Translated from MSZ 1-1987
Reagan’s going through a crisis?
Reagan’s Iran affair is not the scandal, but the standards of US politics that decide what’s a scandal
What has actually happened that’s so extraordinary in US politics? What, according to political experts, did Ronald Reagan do that caused the worst crisis of his time in office?
Arms trafficking
In this case, an enormously modest level compared to what is officially approved every year in the US budget under the heading of military aid and what the CIA delivers less officially but just as regularly to war zones all over the world. The fact that the USA equips entire countries like its own oversized military bases, that Israel, for example – as we learned on the occasion of the current scandal – only has to place orders with the Pentagon to be supplied from US stocks for its “brave military achievements” – this is taken completely for granted. The fact that many “small” wars – “low intensity warfare” (Weinberger/Shultz) in Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia or Nicaragua – are fought with US weapons is equally unobjectionable. The free world honors this by skillfully confusing the makers and instruments of world politics as “aid” for “freedom fighters.” How moral or dirty a war is is decided by the interests of the world’s No. 1 power. And a few arms deliveries to Iran should represent an incredible blunder in US policy?!
Cultivating relationships
The incorporation of states into the Western world order, the methods of blackmail and bribery used in the process – that is also one of the most sacred duties of imperialist supervision. Why do the USA and its allies maintain a diplomatic network that provides even the poorest nation with information about the interests, offers and sanctions it must align itself with?! And since when has a country’s classification on the friend/enemy scale, once it’s been made, been a reason for diplomatic abstinence? The prompt renaming of formerly “despicable states” as “interesting negotiating partners” always registers the success of freedom’s efforts to establish order, which no regime can or wants to avoid in the long term. Who remembers that Egypt or China were once Soviet satellites or totalitarian states? How quickly did a Pakistan’s Zia transform himself from a disreputable dictator into the friendly president of a strategically important country? “Stone-age communists” and “butchers” like Pol Pot’s supporters, drug dealers like the Contra leaders, religious fanatics like the Afghan Mujahideen – it always depends on what they allow themselves to be used for, and the moral classification is based on this. And Ronald Reagan is supposed to have compromised himself by negotiating with Iranian politicians?
Covert operations
are a department of US foreign policy with all the necessary rights. It has it own apparatuses such as the CIA, NSA, etc., which are responsible for this. Their tasks and budgets are regularly approved in the US budget. The idea that something like this takes on a life of its own because it is secret is one of the fairy tales of democracy: Questions of “national security” are just as broad as the USA politically defines its security, namely worldwide. They require the necessary ruthlessness toward legal customs because the “security” of the nation is the highest of all imperatives. After all, they are not conducted in secret so that the nation and its president do not have to be publicly embarrassed from time to time. They are secret simply because the respective enemy/addressee and the rest of the world will find out soon enough what is at stake.
The same democrats who are now pointing to “dirty covert actions” discovered that the overthrow of the Shah was a complete failure of the CIA and the Carter administration, which had not taken precautions in time. And Reagan’s secret diplomacy to get Iran back under control was supposed to have been a misstep?!
Law breaking
That can hardly be what Reagan was guilty of, given the laws in question. For example, the President’s duty to inform Congress:
“The law is deliberately vaguely formulated to give the president, who is also commander in chief of the armed forces, considerable discretion. For the time being, the criticism in the Iran case refers to an ‘overstretching’, but not to a breach of the law.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine, 11.22)
And as for the legally broad arms embargo against Iran, the President has the equally legal instrument of being able to repeal laws when they do not suit him. He signed the document required for this in January 1985. And finally:
Funds for the Contras
A scandal? While at the same time Congress has officially approved funding for the Contras, thus in agreement with the President’s view that the war of attrition against Nicaragua must be supplied with the appropriate equipment?! 10 to 30 million dollars for the Contras can hardly be the reason for the fuss when 100 million are paid legally and a similar amount of military aid is given to El Salvador and Honduras without any dispute, so that they can prepare themselves as a base of operations for the Contras and ongoing American maneuvers.
