John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles, the grim Christian
http://theologyinthevineyard.wordpress.com/,
December 16, 2006
There is a marvelous saying by whom I
do not know. It pertains to blind eyed fanatics for whom the truth
is incidental. They come in all shapes, religions, in every epoch
and in every country where patriotism is suborned by nationalism.
The classic true believer is Dostoyevski's Grand Inquisitor, a
dunce so obtuse that he had no hint that he has long fled the
authentic companionship of Jesus. The saying goes, and I paraphrase,
"I'd rather face 10,000 fanatics on horseback than one Presbyterian
who is convinced he's right." With ecumenical apologies to
Presbyterians who of course have no monopoly on grim certitude,
I present to you John Foster Dulles (b.1888).
Dulles was Eisenhower's Secretary of State
from 1953-1958.This was a period of intense flux in the world-the
breaking of colonial empires and the deep freeze of the Cold War.
It was also a time of tremendous religious conformity. Dulles
grandfather had been a Presbyterian missionary in India and his
father a pastor in Waterdown, New York. He came to his deep religiosity
as a matter of habit-three services on Sunday and several others
during the week.His father had him memorize biblical passages
and he was well on his way to the ministry, following in his father's
footsteps,until he hit Princeton University.It was there that
he discovered that he might indeed be granted a bigger pulpit
in the service of his country and humanity. He then set his eyes
on the job of Secretary of State. This bully pulpit was to be
his when his friend New York governor Thomas Dewey was set to
become president in 1948. After Truman's stunning upset, Dulles
had to wait until Eisenhower's victory in 1952 to assume the job.
By then 65 years of age, Dulles indeed
had imbibed the toxic American brew which has haunted the United
States since its inception. It is called American exceptionalism,
the idea that somehow America has been destined to be "the
shining city on a hill", an absolutely unique nation, endowed
with unquestioned virtue, in the words of novelist Herman Melville,
"the Israel of our times." This is an idea so deeply
ingrained in the American psyche that it is virtually unassailable
and self evident. 9/11 hit Americans like a shattering explosion.
"Why do they hate us?" was the cry of incomprehension.
There was no collective understanding that so many nations did
not share Americans high opinions of themselves, and their undisputed
global altruism.
The staggering hubris of the incurious
George W Bush that Americans had the right to wage war irrespective
of domestic criticism or universal condemnation is a classic example
of this exceptionalism. "We are trying to lead the world,"
was W's lame excuse. And like many of his presidential predecessors
from McKinley to Clinton, it was always for the good of the world
- never about markets and doing the bidding of corporations. Yet
it was not always like this. George Washington, the great hero
of their own colonial war against Great Britain, had warned his
own people not to export what was beyond their own interest. Washington
was a Deist not a hard core Christian like Dulles and as we have
discovered, there is no motivation which drives people like that
of religion, the idea that the Creator has willed it so and you
are but His obedient servant.
Dulles, as noted had been raised in a
strict Presbyterian household on his father's side but on his
mother's side he grew up mid extraordinary affluence and privilege,
spending much time with his maternal grandfather Foster who had
been Secretary of State in the Harrison administration. Foster
also was on many powerful boards and included among his clients
and friends the Carnegies and Bernard Baruch.
Dulles became a lawyer then a partner
in Sullivan and Cromwell, a firm that dutifully served the most
powerful corporations in America and the biggest cartels which
supported the rise of Hitler. In 1954, now Secretary of State,
Dulles engineered the coup which destroyed democracy in Guatemala.
For him it was simple. He had been on the board of the United
Fruit Company whose unused lands the popular president Arbenz
wished to nationalize. Guatemala's effrontery clashed with Dulles'
twin principles: a hatred of Communism and loyal service to corporations.
The problem was (and this would consistently hobble the US, Guatemala
was not communist.) The Cold War had radically skewed American
perceptions of the nascent reformist nationalism sweeping the
world.
John Foster Dulles was a political and
moral disaster, one of the mid-century architects of imperial
America. Universally described as cold, aloof, calculating and
absolutely sure of himself, he was betrayed by the suffocating
narrowness of his patrician history, and his sheltered and privileged
life. All of this was tragically overlayed by his misplaced arrogant
piety, the staggering conviction the God of peace and justice
had somehow blessed him in his Macchiavellian endeavours. Unwittingly
he caused untold havoc to both his country and the global community.
One of his biographers, Leonard Mosley said that Dulles's brother
Allan (who headed the CIA) and sister Eleanor, "sensed in
their brother a chilling capacity to be completely dispassionate,
to reduce even the most anguishing problem to a question of expediency."
This hardly describes the authentic religious sensibility.
Dulles had absolutely no interest or respect
for the countries he was subverting (Iran was another, as was
Vietnam). This narrow minded Christian was absolutely convinced
of his own righteousness which coincided naturally with America's
exceptional mission as God's surrogate . Humility did not appear
to be his long suit. In this way he helped pave the way to the
present American disaster in Iraq, one which the late Arkansas
senator William Fullbright would have called, "the arrogance
of empire."
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