LANTERNS FOR PEACE

 

THE UNITED STATES BOMBS HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI

An Event and Reflection

Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Lanterns for Peace

Peace Action Wisconsin

Saturday, August 9, 2025, 6-10 pm

Zao MKE Church, 2319 Kenwood Blvd. Milwaukee

Peace Action Wisconsin will hold a remembrance of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and renew its commitment to a world free from nuclear weapons.

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REMEMBERING HIROSHIMA and NAGASAKI (a repost)

Harry Targ

In these early August days, we reflect on the decision to drop atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945. The official explanation for the use of these horrific new weapons was that they were required to end the World War in Asia. But subsequent historical research has indicated that the United States chose to drop the bombs to threaten the former Soviet Union and as a result to facilitate the United States construction of a post-war world order that would maximize its economic and political vision.

United States foreign policy over the last 150 years has been a reflection of many forces including economics, politics, militarism and the desire to control territory. The most important idea used by each presidential administration to gain support from the citizenry for the pursuit of empire is the claim that America is “exceptional”. 

Think about the view of “the city on the hill” articulated by Puritan ancestors who claimed that they were creating a social experiment that would inspire the world. Over three hundred years later President Reagan again spoke of “the city on the hill” (and the image of American Exceptionalism continued  as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the Clintons and others referred to the US as ‘the indispensable nation’).

One can recall public addresses by turn of the twentieth century luminaries such as former President Theodore Roosevelt who claimed that the white race from Europe and North America was civilizing the peoples of what we would now call the Global South.  Indiana Senator Beveridge’s stated it clearly: “It is elemental….It is racial.”

From the proclamation of the new nation’s special purpose in Puritan America, to Ronald Reagan’s reiteration of the idea, to similar claims by virtually all politicians of all political affiliations, Americans hear over and over that we are different, special, and a shining example of public virtue that all other peoples should use as their guide for building a better society and polity.

However, the United States has been involved in wars for 201 years from 1776 to 2011. Ten million indigenous people had been exterminated as the “new” nation moved westward between the 17th and the 20th centuries and at least 10 million people were killed, mostly from developing countries, between 1945 and 2010 in wars in which the United States had some role. In addition, world affairs was transformed by the use of the two atomic bombs; one dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 instantly killing 80,000 people and the other on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 killing another 70,000.

Comparing the image of exceptionalism with the domestic reality of American life suggests stark contrasts as well: continuous and growing gaps between rich and poor, inadequate nutrition and health care for significant portions of the population, massive domestic gun violence, and inadequate access to the best education that the society has the capacity to provide to all. Of course, the United States was a slave society for over 200 years formally racially segregated for another 100, and now incarcerates 15 percent of African American men in their twenties.

Although, the United States is not the only country that has a history of imperialism, exploitation, violence, and racism US citizens should understand that its foreign policy and economic and political system are not exceptional and must be changed.

Finally, are there any common threads that run from 1945  when two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese people?  First, a small number of politicians, elected and appointed, made decisions of monumental importance to the victims of the bombing and the subsequent danger of nuclear war.

Second, the decisions were made in the face of overwhelming evidence that the use of these horrific bombs was not needed to end the war in Asia.

Third, Truman and his aides made their decisions in contradiction to warnings of the dangers of atomic war for civilization. Opposition came from significant sectors of the scientific community, including some scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, which developed the bomb.

Fourth, the decision to use atomic weapons was profoundly political. Demonstrating that the United States had this powerful new weapon sent a message to the Soviet Union. In addition, key decisionmakers including General Leslie Groves, Director of the Manhattan Project; James Forrestal who would become the first Secretary of Defense; and James Byrnes, Secretary of State, were virulently anti-communist. Also, the decision to drop the bomb, whether a motivation or not, communicated to the American people that President Truman, not seen as particularly qualified for the job, was tough and potentially a great leader. He, like some historians and former advisors, continued to defend the decision for years to follow.

Finally, a better future and the survival of humanity require a realization, as Paul Robeson once suggested, that what is precious about all people is not their differences but their commonalities. Exceptionalist thinking separates people and facilitates decisions like the dropping of the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sharing what we have in common as human beings, both our troubles and our talents, is the only basis for creating a peaceful and just world.