None of this was the reason for the outrage; it is part of the tried and tested routine of US imperialist foreign policy. Democrats do not take offense at this; on the contrary, they insist on it as the necessary instruments of supervision that the defense of freedom in the world of states requires. And there is just as little criticism of what Reagan’s team did in this particular case.
The reintegration of Iran – also no scandal
It goes without saying that it is fine for the USA to be the arbiter of the Gulf War. No armed conflict is outside the world power’s business. And if two states take the liberty of using up their people for supremacy in the Arab world, which does not fit into the planned Middle East order, then they will not be slowed down or ignored, but will be supplied with weapons in a calculated manner. Well-measured deliveries to both sides guarantee perfect control over the fact that no undesirable victor emerges, but rather that the longer both sides clash, the more thoroughly dependent they become. This then leads to the emergence of so-called “reasonable circles” which can be blackmailed with their need for weapons.
Secondly, there is no denying the interest that prevents Iran from being simply written off, and this can be summed as its “strategic importance”: The common border with the Soviet Union and Afghanistan is an unoccupied front against the main enemy, plus 45 million people, a million soldiers and the remnants of the military infrastructure built up under the Shah; all of these assets guarantee that this nation will be of keen interest to the USA in the long term. After all, the same mullahs who have been labeled terrorists for their anti-imperialist tones are also solidly anti-communist. Alongside the official condemnation, it is therefore logical that the cultivation of contacts has never ceased and has had its successes, as one now learns in passing. In 1983, for example, the cultivation of relations through tips from the CIA cost the lives of around 200 traitors, namely suspected Soviet agents. In addition, Soviet diplomats were expelled at the time and the pro-Soviet Tudeh party was banned and persecuted – nobody wanted to see this as a violation of democratic values.
Finally, it is just as unobjectionable that US policy – for all the good strategic reasons – is interfering in internal Iranian relations and is doing everything in its power to achieve a settlement with Iranian rule that suits it. None of Reagan’s critics has ever questioned the right of the USA to recruit the appropriate personnel from foreign rulers and bring them to power by whatever means necessary.
In the scandal that has now allegedly plunged the US President into a Watergate, none of the imperialist practices, none of the hard interests of the USA and the associated machinations are at issue. The scandal begins beyond that, dismisses all these things as the self-evident rights and duties of a US president, and then identifies offenses that are all very serious.
The scandal:
“Weakness”The US President is said to have entered into a dirty deal for the sake of the hostages. He is said to have violated a sacred principle and made his leadership untrustworthy – because in dealing with “terrorists” any other political dealings short of military action are forbidden.
This remarkable definition of “weakness” is based entirely on standards that were first introduced into world politics under Ronald Reagan. The overweening definition of the enemy was proclaimed under the title of “the fight against terrorism”: disfavored states, conflicting political interests and actions are declared to be crimes that deserve only analogous treatment. The unconditionality of this declaration of hostility, which no longer even wants to blackmail friends of the Soviets which have been put on the hit list with non-refusable offers like those of “Murder Inc.”, is now being used against Reagan himself: he of all people is said to have shown himself to be blackmailable, and therefore dependent, because of the hostages!
This point of view turns the situation on its head: in every American human life that is harassed by the wrong side and uses political kidnappings as a pretext for war actions, US policy reserves the right to see itself as having been attacked – and the same policy is supposed to have allowed itself to be blackmailed into providing weapons to its worst enemies because of six missing Americans? The hypocrisy of the equation between US sovereignty and the protection of human lives is palpable. The human lives that die every day in the USA because of the golden rules of freedom should not even be taken into account. Nor should the US boys and members of other nations who lose their lives in the “fight against terrorism,” including hostages who usually do not survive their release. The US press cites the President’s tearful reference to the three liberated hostages as his greatest blunder; the ex-hostages themselves act as if they would have preferred not to have been freed under these conditions – let them go back! – and the inventor of this war morality, of all people, is supposed to have fallen for it and gone soft?!
