The Perfect Left-Wing Liberal
The appearance of a former CIA officer John Kiriakou in several YouTube interviews rekindled my interest in Greece. Kiriakou spoke about his service-time in Greece, and the active CIA presence in Greece during the turbulent 1980s and 90s. This came about because the Left-wing prime minister Andreas Papandreou decided to allow terrorist groups to establish stations there. Papandreou only insisted that they not strike at Greek targets.
The terrorist groups' activities included assassinations and the hijacking of American airliners that made stops at Athens airport. Not too surprisingly, the hijackings and assassinations led to the State Department's issuing warnings about flying into Athens airport and causing a precipitous decline in American tourism in Greece. If the warnings and decline of tourism bothered Papandreou, he never showed it.
Wikipedia has published a 37-page article on Papandreou, and I recommend it to my readers for its insights into Papandreou's career. He grew up in a political family. His father Georgios Papandreou served as prime minister of Greece and intended from the start to pass on leadership of the nation to his son. Andreas, however, did not want the burden. Greece's political divisions had led to unstable governments since before the War, when Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas resolved the divisions by governing as a dictator, with the approval with the Greek King George II.
Right after World War II, Communist insurgents in Greece, with support from Soviet-Bloc nations, launched a civil war to occupy the government and depose the King. The royal government turned to Britain and the United States for assistance. This terrible proxy war dragged on for four years, with atrocities committed by both sides.
As an American, political divisions interest me. They can have a creative side or cause destruction, and often cause a little of both. If they go unchecked, the divisions cripple the forward progress of a nation and dispirit the citizenry. If the nation reacts proactively, it can end the division with the best possible resolution, albeit with concessions from both sides. If the nation does not react proactively, it will experience the destructive instability that has plagued Greece.
The Greek Civil War ended in 1949 with the defeat of the Communist insurgency. Its leaders faced the usual punishments meted out to the losers—executions, imprisonment, exile, and restrictions of their civil rights. Papandreou's government worked to lessen the consequences for the losing side, in order to hasten reconciliation.
As a Soviet sympathizer and anti-capitalist, however, his efforts created as much resentment as they resolved. Wikipedia writes that Papandreou's "uncompromising radical rhetoric amplified Greece's post-Civil-War instability," and "created the conditions for a group of colonels to stage a coup d'etat and rule Greece for seven years."
In 1974, at the end of the rule by the colonels, Papandreou created his own political party "PASOK", in Greek, "The Party of Social Democrats". Wikipedia writes that he implemented a "transformative social agenda". I associate the word "transformative" with another 1960s social-democrat, Professor James MacGregor Burns, in his book The Democrats must Lead. "Transformation" in the context of a social-democrat agenda can only mean a government-centered agenda—transformation from a society that allows people to use their intelligence and energy to get wealthy, to a society where the government owns and initiates everything.
In 1981, Papandreou spoke to the Greek parliament to elaborate on the policies of his government. "Our basic target is . . . a fairer distribution of the national income and wealth (and) reform of the structures of the economy so that the basic economic choices are made by the society as a whole."
He then spoke of the "crisis in the capitalist system", "intensified international competition", and "the monopolistic structure of many branches," as justification for the governmental intervention to correct the perceived problems.
Wikipedia continues that "Papandreou's pro-worker policies combined with anti-capitalistic rhetoric hindered foreign investment." Then in 1983, "PASOK nationalized numerous industries" by creating an "Industrial Reconstruction Organization . . . turning nationalization into patronage." It led to 200 cases of corruptions, "clientalism", and "political favoritism".
When I think of the numerous liberals who want to implement a social democracy in this country, I can only surmise that they don't undertake this as steps in nation-building but in order to subvert the freedom-loving character of America, I can only surmise they target America because paradoxically they do not have faith in the very system they are proposing.