A WEEKLY COMMENTARY
Year Twenty-Seven ... Number Nine ... February 29, 1980
THE HUMILIATION OF A NATION
The Irani-Afghani crises are the latest in a long series of abject humiliation that have been perpetrated upon a nation which we called the land of the free and the home of the brave. But there is nothing in this long string of degradations which justifies the continued use of that proud title which our ancestors bequested us. Let us recall some of these recent humiliations, while also recalling the fact that appointed and even elected officials of our government have aided and cooperated with our enemies in bringing to pass these national humiliations.
As with Pearl Harbor, our own government officials in our own federal government created the conditions which caused the indignities to be perpetrated. As a result, on November 4, revolutionary terrorists seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, have been holding at least 50 Americans captives ever since. First, President Carter threatened military action; then he humiliatingly backed away from the threat. Next, he threatened economic sanctions; again he backed away from the threat. He ordered Iranian diplomats out of the country; they ignored the order, bringing further humiliation. He ordered the roundup of all Iranian students who were overleave and other Iranians who were here without leave. But, further degradation; the order was never carried out to its completion. Then Carter assumed we were too weak to handle our own affairs; called upon the UN for assistance. The Security Council could do nothing, the General Assembly did nothing; the World Court delivered a dictum that was meaningless. One thing did develop: UN Secretary-General Waldheim agreed to act as a go-between. He arranged for an international commission that would humiliate the United States even further through condemnation of a big nation interfering in the affairs of a little nation. In the beginning, Carter repeatedly declared that the United States would not agree to the appointment of any international commission that would hear Iran's grievances unless Khomeini first released the American hostages. Then Carter said he would agree to the appointment of an international commission if Khomeini would agree to release the hostages. The Ayatollah agreed, but didn't say when. Then, when the USSR took advantage of the situation by sending a horde of Russian troops into Afghanistan, Carter altered his official attitude toward Iran from belligerence to begging. He told the Iranian gang which called itself a government that the USSR, not the USA, was the real enemy; and he promised Iran economic and even military aid if the "students" would only release the fifty American hostages. The newly elected President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr seemed lenient, even possibly agreeable to Carter's pleadings and proffered bribery. Until after that international commission was appointed. Then Bani-Sadr suddenly hardened, brought further humiliation upon the United States by staging a mob scene in front of the American Embassy for the benefit of television cameras, affirmed his solidarity with the "students". Those five international commissioners, appointed by the Ayatollah, were obviously anti-American and pro-Iranian. Yet Carter told Americans that the five-man commission would serve merely as a "fact-finding" body to hear the grievances of both the United States and Iran, and that the release of the hostages was imminent, a matter of a few weeks at most. But in a cable to Waldheim on February 19, Bani-Sadr said "the commission must investigate only past interference of the United States in the internal affairs of Iran" and the former Shah's "crimes, treacheries and corruption." There was no mention of the hostages. And in a televised address to the Iranian people, Ayatollah Khomeini said on February 23: "... the crimes of the United States and the Shah will be proved (and) the issue of the hostages will be up to the representatives of the (Iranian) people ... they can decide about the release of the hostages and the concessions they should obtain in return for their release..." In short, like a servile, weaker power, the United States has made concession after concession and Iran has humiliated us time after time again, in the words of the Ayatollah, has not taken "and will not take a single step backward."
To continue to pursue a foreign policy of this kind can only mean that we have lost or will lose the respect of every nation in the world. Our Nation that once was a standard which other nations sought to emulate, is becoming a laughing stock among nations, neither admired nor feared, a paper tiger. And the most humiliating part is this: we brought it upon ourselves by permitting a group of international power brokers to handle out foreign affairs and ruin our country.
So much for the humiliaton our Nation has received at the hands of a Nation which once was our friend and bulwark in Southwest Asia. Let's look at Iran's neighbor, Afghanistan, already under the military control of Communist Russia. Here we should go back a few years and note how our own leaders helped to pave the way for the blood bath that Afghanis are presently suffering.
In our letter of February 1, 1980, titled "Along Treason Highway," we wrote of how the U.S. Army had cooperation with the Soviets in building super highways so that "when Soviet troops moved into Kabul they did so with the help of your federal income tax dollars" (quotation from the Councilor magazine which first exposed the story). In 1965-67 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers helped the Soviets build a beautiful concrete highway from the Russian border into and through Afghanistan. That "Treason Highway" was used for Communist expansion when Russian tanks and trucks -- products of American technology -- were driven through Afghanistan to the border of Pakistan.
Since publishing this story we have received further confirmation and more information which proves that we merely scratched the surface. Sent to us were reprints of pages one and five of Drake's Freedom Press of August 15, 1967. The banner headline reads: "U.S. Helps Build Highway from Russia to Vietnam." Shown in a large map of a "Southeast Asia Highway System" that totals 35,000 miles of all-weather highways with terminals in Russia, Iraq and Turkey and running through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the highway then dividing in Thai with one road leading to Saigon, another to Singapore. Called "a potential Viet Cong Supply Route" and "The Red Road", there was a special inset map showing the highway-building project in Afghanistan. We have reproduced this portion of the map showing the roads that were being built by U.S. and Soviet engineers in 1967, under the sponsorship of the UN.
