This is a blog-like annex to the Enlightenment Network. It replaces the webmaster's previous blogs which were primarily devoted to the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. This material is found here or here. The primary difference between this effort and the earlier blogs will be the greater range of entries, a weaker compulsion to come up with an entries on a regular basis, and, consequently, less repetition.

12:27 8/1/2006

Enlightenment, Democracy, and the Universalism of Spinoza

In a recent Op-Ed (July 29), Rebecca Goldstein reminds us of the impact of Spinoza (1632-1677) on the eighteenth century and, specifically, the creators of the American political tradition. After several years of refusal to accept Talmudic precepts, Spinoza was expelled from his Portuguese Jewish community at 23 for "abominable heresies" and "monstrous deeds". Fortunately, his expulsion opened up a broader world. He resolved to spend his life trying to understand why most religious communities thought they were chosen peoples with a special and superior relationship to "God". He ultimately thought he found the key in a fatal misunderstanding in all traditions of the nature of God.

Spinoza identified God and Nature as being two sides of the same thing. God was the essential Being and Nature the expression of that Being. These thoughts, harkening back to the mystical traditions of Judaism and Islam, provided a grounding for what became a entirely rational understanding of existence. The highest duty of human beings becomes by extension the rational understanding of nature. He saw morality as the expression of each person's rational understanding of what was appropriate for him or her to do in a situation. Of course, he realized that people will differ in their understanding, but if they all approach the issues of their lives without the blinders of inherited religious traditions, they will build a better world.

As Miles Hodges (internet) explains Spinoza's ethical vision: "We cannot judge others by our own norms. In fact we really cannot judge others at all — unless we do so entirely from a sympathetic [stance from which] we are able to evaluate things from their viewpoint. To hate someone else [for their beliefs or actions] is the worst kind of breakdown in our moral thinking. To be able to identify with others is the highest moral achievement. This why to Spinoza the principle of intellectual and spiritual tolerance was [the highest ethical principle]."

Whatever the medieval roots of much of his thinking, Spinoza became a great teacher to the world awakened by the enlightenment. Both John Locke and Thomas Jefferson had the complete works of Spinoza in their libraries. Textual comparison suggests that their ideas on democracy and egalitarianism were greatly influenced by him. But Spinoza went well beyond Locke in his rejection of traditional religion. As Goldstein writes: ". . .we can catch the sound of Spinoza addressing us in Jefferson's appeal to 'the laws of nature and of nature's God'. This is the language of Spinoza's universalist religion, [a religion that] makes no reference to revelation, but rather to ethical truths that can be discovered through human reason."

An enlightened world must remember and build on the pioneering efforts of men such as Spinoza.

Who is Killing the Lebanese?

As the rockets and bombs destroy more and more of Lebanon, Americans should reflect on the way in which this is perceived by the Arab and Islamic world. These weapons were largely made in or for the United States. The markings on them are clear to even the casual observer. When the Israelis thought after the start of their campaign that they would run out of munitions, they made an urgent plea to the United States to hurry up the delivery of the next batch. We did not hesitate to do their bidding, regardless of the evident fact that the result would be many more civilian deaths.

It is no wonder that much of the Muslim world sees this as more an American war than an Israeli. Indeed, many think it is actually an opening skirmish in a war between the United States and Iran. Neocons support this thesis, arguing that since it is actually our war we should take the opportunity and go "on to Tehran".

The Israelis are drunk on power and an ever more sanctimonious self-righteousness. Their intransigence and smug assumption that they have a "god-given" right to most of Palestine, a right only terrorists could possibly dispute, has changed their struggle into an ever more stark confrontation with Arab extremists who see no solution but the destruction of Israel. It is hard to understand how they will back out of this trap they have laid for themselves. The more Arab extremists Israel kills, the more they manufacture.