 

THE POLITICS OF FEAR: A BASIC TOOL OF REACTION

Harry Targ

“Scare hell out of the American people.” (attributed to Arthur Vandenberg, Senator, Michigan, February, 1947)



A basic tactic used by American politicians to marshal support for policies and politicians that ordinary citizens, given their common sense and self-interest would never support, is to create a sense of fear. The “politics of fear” has a long and venal history in American political life. We can point to warnings of the penetration of foreigners into our public life before the civil war, to dangerous Reds in the struggle for the eight-hour day in the 1880s, to the Red scares of the post-World War I and II periods. The politics of fear has always used class hatred and class envy, racism, sexism, homophobia, and a sense of the “alien” to create enthusiasm for policies that are backward and inhumane.

After World War II, opinion polls indicated that most Americans hoped for a period of peace built upon the continued collaboration of the powerful wartime allies, the United States, the former Soviet Union, and Great Britain. But as President Truman articulated in a relatively unknown speech to a gathering at Baylor University on March, 6, 1947, the United States was committed to the creation of a global economy based upon private enterprise, foreign investment, and free trade. He alluded to forces in the world that sought to organize economic life around different principles, national autonomous development and state directed economies.

What the Truman administration had been discussing in private was not a public debate on the virtues of free markets versus national planning, but a global crusade against “communist tyranny.” At an apocryphal meeting of key aides and politicians in February 1947, before Truman’s famous “Truman Doctrine” speech of March 13, the formerly isolationist senator from Michigan, Arthur Vandenberg, reportedly declared that he would support a global policy, presumably to promote free market capitalism, but he advised that the president should “scare hell out of the American people.” Why? Because the American people still thought peace was possible between the East and the West. In March, Truman warned Congress that the United States was going to be engaged in a long-term struggle against the forces of tyranny in the world, the international communist menace.

In the 1950s, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, warned that President Jacob Arbenz, of Guatemala, constituted a threat to the Central American isthmus, and eventually the United States itself. Since Arbenz supported the expropriation of unused land owned by the United Fruit Company, the administration claimed he was moving toward communism.

Candidate John Kennedy framed his campaign for president around the fears of a “missile gap” that had allegedly opened up between the United States and the Soviet Union and the spread of communism to 90 miles off our shores on the island of Cuba.

Ronald Reagan, another presidential candidate, powerfully introduced the idea of a “the window of vulnerability” to popular discourse on the dangers to American freedom if the incumbent candidate Jimmy Carter was reelected and the government did not dramatically increase military spending.

With the end of the Cold War, new enemies needed to be constructed. And indeed they were. They were more diabolical, less tangible than the Soviet Union and international communism. These included “failed states,” “rogue states,” and “terrorists.”

Reflecting on the politics of fear and its long history, we can extrapolate some core ideas about it and how it works. The politics of fear creates demonic enemies such as communists, terrorists, foreigners, or people who are defined as different. The politics of fear require an implied or stated prediction of doom. If the people do not support what is being advocated, the consequences for human survival would be in jeopardy. Only clear and total support of the policies and politicians promoting it can save us from the apocalypse. Finally, in most instances the politics of fear relates to war and militarism.

The Nixon administration added to the politics of fear the militarization of domestic policies as well. For example, the US needed to commit to a war on cancer or a war on drugs. While military images verbally have not been added to the debate about health care reform today, some opponents have begun to carry guns to places where debates are occurring, suggesting that this debate is indeed a prelude to war.

What are some lessons that this argument raises for progressives to consider? First, we must recognize that the politics of fear undergird much of our political discourse and it has for a long time. Second, the politics of fear is based on distortions of other peoples’ thoughts and behaviors and other countries’ intentions and what their actions might mean for us. Third, we must be ready to challenge virtually every instance in which the politics of fear is used to coerce and manipulate people. Fourth, we need to articulate more vigorously our own public policy proposals and our own vision of how we can build a society that is based on social and economic justice rather than fear, enemies, and the prospects of doom.

 

THE MIDDLE EAST: MILITARISM, GROWING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, AND STARVATION BFFORE OCTOBER 7

 Harry Targ

(a repost from January 29, 2020)

Global Economic Context         

Looking at the last third of the twentieth century, Canadian economist James Davies, in a study prepared by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, wrote “income inequality has been rising for the past 20 to 25 years and we think that is true for inequality in the distribution of wealth.” In 2000 the study showed that the top 1 percent of the world’s population accounted for 40 percent of its total net worth, with the bottom half owning 1.1 percent. Edward Wolff, another economist participating in the study, wrote “With the notable exception of China and India, the third world has drifted behind.” (New York Times, December 6, 2006).

