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What Uncle Sam Really Wants (The Real Story Series)

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A Chomsky Primer

As other reviewers have noted, this is a good introduction to Chomsky. The topics and themes of this summary are fully expanded in other works. While his critics can be numerous and often vicious, he is nevertheless a necessary voice in the dialog of democracy.

Chomsky's assertion that corporations drive American policy is one of the most common threads running throughout his works. Aided by their favorite tool, the media, corporations guide domestic and foreign policy deftly through the three branches of government. Another war critic, the late USMC Major General Smedley Butler, reflecting on his long military career said:

"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket." - from "War is a Racket" (1935)

Chomsky makes a compelling case that indeed we have used our military to gain hegemony throughout the world in order to maintain our economic system. Consider that we have over a hundred military bases around the world for starters. Why would a democratic, peace-loving nation need such a presence? I think it would be more appropriate, however painful some might find this, to call the U.S. an empire.

In Latin America, the CIA and our military have repeatedly strong-armed progressive governments that want to restore assets to the lower classes. Whether it is sugar, fruit, oil, or banking interests, progressive governments are undermined and a more U.S.-friendly, conservative power is installed - often in the form of a dictatorship. When that government starts straying from the script, as in the case of Noriega in Panama, the U.S. intervenes to repair the situation.

If our enemy isn't the Cold War, it is such demonized leaders as Saddam Hussein. The Pentagon cycle of arms building, war, and arms research boosts corporate profits and continues the march to hegemony. Have you seen the photograph of Donald Rumsfeld gleefully shaking Saddam's hands while on a visit to Iraq in 183 by the way? I guess our "friend" turned into a foe down the road. He started playing by his own rules and brought down the wrath of the U.S. upon him.

Even though the book is fairly short, it is a great summary of Chomsky's beliefs. It is impossible to convey all of the subjects and events touched in a single review. Whether or not you agree with his point of view, Chomsky is well worth reading. He provides a perspective on the world not often expressed in the corporate media.

There is no question that if Noam Chomsky was a Russian writing about Russia in this way he'd spend his life in the Gulag. Few countries would allow him to continue lecturing and publishing.

Chomsky is no crackpot. He's a brilliant intellectual and a passionately ethical human being. If he is complaining about something, we'd better listen.

I'll give you a little taste of this book. These are some of the lies that we are told by our media:

1. That America wants to support democracy and human rights around the world. 2. That America opposes terrorism. 3. That America opposes international drug trafficking. 4. That Noriega was ousted from Panama because of drugs. 5. That the Vietnam War was fought to halt the spread of communism. 6. That America was ever afraid of Soviet military power.

If you are willing to re-evaluate every single thing you have come to believe about your country, pick up this little book. It gets right to the point and is extremely readable.

This little book, published in 1992, is one hundred and one pages and is of small dimensions, phamphlet like, and is of the type that can be read pretty quickly, and intends to introduce the critique of foreign affairs (and society in general) of the leading dissident left wing intellectual Noam Chomsky. Taken from excerpts from Chomsky's writings and speeches, Chomsky presents his analysis, more or less of the cold war, how U.S. planners during and after World War Two basically decided that the United States owned the world, and that the economic and political system of the world should cater to the needs of American capitalism. The Soviet Union gobbled up East Europe, the original third world, long exploited by the West, one of main reasons of the cold war, which had nothing to do with Stalinist totalitarianism. One of the original goals of the cold war was also to carry over the massive government involvement in the economy from World War two, that is massive government subsidy to private corporations, especially through the Pentagon system, and later NASA, the energy department,commerce department etc. a system which is mainly responsible today for the success of the computer industry and the internet(not Bill Gates), electronics, pharmaceuticals, and just about every other viable sector of the economy. The taxpayers fund the research and development, corporations reap the profit if there is any to be made.

Chomsky says that the primary concern of U.S. elites in their policy towards the third world was not really economic, such as securing cheap access to raw materials and labor, or at least it was not their primary concern. Their primary concern was that certain third world nations would take primary control of their own resources, and direct what wealth they had towards the benefit of their people and not transnational corporations and investors, and most importantly serve as an example for other poor nations to follow. Nicaragua, Chile, Vietnam, Grenada, etc. could all disapear off the face of the earth tommorow, and U.S. corporations and investors would probably not be too disturbed; it is the example that they set for other nations that provoked (and provokes) U.S. hostility.

U.S. leaders have at various times called this "the domino theory," the targeted third world nations have been described as "viruses" or "rotten apples" that will "infect" their other countries. U.S. leaders ingrained in their own minds that any change of the status quo, no matter how mild, wheather it be secular or religous, right wing or left wing, for the direct benefit of the general population of a third world country is by definition a movement being sponsored by the Soviet Union to overthrow human civilization, and so on, no matter how lacking the evidence is for this thesis.