The kind of criticism that no longer wants to see any difference between moral agitation and political interests declares the Iran deal to be a humiliation of the nation. On the one hand, this is an insane adherence to principles: as if the USA should no longer use any other foreign policy means apart from shooting, bombing and conquering; on the other hand, it is a very clear proposal. The truth about the hostage deal is of little use to Ronald Reagan. He could just as well have left the same hostages to rot in Lebanon and used them as a permanent legal title for “retaliatory strikes”; his nation would never have held that against him. But he used them as test material for concessions and practical influence on the “reasonable circles” in Tehran.
“They wanted to talk about better relations ... They said they wanted to do something about terrorism. So we said, if you are serious, you can prove it. That was an easy way to test their seriousness...” (Frankfurter Rundschau, 2.12.)
He is given credit for his intention – but he is discredited because he did not achieve success.
“Failure”
“Granted, Reagan and his aides were right in trying to re-establish contact with so strategically important a nation as Iran and to gain some influence there. Yet how could they have failed to foresee that by agreeing to arms shipments they would be trapped into what looked — to the Iranians and the rest of the world — like a crude guns-for-hostages swap? … But it is also possible that what they were really doing was subjecting the U.S. to a crude form of blackmail.” (Time, 11/24/1986)
The President’s expert critics know where war morale, hatred for terrorists, has its place and where other political interests are justified. Even an enemy defined as a terrorist state such as Iran can be far too important as a state not to attempt to take it over for US interests by diplomatic means. Only – this re-integration has still not been successful. The affair became known precisely because of the still undecided competition for the successor to Khomeini. Therefore, according to the imperialist logic of the critics, the whole operation is characterized by “incredible amateurism.” A lack of success, or more precisely: sensitive US nationalism does not tolerate the public impression that it’s been screwed by a secret diplomatic mission. Just the combination – US policy mocked publicly by unwashed mullahs and hostages ransomed – makes Ronald Reagan suddenly look very old. Such are the outrageously demanding criteria by which a nation judges the policy offered to it as a show, if only it has been instructed long enough that its divine right will be enforced with decisive action and blitzkriegs.
“Bypassing Congress”
This disapproval of the original idea of using Iran to finance the Contras is anything but disapproval of its intended purpose. Congress was not deceived either. In February, when the debate about open funding of the Contras was looming, Reagan declared that he would “take other positive actions” if Congress did not approve the aid. And he hardly meant to say that he wanted to deceive Congress about his involvement in the war in Nicaragua. It’s the silliest democratic rumor that the CIA and NSA exist primarily to deceive the other democratic bodies. Rather, the CIA organizes a type of warfare with the military conveniences and diplomatic advantages that result from the fact that the USA is not itself the direct belligerent party.
What was never in dispute between Reagan and his Congress was the right or moral qualification of the USA to stage wars and to maintain foreign troops and to tap sources of funding for this purpose. Significantly, the only disputes were over the suitability of these troops, the question of whether the Contras were united, strong enough and militarily good enough to fulfill their intended function. Whether they might not “implicate” the USA in something that “needs” a response ... and that just means: impair the sovereign decision-making of the world power USA through some kind of necessity which, on closer inspection, is nothing other than the USA’s own intentions and choice standards for successful conduct. If this Congress, which exercises no other kind of control over the governmental activities of its president than to check them against the standard of US interests and their most effective and splendid assertion, now complains that the administration has overruled it, then this is nothing more than a turf war. As Reagan’s term of office draws to a close, his political rivals are speaking out, emphasizing their claim to the post with their complaint about “bypassing Congress” and using the “failure” of the incumbent president as their best argument for continuing his policies.
“Lied clumsily” or: “Doesn’t even have the White House basement under control”!
For the time being, Reagan has a choice between these two criteria when it comes to dealing with the scandal. This may seem unfair to him, since he has done “his job” both before and after with the usual methods of inciting the people, disinformation campaigns against his enemies, and a leadership team of specialists in diplomacy, espionage, dirty and clean warfare, and arms buildups.
