It is no accident that those who advocate war for humanitarian reasons end up justifying torture
by John Laughland, The Guardian - Nov 6, 2007
Arguments in favour of the legalisation of torture have not lost their capacity to shock. The fact that US attorneys-general and the senior legal adviser at the state department have said they are in favour of it seems proof to many of America's slide into barbarism. In reality, however, their pro-torture arguments are no different from the claims made in favour of "humanitarian war" and of other forms of military intervention - arguments that, unfortunately, have become increasingly popular since the end of the cold war.
Torture and "humanitarian war" are similar in many ways. Both involve the inflicting of violence in order to force a change of behaviour. Both are predicated on the assumption of guilt: torture is justified because the victim is said to be a terrorist, or an "illegal combatant" who has committed or is about to commit a terrible crime, while pre-emptive war is justified because a state is said to be "a rogue state" violating international law (Iraq) or committing crimes against humanity (Yugoslavia). It is therefore no coincidence that the US administration that justifies its wars in the name of claims about humanity and its right to liberty also advocates the use of torture to protect these.
Torture and war have been the subject of absolute or near-absolute interdiction in international law. In the aftermath of the second world war, the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials established the principle that crimes against peace are the supreme crime. Aggressive war "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole", said the Nuremberg judges, who understood that once war starts, war crimes will inevitably follow. It was therefore better to ban it completely. This was done by the UN charter, which declared all war, including so-called humanitarian war, illegal. War is allowed only in the very restricted and clear-cut cases of self-defence and when authorised by the security council. Torture was similarly banned by UN convention in 1985.
Any attempt to legalise torture or war was simply regarded as the thin end of the wedge. Today, however, many people who say they shudder at the abuses committed by the Spanish Inquisition, or by the Americans at Guantánamo, campaign actively in favour of war. Humanitarian intervention became fashionable as soon as Iraq was bombed in 1991 "to protect the Kurds and the Shia". Now the trump question put to anti-interventionists is: "What would you have done about Rwanda?" Yet this is the same argument as that advocated by the torturer who says he is trying to save lives. Activists in favour of international judicial and military intervention denounce peacemaking and amnesty laws as acts of appeasement, and they typically strive to break down antiwar sentiment by getting people to admit that intervention might be justified in some extreme cases. But if it is, then why not torture too?
This unwelcome campaign to give war a chance persists in spite of the fact that the very abuses that inspired the universal ban on war in 1945 have indeed been committed by the Americans and their allies in their assault on the old postwar sovereignty-based system of the UN charter. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there was no genocide in Kosovo (Milosevic was never charged with it), but many people still regard war as something at least potentially civilised. We need instead to renew the deep conviction that seized the collective conscience of mankind in 1945 that the international system, and the ideas that underpin it, should be structured so as to ensure peace at any price.
Showing posts with label War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Joe Lieberman's War
by Philip Giraldi - Nov 6, 2007
Neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz has written that "as an American and as a Jew" he prays that President George W. Bush will attack Iran. He rests his case on his belief that 2007 is really 1938, that Iran is Nazi Germany, and that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler. His most recent book, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, was described by a reviewer as "a hectoring, often illogical screed based on cherry-picked facts and blustering assertions (often made without any supporting evidence), a book that furiously hurls accusations of cowardice, anti-Americanism, and sheer venality at any and all opponents of the Bush doctrine, be they on the right or the left."
Unlike people who subscribe to the view that a war with Iran would be a catastrophe for the United States, Podhoretz reportedly has regular access to the White House to promote his insightful historical analysis. But as Podhoretz is not in government and he controls no carrier groups, he has only a limited capability to bring about his dream of an emasculated Iran to take its place alongside an emasculated Iraq and a presumably soon-to-be emasculated Syria.
But while Podhoretz cannot start a war alone, there are plenty of others in the government, including Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council's Elliott Abrams, who share his enthusiasm for a preemptive attack on Iran. The leader of Congress' Iran hawks is undoubtedly Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Lieberman, currently an independent, has long been regarded as a "conservative Democrat," but his voting record reveals that his conservatism is largely limited to foreign policy and more specifically to the Middle East, where he is a strong and uncritical defender of Israel. When he successfully ran for reelection as an independent in Connecticut in 2006, he accused his Democratic opponent Ned Lamont of not being a forceful enough advocate for Israel, claiming that Lamont was "surrounded by people who are either naïve or are isolationists or, frankly, some more explicitly against Israel." A former senior official of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC also endorsed that view, stating that "the pro Israel community … will stick with Joe Lieberman."
Lieberman has never counted the costs to the United States of pursuing Israeli objectives in the Middle East. He continues to be a vocal supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, frequently mentioning Saddam's alleged links to terrorists and invoking a variation of the White House line that if the U.S. does not fight terrorists in Iraq it will be necessary to fight them in New Haven. In 1998 he co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Baghdad official U.S. policy. His regular forays to Baghdad have convinced him that Iraq has been transformed from "primitive, killing tyranny" into "modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood." He saw clear evidence by 2005 of the democratization of Iraq: "Progress is visible … there are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones." More recently, he enthusiastically supported last summer's Israeli invasion of Lebanon and has tried to make Syria the newest member of the axis of evil, claiming without any evidence that it is Syria "through which up to 80 percent of the Iraq-bound extremists transit. Indeed, even terrorists from countries that directly border Iraq travel by land via Syria to Iraq, instead of directly from their home countries, because of the permissive environment for terrorism that the Syrian government has fostered."
Lieberman has also been front and center in taking on the thorny problem of Iran, promoting a military response as the most effective option. In an April 2006 interview in the Jerusalem Post, he freely discussed using military force to disarm Iran, noting that the U.S. had learned a lesson from both Osama bin Laden and Hitler that "sometimes when people say really extreme things … they may actually mean it." In December 2006, Lieberman followed up by explaining that he opposed direct talks with Iran because it would be like going to "your local fire department asking a couple of arsonists to help put out the fire. These people are flaming the fire. They are extremists." On Dec. 29, 2006, Lieberman wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he explained the situation in the Middle East in simple terms: "On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States."
On June 10, 2007, Lieberman told Face the Nation, "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me that would include a strike into … over the border into Iran … where they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers." He later stated that "By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers," and, for good measure, he added that if Iran is not willing to live "according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can't just talk to them." On the following day, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said "It sure does," after being asked if the Lieberman statement would make it easier for the White House to consider an attack against Iran.
On July 6, 2007, Lieberman wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he claimed, "The Iranian government, by its actions, has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East. American now has a solemn responsibility to utilize the instruments of our national power to convince Tehran to change its behavior," employing "credible force" because Iran is bringing "about the death of American service members in Iraq." He described, without providing any evidence, how the "Iranian government has been using the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to train and organize Iraqi extremists, who are responsible in turn for the murder of American service members." He called Iran's role as "hostile and violent" and complained that Tehran's "fanatical government" demonstrates "expansionistic, extremist behavior." After again referring to Iran's "fanatical regime," he cited "attacks on American soldiers" as a reason why Iran "must be confronted head on."
Lieberman was the co-sponsor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the recently passed defense appropriations bill, which passed by a Senate vote of 76 to 22 on Sept. 26, 2007. The amendment stated that "the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility against the United States."
Lieberman's press release on the subject, dated July 11, 2007, accused Iran of "murdering our troops" and quoted Sen. John Kyl, who blamed Iran for "actively supporting terrorists who are killing our troops in Iraq." When the Kyl-Lieberman amendment was debated in the Senate, James Webb of Virginia said, "At best, it's a deliberate attempt to divert attention from a failed diplomatic policy. At worst, it could be read as a backdoor method of gaining congressional validation for military action, without one hearing and without serious debate." Webb also called the amendment "Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream" and noted correctly that the attempt to categorize the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary guard as a "foreign terrorist organization" would mandate military action against Iran: "What do we do with terrorist organizations? … We attack them."
There is hardly any point in identifying Lieberman's numerous errors in fact in an attempt to refute his assertions, as he is ideologically driven and not interested in the truth. His sloganeering is more in the nature of propaganda than a careful consideration of policy options or the U.S.' national interests. He twists and embroiders the facts to enable him to rule out speaking to Iran while at the same time blaming it for all of the problems in the region. Lieberman also disregards the reality in Iraq, which is that Iran is deeply embedded there as a result of the United States' invasion, which removed Tehran's traditional rival and empowered the Shia.
Lieberman repeats over and over again that American soldiers are being killed by Iran. Apparently, the neocons have found it too difficult to make the case that Iran is actually seeking a nuclear weapon. That American soldiers are being killed through the active intervention of the Iranian government is in any event debatable, and most of the international media appears to believe that the allegations lack hard evidence. That many Americans do not see the need to attack Iran does not faze Sen. Joseph Isadore Lieberman, a man of self-proclaimed principle who obviously has clearer vision and knows better than his fellow countrymen what is right and what is wrong. If Iran turns into a major catastrophe not only for the U.S. and Iran but also for the entire region, will Lieberman take the blame as a principal enabler of the war so desired by Norman Podhoretz? If Lieberman's lack of contrition over Iraq is anything to go by, almost certainly not.
Neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz has written that "as an American and as a Jew" he prays that President George W. Bush will attack Iran. He rests his case on his belief that 2007 is really 1938, that Iran is Nazi Germany, and that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler. His most recent book, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, was described by a reviewer as "a hectoring, often illogical screed based on cherry-picked facts and blustering assertions (often made without any supporting evidence), a book that furiously hurls accusations of cowardice, anti-Americanism, and sheer venality at any and all opponents of the Bush doctrine, be they on the right or the left."
Unlike people who subscribe to the view that a war with Iran would be a catastrophe for the United States, Podhoretz reportedly has regular access to the White House to promote his insightful historical analysis. But as Podhoretz is not in government and he controls no carrier groups, he has only a limited capability to bring about his dream of an emasculated Iran to take its place alongside an emasculated Iraq and a presumably soon-to-be emasculated Syria.
But while Podhoretz cannot start a war alone, there are plenty of others in the government, including Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council's Elliott Abrams, who share his enthusiasm for a preemptive attack on Iran. The leader of Congress' Iran hawks is undoubtedly Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Lieberman, currently an independent, has long been regarded as a "conservative Democrat," but his voting record reveals that his conservatism is largely limited to foreign policy and more specifically to the Middle East, where he is a strong and uncritical defender of Israel. When he successfully ran for reelection as an independent in Connecticut in 2006, he accused his Democratic opponent Ned Lamont of not being a forceful enough advocate for Israel, claiming that Lamont was "surrounded by people who are either naïve or are isolationists or, frankly, some more explicitly against Israel." A former senior official of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC also endorsed that view, stating that "the pro Israel community … will stick with Joe Lieberman."
Lieberman has never counted the costs to the United States of pursuing Israeli objectives in the Middle East. He continues to be a vocal supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, frequently mentioning Saddam's alleged links to terrorists and invoking a variation of the White House line that if the U.S. does not fight terrorists in Iraq it will be necessary to fight them in New Haven. In 1998 he co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Baghdad official U.S. policy. His regular forays to Baghdad have convinced him that Iraq has been transformed from "primitive, killing tyranny" into "modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood." He saw clear evidence by 2005 of the democratization of Iraq: "Progress is visible … there are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones." More recently, he enthusiastically supported last summer's Israeli invasion of Lebanon and has tried to make Syria the newest member of the axis of evil, claiming without any evidence that it is Syria "through which up to 80 percent of the Iraq-bound extremists transit. Indeed, even terrorists from countries that directly border Iraq travel by land via Syria to Iraq, instead of directly from their home countries, because of the permissive environment for terrorism that the Syrian government has fostered."
Lieberman has also been front and center in taking on the thorny problem of Iran, promoting a military response as the most effective option. In an April 2006 interview in the Jerusalem Post, he freely discussed using military force to disarm Iran, noting that the U.S. had learned a lesson from both Osama bin Laden and Hitler that "sometimes when people say really extreme things … they may actually mean it." In December 2006, Lieberman followed up by explaining that he opposed direct talks with Iran because it would be like going to "your local fire department asking a couple of arsonists to help put out the fire. These people are flaming the fire. They are extremists." On Dec. 29, 2006, Lieberman wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he explained the situation in the Middle East in simple terms: "On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States."
On June 10, 2007, Lieberman told Face the Nation, "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me that would include a strike into … over the border into Iran … where they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers." He later stated that "By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers," and, for good measure, he added that if Iran is not willing to live "according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can't just talk to them." On the following day, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said "It sure does," after being asked if the Lieberman statement would make it easier for the White House to consider an attack against Iran.
On July 6, 2007, Lieberman wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he claimed, "The Iranian government, by its actions, has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East. American now has a solemn responsibility to utilize the instruments of our national power to convince Tehran to change its behavior," employing "credible force" because Iran is bringing "about the death of American service members in Iraq." He described, without providing any evidence, how the "Iranian government has been using the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to train and organize Iraqi extremists, who are responsible in turn for the murder of American service members." He called Iran's role as "hostile and violent" and complained that Tehran's "fanatical government" demonstrates "expansionistic, extremist behavior." After again referring to Iran's "fanatical regime," he cited "attacks on American soldiers" as a reason why Iran "must be confronted head on."
Lieberman was the co-sponsor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the recently passed defense appropriations bill, which passed by a Senate vote of 76 to 22 on Sept. 26, 2007. The amendment stated that "the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility against the United States."
Lieberman's press release on the subject, dated July 11, 2007, accused Iran of "murdering our troops" and quoted Sen. John Kyl, who blamed Iran for "actively supporting terrorists who are killing our troops in Iraq." When the Kyl-Lieberman amendment was debated in the Senate, James Webb of Virginia said, "At best, it's a deliberate attempt to divert attention from a failed diplomatic policy. At worst, it could be read as a backdoor method of gaining congressional validation for military action, without one hearing and without serious debate." Webb also called the amendment "Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream" and noted correctly that the attempt to categorize the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary guard as a "foreign terrorist organization" would mandate military action against Iran: "What do we do with terrorist organizations? … We attack them."
There is hardly any point in identifying Lieberman's numerous errors in fact in an attempt to refute his assertions, as he is ideologically driven and not interested in the truth. His sloganeering is more in the nature of propaganda than a careful consideration of policy options or the U.S.' national interests. He twists and embroiders the facts to enable him to rule out speaking to Iran while at the same time blaming it for all of the problems in the region. Lieberman also disregards the reality in Iraq, which is that Iran is deeply embedded there as a result of the United States' invasion, which removed Tehran's traditional rival and empowered the Shia.
Lieberman repeats over and over again that American soldiers are being killed by Iran. Apparently, the neocons have found it too difficult to make the case that Iran is actually seeking a nuclear weapon. That American soldiers are being killed through the active intervention of the Iranian government is in any event debatable, and most of the international media appears to believe that the allegations lack hard evidence. That many Americans do not see the need to attack Iran does not faze Sen. Joseph Isadore Lieberman, a man of self-proclaimed principle who obviously has clearer vision and knows better than his fellow countrymen what is right and what is wrong. If Iran turns into a major catastrophe not only for the U.S. and Iran but also for the entire region, will Lieberman take the blame as a principal enabler of the war so desired by Norman Podhoretz? If Lieberman's lack of contrition over Iraq is anything to go by, almost certainly not.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Zombie Nation
Cowardice, Complicity and the Withering of the Soul of America
by DAVID PENNER - Nov 2, 2007
As The Office of the Vice President continues to scheme and plot for war with Iran, which would also likely correspond with martial law at home, the American worker continues to sink deeper and deeper into a horrifying abyss of economic, moral, and spiritual slavery. Even during the worst days of the Depression, never was the American worker more crushed, more beaten, more defeated. Never was he more atomized, more alienated, more alone.
