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America, the Godfather

What our government has been up to while our media has kept us fed with a comfort diet of sitcoms, soaps and sports
 

Let me begin with a statement that many will find startling and unthinkable, but is overwhelmingly supported by the historical record: in its international policies, America has long adhered to the mafia model.  This, of course, has been concealed by a veneer of rectitude required by our collective self-image as heroic rescuers of mankind.  Unfortunately, this self-image is an American blind spot that has eased our manipulation by the most greedy and power-hungry among us.

Moreover, these policies are the stimulant behind terrorism.

Poor and indigenous peoples, lacking the resources to buy high-tech weaponry from American arms manufacturers for the defense of their interests, must rely upon guerilla tactics that are then vilified by the American government and media as “terrorism.”  Being far less efficient, terrorists kill and maim far fewer innocent people than do American and Israeli missiles, helicopter gunships, fighter aircraft, and cluster bombs, and require a far higher price in self-sacrifice.  I believe that it is the duty of all Americans – in whose name and with whose dollars “terrorists” are killed –  to understand the rage and desperation that motivates such self-sacrifice.

Important questions must be posed.  Are most terrorists really our enemies?  Or are they the enemies of immense, extractive American corporations allied with our and their corrupt governments?  Might we not view these political and corporate forces as our enemies as well, since they are destroying the planet we all share?  Do we need to kill all the terrorists, or perhaps alternatively, to eliminate the terrible conditions that motivate them?  And ultimately, are we perhaps killing potential allies toward a common goal of preserving our planet, its ecosystems, its diversity of life, and its rich multiplicity of human cultures?

A Brief Conceptual Background

As a young Army psychologist in the 1960s serving a diverse population of military personnel and their dependents in a general hospital, I became impressed with the validity and usefulness of Transactional Analysis. This psychological model, first conceptualized by psychiatrist Eric Berne and developed over a decade in the San Francisco Social Psychiatry seminars, produced a series of books introducing such ideas as interpersonal games, the parent, adult and child “ego states”, and life scripts to both clinical and lay readers.  Some of these concepts – such as games, the inner child, and strokes – became commonplace within the popular vernacular although I have observed that few people using the words fully understood their meaning.  These are profound and complex psychological phenomena resting upon firm empirical foundations while dressed in deceptively simple language.

Ego states, games and scripts comprise the software of the mind, programmed in early life by one’s family of origin. This software provides the operating (conceptual) and filtering (perceptual) systems through which subsequent information is selected, filed, organized, saved or deleted, and utilized in applications throughout life.  The early, formative, experience-based, emotionally powerful words and images we absorb from our cultures via our immediate caretakers establish our basic orientations to the world and our roles in it.

Since this emotionally powerful psychological programming originates in families, which are in turn programmed by each culture and sub-culture, I reasoned that there were cultural scripts that provided the common denominators bonding people within a culture.

Cultural “Ego States”

Ego states are separate states of mind designed by nature to allow us to perform different survival functions: adaptation to reality (the Adult); need gratification (the Child); caretaking and protection (the Parent).  As a gregarious species, we form multiple attachments mediated by our different ego states: emotional bonding through the Child, pragmatic and workplace bonding through the Adult, and cultural bonding through the Parent (the repository of culturally programmed beliefs and traditions transmitted to us by caretakers).

At the cultural level, religions provide the most common common denominators, with worldviews reflecting their childhood origins.  Deities are typically conceptualized as parent figures distributing rewards and punishments to humans conforming to childlike virtues such as faith in authority (of church or scripture) and obedience.  When the evidence of reality fails to support the usual religious worldview of a “Just Parent” deity, then an afterlife is hypothesized (e.g., heaven, hell, Karma) wherein justice is satisfied.  Religion and reality-testing are functions of different ego states: the Parent (culturally inherited beliefs) and “Adult” (reason and realism), respectively.

Religion is the principle institutional repository of the cultural Parent, which regulates the collective Child.  Educational institutions best represent the cultural Adult.  It was clear in the 2004 election campaign that red-state Bush supporters were largely Child- and Parent-dominated, adhering to childlike faith in simple religious ideas and an unquestioning faith in the President’s authority, notably his “strict father” posture toward “terrorists” (the world’s most unruly children).  Blue-state, Kerry supporters not only held a “nurturing parent” view of government’s role reflected in emphases on social programs, but were Adult-driven in their reliance on factual arguments.  These arguments were met – often sneeringly – by Bush supporters with anti-Adult responses (discounting of education and worldly sophistication) and accusations of disloyalty and insufficient patriotism (i.e., being bad children).