If the United States is ever to reestablish its standing in the Muslim world, it must make a conscious decision to distance itself from Israel and Israeli tactics. Israel must no longer be able to rely on unconditional American help, diplomatic, economic, or military. We have a much wider world to deal with, and much larger responsibilities. We need to develop and strengthen coalitions with many countries in many areas. This we cannot do as long as the world perceives us as a craven tool of the Israelis. Yes, we cannot simply abandon Israel. We do have a responsibility there, as we do to all peoples and nations that face serious security problems. But we must place, and be seen to place, this responsibility alongside other responsibilities, such as, right now, to the people and government of Lebanon.

Given the loyalties of American political leaders, particularly in Congress, this change in policy will be by no means easy. Nor can it come overnight. But if it does not, Palestine will remain a running sore and the ranks of Islamic terrorists will continue to grow.

16:33 7/31/2006

A call for a new foreign policy

A an excellent recent proposal for reforming American foreign policy (Samantha Power, Harvard Magazine, July-August) has recently been brought to my attention. Her fundamental proposition is that we have lost a great deal of the power and influence we had at the end of the cold war, and remain blithely ignorant of this loss. It is true that we still have an enormous and well-funded military that dwarfs those of the rest of the world. But what power should be measured in today is influence, the ability to get what we want in the world. Some of our loss of influence was inevitable once the shock of the collapse of the bilateral world had worn off. But much of the loss has been self-inflicted. Failures such as those in Iraq, and possibly Afghanistan and Lebanon, even Katrina, have cast doubt on the advisability of following along behind the United States. If we cannot complete what we say we will, why should others do our bidding?

Her next point is that with the decline of American power we live in a world whose international institutions seem increasingly powerless. Such institutions need active support by major powers. When this is not forthcoming from the United States or what we want is unacceptable, there seems to be a general paralysis. Other great states are unwilling or unable to take the lead. We tried to make the world take Darfur seriously. Others neither accepted our leadership nor did much of anything themselves, separately or through the United Nations.

Power also finds an "accountability deficit". The system of checks and balances seems to have broken down, allowing a radical administration to run roughshod over both national and international law. It is this imbalance of power that allowed torture scandals and Guantanamo illegalities to flourish. The claim that we are said to be in a "war", a war without beginning and foreseeable end, and a war that Congress has never declared exacerbates the problem. The only check that seems to work anymore is journalism and that not too well.

Power is also concerned that Americans are becoming increasingly "turned off" by foreign policy, tending to reject any involvement overseas. The reaction of many Americans to Iraq, particularly Democrats, is to think we should draws back, stop interfering in the affairs of other peoples.

Her formula for "fixing foreign policy" begins with an assertion that human rights is important. We cannot turn a blind eye to the injustices in the world. But to play an active part in the human rights struggle (or the ecological etc.) we must first prove that we are and will continue to be a team player. We must consistently follow international rules, not just when it is in our interest to do so. She cites as an example of not being a team player our first ignoring UN inspectors in Iraq and then asking for UN assistance on elections. Then when the UN did a great job, we acted as though the elections were all our doing. A second point is to pursue the growth of democracy less through election and more through developing effective legal structures.

Power's final point, and one that she keeps returning to is the necessity of involving the American people more constructively in the discussion and development of foreign policy. Too long, she claims, foreign policy has been the purview of a small group of white-haired elites in Washington. If the American public more generally is not enlisted in the effort we cannot effectively face the problems of this century.

To me, this last point is her weakest. If one could assume a broadly educated, rational and well-meaning public, then she is right. But history suggests that this is not and has never been a reasonable expectation. In so far as the public is interested at all in foreign policy, it consists of many publics, often with rather narrow and selfish interests, economic or ethnic. It is the ignoring the advice and wisdom of those white-haired elites in favor of populist calls to "support America in the war against terror" that is responsible for much of the decline in our international position that Power laments.

09:18 6/18/2006

Killing Without End: the Guilty and the Innocent

The world is bleeding, blood pouring from endless pores in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, India, Kashmir, and India again. And we must not forget Sri Lanka. This by no means a complete catalogue. Many more contemporary scenes of carnage can be found, particularly in Africa.