Chomsky gives several examples. One is the case of the Jacabo Arebenz government in Guatemala which the U.S. overthrew in 1954. Arbenz was no more a communist than Franklin Roosevelt was, but his fight against the power of the United Fruit corporation in his country, to go along with his succesful land redistribution program in this desperately poor country, made him a threatening "good example" to the other miserable countries of the region, and that made him an agent of Moscow in the eyes of the U.S. government. The morons in the CIA also had additional evidence that Arbenz government. His government had allegedly given three hundred thousand dollars to Costa Rican president Jose Figueres. Figueres, was a great friend of U.S. corporations and suppressed union activity and was much admired by the George Kennan-Arthur Schlesinger Jr. type liberals, but he had also instituted an extensive social welfare program for Costa Rica and had an independent streak, a real no-no for a third world leader, so that made him a communist, of course. And so if Arbenz, a communist was (allegedly) giving money to Figueres, a communist too, then that meant it was all part of a plot by Moscow to cooridinate subversion in the hemisphere, or something like that, quite standard reasoning for U.S. policy makers. So Arbenz was overthrown and at least 160,000 people have since been killed by the various tin-pot Hitlers, like Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia, that the United States has heavily supported to make sure that populist forces in Guatemala are beaten back sufficiently.

A similar situation existed in El Salvador, Chomsky says, in the late 1970's, when led by the Catholic church, pesant self-help organizations and unions began to work towards gaining a voice for the poor majority. The response was a decade of sadistic terror in which perhaps 60,000 people perished, begun in the Carter administration (which also supported Somoza to his bloody end, contrary to much illusion) and extended by the Reaganites, on the excuse that the guerillas were being directed by the Soviets and Cubans, and so on.

Then there are other odd cases like Manuel Noriega. He was on the payroll of the CIA for years. He stole an election with great fraud and violence in 1984, but was praised extravegently by the Reagan administration for bringing about a triumph of Jeffersonian democracy, and George Schultz went down to attend the inaguration of Noriega's man, Nicos Barletta. As the years went by though, Noriega developed an independent streak, he became lukewarm about the U.S. war against Nicaragua. He started to fight with Panama's business elites, thus threatening the "stability" which the U.S. government cherishes. So he had to go. The U.S. government suddenly discovered that Noriega was a thug and a drug dealer. He was indicted in Miami in 1988. All but one of the charges against him were for actions before 1984, when he was a U.S. friend. So the U.S. invaded and killed perhaps thousands of civilians and installed a regime of even worse drug dealers who made sure that the Panama canal would be in good hands once the U.S. had to give it up.

Or there is the case of East Timor. In 1965, the excessively nationalist president Sukarno of Indonesia was overthrown with U.S. support, initiating a bloodbath that killed hundreds of thousands of landless peasants and destroyed the party that most of them supported the communist PKI. General Suharto took over, to the great jubilation of the New York Times liberals, and proceeded to blunder the country in cooperation with multinational corporations. In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor and began conducting the worst genocide relative to population since the holocaust using mostly U.S. arms and with such diplomatic support as provided by the great liberal Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in December 1975 the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who related with great pride in his 1978 memoir how he had helped block effective international action to counter Indonesia's aggression...

It can be daunting to try to understand the big picture. Chomsky has done a lot of work to get us started on the road toward being informed citizens, gathering an astounding body of evidence indicting 'state capitalism', as practiced predominantly by the United States. His presentation is concise and down-to-earth. Being a distillation of his other books, this booklet borrows their formidable scholarship, which draws largely upon publicly available references (e.g., those released under the Freedom of Information Act). The basic premise is that the US government has engaged since WWII in a coldly calculated campaign of maintaining its position as the preeminent economic power in the world. To do so, it has supported murderous, repressive regimes and/or actively encouraged chaos in order to destroy any successful examples of socialism in the Third World. Examples in the book include Chile, Indonesia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, among many others. It then describes propaganda campaigns waged to keep US citizens uninformed and accepting. It is a classic political maneuver to invoke a foreign threat to consolidate power at home and deflect attention from the real issues. According to the book, the government did this in invoking the "Evil Empire" and declaring a "War on Drugs". The bitter irony, of course, is that our own empire-building has been at least as evil (in terms of violence against citizens and repression of human rights) as the Soviet Union's, and that we are the world's largest exporter of addictive drugs (our tobacco has killed tens of millions worldwide), while abetting known drug dealers as long as they help us maintain regional control. "What Uncle Sam Really Wants" might change your understanding of what the power brokers in our society mean when they deploy terms such as 'democracy', 'socialism', 'communism', 'free enterprise', et cetera. The book should not be dismissed as simplistic just because of its abbreviated format. Especially if you haven't encountered Chomsky before, this quick little read might well significantly alter your worldview. Chomsky concludes the book with the hope that it will engage you further in the struggle to maintain a democracy guided at least as much by ethics as it is by economics.