Under the maps on page one is an article by William H. Drake which begins: "Unknown to most Americans, the United States, since 1959, has been working with Communist Russia and other nations to build a paved highway through Southeast Asia to Vietnam and Singapore. Military experts interviewed by the Freedom Press predict large sections of the Asian Highway will fall into Communist hands before the time it nears completion in 1971. Hence because of its predicted usefulness to Communist expansion, it has acquired the name of 'Red Road' .. Afghanistan, the first link in the highway, is letting the Soviet Union develop the Afghan economy in the Moscow mold, which will be tied to the Soviet economy. U.S. Army engineers are building some links in the highway; Soviet engineers are building others. A Soviet-built road, with elaborate provisions against weather stoppage, connects the railhead of Tashkent in the USSR with Afghanistan's capital of Kabul."
This USSR-USA joint roadbuilding project was done under the sponsorship of the UN's Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), and with the United States supplying the bulk of the money required (U.S. funds given to ECAFE during this roadbuilding period amounted to about $4 billion).
Authenticating these maps, the accompanying pictures, and the article itself, there is reproduced a letter from the U.S. Department of the Army, Office of the Chief of Engineers, dated 8 September, 1967 and signed by the Assistant General Counsel at that time, Charles L. Pistorino. The letter begins: "This office would appreciate being granted permission to make for office use a limited number of copies of the article .. (This will be) of assistance to the Corps of Engineers in carrying out its mission."
The implications are obvious: using an agency of the UN as a cover, the United States helped Communist Russia build a "Red Road" which would be used for the expansion of Communism throughout Southeast Asia, beginning with Afghanistan and possibly ending with Singapore! The duplicity should also be obvious: When the USSR used that road to occupy Afghanistan and threaten Pakistan, utilizing what we gave them or built for them, from nuclear bombs to tank factories, from weather-control apparatus to all-weather highways, we heard howls of protest from President Carter threats of war, and reinstitution of the registration of young men and women for possible war duty. To keep the people from learning the true facts, a war scare is created and threats of retaliation are broadcast. But, sub rosa, the US government cooperates with the Soviet Union on the one hand and Communist China on the other, while they take over more and more of the earth's surface in order to "comfortably merge" the economy of the Soviet Union and of Communist China, and thus establish the "New World Order."
Here is how it seems to work: There is a "Brezhnev Doctrine" which reads: "Once a communist dictatorship is imposed on a country, the international communist movement has a responsibility to keep that dictatorship in power. If the people of that country act to overthrow the communist dictatorship, the military forces must be provided to defeat the anticommunist revolt. When possible, surrogate troops should be used, Russian troops should be used only in contiguous countries." So, Russian troops were used in Afghanistan. But note the strategy: Communists do not invade a country to impose a dictatorship; instead, they send in troops to maintain a dictatorship that has already been established. First they send in spies, infiltrators, agitators, change-agents, and gain control of the country from within. Then, to maintain control, Communist forces will be sent in, as in Cuba, Hungary, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and eventually the United States unless we can awaken our citizens in time.
Now note the "Trilateralist strategy" in connection with the Brezhnev Doctrine: When a country such as Afghanistan is occupied by Communist forces, then the US protests, threatens, declares "this far and no farther. Attack Pakistan at the risk of war!" So, the Communists don't invade Pakistan. They just send in agents, agitators, make appealing trade and goodwill treaties, help the natives to revolt and set up a dictatorship. Then Communist forces, if necessary, will move in to maintain that dictatorship.
Meanwhile, we make it all possible by supplying "the world headquarters of the proletarian class" with technology and machinery, with food and materials, with 35,000 miles of all-weather roads so the Communist conquest of Southeast sia can be completed. As for the rest of Asia, we are now rendering the same sort of service to Communist China.
The humiliation of the Nation is a part of the scheme. Our allies are treated as enemies and our enemies are accorded favored nation treatment. Our economy is weakened by over-taxation and over-regulation. We tell the world we are too weak to fight alone, ask the Trilateralist-involved Nations to help us. While we have ample sources of energy at home, we are browbeaten and forced to beg for "international assistance." Our dollar is so weakened that we humiliatingly ask one-time enemies Japan and West Germany for financial assistance. Sovereign independence is no longer possible, we are told: we must humiliatingly accept an interdependent status in a world community. Perhaps the worst national humiliation of all came about because of Nicaragua. H du B Reports in its February 1980 issue provides documentation to prove Watergate a part of the plot:
"In the light of information which has since come out it seems irrefutable that Watergate was an operation deliberately meant to fail; planned and perpetrated to give America the congress which followed and the President which .. the Trilateral Commission selected, formed and placed in office. As Vietnam was meant to be a nowinism war, so Watergate was meant to be a "set up" burglary, the punch that was to leave America weak when Russia occupied Afghanistan, threatened Pakistan and the world's lifelines .. It is 'creeping one-world government' which American foundations and organizations made their objective, but it is being implemented by Russia. To understand how America reached her present humiliation, let us turn back to Watergate." (HduB Reports, Box 786, St. George, Utah, $25 per year. Single copy: 50 cents).
America has become a humiliated, submissive giant. But if that giant awakes and throws the Trilateralist out this election year, it could be the beginning of a great revival of the courage and freedom which was once America's.
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