Posted on 5-9-2002

The Other American Dream
By William Rivers Pitt

No other nation on the face of the earth uses the words "Life, Liberty, and
the Pursuit of Happiness" as the premise for their foundation in government.

America does, and scads of Constitutional law have been written and
re-written, debated and considered, because a long time ago the Founders
decided to base everything upon the absolute necessity of those three
concepts. America is and has always been a nation of immigrants, because
the promise of these simple ideals has lured millions of people from every
corner of the globe to these shores.

These words are the basis of the American Dream, a concept so simple and
yet so huge that it is difficult to define. How does one encapsulate the
concept of "the pursuit of happiness" in so diverse a nation? The answer to
that question lies in the interpretation of the word that comes before it,
"liberty." Above all, and first in line, is "life." Americans have the
right to be alive, free, and to pursue fulfillment in whatever way suits
them, so long as that pursuit does not grossly interfere with the life,
freedom and happiness of a neighbor.

The American Dream has come to mean a variety of things pertaining to
ownership. Having your own home is part of the American Dream, as is owning
a car, having a job, and the pursuit of monetary wealth. This is all well
and good, for we live in a capitalist society so large that it would make
Adam Smith faint dead away. Through it all, however, runs the pulsing
heartbeat of those three simple concepts.

Of course, we have never achieved the lofty goals set by the Founders in
this regard; liberty is still denied to many, and the pursuit of happiness
is impossible for citizens treated unequally. Yet the American Dream, at
bottom, is bent towards the creation of that more perfect union, where
wrongs are made right and happiness is well within reach.

This is the American Dream we speak of openly, in daylight, when the
children gather to learn about the land they call home. This is what we
tell the immigrants when they raise their hands to take the pledge and
become citizens. This is what we tell ourselves when we feel the need to be
convinced that this nation is indeed good and great.

There is another American Dream which lurks in shadow, and speaks only in
whispers of its designs. This other American Dream runs dark and silent, on
rails lubricated by oil, blood and power. It works at all hours of the day
and night to achieve its goals. It does not sleep. The existence of this
other American Dream places the first one, the real one, the true one, in
terrible peril. If this other American Dream is allowed to blossom into its
intended potential, the American Dream we speak of to our children will
cease completely to exist.

The proponents of this other American Dream look at the world in terms of
empire. They seek to achieve hegemony over great swaths of
strategically-important territory, and will do whatever is necessary to
gain this control. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, they see America
as the first truly global superpower. With the use of economic and military
might, they seek to gain absolute dominion in the space opened by the fall
of our former rival. The term "Globalization" encapsulates only a fraction
of the plan.

For many years, the proponents of this other American Dream lingered in
neo-conservative think tanks, like the Committee on the Present Danger,
where they could only snipe from the fringes. With the rise to power of
George W. Bush, in an election that denied him even the pretense of a
mandate, these neo-conservative strategists suddenly found themselves
walking the halls of power, because Bush was forced in the absence of a
mandate to fall back upon his neo-conservative base for support. The other
American Dream, alive for so long only in white papers within these think
tanks, has become the central framework of American policy.

One proponent of this strategy is Richard Perle, a former Defense
Department official within the Reagan administration. Perle is now chairman
of the powerful Defense Policy Board, which carries great weight within the
Pentagon. Recently, this board listened with avid attention to a policy
briefing proffered by other hard-right think tankers that proposed a "Grand
Strategy for the Middle East." The final slide of their presentation
offered "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot
(and) Egypt as the prize" in an effort to extend American hegemony over the
entire Middle East. Such plans cast into deep shade the reasons put forth
by the Bush administration to defend war against Iraq. There is far more on
the table here than the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

The framework for this other American Dream has other champions in
positions of great influence within the Bush administration. Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and his assistant Paul Wolfowitz, spring from the
same neo-conservative think-tank roots as Richard Perle. From their places
high in government, these fringe elements have gained the required position
to push forward with their plans.