In terms of content, the “qualifications” by which a US president must have his credibility tested delegate the most unconditional power imaginable. He may and must command all secret and public operations that the national interest in any way requires – in case of a possible success rate of a mere 50 percent, he simply must not let himself be coerced into confessions so that he looks bad. He may and must command the largest apparatus of force in the world, bring together the creatures with the relevant skills – he merely must attribute responsibility to himself, i.e. allow himself to be measured against the fiction that he personally has an overview of every submarine maneuver, every troop movement, every CIA break-in.
As ridiculous as the demand for total leadership that is made of the supreme character mask may be, the USA is, on the other hand, allowing itself to indulge in a flawless imperialist event with this scandal. Ronald Reagan only made a mistake with regard to the ideological legal title of his war policy. This is now being used against him. His glorious invasion of Grenada – which has now just been rubber-stamped with a few death sentences for its victims – was commented on with the constructive criticism as to whether a power like the USA could not have used more proportionate, more civil means against a Caribbean island. Now it’s the exact opposite: is a power like the USA, which simply classifies its enemies as criminals, allowed to negotiate with them at all and blackmail them peacefully? Isn’t that a sign of leniency and weakness? This is how flexible the criticism that is constructively oriented toward the success of the nation is.
Secondly, it is self-evident for today’s critics of Reagan that the global deployment of US policy can only be negotiated in the form of domestic debates about the competence or qualities of the supreme character mask. The war against Nicaragua – examined from the select point of view of how much Congress “allows” or “forbids” the President, how well the system of “checks and balances” works. The final solution to the Middle East question – material for doubts about the qualifications of a 75-year-old patriotic idiot to attract the right movers and shakers. US policy is pushing ahead with the repartitioning of the Middle East against the Soviet Union, enlisting all kinds of states for this and using them as intermediaries for its Central America policy – and there is debate about how much Reagan “knew” of this, if he had his hearing aid switched on. The global political progress in straightening out the front line as material to illuminate the advantageous and disadvantageous quirks of their chief: enlightened democrats use this insane distortion to assess the preparations for the next world war.
It’s never about anything else, but in such a way that the actual addressee is not even mentioned. In this respect, too, the scandal-mongering follows the standards set by Reagan: to use the accusation of terrorism to stage the attack on states that are friendly with the Soviet Union or considered to be, as if it were any of its business, as if there were no world power No. 2 whose interests in Central America, the Middle East or Indochina should be taken into account at all.
This always means the Soviet Union. And that is why indignation about weak leadership in the White House is also seamlessly carried over to the topic of how to measure the strong leadership that is required.
“An American diplomat negotiating with the Soviets on arms control issues has picked up disturbing signals. The Kremlin has recently come to view Reagan as so politically weak that it wants to reconsider the concessions it would be willing to make for a deal.” (Time, 8.12.)
Regardless of whether arms diplomacy is even measured by concessions from the Soviet Union, the weakness of one’s own leadership is as good as the strength of the enemy in the imperialist disappointment of the American nation.
The outcome of the scandal,
according to the logic of the standards that have created it, has therefore long been certain, regardless of the various special committees and personnel changes. The nation is once again scrutinizing its President. Will he stay the course? Will the accusation of terrorism against other states still be interpreted as a declaration of war? Is he possibly just a pseudo-radical? These questions already contain the answer: Reagan’s extremism in government has become such a national consensus that as a personality he now comes across as a “lame duck.” This has understandably wounded Nancy and Ron deeply. And it’s already as good as an order to go into action, e.g. for US helicopter pilots on the Nicaraguan border.
A fun guessing game about the success of imperialist politics
As part of a quiz show on Bavarian Radio, in which a prize question is asked every day, the question on Thursday, December 4, was as follows:
“In April of this year, President Reagan, in the fight against international terrorism, bombed Libya. Two cities were hit. One was Tripoli, what was the name of the second city?”