Meet the U.S.

[Stormig]

Links and quotes related to carpet bombing

 

A reminder of who invented terror bombing

 

A History of Bombing By Sven Lindqvist Granta Books, 2001 224 pages $39.95 (hb)

 

REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON

 

When the first bomb was dropped from the air on November 1, 1911, the pattern for the subsequent history of aerial bombing was set. A European power (Italy) bombed a Third World country (Libya, as its colony in North Africa became known), targeting non-combatants (Arab tribespeople at an oasis) to terrorise them and thus break their will to resist. Only four small bombs were dropped on this historic occasion but the terror potential of bombing would escalate exponentially in the following decades.

 

Sven Lindqvist's book records the history of the technological “advance” and military applications of aerial bombing.

 

Churchill's propaganda that only military sites were the targets of his “area bombing” strategy was a fiction, a fiction which was exploded with each bomb which fell on a broad “carpet” of civilian and other sites.

 

The economics of bombing, which had earlier won over Churchill, now didn't add up. Two thirds of the RAF bombs hit nothing of military-industrial importance. Panic and defeatism also failed to materialise as a military outcome, and with both the US and the Soviet Union now in the war against Germany, Churchill's terror bombing had lost its rationale. Churchill, however, and the RAF head, Arthur “Bomber” Harris, intensified the bombing, especially of residential areas, from 1942, focussing on the “morale of the enemy” civilian population, in particular industrial workers.

 

In the US military, the air force head, General Curtis Le May, was impressed by the outcomes in Hamburg and Dresden. Adding the newly invented sticky, inflammable substance, napalm, to the terror cocktail, Le May ordered the fire-bombing of Tokyo in March 1945. One raid on March 9 reduced one quarter of the city to ashes, killed 100,000 people and made a million homeless.

 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were reserved for a special fate as nuclear bombs were dropped on these intact cities, not to end the war or save the lives of US troops, but to intimidate the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany in Europe, fascist Italy in Ethiopia, and militarist Japan in China, did not stand alone when it came to the war crime of using weapons of mass destruction.

 

The US assumed post-war leadership in this law of the jungle. Napalm strutted its stuff — 32,000 tonnes of it in Korea and 373,000 tonnes of the sticky fire in Vietnam. B-52 carpet bombing was a staple in Vietnam, alongside vastly enhanced anti-personnel bombs in which multiple bomb particles penetrate the body at high velocity. The bombing frenzy prolonged the war at great human and environmental cost, and although the US lost the battle, it won the strategic war as bombs became a currency which raised the international price of guerilla warfare for those contemplating national liberation struggles against US political and economic domination.

 

Because of the domestic political problems arising from the use of ground troops, aerial bombing has moved to the forefront of military strategy. The US relied almost exclusively on bombing in the Gulf War in 1991, continuing the grand old tradition of bombing "a third rate power in the Third World". And ever present in the background is the arsenal of nuclear bombs, a majority in the hands of the trigger-happy North American state, with the ability to destroy the world hundreds of times over.

 

Lindqvist's book is a reminder that terrorism — the deliberate and indiscriminate killing of civilians for political purposes — was authored by the powerful states against the weak, is the root cause of the abhorrent retaliatory strikes such as the World Trade Center atrocity, and will not be eliminated from the world until the bombs, conventional and nuclear, are taken away from the imperialist states and destroyed forever.

 

Killing Civilians to Show That Killing Civilians is Wrong: A Briefing on the History of U.S. Military Interventions.

 

Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, most people in the world agree that the perpetrators need to be brought to justice, without killing many thousands of civilians in the process. But unfortunately, the U.S. military has always accepted massive civilian deaths as part of the cost of war. The military is now poised to kill thousands of foreign civilians, in order to prove that killing U.S. civilians is wrong.

 

The United States military has been intervening in other countries for a long time. In 1898, it seized the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico from Spain, and in 1917-18 became embroiled in World War I in Europe. In the first half of the 20th century it repeatedly sent Marines to "protectorates" such as Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. All these interventions directly served corporate interests, and many resulted in massive losses of civilians, rebels, and soldiers. Many of the uses of U.S. combat forces are documented in "A History of U.S. Military Interventions Since 1890" at

 

www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm

 

In the early 1960s, the U.S. returned to its pre-World War II interventionary role in the Caribbean, directing the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs exile invasion of Cuba, and the 1965 bombing and Marine invasion of the Dominican Republic during an election campaign. The CIA trained and harbored Cuban exile groups in Miami, which launched terrorist attacks on Cuba, including the 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jetliner near Barbados. During the Cold War, the CIA would also help to support or install pro-U.S. dictatorships in Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and many other countries around the world.

 

The U.S. war in Indochina (1960-75) pit U.S. forces against North Vietnam, and Communist rebels fighting to overthrow pro-U.S. dictatorships in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. U.S. war planners made little or no distinction between attacking civilians and guerrillas in rebel-held zones, and U.S. "carpet-bombing" of the countryside and cities swelled the ranks of the ultimately victorious revolutionaries. Over two million people were killed in the war, including 55,000 U.S. troops. Less than a dozen U.S. citizens were killed on U.S. soil, in National Guard shootings or antiwar bombings. In Cambodia, the bombings drove the Khmer Rouge rebels toward fanatical leaders, who launched a murderous rampage when they took power in 1975.

 

Echoes of Vietnam reverberated in Central America during the 1980s, when the Reagan administration strongly backed the pro-U.S. regime in El Salvador, and right-wing exile forces fighting the new leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Rightist death squads slaughtered Salvadoran civilians who questioned the concentration of power and wealth in a few hands. CIA-trained Nicaraguan Contra rebels launched terrorist attacks against civilian clinics and schools run by the Sandinista government, and mined Nicaraguan harbors. U.S. troops also invaded the island nation of Grenada in 1983, to oust a new military regime, attacking Cuban civilian workers (even though Cuba had backed the leftist government deposed in the coup), and accidentally bombing a hospital.

 

The U.S. Navy also intervened against Iran during its war against Iraq in 1987-88, sinking Iranian ships and "accidentally" shooting down an Iranian civilian jetliner.

 

U.S. forces invaded Panama in 1989 to oust the nationalist regime of Manuel Noriega. The U.S. accused its former ally of allowing drug-running in the country, though the drug trade actually increased after his capture. U.S. bombing raids on Panama City ignited a conflagration in a civilian neighborhood, fed by stove gas tanks. Over 2,000 Panamanians were killed in the invasion to capture one leader. Common Themes Some common themes can be seen in many of these U.S. military interventions. First, they were explained to the U.S. public as defending the lives and rights of civilian populations. Yet the military tactics employed often left behind massive civilian "collateral damage." War planners made little distinction between rebels and the civilians who lived in rebel zones of control, or between military assets and civilian infrastructure, such as train lines, water plants, agricultural factories, medicine supplies, etc. The U.S. public always believe that in the next war, new military technologies will avoid civilian casualties on the other side. Yet when the inevitable civilian deaths occur, they are always explained away as "accidental" or "unavoidable."

 

Second, although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites. Whether in Vietnam, Central America, or the Persian Gulf, the U.S. was not defending "freedom" but an ideological agenda (such as defending capitalism) or an economic agenda (such as protecting oil company investments). In the few cases when U.S. military forces toppled a dictatorship--such as in Grenada or Panama--they did so in a way that prevented the country's people from overthrowing their own dictator first, and installing a new democratic government more to their liking.

 

Third, the U.S. always attacked violence by its opponents as "terrorism," "atrocities against civilians," or "ethnic cleansing," but minimized or defended the same actions by the U.S. or its allies. If a country has the right to "end" a state that trains or harbors terrorists, would Cuba or Nicaragua have had the right to launch defensive bombing raids on U.S. targets to take out exile terrorists? Washington's double standard maintains that an U.S. ally's action by definition "defensive," but that an enemy's retaliation is by definition "offensive."

 

Fourth, the U.S. often portrays itself as a neutral peacekeeper, with nothing but the purest humanitarian motives. After deploying forces in a country, however, it quickly divides the country or region into "friends" and "foes," and takes one side against another. This strategy tends to enflame rather than dampen a war or civil conflict, as shown in the cases of Somalia and Bosnia, and deepens resentment of the U.S. role.

 

Fifth, U.S. military intervention is often counterproductive even if one accepts U.S. goals and rationales. Rather than solving the root political or economic roots of the conflict, it tends to polarize factions and further destabilize the country. The same countries tend to reappear again and again on the list of 20th century interventions.

 

Sixth, U.S. demonization of an enemy leader, or military action against him, tends to strengthen rather than weaken his hold on power. Take the list of current regimes most singled out for U.S. attack, and put it alongside of the list of regimes that have had the longest hold on power, and you will find they have the same names. Qaddafi, Castro, Saddam, Kim, and others may have faced greater internal criticism if they could not portray themselves as Davids standing up to the American Goliath, and (accurately) blaming many of their countries' internal problems on U.S. economic sanctions.

 

One of the most dangerous ideas of the 20th century was that "people like us" could not commit atrocities against civilians.

 

German and Japanese citizens believed it, but their militaries slaughtered millions of people.

 

British and French citizens believed it, but their militaries fought brutal colonial wars in Africa and Asia.

 

Russian citizens believed it, but their armies murdered civilians in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere.

 

Israeli citizens believed it, but their army mowed down Palestinians and Lebanese.

 

Arabs believed it, but suicide bombers and hijackers targeted U.S. and Israeli civilians.

 

U.S. citizens believed it, but their military killed millions in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere.

 

Every country, every ethnicity, every religion, contains within it the capability for extreme violence. Every group contains a faction that is intolerant of other groups, and actively seeks to exclude or even kill them. War fever tends to encourage the intolerant faction, but the faction only succeeds in its goals if the rest of the group acquiesces or remains silent.

 

http://www.awitness.org/news/november_2001...ing_quotes.html

[Stormig]

Owner of bombed pharmaceutical plant wins release of assets, Sudan demands compensation

By Shannon Jones

7 May 1999

On May 3 the Clinton administration lifted its freeze on the bank accounts of Saudi businessman Saleh Idris, the owner of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan that was destroyed by US cruise missiles last August 20. The US had claimed that the plant produced chemical weapons and that Idris had ties to alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden. In the wake of this decision the Sudan government is demanding the United States pay compensation to everyone affected.

 

The decision to release Idris's funds amounts to tacit admission that the US government claim of a connection between the bombed factory in Sudan and terrorists was a lie. The order to unfreeze the assets came the same day that the government was required to reply to a civil suit filed by Idris on February 26. The Saudi businessman demanded the release of more than $24 million on deposit at the Bank of America on the grounds that the US had failed to provide any evidence to justify its action.

 

Ali Nimir, Sudan's minister for Foreign Affairs, said the unfreezing of Mr. Idris's assets was "proof against the allegations" that the Al-Shifa plant was producing chemical weapons. He called for compensation for those affected by the cruise missile attack and for the end of "political, trade and economic sanctions" against the impoverished African country, which the US has put on its list of nations that sponsor terrorism. The bombed factory produced much of Sudan's supply of human and veterinary pharmaceuticals.

 

Idris, a Sudan-born Saudi citizen, purchased the Al-Shifa plant four months before the US destroyed it following the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Since then he has waged a determined campaign to disprove the claims of the US government of a link to terrorism. He retained the prominent Washington, DC law firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld to represent him. Idris also commissioned independent tests by a leading US chemist of soil samples taken from the site of the plant. The investigation turned up no signs of the manufacture of chemical weapons. Idris also hired a private international security firm, Kroll & Associates, to investigate possible terrorist connections. They found no link between Idris and bin Laden.

 

Steven R. Ross, one of Idris's attorneys said, "Mr. Idris was a Saudi banker who went to sleep one night and woke up in the morning with the US government describing him as a terrorist."

 

Idris is considering plans to sue the US government for compensation. With the unfreezing of his bank accounts he is dropping pending civil suits against the US Treasury and Bank of America.

 

The exposure of US government claims about the missile attack on Sudan raises an obvious question: If the US was prepared to employ such brazen and easily disproven lies to justify its bombing of a defenseless and impoverished country, why should anyone believe the statements of US government officials about the allegedly "humanitarian" reasons for its ongoing assault on Yugoslavia?

 

See Also:

No evidence of chemical weapons at Sudan factory targeted by US

[11 February 1999]

The Al-Shifa factory was not making chemical weapons or their so-called "precursors"

Interview with Tom Carnaffin, technical manager at the bombed Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Factory in Sudan

[12 September 1999]

Nerve gas factory claim exposed as hoax

What are the real reasons for the US missile strike?

[26 August 1999]

 

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/...9/sud-m07.shtml

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/su...sudan/kubar.htm

[Stormig]

U.S. Bombing:

The Myth of Surgical Bombing in the Gulf War

 

by Paul Walker

I first want to thank Ramsey Clark and the National Coalition for having the courage to undertake an event of this nature. I hope as we continue to dig for the truth in this war, the inquiry will be repeated and repeated and repeated hundreds of times over, not only in the United States but around the globe.

Let me try to give you a brief account of the weapons and the war as a military analyst like myself is trying to discover. I must say first that our research at the Institute for Peace and International Security in Cambridge has been going on for several months at this point, ever since the war began and to a certain extent before it began. And there still is a large amount of stonewalling in Washington. Much of the information is unavailable. Much of the information takes an inordinate amount of time to come out. Much of it given out by the various services is in fact contradictory.

 

The first images of the 42-day Mideast war mesmerized most viewers - nighttime television pictures of targeted Iraqi bunkers and buildings, many in downtown Baghdad, being surgically destroyed by precision-guided bombs dropped by stealthy aircraft. The crosshairs of an aircraft high-tech laser targeting system lined up on the rooftop of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, moments later a laser-seeking 2,000 pound bomb blew the building apart. Then the cameras would turn to U.S. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the anti-Iraq coalition, who described the attack "on his counterparts headquarters" with a wry, amused smile - you'll all remember this from the first night as I do. Hundreds of military news reporters in the Saudi briefing room laughed with nervous interest as if viewing Nintendo games, although thousands of individuals were killed, possibly, by that weapon. High-tech warfare had, indeed, come of age.

 

Back in Washington, General Colin Powell, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that he was "rather pleased that we appear to have achieved tactical surprise" against Iraqi forces in a sudden early morning first strike on January 17, 1991. Coalition forces undertook, in short, thousands of aircraft sorties and missile strikes in the first days of war. A select number of the successful ones with laser-guided bombs were portrayed daily back home on Cable News Network, Nightline, and other regular news programs.

 

Some 50 of the new F- 117A batwing stealth fighter bombers were flown in early attacks, apparently achieving better success in Baghdad than they had one year earlier when they missed their targets in Panama City. Over 200 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from ships and submarines for the first time in combat, also reportedly achieving successful "surgical strikes" on high-value Baghdad targets, including the Ministry of Defense and Saddam Hussein's presidential palace. American technological prowess was again displayed graphically several days later when Patriot air-defense missiles successfully intercepted attacking Iraqi missiles launched against Saudi Arabia and Israel.

 

These and other images of war, perhaps more than anything else, I believe, created an illusion of remote, bloodless, pushbutton battle in which only military targets were assumed destroyed. Pentagon officials stressed throughout their daily briefings that Coalition war planners were taking great pains to marry the right weapon with the right target in order to minimize "collateral damage," that is, injury to innocent civilians in Iraq and Kuwait, particularly in populated areas such as Baghdad and Kuwait City.

 

Halfway through the war, one journalist described the conflict as a "robo war" in which "the raids are intense, unremitting, and conducted with the world's most advanced non-nuclear weaponry but are unlikely to cause the sort of general destruction being anticipated by commentators." A Wall Street Journal article proclaimed, "Despite public perceptions, the recent history of high-tech conventional warfare has been to steadily reduce general destruction."

 

Despite all these public proclamations about limited casualties from so-called surgical and precision strikes there would appear to be much greater destruction and much higher numbers of dead and injured in Iraq and Kuwait. Early first-hand accounts provided glimpses of the possibilities of more than surgical damage to Iraqi targets. From my discussions with Ramsey Clark, this is certainly the case. For example, Captain Steven Tait, pilot of an F-16 jet fighter which escorted the first wave of bomber aircraft and who was the first American to shoot down an Iraqi plane, described his bird's eye view of Baghdad after the first hour of allied bombardment: "Flames rising up from the city, some neighborhoods lit up like a huge Christmas tree. The entire city was just sparkling at us."

 

The sheer amount of explosive tonnage dropped over Iraq and Kuwai also, I think, tends to undermine any assumption of surgical strikes. Air Force General McPeak, Air Force commanding general, proudly proclaiming, "Probably the first time in history that a field army has been defeated by air power," estimated that some 88,500 tons of bombs have been dropped in over 109,000 sorties flown by a total of 2,800 fixed-wing aircraft. Of these flights somewhat over half were actual bombing raids while the remainder involved refueling, bomber escort, surveillance, and so forth. Of the actual bombing missions, about 20,000 sorties were flown against a select list of 300 strategic targets in Iraq and Kuwait; about 5,000 were flown against SCUD missile launchers, and some 30,000 to 50,000 against Iraqi forces in southern Iraq and Kuwait. In all, more than 3,000 bombs (including sea-launched cruise missiles) were dropped on metropolitan Baghdad. The total number of bombs dropped by allied forces in the war comes to about 250,000. Of these only 22,000 were the so-called "smart bombs" or guided bombs. About 10,000 of these guided bombs were laser-guided and about 10,000 were guided anti-tank bombs. The remaining 2,000 were radiation guided bombs directed at communication and radar installations.

