The Dubious U.S. State Department

Once again Pat Robertson has stirred a hornets nest. Commenting on Joel Mowbray’s book - Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Endangers America's Security - the broadcaster offered this assessment: "I read your book. When you get through, you say, 'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer.' I mean, you get through this, and you say, 'We've got to blow that thing up"'. He was referring to that bastion of the American Way - the preverbal core of the establishment bureaucracy itself - the U.S. Department of State.

Foreign Policy has long been the Achilles heel of our county. For well over a century the corridors of realpolitik have waged a war more often against true internal interests, than alien foes. The premise upon which the most privileged of public service elites operate is that they are the guardians of the keys to the kingdom. When Charles de Gaulle said: "Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains they drown in every drop", he was stating the obvious. But when Colin Powell asserted: "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return", he was repudiated the inescapable.

Waging foreign wars is a way of life for the forces that control policy. Inventing circumstances, when none exist, requires talent far above the average appointee. Ambassadors who bought their assignment, usually carry out orders. Diplomats who perfect the craft of obfuscation do so in order to advance the interests of the cabal that shapes the culture of political expediency. All the time the public is told that the program of policy is designed to protect them and promote freedom. Let’s be honest, is the world more free after a bloody century of continuous global interventions, or has the uninterrupted plot for world conquest just been lucky in eliminating any and all competitors?

The State Department works the back waters of intrigue at social functions, as it doles out favors and administers penalties. Forging an empire following the tenets and tactics of Bismark conflicts with the personal diplomacy persuasiveness of Aristide Briand, that attacks the heart of a problem rather than its symbols or symptoms. Manifest Destiny has transitioned into a "hyperpower" that seldom resembles a beacon of liberty.

Why does the public accept this failed record of incessant global deployment? If being a superpower requires interminable intervention, what is the purpose of generating conduct that fosters inevitable hatred? Making the case that subduing tyrants is the ultimate purpose for America is psychotic in its transparency. National interest is the recurring theme, with little discussion of what constitutes that interest. The State Department seeks to be the master of security and defense, making policy for the military to execute, as they ignite and invite situations to shed ‘common citizen’ blood and spend our treasure. The public continually gets caught up in the hype; yet, they bear their own liability for accepting the irrational interference that an internationalist policy demands.

In the WW II movie Anzio, Robert Mitchum played a pacifist war correspondent in search of some philosophical reasoning for why men wage war. His conclusion at the end of one of the bloodiest battles in the European theater was simple, pure and alarming. They like it! Who can argue with the historic record? If you don’t relish the perverse repetition of duly sanctioned and organized carnage, why continue to engage in the practice? Before the allegiant apologists assault the argument, it is incumbent upon them to prove that circumstances are necessary to send their sons (and now daughters) off for sacrifice! If a just war is feasible in an age of impersonal and strategic GPS weapons, it has yet to be confirmed that it is essential to maintain our freedom.

Pat Robertson absorbs the retaliation from Richard Boucher, the State Department Agency's top spokesman. Remarks implying final relief from the foggy bottom feeders on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s - The 700 Club - are seen to Mr Boucher as "despicable" as he lacks "sufficient capabilities to express my disdain". When will the ‘Boucher Butchers’ reflect upon their own culpability as the participant in fostering policies that cause the carnage, weakens our actual defense and diminishes our domestic civil liberties?

The price is too high acting the role of a belated planetary benefactor. The State Department has a general leading troops, as he ignores his own doctrine. "Articulated by General Powell when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, the Powell Doctrine was designed to avoid, as Powell once put it, "halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand or support." The Powell Doctrine held that military force should only be used if there was a clear risk to national security; that the force used should be overwhelming; and that the operation must have strong public support and a clear exit strategy."

Compared to the long line of previous Secretaries of State, Powell has shown some independence. But in the end the good general would fall on his sword for his president.

Pat Robertson is no model preacher, he’s a dispensationalist. However, he makes a point worth consideration. What he fails to recognize is that his own support for the rogue Lukid policies resemble the same willing complicity that the State Department has exhibited for decades. Excavating the ruins of a failed bureaucracy doesn’t guarantee a restoration of traditional foreign policy. Washington, the man was right. The culture of Washington DC is the problem.

SARTRE - October 12, 2003