This other American Dream is not solely a creation of Bush administration
officials, nor has it just recently come to fruition, nor is it fixated
solely upon the Middle East. The bloody history of Afghanistan represents a
clear example of the kind of geopolitical gamesmanship that characterizes
the plans these people have for America. Afghanistan in 1978 was ruled by a
Communist puppet regime called the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA). To foster a destabilization of that regime, so as to counter the
growing Soviet influence in that strategically vital region, America began
arming and training Afghan mujeheddin warriors, with Pakistan's assistance,
in an effort to undermine the PDPA.

This effort, however, had more in mind than the overthrow of the PDPA. Elie
Krakowski, in a study written for the Institute for Advanced Strategic and
Political Studies in April of 2000, described Afghanistan's importance as
going far beyond the dictates of the Cold War:

"(Afghanistan) owes its importance to its location at the confluence of
major routes. A boundary between land power and sea power, it is the
meeting point between opposing forces larger than itself. With the collapse
of the Soviet Union, it has become an important potential opening to the
sea for the landlocked new states of Central Asia. The presence of large
oil and gas deposits in that area has attracted countries and multinational
corporations. Because Afghanistan is a major strategic pivot, what happens
there affects the world."

This places American aid to the mujeheddin in 1978 in a broader
perspective. Our actions were not simply about attacking communism. In
attempting to destabilize the PDPA, we were hoping to tempt the wrath of
the Soviet Union. It worked: The USSR invaded and eventually destroyed its
ability to extend influence into the region against the unyielding rock of
Afghanistan, eliminating a strategic enemy and opening the region to
broadening American hegemony.

Zbignew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor for President Carter during
this period, bluntly confirmed this in 1998. "We did not push the Russians
into invading," said Brzezinski, "but we knowingly increased the
probability that they would. The secret operation was an excellent idea.
The effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap."

Brzezinski's brag is revelatory, for it describes the lengths to which the
proponents of this other American Dream will go to achieve this goal.
Afghanistan was utterly destroyed by the Soviet invasion in 1979, by the
ten-year war fought by Afghan warriors to remove them, and by the ravaging
civil war that descended in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal. In that
span was born the Taliban, trained to fight, and to propound their deadly
interpretation of Islam, in Pakistani religious schools funded and
supported by the American CIA.

Brzezinski's "Afghan trap" gave birth, as well, to Osama bin Laden, whose
reputation as a heroic anti-Soviet mujeheddin warrior made him a demigod
within Afghanistan. None of this - the Soviet invasion, the Taliban, Osama
bin Laden, the wretchedness of life in Afghanistan - would have come into
existence without the forces behind the other American Dream playing out
geopolitical strategies designed to augment American control in the world.

This other American Dream was codified by Brzezinski in 1998, who authored
in 1998 a study for the Council on Foreign Relations entitled, "The Grand
Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives." The study
describes in detail the importance of Afghanistan and the entire Central
Asian region, which is described in its entirety as "Eurasia." According to
the study, America must gain military and economic control of the region to
stave off competition from China, Russia and Europe. The guts of the study
are quoted below:

"But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential
economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves
is located in the region, in addition to important minerals including
gold...It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of
dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America...A power that
dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and
economically productive regions.

"To put it in terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of
ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to
prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to
keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from
coming together."

Profoundly disquieting are the conclusions reached by Brzezinski regarding
the means by which the American populace could be directed into supporting
the actions required to achieve control in that region. "As America becomes
an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to
fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of
a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."

The danger is clear. This geopolitical strategy of dominion in Central
Asia, begun in 1978 with the "Afghan trap," put in motion a series of
events that ultimately led to the creation of the Taliban, the empowerment
of Osama bin Laden, and the attacks of September 11th. The plans described
to Richard Perle's Defense Policy Board that target not only Iraq, but
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and indeed the entire Middle East, were born from the
same strategic imperatives.

This is the other American Dream. Already, the blowback from its dictates
have dealt a terrible blow to the true dream we wish to live by. We live in
fear now of mega-terrorism that was spawned by our actions in Central Asia
and the Middle East, and by our desire for economic control of those
regions and their resources. Because of the terrorism we have already
endured, many of our essential liberties have been taken away in the
blasphemous guise of protecting freedom. Because of the terrorism we have
already endured, the fundamental right of life was taken from thousands of
our citizens. The three pillars of our society have been shattered.