One of the primary rules of "civilized war", codified as the "laws of war" is proportionality. The reaction must not be out of line with the action. People supremely confident in the justice of their cause often disregard this principle. Certainly the Israelis seem to be guilty of overreaction in the present case. No matter how much we sympathize with their need to react to the kidnapping of three of their soldiers, with a world ablaze, destroying what is left of large parts of Gaza and Lebanon hardly seems the answer. They say, and may believe, that they never directly target civilians, but they must know that they have in this campaign now killed many more than three civilians.

But pointing to the sins of the Israelis is hardly an answer. The answer will come only when we move toward a world more firmly under a rule of law, with all peoples answerable to authorities that are actually able to enforce their writ within their boundaries. Where such authorities do not exist, there must be outsiders willing and able to step in, ideally with the concurrence of the international community as a whole. Since much of the bloodshed results from real or imagined injustice, there must also be means by which the international community can adjudicate demands for justice and carry out the implications of their findings.

This "solution" is in the realm of the ideal, an argument that can be found in the works of Grotius and Kant written centuries ago. However, it is still possible to approach this ideal more closely than we have with the tools available today. The first step must be for the United States and the other wealthy democracies to take more seriously their responsibility to the world as a whole. This means, first of all, that they keep in reserve at all times sufficient funds and military force to handle multiple world problems as they arise. They must not engage in adventures, such as Iraq, that may seem well-meaning and attractive at the time, but which tie up too much of the West's potential capability. They must also avoid adding to the blood-letting by military actions that inevitably result in extensive loss of life, no matter how much this loss of life might be justified by theoretical hopes that it will eventually be legitimized by historical changes that will ensue if all goes well. The great and powerful must take a vow of humility, to not go beyond their capabilities or their knowledge of the future, and to avoid sanctifying their weapons by reference to grand theories. They must also preserve their economic strength and independence by avoiding large deficits and damaging trade balances that may in crises constrict their actions. The wealthy democratic powers must rededicate themselves to active cooperation in the face of international crises. In this way, the basis for more reliable international interventions to reduce the carnage might be built. Not yet a world of law, but a world more able than today to achieve part of the vision in our time.

18:08 6/17/2006

Instant Democracy Requires Special Conditions

Last Thursday, David Brooks reminded us that 1848 was a year both of widespread democratic revolution, a revolution that quickly turned into a massive retreat back to authoritarianism across Europe. Eventually the ideals of 1848 transformed a many European countries into working democracies, but it was "a long slog of gradual concessions".

Brooks likens what happened in the nineteenth century to the situation today. He argues, in other words, that the road to democracy will be a long and hard one for many countries, that authoritarianism will in many countries only yield very slowly, step by step to the democratic ideology. We are glad to see that he has been chastened by the experience in Iraq, an adventure he originally supported whole-heartedly. Now, he basically has it right, but we still need to make some corrections.

First, the democratic gains in the last twenty-five years have generally been made in ground already well plowed by history. Two areas of gain have been especially important: Latin America and Eastern Europe. We must remember that Latin America has been struggling with attempts to make democracy work since 1820. Fitfully it has worked here and there. Almost everywhere the forms of democracy, based on European or American models, have been institutionalized. People have known a great deal about democracy, but they have not been able to make it reliable. In recent years, with more educated populations they have been able in most countries to make it work more reliably. But as we see in the daily news, a reliably democratic Latin America is still a work in progress. The other major area of gain has been in countries that have long considered themselves European. The end of the Soviet Empire gave them a chance to reidentify with Europe, and this meant to live by European standards of democracy and human rights.

Outside of these areas, there has been as much retreat as advance in recent years. In many countries democracy is identified with the hated West and especially the hated United States. In such countries, the acceptance of democracy is not as easy as we would like it to be. In many other countries, democracy might well come at the expense of other values and interests that we hold dear. How, for example, can we continue to promote "democracy" in Pakistan when we know that a popularly elected government in Pakistan might well be hostile to both the United States and many human rights that we hold dear? And if a people cannot receive the whole-hearted support of the United States in its struggle for democracy that struggle will be seriously weakened. The calculation of benefit and loss of movements in the democratic direction becomes quite different for both elites and masses.

