Allow me to ask: What are think tanks for?
"[T]hink tanks”... monitor and adjust governance norms and networks by using research, analysis, and advocacy to structure discourse about social problems and solutions among multiple elites and in the popular imagination.” http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08192005-162045/They exist for myth-making. Compare five cases:
1) Pakistani military strategist Colonel Akbar Khan conceived the concept of jihad to offset the lack of military balance between the two emerging enemies. Akbar Khan's concept of jihad was no more than subversion in the enemy country, but it was couched in jihadi terms. He himself took over the grand-sounding name of a Muslim conqueror as his nom de guerre. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KG17Df01.html
2) Z. Brzezinski: "Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html
3) Despite quiet support and encouragement for Latin American “death squads” through much of the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. government presented itself as the standard-bearer for human rights and criticized American adversaries that engaged in extrajudicial killings, torture and arbitrary detentions.
That gap between American rhetoric and reality widened after 9/11 as Bush announced his “global war on terror,” while continuing to impress the American news media with pretty words about his commitment to human rights – as occurred in his address to the United Nations on Sept. 25, 2007.
Under Bush’s double standards, he took the position that he could override both international law and the U.S. Constitution in deciding who would get basic human rights and who wouldn’t. He saw himself as the final judge of whether people he deemed “bad guys” should live or die, or possibly face indefinite imprisonment and torture.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/071509.html
4) The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.
For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”
The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.
The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25072.html
5) "That about sums everything up: War Crimes are heinous and intolerable acts that all decent people reject; "anyone suspected of war crimes should be thoroughly investigated"; and War Criminals must not be allowed in any positions of authority . . . . except when the War Crimes in question are committed by Americans, in which case all investigations and accountability must be blocked and those who defended and even approved them are perfectly welcomed in our highest positions of authority (including, ironically, overseeing our war in Afghanistan). See also, quite relatedly: this post from earlier today on how we continue to shield from any accountability the clear and serious crimes committed by Bush officials in how they spied on Americans.. . . Let's just repeat the sermon from the anonymous Obama official in demanding an investigation into crimes by this Afghan warlord: 'We believe that anyone suspected of war crimes should be thoroughly investigated.' It doesn't appear that they know what the word 'anyone' means."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/11/accountability/index.html
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