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Did The Dulles Brothers Seal Our Fate? by Paul Craig Roberts
(2024-05-22 at 22:32:27 )
Did The Dulles Brothers Seal Our Fate? by Paul Craig Roberts
The "Soviet Threat" which became Washington,D.C.s foreign policy mindset was a self-serving creation of Allen and Foster Dulles. The consequences of their creation and its recreation by the United States neoconservatives await us unaddressed.
Some years ago I reviewed Stephen Kinzers book, The Brothers, an extraordinary account of two men long serving at the top of the United States government, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Central Intelligence Agency Director Allen Dulles. Both were appointed to office by President Eisenhower. Allen Dulles was the Director of the CIA, and John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State. The interests of the two mens law firm became in effect the agenda of the government of the United States.
Both men used their power in service of their powerful law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell. Both are examples of the privatization of government to serve private interests. Foreign government that got in the way of their firms clients interests, they plotted to overthrow.
To justify their use of the United States government in service to the clients of their law firm, the brothers invented the "communist threat of world subversion" and inaugurated the Cold War. The brothers came up with six monsters to destroy.
The first was the first democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, certainly no communist. Mossadeghs offense was that he nationalized Iranian oil, thus angering the British government.
He also angered the brothers. Sullivan & Cromwells client, the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corp, was the financial agent for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company on whose board Allen sat. The nationalization of Iranian oil also disrupted Fosters activities in behalf of Chase Manhatten Bank.
Allen Dulles had negotiated for Sullivan & Cromwells client, Overseas Consultants Inc, an Iranian development plan from which the law firm and its client expected to earn massive profits together with an ideal base for John Foster Dulles to project American influence throughout Iran and the Middle East. But the Iranian legislature supported Mossadegh and vetoed the project.
Thus Mossadeghs fate was sealed.
A narrative was created and opinion manipulated. Allen Dulles formed an overthrow team that paid United States tax dollars to street thugs to attack the government, as the United States did in the "Maidan revolution" in Ukraine.
Foster Dulles created a propaganda campaign against Mossadegh presenting him as a weak leader about to be overthrown by Soviet agents. The story fed to President Eisenhower, Congress, and media was that Iran was in danger of being lost to expansionist communism.
It worked. This success of the brothers ability to easily manipulate the United States government, parts of the Iranian population, and the insouciant American public gave us Irans enmity and the Cold War, which in its resurrected state after Reagan buried it threatens to bury us.
The brothers next target was Guatemalas first democratically elected government. Guatemala, long ruled by Sullivan & Cromwells client, United Fruit Company, decided with its free election to take Guatemalas rule out of the United Fruit Companys hands. The new president, Jacobo Arbenz, nationalized fallow land held by United Fruit in order to put the resources in service to the country.
This sealed Arbenzs doom.
Arbenz said he was concerned with Guatemala, not with international ideological rivalries. His statement gave Foster Dulles the opportunity to create a new threat to America-"creeping neutralism"-later defined by George W. Bush as "you are with us or against us."
Being against us, Arbenz was quickly turned into a communist by the brothers and the American media that the brothers easily controlled. Arbenz, a nationalist leader, was turned into a communist whose beachhead into the Americas would seal our doom. Eisenhower, Congress and the media bought the official narrative hook, line, and sinker.
Allen created a fake "liberation army" and a fake radio station to report non-existent advances in Guatemalas liberation against the alleged communist regime of Arbenz. Allen used United States planes to bomb Guatemala military bases to make the armed rebellion look real.
But it was not working. Poor illiterate Guatemalans were not as insouciant as Americans. So the brothers got American Cardinal Francis Spellman, the most prominent Catholic prelate in the United States, to issue a pastoral letter designed to portray a Guatemalan nationalist leader as a communist. Priests read Spellmans letter to their congregations, and the newspapers carried it throughout the country. As Kinzer says, it is "a masterpiece of propaganda, steeped in the vocabulary of faith, fear, and patriotism." Here is an opening paragraph:
"At this moment, we once again raise our voice to alert Catholics that the worst atheistic doctrine of all time-anti-Christian Communism-is continuing its brazen advance in our country, masquerading as a movement of social reform for the needy classes."