The starkest interpretation of this kind of data was reflected in a 2003 article by Egyptian economist Samir Amin. He asserted that the global economy is creating what he called “the precarious classes.” Both in agriculture and manufacturing they cannot count on day-to-day remunerative activity to survive. Amin estimated that 2/3 to 3/4 of humankind are among the “precarious classes.”

Relevance to the Middle East in the 21st Century

A financial publication entitled “Arab Banker” printed a summary of a 2007 World Bank study, “Two Years After London: Restarting Palestinian Economic Recovery.” The World Bank, the Arab Banker, and other sources presented the following alarming data:

-The percentage of Gazans living in poverty steadily increased from 1998 (21.6%) to 2006 (35%).

-Israeli policies barring imports and exports which isolated Gaza from the Israeli and global economy made matters worse; a 90 % decline in Gaza’s industrial operations occurred between the 2006 parliamentary election victory of Hamas and 2007.

-Industrial employment in Gaza declined from 35,000 in 2005 to 4,200 in 2007. 

During the first decade of the new century, comparative economic data on Israel and the occupied territories indicated that West Bank and Gaza gross national product per capita was about 10 percent of that of Israel.

More recently, the United Nations issued a report entitled “Socio-Economic and Food Security Survey 2012: West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestine.” This report was produced under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, and the World Food program. It documented a connection between food insecurity in Palestine and external constraints on the economies of the West Bank and Gaza imposed by occupation and blockades. Among their findings were the following:

-34 percent of Palestinian households, comprising over 1.5 million people, live in situations of food insecurity (19 percent in the West Bank and 57 percent in Gaza).

-Food insecurity increased since 2009, derived from growing unemployment, declining purchasing power, and slowed or abandoned aid thus decreasing jobs, income, and consumption.

-Food insecure households (often with larger families) are more likely to experience disabilities and chronic illnesses.

The report made three general recommendations: lift the embargo on Gaza, increase West Bank access to the Israeli economy, and support efforts to increase economic productivity in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Middle East Wars

The contested land of Palestine had been largely populated by Muslim peoples from the 7th century until the mid-twentieth century.  In 1947, the year that the United Nations recommended the partition of Palestine into two states, only 1/3 of the land’s inhabitants were of Jewish background. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and the chairman of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, declared the establishment of a new state of Israel, and the first Middle East war between the new Israeli army and Arab states ensued. Palestinians and Arab neighbors regarded the creation of the new state as an occupation of the historic residents of the land. Over the course of this first Middle East war and those that followed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became a displaced population.

Subsequently wars occurred in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and intermittently from the 1980s until today. (In the 1967 war Israel occupied, the West Bank, Gaza, the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights, formerly Syrian land). These wars were fought between Israelis, Palestinians and states neighboring Israel. Disputes involved multiple issues including the legitimacy of the state of Israel; Israeli expansion, particularly its continuing construction of settlements in the West Bank and the displacement of Palestinian people; the rights of Palestinians inside Israel, and control of water and land throughout the region. Various organizations challenging the Israeli state and land expansion emerged over the last fifty years including the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Several nations supported contending parties to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict such as the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, former European colonial powers such as Great Britain and France, and neighboring Arab and other Muslim states.

The United States became Israel’s main ally during all these years. Since 1979 Israel has been the largest recipient on a per capita basis of foreign assistance from the United States of any of the latter’s clients. In addition, Israel has become the best equipped and most powerful military force in the region, largely due to the billions of dollars of US military assistance. Israel is the only state with nuclear weapons in the region. In a recent budget decision, the United States has agreed to provide military assistance totaling $3.8 billion per annum for ten years to Israel beginning in 2019.

Finally, pro-Israel lobby groups in the United States support continued military and economic aid to Israel. Israel, with United States support, opposes serious negotiations with what is now the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza. It is expected that recent West Bank/Gaza Palestinian agreements will harden Israeli opposition to serious negotiation.

Of course, Israel opposes initiatives from peace groups in the US and the international community. Currently, militant pro-Israel lobby groups as well as the Israeli government are pressuring Congress to pass legislation overturning Obama administration accords with Iran on nuclear weapons. Many also advocate US-led  military action against Iran.

Violence and instability in the region, the tragedy of 9/11, worldwide terrorism directed against US targets, and insurmountable and spreading conflicts have been directly related to Israel’s economic isolation of and military actions toward the Palestinian people and the continuing US support of Israel’s policies. Within the United States, critics of US support of Israel are excoriated and politicians are intimidated such that policy debate on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians inside Israel as well as economic embargoes and military attacks on interim Palestinian institutions and people in Gaza and the West Bank are largely censored from public discourse.

