{"id":239,"date":"2006-04-08T04:26:41","date_gmt":"2006-04-08T08:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=239"},"modified":"2018-08-23T00:55:37","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T04:55:37","slug":"14643-%c2%a0%c2%a0-gwynne-dyer-with-every-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"14643. (Gwynne Dyer) With Every Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gwynne Dyer is a Cana\u00addian jour\u00adnal\u00adist (now based in the U.K.), and an expert on mil\u00adi\u00adtary sub\u00adjects, who has had a glob\u00adally syn\u00addi\u00adcated col\u00adumn for many years. I don\u2019t always agree with him, but he is com\u00adpe\u00adtent, writes hon\u00adestly, and doesn\u2019t pre\u00advar\u00adi\u00adcate. He\u2019s gen\u00ader\u00adally a voice of com\u00admon sense. Unfor\u00adtu\u00adnately, for the last decade, his col\u00adumn hasn\u2019t appeared in very many Cana\u00addian news\u00adpa\u00adpers. The major\u00adity of big Cana\u00addian papers have been under the con\u00adtrol of the malig\u00adnant press bar\u00adon, Con\u00adrad Black, and his suc\u00adces\u00adsor, in recent years. Dyer is per\u00adsona non gra\u00adta<\/em>. This book con\u00adtains a selec\u00adtion of the columns that most of us, here in his native land, have missed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dyer\u2019s strong point is that, unlike most jour\u00adnal\u00adists, he knows how the mil\u00adi\u00adtary works, how deci\u00adsions get made in it, and what war real\u00adly involves. He also knows some\u00adthing about the cul\u00adture and his\u00adtory of the world in gen\u00aderal. This puts him way ahead of most jour\u00adnal\u00adists. He is weak\u00ader when try\u00ading to sec\u00adond-guess the motives of politi\u00adcians and the oli\u00adgarchs who wield real pow\u00ader, a weak\u00adness which he very hon\u00adestly admits. He calls atten\u00adtion to the columns where he didn\u2019t hit the mark.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dyer offers no grand the\u00ado\u00adret\u00adi\u00adcal frame\u00adwork for his analy\u00adsis of geopo\u00adlit\u00adi\u00adcal events. Unfor\u00adtu\u00adnately, he clings to the \u201cleft-right\u201d for\u00admula of a \u201cpolit\u00adi\u00adcal spec\u00adtrum\u201d, an idea that ren\u00adders most polit\u00adi\u00adcal dis\u00adcus\u00adsions use\u00adless. Most jour\u00adnal\u00adists share that fail\u00ading. How\u00adever, there are still many sol\u00adid insights to be found in his work. I think the mis\u00adfires orig\u00adi\u00adnate in a fal\u00adlacy shared by most observers of Amer\u00adi\u00adcan pol\u00adi\u00adtics. They are accus\u00adtomed to think\u00ading that the poli\u00adcies of the White House are designed to advance \u201cAmer\u00adi\u00adcan\u201d inter\u00adests. Amer\u00adi\u00adcan soci\u00adety is now so inward-look\u00ading and cut off from the world, that it seems log\u00adi\u00adcal to assume that the White House gang is mere\u00adly act\u00ading out tra\u00addi\u00adtional Amer\u00adi\u00adcan xeno\u00adpho\u00adbia and arro\u00adgance. I don\u2019t believe that this is so. The gang that is now in con\u00adtrol is no more \u201cAmer\u00adi\u00adcan\u201d than the Ostro\u00adgothic Kings were \u201cRomans\u201d. Alar\u00adic the Goth may have strut\u00adted around the Forum in a toga, but he was not a Roman.<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe that, with this admin\u00adis\u00adtra\u00adtion, the Unit\u00aded States has come under the con\u00adtrol of peo\u00adple who are not<\/em> Amer\u00adi\u00adcans. They may have been born in the Unit\u00aded States, but their loy\u00adalty is not to their coun\u00adtry or to the Amer\u00adi\u00adcan peo\u00adple. What they are loy\u00adal to is a glob\u00adal aris\u00adtoc\u00adracy, a class of transna\u00adtional bil\u00adlion\u00adaires, mid\u00addle-east\u00adern Sheiks, Euro\u00adpean titled gen\u00adtry, ex-KGB gang\u00adsters, and wealthy fam\u00adi\u00adlies that tran\u00adscend all nation\u00adal bor\u00adders. They live in a world of board\u00ading schools and num\u00adbered bank accounts in Switzer\u00adland, vil\u00adlas in Provence and cas\u00adtles in Eng\u00adland, pied-a-terre <\/em>pent\u00adhouses in Man\u00adhat\u00adtan, shop\u00adping sprees at Har\u00adrods, Dubai, and the Gin\u00adza. Ide\u00ado\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcally, they see them\u00adselves as the New British Empire. There is some Amer\u00adi\u00adcan red-white-and-blue bunting scotch-taped onto their vision, but the the\u00ado\u00adreti\u00adcians and schemers behind the Bush White House nev\u00ader talk for very long before the glo\u00adries of the British Empire work their way into the conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The British Empire, at its height, was not designed to make life pleas\u00adant for col\u00adliery work\u00aders in Lan\u00adcashire. It was designed to make life pleas\u00adant for \u201cEng\u00adlish\u201d Rajahs with giant palaces in Bor\u00adneo and Mysore, and its tem\u00adplate was the Moghul Empire, not Magna Car\u00adta. So it is today, with the Unit\u00aded States. Pre\u00advi\u00adous gen\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtions of rulers of Amer\u00adica, how\u00adever self-serv\u00ading and rapa\u00adcious, prob\u00ada\u00adbly thought of them\u00adselves as pro\u00admot\u00ading Amer\u00adi\u00adcan inter\u00adests. But the cur\u00adrent bunch has embraced a new ide\u00adol\u00adogy. To them, the Amer\u00adi\u00adcan peo\u00adple are noth\u00ading but native peasants.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gwynne Dyer is a Cana\u00addian jour\u00adnal\u00adist (now based in the U.K.), and an expert on mil\u00adi\u00adtary sub\u00adjects, who has had a glob\u00adally syn\u00addi\u00adcated col\u00adumn for many years. I don\u2019t always agree with him, but he is com\u00adpe\u00adtent, writes hon\u00adestly, and \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bu-reading-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9665,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/9665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}