17:14 6/17/2006

The Joys of Nation Building

I recently came across in an old New England journal a discussion of Rudyard Kipling's thinking. I had forgotten that his famous poem "White Man's Burden was written to Americans after our conquest of the Philippines. In retrospect, at least, it seemed to be a handing over of the torch of imperialism from Great Britain to the United States. Let us consider a few verses:

"Take up the White Man's burden —
The savage wars of peace —
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden —
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper —
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden —
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard —
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: —
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden —
Ye dare not stoop to less —
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

We must recall that this was a very different time when political correctness had not been invented. We must also be aware that the claims that the United States is, or was, embarked on a new imperialism is an oversimplication of what President Bush thought he was about (although perhaps less so for some in his camp).

Kipling, who was both a product and a student of the British Empire, was fully aware of the complexities and disappointments inherent in nation building, no matter how well intentioned the nation builder might be. The poem is both a call to arms, and a warning about the costs inherent in answering that call. Would that President Bush and those around him had listened a little more closely to Kipling. Of course, some will say that the call is still important in spite of the costs, that we should pay the costs of living up to our "responsibilities".

16:44 7/5/2006

The War in Iraq

The war in Iraq keeps throwing observers off balance. The violence continues. In some ways it has gotten worse, in others perhaps better. We hear more and more reports of certain areas of Iraq — large parts of provinces and parts of Baghdad — that are now considered to be under insurgent control. More American "war crimes" are coming out in the media. But how this affects what goes on in the country is unclear. The Iraqis appear to have lost interest in the crimes of our soldiers. Some say it is what they have come to expect of Americans. Perhaps others see the many offensive actions that result in civilian casualties as equally "war crimes".

And yet in the midst of this I come across stories that tell a very different tale. It seems, for example, that enrollment in Iraqi schools has been going steadily up since the beginning of the war. This is very clear in the South, but is hardly confined to the South. Even in Baghdad, there are apparently more students going to school. Many of the new students are adults willing and able to attend school with much younger classmates. I find this trend unbelievable, but the reporter seems to be in possession of his faculties. One point in favor of this trend is that schools have seldom been targeted in Iraq by the insurgents, a pattern quite different than that found in Afghanistan

Unfortunately, there have not been too many pleasant surprises lately. One notes the effort of the new government to reach a peace accord with insurgent groups on the basis that their members would only be charged with crimes against Iraqis. Whatever they had done against Americans and other coalition forces would not count. This played to the primary platform on which many in the government could agree with the insurgents: the outsiders were the enemy, as soon as they were gone peace could be made. Of course, this offer was roundly denounced by many Americans, especially in Congress. The new Prime Minister quickly revised the offer. The reaction is understandable, but such American interference is unlikely to help the peace process.

17:53 7/5/2006

Guantanamo

Guantanamo is the shame of the United States. It is filed in the minds of many Americans and much of the world alongside torture and misplaced aggression. Yet as the prolific writer and analyst, Eric Posner, writes in a recent Op-Ed (NYT, June 25) there is a good argument for the existence of a detention facility fulfilling a function similar to Guantanamo. There are many reasons in law for a person to be detained either because of danger to the society at large, to himself, or to particular persons. The detention of enemy aliens is a long-standing practice, though perhaps not one in good repute. The insane are often detained without committing any crimes. Captives in war are detained to prevent them from again taking part in war against the detainers. They may personally have done nothing criminal.

Posner's argument is convincing, although as he admits it may not adequately offer a reason to have detained so many at Guantanamo or the particular persons there. What is good about the argument is that it makes us realize that it is not so much the existence of a detainment facility that is inhumane or criminal as the misuse or sloppy use of this facility. If we did not have Guantanamo and if we were "at war" with an international terrorist organization that fought against Americans, Europeans and others irrespective of frontiers or "the laws of war", we would need a similar facility. With a "declared war", at least on their part, and with no clear idea on either side of what winning such a war might mean, what should we do with the people who appear to be taking part on the side of "the enemy"?