Listen to what people are talking about on TV, on the streets, and in restaurants, and it is clear the American people are pathologically disconnected from reality. This disconnection from reality is particularly pronounced in both the media and academia, where the most critical issues of our time are either completely ignored, or drowned in a barrage of hyperbole and euphemistic blather. It is as if, due to so many decades of brainwashing, Americans are no longer capable of reason, no longer capable of independent thought.
It is also becoming harder and harder to obtain a good paying job without compromising oneself ideologically due to the destruction of the public sphere. The role that the military and prison industrial complexes play in providing employment, and the role played by the media and the education system in indoctrination, pose grave questions about whether constitutional democracy and American capitalism can continue to coexist, or whether the elite will sever the marriage entirely ushering in a military form of government. The unprecedented domination of work in American society, and the cult of placing one's career above and beyond all other considerations, has dehumanized the American people and turned them into collaborators.
In the education system, where universities are increasingly owned lock, stock and barrel by corporations (many universities are corporations), free market dogma reigns unchallenged. The education system, together with the unprecedented power of the mass media, have ushered in a brave new world where Newspeak reigns over the enlightenment, madness over empiricism, and barbarism over reason.
As Americans, we are so fond of saying how we have freedom of speech, but all too often, this simply is not so. How many students at expensive private colleges are permitted to speak out against any number of the vast myriad of unspeakable issues: the destruction of families and communities in American society, the likelihood of war on Iran, the prison-industrial complex, the use of outsourcing and offshoring to destroy unions, the current genocide being waged against black Americans, the censorship in American society? If a student wants to get good grades so as to be able to secure a good paying job later on, the rules are clear: say what you are supposed to say, write what you're supposed to write: shut up and do as you're told. The almost total absence of meaningful intellectual discussion in many colleges and universities, along with the unprecedented corporate consolidation of the media, has put American society in a totalitarian ideological vice. Tenured liberal professors, or even professors that secretly harbor genuinely radical views, often think things privately that they would never dream of saying in class.
The American worker is more enslaved to his employer than ever before, but instead of rebelling against this enslavement, he feels resistance to be impossible or too dangerous to risk, or he embraces it as proof of his toughness and loyalty to his country.
Public school teachers that teach poor and disadvantaged students are under enormous pressures by authoritarian administrators to keep the level as low as possible and to not intellectually challenge their students. Those who resist are marginalized, harassed, and eventually forced out. This tyranny is blindly embraced in the name of multiculturalism, and enforced by morally bankrupt liberals who view students in troubled inner city schools as incapable of serious academic work.
The liberal adage "You have to work within the system" embodies the total moral spiritual, and intellectual collapse of the American people. The Democrats "work within the system," and consequently we have a one party system. Tenured liberal professors have worked within the system, and have gotten so good at it that they have become the system, feeding Amy Tan and The House on Mango Street to poor students so as to keep them illiterate in the name of protecting diversity.
Expensive private colleges are dominated by almost total unanimity of thought in the liberal arts and social sciences, particularly in politics and economics. What are one's chances of getting hired for a tenure-track economics position at a four-year university when you have written polemics attacking the impoverishment of third world countries by the World Bank and IMF? Almost zero. Is this our great freedom, our great liberty of thought? This overwhelming pressure to conform ideologically in the legal system, the media, and academia, and the relentless pressures to be as obsequious and sycophantic as possible at work, is a cancer that is slowly tearing at the heart of American civilization.
Blind obedience and brainwashing through Newspeak begin in school. The media, and other social pressures complete the process. The destruction of family and community life has made resistance at work extraordinarily difficult, because the loss of a decent job that can so easily come from speaking out against unconscionable abuses of power, puts the now atomized American in a void, a zone of nothingness, a banishment into purgatory.
Americans are constantly lying to themselves about the degree to which they have allowed themselves to become ideologically compromised at work. Even more disturbing than the collapse of the New Deal is the inherently reactionary nature of so many jobs in the twenty first century United States. It is almost absurd to talk about unions if you work for the military and are assisting in the manufacturing of new weapons. Jobs in the mass media and mainstream press are often equally as dubious. The education system, viewed by liberals from the 1960's in such an innocent light, bears at least as much responsibility as the media in the lobotomizing of the American mind.
Instead of desperately trying to ward off a looming martial law, Americans are busy trying to get ahead at work. Fascism hasn't come to America with rallies and bonfires but in the fight for the corner office.
Take a good look at what Americans will put up with at ten dollars an hour, and it is clear that unionization and solidarity have reached their nadir in American history.
The idea of not making much money, yet waking up in the morning and feeling good about oneself is a myth if you are a public school teacher whose hands are tied by anti-literacy administrators, or a defense attorney forced to betray clients and plea bargain innocent people into jail.
There is still time for the American worker to awake and take back his country. There is still time to resist, to stand up for freedom of expression and worker's rights. For the elite are rapidly taking us to a place where it may soon no longer be possible to resist. Once that Rubicon is crossed, there will be naught but demons all around us, the bough will be broken, and constitutional democracy will drown in a sea of death and darkness.
by DAVID PENNER - Nov 2, 2007
As The Office of the Vice President continues to scheme and plot for war with Iran, which would also likely correspond with martial law at home, the American worker continues to sink deeper and deeper into a horrifying abyss of economic, moral, and spiritual slavery. Even during the worst days of the Depression, never was the American worker more crushed, more beaten, more defeated. Never was he more atomized, more alienated, more alone.
Listen to what people are talking about on TV, on the streets, and in restaurants, and it is clear the American people are pathologically disconnected from reality. This disconnection from reality is particularly pronounced in both the media and academia, where the most critical issues of our time are either completely ignored, or drowned in a barrage of hyperbole and euphemistic blather. It is as if, due to so many decades of brainwashing, Americans are no longer capable of reason, no longer capable of independent thought.
It is also becoming harder and harder to obtain a good paying job without compromising oneself ideologically due to the destruction of the public sphere. The role that the military and prison industrial complexes play in providing employment, and the role played by the media and the education system in indoctrination, pose grave questions about whether constitutional democracy and American capitalism can continue to coexist, or whether the elite will sever the marriage entirely ushering in a military form of government. The unprecedented domination of work in American society, and the cult of placing one's career above and beyond all other considerations, has dehumanized the American people and turned them into collaborators.
In the education system, where universities are increasingly owned lock, stock and barrel by corporations (many universities are corporations), free market dogma reigns unchallenged. The education system, together with the unprecedented power of the mass media, have ushered in a brave new world where Newspeak reigns over the enlightenment, madness over empiricism, and barbarism over reason.
As Americans, we are so fond of saying how we have freedom of speech, but all too often, this simply is not so. How many students at expensive private colleges are permitted to speak out against any number of the vast myriad of unspeakable issues: the destruction of families and communities in American society, the likelihood of war on Iran, the prison-industrial complex, the use of outsourcing and offshoring to destroy unions, the current genocide being waged against black Americans, the censorship in American society? If a student wants to get good grades so as to be able to secure a good paying job later on, the rules are clear: say what you are supposed to say, write what you're supposed to write: shut up and do as you're told. The almost total absence of meaningful intellectual discussion in many colleges and universities, along with the unprecedented corporate consolidation of the media, has put American society in a totalitarian ideological vice. Tenured liberal professors, or even professors that secretly harbor genuinely radical views, often think things privately that they would never dream of saying in class.
The American worker is more enslaved to his employer than ever before, but instead of rebelling against this enslavement, he feels resistance to be impossible or too dangerous to risk, or he embraces it as proof of his toughness and loyalty to his country.
Public school teachers that teach poor and disadvantaged students are under enormous pressures by authoritarian administrators to keep the level as low as possible and to not intellectually challenge their students. Those who resist are marginalized, harassed, and eventually forced out. This tyranny is blindly embraced in the name of multiculturalism, and enforced by morally bankrupt liberals who view students in troubled inner city schools as incapable of serious academic work.
The liberal adage "You have to work within the system" embodies the total moral spiritual, and intellectual collapse of the American people. The Democrats "work within the system," and consequently we have a one party system. Tenured liberal professors have worked within the system, and have gotten so good at it that they have become the system, feeding Amy Tan and The House on Mango Street to poor students so as to keep them illiterate in the name of protecting diversity.
Expensive private colleges are dominated by almost total unanimity of thought in the liberal arts and social sciences, particularly in politics and economics. What are one's chances of getting hired for a tenure-track economics position at a four-year university when you have written polemics attacking the impoverishment of third world countries by the World Bank and IMF? Almost zero. Is this our great freedom, our great liberty of thought? This overwhelming pressure to conform ideologically in the legal system, the media, and academia, and the relentless pressures to be as obsequious and sycophantic as possible at work, is a cancer that is slowly tearing at the heart of American civilization.
Blind obedience and brainwashing through Newspeak begin in school. The media, and other social pressures complete the process. The destruction of family and community life has made resistance at work extraordinarily difficult, because the loss of a decent job that can so easily come from speaking out against unconscionable abuses of power, puts the now atomized American in a void, a zone of nothingness, a banishment into purgatory.
Americans are constantly lying to themselves about the degree to which they have allowed themselves to become ideologically compromised at work. Even more disturbing than the collapse of the New Deal is the inherently reactionary nature of so many jobs in the twenty first century United States. It is almost absurd to talk about unions if you work for the military and are assisting in the manufacturing of new weapons. Jobs in the mass media and mainstream press are often equally as dubious. The education system, viewed by liberals from the 1960's in such an innocent light, bears at least as much responsibility as the media in the lobotomizing of the American mind.
Instead of desperately trying to ward off a looming martial law, Americans are busy trying to get ahead at work. Fascism hasn't come to America with rallies and bonfires but in the fight for the corner office.
Take a good look at what Americans will put up with at ten dollars an hour, and it is clear that unionization and solidarity have reached their nadir in American history.
The idea of not making much money, yet waking up in the morning and feeling good about oneself is a myth if you are a public school teacher whose hands are tied by anti-literacy administrators, or a defense attorney forced to betray clients and plea bargain innocent people into jail.
There is still time for the American worker to awake and take back his country. There is still time to resist, to stand up for freedom of expression and worker's rights. For the elite are rapidly taking us to a place where it may soon no longer be possible to resist. Once that Rubicon is crossed, there will be naught but demons all around us, the bough will be broken, and constitutional democracy will drown in a sea of death and darkness.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Obama pledges new relationship with Iran
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois waves to a crowd Monday during a rally in Charlottesville, Va. In an interview on Wednesday, Obama told The New York Times that forging a new relationship with Iran would be a major element of what he pledged would be a broad effort to stabilize Iraq.It's interesting how many of the Establishment Presidential Candidates are slowly and very quietly shifting their positions to sound more and more like Ron Paul!
He says diplomacy part of an effort to stabilize Iraq, bring troops home
By Michael R. Gordon and Jeff Zeleny, NY Times - Nov. 1, 2007
Senator Barack Obama said he would “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran if elected president, and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek “regime change” if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues.
In an hourlong interview on Wednesday, Mr. Obama made clear that forging a new relationship with Iran would be a major element of what he pledged would be a broad effort to stabilize Iraq as he executed a speedy timetable for the withdrawal of American combat troops.
Mr. Obama said that Iran had been “acting irresponsibly” by supporting Shiite militant groups in Iraq. He also emphasized that Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program and its support for “terrorist activities” were serious concerns.
But he asserted that Iran’s support for militant groups in Iraq reflected its anxiety over the Bush administration’s policies in the region, including talk of a possible American military strike on Iranian nuclear installations.
Making clear that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions, Mr. Obama emphasized further that “changes in behavior” by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization , other economic benefits and security guarantees.
“We are willing to talk about certain assurances in the context of them showing some good faith,” he said in the interview at his campaign headquarters here. “I think it is important for us to send a signal that we are not hellbent on regime change, just for the sake of regime change, but expect changes in behavior. And there are both carrots and there are sticks available to them for those changes in behavior.”
Distinguishing himself
In his Democratic presidential bid, Mr. Obama has vigorously sought to distinguish himself on foreign policy from his rivals, particularly Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, by asserting that he would sit down for diplomatic meetings with countries like Iran, North Korea and Syria with no preconditions.
The suggestion, which emerged as flash point in the campaign, has prompted Mrs. Clinton to question whether such an approach would amount to little more than a propaganda victory for the United States’s adversaries and to question the experience of Mr. Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois. Other Democrats, in turn, have criticized Mrs. Clinton for an approach to Iran they called too hawkish.
Mr. Obama’s willingness to conduct talks at the highest level with Iran also differs significantly from the Bush administration. The administration has authorized Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to discuss Iraq with Iranian officials. But the White House has also said it will not engage in high-level talks on other issues unless Iran first suspends its program to enrich uranium. Nor has the Bush administration advertised in such detail the possible rewards for a change of Iranian behavior.
Obama: Looking forward on Iraq
Through most of the interview, Mr. Obama spoke without referring to notes. At one point near the end of the session, he leaned forward in his chair and looked at a yellow legal pad on the table in front of him, which listed points where he believed he and Mrs. Clinton differ on how to go forward in Iraq.
“You don’t want to look backwards, but obviously our general view about this mission as a whole has been very different,” Mr. Obama said. “She missed the strategic interests that should have dictated whether we went to Iraq in the first place or not.”
Mrs. Clinton has said that after carrying out major troop withdrawals she would leave a residual force in Iraq to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia , battle other terrorist groups, train the Iraqi Army and deter Iranian intervention.
Mr. Obama has also talked about keeping a limited force in Iraq after withdrawing American combat units at the rate of one or two per month. But Mr. Obama insisted in the interview that the mission of his residual force would be more limited than that posited by Mrs. Clinton.
Details of residual force idea
Mr. Obama said, for example, that the part of the residual force assigned to counterterrorism might be based outside Iraq. He also emphasized that the residual force would not have the mission of deterring Iranian involvement in Iraq. He said he would commit to training Iraqi security forces only if the Iraqi government engaged in political reconciliation and did not employ the Iraqi Army and police for sectarian purposes. In any event, he said, American trainers would not be attached with Iraqi units that go in harm’s way.
“The trainers are going to have to be provided with missions that don’t put them in vulnerable situations,” he said. “Part of what my goal is is that the trainers are not constantly embedded in combat operations.” Whether such a limited force could effectively influence events in Iraq is an important question. Keeping the part of the force assigned to counterterrorism outside the country raises the issue of whether it could respond in a timely way and without the benefit of the sort of intelligence that is gathered by forces that regularly interact with Iraqi civilians. Nor is it clear how, without keeping some combat forces in the country, the American military might rush to the aid of any trainers if they came under attack.
Mr. Obama acknowledged in the interview that there were “legitimate questions” as to how his concept of a residual force might work, and said he would adjust it if necessary after discussions with senior military leaders.
“As commander in chief, I’m not going to leave trainers unprotected. In our counterterrorism efforts, I’m not going to have a situation where our efforts can’t be successful,” he said. “If the commanders tell me that they need X, Y and Z, in order to accomplish the very narrow mission that I’ve laid out, then I will take that into consideration.”
An aggressive policy
For all his efforts to emphasize an approach that calls for minimal military involvement in Iraq, Mr. Obama’s plan is in one respect more ambitious than Mrs. Clinton’s. While Mr. Obama said he hoped to withdraw all American combat forces within 16 months of taking office, his plan states that American and allied troops should be prepared to return to Iraq and protect civilians if there were genocidal attacks against civilians.
“I do not anticipate that happening, because I think we can execute our withdrawal in an effective way,” he said. “What I am saying is that I as president am obviously going to be mindful of the possibility of humanitarian disaster and if that were to occur, I am not ruling out that we wouldn’t take steps in concert with other nations — even if it was short term — to ensure that a wholesale disaster did not take place.”
Mr. Obama argued that it was “too speculative” to say if the United States would undertake such action unilaterally or only if allied nations chose to participate.
