Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Deano on Foreign Policy

From the New Yorker via Andrew Sullivan:

One professor who made a big impression was Wolfgang Leonhard, who taught Russian history. He'd been a Party official in East Germany and had defected. A fantastic lecturer. He once told us, 'Pravda lies in such a way that not even the opposite is so.' That really hit home. I felt he wasn't just referring to the Soviet government but to our own at the time. You knew it from some of the things Nixon talked about — denying the bombing of Cambodia — or from Kissinger’s 'Peace is at hand' statement, when clearly peace wasn't at hand. They said these things just to get reĆ«lected. I think there are some similarities between George Bush’s Administration and Richard Nixon's Administration: a tremendous cynicism about the future of the country; a lack of ability to instill hope in the American people; a war which doesn't have clear principles behind it; and a group of people around the President whose main allegiance is to each other and their ideology rather than to the United States.

Two points. First, Dean must have missed the last lecture of the semester, during which Professor Leonhard heaped scorn on the notion that the US system and the Soviet system were politically or morally equivalent. He was emphatic that the Soviet system was geniunely evil and that the US system, flawed though it was, was not.

Second, who are these shadowy people "around the president" whose allegiance is "to each other and their ideology rather than to the United States?" I suppose he means Paul Wolfowitz and other members of the Dreaded Jewish Neocon Cabal (DJNC). It's possible though, that he knows the real truth; about the Double Secret Shadow Government (DSSG) that dares not speak its name. I could tell you about the DSSG, but if I did, I'd have to kill you.