The letters in the paper on the 27th added little to the argument. They were mostly informed by the cruelties and injustices in the situation that faces the detainees. They did not face the question of "If not detention, then what?

17:55 7/5/2006

Iraq: Solution Through Division?

In this commentary and others, I have often suggested that the solution to Iraq may be to simply allow the country to be divided among its main ethnic or religious groupings. I have always admitted the difficulty of this approach, pointing especially to the intermingling of different groups in Baghdad. Even many Kurds take part in, and may continue to wish to be a part of life in Baghdad.

To some degree, the problem is being ameliorated by the insurgent and Shi'a groups that have been forcing the relocation of people, "cleansing" many areas of people they do not like. Shiites are leaving some areas as a result of threats and murders; Sunnis are leaving others; Kurds have been forcing people out of areas in the north that they consider theirs. Even in the vicinity of Basra, Sunnis have come under increasing pressure from the majority Shi'a.

However, an examination of the "reality" (NYT June 25) brings out more forcefully than I have previously seen the problems that a division of the country would face. Mosul in the north is a mixed city of Kurds and Arab Sunnis, intermingled with minorities of many kinds. Fighting here has been particularly fierce. The situation in Kirkuk is even worse. Here the problem is deepened by the demand of the Kurds that the city and the oil wells in the surrounding area be turned over to them

We should not forget the experience of India after World War II when it was divided between Muslims who would become citizens of the new country of Pakistan and the Hindus and Sikhs. Among the leaders of both Muslims and Hindus it seemed that a solution that allowed the country to be peaceably divided along religious lines had been achieved. But this "solution" did not go down well among peoples with a history of communal riots. The resulting fears of millions of Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs that they would be forced to live in countries hostile to their way of life led to a mass exodus and exchange of populations. This triggered a murderous outpouring of emotion among those who were staying. Evidently, the decision of so many to leave for another country was considered a kind of treason. In any event, the resulting bloodbath left millions dead.

09:45 6/8/2006

Leaving Iraq

Until recently, with all their doubts and criticisms, leading figures in both parties have agreed that we cannot leave Iraq without achieving at least the minimal goals of stabilizing the country. In the last month, however, I have noticed that there is a general acceptance of the fact that we are not winning and probably not going to win. The violence continues to get worse and more grisly, and the new government appears quite unable to make a difference. I have read recent newspaper pieces quoting military figures as saying that this or that area are now "under insurgent control". One reads of the insurgents moving forward in Baghdad so that areas once considered safe for normal life are no longer safe. It is almost as if there is a "front" in Baghdad and we and our allies are moving backwards. This marks a new chapter.

This morning the conservative columnist, David Brooks, writes of the war in a more pessimistic manner than I have ever noticed. He tells us that savagery and evil seem to be winning in Iraq. The insurgents and the out-of-control militias are not only cruel but atrociously cruel and proud of it. Videos of their horrors are sold on the streets. They are also succeeding because they have created an environment in which no one can be trusted. He finds the insurgents third advantage is that "they have no agenda", or at least no standards to live up to. All they have to do is destroy. The more they destroy the better. When we commit atrocities, it is a defeat for us; when they commit atrocities, a victory for them.

It is hard to admit it, but somehow we must make the decision to leave, even if it means the loss of cherished objectives, our own and those of many Iraqis. This can't be left to the next President as Bush hopes. Leaving under these conditions will also mean a loss of face, a decline of internationally respect for America and particularly its military strength. But we will have to bite the bullet

We abandoned Vietnam after a much larger investment than we have made in Iraq, and, we thought at the time, a much larger strategic stake. But we moved on because we had discovered that we had no plausible theory of victory. Our loss was a major setback, but we went on to win the Cold War. The analogy is in this respect a good one, for most of those who follow the war in Iraq closely have also lost confidence that we have, or can construct, a winning strategy. With Iraq behind us, we would be able to increase our effectiveness in confronting many other international issues.

