| February
27, 2004
American
Deception, Maskirovaka and Weapons of
Mass Destruction
By Luis
Tijerina/HispanicVista.com
Maskirovaka is a
Soviet word defining an act of
intentional misleading, involving the
presentation and dissemination of false
information. In the Soviet context,
Maskirovaka is a moral deception, in one
case used to defeat the invading German
armies, in other cases used to maintain
order among its people and was
politically acceptable. In the
American context, deception of the
people, to manipulate their support of an
individual President’s policy,
should be considered in contradiction to
supposed Democratic principles.
In relationship to
foreign policy deception, in which
limited or false intelligence gathering
plays a central role, the American people
have proven to be susceptible to such
deception. The Mexican-American War
of 1846-1848, in which, then President
James K. Polk, created a conflict with Mexico
that resulted in what many Americans
viewed as “a war unconstitutionally
begun by Polk”, and conceded by the
nationalist historian Bauer exemplifies
this deception. A young, aggressive
American government that desired to
expand its borders to include all of the territory
of Mexico, if it could achieve such a
goal manipulated the war itself. There
were numerous political radicals within
and outside the Polk administration that
opposed the war against the Mexican
people and the Mexican government with
‘moral indignation’.
Among the dissidents against this war
were abolitionists, anti-war pacifists,
and other numerous reformers who also
considered themselves angry at the
American government’s deception
policy that led to war against Mexico.
What we can learn
from this period of time in America is
that American leadership was learning how
to manipulate its own people with
deception, without having to justify it
with a false alibi. Some Liberals
of that period took a naïve satisfaction
in opposing a war that would involve the
expansion of slave holding in the
occupying territory. Nonetheless,
as the historian Paul Foos suggests,
“The war of 1846-1848 provided
Americans with a venue to confront their
own internal conflicts…promoted by
politicians and the press in the name of
white, Anglo-Saxon supremacy”.
Not until the Vietnam War, did many
Americans demonstrate that resistance to
political deception and propaganda
devised by the American government is
politically and morally effective.
The average
Americans, in their self-absorption, have
never taken the responsibility, which is
also a historical responsibility, to
retaliate with a political heat, such as
is part of the historic fabric in the
most repressive of countries found in
Central and South America. The
peoples of Mexico, and the millions of
citizens of South America are accustomed
to public political protests, are used to
engaging in a general strike, even if it
means imprisonment, exile or death. They
are more Roman; they are influenced by
Jacobin ideology and influence. The
Americans on the other hand are guided,
if not dragged, toward both passive and
decadent behavior, which has become a
part of the body politic. No coda of
Bolivar rebellion, in the mature
political sense of action, exists in
them, except perhaps among the Mexican
American population, and the Mexican
nationals who live and work in the United
States. There are thousands upon
thousands of other Hispanic and Latinos,
who also reside in America, and whose
lives are more Spartan by necessity.
Although many of them live in poverty and
are of working class origins, they are no
less proud and non-conformist in their
political protest, when it is necessary.
Yet, we cannot
ignore the national American character.
As one American citizen said to me in
regard to hearing about the falsification
or manipulation of intelligence
information the Bush regime used to
persuade the American people to enter the
war, “They prefer it that way.”
The American people need to be deceived
in order to accept the actions of their
government as well as their own
individual actions. The American
paradigm is a complex web, which cannot
be examined too closely or it may
collapse from its own weighty
contradictions.
But are the American
people capable yet of entering into the
moral arena, when their actions, even to
their national minority citizens, are one
of class and racial hatred? This moral
arena rarely exists during a brutal
embrace of domestic political conflict or
war. However, that does not mean
that a moral deception cannot thrive
under limited circumstances. Looking
back on the complex history of the Soviet
Union, there was such a moral coda that
was at least a part of the operational
political and military strategy known as
maskirovka. I would comment that no
such moral deception such as maskirovka
could become a reality in a capitalist
nation-state. The American
government’s interest is not to
create a deception to safeguard the
interests of its people. It uses
insidious deception to control and
manipulate social and economic spheres
both within and outside its borders.
Therefore it should be apparent, that the
weapons of mass destruction and them
being or not being in Iraq was not the
actual reason for going to war.
America went to war
with a President and his regime bent on
malice and the destruction a country they
could not control. However, that
does not mean that the Bush regime holds
total responsibility for the war that has
killed thousands of Iraqi men, women, and
young children. The American people
will also be held accountable in history,
for they allowed the events of this war
to unfold. At the beginning, there
were many who believed that this would be
a great war, a lucrative economic war,
not knowing the price that would follow,
and as written by the late Canadian
historian, Neal Wood, “For it should
be understood from the outset that many
Americans despite the global travels of
some… seem so self-centered, so
isolated from the rest of the world, so
captivated by their dominant consumer
culture… that they lack any
perspective on what is happening to them,
their society and their polity”.
The fall of ancient Athens
resulted from their over-reaching their
powers. Napoleon was defeated because he
over-reached his power. Hitler was
defeated because he over-reached his
power. History teaches us that the
zealousness of any nation to over-reach
its national boundaries by false
political deception brings about its own
destruction. The current world
political crisis is in danger of creating
such a calamity, even to a powerful
nation-state as the United States.
______________________________________
Luis L. Tijerina has
a Masters of Arts Degree in history from
Vermont College of Norwich University. He
lives in Burlington, Vermont. Contact
at andropov@verizon.net
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