 

The most complete survey of all the different bombs, missiles, shells, and weapons so far appears in Appendix A of On Impact: Modern Warfare and the Environment, a report prepared by William Arkin, Damian Durrant, and Marianne Cherni for Greenpeace. This report was prepared for the "Fifth Geneva Convention on the Protection of the Environment in the Time of Armed Conflict" (London, June 3, 1991). The authors infer the total weapons used from the 1991 fiscal year supplemental budget request to Congress which lists weapons required to replenish U.S. stockpiles. The numbers are revealing and staggering. In part, they include:

 

2,095 HARM missiles

217 Walleye missiles

5,276 guided anti-tank missiles

44,922 cluster bombs and rockets

136,755 conventional bombs

4,077 guided bombs[1]

The conventional unguided bomb (so-called "dumb bomb") was the most commonly used weapon in the massacre. These come in four types: the Mk 82 (500 lbs), Mk 83 (1,000 lbs), Mk 84 (2,000 lbs), and the M117 (750 lbs). In all some 150,000 to 170,000 of these bombs were dropped during the war.

The U.S. arsenal contains eight kinds of guided bombs:

 

AGM-130, an electro-optically or infrared-guided 2,000 pound powered bomb,

GBU-10 Paveway II, a 2,000 pound laser-guided bomb based on a Mk 84,

GBU-101 Paveway II, a 2,000 pound laser-guided bomb with I-2000 hard target munition, employed exclusively on the F117A and used in small numbers,

GBU-12 Paveway II, a 500 pound laser-guided bomb, used against tanks,

GBU-24 Paveway III, a 2,000 pound laser-guided, low-level weapon (with BLU-109 bomb and mid-course auto pilot) used against chemical and industrial facilities, bridges, nuclear storage areas, and aircraft shelters,

GBU-27 Paveway III, a 2,000 pound laser-guided bomb with I-2000 hard target munition on the BLU-109/B, a "black program" adapted version of the GBU-24, used exclusively by F- 117A fighters to attack aircraft shelters, bunkers, and other targets in Baghdad, and

GBU-28, a 5,000 pound "bunker busting" laser-guided bomb, fabricated especially for the war against Iraq "in an effort to destroy extremely hardened, deeply buried Iraqi command and control bunkers, kill senior military officials and possible kill Saddam Hussein."[2]

As if explosive bombs were not enough, the U.S. used massive amounts of fire bombs and napalm, although U.S. officials denied using napalm against Iraqi troops, only on oil filled trenches (this raises the question of who set all the oil wells on fire in Kuwait and southern Iraq). These trenches, of course, in many cases surrounded bunkers where Iraqi soldiers were hiding. Perhaps the most horrifying of all bombs was the Fuel Air Explosives (FAE) which were used to destroy minefields and bunkers in Iraq and Kuwait. These firebombs were directly used against Iraqi soldiers, although military spokesmen and press reports have consistently tried to downplay their role.[3] Perhaps this is only because press reports were too descriptive before the war when the Pentagon was leaking stories about possible Iraqi use of FAEs, along with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons - none of which ever appeared on the Iraqi side. The FAE is composed of an ethelene oxide fuel which forms an aerosol cloud or mist on impact. The cloud is then detonated, forming very high overpressures and a blast or shock wave that destroys anything within an area of about 50,000 square feet (for a 2,000 pound bomb). The U.S. also used "daisy cutters" or the BLU-82, a 15,000 pound bomb containing GSX Gelled slurry explosives. This, too, is a concussion type bomb which military spokesmen and the U.S. press said was used to detonate pressure sensitive mines. The mines, of course, surrounded Iraqi troop deployments and the concussive force of the bomb would surely also rupture internal organs or ear-drums of Iraqi soldiers pinned down in their bunkers. This is not even to mention incineration and asphyxiation, as the fire storm of the bomb sucks all of the oxygen out of the area. President Bush continually warned about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but it is clear that U.S. forces alone used weapons of mass destruction against Iraqi troops in both Iraq and Kuwait.

Among other controversial weapons are cluster bombs and anti-personnel bombs which contain a large number of small bomblets inside a large casing. Upon impact the little bombs are dispersed over a wide area and then explode. Using cluster bombs, a single B-52 can deliver more than 8,000 bomblets in a single mission. A total of about 60,000 to 80,000 cluster bombs were dropped.[4]

 

What all of this means to anyone who thinks about the numbers is simply that the bombing was not a series of surgical strikes but rather an old fashioned mass destruction. On March 15, 1991, the Air Force released information stating that 93.6% of the tonnage dropped were traditional unguided bombs. So we have something like 82,000 tons of bombs that were non-precision guided and only 7,000 tons of guided bombs. This is not surgical warfare in any accurate sense of the term and more importantly in the sense that was commonly understood by the American public. Bombs were, moreover, not the only source of explosives rained down upon Iraq. Artillery shells from battleships and rocket launchers amounted to an additional 20,000 to 30,000 tons of explosives.

 

While the F-117 Stealth fighter captured the fascination of the news media, massive B-52s carried out the bulk of the work. Flying out of bases in Diego Garcia, Spain, United Kingdom, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other places, B-52s dropped about thirty percent of the total tonnage of bombs. B-52s were used from the first night of the war to the last. Flying at 40,000 feet and releasing 40 - 60 bombs of 500 or 750 pounds each, their only function is to carpet bomb entire areas. General McPeak told Defense Week, "The targets we are going after are widespread. They are brigades, and divisions and battalions on the battlefield. It's a rather low density target. So to spread the bombs - carpet bombing is not my favorite expression - is proportionate to the target. Now is it a terrible thing? Yes. Does it kill people? Yes."[5] B-52s were used against chemical and industrial storage areas, air fields, troop encampments, storage sites, and they were apparently used against large populated areas in Basra.

 

Language used by military spokesman General Richard Neal during the war made it sound as if Basra had been declared a "free fire zone" - to use a term from the Vietnam war for areas which were declared to be entirely military in nature and thus susceptible to complete bombing. On February 11, 1991, Neal told members of the press that "Basra is a military town in the true sense.... The infrastructure, military infrastructure, is closely interwoven within the city of Basra itself"[6] He went on to say that there were no civilians left in Basra, only military targets. Before the war, Basra was a city of 800,000 people, Iraq's second largest. Eyewitness accounts Suggest that there was no pretense at a surgical war in this city. On February 5, 1991, the Los Angeles Times reported that the air war had brought "a hellish nightime of fires and smoke so dense that witnesses say the sun hasn't been clearly visible for several days at a time . . . [that the bombing is] leveling some entire city blocks . . . [and that there are] bomb craters the size of football fields and an untold number of casualties."[7] Press reports immediately following the cease-fire tried to suggest that the massive destruction of Basra was caused by Iraqi forces suppressing the Shiite rebellion or was simply left over from the Iran-Iraq war. This would not be the first time the press and the U.S. government covered up the extent of its war destruction - the case of Panama comes immediately to mind

 

The use of B-52s and carpet bombing violates Article 51 of Geneva Protocol I which prohibits area bombing. Any bombardment that treats a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located within a city as a single military objective is prohibited. Basra and most of southern Iraq and Kuwait where Iraqi forces were deployed were treated by U.S. military planners as a single area or to use McPeak's phrase "a low density target." The same is true for General Norman Schwarzkopf's order at the start of the ground war "not to let anybody or anything out of Kuwait City."[8] The result of this order was the massive destruction that came to be known as the "Highway of Death." In addition to retreating soldiers, many of whom had affixed white flags to their tanks which were clearly visible to U.S. pilots,[9] thousands of civilians, especially Palestinians, were killed as they tried to escape from Kuwait City. An Army officer on the scene told reporters that the "U.S. Air Force had been given the word to work over that entire area [roads leading north from Kuwait City] to find anything that was moving and take it out.''[10]

 

By now it should be clear to anyone that claims of a surgical or a precise war are no more than the kind of excuses which the guilty always give to deflect blame elsewhere. The destruction of Iraq was near total and it was criminal. The fact that Baghdad was not carpet bombed by B-52s does not mean that the civilian population was not attacked and killed. On top of the massive bombing, we have now a new kind of war: bomb now, die later. The precision bombs which did manage to hit their targets destroyed precisely the life-sustaining economic infrastructure without which Iraqis would soon die from disease and malnutrition. George Bush's remark on February 6, 1991, that the air strikes have "been fantastically accurate" can only mean that the destruction of the civilian economic infrastructure was, indeed, the desired target and that the U.S. either made no distinction between military and civilian targets or defined the military area in such a broad manner as to include much civilian property. In both cases, it is a war crime.

 

Finally, comments about the surgical nature of the war tend to neglect the outright massacre which occurred in southern Iraq and Kuwait. The only way to describe what happened there would be a killing frenzy. No accurate numbers of people killed in these areas exist but with the massive bombing of bunkers, especially by FAEs, it is likely that most of the Iraqi soldiers were killed by the saturation bombing. This number could go as high as several hundred thousand. These soldiers were defenseless from air attacks and cut off from communication with leaders in Baghdad. They were simply isolated by the U.S.-led coalition, brutally killed, and then bulldozed into some forty-nine mass graves. That is what General Colin Powell said in November with regard to the Iraqi army: "First you cut it off, then you kill it." There is nothing surgical about that.

 

Notes

Williarn M. Arkin, Darnian Durrant, and Marianne Cherni , On Impact: Modern Warfare and the Environment - A Case Study of the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Greenpeace, May 1991), p. 160, fn 377.

John D. Morrocco and David Fulghum , "USAF Developed a 4,700-lb. Bomb in Crash Program to Attack Iraqi Military Leaders in Hardened Bunkers," Aviation Week eS Space Technology, May 6, 1991: 85.

John Morrocco , "Looming Budget Cuts Threaten Future of Key HighTech Weapons," Aviation Week & Space Technology, April 22, 1991: 66-67. Eric Schmitt, "Why Iraqi Battle Threat Fizzled: Allied Strengths and Enemy Weaknesses," New York Times, March 4,1991: A9. Barbara Starr, "FAEs Used to Clear Mines," Jane's Defense Weekly, February 23, 1991: 247.

Arkin, Durrant, and Cherni , On Impact, Appendix A.

Tony Capaccio , "McPeak: Unclear If Air War has Sapped Iraqi Will," Defense Week, February 4, 1991.

Washington Post , February 2, 1991: A14.

Mark Fineman , "Smoke Blots Out Sun in Bomb-Blasted Basra," Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1991.

Bill Gannon "Pool Report with the Tiger Brigade Outside Kuwait City," Newark Star-Ledger, February 27, 1991.

Rowan Scarborough , "Pool Report Aboard the USS Blue Ridge," Washington Times, February 27, 1991.

Michael Kelly, "Highway to Hell," New Republic, April 1991: 12.

Paul Walker is the director of the Institute for Peace and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His report was given at the New York Commission hearing, May 11, 1991 and at the Boston ommission hearing on June 8, 1991.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Index

WWW URL: http://deoxy.org/wc-myth.htm

Copyright © 1992 by The Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal

[Stormig]

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2002/08/18298.php

 

At the time of this writing, the municipalities of Toribio and Jambalo in Northern Cauca are being bombarded by both FARC and the Colombian government. Northern Cauca is home to one of the most remarkable experiments in resistance to neoliberalism and in the actual construction of alternatives in the hemisphere, not to mention a courageous and unarmed struggle for peace.

 

The current battle begain when the FARC entered the area with the intention of executing the indigenous mayors of these municipalities for 'corruption'. The mayors were elected in a direct-democratic, consultative process developed by the people of Cauca (see "Snapshot of Colombia" for more detail on this process) and the accusation of corruption leveled at them is not warranted. The indigenous organizations of Cauca have asked for international action to protect them from this threat and for all armed actors to leave their territory so they can continue their construction of autonomy.

 

Noam Chomsky visited Cauca several months ago. He gave his assessment of the situation there in an email interview today.

 

1) You visited the indigenous of Cauca recently, and now they are being hit quite hard from all quarters-- the FARC, the paramilitaries, and aerial fumigation from the US. Why is that? Do their achievements qualify as the kind of 'threat of a good example' that has to be destroyed?

 

That's a fair conclusion, I think.

 

I spent a few days in Cauca, but met mostly people from the southern part, campesinos and indigenous mostly, with personal testimonies that are really painful to listen to. Also met activists from many different groups, very impressive people, and was able to spend a few hours talking to the governor, Floro Tunubala, a thoughtful, articulate, proud indigenous man, maybe the first indigenous elected official at that rank in the hemisphere. His election was a shock to the elites that have run the place forever. It's reminiscent of Haiti 10 years ago. His election was a reflection of the success of local organizing among the popular sectors, the "Bloque Social" -- the Social Bloc. In answer to your question, I'll just quote what he said in a published interview. He warned a year ago of the growing presence of paramilitaries in the north, another step in extending their control over large parts of Colombia. He attributed their invasion of northern Cauca to the successes of the Social Bloc, which has "won economic and territorial rights, and social rights in the areas of education and health." That "attracted the attention of the paramilitaries," who do not tolerate such deviation from the traditional structures of power they protect. I think that's the basic answer to the question you raise.

 

But it's more complex. In recent years, he said, the guerrillas have "sought to manipulate the social movements," and it is clear from personal testimonies that they -- particularly FARC -- are feared by campesinos, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous people, and that FARC has lost its former social program as the conflict has become increasingly militarized. The Social Bloc is seeking to separate the region from the conflict, to free themselves from the military-paramilitary and from the guerrillas, and to pursue a path towards independent social and economic development under their own control. None of the militarized forces accept that. There are similar efforts in many parts of Colombia, including quite sizeable networks of communities, in one case an area about the size of El Salvador. Perhaps the oldest is San Jose de Apartado, which declared itself a zone of peace over 30 years ago, and has suffered bitterly from the refusal of the armed groups to accept that. They had been under siege by paramilitaries for weeks when I was there, food and other supplies were running short, and the situation may be desperate unless they receive some outside support beyond the human rights and solidarity groups that are attempting to do something and arouse international attention.

 

Those I met described the US chemical warfare campaign ("fumigation") as a particularly vicious atrocity. Peasant testimonies were graphic and heart-rending, and even a casual visit suffices to see some of the effects directly. Most of the those met were coffee farmers. They had managed to overcome the sharp decline in coffee prices (which devastates the farmers; the multinational distributors are doing fine) by developing a niche market for export, mostly to Europe: very high quality organically-grown coffee. That's destroyed by the fumigation, forever. Not only are all the coffee bushes killed, but the land is poisoned, and will not be certified again, even if they can somehow survive the years it takes to re-establish what has been destroyed, along with all other crops: yucca, asparagus, much else. Their farms and lives are ruined, their animals killed, their children often sick and dying. They are left destitute, with little hope. At least in the areas from which I heard personal testimonies, the crop destruction had little if anything to do with guerrilla presence or drug production -- grotesque as even those projects are. There hadn't even been an attempt to investigate on the ground the areas subjected to ruinous crop destruction. These programs appear to be another stage in the historical process of driving poor peasants from the land, opening up rich resources to exploitation by foreign capital, and probably laying the basis for agroexport controlled by multinationals using laboratory-produced seed, once the biodiversity is destroyed, along with the rich but fragile tradition of peasant agriculture. Along with the governors of the neighboring provinces, Tunubala has called for an end to fumigation, with manual eradication along with programs of social and economic development. But that doesn't fit the aims of the Colombian elite and Washington's "Plan Colombia," so it receives virtually no support.

 

There's background that should be kept in mind. In 2001, Cauca had the worst record for human rights violations in Colombia, which is quite an achievement. Next was Choco, mostly Afro-Colombian, the scene of a terrible massacre when a FARC bomb hit a church where people were taking refuge from fighting that broke out after paramilitaries invaded the area. These are the latest stages in an ugly history. From far back, the violence in Cauca, as elsewhere, is part of the expulsion of peasants from the best lands, escalating under the neoliberal programs but with deep historical roots, leading to a social order with extreme concentration of wealth, linked to foreign capital, and awful misery in a country with rich and varied resources. That's been true of Cauca for a long time. The Social Bloc has been reversing the process, and that is not welcome to concentrated power, domestic or international.

 

2) How credible is the Colombian government's claim that they are trapped between a guerrilla insurgency and a paramilitary army, neither of which they can control, both of which they need military help from the US to bring to heel?

 

Both international and Colombian human rights organizations now attribute the large majority of atrocities to paramilitaries, who are so closely, and so visibly, allied to the military that Human Rights Watch calls them the "Sixth Division," alongside the five official divisions. There's overwhelming evidence of intimate connections and cooperation, both from ample personal testimony and published reports of the major human rights organizations, which are detailed and informative. The proportion of atrocities attributed to the military/paras has been steady over the years: about 75%-80%, with the military component declining as atrocities are "farmed out" to the paras in ways that are familiar elsewhere. That's useful for "plausible deniability" -- plausible enough for State Department pretenses when they go through the annual charade of certifying "improvements" in the military's human rights record, most recently a disgraceful performance by Colin Powell a few months ago after he had been presented with extensive documentation from the main human rights organizations showing in careful detail that accreditation would be a farce. The transfer of atrocities to paramilitaries is a form of privatization that fits well into the "neoliberal model," of which Colombia is a stellar example generally. US participation in state terror is proceeding along a similar track. Increasingly, it is privatized. The tasks are handed over to companies like MPRI and Dyncorps that hire US military personnel and operate on government contracts, but aren't subject to the congressional surveillance that somewhat constrains direct participation in state terror.

 

3) Can concerned North Americans actually help protect the work of people in Cauca? How?

 

It's no exaggeration to say that their fate lies in our hands. The Social Bloc in Cauca is one of quite a few popular formations throughout the country. They cannot alone withstand the overwhelming resources of violence in the hands of the Colombian elite linked to US power. As for the guerrillas, power centers may not defeat them in conventional military terms, but have already succeeded to a large extent in one primary goal: driving the guerrillas to become a military force without meaningful social programs, hence just another source of terror for the population that seeks to find a way to escape the criminal socioeconomic system and pervasive violence that is closely connected to it. That's again a classic device of state-directed international terrorism.

