JFK Violated the CIA's Civic Religion (BOOK REVIEW)

As Kinzer explains, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia had inspired fear in President Woodrow Wilson and other Western leaders at the Paris Peace conference in 1918-1919 at the end of World War I, which the Dulles brothers participated in (32). During the Cold War, the pathos component was fear -- fear of the Soviet Union, and fear of world-wide communism supposedly directed by Moscow. The ethos component was based on being loyal Americans.

In the midst of anti-communist hysteria in the United States, Senator Joseph McCarthy, himself a Roman Catholic from Wisconsin, excelled in denouncing supposedly un-American people in the American government. No American wanted to be suspected of being "un-American." This accusation usually meant that the accused person did not believe fervently in the American representative democratic government and/or American capitalism. The accused could even be suspected of being a spy.

THE AMERICAN CIVIC RELIGION

Kinzer suggests that the Dulles brothers and President Eisenhower in the 1950s were determined to wage their global war against communism because they were "reassured by a diffuse, supra-rational assumption that American power must always prevail in the end" (297). I refer to this kind of supra-rational assumption as the American civic religion.

Kinzer claims that Foster and Allen Dulles "were shaped by missionary Calvinism and America's pioneer tradition, believed that godly and satanic forces were at war on earth, and felt called to crush the satanic ones" (227). Elsewhere, Kinzer quotes Max Weber to explain the sharp binary of good versus evil that the Dulles brothers worked with: "They assimilated what the sociologist Max Weber described as two fundamental Calvinist tenets: that Christians are "weapons in the hands of God and executors of His providential will' and that "God's glory demanded that the reprobate be compelled to submit to the law of the church'" (115-16).

So for Foster and Allen, the Cold War was really a holy war. Because the communists were officially opposed to religion, their official position reinforced the sense that the Dulles brothers and many other anti-communist Americans had that the Cold War was a holy war.

In the view of the Dulles brothers and President Eisenhower, neutrality was not an acceptable option for non-communist nations around the world. In other words, communism was supposed to be the common enemy of all non-communist nations in the world. With the full collaboration of President Eisenhower, the Dulles brothers geared up the CIA for a wide range of dark arts, including destabilizing unacceptable regimes.

For example, with President Eisenhower's approval, the CIA planned the invasion of Fidel Castro's Cuba. But the invasion was carried out in 1961 after President John F. Kennedy had taken office and had approved it. It turned out to be a disaster. As a result of that debacle, President Kennedy subsequently relieved Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell of their CIA positions. (Kinzer claims that Allen Dulles had serious health issues for months before Kennedy relieved him of his CIA position.)

Kinzer carefully details how President Eisenhower had acted over the years regarding various CIA operations. Kinzer suggests that Richard Bissell, who was primarily responsible for the invasion plan, had most likely expected President Kennedy to supply air cover for the invasion, as President Eisenhower almost certainly would have.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY IS NOT PRESIDENT EISENHOWER

But did Kennedy's later removal of Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell prompt certain disgruntled CIA officials to assassinate Kennedy -- bringing then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson into their conspiracy to handle the cover-up afterward? Kinzer does not explore this possibility. However, he could have explored this possibility in at least general terms. Let me explain.

In his fine book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (Orbis Books, 2008), James W. Douglass suggests that JFK was assassinated because he was a peacenik in a government in which peaceniks were not over-represented, to put it mildly.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).