The particular mantra of rightwing groups, including Christian nationalists and Republicans and Democrats alike, label any critics of Israeli policy as “anti-Semitic.” Some of the strongest voices opposed to the total United States military and economic support for Israel come from progressives in the Jewish community. More Jewish people are becoming critics of Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people. Many of these people proudly identify with their historical heritage of support for social and economic justice all around the world and are outraged by recent disingenuous claims of sympathy for the Jewish people from Conservative politicians in both political parties, think tanks and religious lobby groups, and sectors of the mainstream media.

Politics and Economics of the Middle East Today

Nar Arafeh, a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, challenges the idea that economic development in the West Bank and Gaza alone could bring peace to the region. She argues that unless economic change is coupled with increased Palestinian political rights in the region resistance to Israel’s political/military domination will continue.

As to economics, although Palestine is expected to experience 3.5% growth in GDP in 2017, that growth is largely based on construction, presumably rebuilding housing units destroyed by Israeli bombs. She points out that the boost in construction in recent years in the West Bank and Gaza is coupled with economic stagnation including low growth and inadequate wages, increased unemployment, and declining foreign assistance. Israel controls the flow of labor from the West Bank to production sites as needed and limits more substantially Palestinian labor from Gaza. Arafeh says that “The ‘Palestinian Economy’ is a political construct, shaped to serve the more powerful player: Israel.” (Nar Arafeh, “Palestine’s Economic Outlook-April, 2017. Al Jazeera).

And on the human rights front, an Amnesty International report entitled, “Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories Report 2016/2017” stated that:

Israeli forces unlawfully killed Palestinian civilians, including children, in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and detained thousands of Palestinians from the OPT who opposed Israel’s continuing military occupation, holding hundreds in administrative detention. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained rife and was committed with impunity. The authorities continued to promote illegal settlements in the West Bank, including by attempting to retroactively “legalize” settlements built on private Palestinian land, and severely restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement, closing some areas after attacks by Palestinians on Israelis. Israeli forces continued to blockade the Gaza Strip, subjecting its population of 1.9 million to collective punishment, and to demolish homes of Palestinians in the West Bank and of Bedouin villagers in Israel’s Negev/Naqab region, forcibly evicting residents.

What Does This Mean?

First, violence and political instability in the world is intimately connected to the absence of economic well-being.  The economic crises faced in recent years in the industrial capitalist world are small compared to the punishing crises of survival that some countries of the Global South still experience in the 21st century; countries and territories of the Middle East are prime examples.

Second, data suggests clearly that in the occupied territories (the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, all conquered in the 1967 Middle East war) the notion of “precariousness” (joblessness, land theft, food insecurity, grotesque economic and political inequalities) is an apt way to describe the condition of the Palestinian people.

Third, shifting currents in Palestinian politics have been connected to patterns of economic growth and decay. In the 1950s and 1960s, secular leaders in the Arab world, including Palestinians, offered a vision of economic change and political autonomy for their people that was processed in Washington and European capitals as threatening to dominant economic interests. President Nasser of Egypt who opened relations with the Soviet Union and began to talk about Arab Socialism was a prime target of concern. Paradoxically, the US began to support political actors in the region with a religious agenda, countries such as Saudi Arabia and later in the 1980s followers of Osama Bin Laden who were fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. In the 1980s also the United States supported Hamas in Palestine.

There is no easy solution but the United States and other wealthy countries have an obligation to participate in a disinterested economic reconstruction of the occupied territories and support for complete political autonomy of the Palestinian people. Only that will break the back of anger, hatred, and political instability. The United States should stop fueling the violence in the region by ending military aid to Israel. Economic reconstruction requires negotiation toward the creation of a viable secular Israeli state in which all participate or a separate Palestinian state with land repatriation and guarantees of security from Israeli military attack. In addition, Israeli settlements in the West Bank need to be dismantled. Economic development must be coupled with economic justice.

In the United States, the political climate needs to begin to change so that a resumption of frank dialogue can proceed concerning foreign policy toward Israel, ending the violence in the region, and supporting economic justice and political rights for the Palestinian people. For example, is it wise and humane for the United States to commit $3.8 billion annually in for military aid to Israel for the next ten years?

Labeling those who propose different United States foreign policies toward Israel as anti-Semitic do a disservice to peoples of the region and defame US activists, including Jews, who support peace and justice for the Palestinian people.