 

The courage and dedication of the Social Bloc, and the activists who work with them, are extraordinary and inspiring. But the heavy hand of oppression has to be removed right here. It is also right here that they should be receiving direct support for the very impressive and promising work that they are doing. To some extent that is happening, with sister city projects and other forms of solidarity. How these processes develop will determine the fate of millions of Colombians. We're not observing from Mars, and even a tiny fraction of what they do every day, under incomparably harsher conditions, can make an enormous difference.

[Stormig]

Confronting the Empire

by Noam Chomsky

Dissident Voice

February 4, 2003

 

The following speech by Noam Chomsky was delivered to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil on January 27, 2003

 

We are meeting at a moment of world history that is in many ways unique – a moment that is ominous, but also full of hope.

 

The most powerful state in history has proclaimed, loud and clear, that it intends to rule the world by force, the dimension in which it reigns supreme. Apart from the conventional bow to noble intentions that is the standard (hence meaningless) accompaniment of coercion, its leaders are committed to pursuit of their “imperial ambition,” as it is frankly described in the leading journal of the foreign policy establishment – critically, an important matter. They have also declared that they will tolerate no competitors, now or in the future. They evidently believe that the means of violence in their hands are so extraordinary that they can dismiss with contempt anyone who stands in their way. There is good reason to believe that the war with Iraq is intended, in part, to teach the world some lessons about what lies ahead when the empire decides to strike a blow -- though “war” is hardly the proper term, given the array of forces.

 

The doctrine is not entirely new, nor unique to the US, but it has never before been proclaimed with such brazen arrogance – at least not by anyone we would care to remember.

 

I am not going to try to answer the question posed for this meeting: How to confront the empire. The reason is that most of you know the answers as well or better than I do, through your own lives and work. The way to “confront the empire” is to create a different world, one that is not based on violence and subjugation, hate and fear. That is why we are here, and the WSF offers hope that these are not idle dreams.

 

Yesterday I had the rare privilege of seeing some very inspiring work to achieve these goals, at the international gathering of the Via Campesina at a community of the MST, which I think is the most important and exciting popular movement in the world. With constructive local actions such as those of the MST, and international organization of the kind illustrated by the Via Campesina and the WSF, with sympathy and solidarity and mutual aid, there is real hope for a decent future.

 

I have also had some other recent experiences that give a vivid picture of what the world may be like if imperial violence is not limited and dismantled. Last month I was in southeastern Turkey, the scene of some of the worst atrocities of the grisly 1990s, still continuing: just a few hours ago we were informed of renewed atrocities by the army near Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of the Kurdish regions. Through the 1990s, millions of people were driven out of the devastated countryside, with tens of thousands killed and every imaginable form of barbaric torture. They try to survive in caves outside the walls of Diyarbakir, in condemned buildings in miserable slums in Istanbul, or wherever they can find refuge, barred from returning to their villages despite new legislation that theoretically permits return. 80% of the weapons came from the US. In the year 1997 alone, Clinton sent more arms to Turkey than in the entire Cold War period combined up to the onset of the state terror campaign – called “counterterror” by the perpetrators and their supporters, another convention. Turkey became the leading recipient of US arms as atrocities peaked (apart from Israel-Egypt, a separate category).

 

In 1999, Turkey relinquished this position to Colombia. The reason is that in Turkey, US-backed state terror had largely succeeded, while in Colombia it had not. Colombia had the worst human rights record in the Western hemisphere in the 1990s and was by far the leading recipient of US arms and military training, and now leads the world. It also leads the world by other measures, for example, murder of labor activists: more than half of those killed worldwide in the last decade were in Colombia. Close to ½ million people were driven from their land last year, a new record. The displaced population is now estimated at 2.7 million. Political killings have risen to 20 a day; 5 years ago it was half that.

 

I visited Cauca in southern Colombia, which had the worst human rights record in the country in 2001, quite an achievement. There I listened to hours of testimony by peasants who were driven from their lands by chemical warfare – called “fumigation” under the pretext of a US-run “drug war” that few take seriously and that would be obscene if that were the intent. Their lives and lands are destroyed, children are dying, they suffer from sickness and wounds. Peasant agriculture is based on a rich tradition of knowledge and experience gained over many centuries, in much of the world passed on from mother to daughter. Though a remarkable human achievement, it is very fragile, and can be destroyed forever in a single generation. Also being destroyed is some of the richest biodiversity in the world, similar to neighboring regions of Brazil. Campesinos, indigenous people, Afro-Colombians can join the millions in rotting slums and camps. With the people gone, multinationals can come in to strip the mountains for coal and to extract oil and other resources, and to convert what is left of the land to monocrop agroexport using laboratory-produced seeds in an environment shorn of its treasures and variety.

 

The scenes in Cauca and Southeastern Turkey are very different from the celebrations of the Via Campesina gathering at the MST community. But Turkey and Colombia are inspiring and hopeful in different ways, because of the courage and dedication of people struggling for justice and freedom, confronting the empire where it is killing and destroying.

 

These are some of the signs of the future if “imperial ambition” proceeds on its normal course, now to be accelerated by the grand strategy of global rule by force. None of this is inevitable, and among the good models for ending these crimes are the ones I mentioned: the MST, the Via Campesina, and the WSF.

 

At the WSF, the range of issues and problems under intense discussion is very broad, remarkably so, but I think we can identify two main themes. One is global justice and Life after Capitalism – or to put it more simply, life, because it is not so clear that the human species can survive very long under existing state capitalist institutions. The second theme is related: war and peace, and more specifically, the war in Iraq that Washington and London are desperately seeking to carry out, virtually alone.

 

Let’s start with some good news about these basic themes. As you know, there is also a conference of the World Economic Forum going on right now, in Davos. Here in Porto Alegre, the mood is hopeful, vigorous, exciting. In Davos, the New York Times tells us, “the mood has darkened.” For the “movers and shakers,” it is not “global party time” any more. In fact, the founder of the Forum has conceded defeat: “The power of corporations has completely disappeared,” he said. So we have won. There is nothing left for us to do but pick up the pieces -- not only to talk about a vision of the future that is just and humane, but to move on to create it.

 

Of course, we should not let the praise go to our heads. There are still a few difficulties ahead.

 

The main theme of the WEF is “Building Trust.” There is a reason for that. The “masters of the universe,” as they liked to call themselves in more exuberant days, know that they are in serious trouble. They recently released a poll showing that trust in leaders has severely declined. Only the leaders of NGOs had the trust of a clear majority, followed by UN and spiritual/religious leaders, then leaders of Western Europe and economic managers, below them corporate executives, and well below them, at the bottom, leaders of the US, with about 25% trust. That may well mean virtually no trust: when people are asked whether they trust leaders with power, they usually say “Yes,” out of habit.

 

It gets worse. A few days ago a poll in Canada found that over 1/3 of the population regard the US as the greatest threat to world peace. The US ranks more than twice as high as Iraq or North Korea, and far higher than al-Qaeda as well. A poll without careful controls, by Time magazine, found that over 80% of respondents in Europe regarded the US as the greatest threat to world peace, compared with less than 10% for Iraq or North Korea. Even if these numbers are wrong by some substantial factor, they are dramatic.

 

Without going on, the corporate leaders who paid $30,000 to attend the somber meetings in Davos have good reasons to take as their theme: “Building Trust.”

 

The coming war with Iraq is undoubtedly contributing to these interesting and important developments. Opposition to the war is completely without historical precedent. In Europe it is so high that Secretary of “Defense” Donald Rumsfeld dismissed Germany and France as just the “old Europe,” plainly of no concern because of their disobedience. The “vast numbers of other countries in Europe [are] with the United States,” he assured foreign journalists. These vast numbers are the “new Europe,” symbolized by Italy’s Berlusconi, soon to visit the White House, praying that he will be invited to be the third of the “three B’s”: Bush-Blair-Berlusconi – assuming that he can stay out of jail. Italy is on board, the White House tells us. It is apparently not a problem that over 80% of the public is opposed to the war, according to recent polls. That just shows that the people of Italy also belong to the “old Europe,” and can be sent to the ashcan of history along with France and Germany, and others who do not know their place.

 

Spain is hailed as another prominent member of the new Europe -- with 75% totally opposed to the war, according to an international Gallup poll. According to the leading foreign policy analyst of Newsweek, pretty much the same is true of the most hopeful part of the new Europe, the former Communist countries that are counted on (quite openly) to serve US interests and undermine Europe’s despised social market and welfare states. He reports that in Czechoslovakia, 2/3 of the population oppose participation in a war, while in Poland only ¼ would support a war even if the UN inspectors “prove that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.” The Polish press reports 37% approval in this case, still extremely low, at the heart of the “new Europe.”

 

New Europe soon identified itself in an open letter in the Wall Street Journal: along with Italy, Spain, Poland and Czechoslovakia – the leaders, that is, not the people – it includes Denmark (with popular opinion on the war about the same as Germany, therefore “old Europe”), Portugal (53% opposed to war under any circumstances, 96% opposed to war by the US and its allies unilaterally), Britain (40% opposed to war under any circumstances, 90% opposed to war by the US and its allies unilaterally), and Hungary (no figures available).

 

In brief, the exciting “new Europe” consists of some leaders who are willing to defy their populations.

 

Old Europe reacted with some annoyance to Rumsfeld’s declaration that they are “problem” countries, not modern states. Their reaction was explained by thoughtful US commentators. Keeping just to the national press, we learn that “world-weary European allies” do not appreciate the “moral rectitude” of the President. The evidence for his “moral rectitude” is that “his advisors say the evangelical zeal” comes directly from the simple man who is dedicated to driving evil from the world. Since that is surely the most reliable and objective evidence that can be imagined, it would be improper to express slight skepticism, let alone to react as we would to similar performances by others. The cynical Europeans, we are told, misinterpret Bush’s purity of soul as “moral naiveté” – without a thought that the administration’s PR specialists might have a hand in creating imagery that will sell. We are informed further that there is a great divide between world-weary Europe and the “idealistic New World bent on ending inhumanity." That this is the driving purpose of the idealistic New World we also know for certain, because so our leaders proclaim. What more in the way of proof could one seek?

 

The rare mention of public opinion in the new Europe treats it as a problem of marketing; the product being sold is necessarily right and honorable, given its source. The willingness of the leaders of the new Europe to prefer Washington to their own populations “threatens to isolate the Germans and French,” who are exhibiting retrograde democratic tendencies, and shows that Germany and France cannot “say that they are speaking for Europe.” They are merely speaking for the people of old and new Europe, who – the same commentators acknowledge -- express “strong opposition” to the policies of the new Europe.

 

The official pronouncements and the reaction to them are illuminating. They demonstrate with some clarity the contempt for democracy that is rather typical, historically, among those who feel that they rule the world by right.

 

There are many other illustrations. When German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder dared to take the position of the overwhelming majority of voters in the last election, that was described as a shocking failure of leadership, a serious problem that Germany must overcome if it wants to be accepted in the civilized world. The problem lies with Germany, not elites of the Anglo-American democracies. Germany’s problem is that “the government lives in fear of the voters, and that is causing it to make mistake after mistake” – the spokesperson for the right-wing Christian Social Union party, who understands the real nature of democracy.

 

The case of Turkey is even more revealing. As throughout the region, Turks are very strongly opposed to the war – about 90% according to the most recent polls. And so far the government has irresponsibly paid some attention to the people who elected it. It has not bowed completely to the intense pressure and threats that Washington is exerting to compel it to heed the master’s voice. This reluctance of the elected government to follow orders from on high proves that its leaders are not true democrats. For those who may be too dull to comprehend these subtleties, they are explained by former Ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz, now a distinguished senior statesman and commentator. Ten years ago, he explained, Turkey was governed by a real democrat, Turgut Ozal, who “overrode his countrymen’s pronounced preference to stay out of the Gulf war.” But democracy has declined in Turkey. The current leadership “is following the people,” revealing its lack of “democratic credentials.” “Regrettably,” he says, “for the US there is no Ozal around.” So it will be necessary to bring authentic democracy to Turkey by economic strangulation and other coercive means – regrettably, but that is demanded by what the elite press calls our “yearning for democracy.”

 

Brazil is witnessing another exercise of the real attitudes towards democracy among the masters of the universe. In the most free election in the hemisphere, a large majority voted for policies that are strongly opposed by international finance and investors, by the IMF and the US Treasury Department. In earlier years, that would have been the signal for a military coup installing a murderous National Security State, as in Brazil 40 years ago. Now that will not work; the populations of South and North have changed, and will not easily tolerate it. Furthermore, there are now simpler ways to undermine the will of the people, thanks to the neoliberal instruments that have been put in place: economic controls, capital flight, attacks on currency, privatization, and other devices that are well-designed to reduce the arena of popular choice. These, it is hoped, may compel the government to follow the dictates of what international economists call the “virtual parliament” of investors and lenders, who make the real decisions, coercing the population, an irrelevant nuisance according to the reigning principles of democracy.

 

When I was just about to leave for the airport I received another of the many inquiries from the press about why there is so little anti-war protest in the US. The impressions are instructive. In fact, protest in the US, as elsewhere, is also at levels that have no historical precedent. Not just demonstrations, teach-ins, and other public events. To take an example of a different kind, last week the Chicago City Council passed an anti-war resolution, 46-1, joining 50 other cities and towns. The same is true in other sectors, including those that are the most highly trusted, as the WEF learned to its dismay: NGOs and religious organizations and figures, with few exceptions. Several months ago the biggest university in the country passed a strong antiwar resolution – the University of Texas, right next door to George W’s ranch. And it’s easy to continue.

 

So why the widespread judgment among elites that the tradition of dissent and protest has died? Invariably, comparisons are drawn to Vietnam, a very revealing fact. We have just passed the 40th anniversary of the public announcement that the Kennedy administration was sending the US Air Force to bomb South Vietnam, also initiating plans to drive millions of people into concentration camps and chemical warfare programs to destroy food crops. There was no pretext of defense, except in the sense of official rhetoric: defense against the "internal aggression" of South Vietnamese in South Vietnam and their "assault from the inside" (President Kennedy and his UN Ambassador, Adlai Stevenson). Protest was non-existent. It did not reach any meaningful level for several years. By that time hundreds of thousands of US troops had joined the occupying army, densely-populated areas were being demolished by saturation bombing, and the aggression had spread to the rest of Indochina. Protest among elite intellectuals kept primarily to “pragmatic grounds”: the war was a “mistake” that was becoming too costly to the US. In sharp contrast, by the late 1960s the great majority of the public had come to oppose the war as “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” not “a mistake,” figures that hold steady until the present.

 

Today, in dramatic contrast to the 1960s, there is large-scale, committed, and principled popular protest all over the US before the war has been officially launched. That reflects a steady increase over these years in unwillingness to tolerate aggression and atrocities, one of many such changes, worldwide in fact. That’s part of the background for what is taking place in Porto Alegre, and part of the reason for the gloom in Davos.

 

The political leadership is well aware of these developments. When a new administration comes into office, it receives a review of the world situation compiled by the intelligence agencies. It is secret; we learn about these things many years later. But when Bush #1 came into office in 1989, a small part of the review was leaked, a passage concerned with “cases where the U.S. confronts much weaker enemies” – the only kind one would think of fighting. Intelligence analysts advised that in conflicts with “much weaker enemies” the US must win “decisively and rapidly,” or popular support will collapse. It’s not like the 1960s, when the population would tolerate a murderous and destructive war for years without visible protest. That’s no longer true. The activist movements of the past 40 years have had a significant civilizing effect. By now, the only way to attack a much weaker enemy is to construct a huge propaganda offensive depicting it as about to commit genocide, maybe even a threat to our very survival, then to celebrate a miraculous victory over the awesome foe, while chanting praises to the courageous leaders who came to the rescue just in time.

 

That is the current scenario in Iraq.

 

Polls reveal more support for the planned war in the US than elsewhere, but the numbers are misleading. It is important to bear in mind that the US is the only country outside Iraq where Saddam Hussein is not only reviled but also feared. There is a flood of lurid propaganda warning that if we do not stop him today he will destroy us tomorrow. The next evidence of his weapons of mass destruction may be a “mushroom cloud,” so National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice announced in September – presumably over New York. No one in Iraq’s neighborhood seems overly concerned, much as they may hate the murderous tyrant. Perhaps that is because they know that as a result of the sanctions “the vast majority of the country’s population has been on a semi-starvation diet for years,” as the World Health Organization reported, and that Iraq is one of the weakest states in the region: its economy and military expenditures are a fraction of Kuwait’s, which has 10% of Iraq’s population, and much farther below others nearby.

 

But the US is different. When Congress granted the President authority to go to war last October, it was “to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” We must tremble in fear before this awesome threat, while countries nearby seek to reintegrate Iraq into the region, including those who were attacked by Saddam when he was a friend and ally of those who now run the show in Washington -- and who were happily providing him with aid including the means to develop WMD, at a time when he was far more dangerous than today and had already committed by far his worst crimes.

 

A serious measure of support for war in the US would have to extricate this “fear factor,” which is genuine, and unique to the US. The residue would give a more realistic measure of support for the resort to violence, and would show, I think, that it is about the same as elsewhere.

 

It is also rather striking that strong opposition to the coming war extends right through the establishment. The current issues of the two major foreign policy journals feature articles opposing the war by leading figures of foreign policy elites. The very respectable American Academy of Arts and Sciences released a long monograph on the war, trying to give the most sympathetic possible account of the Bush administration position, then dismantling it point by point. One respected analyst they quote is a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who warns that the US is becoming “a menace to itself and to mankind” under its current leadership. There are no precedents for anything like this.