Other aspects of his policy for the Middle East region also remain unclear. Mr. Obama declined to say if he would consider military action if Iran did not abandon its presumed nuclear weapons program or if he would settle for a strategy of deterring and containing a nuclear-armed Iran.
“My decision making, with respect to military options versus diplomatic options, a containment strategy versus a strike strategy, is going to be informed by how is that going to impact not just Iran,” he said, “but how is that going to impact the stability of the region and how’s that going to impact our long-term security interests.”
Obama visited Iraq
Mr. Obama, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, visited Iraq in January 2006. Asked whether that was his last visit, given how much events on the ground have changed since then, he jumped in before the question was finished, saying, “Given how important this is, why haven’t I gone back?”
“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “Part of it is that my schedule is such that the trips would be one or two days and would be centered around the Green Zone.” He added: “I suspect we will be going back. It probably won’t before Iowa, realistically speaking.” The Iowa caucuses are scheduled for Jan. 3.
(Mrs. Clinton has been to Iraq three times, her aides said.)
Mr. Obama has implored voters to consider his judgment in foreign policy, reminding audiences at political rallies and in television commercials that he spoke out against the Iraq war from the beginning, two years before he was elected to the Senate. That judgment, he said, would be carried over to selecting people to fill his administration.
He said his views were shaped by his foreign policy advisers, including Richard Danzig, who was Navy secretary under President Bill Clinton; Anthony Lake, a national security adviser in the Clinton administration; Susan E. Rice, an assistant secretary of state for African affairs under Mr. Clinton; Scott Gration, a retired Air Force major general; and Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, now retired, a former chief of staff of the Air Force.
Asked whom he would appoint as defense secretary or to important national security positions, Mr. Obama said he would consider “the best person, regardless of party.”
A Trail of American Blood: From the White House to CBS
by Rev. WILLIAM E. ALBERTS - Oct 31, 2007
A classic denial of reality is seen in the defensive reactions of CBS "60 Minutes" reporter Scott Pelley in his September 23, 2007 interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Pelley's defensiveness is an attempt to deny the reality of an American foreign policy soaked in blood: "The American people believe . . . your country is a terrorist nation," and that "you have American blood on your hands," because "it is an established fact now that Iranian bombs and know-how are killing Americans in Iraq." Ahmadinejad responded that "American officials" were making that charge to divert attention from their failed policy in Iraq, a policy opposed by many Americans, and that he was "amazed" that Pelley, "representing a media and . . . a reporter" would "speak for . . . 300 million" Americans. Pelley repeated, "Many Americans believe that you have American blood on your hands." Scott Pelley and CBS do not want the American people to know who really has "American blood" on their hands.
CBS itself has "American blood" on its hands. On February 5, 2003, CBS's "60 Minutes II" presented a program designed to build public support for pre-emptive war against Iraq called, "The Case Against Saddam" [italics added]. "The Case" began with Secretary of State Colin Powell, fresh from his blatantly false, dishonorable UN presentation on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction that morning, telling host Dan Rather, "I spent most of the last four days going over every sentence in my statement. . . . What you see is the truth . . . I think I put forward a case today that said . . . there are many smoking guns."
CBS's "The Case Against Saddam" followed Secretary of State Powell with a clip of Saddam Hussein in a recent rare interview saying, "I tell you, as I have said on many occasions before, that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq whatsoever. And we challenge those who say the opposite to give the simplist proof. These weapons are not aspirin pills that one can have in his pockets."
"60 Minutes II" commentator Bob Simon then introduced CBS News consultant and Johns Hopkins University professor of Middle Eastern Studies Fouad Ajami "to help us make sense of Saddam's answers" [italics added]. Ajami responded, "The charm of Saddam Hussein. If you will, in a very perverse way, is this attempt to seem like a reasonable man." But he is not: as Ajami then explained, "Saddam . . . gets this softball question: 'Do you have weapons of mass destruction?' He says, 'you can't hide them.' Well, in fact we know you can hide them."
CBS News Consultant Fouad Ajami's "own judgment is that the people of Iraq will not fight for Saddam Hussein." His "own guess [is] that were we to enter Baghdad when the time comes to do so [italics added], it will be exactly a repeat of what happened in Kabal when the Americans came into Afghanistan and were greeted by kites and music and boom boxes, and people were glad to be rid of the Taliban."(Feb. 5, 2003)
Tragically for the lifeblood of Iraqi and US citizens alike, Fouad Ajami obviously was saying what he thought CBS and the Bush administration wanted to hear. There is no "music to anyone's ears in Afghanistan or Iraq today. In fact, a recent United Nation's report states that "violence in Afghanistan has surged nearly 30% this year and suicide bombings are inflicting a high toll on civilians." ("Afghan violence up 30 percent, UN says," by Jason Straziuso and Rahim Faiez, Associated Press, The Boston Globe, Oct. 3, 2007)
Nor were weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, nor ties to the horrible attack against America on 9/11/01, as the Bush administration repeatedly charged to justify its fear-and-war-mongering invasion and occupation of Iraq. There is only ground soaked with much Iraqi and American blood.
Bob Simon ended "The Case Against Saddam" by saying "The interview is vintage Saddam." It was actually "vintage" CBS news that's fit to cover up the Bush administration's blood-soaked foreign policy for oil and empire. Blood for oil.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? Secretary of State Colin Powell's dramatic falsely-based indictment of a weapons of mass destruction "armed" Iraq before the UN was not only reported but affirmed by many in mainstream media. "Powell's briefing was not only breathtaking in scope but utterly convincing," Boston Globe colunist H.D.S. Greenway wrote in a piece called "A compelling case is made for action." (Feb. 7, 2003) "Powell has convinced me," was the title of syndicated columnist Mary McGrory's piece, "and I was as tough as France to convince," she wrote. (The Boston Globe, Feb. 8, 2003) New York Times writer William Safire's column hailed Powell's "proof of Saddam's cover-up" as "irrefutable and undeniable." (Feb. 6, 2003) A New York Times editorial said that "Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the United Nations and a global television audience yesterday with the most powerful case to date that Saddam Hussein stands in defiance of Security Council resolutions and has no intention of revealing or surrendering whatever unconventional weapons he may have." (Feb. 6, 2003). And there was New York Times writer Judith Miller taking falsehoods of US administration and military officials and Iraqi exiles and spinning terrifying front-page stories of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. (See "The New York Times' role in promoting war in Iraq," by Antony Loewenstein, Fairfax Digital, Mar. 23, 2004.)
Boston Globe media writer Mark Jurkowitz's piece entitled "Powell's UN speech proves persuasive for commentators" began, "Secretary of State Colin Powell's dramatic Feb. 5 presentation at the UN may not have convinced the French, German or Russians of the need to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. But is seemed to work wonders on opinion makers and editorial shakers in the media universe." Jurkowitz's conclusion was based on two studies of the editorials in many of the nation's largest newspapers before and after Powell's speech: one survey found "those considered 'war skeptics' plummeted from 29 to 11." (Feb. 13, 2003)
Who has "American blood" on their hands? Many mainstream media played a largely advocacy rather than an investigative role in the run-up to the Bush administration's criminal war of choice against Iraq. The following Boston Globe editorials, most written long before Secretary of State Powell's UN presentation, are believed to be typical of widespread uncritical dominant media acceptance and promotion of the Bush administration's "Case Against Saddam." "Bush was fittingly candid in saying that 'though all options are on the table,' the 'one thing I will not allow is a nation such as Iraq to threaten our very future by developing weapons of mass destruction.' In reality," the editorial continued, "Saddam already has large quantities of chemical and biological weapons [italics added]. (Mar. 15, 2002) "[Britian Prime Minister Tony] Blair's lucid truth [italics added] is that . . . the world cannot allow such a mass murderer to threaten the use of weapons of mass destruction." (Sept. 29, 2002) "The surest way to unveil his weapons of mass destruction[italics added] is to make certain [Hans] Blix [chief UN weapons inspector] brings knowledgeable Iraqi scientists and officials out of Iraq with their families so that they can tell the truth without fear. The international community can then free Iraqis from Saddam's tyranny." (Dec. 6, 2002) "The particular means for liberating Iraqis [from "Saddam's police state"] will be less important in the long run [italics added] than the character of the government that comes after Saddam's fall." (June 19, 2002) "If U.S. action in coming months leads to Saddam Hussein's overthrow, there will be jubilation in Iraq [italics added] that the monster who murdered and tortured so many people and ruined the life of entire generations is finally gone." (Oct. 21, 2002) "Nothing could mean more to the reputation of America in the world [italics added] than for Bush to keep his promise to support a democratic future for Iraqis after the long nightmare of Saddam's regime." (Mar. 18, 2003)
Who has "American blood" on their hands? The dominant uncritical daily widespread advance billing of many mainstream media was "Showdown with Iraq." A media image was presented of Saddam Hussein waiting in the desert at high noon with weapons of mass destruction hidden in the sand, ready to take on the deadliest "dead-or-alive" gun-fighting superpower in the West-and that superpower's British sidekick to boot. Coming soon to your living room television screen: the Mother of all reality shows. A predominantly pro-Bush administration American media then presented a "sanitized" war for our patriotic viewing, reading and listening pleasure. Nightly "shock and awe" bombs bursting in air, as entertaining "fireworks over Baghdad," on our television screens. With the blood-spattered lives of dead Iraqi men, women and children hidden under media-glamorized "precision" and "smart" bombs. The war-marketing slogan: "We aim to please!"
Who has "American blood" on their hands? In a pre-war Action Alert called "Do Media Know That War Kills?," Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) reveals the culpability of mainstream media: "Despite daily reports about the 'showdown' with Iraq, Americans heard very little from mainstream media about the most basic fact of war: People will be killed and civilian infrastructure will be destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops." FAIR found, "Since the beginning of the year, according to a search of the Nexis database (1/1/03 3/12/03), none of the three major television networks' nightly national newscasts ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, or NBC Nightly News have examined in detail what long-term impact war will have on humanitarian conditions in Iraq. They've also downplayed the immediate civilian deaths that will be caused by a U.S. attack." (Mar. 14, 2003)
The reality of "Showdown with Iraq": "people [continue being] killed and civilian infrastructure . . . destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops." Over a million Iraqi civilians dead, the country's life-sustaining infrastructure decimated; some four million citizens forced to flee as refugees inside and outside their country; a deadly massive civil war raging, triggered by the US-led invasion and occupation; over 3800 U.S. deaths confirmed and tens of thousands wounded in body, mind and spirit; ("Casualties in Iraq-2007, antiwar.com); the terrible waste of our nation's resources; and a Bush-administration-bred mercenary "Blackwater" mentality's indiscriminate killing of Iraqi people, further inflaming Iraqi and world opinion against America. A horrible, blood-soaked international American-made criminal war and occupation, seeking to be denied and hidden by a defensive foreign reporter of a bloodstained news outlet telling Iraq's neighboring president, "Many American believe that you have American blood on your hands."
"The Case Against Saddam." "Showdown with Iraq." "The Battle for Iraq." "The Struggle for Iraq" "America in Iraq" These and other mainstream media's palatable-for-public-consumption captions change. But they cannot make culpability for the criminal sacrifice of "American [and Iraqi] blood" disappear. Smoke and mirror captions of advocacy rather than investigative American mainstream press.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? As recently as a news conference in Chicago on July 7, 2006, President Bush repeated an outright lie in front of uncritical national and local reporters: "I have always said that it's important for an American president to exhaust all diplomatic avenues before the use of force. . . . All diplomatic avenues were exhausted, as far as I was concerned, with Saddam Hussein [italics added]. (Transcript, 'President Bush Holds a News Conference in Chicago," CQ Transcripts Wire washingtonpost.com, July 7, 2006)
Reporters could have had a field day with President Bush's falsehoods. He repeatedly justified his administration's pre-emptive war against Iraq by saying, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof-and the smoking gun-that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." ("President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat," Cincinnati, Ohio, The White House, Oct. 7, 2002). And three days before invading Iraq, he warned, "The danger is clear. Using chemical, biological or one day nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambition to kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other." ("President Bush Presents 48 Hour Ultimatum," Address to the Nation, The White House, Mar. 17, 2003)
"All diplomatic options were exhausted," President Bush could even get away with repeating to reporters over three years later. Over two months before Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, an Associated Press story quoted chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix as saying, 'We have now been there [in Iraq] for some two months and been covering the country in ever widening sweeps and we haven't found any smoking guns. ("Blix Says No Smoking Guns Found in Iraq," by Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, Jan. 9, 2003). Later Blix was reported to have "lamented" the aborting of the UN inspections by Bush's invasion of Iraq. A Boston Globe story quoted Blix as saying, "I don't think it is reasonable to close the door to inspections after three-and-a-half months." He "would have welcomed some months more. . . . While inspectors followed up leads from US intelligence," the story continued, "Blix said, 'I must regret we have not found the results in so many cases.' We certainly have not found any smoking guns." (Mar. 19, 2003)
"We cannot wait for the final proof-and the smoking gun." President Bush repeatedly charged to a receptive mainstream media that Saddam Hussein was playing "a game of deception" with the UN inspectors. Bush was playing a game of deception and not Hussein. The only weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq are America's.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? A glaring example of "news" that's "print to fit" was President Bush's orchestrated March 6, 2003 news conference shortly before his administration launched its war of choice. Typical of the controlled "give-and-take" was a question from a black woman reporter: "As the nation is at odds over war, with many organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus pushing for continued diplomacy through the UN, how is your faith guiding you?" Bush replied, "I appreciate that question a lot." He then said, "My faith sustains me. Because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength . . . I pray for peace. I pray for peace." (The New York Times, Mar. 7, 2003) Two weeks later the Bush administration unleashed its long-planned pre-emptive war against Iraq-with few in mainstream media asking to whom does President Bush pray. Bush then repeatedly used his god to justify and hide his administration's blood-drenched aggression against the Iraqi people: "Freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to every man and woman in the world." ("Acceptance speech to Republican Convention Delegates," The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2004) Tell that to the millions of Iraqi mothers and fathers and children being ground under by such "freedom." The idolatry of ideology and theology used to justify high crimes. It should be painfully obvious by now: President Bush's god has "American blood" on his hands-and so much Iraqi and other Muslim blood as well.
Reporters like Scott Pelley would find instructive certain comments of Iranian President Ahmadinejad. When Pelley asked Ahmadinejad, "What do you admire in President Bush?," the Iranian president hesitated, which led Pelley to say, "Well, Mr. Bush is, without question, a very religious man [italics added] for example, as you are. I wonder if there's anything that you've seen in President Bush that you admire." A disingenuous question by a reporter who knows Bush has condemned Ahmadinejad as a tyrant, called Iran part of an "axis of evil," and has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear power facilities-which he sees as hiding a nuclear weapon-"mushroom cloud" like he did Iraq. Ahmadinejad replied, "Well, is Mr. Bush a religious man?" "Very much so. As you are," Pelley responded. Ahmadinejad then asked the question American reporters should have been asking from the moment Bush said, "I pray daily . . . for peace," and two weeks later launched his administration's criminal war. Ahmadinejad responded:
What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people? Please tell me. Does Christianity tell its followers to do that? Judaism, for that matter? Islam, for that matter? What prophet tells you to send 160,000 troops to another country, kill men, women and children? You just can't wear your religion on your sleeve or just go to church. You should be truthfully religious. Religion tells us all that you should respect the property, the life of different people. Respect human rights. Love your fellow man.
Pelley avoided Ahmadinejad's response to his assertion that "Mr. Bush is without question, a very religious man," by saying "I take it you can't think of anything you like about President Bush."
Scott Pelley's assertion that "Mr. Bush is without question, a very religious man," reveals an incredible lack of investigative skepticism and inquisitiveness.