Our quick departure from Iraq would initially cost the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Our Vietnam exodus damaged the lives of millions of Vietnamese. Perhaps as many as a million or so Vietnamese fled their country. Those ending up in America have been joined by hundreds of thousands of Laotians and Cambodians. But in neither the case of Vietnam nor Iraq should we imagine that prolonging the agony would not have been, or be, even more costly for all parties. In Iraq, unlike Vietnam, we have the option of continuing to effectively support one section of the country (the Kurdish enclave), thereby preserving at least a small beacon of light in the region and saving to this extent our national honor. Presumably we could reinstitute something like the arrangement we had before the Iraq war, an arrangement that allowed the development of a relatively free and prosperous Kurdistan. One can only hope that this will be part of our abandonment planning.

18:04 6/2/200

We Need Both Truth and Truthfulness

John Perkins Confessions of an Economic Hit man has been a recent New York Times best-seller for several weeks. It is an astonishing book. It is in so many ways "right", and yet it is based on an unconvincing and apparently fabricated text by a seriously flawed author. It is a sad book. As one reviewer wrote, it could have been a book about the issues; instead it was about John Perkins. But what is important here is the reiterate the need for truthfulness — higher truth if one can get it, but at least truthfulness, the desire to search for truth

Perkins tells us that he was recruited indirectly by the NSA in the 1970s to work for a company (MAIN) whose assignment was to make up development plans for poor countries that would have as their effect impoverishing the countries affected, turning their people into slaves of American imperialism, and making American capitalists, including his company, fabulously rich and powerful. His trainer for his job at MAIN, a beautiful woman, met him in her apartment where she laid out clearly what he was to do as an "economic hit man". He quotes her as telling him in one of these training sessions that "We're paid to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars. A large part of your job is to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire — to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs." She goes on to discuss the thinking behind the creation of an American empire and how this empire will differ from those of the past. She tells him that in his new position he would essentially be working for the government (but then the government and major corporations such as Halliburton seem in this story to be identical). She ended her training sessions with an elegant meal at which she announced that he was never to refer to any conversations that they had had and that he would probably not see her again. Returning from an assignment, he found that she had disappeared without a trace.

Perkins devotes most of the bok to his experiences as an economic planner and forecaster in Ecuador, Indonesia, Colombia, Iran and other countries. His discussions of economic planning and its results in these countries gives little information, except to repeat his accusations against the system. He never offers statistical details about the economy of a country before or after the "big projects" that his projections supported. Instead, he uncritically repeats the opinions of opposition elements he finds in each country. On Iran, the only one of his examples I have personal experience with, he tells us of conversations I find less than convincing. For example, an informant tells him that the shah, with the backing of the United States, wants to turn the country green (I assume through large irrigation projects such as the Helmand Valley project we undertook in neighboring Afghanistan). His informant tells him that of course no real Iranian would want such a thing since Iranians love their deserts and the people who live in them. This struck me as odd; certainly this was not one of the main arguments the Iranian people had against the shah! His informant also tells him (this was the early 1970s) that the shah is on his way out because of the work of the Islamic underground, which is organizing the people to rise. First, the shah was not threatened in those years. The crises that led to the revolt came later. Second, his informant appeared to come from the educated middle class. This was the group that had no clue when the revolution actually came that the Islamic movement would be the beneficiary. Both they and the American government thought the country would be either taken over with by liberals (Mossadegh-types) or the communist Tudeh, which was the best organized political party in the country.

What Perkins seems almost unaware of in the period of his overseas work (primarily the seventies and early eighties) is that American foreign policy was focused primarily on containing communism. This aspect of policy is dismissed in asides, but it is what really drove our policy in Iran and Indonesia, as it had in Vietnam earlier. He speaks about our deal with Saudi Arabia that included allowing them to support Osama bin Laden's "war against the Russians" in Afghanistan. Actually, we supported in Afghanistan whoever we could find that would fight the Russians. Osama bin Laden was a part of this effort, but certainly not the main part. The talk of an "American Empire" that he places in the seventies was actually not taken seriously until we did become "the only superpower" around 1990. After the USSR collapsed, there were small groups in Washington who began to talk of empire, although their idea was more classical empire than the economic empire stemming from imposed globalization that Perkins discusses.