 

We should recognize that these criticisms tend to be narrow. They are concerned with threats to the US and its allies. They do not take into account the likely effects on Iraqis: the warnings of the UN and aid agencies that millions may be at very serious risk in a country that is at the edge of survival after a terrible war that targeted its basic infrastructure – which amounts to biological warfare -- and a decade of devastating sanctions that have killed hundreds of thousands of people and blocked any reconstruction, while strengthening the brutal tyrant who rules Iraq. It is also interesting that the criticisms do not even take the trouble to mention the lofty rhetoric about democratization and liberation. Presumably, the critics take for granted that the rhetoric is intended for intellectuals and editorial writers – who are not supposed to notice that the drive to war is accompanied by a dramatic demonstration of hatred of democracy, just as they are supposed to forget the record of those who are leading the campaign. That is also why none of this is ever brought up at the UN.

 

Nevertheless, the threats that do concern establishment critics are very real. They were surely not surprised when the CIA informed Congress last October that they know of no link between Iraq and al Qaeda-style terrorism, but that an attack on Iraq would probably increase the terrorist threat to the West, in many ways. It is likely to inspire a new generation of terrorists bent on revenge, and it might induce Iraq to carry out terrorist actions that are already in place, a possibility taken very seriously by US analysts. A high-level task force of the Council on Foreign Relations just released a report warning of likely terrorist attacks that could be far worse than 9-11, including possible use of WMD right within the US, dangers that become “more urgent by the prospect of the US going to war with Iraq.” They provide many illustrations, virtually a cook-book for terrorists. It is not the first; similar ones were published by prominent strategic analysts long before 9-11.

 

It is also understood that an attack on Iraq may lead not just to more terror, but also to proliferation of WMD, for a simple reason: potential targets of the US recognize that there is no other way to deter the most powerful state in history, which is pursuing “America’s Imperial Ambition,” posing serious dangers to the US and the world, the author warns in the main establishment journal, Foreign Affairs. Prominent hawks warn that a war in Iraq might lead to the “greatest proliferation disaster in history.” They know that if Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, the dictatorship keeps them under tight control. They understand further that except as a last resort if attacked, Iraq is highly unlikely to use any WMD it has, thus inviting instant incineration. And it is also highly unlikely to leak them to the Osama bin Ladens of the world, which would be a terrible threat to Saddam Hussein himself, quite apart from the reaction if there is even a hint that this might take place. But under attack, the society would collapse, including the controls over WMD. These would be “privatized,” terrorism experts point out, and offered to the huge “market for unconventional weapons, where they will have no trouble finding buyers.” That really is a “nightmare scenario,” just as the hawks warn.

 

Even before the Bush administration began beating the war drums about Iraq, there were plenty of warnings that its adventurism was going to lead to proliferation of WMD, as well as terror, simply as a deterrent. Right now, Washington is teaching the world a very ugly and dangerous lesson: if you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible military threat, including WMD. Otherwise we will demolish you in pursuit of the new “grand strategy” that has caused shudders not only among the usual victims, and in “old Europe,” but right at the heart of the US foreign policy elite, who recognize that “commitment of the US to active military confrontation for decisive national advantage will leave the world more dangerous and the US less secure” – again, quoting respected figures in elite journals.

 

Evidently, the likely increase of terror and proliferation of WMD is of limited concern to planners in Washington, in the context of their real priorities. Without too much difficulty, one can think of reasons why this might be the case, not very attractive ones.

 

The nature of the threats was dramatically underscored last October, at the summit meeting in Havana on the 40th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, attended by key participants from Russia, the US, and Cuba. Planners knew at the time that they had the fate of the world in their hands, but new information released at the Havana summit was truly startling. We learned that the world was saved from nuclear devastation by one Russian submarine captain, Vasily Arkhipov, who blocked an order to fire nuclear missiles when Russian submarines were attacked by US destroyers near Kennedy’s “quarantine” line. Had Arkhipov agreed, the nuclear launch would have almost certainly set off an interchange that could have “destroyed the Northern hemisphere,” as Eisenhower had warned.

 

The dreadful revelation is particularly timely because of the circumstances: the roots of the missile crisis lay in international terrorism aimed at “regime change,” two concepts very much in the news today. US terrorist attacks against Cuba began shortly after Castro took power, and were sharply escalated by Kennedy, leading to a very plausible fear of invasion, as Robert McNamara has acknowledged. Kennedy resumed the terrorist war immediately after the crisis was over; terrorist actions against Cuba, based in the US, peaked in the late 1970s continued 20 years later. Putting aside any judgment about the behavior of the participants in the missile crisis, the new discoveries demonstrate with brilliant clarity the terrible and unanticipated risks of attacks on a “much weaker enemy” aimed at “regime change” – risks to survival, it is no exaggeration to say.

 

As for the fate of the people of Iraq, no one can predict with any confidence: not the CIA, not Donald Rumsfeld, not those who claim to be experts on Iraq, no one. Possibilities range from the frightening prospects for which the aid agencies are preparing, to the delightful tales spun by administration PR specialists and their chorus. One never knows. These are among the many reasons why decent human beings do not contemplate the threat or use of violence, whether in personal life or international affairs, unless reasons have been offered that have overwhelming force. And surely nothing remotely like that has been offered in the present case, which is why opposition to the plans of Washington and London has reached such scale and intensity.

 

The timing of the Washington-London propaganda campaign was so transparent that it too has been a topic of discussion, and sometimes ridicule, right in the mainstream. The campaign began in September of last year. Before that, Saddam was a terrible guy, but not an imminent threat to the survival of the US. The “mushroom cloud” was announced in early September. Since then, fear that Saddam will attack the US has been running at about 60-70% of the population. “The desperate urgency about moving rapidly against Iraq that Bush expressed in October was not evident from anything he said two months before,” the chief political analyst of United Press International observed, drawing the obvious conclusion: September marked the opening of the political campaign for the mid-term congressional elections. The administration, he continued, was “campaigning to sustain and increase its power on a policy of international adventurism, new radical preemptive military strategies, and a hunger for a politically convenient and perfectly timed confrontation with Iraq.” As long as domestic issues were in the forefront, Bush and his cohorts were losing ground – naturally enough, because they are conducting a serious assault against the general population. “But lo and behold! Though there have been no new terrorist attacks or credible indications of imminent threat, since the beginning of September, national security issues have been in the driver’s seat,” not just al Qaeda but an awesome and threatening military power, Iraq.

 

The same observations have been made by many others. That’s convenient for people like us: we can just quote the mainstream instead of giving controversial analyses. The Carnegie Endowment Senior Associate I quoted before writes that Bush and Co. are following “the classic modern strategy of an endangered right-wing oligarchy, which is to divert mass discontent into nationalism," inspired by fear of enemies about to destroy us. That strategy is of critical importance if the "radical nationalists" setting policy in Washington hope to advance their announced plan for "unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority," while conducting a major assault against the interests of the large majority of the domestic population.

 

For the elections, the strategy worked, barely. The Fall 2002 election was won by a small number of votes, but enough to hand Congress to the executive. Analyses of the election found that voters maintained their opposition to the administration on social and economic issues, but suppressed these issues in favor of security concerns, which typically lead to support for the figure in authority – the brave cowboy who must ride to our rescue, just in time.

 

As history shows, it is all too easy for unscrupulous leaders to terrify the public, with consequences that have not been attractive. That is the natural method to divert attention from the fact that tax cuts for the rich and other devices are undermining prospects for a decent life for large majority of the population, and for future generations. When the presidential campaign begins, Republican strategists surely do not want people to be asking questions about their pensions, jobs, health care, and other such matters. Rather, they should be praising their heroic leader for rescuing them from imminent destruction by a foe of colossal power, and marching on to confront the next powerful force bent on our destruction. It could be Iran, or conflicts in the Andean countries: there are lots of good choices, as long as the targets are defenseless.

 

These ideas are second nature to the current political leaders, most of them recycled from the Reagan administration. They are replaying a familiar script: drive the country into deficit so as to be able to undermine social programs, declare a “war on terror” (as they did in 1981) and conjure up one devil after another to frighten the population into obedience. In the ‘80s it was Libyan hit-men prowling the streets of Washington to assassinate our leader, then the Nicaraguan army only two-days march from Texas, a threat to survival so severe that Reagan had to declare a national emergency. Or an airfield in Grenada that the Russians were going to use to bomb us (if they could find it on a map); Arab terrorists seeking to kill Americans everywhere while Qaddafi plans to “expel America from the world,” so Reagan wailed. Or Hispanic narcotraffickers seeking to destroy the youth; and on, and on.

 

Meanwhile the political leadership were able to carry out domestic policies that had generally poor economic outcomes but did create wealth for narrow sectors while harming a considerable majority of the population – the script that is being followed once again. And since the public knows it, they have to resort to “the classic modern strategy of an endangered right wing oligarchy” if they hope to carry out the domestic and international programs to which they are committed, perhaps even to institutionalize them so they will be hard to dismantle when they lose control.

 

Of course, there is much more to it than domestic considerations – which are of no slight importance in themselves. The September 11 terrorist atrocities provided an opportunity and pretext to implement long-standing plans to take control of Iraq's immense oil wealth, a central component of the Persian Gulf resources that the State Department, in 1945, described as "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history." US intelligence predicts that these will be of even greater significance in the years ahead. The issue has never been access. The same intelligence analyses anticipate that the US will rely on more secure supplies in the Western hemisphere and West Africa. The same was true after World War II. What matters is control over the "material prize," which funnels enormous wealth to the US in many ways, Britain as well, and the "stupendous source of strategic power," which translates into a lever of “unilateral world domination” -- the goal that is now openly proclaimed, and is frightening much of the world, including “old Europe” and the conservative establishment in the US.

 

I think a realistic look at the world gives a mixed picture. There are many reasons to be encouraged, but there will be a long hard road ahead.

 

Noam Chomsky is an internationally renowned Professor of Linguistics at MIT, and America’s leading dissident intellectual. He is the author of many books including: 9-11 (Seven Stories Press, 2001), A New Generation Draws the Line (Verso, 2000), The New Military Humanism (Common Courage, 1999), and The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians (South End Press, new edition 1999). Read more of Noam Chomsky’s work at the Monkeyfist Collective website: http://monkeyfist.com/ChomskyArchive

 

Source: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Cho...ntingEmpire.htm

[Stormig]

http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/200...sp?from=pubdate

 

The Push for War

 

By Anatol Lieven

 

Originally published in the London Review of Books (Vol. 24 No. 19) on 3 October 2002

 

Anatol Lieven considers what the US Administration hopes to gain

 

The most surprising thing about the Bush Administration's plan to invade Iraq is not that it is destructive of international order; or wicked, when we consider the role the US (and Britain) have played, and continue to play, in the Middle East; or opposed by the great majority of the international community; or seemingly contrary to some of the basic needs of the war against terrorism. It is all of these things, but they are of no great concern to the hardline nationalists in the Administration. This group has suffered at least a temporary check as a result of the British insistence on UN involvement, and Saddam Hussein's agreement to weapons inspections. They are, however, still determined on war - and their power within the Administration and in the US security policy world means that they are very likely to get their way. Even the Washington Post has joined the radical rightist media in supporting war.

 

The most surprising thing about the push for war is that it is so profoundly reckless. If I had to put money on it, I'd say that the odds on quick success in destroying the Iraqi regime may be as high as 5/1 or more, given US military superiority, the vile nature of Saddam Hussein's rule, the unreliability of Baghdad's missiles, and the deep divisions in the Arab world. But at first sight, the longer-term gains for the US look pretty limited, whereas the consequences of failure would be catastrophic. A general Middle Eastern conflagration and the collapse of more pro-Western Arab states would lose us the war against terrorism, doom untold thousands of Western civilians to death in coming decades, and plunge the world economy into depression.

 

These risks are not only to American (and British) lives and interests, but to the political future of the Administration. If the war goes badly wrong, it will be more generally excoriated than any within living memory, and its members will be finished politically - finished for good. If no other fear moved these people, you'd have thought this one would.

 

This war plan is not like the intervention in Vietnam, which at the start was supported by a consensus of both political parties, the Pentagon, the security establishment and the media. It is true that today - for reasons to which I shall return - the Democrats are mostly sitting on the fence; but a large part of the old Republican security establishment has denounced the idea and the Pentagon has made its deep unhappiness very clear.

 

The Administration has therefore been warned of the dangers. And while a new attack by al-Qaida during the war would help consolidate anti-Muslim American nationalism, the Administration would also be widely accused of having neglected the hunt for the perpetrators of 11 September in order to pursue an irrelevant vendetta. As far as the Israeli lobby is concerned, a disaster in the Middle East might be the one thing that would at last bring a discussion of its calamitous role into the open in the US.

 

With the exception of Donald Rumsfeld, who conveniently did his military service in the gap between the Korean and Vietnam Wars, neither Bush nor any of the other prime movers of this war served in the military. Of course, General Colin Powell served in Vietnam, but he is well known to be extremely dubious about attacking Iraq. All the others did everything possible to avoid service. If the war goes wrong, the 'chicken hawk' charge will be used against them with devastating political effect.

 

Vietnam veterans, both Democrat and Republican, have already started to raise this issue, stirred up in part by the insulting language used by Richard Perle and his school about the caution of the professional military. As a recent letter to the Washington Post put it, 'the men described as chicken hawks avoided military service during the Vietnam War while supporting that war politically. They are not accused of lacking experience and judgment compared to military men. They are accused of hypocrisy and cowardice.' Given the political risks of failure - to themselves, above all - why are they doing this? And, more broadly, what has bred this reckless spirit?

 

To understand the Administration's motivation, it is necessary to appreciate the breathtaking scope of the domestic and global ambitions which the dominant neo-conservative nationalists hope to further by means of war, and which go way beyond their publicly stated goals. There are of course different groups within this camp: some are more favourable to Israel, others less hostile to China; not all would support the most radical aspects of the programme. However, the basic and generally agreed plan is unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority, and this has been consistently advocated and worked on by the group of intellectuals close to Dick Cheney and Richard Perle since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

 

This basic goal is shared by Colin Powell and the rest of the security establishment. It was, after all, Powell who, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared in 1992 that the US requires sufficient power 'to deter any challenger from ever dreaming of challenging us on the world stage'. However, the idea of pre-emptive defence, now official doctrine, takes this a leap further, much further than Powell would wish to go. In principle, it can be used to justify the destruction of any other state if it even seems that that state might in future be able to challenge the US. When these ideas were first aired by Paul Wolfowitz and others after the end of the Cold War, they met with general criticism, even from conservatives. Today, thanks to the ascendancy of the radical nationalists in the Administration and the effect of the 11 September attacks on the American psyche, they have a major influence on US policy.

 

To understand the genesis of this extraordinary ambition, it is also necessary to grasp the moral, cultural and intellectual world of American nationalism in which it has taken shape. This nationalism existed long before last September, but it has been inflamed by those attacks and, equally dangerously, it has become even more entwined with the nationalism of the Israeli Right.

 

To take the geopolitical goals first. As with National Missile Defense, the publicly expressed motive for war with Iraq functions mainly as a tool to gain the necessary public support for an operation the real goals of which are far wider. The indifference of the US public to serious discussion of foreign or security affairs, and the negligence and ideological rigidity of the US media and policy community make searching debate on such issues extremely difficult, and allow such manipulation to succeed.

 

The immediate goal is indeed to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. There is little real fear, however, that Saddam Hussein will give those weapons to terrorists to use against the United States - though a more genuine fear that he might conceivably do so in the case of Israel. Nor is there any serious prospect that he would use them himself in an unprovoked attack on the US or Israel, because immediate annihilation would follow. The banal propaganda portrayal of Saddam as a crazed and suicidal dictator plays well on the American street, but I don't believe that it is a view shared by the Administration. Rather, their intention is partly to retain an absolute certainty of being able to defend the Gulf against an Iraqi attack, but, more important, to retain for the US and Israel a free hand for intervention in the Middle East as a whole.

 

From the point of view of Israel, the Israeli lobby and their representatives in the Administration, the apparent benefits of such a free hand are clear enough. For the group around Cheney, the single most important consideration is guaranteed and unrestricted access to cheap oil, controlled as far as possible at its source. To destroy and occupy the existing Iraqi state and dominate the region militarily would remove even the present limited threat from Opec, greatly reduce the chance of a new oil shock, and eliminate the need to woo and invest in Russia as an alternative source of energy.

 

It would also critically undermine the steps already taken towards the development of alternative sources of energy. So far, these have been pitifully few. All the same, 11 September brought new strength to the security arguments for reducing dependence on imported oil, and as alternative technologies develop, they could become a real threat to the oil lobby - which, like the Israeli lobby, is deeply intertwined with the Bush Administration. War with Iraq can therefore be seen as a satisfactory outcome for both lobbies. Much more important for the future of mankind, it is also part of what is in essence a strategy to use American military force to permit the continued offloading onto the rest of the world of the ecological costs of the existing US economy - without the need for any short-term sacrifices on the part of US capitalism, the US political elite or US voters.

 

The same goes for the war against al-Qaida and its allies: the plan for the destruction of the existing Iraqi regime is related to this struggle, but not as it has been presented publicly. Links between Baghdad and al-Qaida are unproven and inherently improbable: what the Administration hopes is that by crushing another middle-sized state at minimal military cost, all the other states in the Muslim world will be terrified into full co-operation in tracking down and handing over suspected terrorists, and into forsaking the Palestinian cause. Iran for its part can either be frightened into abandoning both its nuclear programme and its support for the Palestinians, or see its nuclear facilities destroyed by bombardment.

 

The idea, in other words, is to scare these states not only into helping with the hunt for al-Qaida, but into capitulating to the US and, more important, Israeli agendas in the Middle East. This was brought out in the notorious paper on Saudi Arabia presented by Laurent Murawiec of the Rand Corporation to Richard Perle's Defense Policy Board. Murawiec advocated sending the Saudis an ultimatum demanding not only that their police force co-operate fully with US authorities, but also the suppression of public criticism of the US and Israel within Saudi Arabia - something that would be impossible for any Arab state. Despite this, the demand for the suppression of anti-Israeli publications, broadcasts and activities has been widely echoed in the US media.