In the face of the falsehoods underlying "The Case Against Saddam," and the bloodbath of "Showdown with Iraq," a needfully defensive Scott Pelley says to President Ahmadinejad, "But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world . . . You have American blood on your hands." And "want[ing] to be very direct and very clear," Pelley repeated, "Many Americans believe that you have American blood on your hands . . . Sir, forgive me, you're smiling," Pelley observed, "but this is a very serious matter to America." Ahmadinejad's reponse clearly indicates which one is in touch with reality and which is defending against it. "Well, it's serious for us as well. I daresay it's serious to everyone." Ahmadinejad then said,
I'm just amazed as the representative of the media, why do you insist on the untrue accusation leveled by your government? This doesn't solve anything. It seems to me it's laughable for someone to turn a blind eye to the truth and accuse others. It doesn't help. And the reason that I'm smiling again, it's because the picture's so clear. But American officials refuse to see it. And I think that as a member of the media, your responsibility here is to talk about the truth and back home to force your officials to appreciate the truth and to take the correct decision. . . . Many thousands of American soldiers have been killed. They need to answer for their action. Instead of answering those questions, they are accusing others."
Scott Pelley accused Ahmadinejad of "dodging the questions" and repeated, "Will you pledge tonight to do everything in your power to prevent Iranian arms from entering Iraq?," The Iranian President replied, "Well, I think you have been charged with a mission to repeat a sentence over and over again. My comments are very clear. I think you should go back and take American officials to task. Use the same force you are using right now so that they take the troops out."
The New York Times reports that "the Bush administration has been considering whether to classify the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group." (Oct. 8, 2007) The Bush administration is a terrorist group.
The "American officials" who need to hear the truth include the leading Democratic presidential candidates. In a September 26 debate in Hanover, New Hampshire, they refused to pledge to end the occupation of Iraq and bring the US forces home by 2013, the end of their presidential term, if elected. When asked if they could make such a commitment, Illinois Senator Barack Obama replied, "I think it is hard to project four years from now, and I think it would be irresponsible. We don't know what contingency will be out there." Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards responded. "I cannot make that commitment." And Senator Hillary Clinton of New York answered, " . . . I agree with Barack. It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting." ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC," Transcript, The New York Times, Sept. 26, 2007) Obama, Edwards and Clinton are willing to have "American blood" on their hands through their presidency.
Senator Clinton also appears to be willing to have "American blood" on her hands in Iran. She voted for the recent Senate resolution calling on the Bush administration to classify Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. ("Obama launches attack on Clinton over Iran," By Marcella Bombardieri, The Boston Globe, Oct. 12, 2007) And in a policy statement on "Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-first Century," appearing in the Nov./Dec. 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, she wrote, "Iran . . . must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table" (italics added). In the face of her support for the Bush administration's falsely-based, criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq, she also wrote, "Iran . . . is the country that most practices state-sponsored terrorism." She even stated, "Our quarrel is not with {the Iranian people} but with their government." Echoes of President Bush's words before US state-sponsored terrorism was unleashed on Iraq.
The commitment of the leading presidential candidates is about dodging reality. Whoever is elected president in 2008 will have "inherited" a blatant, globally condemned, international war crime against humanity that needs to be ended now. Accompanied by American-led reparations and works of restitution beginning immediately. And the glaring perpetrators of this horrific crime brought to justice before they trigger a war against Iran to further cover up their imperialistic blood for oil policies against the people of Iraq and America. Instead of a planned presidential library for George W. Bush at accommodating Southern Methodist University, there should be a jail cell in his future-and that of his vice president and other war-mongering imperialistic advisors.
Everyone bleeds human. And the lifeblood of every human being is sacred.
A classic denial of reality is seen in the defensive reactions of CBS "60 Minutes" reporter Scott Pelley in his September 23, 2007 interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Pelley's defensiveness is an attempt to deny the reality of an American foreign policy soaked in blood: "The American people believe . . . your country is a terrorist nation," and that "you have American blood on your hands," because "it is an established fact now that Iranian bombs and know-how are killing Americans in Iraq." Ahmadinejad responded that "American officials" were making that charge to divert attention from their failed policy in Iraq, a policy opposed by many Americans, and that he was "amazed" that Pelley, "representing a media and . . . a reporter" would "speak for . . . 300 million" Americans. Pelley repeated, "Many Americans believe that you have American blood on your hands." Scott Pelley and CBS do not want the American people to know who really has "American blood" on their hands.
CBS itself has "American blood" on its hands. On February 5, 2003, CBS's "60 Minutes II" presented a program designed to build public support for pre-emptive war against Iraq called, "The Case Against Saddam" [italics added]. "The Case" began with Secretary of State Colin Powell, fresh from his blatantly false, dishonorable UN presentation on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction that morning, telling host Dan Rather, "I spent most of the last four days going over every sentence in my statement. . . . What you see is the truth . . . I think I put forward a case today that said . . . there are many smoking guns."
CBS's "The Case Against Saddam" followed Secretary of State Powell with a clip of Saddam Hussein in a recent rare interview saying, "I tell you, as I have said on many occasions before, that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq whatsoever. And we challenge those who say the opposite to give the simplist proof. These weapons are not aspirin pills that one can have in his pockets."
"60 Minutes II" commentator Bob Simon then introduced CBS News consultant and Johns Hopkins University professor of Middle Eastern Studies Fouad Ajami "to help us make sense of Saddam's answers" [italics added]. Ajami responded, "The charm of Saddam Hussein. If you will, in a very perverse way, is this attempt to seem like a reasonable man." But he is not: as Ajami then explained, "Saddam . . . gets this softball question: 'Do you have weapons of mass destruction?' He says, 'you can't hide them.' Well, in fact we know you can hide them."
CBS News Consultant Fouad Ajami's "own judgment is that the people of Iraq will not fight for Saddam Hussein." His "own guess [is] that were we to enter Baghdad when the time comes to do so [italics added], it will be exactly a repeat of what happened in Kabal when the Americans came into Afghanistan and were greeted by kites and music and boom boxes, and people were glad to be rid of the Taliban."(Feb. 5, 2003)
Tragically for the lifeblood of Iraqi and US citizens alike, Fouad Ajami obviously was saying what he thought CBS and the Bush administration wanted to hear. There is no "music to anyone's ears in Afghanistan or Iraq today. In fact, a recent United Nation's report states that "violence in Afghanistan has surged nearly 30% this year and suicide bombings are inflicting a high toll on civilians." ("Afghan violence up 30 percent, UN says," by Jason Straziuso and Rahim Faiez, Associated Press, The Boston Globe, Oct. 3, 2007)
Nor were weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, nor ties to the horrible attack against America on 9/11/01, as the Bush administration repeatedly charged to justify its fear-and-war-mongering invasion and occupation of Iraq. There is only ground soaked with much Iraqi and American blood.
Bob Simon ended "The Case Against Saddam" by saying "The interview is vintage Saddam." It was actually "vintage" CBS news that's fit to cover up the Bush administration's blood-soaked foreign policy for oil and empire. Blood for oil.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? Secretary of State Colin Powell's dramatic falsely-based indictment of a weapons of mass destruction "armed" Iraq before the UN was not only reported but affirmed by many in mainstream media. "Powell's briefing was not only breathtaking in scope but utterly convincing," Boston Globe colunist H.D.S. Greenway wrote in a piece called "A compelling case is made for action." (Feb. 7, 2003) "Powell has convinced me," was the title of syndicated columnist Mary McGrory's piece, "and I was as tough as France to convince," she wrote. (The Boston Globe, Feb. 8, 2003) New York Times writer William Safire's column hailed Powell's "proof of Saddam's cover-up" as "irrefutable and undeniable." (Feb. 6, 2003) A New York Times editorial said that "Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the United Nations and a global television audience yesterday with the most powerful case to date that Saddam Hussein stands in defiance of Security Council resolutions and has no intention of revealing or surrendering whatever unconventional weapons he may have." (Feb. 6, 2003). And there was New York Times writer Judith Miller taking falsehoods of US administration and military officials and Iraqi exiles and spinning terrifying front-page stories of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. (See "The New York Times' role in promoting war in Iraq," by Antony Loewenstein, Fairfax Digital, Mar. 23, 2004.)
Boston Globe media writer Mark Jurkowitz's piece entitled "Powell's UN speech proves persuasive for commentators" began, "Secretary of State Colin Powell's dramatic Feb. 5 presentation at the UN may not have convinced the French, German or Russians of the need to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. But is seemed to work wonders on opinion makers and editorial shakers in the media universe." Jurkowitz's conclusion was based on two studies of the editorials in many of the nation's largest newspapers before and after Powell's speech: one survey found "those considered 'war skeptics' plummeted from 29 to 11." (Feb. 13, 2003)
Who has "American blood" on their hands? Many mainstream media played a largely advocacy rather than an investigative role in the run-up to the Bush administration's criminal war of choice against Iraq. The following Boston Globe editorials, most written long before Secretary of State Powell's UN presentation, are believed to be typical of widespread uncritical dominant media acceptance and promotion of the Bush administration's "Case Against Saddam." "Bush was fittingly candid in saying that 'though all options are on the table,' the 'one thing I will not allow is a nation such as Iraq to threaten our very future by developing weapons of mass destruction.' In reality," the editorial continued, "Saddam already has large quantities of chemical and biological weapons [italics added]. (Mar. 15, 2002) "[Britian Prime Minister Tony] Blair's lucid truth [italics added] is that . . . the world cannot allow such a mass murderer to threaten the use of weapons of mass destruction." (Sept. 29, 2002) "The surest way to unveil his weapons of mass destruction[italics added] is to make certain [Hans] Blix [chief UN weapons inspector] brings knowledgeable Iraqi scientists and officials out of Iraq with their families so that they can tell the truth without fear. The international community can then free Iraqis from Saddam's tyranny." (Dec. 6, 2002) "The particular means for liberating Iraqis [from "Saddam's police state"] will be less important in the long run [italics added] than the character of the government that comes after Saddam's fall." (June 19, 2002) "If U.S. action in coming months leads to Saddam Hussein's overthrow, there will be jubilation in Iraq [italics added] that the monster who murdered and tortured so many people and ruined the life of entire generations is finally gone." (Oct. 21, 2002) "Nothing could mean more to the reputation of America in the world [italics added] than for Bush to keep his promise to support a democratic future for Iraqis after the long nightmare of Saddam's regime." (Mar. 18, 2003)
Who has "American blood" on their hands? The dominant uncritical daily widespread advance billing of many mainstream media was "Showdown with Iraq." A media image was presented of Saddam Hussein waiting in the desert at high noon with weapons of mass destruction hidden in the sand, ready to take on the deadliest "dead-or-alive" gun-fighting superpower in the West-and that superpower's British sidekick to boot. Coming soon to your living room television screen: the Mother of all reality shows. A predominantly pro-Bush administration American media then presented a "sanitized" war for our patriotic viewing, reading and listening pleasure. Nightly "shock and awe" bombs bursting in air, as entertaining "fireworks over Baghdad," on our television screens. With the blood-spattered lives of dead Iraqi men, women and children hidden under media-glamorized "precision" and "smart" bombs. The war-marketing slogan: "We aim to please!"
Who has "American blood" on their hands? In a pre-war Action Alert called "Do Media Know That War Kills?," Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) reveals the culpability of mainstream media: "Despite daily reports about the 'showdown' with Iraq, Americans heard very little from mainstream media about the most basic fact of war: People will be killed and civilian infrastructure will be destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops." FAIR found, "Since the beginning of the year, according to a search of the Nexis database (1/1/03 3/12/03), none of the three major television networks' nightly national newscasts ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, or NBC Nightly News have examined in detail what long-term impact war will have on humanitarian conditions in Iraq. They've also downplayed the immediate civilian deaths that will be caused by a U.S. attack." (Mar. 14, 2003)
The reality of "Showdown with Iraq": "people [continue being] killed and civilian infrastructure . . . destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops." Over a million Iraqi civilians dead, the country's life-sustaining infrastructure decimated; some four million citizens forced to flee as refugees inside and outside their country; a deadly massive civil war raging, triggered by the US-led invasion and occupation; over 3800 U.S. deaths confirmed and tens of thousands wounded in body, mind and spirit; ("Casualties in Iraq-2007, antiwar.com); the terrible waste of our nation's resources; and a Bush-administration-bred mercenary "Blackwater" mentality's indiscriminate killing of Iraqi people, further inflaming Iraqi and world opinion against America. A horrible, blood-soaked international American-made criminal war and occupation, seeking to be denied and hidden by a defensive foreign reporter of a bloodstained news outlet telling Iraq's neighboring president, "Many American believe that you have American blood on your hands."
"The Case Against Saddam." "Showdown with Iraq." "The Battle for Iraq." "The Struggle for Iraq" "America in Iraq" These and other mainstream media's palatable-for-public-consumption captions change. But they cannot make culpability for the criminal sacrifice of "American [and Iraqi] blood" disappear. Smoke and mirror captions of advocacy rather than investigative American mainstream press.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? As recently as a news conference in Chicago on July 7, 2006, President Bush repeated an outright lie in front of uncritical national and local reporters: "I have always said that it's important for an American president to exhaust all diplomatic avenues before the use of force. . . . All diplomatic avenues were exhausted, as far as I was concerned, with Saddam Hussein [italics added]. (Transcript, 'President Bush Holds a News Conference in Chicago," CQ Transcripts Wire washingtonpost.com, July 7, 2006)
Reporters could have had a field day with President Bush's falsehoods. He repeatedly justified his administration's pre-emptive war against Iraq by saying, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof-and the smoking gun-that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." ("President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat," Cincinnati, Ohio, The White House, Oct. 7, 2002). And three days before invading Iraq, he warned, "The danger is clear. Using chemical, biological or one day nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambition to kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other." ("President Bush Presents 48 Hour Ultimatum," Address to the Nation, The White House, Mar. 17, 2003)
"All diplomatic options were exhausted," President Bush could even get away with repeating to reporters over three years later. Over two months before Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, an Associated Press story quoted chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix as saying, 'We have now been there [in Iraq] for some two months and been covering the country in ever widening sweeps and we haven't found any smoking guns. ("Blix Says No Smoking Guns Found in Iraq," by Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, Jan. 9, 2003). Later Blix was reported to have "lamented" the aborting of the UN inspections by Bush's invasion of Iraq. A Boston Globe story quoted Blix as saying, "I don't think it is reasonable to close the door to inspections after three-and-a-half months." He "would have welcomed some months more. . . . While inspectors followed up leads from US intelligence," the story continued, "Blix said, 'I must regret we have not found the results in so many cases.' We certainly have not found any smoking guns." (Mar. 19, 2003)
"We cannot wait for the final proof-and the smoking gun." President Bush repeatedly charged to a receptive mainstream media that Saddam Hussein was playing "a game of deception" with the UN inspectors. Bush was playing a game of deception and not Hussein. The only weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq are America's.
Who has "American blood" on their hands? A glaring example of "news" that's "print to fit" was President Bush's orchestrated March 6, 2003 news conference shortly before his administration launched its war of choice. Typical of the controlled "give-and-take" was a question from a black woman reporter: "As the nation is at odds over war, with many organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus pushing for continued diplomacy through the UN, how is your faith guiding you?" Bush replied, "I appreciate that question a lot." He then said, "My faith sustains me. Because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength . . . I pray for peace. I pray for peace." (The New York Times, Mar. 7, 2003) Two weeks later the Bush administration unleashed its long-planned pre-emptive war against Iraq-with few in mainstream media asking to whom does President Bush pray. Bush then repeatedly used his god to justify and hide his administration's blood-drenched aggression against the Iraqi people: "Freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to every man and woman in the world." ("Acceptance speech to Republican Convention Delegates," The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2004) Tell that to the millions of Iraqi mothers and fathers and children being ground under by such "freedom." The idolatry of ideology and theology used to justify high crimes. It should be painfully obvious by now: President Bush's god has "American blood" on his hands-and so much Iraqi and other Muslim blood as well.