The first Gulf of Tonkin "Incident" 61 Years Ago

 Harry Targ

President Johnson's Confrontation with the Vietnamese People

Shortly after Kennedy's death, Secretary of Defense McNamara reported to the new president, Lyndon Johnson, on South Vietnam. McNamara said the situation was bad, that if the United States did not act a new Communist or neutral government would be in power in South Vietnam within three months. The government that replaced Diem was indecisive, and the NLF was gaining support in the countryside. The secretary of defense counseled that the United States should keep a close watch on Southeast Asia and be prepared to act.

From December, 1963, until the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August, 1964, the Johnson administration had been supporting secret military operations in South Vietnam and against the North, and at the same time was planning broader U.S. involvement in the war. U.S.-supported raids and attacks on the North were carried out in the spring of 1964, air strikes were made against targets in Laos, and destroyer patrols were maintained in the Gulf of Tonkin in North Vietnamese waters. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had proposed escalation of the war and extensive bombing in January, 1964. William Bundy of the State Department was preparing a scenario for U.S. escalation in May, 1964, a scenario that would include requesting a resolution of support for administration action by Congress. Meanwhile, members of the administration were making public statements warning of the need for greater U. S. involvement and periodically claiming that U. S. participation in the Southeast Asian war could end within two years.

President Johnson, planning for his own campaign for election against right-wing Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, gave no public clues to the conclusions being reached by his advisors concerning the U.S. role in Vietnam. While Johnson was preparing for brutal war in Vietnam, U.S. liberals were supporting him as the "peace candidate." The Gulf of Tonkin incident provided the immediate pretext for implementing the scenario of escalation. Two U.S. ships were purportedly attacked by North Vietnamese boats on August 2 and 4, 1964, in the Gulf of Tonkin. As a result of the "attack" the United States sent fighter-bombers to counterattack North Vietnam. The president then brought a resolution to Congress asking for authority to do what he deemed necessary in support of the "independence and territorial integrity" of South Vietnam and Laos.

What does seem clear is that the Johnson administration had been planning escalation in support of the South Vietnamese government in early 1964, and that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was the vehicle used to generate congressional and public support for the actions already planned. Tom Wicker reported an unnamed official as saying: "The Tonkin resolution was then brought out of Johnson's pocket to be used as the basis for legitimizing the planned expansion of the war-all that had been needed was an event to set things in motion" (224-25). The Gulf of Tonkin incident, then, could have been a third "staged" event in the critical junctures of U. S. foreign-policy history: the exploitation of the Greek civil war in February, 1947, being the first and of the North Korean "invasion" of South Korea being the second. Staged or not, all three events provided opportunities for marshaling public support for escalating U.S. imperial policies.

After the election of the "peace" candidate in November, the Johnson administration continued its planning for escalated war to defend the faltering South Vietnamese government and army. An NLF attack on a U.S. military installation at Pleiku in February, 1965, created the rationale for beginning the bombing of North Vietnam that would continue unabated for three years. The Pentagon Papers suggest that the bombing of North Vietnam had been decided on in September, 1964, when presidential candidate Johnson was opposing Goldwater's bombing proposals. The bombing campaign, code-named Operation Rolling Thunder, was designed to force the North Vietnamese to sue for peace and hence pressure its allies in the South to stop fighting. The effect of the bombing was just the opposite. North Vietnamese resolve to support the NLF increased, the Soviet Union continued material support of the North, and the efforts of the NLF in the South were increasingly successful in winning popular support. Then Johnson ordered U.S. troops into offensive action against the NLF and sent twenty thousand more combat troops to South Vietnam, while trying to restrict public access to information about this new commitment. In a significant speech at Johns Hopkins University, the president called for a major Marshall-Plan effort to rebuild all of Southeast Asia, and, at the same time, likened the North Vietnamese to the Nazis in the 1930s. If the United States acted like the Europeans after Munich, then all of Southeast Asia would fall to this new form of totalitarianism. Johnson also raised what may be called the "puppet" theory of aggression in Southeast Asia: the NLF, still largely indigenous South Vietnamese, was a puppet of the North, which, in turn, was a puppet of the Chinese Communists and ultimately of the Soviet Union.