 

'The road to Middle East peace lies through Baghdad' is a line that's peddled by the Bush Administration and the Israeli lobby. It is just possible that some members of the Administration really believe that by destroying Israel's most powerful remaining enemy they will gain such credit with Israelis and the Israeli lobby that they will be able to press compromises on Israel.

 

But this is certainly not what public statements by members of the Administration - let alone those of its Likud allies in Israel - suggest. Rumsfeld recently described the Jewish settlements as legitimate products of Israeli military victory; the Republican Majority Leader in the House, Dick Armey (a sceptic as regards war with Iraq), has advocated the ethnic cleansing ('transfer') of the Palestinians across the Jordan; and in 1996 Richard Perle and Douglas Feith (now a senior official at the Pentagon) advised Binyamin Netanyahu to abandon the Oslo Peace Process and return to military repression of the Palestinians.

 

It's far more probable, therefore, that most members of the Bush and Sharon Administrations hope that the crushing of Iraq will so demoralise the Palestinians, and so reduce wider Arab support for them, that it will be possible to force them to accept a Bantustan settlement bearing no resemblance to independent statehood and bringing with it no possibility of economic growth and prosperity.

 

How intelligent men can believe that this will work, given the history of the past fifty years, is astonishing. After all, the Israelis have defeated Arab states five times with no diminution of Palestinian nationalism or Arab sympathy for it. But the dominant groups in the present Administrations in both Washington and Jerusalem are 'realists' to the core, which, as so often, means that they take an extremely unreal view of the rest of the world, and are insensitive to the point of autism when it comes to the character and motivations of others. They are obsessed by power, by the division of the world into friends and enemies (and often, into their own country and the rest of the world) and by the belief that any demonstration of 'weakness' immediately leads to more radical approaches by the 'enemy'.

 

Sharon and his supporters don't doubt that it was the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon - rather than the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories - which led to the latest Intifada. The 'offensive realists' in Washington are convinced that it was Reagan's harsh stance and acceleration of the arms race against the Soviet Union which brought about that state's collapse. And both are convinced that the continued existence of Saddam Hussein's regime of itself suggests dangerous US weakness and cowardice, thus emboldening enemies of the US and Israel across the Middle East and beyond.

 

From the point of view of the Arab-Israeli conflict, war with Iraq also has some of the character of a Flucht nach vorn - an 'escape forwards' - on the part of the US Administration. On the one hand, it has become clear that the conflict is integrally linked to everything else that happens in the Middle East, and therefore cannot simply be ignored, as the Bush Administration tried to do during its first year in office. On the other hand, even those members of the American political elite who have some understanding of the situation and a concern for justice are terrified of confronting Israel and the Israeli lobby in the ways which would be necessary to bring any chance of peace.

 

When the US demands 'democracy' in the Palestinian territories before it will re-engage in the peace process it is in part, and fairly cynically, trying to get out of this trap. However, when it comes to the new rhetoric of 'democratising' the Arab world as a whole, the agenda is much broader and more worrying; and because the rhetoric is attractive to many liberals we must examine this agenda very carefully.

 

Belief in the spread of democracy through American power isn't usually consciously insincere. On the contrary, it is inseparable from American national messianism and the wider 'American creed'. However, this same messianism has also proved immensely useful in destroying or crippling rivals of the United States, the Soviet Union being the outstanding example.

 

The planned war against Iraq is not after all intended only to remove Saddam Hussein, but to destroy the structure of the Sunni-dominated Arab nationalist Iraqi state as it has existed since that country's inception. The 'democracy' which replaces it will presumably resemble that of Afghanistan - a ramshackle coalition of ethnic groups and warlords, utterly dependent on US military power and utterly subservient to US (and Israeli) wishes.

 

Similarly, if after Saddam's regime is destroyed, Saudi Arabia fails to bow to US wishes and is attacked in its turn, then - to judge by the thoughts circulating in Washington think-tanks - the goal would be not just to remove the Saudi regime and eliminate Wahabism as a state ideology: it would be to destroy and partition the Saudi state. The Gulf oilfields would be put under US military occupation, and the region run by some client emir; Mecca and the Hejaz might well be returned to the Hashemite dynasty of Jordan, its rulers before the conquest by Ibn Saud in 1924; or, to put it differently, the British imperial programme of 1919 would be resurrected (though, if the Hashemites have any sense, they would reject what would without question be a long-term death sentence).

 

Beyond lies China. When the Bush Administration came to power, its major security focus was not the Middle East. There, its initial policy was benign neglect ('benign' at any rate in the case of Israel). The greatest fears of right-wing nationalist gurus such as Robert Kagan concerned the future emergence of China as a superpower rival - fears lent a certain credibility by China's sheer size and the growth of its economy. As declared in the famous strategy document drawn up by Paul Wolfowitz in the last year of the first Bush Administration - and effectively proclaimed official policy by Bush Jr in his West Point speech in June - the guiding purpose of US strategy after the end of the Cold War should be to prevent the emergence of any 'peer competitor'anywhere in the world.

 

What radical US nationalists have in mind is either to 'contain' China by overwhelming military force and the creation of a ring of American allies; or, in the case of the real radicals, to destroy the Chinese Communist state as the Soviet Union was destroyed. As with the Soviet Union, this would presumably involve breaking up China by 'liberating' Tibet and other areas, and under the guise of 'democracy', crippling the central Chinese Administration and its capacity to develop either its economy or its Army.

 

To judge by the right-wing nationalist media in the US, this hostility to China has survived 11 September, although in a mitigated form. If the US can demonstrate overwhelming military superiority in the Middle East, there will certainly be groups in the Republican Party who will be emboldened to push for a much tougher line on China. Above all, of course, they support formal independence for Taiwan.

 

Another US military victory will certainly help to persuade these groups that for the moment the US has nothing to fear from the Chinese Navy or Air Force, and that in the event of a Taiwanese declaration of independence, the island can be defended with relative impunity. Meanwhile, a drastic humiliation of China over Taiwan might well be seen as a key stepping-stone to the overthrow of Communism and the crippling of the Chinese state system.

 

At present these are only long-term ambitions - or dreams. They are certainly not shared even by a majority of the Administration, and are unlikely to be implemented in any systematic way. On the other hand, it's worth bearing in mind that the dominant groups in this Administration have now openly abandoned the underlying strategy and philosophy of the Clinton Administration, which was to integrate the other major states of the world in a rule-based liberal capitalist order, thereby reducing the threat of rivalry between them.

 

This tendency is not dead. In fact, it is strongly represented by Colin Powell, and by lesser figures such as Richard Haass. But their more powerful nationalist rivals are in the meantime publicly committed to preventing by every possible means the emergence of any serious rival or combination of rivals to the US, anywhere in the world, and to opposing not just any rival would-be world hegemon, but even the ability of other states to play the role of great power within their own regions.

 

Under the guise of National Missile Defense, the Administration - or elements within it - even dreams of extending US military hegemony beyond the bounds of the Earth itself (an ambition clearly indicated in the official paper on Defense Planning Guidance for the 2004-09 Fiscal Years, issued this year by Rumsfeld's office). And while this web of ambition is megalomaniac, it is not simply fantasy. Given America's overwhelming superiority, it might well work for decades until a mixture of terrorism and the unbearable social, political and environmental costs of US economic domination put paid to the present order of the world.

 

As things stand, the American people would never knowingly support such a programme - nor for that matter would the US military. Even after 11 September, this is not by historical standards a militarist country; and whatever the increasingly open imperialism of the nationalist think-tank class, neither the military nor the mass of the population wishes to see itself as imperialist. The fear of casualties and of long-term overseas military entanglements remains intense. And all opinion polls suggest that the majority of the American public, insofar as it considers these issues at all, is far more interested than this Administration in co-operation with allies.

 

Besides, if the US economy continues to stagnate or falls sharply, the Republicans will most probably not even be in power after 2004. As more companies collapse, the Administration's links to corrupt business oligarchies will become more and more controversial. Further economic decline combined with bloated military spending would sooner or later bring on the full consequences of the stripping of the public finances caused by this Administration's military spending and its tax cuts for the rich. At that point, the financial basis of Social Security would come into question, and the Republican vote among the 'middle classes' could shatter.

 

It is only to a minimal degree within the power of any US administration to stimulate economic growth. And even if growth resumes, the transformation of the economy is almost certain to continue. This will mean the incomes of the 'middle classes' (which in American terminology includes the working proletariat) will continue to decline and the gap between them and the plutocracy will continue to increase. High military spending can correct this trend to some extent, but because of the changed nature of weaponry, to a much lesser extent than was the case in the 19th and most of the 20th centuries. All other things being equal, this should result in a considerable shift of the electorate to the left.

 

But all other things are not equal. Two strategies in particular would give the Republicans the chance not only of winning in 2004, but of repeating Roosevelt's success for the Democrats in the 1930s and becoming the natural party of government for the foreseeable future. The first is the classic modern strategy of an endangered right-wing oligarchy, which is to divert mass discontent into nationalism. The second, which is specifically American, is to take the Jewish vote away from its traditional home in the Democratic Party, by demonstrating categorical Republican commitment not just to Israel's defence but to its regional ambitions.

 

This is connected both to the rightward shift in Israel, and to the increasingly close links between the Republicans and Likud, through figures like Perle and Feith. It marks a radical change from the old Republican Party of Eisenhower, Nixon and Bush père, which was far more independent of Israel than the Democrats. Of key importance here has been the growing alliance between the Christian Right - closely linked to the old White South - and the Israeli lobby, or at least its hardline Likud elements.

 

When this alliance began to take shape some years back, it seemed a most improbable combination. After all, the Christian Right and the White South were once havens of anti-semitic conspiracy theories. On the other hand, the Old Testament aspects of fundamentalist Christianity had created certain sympathies for Judaism and Israel from as far back as the US's 17th-century origins.

 

For Christian fundamentalists today the influence of millenarian thought is equally important in shaping support for Israel: the existence of the Israeli state is seen as a necessary prelude to the arrival of the Antichrist, the Apocalypse and the rule of Christ and His Saints. But above all, perhaps, this coming together of the fundamentalist Right and hardline Zionism is natural, because they share many hatreds. The Christian Right has always hated the United Nations, partly on straight nationalist grounds, but also because of bizarre fears of world government by the Antichrist. They have hated Europeans on religious grounds as decadent atheists, on class grounds as associates of the hated 'East Coast elites', and on nationalist grounds as critics of unconstrained American power. Both sides share an instinctive love of military force. Both see themselves as historical victims. This may seem strange in the case of the American Rightists, but it isn't if one considers both the White South's history of defeat, and the Christian Right's sense since the 1960s of defeat and embattlement by the forces of irreligion and cultural change.

 

Finally, and most dangerously, both are conditioned to see themselves as defenders of 'civilisation' against 'savages' - a distinction always perceived on the Christian Right as in the main racially defined. It is no longer possible in America to speak openly in these terms of American blacks, Asians and Latinos - but since 11 September at least, it has been entirely possible to do so about Arabs and Muslims.

 

Even in the 2000 elections, the Republicans were able to take a large part of the white working-class vote away from Gore by appealing to cultural populism - and especially to those opposed to gun control and environmental protection. Despite the real class identity and cultural interests of the Republican elite, they seem able to convince many workers that they are natural allies against the culturally alien and supercilious 'East Coast elites' represented as supporting Gore.

 

These populist values are closely linked to the traditional values of hardline nationalism. They are what the historian Walter Russell Mead and others have called 'Jacksonian' values, after President Andrew Jackson's populist nationalism of the 1830s. As Mead has indicated, 11 September has immensely increased the value of this line to Republicans.

 

If on top of this the Republicans can permanently woo the Jewish vote away from the Democrats - a process which purely class interests would suggest and which has been progressing slowly but steadily since Reagan's day - there is a good chance of their crippling the Democrats for a generation or more. Deprived of much of their financial support and their intellectual backbone, the Democrats could be reduced to a coalition of the declining unionised white working class, blacks and Latinos. And not only do these groups on the whole dislike and distrust each other, but the more the Democrats are seen as minority dominated, the more whites will tend to flee to the Republicans.

 

Already, the anti-semitism of some black leaders in the Democratic Party has contributed to driving many Jews towards the Republicans; and thanks to their allegiance to Israel, the liberal Jewish intelligentsia has moved a long way from their previous internationalism. This shift is highly visible in previously liberal and relatively internationalist journals such as the New Republic and Atlantic Monthly, and maybe even in the New Yorker. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that as a result the internationalist position in the Democratic Party and the US as a whole has been eviscerated.

 

The Democrats are well aware of this threat to their electorate. The Party as a whole has always been strongly committed to Israel. On Iraq and the war against terrorism, its approach seems to be to avoid at all costs seeming 'unpatriotic'. If they can avoid being hammered by the Republicans on the charge of 'weakness' and lack of patriotism, then they can still hope to win the 2004 elections on the basis of economic discontent. The consequence, however, is that the Party has become largely invisible in the debate about Iraq; the Democrats are merely increasing their reputation for passionless feebleness; whereas the Republican nationalists are full of passionate intensity - the passion which in November 2000 helped them pressure the courts over the Florida vote and in effect steal the election.

 

It is this passion which gives the nationalist Right so much of its strength; and in setting out the hopes and plans of the groupings which dominate the Bush Administration, I don't want to give the impression that everything is simply a matter of conscious and cynical manipulation in their own narrow interests. Schematic approaches of this kind have bedevilled all too much of the reporting of nationalism and national conflict. This is odd and depressing, because in recent decades the historiography of pre-1914 German nationalism - to take only one example - has seen an approach based on ideas of class manipulation give way to an infinitely more subtle analysis which emphasises the role of socio-economic and cultural change, unconscious identifications, and interpenetrating political influences from above and below.

 

To understand the radical nationalist Right in the US, and the dominant forces in the Bush Administration, it is necessary first of all to understand their absolute and absolutely sincere identification of themselves with the United States, to the point where the presence of any other group in government is seen as a usurpation, as profoundly and inherently illegitimate and 'un-American'. As far as the hardline elements of the US security establishment and military industrial complex are concerned, they are the product of the Cold War, and were shaped by that struggle and the paranoia and fanaticism it bred. In typical fashion for security elites, they also became conditioned over the decades to see themselves not just as tougher, braver, wiser and more knowledgeable than their ignorant, innocent compatriots, but as the only force standing between their country and destruction.

 

The Cold War led to the creation of governmental, economic and intellectual structures in the US which require for their survival a belief in the existence of powerful national enemies - not just terrorists, but enemy states. As a result, in their analyses and propaganda they instinctively generate the necessary image of an enemy. Once again, however, it would be unwise to see this as a conscious process. For the Cold War also continued, fostered and legitimised a very old discourse of nationalist hatred in the US, ostensibly directed against the Communists and their allies but usually with a very strong colouring of ethnic chauvinism.

 

On the other hand, the roots of the hysteria of the Right go far beyond nationalism and national security. Their pathological hatred for the Clinton Administration cannot adequately be explained in terms of national security or even in rational political or economic terms, for after a very brief period of semi-radicalism (almost entirely limited to the failed attempt at health reform), Clinton devoted himself in a Blairite way to adopting large parts of the Republican socio-economic agenda. Rather, Clinton, his wife, his personal style, his personal background and some of his closest followers were all seen as culturally and therefore nationally alien, mainly because associated with the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s.

 

The modern incarnation of this spirit can indeed be seen above all as a reaction to the double defeat of the Right in the Vietnam War - a defeat which, they may hope, victory in Iraq and a new wave of conservative nationalism at home could cancel out once and for all. In Vietnam, unprecedented military defeat coincided with the appearance of a modern culture which traditionalist Americans found alien, immoral and hateful beyond description. As was widely remarked at the time of Newt Gingrich's attempted 'Republican Revolution' of the mid-1990s, one way of looking at the hardline Republicans - especially from the Religious Right - is to see them as motivated by a classical nationalist desire for a return to a Golden Age, in their case the pre-Vietnam days of the 1950s.

 

None of these fantasies is characteristic of the American people as a whole. But the intense solipsism of that people, its general ignorance of the world beyond America's shores, coupled with the effects of 11 September, have left tremendous political spaces in which groups possessed by the fantasies and ambitions sketched out here can seek their objectives. Or to put it another way: the great majority of the American people are not nearly as militarist, imperialist or aggressive as their German equivalents in 1914; but most German people in 1914 would at least have been able to find France on a map.

 

The younger intelligentsia meanwhile has also been stripped of any real knowledge of the outside world by academic neglect of history and regional studies in favour of disciplines which are often no more than a crass projection of American assumptions and prejudices (Rational Choice Theory is the worst example). This has reduced still further their capacity for serious analysis of their own country and its actions. Together with the defection of its strongest internationalist elements, this leaves the intelligentsia vulnerable to the appeal of nationalist messianism dressed up in the supposedly benevolent clothing of 'democratisation'.

 

Twice now in the past decade, the overwhelming military and economic dominance of the US has given it the chance to lead the rest of the world by example and consensus. It could have adopted (and to a very limited degree under Clinton did adopt) a strategy in which this dominance would be softened and legitimised by economic and ecological generosity and responsibility, by geopolitical restraint, and by 'a decent respect to the opinion of mankind', as the US Declaration of Independence has it. The first occasion was the collapse of the Soviet superpower enemy and of Communism as an ideology. The second was the threat displayed by al-Qaida. Both chances have been lost - the first in part, the second it seems conclusively. What we see now is the tragedy of a great country, with noble impulses, successful institutions, magnificent historical achievements and immense energies, which has become a menace to itself and to mankind.