Reporters like Scott Pelley would find instructive certain comments of Iranian President Ahmadinejad. When Pelley asked Ahmadinejad, "What do you admire in President Bush?," the Iranian president hesitated, which led Pelley to say, "Well, Mr. Bush is, without question, a very religious man [italics added] for example, as you are. I wonder if there's anything that you've seen in President Bush that you admire." A disingenuous question by a reporter who knows Bush has condemned Ahmadinejad as a tyrant, called Iran part of an "axis of evil," and has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear power facilities-which he sees as hiding a nuclear weapon-"mushroom cloud" like he did Iraq. Ahmadinejad replied, "Well, is Mr. Bush a religious man?" "Very much so. As you are," Pelley responded. Ahmadinejad then asked the question American reporters should have been asking from the moment Bush said, "I pray daily . . . for peace," and two weeks later launched his administration's criminal war. Ahmadinejad responded:
What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people? Please tell me. Does Christianity tell its followers to do that? Judaism, for that matter? Islam, for that matter? What prophet tells you to send 160,000 troops to another country, kill men, women and children? You just can't wear your religion on your sleeve or just go to church. You should be truthfully religious. Religion tells us all that you should respect the property, the life of different people. Respect human rights. Love your fellow man.
Pelley avoided Ahmadinejad's response to his assertion that "Mr. Bush is without question, a very religious man," by saying "I take it you can't think of anything you like about President Bush."
Scott Pelley's assertion that "Mr. Bush is without question, a very religious man," reveals an incredible lack of investigative skepticism and inquisitiveness.
In the face of the falsehoods underlying "The Case Against Saddam," and the bloodbath of "Showdown with Iraq," a needfully defensive Scott Pelley says to President Ahmadinejad, "But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world . . . You have American blood on your hands." And "want[ing] to be very direct and very clear," Pelley repeated, "Many Americans believe that you have American blood on your hands . . . Sir, forgive me, you're smiling," Pelley observed, "but this is a very serious matter to America." Ahmadinejad's reponse clearly indicates which one is in touch with reality and which is defending against it. "Well, it's serious for us as well. I daresay it's serious to everyone." Ahmadinejad then said,
I'm just amazed as the representative of the media, why do you insist on the untrue accusation leveled by your government? This doesn't solve anything. It seems to me it's laughable for someone to turn a blind eye to the truth and accuse others. It doesn't help. And the reason that I'm smiling again, it's because the picture's so clear. But American officials refuse to see it. And I think that as a member of the media, your responsibility here is to talk about the truth and back home to force your officials to appreciate the truth and to take the correct decision. . . . Many thousands of American soldiers have been killed. They need to answer for their action. Instead of answering those questions, they are accusing others."
Scott Pelley accused Ahmadinejad of "dodging the questions" and repeated, "Will you pledge tonight to do everything in your power to prevent Iranian arms from entering Iraq?," The Iranian President replied, "Well, I think you have been charged with a mission to repeat a sentence over and over again. My comments are very clear. I think you should go back and take American officials to task. Use the same force you are using right now so that they take the troops out."
The New York Times reports that "the Bush administration has been considering whether to classify the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group." (Oct. 8, 2007) The Bush administration is a terrorist group.
The "American officials" who need to hear the truth include the leading Democratic presidential candidates. In a September 26 debate in Hanover, New Hampshire, they refused to pledge to end the occupation of Iraq and bring the US forces home by 2013, the end of their presidential term, if elected. When asked if they could make such a commitment, Illinois Senator Barack Obama replied, "I think it is hard to project four years from now, and I think it would be irresponsible. We don't know what contingency will be out there." Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards responded. "I cannot make that commitment." And Senator Hillary Clinton of New York answered, " . . . I agree with Barack. It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting." ("The Democratic Presidential Debate on MSNBC," Transcript, The New York Times, Sept. 26, 2007) Obama, Edwards and Clinton are willing to have "American blood" on their hands through their presidency.
Senator Clinton also appears to be willing to have "American blood" on her hands in Iran. She voted for the recent Senate resolution calling on the Bush administration to classify Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. ("Obama launches attack on Clinton over Iran," By Marcella Bombardieri, The Boston Globe, Oct. 12, 2007) And in a policy statement on "Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-first Century," appearing in the Nov./Dec. 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, she wrote, "Iran . . . must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table" (italics added). In the face of her support for the Bush administration's falsely-based, criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq, she also wrote, "Iran . . . is the country that most practices state-sponsored terrorism." She even stated, "Our quarrel is not with {the Iranian people} but with their government." Echoes of President Bush's words before US state-sponsored terrorism was unleashed on Iraq.
The commitment of the leading presidential candidates is about dodging reality. Whoever is elected president in 2008 will have "inherited" a blatant, globally condemned, international war crime against humanity that needs to be ended now. Accompanied by American-led reparations and works of restitution beginning immediately. And the glaring perpetrators of this horrific crime brought to justice before they trigger a war against Iran to further cover up their imperialistic blood for oil policies against the people of Iraq and America. Instead of a planned presidential library for George W. Bush at accommodating Southern Methodist University, there should be a jail cell in his future-and that of his vice president and other war-mongering imperialistic advisors.
Everyone bleeds human. And the lifeblood of every human being is sacred.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
An attempt to douse the flames of war
by Khody Akhavi - Nov 1, 2007
L. Bruce Laingen was working as a senior US Foreign Service officer in Tehran in 1979 when student protestors - caught up in the fervor of Iran's Islamic Revolution - seized the US Embassy and irrevocably changed the course of relations between the two nations. Laingen and 51 other US diplomats endured 444 days in captivity until their release on January 20, 1981. On that day, as he prepared to board the Algerian airliner that would finally take him to freedom, the US charge d'affaires turned to one of his Iranian captors and said, "I look forward to the day your country and mine can have a normal diplomatic relationship."
Next Sunday will mark 28 years exactly since the US cut off diplomatic, business and military ties with Iran in response to the hostage crisis. At a discussion sponsored by the Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation at Washington's National Cathedral on Monday, panelists engaged in a sobering debate rarely seen on the US broadcast news outlets or, it seems, in the halls of Congress and the White House.
The current stakes, they agreed, could not be any higher.
The rhetoric has reached a noxious fever pitch: Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's bewildering comments on the Holocaust mixed with President George W Bush's warnings of impending "World War III" should Iran acquire the means to develop nuclear weapons.
Citing the "poison rhetoric and policy paralysis that have characterized conduct of both countries", Laingen said: "We can all agree that the wall of mistrust is damn high. It will be difficult to remove."
Against the backdrop of US failures in Iraq, Washington's bellicosity towards Iran has intensified. The Bush administration last week imposed the most sweeping set of unilateral sanctions on Iran since 1979, and proceeded with its controversial decision to brand Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a "terrorist organization" for its alleged proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the Quds Force's alleged support of "terrorism" in Iraq.
"The label of the word terrorist is so devoid of meaning now, it's hypocritical," said Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times bureau chief and author of the book All the Shah's Men, about the 1953 Central Intelligence Agency-backed coup d'etat to oust democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq.
"First we find groups around the world we don't like, then we find ways to label them as terrorists," he said, and referred the US's double standard with regard to two Kurdish separatist groups that, on either side of Iraq's borders, attack Turkish and Iranian troops.
"One [the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party] is a terrorist, the other [the Iranian Party for Free Life in Kurdistan] receives support from us," he said.
Bush's hard line has also drawn criticism from presumed international allies, such as Russia's President Vladimir Putin, who likened Washington's recent sanctions to "mad people wielding razor blades". Russia occupies a seat on the United Nations Security Council and maintains military and economic relations with Iran. Tehran remains defiant in the face of Washington's pressure to halt its nuclear program, which Washington alleges is aimed at developing nuclear weapons.
Analysts at Monday's discussion said the current tensions underscore Washington's continued inability to understand Iran, its history, culture, the aspirations of its citizens and the effects of the US's ill-fated policies on the overall psyche of Iranians.
"There is a fundamental sympathy for democracy [in Iran] ... Iranians have a democratic consciousness that is unique in the Middle East," said Kinzer.
"Had it not been for the fact that the democratic government came to power in the 1950s, and became obsessed with the great project of nationalizing the Iranian oil reserves, there wouldn't be a 1953," said Kinzer. "Had we [US] not overthrown the Mossadeq government in 1953, we might have had a thriving democracy in the heart of the Middle East for these past 50 years."
The CIA-backed coup, code-named Operation Ajaz, was carried out during president Dwight D Eisenhower's tenure and was supported by Britain. Using widespread bribery, the CIA overthrew Mossadeq and his cabinet and reinstalled Iran's unpopular pro-US dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
And had it not been for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's 1981 invasion of Iran (and US support for that invasion), the mullahs may not have been able to consolidate their political power, according to Iran specialist Trita Parsi.
"[Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini survived, not in spite of, but because of the Iraqi invasion," said Parsi. "War with Iran would result in Iranians rallying around the flag [rather than] turning away. The government would be strengthened instead of toppled. The Iranian nuclear program would more likely accelerate than be destroyed."
Kinzer also criticized the US mainstream press, which he argued "has played a very shameful role in helping to fan the flames of war, just as we did in Iraq".
"We truly have failed because we have always presented the problems with the US and Iran through the official US paradigm," said Kinzer. "This is a classic failure of the press, which is why people so easily leap to support policies that are fundamentally against our own country."
And then, there are the missed opportunities: the 2003 memorandum signed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a grand bargain in which the Iranians agreed to open the nuclear issue to full transparency, offered to stop support of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, agreed to make Hezbollah a political party (ie, disarm the militia group), and promised to help support an Iraqi government that was not sectarian. The offer was presented to the White House by former Congressman Bob Ney several weeks after the US invasion of Iraq, but was ignored.
"The Iranians profess this offer doesn't exist. It's a prime example of missed opportunities and policy paralysis that can so easily set in," said Laingen.
The evening's moderator, Republican Congressman Wayne Gilchrest, also offered his perspective: "For the Senate or House [of Representatives] to ramp up the rhetoric on the Revolutionary Guards as being terrorists, or insurgents, or rebels, only reduces the ability of that mistrust to subside," he said.
"It's beyond time for us to negotiate with Iranians. It's time for old men to talk, before they send young men to die."
L. Bruce Laingen was working as a senior US Foreign Service officer in Tehran in 1979 when student protestors - caught up in the fervor of Iran's Islamic Revolution - seized the US Embassy and irrevocably changed the course of relations between the two nations. Laingen and 51 other US diplomats endured 444 days in captivity until their release on January 20, 1981. On that day, as he prepared to board the Algerian airliner that would finally take him to freedom, the US charge d'affaires turned to one of his Iranian captors and said, "I look forward to the day your country and mine can have a normal diplomatic relationship."
Next Sunday will mark 28 years exactly since the US cut off diplomatic, business and military ties with Iran in response to the hostage crisis. At a discussion sponsored by the Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation at Washington's National Cathedral on Monday, panelists engaged in a sobering debate rarely seen on the US broadcast news outlets or, it seems, in the halls of Congress and the White House.
The current stakes, they agreed, could not be any higher.
The rhetoric has reached a noxious fever pitch: Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's bewildering comments on the Holocaust mixed with President George W Bush's warnings of impending "World War III" should Iran acquire the means to develop nuclear weapons.
Citing the "poison rhetoric and policy paralysis that have characterized conduct of both countries", Laingen said: "We can all agree that the wall of mistrust is damn high. It will be difficult to remove."
Against the backdrop of US failures in Iraq, Washington's bellicosity towards Iran has intensified. The Bush administration last week imposed the most sweeping set of unilateral sanctions on Iran since 1979, and proceeded with its controversial decision to brand Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a "terrorist organization" for its alleged proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the Quds Force's alleged support of "terrorism" in Iraq.
"The label of the word terrorist is so devoid of meaning now, it's hypocritical," said Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times bureau chief and author of the book All the Shah's Men, about the 1953 Central Intelligence Agency-backed coup d'etat to oust democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq.
"First we find groups around the world we don't like, then we find ways to label them as terrorists," he said, and referred the US's double standard with regard to two Kurdish separatist groups that, on either side of Iraq's borders, attack Turkish and Iranian troops.
"One [the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party] is a terrorist, the other [the Iranian Party for Free Life in Kurdistan] receives support from us," he said.
Bush's hard line has also drawn criticism from presumed international allies, such as Russia's President Vladimir Putin, who likened Washington's recent sanctions to "mad people wielding razor blades". Russia occupies a seat on the United Nations Security Council and maintains military and economic relations with Iran. Tehran remains defiant in the face of Washington's pressure to halt its nuclear program, which Washington alleges is aimed at developing nuclear weapons.
Analysts at Monday's discussion said the current tensions underscore Washington's continued inability to understand Iran, its history, culture, the aspirations of its citizens and the effects of the US's ill-fated policies on the overall psyche of Iranians.
"There is a fundamental sympathy for democracy [in Iran] ... Iranians have a democratic consciousness that is unique in the Middle East," said Kinzer.
"Had it not been for the fact that the democratic government came to power in the 1950s, and became obsessed with the great project of nationalizing the Iranian oil reserves, there wouldn't be a 1953," said Kinzer. "Had we [US] not overthrown the Mossadeq government in 1953, we might have had a thriving democracy in the heart of the Middle East for these past 50 years."
The CIA-backed coup, code-named Operation Ajaz, was carried out during president Dwight D Eisenhower's tenure and was supported by Britain. Using widespread bribery, the CIA overthrew Mossadeq and his cabinet and reinstalled Iran's unpopular pro-US dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
And had it not been for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's 1981 invasion of Iran (and US support for that invasion), the mullahs may not have been able to consolidate their political power, according to Iran specialist Trita Parsi.
"[Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini survived, not in spite of, but because of the Iraqi invasion," said Parsi. "War with Iran would result in Iranians rallying around the flag [rather than] turning away. The government would be strengthened instead of toppled. The Iranian nuclear program would more likely accelerate than be destroyed."
Kinzer also criticized the US mainstream press, which he argued "has played a very shameful role in helping to fan the flames of war, just as we did in Iraq".
"We truly have failed because we have always presented the problems with the US and Iran through the official US paradigm," said Kinzer. "This is a classic failure of the press, which is why people so easily leap to support policies that are fundamentally against our own country."
And then, there are the missed opportunities: the 2003 memorandum signed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a grand bargain in which the Iranians agreed to open the nuclear issue to full transparency, offered to stop support of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, agreed to make Hezbollah a political party (ie, disarm the militia group), and promised to help support an Iraqi government that was not sectarian. The offer was presented to the White House by former Congressman Bob Ney several weeks after the US invasion of Iraq, but was ignored.
"The Iranians profess this offer doesn't exist. It's a prime example of missed opportunities and policy paralysis that can so easily set in," said Laingen.
The evening's moderator, Republican Congressman Wayne Gilchrest, also offered his perspective: "For the Senate or House [of Representatives] to ramp up the rhetoric on the Revolutionary Guards as being terrorists, or insurgents, or rebels, only reduces the ability of that mistrust to subside," he said.
"It's beyond time for us to negotiate with Iranians. It's time for old men to talk, before they send young men to die."
Plan B (for 'bombs') after Iran fantasy fails
by Gareth Porter - Nov 1, 2007
Vice President Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative allies in the George W Bush administration only began agitating for the use of military force against Iran once they had finally given up the illusion that regime change in Iran would happen without it.
And they did not give up the illusion until late 2005, according to a former high-level Foreign Service officer who participated in United States discussions with Iran from 2001 until late 2005.
Hillary Mann, who was the director for Persian Gulf and Afghanistan Affairs on the National Security Council (NSC) staff in 2003 and later on the State Department's Policy Planning staff, observes that the key to neo-conservative policy views on Iran until 2006 was the firm belief that one of the consequences of a successful display of US military force in Iraq would be to shake the foundations of the Iranian regime.