In June, 1965, because of the deteriorating situation in the South, General Westmoreland, head of U.S. forces in Indochina, requested forty-four battalions of troops. By July, Johnson had agreed to the Westmoreland request, and by year's end there were 184,314 U.S. soldiers engaged in ground combat in South Vietnam. The pattern of requests for more men, coupled with promises of victory, was to continue for three years as death and destruction were unleashed on Vietnamese society. By this time opposition to the U.S. war effort had begun to grow. A largely student-based antiwar movement began demonstrations, first on campuses and later in the streets. Dissent began to appear from more "legitimate" sources as well. Senator J. William Fulbright and other members of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee held public and televised hearings on the war and in the process attacked the following official administration arguments: that the United States had a moral commitment to support the South Vietnamese government, that the war was really "aggression from the North" rather than a civil-war situation, that the United States had to crush this "war of national liberation" so that Communists would learn the lesson that such wars never work, and that U.S. prestige was at stake. Despite the growing movement against the war, U.S. escalation continued.

In 1966 more bombings were ordered and troops sent. The latest of several generals heading the South Vietnamese government, Nguyen Cao Ky, had taken power in 1965 after several coups. His statement of admiration for Hitler was broadly reported in the mass media, since it had become impossible any longer for the media to portray the United States as preserving democracy.

In 1967 the level of bombardment was again raised, from sixty to eight hundred raids per month. Johnson did not support proposals by the military to increase troop strength to 670,000, to end bombing target limits, invade Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam, and attack the harbor of Haiphong in the North. Even with the "constraints" placed on the military, however, large areas of South Vietnam had been declared "free fire zones," one-third to one-half of the people of Southeast Asia had become refugees, 100,000,000 pounds of herbicide were dropped on South Vietnam between 1961 and 1971, one-seventh of South Vietnam had been sprayed to destroy crops, and thirty-six percent of rice-growing swamps had been made unfit for cultivation by 1974. Between 1965 and 1971, 142 pounds of explosives per acre had been dropped on Vietnam (584 pounds per person), 118 pounds detonated per second-all of this equivalent to 450 Hiroshima bombs. The land was being mutilated by the murderous Johnson policies, malaria was spreading, and timber and rubber industries destroyed (Nathan and Oliver 369-70). During the Johnson years the population of Saigon had swelled, and with wartime profiteering came incredible corruption, prostitution, and drug trafficking. Finally, by the end of 1967 more bombs had been dropped on Vietnam than had been dropped during the entire European phase of World War II.

Despite the enormous firepower unleashed against the Vietnamese people, the NLF and North Vietnamese armies launched a massive assault on several South Vietnamese cities on January 31, 1968, during the Tet holiday. The Vietnamese suffered large casualties but gained military control of cities and rural areas throughout Vietnam. The U.S. military defined their counterattack as a victory, but key decision makers and the public knew that the war was leading to defeat. Three years of genocidal application of force had not reduced the spirit or resistance of the Vietnamese people.

In broad historical perspective, the Tet offensive may have provided the decisive impetus to the decline of U. S. global power. General Westmoreland requested another 206,000 troops after Tet. Clark Clifford, a corporate lawyer who had advised Democrats on foreign policy since the Truman administration and had recently replaced McNamara as secretary of defense, began a quick review of U.S. Vietnam policy. He communicated to Johnson his conclusion that the war was not winnable and therefore that Westmoreland's request should not be granted. Dean Acheson, the longtime cold warrior, told Johnson the same thing. While still wishing to pursue the war, Johnson gave in to the advice of Clifford and Acheson. The war had been so costly in men (139,801 casualties) and materiel, the value of the dollar had declined on the world market, the image of U.S. military power had been so tarnished, and the opposition in the streets had reached such a fever pitch that key sectors of monopoly capital, whom Clifford and Acheson represented, had become war critics.

On March 31, 1968, President Johnson announced that he was restricting the bombing to below the nineteenth parallel in the hope that the initiative would bring negotiations, and that he would not be a candidate for the presidency in 1968. The North Vietnamese responded with an offer to negotiate a full bombing halt. The Johnson administration insisted upon a reduction of North Vietnamese battle activities in the South. Despite a verbal stalemate, offensive action declined during the summer of 1968 and increased in the fall as the United States failed to respond to the decreased intensity of combat.

Finally, with the Democratic presidential candidate trailing in the opinion polls, Johnson fully halted the bombing on October 31, 1968. The primary source of the U.S. defeat in Vietnam was the Vietnamese people. Domestic opposition to the brutal war played its part as well, however. The U.S. working class, not as demonstrative as students, had opposed the war more than any other group in society, according to polls; even so, worker opposition increased after Tet.