 

Anatol Lieven, a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, is the author of Chechnya and Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry.

[Stormig]

Chicago Passes Anti-War Resolution / 46-1 Vote Follows Extensive and Personal Debate

 

Chicago, Jan. 16, 2003 --After one of the most mesmerizing, impassioned and personal debates ever to occur in Chicago's City Council Chamber, Chicago has become the largest and most prominent city in the nation to formally oppose a unilateral pre-emptive strike on Iraq.

 

One by one, black and white, Latino and Jewish, men and women, the Aldermen stood to draw attention to their own particular concerns with the current path of the Bush Administration. Many pointed out that the real dangers this nation faces today are the rising rates of unemployment and economic stagnation. Others were concerned about the double standard the administration is showing with respect to North Korea. And some drew attention to the prospect of young sons and daughters coming home in body bags from an ill-conceived war.

 

The Committee of Human Relations of the Chicago City Council sent the "Resolution Opposing Pre-emptive U.S. Military Strikes on Iraq" to the full council today after a vote yesterday.

 

"It is our sons and daughters who will be recruited-- perhaps even conscripted--to fight in this war," said Ald. Joseph Moore (49th), chief sponsor of the resolution. Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) was concerned that the "cost of the war will dry up federal funding for domestic programs for a war that has yet to be justified."

 

Judith Kossy of Chicagoans Against the War on Iraq said she and her organization were deeply moved by the leadership of Ald. Joe Moore, Ald. Helen Shiller, Ald. Ricardo Munoz, Ald. Leslie Hairston and by the action taken today the City Council. "Two out of three people in the nation oppose a unilateral war. It's important for local leaders to articulate their constituent's feelings to President Bush and to the world," Kossy said.

 

The full resolution follows:

 

RESOLUTION OPPOSING A PRE- EMPTIVE U.S. MILITARY ATTACK ON IRAQ

 

WHEREAS, the issues between Iraq and the world community have not proven to be irresoluble by traditional diplomatic efforts; and

 

WHEREAS, while Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who should be removed from power, both for the good of the Iraqi people and for the security of Iraq's neighboring countries, it is not at all clear that a unilateral U.S. military action would result in the installation of a free and democratic Iraqi government; and

 

WHEREAS, U.S. military actions would risk the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians without guaranteeing the safety and security of U.S. citizens; and

 

WHEREAS, a pre-emptive and unilateral U.S. military attack would violate international law and our commitments under the U.N. Charter and further isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world; and

 

WHEREAS, the Congressional Budget Office estimates a military action against Iraq will cost our nation between $9 and $13 billion a month, likely resulting in further cuts in federally funded projects and programs that benefit our city and its residents; and

 

WHEREAS, a U.S.-led war in Iraq would compromise our current action in Afghanistan, and require years of nation-building activities in Iraq; and

 

WHEREAS, the Bush administration has failed to articulate a clear strategic objective or outcome of a military attack against Iraq, and such an attack fails to enjoy the support of many of our important allies; and

 

WHEREAS, we give our unconditional support to U.S. military personnel serving at home and abroad in their tireless battle against global terrorism, and should our military forces be sent to Iraq, we give our unyielding support to our young men and women serving in our nation's military, even if we oppose the policy that sent them there;

 

NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that we, the members of the City Council of the City of Chicago, oppose a pre- emptive U.S. military attack on Iraq unless it is demonstrated that Iraq poses a real and imminent threat to the security and safety of the United States; and

 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we support a return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq, enhanced by sufficient police support to guarantee unfettered access to all targeted sites; and

 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we urge the U.S. to work through the U.N. Security Council and reaffirm our nation's commitment to the rule of law in all international relationships; and

 

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be forwarded to the Illinois congressional delegation and the President of the United States.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

From Chicago Tribune: Council seats gay alderman; opposes Iraq attack

 

By Gary Washburn Tribune staff reporter

 

January 16, 2003--The Chicago City Council made history today by seating a North Side restaurateur as the city's first openly gay alderman. It also passed a resolution opposing a pre-emptive attack on Iraq unless that nation poses an imminent threat to the United States. ...

 

Though Tunney is the city's first gay legislator, gay elected officials have served in Washington for years, and state Rep. Larry McKeon (D-Chicago) was elected to the General Assembly in 1996.

 

Separately, aldermen vote 45-1 to approve a resolution that puts the city on record as opposing an attack on Iraq "unless it is demonstrated that Iraq poses a real and imminent threat" to U.S. security.

 

The lone "no" vote was cast by Ald. James Balcer (11th). Balcer has said he agreed with "96 percent" of the resolution but objected to the measure's suggestion Iraq does not already pose a threat.

 

Before the vote, aldermen talked about the huge cost of waging war.

 

"Where will the money come from? From an increase in taxes? Of course not. No, the war will be financed by deficit spending and drastic cuts in domestic funding," said Ald. Joe Moore (49th), a co-sponsor of the measure.

 

http://www.iacenter.org/iraq_ch-res.html

[Stormig]

Even schools feel the obligation to take a stance.

 

http://www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback...1/06/news8.html

 

Nov 6, 2002

GSG passes anti-war resolution

One executive resigns over bill, others fear group will become members' political mouthpiece

By Emily Funderburk

Staff writer

 

The Graduate Student Government passed an unprecedented anti-war resolution Friday, prompting one group member's resignation and provoking debate about the organization's future political involvement.

 

GSG President Alfredo Perez has until Nov. 15 to sign, veto or let the bill stand.

 

"It has brought us to a moment of crisis," Perez said. "We need to decide together if the GSG should be involved in external political matters ... the assembly has spoken," he said, referring to Friday's vote of 20-15 in favor of the bill.

 

The resolution, written by mathematics graduate student Kobi Snitz, stipulates that "a U.S. invasion of Iraq [is] unjust" and resolves to publicize the GSG's opposition to the war.

 

GSG Vice President for Financial Affairs Whitney Schott, an economics student, resigned from the executive committee and said she feels GSG political involvement goes against the organization's original mission statement.

 

"The purpose of the GSG is to represent the interests of graduate students on issues directly affecting the graduate community," she wrote in an e-mail. "The purpose of the GSG is not to represent any specific political party, support any divisive political issues, nor to take a firm position on international political events. ...

 

"...the credibility of the GSG as a meaningful organization representing graduate students has perished. The strength of any previous resolution, such as the position of the GSG on housing or on student fees, has been undermined, all progress previously gained, dismantled."

 

Other GSG members said the resolution may cause more tension in the assembly.

 

"More people will want to become involved if they believe they can further their own political viewpoints," said Rachel Jablon, vice president for legislative affairs in the GSG and a comparative literature student. "The GSG will become fractious as more and more factions seek to use the GSG as a political stepping stone."

 

GSG members who support the resolution said they hope to affect the anti-war movement by joining other schools including the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Texas at Austin and Yale University that have adopted similar resolutions.

 

"I believe we can stop the Pentagon if we get together and get our voices heard," said Cathy Jones, a mathematics doctoral candidate and a member of the organizing committee of Graduates, Adjuncts and Lecturers: Organized Labor. "This is my duty as a citizen to stand up and say no."

 

Snitz said he thinks the resolution will have an effect only if enough students unite to express their opinion.

 

"The only way we can affect it is if enough people express themselves. I'm not fooling myself, but we shouldn't be too pessimistic," he said. "It makes me very optimistic that there is cooperation with student groups."

 

Jones, who also sponsored the bill, said she thinks after students have thought about the issue, they will believe war is not the right option at this time.

 

Jones said the resolution will encourage students to question their leaders.

 

"I am a graduate student; I am trained to question things," she said. "We are really smart people. Graduate students have a lot to say."

 

Perez said he wants to hold a campus-wide debate to explore the possibility of the GSG representing graduate students politically.

 

"My concern now is how to take this moment of crisis into a moment of debate," he said, citing the GSG's purpose as an organization designed to serve and represent graduate students.

 

Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector in Iraq, is coming to the campus Nov. 11, and Snitz said he hopes to present the resolution to him. Snitz also said Kofi Annan's Nov. 13 lecture in Cole Field House would be an appropriate venue.

 

Jones said she hopes the GSG, in conjunction with Peace Forum, will sponsor a conversation about the potential war.

 

"I'm happy it passed and I hope it's the beginning of a conversation," she said.

 

Perez said the debate will help the GSG decide its future direction.

 

"We need everybody on the same page," he said. "It's a very important moment to decide our future. It's going to get people involved, and that is always good."

[Stormig]

Univ. of Michigan Student Assembly

Passes Anti-war Resolution

 

On December 10, the Michigan Student Assembly (MSA) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor voted in favor of an anti-war resolution, at least the seventh such resolution by a U.S. university student government body. The resolution, passed 22 to 13 before a chamber packed with students holding signs reading "Vote Antiwar," opposes an illegal and unjust "pre-emptive" attack against Iraq. The resolution cites, among other reasons:

 

"Foreign policy experts, government officials, and United Nations weapons inspectors have affirmed that Iraq only poses a perceived threat to the United States, and a pre-emptive attack would be contrary to the will of many American citizens and the international community and represent a violation of the UN charter;" and

 

"The civilian infrastructure of Iraq has been destroyed as a result of twelve years of sanctions and bombing. The UNICEF reports that the infant mortality rate from 1991-1999 tripled, resulting in almost 500,000 deaths for Iraqi children. The use of military force against Iraq would aggravate these problems and unquestionably result in the tragic deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians and military personnel, as well as untold numbers of United States combatants."

 

The resolution demands the government "pursue a peaceful diplomatic resolution built upon international support." The MSA also resolved to work with campus organizations in opposing war and promoting anti-war events on campus.

 

According to Michigan Indymedia, much of the debate focussed on whether the MSA is an appropriate forum for voicing political stances. Students spoke eloquently in support of the resolution, arguing that elected officials have ceased to represent their constituents, and that people must take every initiative possible to give their demands expression.

 

Indymedia adds, "The resolution passed as antiwar activism in Ann Arbor has reached peak levels; last week the City Council passed an antiwar resolution, and also yesterday the student group Anti-War Action! created a mock cemetery, adding a tombstone every 4 minutes to symbolize how often a civilian dies due to the UN sanctions. This action was in solidarity with the Dec. 10 National Day of Action/Human Rights Day...." Ann Arbor students are also organizing a two-day Stop the War Conference in January.

 

Other student governments passing similar resolutions include University of California Santa Cruz; Grinnell (Iowa); University of Maryland, College Park — Graduate School; Ithaca College (New York); Swathmore (Pennsylvania); and the University of Texas — Austin.

 

http://www.usmlo.org/archive/2002-19/06-51-12.htm

[Stormig]

http://salt.claretianpubs.org/sjnews/2003/...1/sjn0301d.html

 

U.S. city councils call for peaceful resolution to Iraq crisis

City Council resolutions opposing war with Iraq have been passed in over 20 cities across the U.S. and efforts are underway in dozens of other communities. The Institute for Policy Studies is working with the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC), National Priorities project, American Friends Service Committee chapters, and other grassroots groups, students, the faith-based community groups to facilitate the drafting and passing of City Council resolutions or letters opposing war with Iraq. Resolutions are pending before both the New York and Chicago city councils and have already passed in cities such as Baltimore, Oakland, and Philadelphia.

 

Similar resolutions can be passed in other bodies, such as student council bodies, faculty senates, unions or church boards. In addition to opposing U.S. military action against Iraq, these City Council resolutions are highlighting how taxpayers, city and state budgets, and critical social services will be affected by the costs of a war with Iraq.

 

Organizers hope to generate 100 city council resolutions and letters against the war by the Jaunuary State of the Union Address.

 

According to the effort's organizers, a resolution effort in your community will:

 

1) elevate public awareness of anti-war sentiment;

 

2) highlight the links between domestic and foreign policy concerns about the war; educate elected officials about the potential impacts on their city's budgets and citizens' concerns that rushing to war will further compromise the safety of our cities;

 

3) create media buzz about local impacts of war and generate national coverage of the growing city-led backlash to Bush's war;

 

4) deepen working relations between national and grassroots activists of the anti-war movement;

 

5) further the current work going on in communities of color (who are one of the strongest anti-war demographics) as well as student groups, labor, and faith-based communities. Religious groups such as the National Council of Churches, the United Methodists and Muslim organizations would be central to working with community activists in this endeavor;

 

6) create opportunities for elected officials who oppose war to take pro-active steps towards stopping the drive toward military action.

[Stormig]

Rise of rightism in the U.S.?

 

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Students in private and public schools would be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the national anthem each morning under a bill unanimously passed this week by the state Senate.

 

Republican Rep. Allan Egolf said he introduced the measure, which also would mandate the display of the American flag in all classrooms, after finding that some schools did not ask students to recite the pledge.

 

"It's getting away from teaching about what our country stands for, what our founders did, and why we have the country we have," Egolf said.

 

The measure would allow students to decline reciting the pledge and saluting the flag on the basis of religious conviction or personal belief, but school officials would have to notify their parents.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union has said that it believes the parental notification requirement would discourage students from exercising their right not to participate.

 

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

 

MONTGOMERY, Alabama (AP) -- A Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of Alabama's judicial building violates the constitution's ban on government promotion of religion, a federal judge ruled Monday.

 

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson gave Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who had had the 5,300-pound granite monument installed in the state building, 30 days to remove it.

 

Moore testified during the trial that the commandments are the moral foundation of American law. He said the monument acknowledges God, but does not force anyone to follow his conservative Christian religious beliefs.

 

A lawsuit seeking removal of the monument argued that it promoted the judge's faith in violation of the constitution's ban on government establishment of religion.

 

"This is a question of whether the politically powerful can impose their views on others," Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Danielle Lipow argued during the trial before Thompson.

 

Moore testified he decided to locate a monument to the Ten Commandments in the building shortly after he was elected chief justice in November 2000.

 

The monument, which features the King James Bible version of the Ten Commandments sitting on top of a granite block, is one of the first things visitors see upon entering the building.

[Stormig]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Young Americans may soon have to fight a war in Iraq, but most of them can't even find that country on a map, the National Geographic Society said Wednesday.

 

The society survey found that only about one in seven -- 13 percent -- of Americans between the age of 18 and 24, the prime age for military warriors, could find Iraq. The score was the same for Iran, an Iraqi neighbor.

 

Although the majority, 58 percent, of the young Americans surveyed knew that the Taliban and al Qaeda were based in Afghanistan, only 17 percent could find that country on a world map. A U.S.-led force attacked the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan in October 2001, and President Bush has said he is prepared to use force to rid Iraq of any chemical, nuclear or biological weapons programs.

 

The survey asked 56 geographic and current events questions of young people in nine countries and scored the results with traditional grades. The surveyed Americans got a "D," with an average of 23 correct answers. Mexico ranked last with an average score of 21, just three points from a failing grade.

 

Topping the scoring was Sweden, with an average of 40, followed by Germany and Italy, each with 38. None of the countries got an "A," which required average scores of 42 correct answers or better on the 56 questions.

 

"If our young people can't find places on a map and lack awareness of current events, how can they understand the world's cultural, economic and natural resource issues that confront us?" John Fahey, president of the National Geographic Society, said in a statement.

 

National Geographic is convening an international panel of policy makers and business and media leaders to find ways to improve geographic education and to encourage interest in world affairs, the society said.

 

Other findings from the survey:

• Thirty-four percent of the young Americans knew that the island used on last season's "Survivor" show was located in the South Pacific, but only 30 percent could locate the state of New Jersey on a map. The "Survivor" show's location was the Marquesas Islands in the eastern South Pacific.

 

• When asked to find 10 specific states on a map of the United States, only California and Texas could be located by a large majority of those surveyed. Both states were correctly located by 89 percent of the participants. Only 51 percent could find New York, the nation's third most populous state.

 

• On a world map, Americans could find on average only seven of 16 countries in the quiz. Only 89 percent of the Americans surveyed could find their own country on the map.

 

• In the world map test, Swedes could find an average of 13 of the 16 countries. Germans and Italians were next, with an average of 12 each.

 

• Only 71 percent of the surveyed Americans could locate on the map the Pacific Ocean, the world's largest body of water. Worldwide, three in 10 of those surveyed could not correctly locate the Pacific Ocean.

 

• Although 81 percent of the surveyed Americans knew that the Middle East is the Earth's largest oil exporter, only 24 percent could find Saudi Arabia on the map.

 

The international survey was conducted for the National Geographic by RoperASW. The results are based on face-to-face interviews with at least 300 men and women aged 18 to 24 in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, Britain and the United States.

 

The questionnaires were in the local language, but the content was universally the same.

[Stormig]

Ex-arms inspector defends Iraq

 

A former senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, has told the Baghdad parliament that Iraq is not a threat to the outside world and that military action against the country would not be justifiable.

 

US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair have said they are determined that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction must be eliminated, but Mr Ritter said he did not believe there were such weapons.

 

But Mr Ritter, who is on a private visit, said Iraq had to allow weapons inspectors back into the country to prove to the outside world that this was the case.

 

This was the only way now to avoid war, he said.

 

"Nothing else will be acceptable," the American told Iraqi deputies.

 

"Iraq cannot attempt to link the return of the weapons inspectors with any other issues, regardless of justification. Unconditional return, unfettered access, this is the only acceptable action."

 

Weapons inspectors have been barred from the country since 1998.

 

Vocal critic

 

As a prominent American who opposes a US strike on Iraq, Mr Ritter's visit is a boost to the regime in Baghdad and will not help current efforts being undertaken by Mr Bush and Mr Blair to garner support for their campaign.

 

On Thursday, one day after the anniversary of the 11 September terrorist attacks, Mr Bush will address the United Nations in a speech US officials say will demand fast, decisive action to minimise the threat of Iraq.