The publishing date is 1992, but the material hasn't dated at all. Fifteen intervening years have merely augmented Chomsky's thesis. Within its farflung empire, the US continues to intervene where and when it wants, public be darned. Iraq, of course, is just the latest chapter in that expanding volume of imperial adventures. This is a slender primer, yet chock-full of the kind of doors that still remain closed to a general public. It never ceases to amaze me how Chomsky assembles his material, not from dusty esoteric volumes, but from an easily accessed public record. Such is the wisdom of empire management here at home, not to suppress all dissent like the clumsy Soviets. Instead, embarrassing facts are marginalized by a vigilant retail media and a legion of spin doctors. I'm still awaiting a Chomsky interview on even C-Span, long after that "public service" channel has exhausted its dismal list of Repubocrat think tanks. Such, again, is the wisdom of empire management, Wall St.-Washington style. Anyway, the prose may be undemanding, but the facts are challenging. Put together in the usually lucid Chomsky manner, they're precisely the window public-spirited citizens need for understanding why so many others see us as they do.

"What Uncle Sam Really Wants" condenses about 10 Noam Chomsky books into 100 pages. Looking at the footnotes of this book, you'll find references to entire chapters in Deterring Democracy, The Culture of Terrorism, Necessary Illusions, Manufacturing Consent, and others. This book was written as a kind of 'Chomsky for beginners' --- you can read this slim volume first, then go to the other books for the full story.

However, just because it's condensed, that doesn't mean it's vague or simplified. As Alex Cockburn once said, the genius of Chomsky's point of view is that it's so clear: The US has no more right to block democracy or violate human rights than any other country. Chomsky backs up this obvious point with a long list of detailed examples. Most of them can be grouped by country --- the US invasion of Vietnam, the war against Nicaragua in the 1980s, support for murderous regimes in El Salvador and Haiti, etc. He also touches on the abuse of power at home. For example, the US is the only industrialized country that uses a 'war on drugs' as population control. (You can make the argument that, although this method of population control exists, it hasn't worked very well.)

If you haven't read Chomsky before, this is a good place to start. He traces the fundamental principles of US foreign policy from the end of World War II to the early 1990s. On every page, he mentions an event or issue you are familiar with, but his take on it is radically different from what you've heard. What makes his view so important is that, although his take is different, it rings true. From the invasion of Panama in the late 1980s to the real roots of the Cold War, Chomsky's research matches what you secretly suspected all along..

Reads fast. And has this imagery and sounds running thru your head like the best documentaries do. Not boring in the slightest. And the best part is that it isn't some wacko-- he's using government papers, and news articles to prove his points.

Noam Chomsky, in his excellent dissection of our government's motivations, gives a very telling account of America's countless transgressions world-wide. In addition to giving an in-depth analysis of the subject of foreign policy, Chomsky writes in an accessible manner that avoids too many assumptions of previous knoweldge on the (often) reader's part. It is this aspect, I find, that makes this book a necessary acquisition. I myself first read it as a junior in high school (and am now a freshman in college) and found it an excellent introduction to a view of the workings of society that I otherwise would not have been exposed to. It is important to note that while Chomsky is by all means adamant and assured of his view's veracity, he does not present any sort of dogma. On the contrary, his assertions are firmly rooted in facts and meticulously documented. The issues he brings up, effectively marginalized by the mainstream media, are incredibly important ones that have a direct impact on our society and our passive acceptance of the "reality" it presents us with. True, his arguments may not win universal acceptance from those who read them, but one can hardly deny that the ideas presented in this and a host of other books of his, by shedding light on igonred facets of our society, bring to those interested in understanding the happenings and actions of the powers-that-be a much-needed source of information. Love him or hate him, the mere fact that his ideas are in the public sphere is a victory in itself and a step in the right direction. The fact that Chomsky's books have had a profound effect on me, however, by no means implies that I have swallowed his ideas like some empty-headed automaton. Quite the contrary, I have examined what he has to say and found that I am in agreement with his fundamental arguments. This does not, I believe, a blind follower make. So...pick up this book and take a look at the issues he presents. I would not say something like "decide", for it is not a matter of agreeing or disgreeing with Noam Chomsky, but rather a look at some events of utmost relevance to our day and age. Enjoy and pass it on to a friend.

This book/pamphlet provides Chomsky's cogent analysis of US militarism in the second half of the 20th century. It is a must read for anyone who grew up after the Vietnam war wondering why the US was invading one small Latin American nation after another, all under the auspices of a defense against communism. A must read for anyone with even the most cursory interest in world affairs.

probably not the greatest chomsky book you can find, but probably the best place to start. very easy to understand, and very enlightening, nonetheless. excellent commentaries on terrible events in our history like the war on drugs, the panama canal, and operation desert storm... i highly suggest you purchase this book