Washington Bullets Take Aim

Book Review:

Prashad, Vijay, “Washington Bullets.” Leftward Books, New Delhi, 2020. Preface by Evo Morales Ayma, former President of Bolivia.

I bought the book through Amazon. I believe that it contributes to a trend, especially among younger people, toward a greater awareness of the seamy side of our nation’s role in the world. Some of the ugliest chapters are generally known among the technologically advanced. The CIA’s overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala, their bloody work in substituting dictators for democracy in Indonesia and most of Latin America, the murder of Patrice Lumumba in Africa, and all the assassination attempts against Fidel Castro in Cuba are common parlance among younger folk. This book attempts to enlarge the scope of understanding and fill in a lot of historical blanks.

The facts are in the book, but this long-running list of condemnations doesn’t follow an understandable pattern and isn’t as clear as other books on the same subject such as “The Jakarta Method.” The problem is probably that other books take up only a few of the bloodstained chapters of American interventionism, while Prashad tries to cover it all. The sheer scope of imperialism’s history, running from the massacres and enslavements of darker-skinned peoples at the very beginnings of colonial America through the current efforts to starve Iran and Venezuela into submission, might be better explained in a series of books explaining interventions in different continents, different eras, or different trends.

Another problem with trying to cover the entire range of international crimes is that American laws protect the documentation from scrutiny for decades before any admissions are made. We are only just now getting official documents about the murder of a million Indonesians in the 1960s, and we don’t know much of anything about NATO’s current slide eastward.

One obvious truth that emerges from Prashad’s effort is that domestic public opinion is always thoroughly prepared before imperialism makes a move. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution, known today as a total sham, prepared public opinion for the invading armies in Vietnam. The invasion of Iraq was preceded by months of repeated nonsense about “weapons of mass destruction.” The U.S. is accused of recently engineering the overthrow of the government in Bolivia, but it’s barely mentioned here. Today, we’re getting spoon fed demonization of Iran, Venezuela, and, especially, China in preparation for whatever they are planning, and we won’t get official release of documents for decades to come.

But communication technology has a way of abrading its way through the sheaths of secrecy. As this is written, Americans are beginning to lose all hope for victory in America’s longest war, Afghanistan. Public opinion already gave up on Libya and Syria.  I have never seen an assessment of the effect of ending the draft on imperialism’s designs, and I have no way of knowing whether or not Americans are willing to support the inevitable next intervention. But Prashad’s book contributes to a healthy trend toward truth and understanding.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk radio show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. We podcast the program and another called “Workers Beat Extra” on Soundcloud.com every Wednesday. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my aging personal web site.