 

Mr Ritter said Iraq was not a sponsor of the kind of terror perpetrated against the US on 11 September and indeed that Baghdad was "active in suppressing the sort of fundamentalist extremism that characterises those who attacked the US on that horrible day".

 

During the seven years the UN was allowed to carry out inspections, Iraq had been certified as being disarmed to a 90-95% level.

 

Mr Ritter was not always popular with the Iraqi authorities - as head of the inspection team until 1998, he was renowned for his tough line and intrusive searches.

 

But he later accused Washington of using the UN mission to spy on Iraq. He has since been a vocal critic of US policy.

 

Iraqi warning

 

The crucial question now is whether Iraq will invite the current UN weapons inspectors back.

 

Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said Iraq might consider doing so, but only as part of what he called a comprehensive settlement.

 

But, speaking in Jordan on Saturday, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said the Americans did not care about inspections.

 

What they wanted was a change of the political regime - but their ambitions would be smashed, he declared, at the gates of Iraq.

 

From the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2243627.stm

[Stormig]

School of the Americas:

 

http://www.soaw.org/new/

[Stormig]

Piercing the smokescreen they use to justify war

 

The truth on weapons of mass destruction

 

Bush and Blair claim war on Iraq is about stopping Saddam Hussein developing weapons of mass destruction.

 

But who is the real threat in the world? And who has, and has used, weapons of mass destruction? "The people who do most of the shouting about weapons of mass destruction have those weapons themselves," says Nigel Chamberlain from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

 

igures are from the US-based Natural Resources Defence Council. For full details go to www.nrdc.org

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The arsenal in US and British hands

 

THE UNITED States has 10,600 nuclear warheads in its stockpile.

 

That includes 550 intercontinental ballistic missiles with 1,700 warheads. There are also 18 Trident nuclear powered submarines which carry a total of 3,120 warheads, 320 Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles, 94 B-52 bombers and 21 B-2 bombers.

 

The B-2s carry the US's new "earth penetrating" nuclear bomb.

 

The US's chief ally is Britain, which has around 200 warheads with four nuclear submarines which can carry 64 nuclear missiles.

 

Both these countries are willing to use nuclear weapons. US defence policy now authorises the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, reported the Los Angeles Times earlier this year.

 

The paper said that US policy is now that nuclear weapons could be used when there is an unexpected development in a conventional war.

 

New Labour's 1998 Strategic Defence Review allows "the limited use of nuclear weapons".

 

The US is still the only state to have actually used nuclear weapons in war. The US exploded an untested uranium bomb above the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945.

 

It killed 140,000 out of a population of 350,000.

 

The US then dropped a nuclear bomb on another Japanese city, Nagasaki, killing 70,000 out of 270,000 inhabitants.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Other nuclear powers

 

Five nuclear powers dominate the UN's security council, which authorises military action against other countries.

 

As well as the US and Britain these are Russia, China and France.

 

Russia has a declining stock of nuclear weapons, but is still the world's second largest nuclear power.

 

It has 8,400 nuclear warheads. That includes 706 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 14 operational nuclear submarines and 78 bombers.

 

France has 288 warheads including 60 bombers capable of carrying nuclear missiles, and three nuclear submarines.

 

China does not issue detailed figures on nuclear capability, but it is estimated that it has 130 aircraft which can carry nuclear missiles, as well as 125 land-based missiles and 12 nuclear submarines.

 

There is one state in the Middle East that has been secretly developing nuclear weapons-Israel.

 

It has up to 200 nuclear weapons. It refuses to let in any weapons inspectors at all.

 

Yet the US gives Israel $3 billion in military and economic "aid" every year. Between 1980 and 1995 it bought or "received" 260 F-16 fighter aircraft from the US which can drop nuclear bombs.

 

Former Pentagon and US state department officials told the Washington Post in June this year that Israel was also arming three submarines with missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Spreading the threat

 

THE MAJOR powers' access to nuclear weapons fuels the arms race around the world.

 

India and Pakistan threatened to start a nuclear war in June in their longstanding dispute over Kashmir.

 

India has an estimated 30-35 nuclear weapons and Pakistan an estimated 48 nuclear weapons.

 

The US sells weapons to both sides, after abandoning an arms embargo on both countries in September last year.

 

Russia also sells arms to India, and China sells to Pakistan. France sells Mirage jets to both air forces.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The real makers of biological bombs

 

THE US is the world's biggest investor in "biodefence".

 

It refuses to allow any inspections of its research.

 

The campaign group GeneWatch UK last month condemned the US secrecy. "Investment in biodefence may look like a screen for the development of weapons that are intended for offensive use," it said.

 

"Because the US have been unwilling to declare programmes in the past, their motives inevitably come under scrutiny."

 

During former US president Clinton's administration the US secretly built and tested a model of an anthrax bomb.

 

The US also constructed a facility in Nevada where bacteria could have been produced for use in biological weapons, according to a New York Times report in September last year.

 

Bush's administration whipped up hysteria in the wake of 11 September over letters contaminated with anthrax that killed five people in the US.

 

The anthrax spores are now suspected to have come from the US's own research facilities.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The rogue state Bush supports

 

"Iraq has answered a decade of United Nations demands with a decade of defiance. Are UN resolutions to be honoured and enforced or cast aside without consequence?"

 

Those were the words George Bush used last week when addressing the UN general assembly. Tony Blair used the same argument in his TUC speech.

 

Talk of the "flouting" of UN resolutions is a fig leaf. One state in the world has broken many, many more UN resolutions than Iraq.

 

Yet Bush and Blair are not threatening any action against it. That state, Israel, is the US's key ally in the oil-rich Middle East. Israel has ridden roughshod over UN resolutions since its creation in 1948.

 

The UN passed a partition plan for Palestine in 1947. It gave 55 percent of Palestine to Israeli settlers, who were only 30 percent of the population. This was not enough for the Israelis. Armed militias ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948. Israel grabbed 77 percent of Palestine.

 

The UN general assembly passed Resolution 194 in response. It calls for the Palestinians to be allowed to return to their homes.

 

This resolution has been reaffirmed at least 28 times since 1948. Israel has ignored it every time.

 

srael invaded and took over the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.

The UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 242 in response. This called for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict".

 

Israeli troops are still occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip 35 years later. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 338 in 1973 calling for the implementation of Resolution 242.

 

After the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in September 2000 the UN Security Council again reaffirmed both Resolutions 242 and 338. These resolutions are both fully binding, and can be enforced by sanctions and military action.

 

etween 1955 and 1992 there were, in all, 65 UN Security Council resolutions passed against Israel. All of them were ignored.

This pattern continues today.

 

srael this year invaded the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin and Palestinian cities that were supposed to be Palestinian- controlled under the peace process.

The UN Security Council passed resolutions calling for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops. Israel did not withdraw.

 

The UN Security Council passed a resolution in April to send a UN fact-finding mission into Jenin to discover whether the Israelis had massacred people there. Israel refused to allow a UN group into the camp.

 

Despite its flouting of UN decisions and international law there has been no military or economic action threatened against Israel. This has allowed Israel's leaders, including the current hardline prime minister Ariel Sharon, to tighten the noose around the neck of the Palestinians.

 

The US's war on terror and its backing for Sharon are threatening another catastrophe for the Palestinian people.

 

"After 11 September the Israeli ruling class thought it was even more right, and that it could wage war without limit," says Michel Warschawski, an Israeli revolutionary socialist.

 

"They said, 'We are waging the same war as Bush. We are in the front line of the war against terrorism. We have the US with us.' There has been an unprecedented dehumanisation. The Palestinians are not seen as human beings but as terrorists. What held Israel back previously was international pressure. But today Washington is following Israel. The framework of the war has become Israeli-Arab. Sharon is pushing for war against the Arabs and Iraq. According to the journalist George Novak, Sharon called on the US to wage war against Saudi Arabia and Egypt during a closed meeting of the foreign affairs committee in the US Senate. The ultimate objective is to expel the Palestinians. There are terrifying slogans appearing. There is huge graffiti at Jerusalem bus station saying, 'Holocaust for the Arabs', a car sticker published by the governing parties says, 'Peace is a catastrophe-we want war.' And everywhere you see posters: 'Jordan is the Palestinian state, transfer now.' The 'transfer', meaning ethnic cleansing, is the line of four of the eight parties in the governing coalition. The situation is getting worse month by month. Finally, Israel is pushing for 'the nuclear option'. Sharon declared a month ago, 'If the Iraqis fire missiles on Tel Aviv, and even if there are no victims, we will use nuclear weapons.' Since Bush's declaration on the 'axis of evil' Sharon has pushed to attack Iraq. The question is not whether it will happen but when and how."

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The record on chemical weapons

 

DURING THE Vietnam War the US dropped 17 million gallons of defoliant. The Agent Orange defoliant contained one of the most toxic substances known to humanity, dioxin.

 

It caused massive deformities in children long after the US left Vietnam. The US also dropped napalm on Vietnamese villages.

 

The US experimented with napalm to ensure it clung to human flesh and couldn't be washed off. The US World Trade Journal reported in 1966, "Today when the American troops enter the villages of South Vietnam they make it a habit to throw gas grenades into the shelters.

 

"Obviously there are some innocent victims."

 

Britain used mustard gas and white phosphorus incendiaries in the First World War, along with Germany and France.

 

Israel used phosphorus bombs during its invasion of the Lebanon in 1982 in which 12,000 Lebanese civilians were killed. "Dr Shamaa found that two five day old twins had already died but they were still on fire," reported journalist Robert Fisk.

 

"'I had to take the babies and put them in buckets of water to put out the flames,' she said.

 

"'When I took them out half an hour later they were still burning'."

 

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein felt he could easily get away with using poison gas against Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians during his eight-year war with Iran that started in 1980.

 

There was no outcry from Western governments. US military observers on the ground at the time knew exactly what was happening, and approved of it.

 

--------------------

 

My addition - Belgium, too, used mustard gas (also known as yperite) on Congolese - in time of peace.

[Stormig]

Colombian judge orders suspension of US-backed drug fumigation programme

 

Following mounting evidence of risks to health and the environment, a judge in Bogotá has ordered the immediate suspension of the fumigation of coca and poppy by herbicides in the indigenous territories throughout the country, however the Colombian Government intends to continue its eradication programme.

 

The judge ordered the suspension of the aerial fumigations that use the herbicide glyphosate when he ruled in favour of Colombian Amazon indigenous communities and an NGO, Paz Colombia, on the grounds that it “violates the right to life, due process, and environmental rights”. According to the groups, the government had only signed an agreement for the use of manual eradication only with the inhabitants of two provinces, where some 40,000 acres of coca are under cultivation. According to Paz Colombia, the aerial fumigation of these plantings has caused sickness in more than 35,000 Indians and the judicial order should be immediately applied in territories inhabited by indigenous peoples throughout the country, the southeast, the northwest, and the Colombian Atlantic coast.

 

The delegate to the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), Klaus Nylhom has proposed the establishment of a neutral international observation team for the fumigations in the smaller plots of coca and poppy and agrees that the small plots of illegal cultivation in the departments of Cauca and Nariño in the southeast, are “very modest”, and stated that the peasants and indigenous people growing them are “not criminals”.

 

The move follows a letter from Colombia’s Parliamentary Commissioner, Eduardo Cifuentes Munoz, to Justice Minister Dr. Romulo Gonzalez Trujillo saying that the governmental policy of spraying illicit coca crops, which has been aided by US governmental funding “jeopardises fundamental rights - to life, integrity, health and food safety - as well as the collective right to enjoy a healthy environment and ecological equilibrium”. The months old campaign has met with numerous protests to date, including a Washington conference where experts warned that using glyphosate to spray hundreds of square kilometres of plantations would result in widespread harm to the environment and indigenous communities (see related story).

 

International pesticide experts have also criticised the so-called ‘Plan Colombia’, saying that the aerial fumigation is indiscriminate and causing serious health problems in humans and animals, contaminating the soil, the air, water and food, and destroying crops, livestock and fish, which form the basis for survival of the rural and indigenous populations. “The aerial fumigation of illicit crops by herbicides which is happening in Colombia has no seen no precedent in scientific literature,” said Elsa Nivia, an agronomist from the international organisation Pesticide Action Network.

 

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Ecuador, Foreign Affairs Minister Heinz Moeller has asked Colombia to manually spray coca crops near the border following reports of Ecuadorians falling ill. Ecuadorian environmental group, Acción Ecológica, said that the Plan has led to 36 illnesses for more than 6,000 people, including indigenous communities, living along the Ecuador-Colombia border. Every one of the Ecuadorian residents living within five kilometres of the Colombian border presented symptoms of pesticide-related ailments, the group said.

 

However Minister Trujillo said that the Government would fight the judge’s decision for being unconstitutional and denied that fumigation was taking place in indigenous areas, while Colombia’s Environment minister, Juan Myer, maintains that aerial fumigation of coca plantations causes “no real harm”.

 

http://www.edie.net/news/Archive/4532.cfm

http://www.colombiareport.org/drugphotos.htm

[Stormig]

Consider this: the history of US involvement in Panama

AND was the 1989 US invasion of Panama to remove General Manuel Noriegajustified and inevitable?

 

INTRO

Geographically, Panama was fated to be an American dominion. From its beginnings as a nation and throughout its history it has been dominated by the United States militarily, politically and economically: largely the result of the US-built canal. It is an influence that continues to be resented today, even after the US invaded to destroy the Noriega dictatorship. An invasion that was completely unjustified under international law and the canal treaties. Although the Americans maintained they were protecting their interests and establishing democracy. Matters of US domestic politics were also at stake. In the circumstances, the 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States was a foregone conclusion. It was only a matter of timing.

 

HISTORY

 

Panama became a nation in the interests of the US. The US had been slowly spreading its influence under the auspices of the Monroe Doctrine. A relatively young nation, Panama only became independent from Gran Colombia in 1903. US gunboats prevented Colombian troops from landing while a separatist rebellion gained control of Panama City. In the midst of it all a member of the US Army Corps raised the new flag and Panama began its international life as a US protectorate. Ultimately Panama became a nation through "big-stick diplomacy,"(1) its sovereignty always under question.

 

A few years before, a French entrepreneur, Phillippe Bunau-Varilla, had attempted to build a canal. Even with the authority of the Colombian government his attempted canal across the panamanian isthmus failed due to the bankrupting of his company. It was in the name of the new republic that the Frenchman formulated a canal treaty with the US. The canal would serve the US well for its economic and, more importantly, strategic naval interests in the region. Furthermore, the new constitution gave the US the right "to intervene in any part of Panama to re-establish public peace and constitutional order."(2) A statute that was greatly influenced by the hegemonic concepts of the 1903 Roosevelt Collary to the Monroe Doctrine. The collary said it was the "duty of the US" to interfere in the internal affairs of its neighbours where "chronic wrongdoing or an impotence.... results in a general loosening of ties of civilised society." (3)

 

Only a year later in 1904 US troops quelled anti-US riots in the capital Panama City. Under pressure from the US the National Panamanian Army was disbanded. Around the same time Panama's monetary system became based on the US dollar. Ten years later the Panama Canal began full operation. It was run by the US with a special 10-mile wide Canal Zone for US civilians and military personnel, to defend the canal. This "de facto US colony"(4) was a haven of luxury compared to the poverty of the surrounding nation.

 

The US protectorate came to an end in 1939. Although the dominance of the US stayed along with fourteen military bases and thousands of troops to protect the Canal Zone. The canal became a fixture of the Panamanian landscape on which the country's economy and the US navy depended. With the entrance of the US into World War II in 1942 a new "General Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation" was signed by both countries. It heavily favoured the United States as it guaranteed US bases and airfields on Panamanian territory with minimal aid increases to Panama.

 

In 1946 the US flagrantly began to violate its treaty obligations. It opened the School of the Americas, a base to teach military personnel from around Latin America. This act contravened the 1903 treaty which allowed US troops only for the defence of the canal. It was set up by the US to train pro-US military officers throughout Latin America who would in turn increase US influence in the region. Once more it was a reflection on the "long-standing premise...[that] Central America was part of the US' historical even natural sphere of influence."(5)

 

Within a year the Panamanian National Assembly rejected a new treaty on US military bases after great public protests. Six years later the US created the Panamanian National Guard (PNF) modelled on that of Somoza, the then Nicuraguan dictator. Furthermore it was the presence of the Canal Zone and the US bases that were a "guarantee that Panama would never drift to far away from Washington,"(6) during the ensuing Cold War. In 1962 the Presidents of the US and Panama, Kennedy and Chiari respectively, agreed to begin reviewing the original 1903 treaty. Furthermore they agreed, for the first time, that the Panamanian flag could be displayed in the Canal Zone.

 

In January of 1964 riots broke out over the flag issue. American students, at a high school in the Canal Zone had flown a US flag without the accompanying Panamanian flag. In the subsequent fighting 20 were killed, over 300 wounded and over 500 arrested. In response Panama severed diplomatic relations with the US and the Organisation of American States (OAS) was called in to mediate. By April diplomatic relations were restored and negotiations began over drafting another treaty to resolve the conflict. A further nine years later, in 1973, the UN security council met in Panama. It exhorted Panama and the US to continue negotiations for a treaty returning the Canal Zone to Panama. The US vetoed the resolution, determined to hold on to its strategic interests. Yet, a year later the US and Panama agreed to begin new negotiations.

 

Finally in 1977 Omar Torrijos, the nationalist President of Panama and US President Carter signed a treaty guaranteeing Panama the canal at noon on the 31st. of December 1999. A further accord agreed to replace the US-run Panama Canal Company with a jointly supervised Panama Canal Commission. The accord meant a Panamanian would take office as administrator of the Commission on the 1st. of January 1990, creating a Panamanian majority on the canal body. The Panamanian National Assembly approved the treaties. In 1978 the US Senate ratified the treaties including a provision that permitted US intervention in Panama if "the canal's operation is interrupted, though such action shall not be interpreted as a right of intervention in Panama's sovereignty or internal affairs."(7) It was a moment of great national pride for the Panamanians. The long-resented Canal Zone officially ceased to exist when the treaties came into effect in 1979.