That central belief was conveyed to conservative columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave of the Washington Times in April 2002 by prominent neo-con figures who told him the Bush administration "had decided to redraw the geopolitical map of the Middle East".
The Bush doctrine of pre-emption, they said, "had become the vehicle for driving axis of evil practitioners out of power". The removal of Saddam Hussein, according to the neo-con scenario, would bring a democratic Iraq that would then spread through the region, "bringing democracy from Syria to Egypt and to the sheikhdoms, emirates and monarchies of the Gulf".
Under the influence of this central myth, after the September 11, 2001, attacks, some of Cheney's allies in the Pentagon conceived the objective of removing every regime in the Middle East that was hostile to the US and Israel.
In November 2001, General Wesley Clark, who had recently retired from his post as head of the US Southern Command, learned from a general he knew in the Pentagon that a memo had just come down from the office of the secretary of defense outlining the objective of the "take down" of seven Middle Eastern regimes over five years.
The plan would start with the invasion of Iraq, and then go after Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan, according to an account in Clark's 2003 book, Winning Modern Wars. The memo indicated the plan was to "come back and get Iran in five years".
The neo-cons were very serious about going after Syria. In the weeks following the initial US blow at Saddam, Paul Wolfowitz, the chief neo-conservative architect of the Iraq invasion, argued unsuccessfully for taking advantage of the presumed military triumph there to overthrow the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, according to the right-leaning Insight magazine.
Contrary to the popular notion that the neo-cons believed that "real men go to Tehran", no one was yet proposing that Iran should be the next military target.
In September 2003, Cheney brought in David Wurmser, a close friend and protege of Richard Perle and one of the architects of the neo-conservative plan for regime change in Iraq, as his adviser on the Middle East. Wurmser had previously articulated very specific ideas about how taking down Saddam by force would help destabilize the Iranian regime.
In a 1999 book, Wurmser had laid out a plan for using the Iraqi Shi'ite majority and their conservative clerics as US allies in the "regional rollback of Shi'ite fundamentalism" - meaning the Islamic regime in Iran.
But Wurmser also believed that the Ba'athist regime in Syria was an obstacle to regime change in Iran. Beginning with the "Clean Break" memo to incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which he had co-authored with Perle and Douglas Feith in 1996, he had argued that once Saddam was removed, the next step was to take down the Assad regime in Syria.
In a September 2007 interview with the London Telegraph, after he had left Cheney's office, Wurmser confirmed his belief that regime change in Syria - by force, if necessary - would directly affect the stability of the Tehran regime. If Iran were seen to be unable to do anything to prevent the overthrow of the regime in Syria, he suggested, it would seriously undermine the Islamic regime's prestige at home.
From 2003 to 2005, Wurmser and the neo-cons were in denial about the increasingly obvious reality that the US occupation of Iraq was actually boosting Iranian influence there rather than shaking the regime's power at home, according to former NSC specialist Mann.
She was well acquainted with the neo-conservatives' thinking from her associations with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in the 1990s, and she told Inter Press Service in a recent interview that she was "astounded" to hear neo-cons in the administration suggest as late as 2005 that the situation in Iraq was on track to help destabilize the Iranian regime.
The neo-cons had long viewed the Iranian reformists, led by president Mohammed Khatami, as the primary obstacle to the popular revolution against the mullahs for which they were working. As French Iran specialist Frederic Tellier noted in an early 2006 essay, they believed the electoral defeats of the reformists in 2003 and 2004 would also help open the way to a revolutionary political upheaval in Tehran.
In an appearance on the Don Imus radio talk show on January 21, 2005, Cheney said the Israelis might attack Iran's nuclear sites if they became convinced the Iranians had a "significant nuclear capability". That remark underlined the fact that he was not thinking seriously about a US strike against Iran.
By the end of 2005, however, the neo-cons had finally accepted the reality of the failure of the Bush administration's military intervention in Iraq, according to Mann. She also notes that the electoral victory of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, representing a new breed of nationalist conservative with a base of popular support, in the June 2005 presidential election, spelled the "death knell" for neo-con optimism about regime change in Iran.
Mann observes that the neo-cons had never given up the idea of using force against Iran, but they had argued that less force would be needed in Iran than had been used in Iraq. By early 2006, however, that assumption was being discarded by prominent neo-conservatives.
Former Central Intelligence Agency analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute - writing under the pseudonym Edward Shirley - had been more aggressive than anyone else in arguing that Iraq's Shi'ites, liberated by US military power, would help subvert the Iranian regime. But in April 2006, he called, in a Weekly Standard article, for continued bombing of Iran's nuclear sites until the Iranians stopped rebuilding them.
Within the administration, meanwhile, Wurmser was looking for the opportunity to propose a military option against Iran. In his September 2007 interview with the Telegraph shortly after leaving Cheney's office, he insisted that the United States must be willing to "escalate as far as we need to go to topple the [Iranian] regime if necessary".
That opportunity seemed to present itself in the aftermath of Israel's failed attempt to deal a major blow to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Neo-conservatives aligned with Cheney argued that Iran was now threatening US dominance in the region, through its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territory and its nuclear program. They insisted that the administration had to push back by targeting Iran's Quds Force personnel in Iraq, increasing the naval presence in the Gulf and accusing Iran of supporting the killing of US troops.
Although the ostensible rationale was to pressure Iran to back down on the nuclear issue, in light of the previous views, it appears that they were hoping to use military power against Iran to accomplish their original goal of regime change.
Vice President Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative allies in the George W Bush administration only began agitating for the use of military force against Iran once they had finally given up the illusion that regime change in Iran would happen without it.
And they did not give up the illusion until late 2005, according to a former high-level Foreign Service officer who participated in United States discussions with Iran from 2001 until late 2005.
Hillary Mann, who was the director for Persian Gulf and Afghanistan Affairs on the National Security Council (NSC) staff in 2003 and later on the State Department's Policy Planning staff, observes that the key to neo-conservative policy views on Iran until 2006 was the firm belief that one of the consequences of a successful display of US military force in Iraq would be to shake the foundations of the Iranian regime.
That central belief was conveyed to conservative columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave of the Washington Times in April 2002 by prominent neo-con figures who told him the Bush administration "had decided to redraw the geopolitical map of the Middle East".
The Bush doctrine of pre-emption, they said, "had become the vehicle for driving axis of evil practitioners out of power". The removal of Saddam Hussein, according to the neo-con scenario, would bring a democratic Iraq that would then spread through the region, "bringing democracy from Syria to Egypt and to the sheikhdoms, emirates and monarchies of the Gulf".
Under the influence of this central myth, after the September 11, 2001, attacks, some of Cheney's allies in the Pentagon conceived the objective of removing every regime in the Middle East that was hostile to the US and Israel.
In November 2001, General Wesley Clark, who had recently retired from his post as head of the US Southern Command, learned from a general he knew in the Pentagon that a memo had just come down from the office of the secretary of defense outlining the objective of the "take down" of seven Middle Eastern regimes over five years.
The plan would start with the invasion of Iraq, and then go after Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan, according to an account in Clark's 2003 book, Winning Modern Wars. The memo indicated the plan was to "come back and get Iran in five years".
The neo-cons were very serious about going after Syria. In the weeks following the initial US blow at Saddam, Paul Wolfowitz, the chief neo-conservative architect of the Iraq invasion, argued unsuccessfully for taking advantage of the presumed military triumph there to overthrow the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, according to the right-leaning Insight magazine.
Contrary to the popular notion that the neo-cons believed that "real men go to Tehran", no one was yet proposing that Iran should be the next military target.
In September 2003, Cheney brought in David Wurmser, a close friend and protege of Richard Perle and one of the architects of the neo-conservative plan for regime change in Iraq, as his adviser on the Middle East. Wurmser had previously articulated very specific ideas about how taking down Saddam by force would help destabilize the Iranian regime.
In a 1999 book, Wurmser had laid out a plan for using the Iraqi Shi'ite majority and their conservative clerics as US allies in the "regional rollback of Shi'ite fundamentalism" - meaning the Islamic regime in Iran.
But Wurmser also believed that the Ba'athist regime in Syria was an obstacle to regime change in Iran. Beginning with the "Clean Break" memo to incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which he had co-authored with Perle and Douglas Feith in 1996, he had argued that once Saddam was removed, the next step was to take down the Assad regime in Syria.
In a September 2007 interview with the London Telegraph, after he had left Cheney's office, Wurmser confirmed his belief that regime change in Syria - by force, if necessary - would directly affect the stability of the Tehran regime. If Iran were seen to be unable to do anything to prevent the overthrow of the regime in Syria, he suggested, it would seriously undermine the Islamic regime's prestige at home.
From 2003 to 2005, Wurmser and the neo-cons were in denial about the increasingly obvious reality that the US occupation of Iraq was actually boosting Iranian influence there rather than shaking the regime's power at home, according to former NSC specialist Mann.
She was well acquainted with the neo-conservatives' thinking from her associations with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in the 1990s, and she told Inter Press Service in a recent interview that she was "astounded" to hear neo-cons in the administration suggest as late as 2005 that the situation in Iraq was on track to help destabilize the Iranian regime.
The neo-cons had long viewed the Iranian reformists, led by president Mohammed Khatami, as the primary obstacle to the popular revolution against the mullahs for which they were working. As French Iran specialist Frederic Tellier noted in an early 2006 essay, they believed the electoral defeats of the reformists in 2003 and 2004 would also help open the way to a revolutionary political upheaval in Tehran.
In an appearance on the Don Imus radio talk show on January 21, 2005, Cheney said the Israelis might attack Iran's nuclear sites if they became convinced the Iranians had a "significant nuclear capability". That remark underlined the fact that he was not thinking seriously about a US strike against Iran.
By the end of 2005, however, the neo-cons had finally accepted the reality of the failure of the Bush administration's military intervention in Iraq, according to Mann. She also notes that the electoral victory of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, representing a new breed of nationalist conservative with a base of popular support, in the June 2005 presidential election, spelled the "death knell" for neo-con optimism about regime change in Iran.
Mann observes that the neo-cons had never given up the idea of using force against Iran, but they had argued that less force would be needed in Iran than had been used in Iraq. By early 2006, however, that assumption was being discarded by prominent neo-conservatives.
Former Central Intelligence Agency analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute - writing under the pseudonym Edward Shirley - had been more aggressive than anyone else in arguing that Iraq's Shi'ites, liberated by US military power, would help subvert the Iranian regime. But in April 2006, he called, in a Weekly Standard article, for continued bombing of Iran's nuclear sites until the Iranians stopped rebuilding them.
Within the administration, meanwhile, Wurmser was looking for the opportunity to propose a military option against Iran. In his September 2007 interview with the Telegraph shortly after leaving Cheney's office, he insisted that the United States must be willing to "escalate as far as we need to go to topple the [Iranian] regime if necessary".
That opportunity seemed to present itself in the aftermath of Israel's failed attempt to deal a major blow to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Neo-conservatives aligned with Cheney argued that Iran was now threatening US dominance in the region, through its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territory and its nuclear program. They insisted that the administration had to push back by targeting Iran's Quds Force personnel in Iraq, increasing the naval presence in the Gulf and accusing Iran of supporting the killing of US troops.
Although the ostensible rationale was to pressure Iran to back down on the nuclear issue, in light of the previous views, it appears that they were hoping to use military power against Iran to accomplish their original goal of regime change.
Iran warns U.S. of "quagmire"
by Fredrik Dahl - Oct 31, 2007
Iran warned the United States on Wednesday it would find itself in a "quagmire deeper than Iraq" if it attacked the Islamic state, and Russia stepped up efforts for a diplomatic solution to Tehran's nuclear row with the West.
The warning by the head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, a target of new U.S. sanctions announced last week, added to angry rhetoric between the two old foes that has prompted speculation of possible U.S. military action.
U.S. President George W. Bush this month suggested a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War Three but the White House said on Tuesday it remained determined to resolve the stand-off peacefully.
"If the enemies show inexperience and want to invade Islamic Iran, they will receive a strong slap from Iran," Jafari said in comments carried by the semi-official Fars News Agency.
"The enemy knows that if it attacks Iran it, will be trapped in a quagmire deeper than Iraq and Afghanistan, and they will have to withdraw with defeat," he told a parade in north-central Iran, without mentioning the United States by name.
Major powers are expected to meet in London this week to discuss a possible third round of U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt work which it says is aimed at generating electricity but could also be used for making bombs.
Iran, hoping to ward off any further sanctions on its oil-dependent economy, agreed with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in August to clear up suspicions about its past secret nuclear activities.
The United States, saying the deal failed to address the core U.N. demand that Tehran suspend work Washington suspects is aimed at making bombs, is pushing for tougher U.N. sanctions.
Tensions over Iran's nuclear program are one of the factors that have pushed oil prices to record highs of over $90 a barrel in recent days.
"TRUST"
Russia, a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, says dialogue rather than punishment or talk of military action offers the best way to ease tension. It says the IAEA process should be given time to run its course.
Speaking after talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday evening, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, according to a transcript from his ministry:
"We encouraged the Iranian leadership to undertake further -- and preferably more active -- work with the IAEA to clear up those questions which have been raised by the agency with regard to the Iranian nuclear program's past."
Lavrov, visiting two weeks after a trip to Tehran by President Vladimir Putin, said he "underlined the importance of closing these questions as soon as possible, in order to restore trust in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's activities."
Ahmadinejad said Iran was "determined" to continue its cooperation with the agency, the ISNA news agency said.
Lavrov's visit coincided with vital talks in Tehran between officials from Iran and the Vienna-based IAEA on implementing the August agreement, entering their third day on Wednesday.
Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei will report to the agency's 35-nation board of governors in mid-November. If Iran has not answered sensitive questions by then, Western powers say they will move to have harsh U.N. sanctions adopted.
In Washington, U.S. officials said they expected the five permanent U.N. Security Council members -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -- as well as Germany to meet later this week in London to discuss new sanctions.
Britain and France back a tough line on Iran. China, like Russia, has opposed an early move to tighten economic sanctions, saying Iran should be given longer to cooperate with the IAEA.
The U.N. Security Council has already imposed two sets of limited sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt enrichment, a process to make fuel for nuclear power plants that can also, if refined further, provide material for bombs.
Iran warned the United States on Wednesday it would find itself in a "quagmire deeper than Iraq" if it attacked the Islamic state, and Russia stepped up efforts for a diplomatic solution to Tehran's nuclear row with the West.
The warning by the head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, a target of new U.S. sanctions announced last week, added to angry rhetoric between the two old foes that has prompted speculation of possible U.S. military action.
U.S. President George W. Bush this month suggested a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War Three but the White House said on Tuesday it remained determined to resolve the stand-off peacefully.
"If the enemies show inexperience and want to invade Islamic Iran, they will receive a strong slap from Iran," Jafari said in comments carried by the semi-official Fars News Agency.
"The enemy knows that if it attacks Iran it, will be trapped in a quagmire deeper than Iraq and Afghanistan, and they will have to withdraw with defeat," he told a parade in north-central Iran, without mentioning the United States by name.
Major powers are expected to meet in London this week to discuss a possible third round of U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt work which it says is aimed at generating electricity but could also be used for making bombs.
Iran, hoping to ward off any further sanctions on its oil-dependent economy, agreed with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in August to clear up suspicions about its past secret nuclear activities.
The United States, saying the deal failed to address the core U.N. demand that Tehran suspend work Washington suspects is aimed at making bombs, is pushing for tougher U.N. sanctions.
Tensions over Iran's nuclear program are one of the factors that have pushed oil prices to record highs of over $90 a barrel in recent days.
"TRUST"
Russia, a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, says dialogue rather than punishment or talk of military action offers the best way to ease tension. It says the IAEA process should be given time to run its course.