Activities of the antiwar movement also became more intense and incorporated more and more people. Radical groups, while not developing sophisticated theory, began to talk of the interconnections between war, racism, and poverty. Groups like the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) talked of the Vietnam War as a by-product of the structure of imperialism. These views countered earlier explanations that emphasized a misguided and overly zealous anti-Communist outlook.

Corresponding to the antiwar sentiment among the corporate elites represented by Clifford and Acheson was a reformist electoral movement to end the war. Senators Eugene McCarthy and later Robert Kennedy entered presidential primaries and scored victories over President Johnson. Tensions within the society were heightened when Senator Kennedy and civil rights leader and later antiwar activist Martin Luther King were assassinated. Finally, in the summer of 1968 thousands of antiwar activists and other dissidents came to the Democratic national convention in Chicago, where they were brutally beaten by the Chicago police. The Democrats ignored McCarthy's victories in the primaries and the massive protest against the war outside the convention and selected Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, as the presidential candidate. To a large extent, as slogans of the time ran, the war had indeed been brought home.

from

https://thenorthmeridianreview.org/new-page-1#:~:text=This%20book%20is%20a%20historical,States'%20political%20and%20economic%20history.

THE CONTINUATION OF ATTACKS ON HIGHER EDUCATION

 (The ruling class has been pushing back on the reforms and ferment in higher education for a long time. The Israeli policy of genocide and the outrage reflected by students and faculty around the country have become the occasion for mobilizing attacks and transformation of higher education. Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" seems relevant here as governments and pressure groups attack DEI, critical debate on public issues, the tenure system, liberal arts and all manner of innovations that evolved over the last fifty years in higher education. Such attacks have been most visible in Ivy League institutions but have been occurring around the country. 8/1/25).

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY: THE PURDUE EXAMPLE

Harry Targ

 

(Part of a larger paper entitled “The Crisis of Higher Education in the Era of Neoliberal Globalization_” published in Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 19 (2020) 127-137).

A prominent Big Ten university, Purdue, has led the process of transforming itself into a model neoliberal university, in keeping with the Koch Brothers/ ALEC model of education. The transformation of Purdue University has involved significant changes including privatization of public control of the institution; moving into the increasingly competitive online education market; shifting programs away from an educational mix of science, technology, the social sciences, and humanities to more STEM and less liberal arts; currying the favor of huge corporations and enlarged Department of Defense contracts; establishing programs whereby wealthy alumni fund students’ education with contractual guarantees by which students pay back the alums; and the establishment at the university of a country club ambience to attract students.

 

As to increasing Purdue’s connections with the corporate sector and the military, Purdue’s Discovery Park launched a nanotechnology center in 2001 with a grant from the state of Indiana and expanded with a $25 million Lilly Endowment. Today it is a $1.15 billion research and learning complex that combines Purdue’s expertise in science, engineering, technology, and biology, with connections to the corporate world. As its website suggests: “Leveraging Lilly Endowment’s investment, Discovery Park has created an innovative environment where major global challenges are examined objectively, generating new ideas and directions for future generations.” One of Discovery Park’s core strengths is “Global Security.” Key research on this subject is designed to respond to security threats, global instability, defense needs, terrorism, nuclear deterrence and proliferation, basically responding to “the most pressing security and defense challenges facing the nation and the world.” Recently, the National Defense Industrial Association, a key military/industrial lobbying group (NDIA) and Purdue University hosted a conference on “hypersonics,” the development of highspeed weapons systems stimulated by a $2.4 billion allocation in the 2020 defense budget.

 

According to a Purdue press release, the university has one of the most comprehensive hypersonic research capabilities. University President Mitch Daniels (2018) declared that the university was “… ready to establish itself as the ‘university hub’ of hypersonic research and development.” Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb declared that “Hypersonics systems are our state’s number one defense priority, and I’m glad we can bring industry leaders together at Purdue University to showcase what Indiana can offer” (Purdue University 2019). Some comments suggested also that this new military research agenda would lead to greater economic development in the Greater Lafayette area. One particularly bizarre spokesperson justified the Purdue commitment to high-speed warfare by referring to the mission of the Morrill Act of 1862 establishing land-grant universities (Bangert 2019).

 

To justify the expansion of collaboration with military contractors and the Department of Defense, a Discovery Park spokesman wrote, “It has become apparent that the United States is no longer guaranteed top dog status on the dance card that is the future of warfare. To maintain military superiority, the focus must shift from traditional weapons of war to advanced systems that rely on AI-based (artificial intelligence) weaponry … we must call upon the government to weave together academia, government and industry for the greater good” (Rubia 2018).