The book repeatedly describes conspiracies, but then backtracks and says that there is really no conspiracy: "The empire depends on the efficacy of big banks, corporations, and governments — the corporatocracy — but it is not a conspiracy. . .it is ourselves" (page 256). In other words, it is what is happening in the world, and in so far as we benefit personally from it, we are complicit. He tells us he is not talking about "conspirators lurking in the shadows", but rather all those who work for the system. This would seem reasonable enough. Yet most of the book does not read that way. It outlines what can only be described as a worldwide conspiracy, with people (usually CIA) lurking in the shadows, killing heads of states by nefarious means, or arresting Noriega because he wouldn't go along with our plans. Perkins has apparently asserted in other public forums that both Kennedys, Martin Luther King, John Lennon and several senators were assassinated. He has seriously suggested that 9/11 was "an inside job", and certainly not something Osama bin Laden could have managed. One should note that his other books have been on the wisdom that South American shamans have to offer us. In a recent book, written after his government consulting work ("Shapeshifting"), Perkins tells us "how he overcame his initial skepticism and doubt to became one with a chair, transform herbs into a newspaper, and travel through time and space as a blue ball of light" (from an Amazon review). All in all, Perkins appears to have a tenuous grip on reality.

Some reviewers have noted that Perkins suffers from a life-long "guilt trip", going back to his days in prep school. He never had a standard education to prepare him for his work. Yet he was offered a large salary to do what he was told would be the falsification of economic projections. This was part of a pattern. He tells us that he was repeatedly seduced by rewards of money and power. At the same time, or from time to time, he has felt guilty about having too much, a guilt that has episodically overwhelmed him both in this country and during his overseas assignments. Several times to began to write "the Confessions", but then drew back when a new chance for easy money arose, or when he thought the book would endanger his way of life.

Confessions is a sad book because if we take out the international conspiracy elements many of the accusations he makes have a good deal of truth in them. There has been collusion between American governments and economic interests in the development of foreign assistance policy. This collusion was actually written into many assistance bills (for example, if food aid were to be given, it had to be from America; if contracts were to be let, American companies, large and small, were to be favored). There also was a tendency before the nineties for foreign aid to emphasize large development projects, such as dams, in developing countries. This was based on the argument that these were the type of projects that the host country was least able to doon its own. This was not all nonsense, but certainly many large American companies benefited from such choices.

We are disliked by many people around the world, both for the style and substance of our foreign policy. Our assistance has often not gone to those it should have. We have often propped up unpopular leaders such as Mobutu because they opposed communism, or ignored the nature of regimes such as the Saudi because it was in our national interest or the interest of the big oil companies. Our record in Iraq is truly ignoble. These facts apparently make it easy for many on the "liberal-left", now identified with bitter opposition to President Bush, to welcome Perkins's work as a vindication of their worst fears. Even David Brancaccio, a well-known PBS interviewer held an interview with Perkins that essentially offered a platform for Perkins to make his case. He made no serious effort to call him to account or question the lack of evidence in the book for his accusations. In accepting so easily the Perkins case, communicators such as Brancaccio undercut both the case of their interviewees and the case they should be making. In the interview, Brancaccio did not question, for example, the unlikelihood that the NSA had been the unseen hand in recruiting him as an economic hit man. Concerned primarily with electronic intelligence, the NSA would have been a most unlikely agency for this role. He did not question Perkins' repeated use of false statistics, such as the "fact" that most poor people are getting poorer and health statistics show a steady decline, or even that the United States has an exceptionally high suicide rate! Because if liberal reporters do not care deeply about the truth, if they are willing to let ideological talk rather than careful thought shape how they understand their world, and what they communicate to others of their understanding, then they are no better than Bush-Cheneys with their skewed agendas.

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