Speaking after talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday evening, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, according to a transcript from his ministry:
"We encouraged the Iranian leadership to undertake further -- and preferably more active -- work with the IAEA to clear up those questions which have been raised by the agency with regard to the Iranian nuclear program's past."
Lavrov, visiting two weeks after a trip to Tehran by President Vladimir Putin, said he "underlined the importance of closing these questions as soon as possible, in order to restore trust in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's activities."
Ahmadinejad said Iran was "determined" to continue its cooperation with the agency, the ISNA news agency said.
Lavrov's visit coincided with vital talks in Tehran between officials from Iran and the Vienna-based IAEA on implementing the August agreement, entering their third day on Wednesday.
Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei will report to the agency's 35-nation board of governors in mid-November. If Iran has not answered sensitive questions by then, Western powers say they will move to have harsh U.N. sanctions adopted.
In Washington, U.S. officials said they expected the five permanent U.N. Security Council members -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -- as well as Germany to meet later this week in London to discuss new sanctions.
Britain and France back a tough line on Iran. China, like Russia, has opposed an early move to tighten economic sanctions, saying Iran should be given longer to cooperate with the IAEA.
The U.N. Security Council has already imposed two sets of limited sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt enrichment, a process to make fuel for nuclear power plants that can also, if refined further, provide material for bombs.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Cancer in Iraq vets raises possibility of toxic exposure
by Carla McClain - October 28, 2007
After serving in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago — and receiving the Bronze Star for it — the Tucson soldier was called back to active duty in Iraq.
While there, he awoke one morning with a sore throat. Eighteen months later, Army Sgt. James Lauderdale was dead, of a bizarrely aggressive cancer rarely seen by the doctors who tried to treat it.
As a result, his stunned and heartbroken family has joined growing ranks of sickened and dying Iraq war vets and their families who believe exposures to toxic poisons in the war zone are behind their illnesses — mostly cancers, striking the young, taking them down with alarming speed.
The number of these cancers remains undisclosed, with military officials citing patient privacy issues, as well as lack of evidence the cases are linked to conditions in the war zone. The U.S. Congress has ordered a probe of suspect toxins and may soon begin widespread testing of our armed forces.
"He got so sick, so fast"
Jim Lauderdale was 58 when his National Guard unit was deployed to the Iraq-Kuwait border, where he helped transport arriving soldiers and Marines into combat areas.
He was a strong man, say relatives, who can't remember him ever missing a day of work for illness. And he developed a cancer of the mouth, which overwhelmingly strikes smokers, drinkers and tobacco chewers. He was none of those.
"Jim's doctors didn't know why he would get this kind of cancer — they had no answers for us," said his wife, Dixie.
"He got so sick, so fast. We really think it had to be something he was exposed to over there. So many of the soldiers we met with cancer at Walter Reed (Army Medical Center) complained about the polluted air they lived in, the brown water they had to use, the dust they breathed from exploded munitions. It was very toxic."
As a mining engineer, Lauderdale knew exactly what it meant when he saw the thick black smoke pouring nonstop out of the smokestacks that line the Iraq/Kuwait border area where he was stationed for three months in 2005.
"He wrote to me that everyone was complaining about their stinging eyes and sore throats and headaches," Dixie said. "For Jim to say something like that, to complain, was very unusual.
"One of the mothers on the cancer ward had pictures of her son bathing in the brown water," she said. "He died of kidney cancer."
Stationed in roughly the same area as Lauderdale, yet another soldier — now fighting terminal colon cancer — described the scene there, of oil refineries, a cement factory, a chlorine factory and a sulfuric acid factory, all spewing unfiltered and uncontrolled substances into the air.
"One day, we were walking toward the port and they had sulfuric acid exploding out of the stacks. We were covered with it, everything was burning on us, and we had to turn around and get to the medics," said Army Staff Sgt. Frank Valentin, 35.
Not long after, he developed intense rectal pain, which doctors told him for months was hemorrhoids. Finally diagnosed with aggressive colorectal cancer — requiring extensive surgery, resulting in a colostomy bag — he was given fewer than two years to live by his Walter Reed physicians.
He is now a couple of months past that death sentence, but his chemo drugs are starting to fail, and the cancer is eating into his liver and lungs. He spends his days with his wife and three children at their Florida home.
"I don't know how much time I have," he said.
Suspect: depleted uranium
None of these soldiers know for sure what's killing them. But they suspect it's a cascade of multiple toxic exposures, coupled with the intense stress of daily life in a war zone weakening their immune systems.
"There's so much pollution from so many sources, your body can't fight what's coming at it," Valentin said. "And you don't eat well or sleep well, ever. That weakens you, too. There's no chance to gather your strength. These are kids 19, 20 and 21 getting all kinds of cancers. The Walter Reed cancer ward is packed full with them."
The prime suspect in all this, in the minds of many victims — and some scientists — is what's known as depleted uranium — the radioactive chemical prized by the military for its ability to penetrate armored vehicles. When munitions explode, the substance hits the air as fine dust, easily inhaled.
Last month, the Iraqi environment minister blamed the tons of the chemical dropped during the war's "shock and awe" campaign for a surge of cancer cases across the country.
However, the Pentagon and U.S. State Department strongly deny this, citing four studies, including one by the World Health Organization, that found levels in war zones not harmful to civilians or soldiers. A U.N. Environmental Program study concurs, but only if spent munitions are cleared away.
Returning solders have said that isn't happening.
"When tanks exploded, I would handle those tanks, and there was DU everywhere," said Valentin. "This is a big issue."
The fierce Iraq winds carry desert sand and dust for miles, said Dixie Lauderdale, who suspects her husband was exposed to at least some depleted uranium. Many vets from the Gulf War blame the chemical used in that conflict for their Gulf War syndrome illnesses.
Congress orders study
As the controversy rages, Congress has ordered a comprehensive independent study, due in October, of the health effects of depleted uranium exposure on U.S. soldiers and their children. And a "DU bill" — ordering all members of the U.S. military exposed to it be identified and tested — is working its way through Congress.
"Basically, we want to get ahead of this curve, and not go through the years of painful denial we went through with Agent Orange that was the legacy of Vietnam," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a co-sponsor of the bill.
"We want an independent agency to do independent testing of our soldiers, and find out what's really going on. These incidents of cancer and illness that all of us are hearing about back in our districts are not just anecdotal — there is a pattern here. And yes, I do suspect DU may be at the bottom of it."
What's happening today — growing numbers of sickened soldiers who say they were exposed to it amid firm denials of harm from military brass — almost mirrors the early stages of the Agent Orange aftermath. It took the U.S. military almost two decades to admit the powerful chemical defoliant killed and disabled U.S. troops in the jungles of Vietnam, and to begin compensating them for it.
Doctors flabbergasted
Whatever it was that struck Jim Lauderdale did a terrifying job of it.
Sent to Walter Reed with oral cancer in April 2005, he underwent his first extensive and disfiguring surgery, removing half his tongue to get to tumors in the mouth and throat. A second surgery followed a month later to clear out more of those areas.
Five months later, another surgery removed a new neck tumor. Then came heavy chemotherapy and radiation.
Shortly after, he had a massive heart attack, undergoing another surgery to place stents in his arteries. Two weeks later, the cancer was back and growing rapidly, forcing a fourth surgery in January 2006.
By this time, much of his neck and shoulder tissue was gone, and doctors tried to reconstruct a tongue, using tissue from his wrist. He couldn't swallow, so was fed through a tube into his stomach.
Just weeks later, four external tumors appeared on his neck — "literally overnight," his wife said.
Suffering severe complications from the chemo drugs, Lauderdale endured 39 radiation treatments, waking up one night bleeding profusely through his burned skin. The day after his radiation ended, new external tumors erupted at the edge of the radiation field, flabbergasting his doctors.
"As this aggressive disease grew though chemoradiation, it was determined at this point there was no chance for cure," his oncologist wrote then.
By then, the cancer had spread to his lungs and spine and, most frightening of all, "hundreds and thousands" of tumors were erupting all over his upper body, his wife said.
"The doctors said they'd never seen anything like it — that this happens in only 1 percent of cases," she said.
Efforts to contact his doctors at Walter Reed were unsuccessful, but a leading head-and-neck cancer specialist at the Arizona Cancer Center reviewed the course of Lauderdale's disease.
"This a a very wrenching case," said Dr. Harinder Garewal. "This is unusually aggressive behavior for an oral cancer. I would agree it happens in only 1 percent of cases."
When oral cancer occurs in nonsmokers and non-drinkers, it tends to be more aggressive, he said.
"My feeling is the immune system for some reason can't handle the cancer," he said.
Jim Lauderdale died on July 14, 2006, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dixie and their two grown children still feel the raw grief of loss, but not anger, she said.
"But I am convinced something very wrong is happening over there. Is anyone paying attention to this? Is the cancer ward still full?" she asked. "I would hate to see another whole generation affected like this, but I'm very afraid it will be."
After serving in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago — and receiving the Bronze Star for it — the Tucson soldier was called back to active duty in Iraq.
While there, he awoke one morning with a sore throat. Eighteen months later, Army Sgt. James Lauderdale was dead, of a bizarrely aggressive cancer rarely seen by the doctors who tried to treat it.
As a result, his stunned and heartbroken family has joined growing ranks of sickened and dying Iraq war vets and their families who believe exposures to toxic poisons in the war zone are behind their illnesses — mostly cancers, striking the young, taking them down with alarming speed.
The number of these cancers remains undisclosed, with military officials citing patient privacy issues, as well as lack of evidence the cases are linked to conditions in the war zone. The U.S. Congress has ordered a probe of suspect toxins and may soon begin widespread testing of our armed forces.
"He got so sick, so fast"
Jim Lauderdale was 58 when his National Guard unit was deployed to the Iraq-Kuwait border, where he helped transport arriving soldiers and Marines into combat areas.
He was a strong man, say relatives, who can't remember him ever missing a day of work for illness. And he developed a cancer of the mouth, which overwhelmingly strikes smokers, drinkers and tobacco chewers. He was none of those.
"Jim's doctors didn't know why he would get this kind of cancer — they had no answers for us," said his wife, Dixie.
"He got so sick, so fast. We really think it had to be something he was exposed to over there. So many of the soldiers we met with cancer at Walter Reed (Army Medical Center) complained about the polluted air they lived in, the brown water they had to use, the dust they breathed from exploded munitions. It was very toxic."
As a mining engineer, Lauderdale knew exactly what it meant when he saw the thick black smoke pouring nonstop out of the smokestacks that line the Iraq/Kuwait border area where he was stationed for three months in 2005.
"He wrote to me that everyone was complaining about their stinging eyes and sore throats and headaches," Dixie said. "For Jim to say something like that, to complain, was very unusual.
"One of the mothers on the cancer ward had pictures of her son bathing in the brown water," she said. "He died of kidney cancer."
Stationed in roughly the same area as Lauderdale, yet another soldier — now fighting terminal colon cancer — described the scene there, of oil refineries, a cement factory, a chlorine factory and a sulfuric acid factory, all spewing unfiltered and uncontrolled substances into the air.
"One day, we were walking toward the port and they had sulfuric acid exploding out of the stacks. We were covered with it, everything was burning on us, and we had to turn around and get to the medics," said Army Staff Sgt. Frank Valentin, 35.
Not long after, he developed intense rectal pain, which doctors told him for months was hemorrhoids. Finally diagnosed with aggressive colorectal cancer — requiring extensive surgery, resulting in a colostomy bag — he was given fewer than two years to live by his Walter Reed physicians.
He is now a couple of months past that death sentence, but his chemo drugs are starting to fail, and the cancer is eating into his liver and lungs. He spends his days with his wife and three children at their Florida home.
"I don't know how much time I have," he said.
Suspect: depleted uranium
None of these soldiers know for sure what's killing them. But they suspect it's a cascade of multiple toxic exposures, coupled with the intense stress of daily life in a war zone weakening their immune systems.
"There's so much pollution from so many sources, your body can't fight what's coming at it," Valentin said. "And you don't eat well or sleep well, ever. That weakens you, too. There's no chance to gather your strength. These are kids 19, 20 and 21 getting all kinds of cancers. The Walter Reed cancer ward is packed full with them."
The prime suspect in all this, in the minds of many victims — and some scientists — is what's known as depleted uranium — the radioactive chemical prized by the military for its ability to penetrate armored vehicles. When munitions explode, the substance hits the air as fine dust, easily inhaled.
Last month, the Iraqi environment minister blamed the tons of the chemical dropped during the war's "shock and awe" campaign for a surge of cancer cases across the country.
However, the Pentagon and U.S. State Department strongly deny this, citing four studies, including one by the World Health Organization, that found levels in war zones not harmful to civilians or soldiers. A U.N. Environmental Program study concurs, but only if spent munitions are cleared away.
Returning solders have said that isn't happening.
"When tanks exploded, I would handle those tanks, and there was DU everywhere," said Valentin. "This is a big issue."
The fierce Iraq winds carry desert sand and dust for miles, said Dixie Lauderdale, who suspects her husband was exposed to at least some depleted uranium. Many vets from the Gulf War blame the chemical used in that conflict for their Gulf War syndrome illnesses.
Congress orders study
As the controversy rages, Congress has ordered a comprehensive independent study, due in October, of the health effects of depleted uranium exposure on U.S. soldiers and their children. And a "DU bill" — ordering all members of the U.S. military exposed to it be identified and tested — is working its way through Congress.
"Basically, we want to get ahead of this curve, and not go through the years of painful denial we went through with Agent Orange that was the legacy of Vietnam," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a co-sponsor of the bill.
"We want an independent agency to do independent testing of our soldiers, and find out what's really going on. These incidents of cancer and illness that all of us are hearing about back in our districts are not just anecdotal — there is a pattern here. And yes, I do suspect DU may be at the bottom of it."
What's happening today — growing numbers of sickened soldiers who say they were exposed to it amid firm denials of harm from military brass — almost mirrors the early stages of the Agent Orange aftermath. It took the U.S. military almost two decades to admit the powerful chemical defoliant killed and disabled U.S. troops in the jungles of Vietnam, and to begin compensating them for it.
Doctors flabbergasted
Whatever it was that struck Jim Lauderdale did a terrifying job of it.
Sent to Walter Reed with oral cancer in April 2005, he underwent his first extensive and disfiguring surgery, removing half his tongue to get to tumors in the mouth and throat. A second surgery followed a month later to clear out more of those areas.
Five months later, another surgery removed a new neck tumor. Then came heavy chemotherapy and radiation.
Shortly after, he had a massive heart attack, undergoing another surgery to place stents in his arteries. Two weeks later, the cancer was back and growing rapidly, forcing a fourth surgery in January 2006.
By this time, much of his neck and shoulder tissue was gone, and doctors tried to reconstruct a tongue, using tissue from his wrist. He couldn't swallow, so was fed through a tube into his stomach.
Just weeks later, four external tumors appeared on his neck — "literally overnight," his wife said.
Suffering severe complications from the chemo drugs, Lauderdale endured 39 radiation treatments, waking up one night bleeding profusely through his burned skin. The day after his radiation ended, new external tumors erupted at the edge of the radiation field, flabbergasting his doctors.
"As this aggressive disease grew though chemoradiation, it was determined at this point there was no chance for cure," his oncologist wrote then.
By then, the cancer had spread to his lungs and spine and, most frightening of all, "hundreds and thousands" of tumors were erupting all over his upper body, his wife said.
"The doctors said they'd never seen anything like it — that this happens in only 1 percent of cases," she said.
Efforts to contact his doctors at Walter Reed were unsuccessful, but a leading head-and-neck cancer specialist at the Arizona Cancer Center reviewed the course of Lauderdale's disease.
"This a a very wrenching case," said Dr. Harinder Garewal. "This is unusually aggressive behavior for an oral cancer. I would agree it happens in only 1 percent of cases."
When oral cancer occurs in nonsmokers and non-drinkers, it tends to be more aggressive, he said.