This was strikingly reflected in a survey conducted soon before the election by the Program on International Policy Attitudes associated with the University of Maryland, that discovered striking differences in knowledge of well publicized facts (Adult data) between the two political camps.  Following are the comparisons between Bush and Kerry supporters:
 

Factual Information	Bush	Kerry
Most experts agree that, just before the war, Iraq had WMDs	56%	18%
The 2004 report by chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer concluded that  Iraq had WMDs or major, active WMD programs just before the war	57%	23%
Saddam was directly involved in 9/11	20%	8%
Saddam provided substantial support to al-Qaeda	55%	22%
The 9/11 Commission concluded that Saddam was directly involved  or supported al-Queda in carrying out 9/11	56%	27%
Does world public opinion primarily oppose the US invasion of Iraq?(1)	31%	74%
Does world public opinion primarily oppose Bush’s re-election?(2)	9%	69%

Our Cultural Games

Games are programmed transactional patterns between people in which one, both or all parties are discounted in value (“Not OK”), which yield predictable emotional payoffs.  They enliven life in the absence of meaningful work and genuine intimacy.  They are the basis of melodramas and soap operas.  They involve 3 roles: a Victim, an Aggressor and a Rescuer, with the roles switching at the end of the game to produce the emotional payoffs for all parties. Berne differentiated three levels of games: 1st degree games are played in the open; 2nd degree games are concealed from the neighbors; and 3rd degree games are played for keeps, ending in court, prison, or the morgue.

I have long hypothesized that cultural transactions follow these same patterns, suggesting that our government conducts 1st degree games through the State Department, 2nd degree games through the CIA, and 3rd degree games through the Department of Defense (DoD).  A recent book by John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, provides striking confirmation of my hypothesized model and adds a dimension.  First-degree games also include international financial institutions funded by the US Treasury - the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and Asian Development Bank - as well as US foreign policy proxy figures representing private US companies.  The latter are self-described “economic hit men” (EHM) and Perkins was one of them.  He tells the story from the inside.

Briefly, here’s how it works.  The long-pursued goal of US foreign policy is empire –  control of the world’s governments and resources in the service of US business interests –  with the military option withheld as a last resort.  The first, preferred strategy is economic control.  Enter the EHM, who attempts to negotiate huge “development” loans from the World Bank or one of its siblings with the leader(s) of a targeted nation.  If successful, the money is transferred to a huge US company contracted to do the work (e.g., build a dam, develop an oil field) such as Halliburton or Bechtel (the same familiar cast of corporate characters awarded no-bid contracts in Iraq).  The recipient country is now obligated to repay this loan, which is typically beyond its realistic capabilities.  The U.S. can now “call in its markers” as needed, forgiving some of the debt for a UN vote, access to natural resources such as petroleum for extraction by U.S. producers,  and real estate for U.S. military bases (there are currently 725 on foreign soil) – an unabashed Godfather model of U.S. foreign relations.

The “development” itself typically serves the recipient country’s elite, often to the detriment of its poor and indigenous populations, whose living standards by all objective indices have decreased during our post-WWII era of “foreign aid”.  Ecosystems upon which indigenous peoples survive have been destroyed.  The embattled poor and indigenous people who fight back are designated as “terrorists” and are killed by their government’s CIA-trained military.  Debt service consumes the government’s financial resources and precludes spending on programs for the ordinary people such as education and health care.

If a targeted leader proves incorruptible by the EHM, the 2nd degree game is conducted by what EHMs call the “jackals” – CIA assassins and coup fomenters.  Several popular, elected leaders of targeted countries – always loudly decried as “communists” –  have met such a fate when attempting to nationalize their own resources and terminate contracts with extractive US industries.  These are described in our companion document, The Long-Planted Seeds of Anti-American Terrorism.

If the targeted leader succeeds in avoiding CIA assassination or CIA-instigated overthrow, the DoD’s 3rd degree solution is implemented.  Numerous examples are described in The Long-Planted Seeds of Anti-American Terrorism. This appears to be the case with both the Taliban and Saddam.

Alternatives to Games

Assassination and invasion are 3rd degree games initiated by the U.S., as are terrorist responses to our aggression and domination.  What we need, of course, are alternatives to games.  The transactional alternatives to games are negotiated and subsequently honored contracts between non-discounted participants who view and treat each other with respect (based upon “I’m OK, you’re OK” perceptions).  The Cold War ended with such transactions between a Gorbachev-reformed Soviet administration and a perceptually transformed Reagan who discontinued his “evil empire” rhetoric.  A similar transformation of perceptions is needed with Islamic terrorists, who typically see themselves as “freedom fighters” or avengers of atrocities committed against their families and communities.  Empathy and understanding of so-called “terrorists” is not impossible, as we think you will see upon reading our companion document.
 

End notes

1 Polls conducted by the Pew Research Center and Gallup International (56 countries altogether) in April/May 2003 found near-universal rejection of the US invasion, typically by overwhelming majorities.  Approval was found only within three countries that had contributed troops or allowed US bases - Australia, the UK, and Kuwait.  See www.gallup-international.com or www.people-press.org for complete survey findings.
2 Polls conducted in 35 major countries in summer 2004 by GlobeScan and PIPA found Kerry favored in 30 and Bush in only 3.  The average difference was 46% for Kerry and 20% for Bush. A poll in Sept/Oct 2004 conducted by a consortium of 10 international newspapers found majorities favoring Kerry in 8 of 10 countries.  See www.cyberpresse.ca.

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Copyright 2004 Jack Dresser, Ph.D.