 

As to efforts to build enrollments and earn increasingly scarce resources, Purdue University launched an online university with almost no input from faculty in April 2017. Purdue purchased the discredited Kaplan University, and created the new Purdue Global University. There has been no discussion of the educational value of online education; considerations of “blended” programs, a mix of online and on campus class work; subject matter and programs; who will be teaching the courses offered; and how Purdue Global will survive the growing online market. If the for-profit experience of former Kaplan University is indicative, students will not receive a quality education, will incur debts, and will not secure lucrative employment after they receive degrees.

 

As to changing curriculum President Mitch Daniels (2018) pridefully declared at a meeting of The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative association, that Purdue is the third most STEM-centric university in the country. 

He further declared that liberal arts programs need to change to adapt to STEM needs. He argued that liberal arts education consists of “conformity of thought, intolerance of dissent and sometimes an authoritarian tendency to quash it, a rejection of the finest Western and Enlightenment traditions in favor of unscholarly revisionism and pseudo-disciplines.”

The tenure system, he proclaimed protected “mediocrity,” “illiberal viewpoints,” “conformity of thought,” “shoddy scholarship,” and was “hopelessly abstruse.” The worst problem he said was the traditional liberal arts curriculum was boring: “histories are written without heroes, excitement … glory, the human elements.” 

Before heading the University as Governor, he encouraged “top educational officials” to suppress the use of Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States, from public schools and university teacher training institutes. In an e-mail discovered by an enterprising AP reporter, Daniels wrote upon Zinn’s death that “this terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away.”

The Future of the Neoliberal Agenda and Higher Education

With this backdrop, higher education, with Purdue as just one example, is shifting from influence of educators to politicians and businesspersons, decreasing transparency, growing integration with the military/industrial complex, and shifting educational focus from broad-based curriculum to STEM fields. 

The new criteria for every program decision as to curricula is employment, not providing knowledge of history, culture, and developing the skills to write, think, and act as informed persons in an increasingly complex world. To evaluate performance, universities create measures, numerical “tests” of performance and outcomes, employing private corporations to measure performance, and increasingly measuring virtually every administrative unit at the university by their capacity to be profitable. 

In the end these changes require wresting any influence over educational policy away from faculty and students. In the context of a global educational system fraught with competition over students and scarce resources, market fundamentalism, including commercial competition for students, the promotion of austerity in terms of wages and benefits for educational workers, and the privatization of many institutions and processes within universities, the neoliberal stage of capitalism has brought the contradictions of global capitalism to higher education.

References

Bangert, Dave. 2019. “Purdue ‘Doubling Down’ on Military Research on Hypersonic Flight, Weapons.” Lafayette Journal and Courier. July 30. (https://www.jconline .com/story/news/2019/07/30/purdue-doubling-downmilitary-research-hypersonic -flight-weapons/1864805001/).

 

Barrow, Clyde. 1990. Universities and the Capitalist State. WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Daniels Jr., Mitchell E. 2018. “Reliberalizing the Liberal Arts.” October 12. (https://www .goacta.org/publications/re-liberalizing-the-liberal-arts).

Harvey, David. 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. UK: Oxford University Press.

 

Hershan, Robert and Crystal L. Lauderdale. 2018. Trends in Higher Education: 2018 Outlook: The Rising Need for Sustainable Financial, Operational and Academic Models.            

 

Kauppi, Niilo. 2019. “Waiting for Godot? On Some of the Obstacles for Developing Counter-Forces in higher Education.” Globalizations 16(5):745750.

 

Loss, Christopher. 2012. “Why the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act Still Matters.” July 16. The Chronicle of Higher Education. (https://www.chronicle.com/article/ Why-the-Morrill-Act-Still/132877).

 

Purdue University. 2019. “NDIA, Purdue Launching Inaugural Hypersonics Capabilities Conference to Advance Transformational Military Capabilities.” Purdue Research Foundation          News.    July29. https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2019/Q3/ Ndia,-purdue-launching inaugural-hypersonics-capabilities-conference-to-advance -transformationalmilitary-capabilities.html).

 

Rubia, Tomás Díaz de la. 2018. “The New Future of Warfare.” Discovery Park Vice President’s Blog. October 1.

(https://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/blog/2018/10/ the-new-future-of warfare/).

 

Celebrating Purdue University's work on semi-conductors:

https://youtu.be/qo3g_UqJDIk?si=RjDorAOsERZXpE73

For more information see:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4153726770392245772/136806380839985774

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