 

Torrijos was viewed by many as "the defender of Panama's sovereignty."(8) He had come to power in a coup in 1968 and had staved off a major coup attempt with the help of Manuel Noriega, a CIA asset. His persistent attempts, with three different US administrations, to gain control of the canal concerned conservatives in the US who were worried about the possible influence of the Soviet Bloc in the Western Hemisphere. Inspired by the success of Egyptian President Nasser in gaining control of the Suez Canal, Torrijos' eventual success in gaining that which Panamanians wanted for their own was a moment of great national pride. He died in a plane accident, whose causes are unknown, in 1981.

 

The Reagan administration despised the actions of Carter who they believed had weakened US influence in the region. Reagan's attitude encouraged "official ignorance towards Panama...echoing a common US conservative slogan We bought it, we paid for it, we built it and we intend to keep it."(9) Under Reagan, the US' domination of the region intensified. He wanted to stabilise the region and enforce the status quo. Reagan supported the right wing military dictatorships of Central America, both covertly and overtly, while attempting to undermine left-wing governments. Central America once again became a proving ground of US power. As the then US ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, said: "Central America was the most important place in the world... for the United States.....and had become the main challenge to US interests."(10)

 

Panama was still central to US strategic interests. Indeed, they had established their Southern Command (SouthCom) there, only one of 10 specified US military commands. So it was of great significance to them when in 1983 Manual Noriega, head of military intelligence became commander of the Panama Defence Forces (FDP, the reorganised and renamed National Guard). Effectively he took control of the country. The National Guard also expanded to include customs and all immigration and transitory authorities as well as the National Bank of Panama and the Attorney-General's office. Essentially, he turned the county's institutions into "branches of a criminal enterprise,"11 all carried out without any protest from the US.

 

This is of little surprise as Noriega continued to operate as a CIA asset, with payments in excess of $110,000 a year.(12) His loyalty was conditional as he also provided services to opponents of the US. Noriega traded arms to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in El Salvador while allowing the CIA to use air-strips in the north of Panama to deliver guns to the Contras. Drug-running also gave him a sizeable income. Under Noriega Panama became a "listening post for US intelligence, a crossroads for arms peddlers, spies, drug dealers, and covert operators of various stripes, all giving Noriega ample opportunity to profit politically and economically."(13) Ironically, Noriega also worked in cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), informing them of rival drug operations. (It was not only the US who was later embarrassed by this: Interpol awarded Noriega its medal of honour for his "contribution to the struggle against terrorism and drug trafficking" in 1987).(14) It has never been concretely confirmed whether George Bush knew of Noriega's relations with the narcotics traffickers when he was head of the CIA in the 1970's.

 

The 1984 Panamanian democratic elections were overturned by Noriega. After much protest he forced the elected president to resign and installed Vice-President Erick Arturo Delvalle in the presidency in 1985. Around the same time the US-run school of the Americas closed down its operations and relocated to Fort Benning, Georgia. By 1987 Noriega's relations with the US were beginning to weaken. The IranContra scandal was putting undue attention on the US' relationship with Noriega and the Reagan administration decided Noriega should go.

 

Also at that turning point the CIA chief, William Casey, a strong Noriega supporter, died of a heart attack. The US Senate approved a resolution calling for Noriega to step down, for an independent investigation into corruption charges against him and for fresh elections. Anger erupted in Panama and in riots the US embassy was damaged. Noriega, due to his ties with Torrijos, carried dubious credentials as an-anti-imperialist and "Washington's failure to understand that international pressure was counter-productive when it came unilaterally from Washington" strengthened those credentials.

 

Introducing economic sanctions against Panama Washington then suspended $3 million of aid, escalating pressure on Noriega to go. The pressure further mounted with US attorneys announcing Noriega's indictment on drug-trafficking charges in Florida in 1988. President Delvalle around the same time attempted to fire Noriega, but was instead ousted himself and went into hiding in the US. There he was recognised as Panama's President. Uncertainty began to spread as US pressure mounted and in April of 1988 Noriega formed the infamous Dignity Battalions to fight against a possible US invasion. Secret bargaining between both countries collapsed and with the US presidential elections in full swing the focus on Noriega weakened.

 

In early 1989 democratic elections were once again held in Panama. Guillermo Endara won the presidency in a landslide, only for the elections to be nullified by Noriega. Mass demonstrations broke out with a number killed by the PDF's brutal response. The presence of international observers, including ex-US President Carter, re-focused US attention on Panama. George Bush, newly-elected US President, effectively severed diplomatic ties by recalling the US ambassador and sending 2,000 additional troops to Panama. The OAS attempted to mediate, but to no avail. The US response in August of 1989 was to replace its commander in Panama with General Maxwell Thurman who began to prepare for an invasion. A coup attempt in October, half-heartedly supported by the US, failed. Finally, on the 20th of December the US invaded with 26, 000 troops. Endara was sworn in as Panamanian President on a US army base with two Panamanians as witnesses just before the invasion commenced.

 

In what followed, 23 US soldiers and an estimated 300 Panamanian soldiers were killed.(15) The international media jumped on a CBS news poll claiming 92 percent of the population supported the invasion.(16) Meanwhile they overlooked another poll taken that claimed "23 percent of the population had a good friend or relative killed or wounded" in the invasion.(17) Many living in Panama City were displaced by the US bombing and civilian casualty figures range from hundreds in to the thousands. In accordance with the 1977 treaties, a Panamanian became administrator of the Panama Canal Commission on 1st. of January 1990.

 

Two days later Noriega surrendered to US troops and was extradited to the US on drugs charges. The initial euphoria when President Bush promised $1 billion of aid turned to anger when five months later the US Senate approved only $240 million of aid. Panama, though rid of Noriega, was economically in tatters. The end result saw the "gross national product shrink by 22 percent between 1988 and early 1991."(18)

 

JUSTIFIED AND INEVITABLE?

 

Many factors resulted in the US applying unilateral military force to end the rule of Noriega. They can be summarised into two sections. Those that related to the immediate necessities of US domestic politics and those which related to longer-term foreign relations. It was these factors which culminated and led to yet another US show of overt military force in the region by invading. Only six years earlier the US invaded another part of Central America, Grenada in 1983. Its covert actions in the region were more numerous.

 

With his election Bush, though he had been Vice-President during the Reagan administration, had to prove his worth. It was felt he needed to cast himself as a strong leader willing to use force. Unlike the past the US was not able to cast Noriega as acting for the Soviets as a pretext for acting aggressively towards him. Where once the threat of communism had been used as a pretext for US military force, Bush said "Operation Just Cause was launched to defend [the US] from narcotraffickers seeking to destroy" them.(19) In the propaganda campaign that led up to the invasion the US focused on Noriega's drug dealing activities. Activities they had known about since 1983 when as a result it was believed "Noriega was losing his value to the CIA as an intelligence source."(20) It was extremely opportune to use the war on drugs as justification to invade Panama, but hollow if one considers the time the US had known about it. Even after the invasion the US failed to put a stop to the illicit drug trade.

 

The propaganda war was extremely successful for Bush's administration. Images coming out of Panama of the bloody riots and chaos after the 1989 elections were used by "Bush in his justifications of the invasion."21 He told his inner-circle at the time that "television pictures of Americans being clubbed and fleeing with blood encrusted shirts [as seen of the Panamanian vice-president elect Guillermo Ford] would require immediate action."22 Later he would use this pretext of protecting US citizens as one of his key justifications for the invasion. There is little evidence to support the belief that US citizens were in danger of their lives as most of them lived in and around the US bases in Panama. If anything, the US' moves to escalate the conflict, including sending armed military convoys across Panamanian territory, had put their lives in danger.

 

Indeed one US serviceman was shot dead by a PDF soldier in late 1989. The shooting occurred when a car carrying US military personnel panicked and attempted to run a PDF road block. Another incident involved the interrogation of a US officer and his wife by the PDF. It included physical threats against his wife before they were later released. This was held up by Bush in an emotional statement as a threat to US womanhood.

 

However, noted media and political critic Noam Chomsky points out, that Bush chose to ignore an incident only weeks earlier of "an American nun, Diana Ortiz,....[who was] kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused by the Guatemalan police," among other "threats"(23) to US womanhood in Central America. Along a similar vein Noriega's record on human rights pales into insignificance when compared to the thousands killed by the right-wing governments of Panama's neighbours.

 

Economically, Panama was of no importance to the US, its trade with Central America in 1986 amounting to "less than 1 percent of US trade."(24) Although it must be said that many countries on the west coast of South America used the canal to export to the US. The US sanctions, begun in 1987, only served to wreck Panama's national economy and did little to undermine Noriega's funding (drug-money) which was unsanctioned in any case in the international community.

 

Politically, the US pretence of re-estabilishing democracy was also hypocritical after their reaction to the 1984 elections as well as their continued support for other oligarchies and dictatorships in the hemisphere. As the Panamanian Foreign Minister (after the invasion) said, "I am sure the US did not carry out its military action to liberate Panama, but for reasons related to its own interests."(25) In any case, the new government was shown to be corrupt and Panama remained a haven for drug-trafficking.

 

Strategically Panama was the linchpin for the US in the region. SouthCom, it was believed, could not have had a better location. It gave the US great leverage in the region and allowed the US to protect the canal from outside threats. However, the naval importance of being able to use the canal had diminished considerably over the years as a result of having two separate navies and also aircraft carriers that were too large to fit. With complete US domination of the region growing smaller the need show its military capabilities was unnecessary.

 

When the US announced it had invaded Panama it did so saying it was in response to the "state of war" issued a few days earlier by Noriega. Again, this attempt to justify the invasion has been refuted. Chomsky quotes international law professor Alfred Rubin who pointed out that the Panamanian National "Assembly had declared what amounts to a state of emergency for the duration of the aggression unleashed by the US government."(26) Legally, the US contravened international law and its treaty obligations to both the OAS and Panama itself. If a lesser country had attempted the same there can be no doubt that they would have undergone extremely harsh international condemnation.

 

Ultimately the decision to invade was based on the need to establish a US-friendly Panamanian government. With the strategically important canal "scheduled to pass from the US to Panama's control at the end of the century and 12,000 American military personnel and many of their families living in Panama, the Bush administration wanted Noriega out."(27) With a pro-US government in place to facilitate the changes it could lead to treaty concessions. In the words of the US Commander in Chief of the Air Force "the choice for the US was either to get out of Panama entirely or get in all the way....there was no [other] (28)choice."

 

The "gun-boat" diplomacy that gave birth to a nation also served to overcome it. It was inevitable that the US would invade Panama, however unjustified its actions were. Their macho stand-off and aggressive tactics served to remind the rest of the world that US military force is still an option where diplomatic or economic solutions fail. Panama was created to serve US interests living forever with its sovereignty under threat. With so much history of US intervention combined with the political timeliness for President Bush in the US, the 1989 invasion of Panama was a foregone conclusion.

 

BILBLIOGRAPHY

 

Chomsky, N., Deterring Democracy, Vintage, London, 1992,

 

Barry T.& Preusch, D., The Central American Fact Book, Grove Press, New York, 1986,

 

Best, E., US Policy & Regional Security in Central America, Gower House,

1987

 

Molineau, H., US Policy Toward Latin America, Westview Press, Boulder, 1990

 

Skidmore, T. & Peter H., Modern Latin America, Oxford Uni. Press, Oxford, 1992

 

Weeks, J. & Gunson, P., Panama: Made in the USA. Latin American Bureau Ltd., London, 1991

 

Winn, P., Americas: Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean, Uni. of California Press, Berkeley, 1992

 

Woodward, B.,The Commanders, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1991

 

Footnotes

 

[1] Skidmore, T. & Peter H., Modern Latin America, Oxford Uni. Press, Oxford, 1992, pg. 322

[2] Weeks, J. & Gunson, P., Panama: Made in the USA. Latin American Bureau Ltd., London, 1991, pg. xiii

[3] Winn, P., Americas: Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean, Uni. of California Press, Berkeley, 1992, pg. 452

[4] Skidmore, T. & Peter H., Modern Latin America, op.cit., pg. 322

[5] Best, E., US Policy & Regional Security in Central America, Gower House, 1987, Hants, 1987, pg.5

[6] Barry T.& Preusch, D., The Central American Fact Book, Grove Press, New York, 1986, pg. 310

[7] Weeks, J. & Gunson, P., Panama: Made in the USA, op. cit., pg. xv

[8] Winn, P., Americas: Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean, op.cit., pg. 455

[9] Barry T.& Preusch, D., The Central American Fact Book, op.cit., pg. 300

[10] i.b.i.d., pg 18

[11] Week, J & Gunson P., Panama: Made in the USA, op.cit., pg.52

[12]/a> ib.i.d. pg. 47

[13] Molineau, H., US Policy Toward Latin America, Westview Press, Boulder, 1990, pg. 245

[14] Week, J. & Gunson P., Panama: Made in the USA, op.cit., pg.52

[15] Molineau, H., US Policy Toward Latin America, op.cit., pg. 248

[16] Weeks, J.& Gunson P., Panama: Made in the USA, op. cit., pg 92

[17] Chomsky, N., Deterring Democracy, Vintage, London, 1992, pg.157

[18]Skidmore, T. & Smith P., Modern Latin America, op.cit., pg323

[19] Chomsky, N., Deterring Democracy, op.cit, pg. 37

[20] Weeks, J. & Gunson, P., Panama; Made in the USA, op.cit., pg. 48

[21] i.b.i.d., pg 80

[22] Woodward, B., The Commanders, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1991, pg. 55

[23] Chomsky, N., Deterring Democracy, op. cit., pg. 150

[24] Barry T. & Preusch, D., The Central America Fact Book, op.cit., pg. 19

[25] Weeks, J. & Gunson P., Panama: Made in the USA, op. cit., pg. 111

[26] Chomsky, N., Deterring Democracy, op. cit., pg. 153

[27] Woodward, B., The Commanders, op. cit., pg. 52

[28] i.b.i.d., pg. 141

 

Introduction to Latin American Studies Essay Lecturer: Dr Martin Scurrah RETURN HOMEPAGE

 

http://infotrain.magill.unisa.edu.au/Epub/...incm/panama.htm

[Azat]

Stormy, thanks to this thread now HyeForum and especially you are on the US list of terroristic activities.

[Stormig]

Hey, whatever the hell happened to the First Amendment? Plus I am not a graduate from School of the Cubas or School of the Afghanistans.

[Azat]

That is the first thing that the current administration removed when they came in to power.

[Sip]

All I can say is, If you don't like it, go back to whereever the hell you came from.

 

Disclaimer: As a US Citizen, I have earned the right to say this to anyone about anything. Even to you stormy. Even without reading any of the above!!!

 

[ March 01, 2003, 02:41 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

[Stormig]

Ah, come off it, Sip. It's not funny. Whatever the hell happened to, "Your children shouldn't pay ("work") so that ours can play!"? (Referring to use of child labour in manufacture of soccer balls for American consumption in countries like Pakistan.) Same thing. Your country has to find a means to bring food on the table without stealing from someone else. It has demonstrated it has the potential to. So it has been written, so let it be done. All good things come to an end, and somewhere down in the line of time your descendents might be suffering from the rage of another empire, unbridled because at the time people did not care to consolidate the concept of auto-criticism and auto-control in one part or another of the world.

What is going on is no different from the decimation of Amerindians. Today we lament what was done yesterday, but today we also have a chance to stop something. (Well, not really, but at least we should demonstrate the maturity to realize some things.)

[Sip]

I am sorry but I am TOTALLY sick of the US bashing. I was raised with "death to America" and "America is the biggest Satan" blah blah blah Screams in my ear EVERYDAY.

 

Every fricking time Sadam dropped a bomb on us, I heard that US was responsible for it.

 

Well, I don't buy it anymore. I grew up. I opepend my eyes ... and I see that US is not the huge EVIL everyone around me made it sound to be.

 

FOR ONCE I want to hear:

[*]thanks US, for giving us the polio vaccine so our kids don't have to suffer

[*]thanks US, for giving us the semiconductor chip on which the world is running right now

[*]thanks US, for giving us the most amazing new agricultural techniques so we can feed this ever expanding population (guess where it's expanding the most?)

[*]thanks US, for velcro

[*]thanks US, for connecting the world with satellites

[*]thanks US, for helping us get into the nuclear age

[*]thanks US, ...

How come I never hear any of that? How come I only hear bitching and crying from the world? How come they don't teach any of this to their amazingly "smart" students that can locate Iraq on the map but don't know that the US is responsible for the creation and development of the majority of things they now take for granted?

[THOTH]

Here here Sip - nice post!

 

However those in power also often make mistakes and/or bad choics and there is certainly much for the world to resent. This war fever certainly doesn't thrill me...

 

I hear you though...this is the greatest nation on earth and we have done so much & facilitated so much that is making our current world such a great place to live in. It truly is a clash of civilizations...

[Accelerated]

Its pretty funny actually, it was only a couple of years ago, that I was basically in Stormys mindset. But I have changed and become a true citizen of the Western world. I no longer care how many Iraqis are going to be blown to pieces, for me to have cheap fuel, and how little the coffee harvesters of Western Africa are paid for me to enjoi my coffee. Ignorance is bliss (mind you, its not because I have become ignorant in relation to these issues, I just dont give a sh!t anymore, got more important stuff to worry about)

 

And I laugh at these people my age, that are wasting their valuable youth 'trying to make a difference'

 

This is also part of the reason why have stopped posting on political topics, just not worth the effort and couldnt care less.....

 

[ March 02, 2003, 02:13 AM: Message edited by: Accelerated ]