The brothers having successfully destroyed Guatemalans belief in their protector against foreign interests, replaced the elected president they had successfully demonized with their man.
What Kinzer shows is that the long, expensive Cold War, both in terms of United States money and United States civil liberties, was the creation of two holders of powerful United States government offices used in defense of their law firms clients.
The brothers set the pattern for the future. It has been eons since any United States government policy served any public interest.
What public interest is served by open borders, creating enemies out of Russia and China, demonizing white people, teaching white school children that they are racist, weaponizing law, offshoring high productivity jobs, creating endless money and financial bubbles? You can add to the list.
President Reagan succeeded in ending the Cold War despite the opposition of the CIA and the powerful military-security complex and the senators and representatives dependent on the military-securitys complexs campaign donations. But the neoconservative dominated Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and Biden regimes resurrected the Cold War which is warming into a hot stage in the Ukraine conflict.
Putin and Xi have been slow to understand the situation that they face. In their deluded thinking they believe they can negotiate a solution with the West or simply out wait the West.
They do not understand that just as their national existence is an existential issue, for Washington,D.C. its hegemony is an existential issue. Without hegemony Washington,D.C. cannot pay its bills and control its Western empire.
As both the Russian and Chinese leaders are incapable of comprehending the reality that confronts them, the chance of avoiding a Third World War with nuclear weapons is not high.
Kinzers account of a Secretary of State, who used the fear of communism that he implanted as a cover for serving the interest of his law firms clients, and a CIA director, who not only used his office in defense of his law firms interests but to live an exciting James Bond life complete with endless women, demonstrates a United States government captured by private interests. There is no "public sector."
These two men using government to serve their interests created the Cold War that almost brought our end in the Cuban Missile Crisis and turned government into the service of private interests. Lincoln had turned domestic policy to the service of private interests, and the Dulles brothers turned foreign policy to the service of private interests.
President John F. Kennedy fired Allen Dulles for trying to sandbag him into supporting the CIAs Bay of Pigs invasion. It was probably Allen Dulles who plotted the assassination of President Kennedy, and it was Allen Dulles who was appointed to the Warren Commission to cover up Kennedys assassination.
The Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh was the next on the list to be turned into a communist threat. Brandishing the "domino theory," the brothers led us into the Vietnam war. The brothers extraordinary manipulative powers were again demonstrated, but they failed to dislodge Ho, and the brothers experienced the bitterness of defeat.
Their next plot was against President Sukarno of Indonesia, and it also ended in a mess.
The next was the prime minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Again it was the Soviet threat narrative and a Soviet bridgehead in Africa. The CIA had Lumumba murdered in Katanga. Next was the long plot against Castro, elements of which were exposed by the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s.
The brothers were behind much more mischief. Allen created a 14,000 Tibetan army that was crushed by China. Tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed, and the Delai Lama had to flee Tibet. Allen declared his operation a success. It had baited the Chinese into repression and produced propagand value. Just as in Ukraine today, Washington,D.C. paid thousands of other peoples lives for its propaganda posters.
The CIA had a hand in the Hungarian Revolution crushed by the Soviets. Frank Wisner, the CIAs man who instigated the Hungarian uprising, never recovered from his realization that Washington,D.C. never intended any help for the Hungarians. The intent was not Hungarys freedom but anti-Soviet propaganda at the expense of Hungarian lives.
What began as the removal of obstacles to their law firms clients ended in an anti-communist crusade in which the brothers became believers of their own propaganda.
Today the revival of this propaganda again positions Washington,D.C. at swords point with Russia and China. Anti-Russian propaganda is so much a part of Washington,D.C.s consciousness that it appears to be embedded, continuing to cause foreign policy mistakes and overthrows of countries.
Washington,D.C.s overthrow of Ukraine has led to an ever-widening war, the consequences of which remain to be seen. The legacy of the brothers might well be nuclear Armageddon.
The official narrative is that the brothers protected us from the Soviet threat. Others see it differently. Diego Riveras mural has John Foster Dulles in the center wearing a flak jacket and cruelly grinning. Allen Dulles is sneering with a satchel of dollars hanging from his waist. Eisenhowers face decorates a bomb. Dead Guatemalan children lie at their feet.
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