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Who Says We've Grown Up: America's Great Satans

By VVAW

Last October 6th, armed agents of the U.S. Treasury Department raided the office of a travel agent in Westport, Connecticut. They have confiscated some of his records and $200,000 from one of his bank accounts. A spectacular drug bust, you think? A travel agent using his connections to bring cocaine in from Columbia? Well, no. It was nothing so spectacular.

The travel agent involved in Lars-Eric Linblad of Lindblad travel—an agent highly respected by his peers in the travel business. He was even voted to the Travel Hall of Fame by the American Society of Travel Agents. So what was this elderly gentleman's crime? He was going to operate tours to Cambodia and Vietnam.

The justification of the Treasury Department used to go after Lindblad was the "Trading with the Enemy Act." Damn! I thought the Vietnam War was over. This is bad news for a lot of stressed-out vets. I know they've been trying to re0write what happened in Vietnam. Maybe next they're gonna say the Paris Peace Treaty was never signed.

The attack on Lindblad was an example of what happens when these fanatical right wingers gain a bit of power. The U.S. lost in Vietnam. Period. Korea ended in a tie game. Before that there were eight or ten victories. When your war record is eight or ten wins and one tie, it really deflates the ego to lose one—like in Vietnam. These macho right wingers equate what they see as the greatness of their country with military victory. That's one of the reasons why they try to re0write the Vietnam War history and look for ways to keep fighting that war.

But there's also another dynamic at work here. They need to keep fighting Vietnam and pick on people like Lindblad because they need enemies. Americans laugh self-righteously at the Ayatollah Khoumeni when Khoumeni talks about how his country needs to fight the Great Satan which is America. We all know we aren't that bad, so the Ayatollah must be an old fool. But what about our own macho men of the right? They don't use silly words like "Great Satan" but they talk about their enemies in the same way Khoumeni talks about his—short on fact and long on the beating of the breast.

The Russians have really been a big let-down for our right-wing friends. They were such a good enemy—so easy to hate. The "Evil Empire." Then, the Soviet Central Committee chose a man of peace to lead them. Gorbachev said he wants peace with the U.S. Our Ayatollahs said he was lying. Gorbachev reduced his missiles in Europe. Our Ayatollahs said it was a smokescreen. Gorbachev began troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. The Ayatollahs didn't believe it. They won't be satisfied until Forby buys stock in IBM, masterminds a leveraged buyout and does a line of coke at a Park Avenue party.

Our macho Ayatollahs are losing their credibility by constantly attacking the Russians when the Russians obviously want Peace. So our Ayatollahs try to pick fights with Vietnam or Cuba or various countries in the Middle East. And you have to wonder why they keep doing this.

Maybe there are economic reasons why the American Ayatollahs do what they do. There's big money in the arms trade, and that's the kind of business that would appeal to these people. Maybe they need to expand their arms business or their oil business or their computer business. They need customers and resources. Or maybe they just don't like foreigners. Or maybe they need to keep creating enemies to retain their own following and keep what power they have.

All the above reasons are possible. Me? I'm partial to the psychosexual theory. I think our Ayatollah's get their spiritual guidance from people like Jimmy Swaggert. As a result, they experience sexual frustration. Sot hey attack places like Grenada and Libya and Nicaragua. This is all a way to have a giant public masturbation without having to pull their pants down. And the preacher says it's okay. And they're proud of themselves. Damn the innocent people who get caught in the middle. They've found a real, live, big, bad Enemy.

I have to say a word about poor Libya. Now, the dude, who runs Libya is not wrapped too tight. And I'm sure he's involved in some things—maybe many things—that are not very nice. But pity the poor Libyan people. They've become punching bags for the United States whenever something goes wrong.

The U.S. never proves anything on Libya. There are a lot of charges, but no proof. Remember the Libyan assassination team roaming around America a couple of years ago? What happened to them? The U.S. never proved it was Libya that did the Disco bombing in Germany, or anything else. But we shoot their planes out of the sky and bomb their country. That's because our Ayatollahs need to masturbate once and a while.

Libya shows how the Ayatollahs are simple bullies as well as fanatics. They pick on Libya because Libya is a hapless, out-of-the-way place. If they attacked some of the other countries who play terrorist games, there might be a major war or a shortage of oil. So, they take it out on the poor Libyans.

Our Ayatollahs like to use the word "conservative" to describe themselves, but they're not even that. The trial of Oliver North serves as an example of this fanaticism that goes beyond the old time conservatism. The old conservative may have stood in the way of progress and used to narrow interpretations of the Constitution, but he upheld the law. The new breed gets self-righteous and asks, "Since when do you prosecute a man for fighting Communism?" They feel that the laws are theirs to break. And the cover-up goes on, and they won't release documents in the name of National Security! Give us a break—it ain't national security but cover-your-ass.

While so much of the U.S. foreign policy is dictated by the military and confrontational desires of our right-wing fanatics, during the 1970's the number of people with inadequate diets around the world increased from 650 million to 730 million. And since 1980, it's gotten worse because economic growth has slowed in developing countries, and spending on social services has decreased. And while this is going on, more and more of the dollars of U.S. aid to foreign countries are going there as security assistance (military and police) rather than needed developmental aid. Or to put it another way, here's a quote from an editorial in the Washington Times, a mouthpiece of the new Ayatollahs. "Any aid directed at overthrowing communism is a humanitarian aid." And so, while the bloodlust appetites of our Ayatollahs are satisfied, things become worse for people around the world as well as at home.

There are economic and political reasons why countries go to war or promote wars among their allies. These reasons may always be with us. But sometimes wars are started or promoted by fanatics. The recent Iran-Iraq War seems like one. These kinds of wars are the saddest kind because they aren't driven by economic or political necessities. They could have been prevented. They are driven only by people with little minds in powerful positions who need to find an enemy to fight because such an enemy justifies their own being. And we've got a lot of these kind of people running around this country. And they don't wear religious robes. They wear Brooks Brothers suits and Rolex watches, and instead of chanting mantras, they go around chanting, "We're number one, We're number one!"