"My feeling is the immune system for some reason can't handle the cancer," he said.
Jim Lauderdale died on July 14, 2006, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dixie and their two grown children still feel the raw grief of loss, but not anger, she said.
"But I am convinced something very wrong is happening over there. Is anyone paying attention to this? Is the cancer ward still full?" she asked. "I would hate to see another whole generation affected like this, but I'm very afraid it will be."
Something to consider before attacking Iran
by Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star -Oct 27, 2007
The main Middle Eastern issue being discussed in the US these days is not Iraq, Arab-Israeli peacemaking, or Turkish-Kurdish-Iraqi tensions, but rather what to do about Iran and its perceived threat to the region, the US and the world. The Bush administration sets a shrill and aggressive tone on this and is taking action, including this week's new sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, its Quds Force, and several banks.
Possible American moves against Iran should be considered in light of the 2001-2007 lessons of US-led wars to change regimes and remake national governance systems in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more indirectly in Palestine and Lebanon. This is not just a Bush-Cheney problem, but an all-American one, since most presidential candidates in both parties do not stray far from the administration's aggressive policy options.
The post-2001 experience suggests that American military attacks against Iran would probably result in more turmoil in the Middle East and Asia, and greater anti-American sentiments and actions around the world. The American-led wars and aggressive diplomatic stances vis-a-vis Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria have already generated two specific phenomena: widespread criticism of the US in public opinion around the entire world (see the recent BBC and Pew polls); and, a determination by many Middle Eastern actors to actively resist and defy the US, and militarily fight it (or its Arab and Israeli proxies) when such an opportunity arises in Lebanon and Iraq, rather than to react with the expected acquiescence and compliance.
The six-year-old US-led "global war on terror" has expanded terror networks and their threats, hastened weapons of mass destruction proliferation by assorted regimes, bolstered Arab-Asian dictators, weakened indigenous democracy movements, mangled nascent rule of law traditions, badly isolated and weakened the US diplomatically, and virtually nullified the deterrent power of American-Israeli military might. Attacking Iran will only exacerbate these trends in the short term.
Americans should grasp precisely why a US-led war on global terror has backfired, and isolated the US as much as the terrorists. The main reason, simply, is that every single aspect of Washington's "global war on terror" is perceived by the majority of people in the Arab-Asian region as reviving, reaffirming, expanding and accelerating all the negative Western policies that have devastated the people of the Middle East for nearly a century. Here is a quick summary list of these issues:
* From the days of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt two centuries ago to the birth of the modern Middle East state system at Euro-colonial hands a century ago, a steady stream of Western armies that invade, occupy and seek to remake the Middle East to suit Western strategic aims;
* European and now American policies that blatantly favor Israel at the expense of Arab rights, and turn a blind eye to Israel's continued colonization of Palestinian land;
* Persistent marginalization of Palestinian rights, and collusion in barbaric Israeli policies against the Palestinians, such as this week's Israeli move to cut electricity supplies to civilians in Gaza;
* Supporting autocratic Arab regimes and police states, and showing chronic disdain for the democratic aspirations of Arab citizens;
* Promoting the ethnic and sectarian division of the region in order to enhance American hegemony and Israeli control (why is the US today the only source of apparently serious proposals to divide Iraq into three smaller units?);
* Demonizing Islam and Islamic values, to the point where 75 percent of Arabs and Muslims surveyed recently express an astounding fear that the US actually wants to dominate or destroy Islam itself;
* Attacking any Arab or Islamic power or mass popular force that rises in the region, such as Nasser's Egypt, Baathist Iraq, Iran, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others;
* Dictating economic, political, social, educational, and religious norms and values that should define Arab-Asian societies, and trying to enforce those values through military power and political force;
* Pursuing blatant double standards in implementing UN resolutions and international law, such as relating to Israeli occupation and colonization of Arab land, Iran's nuclear industry, recognizing or rejecting democratic elections, and other issues;
* Exploiting local leaders and movements to suit Western policies, then dropping these erstwhile allies and friends when they are no longer needed;
* Maintaining control of Arab-Asian natural resources, such as oil, gas and strategic geography.
This is what ordinary Arabs, Iranians and other Middle Easterners see when they hear about American plans possibly to attack Iran. This is not because people in the Middle East have fertile imaginations, but rather because this is the actual history that they have experienced for the past century at the hands of once colonial masters who have now turned into post-colonial and neo-colonial nightmares. They see America's "global war on terror" as a frightening renewal and continuation of foreign threats and predatory intrusions at the hands of powerful Western armies and political demagogues.
The main Middle Eastern issue being discussed in the US these days is not Iraq, Arab-Israeli peacemaking, or Turkish-Kurdish-Iraqi tensions, but rather what to do about Iran and its perceived threat to the region, the US and the world. The Bush administration sets a shrill and aggressive tone on this and is taking action, including this week's new sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, its Quds Force, and several banks.
Possible American moves against Iran should be considered in light of the 2001-2007 lessons of US-led wars to change regimes and remake national governance systems in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more indirectly in Palestine and Lebanon. This is not just a Bush-Cheney problem, but an all-American one, since most presidential candidates in both parties do not stray far from the administration's aggressive policy options.
The post-2001 experience suggests that American military attacks against Iran would probably result in more turmoil in the Middle East and Asia, and greater anti-American sentiments and actions around the world. The American-led wars and aggressive diplomatic stances vis-a-vis Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria have already generated two specific phenomena: widespread criticism of the US in public opinion around the entire world (see the recent BBC and Pew polls); and, a determination by many Middle Eastern actors to actively resist and defy the US, and militarily fight it (or its Arab and Israeli proxies) when such an opportunity arises in Lebanon and Iraq, rather than to react with the expected acquiescence and compliance.
The six-year-old US-led "global war on terror" has expanded terror networks and their threats, hastened weapons of mass destruction proliferation by assorted regimes, bolstered Arab-Asian dictators, weakened indigenous democracy movements, mangled nascent rule of law traditions, badly isolated and weakened the US diplomatically, and virtually nullified the deterrent power of American-Israeli military might. Attacking Iran will only exacerbate these trends in the short term.
Americans should grasp precisely why a US-led war on global terror has backfired, and isolated the US as much as the terrorists. The main reason, simply, is that every single aspect of Washington's "global war on terror" is perceived by the majority of people in the Arab-Asian region as reviving, reaffirming, expanding and accelerating all the negative Western policies that have devastated the people of the Middle East for nearly a century. Here is a quick summary list of these issues:
* From the days of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt two centuries ago to the birth of the modern Middle East state system at Euro-colonial hands a century ago, a steady stream of Western armies that invade, occupy and seek to remake the Middle East to suit Western strategic aims;
* European and now American policies that blatantly favor Israel at the expense of Arab rights, and turn a blind eye to Israel's continued colonization of Palestinian land;
* Persistent marginalization of Palestinian rights, and collusion in barbaric Israeli policies against the Palestinians, such as this week's Israeli move to cut electricity supplies to civilians in Gaza;
* Supporting autocratic Arab regimes and police states, and showing chronic disdain for the democratic aspirations of Arab citizens;
* Promoting the ethnic and sectarian division of the region in order to enhance American hegemony and Israeli control (why is the US today the only source of apparently serious proposals to divide Iraq into three smaller units?);
* Demonizing Islam and Islamic values, to the point where 75 percent of Arabs and Muslims surveyed recently express an astounding fear that the US actually wants to dominate or destroy Islam itself;
* Attacking any Arab or Islamic power or mass popular force that rises in the region, such as Nasser's Egypt, Baathist Iraq, Iran, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others;
* Dictating economic, political, social, educational, and religious norms and values that should define Arab-Asian societies, and trying to enforce those values through military power and political force;
* Pursuing blatant double standards in implementing UN resolutions and international law, such as relating to Israeli occupation and colonization of Arab land, Iran's nuclear industry, recognizing or rejecting democratic elections, and other issues;
* Exploiting local leaders and movements to suit Western policies, then dropping these erstwhile allies and friends when they are no longer needed;
* Maintaining control of Arab-Asian natural resources, such as oil, gas and strategic geography.
This is what ordinary Arabs, Iranians and other Middle Easterners see when they hear about American plans possibly to attack Iran. This is not because people in the Middle East have fertile imaginations, but rather because this is the actual history that they have experienced for the past century at the hands of once colonial masters who have now turned into post-colonial and neo-colonial nightmares. They see America's "global war on terror" as a frightening renewal and continuation of foreign threats and predatory intrusions at the hands of powerful Western armies and political demagogues.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Big-Game Hunting in Iraq
Tom Engelhardt & Nick Turse - October 26, 2007
Evidently, Blackwater, the now infamous private security company whose hired guns, working for the State Department, mowed down at least 17 Iraqis in a Baghdad square recently, wants to soften its image. (I wonder why?) The New York Times' Paul von Zielbauer just reported that the company has redesigned its logo. Once, according to him, it was "a bear's paw print in a red crosshairs, under lettering that looks to have been ripped from a fifth of Jim Beam" on a "menacing" black field. Like Daniel Boone, the company was evidently selling its ability to put "big game" in the crosshairs of its gun sights in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, subtly transformed, the logo is on a white background; the bear's paw more modest looking; and the crosshairs of that sniper's rifle have simply disappeared.
Maybe it will prove a tad late for Blackwater to take its rep out of the Wild West and into the mild and corporate, but it's certainly never too late to try. Americans (if not Iraqis) are a forgiving people, who believe in the second chance. While Blackwater sends in the marketing guys to humanize itself, it looks as if the U.S. military may be moving in another direction when it comes to big-game hunting, as Nick Turse, on the Tomdispatch military beat, reports today. - Tom
(Un)Fair Game
Targeting Iraqis as "Big Game" - By Nick Turse
Earlier this month, news of the military's use of Human Terrain Teams -- U.S. combat units operating in Afghanistan and Iraq that contain anthropologists and other social scientists who have traded in their academic robes for body armor -- hit the front-page of the New York Times. While the incorporation of academic experts into combat units has raised ire in some scholarly circles, their use as "cultural advisers" to aid the war effort has been greeted by the military as "a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations" and in the media as an example of increased cultural sensitivity as well as evidence of a new Pentagon willingness to think outside the box.
But the university is only one of a number of areas where an overstretched military, involved in two losing wars, is in a desperate search for new ideas. And humanizing allies and enemies alike has only been one part of the process. Dehumanizing them has been the other. At a recent conference on urban warfare in Washington, D.C., James Lasswell, a retired Marine Corps colonel who now heads the Office of Science and Technology at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, opened an interesting window into this side of things. He noted that, as part of an instruction course named "Combat Hunter," the Marines have brought in "big-game hunters" to school their snipers in the better use of "optics." According to a September 2007 article by Grace Jean in NationalDefense Magazine, "[T]he lab conducted a war game with Marines, African game hunters and inner city police officers to search for ways to improve training." The program included a 15-minute CD titled "Every Marine a Hunter."
Earlier this year, according to an article by Kimberly Johnson of the Marine Corps Times, Col. Clarke Lethin, chief of staff of the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) -- a unit based in Camp Pendleton, California that took part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and will be returning there soon -- indicated that its commanders "believe that if we create a mentality in our Marines that they are hunters and they take on some of those skills, then we'll be able to increase our combat effectiveness." The article included this curious add-on: "The Corps hopes to tap into skills certain Marines may already have learned growing up in rural hunting areas and in urban areas, such as inner cities, said Col. Clarke Lethin, I MEF's chief of staff." Outraged by the statement, one Sgt. Ramsey K. Gregory wrote a letter to the publication asking, "Just what was meant by that comment about the inner city? I hope to God that he's not saying that people from the inner cities are experts in killing each other and that we all just walk around carrying guns."
While the colonel's language -- defended by some -- did seem to suggest that inner-city dwellers lived in an urban jungle of gun-toting hunters of other humans, none of the letters, pro or con, considered quite a different part of the Colonel's equation: the implicit comparison of enemies in urban warfare, today largely Iraqis and Afghans, to animals that are hunted and killed as quarry. As Lethin had unabashedly noted, "We identified a need to ensure our Marines were being the hunters… Hunting is more than just the shooting. It's finding your game."
That military men might indulge in this sort of description was perhaps less than surprising, given the degree to which "hunting" the enemy has been on the lips of America's commander-in-chief. George W. Bush has, on many occasions, invoked the image: "We're hunting them down, one at a time" he likes to say of, for instance, al-Qaeda terrorists, or "we're smoking them out," as he said in November 2001.
In fact, the President needed no big-game hunters to coach him on his optics or anything else. He's talked incessantly of hunting humans -- in speeches to American troops, at photo ops with foreign leaders, at family fundraisers, even in the midst of remarks about homeownership.
Nor is there anything new about Americans treating racial and ethnic enemies as the equivalent of animals to be abused or killed. In his memoir of the Vietnam War, Dispatches, acclaimed combat correspondent Michael Herr, for example, recalled a young soldier from the Army's 1st Infantry Division who admitted, "Well, you know what we do to animals…. kill 'em and hurt 'em and beat on 'em…. Shit, we don't treat the Dinks [Vietnamese] no different than that." Another veteran, quoted elsewhere remembered, "As soon as I hit boot camp…. they tried to change your total personality…. Right away they told us not to call them Vietnamese. Call them gooks, dinks…. They were like animals, or something other than human…. They told us they're not to be treated with any type of mercy…" Today, the slurs of the Vietnam era have been replaced by "haji" and "raghead," while the big-game hunters and the language that goes with killing animals have added to the atmosphere of dehumanization.
That program of instruction is, however, just one recent example of an undercurrent within the military's institutional culture that implicitly reduces people to animals. It's not just in the language of everyday anger and dismissal by soldiers in a strange land where danger is everywhere and it's difficult to tell friend from foe. It's lodged right in the institutional language, if you care to notice. Last month, a piece in the Washington Post, for example, drew much media attention when it came to light that U.S. Army snipers from the "painted demons" platoon of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division allegedly took part in "a classified program of 'baiting' their targets" to lure insurgents within their sniper scopes.
"Basically, we would put an item [like a spool of wire or ammunition] out there and watch it," said Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of the elite sniper platoon in a sworn statement. "If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces." While there has been much subsequent discussion about the ethics and legality of such a program, nobody seemed to take note of the hunting language involved. After all, when you "bait" a trap (or a hook), it's to lure an animal (or fish) in for the kill. But "bait" for a human?
While the use of anthropologists and other social scientists has made headlines, the utilization of "big-game hunters" as troop trainers for the "urban jungles" of Iraq has been essentially ignored. Programs stressing cultural sensitivity may be covered, but treating Iraqis scavenging in a weapon-strewn war zone as the equivalent of elephants, water buffalo, or other prized trophies of great white hunters has gone largely unexamined in any meaningful way.
From the commander-in-chief to low-ranking snipers, a language of dehumanization that includes the idea of hunting humans as if they were animals has crept into our world -- unnoticed and unnoted in the mainstream media. Perhaps a few linguistics professors or other social scientists might like to step into the breach and offer their views on the subject -- unless, of course, they've already been mustered into those Human Terrain Teams.
Evidently, Blackwater, the now infamous private security company whose hired guns, working for the State Department, mowed down at least 17 Iraqis in a Baghdad square recently, wants to soften its image. (I wonder why?) The New York Times' Paul von Zielbauer just reported that the company has redesigned its logo. Once, according to him, it was "a bear's paw print in a red crosshairs, under lettering that looks to have been ripped from a fifth of Jim Beam" on a "menacing" black field. Like Daniel Boone, the company was evidently selling its ability to put "big game" in the crosshairs of its gun sights in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, subtly transformed, the logo is on a white background; the bear's paw more modest looking; and the crosshairs of that sniper's rifle have simply disappeared.
Maybe it will prove a tad late for Blackwater to take its rep out of the Wild West and into the mild and corporate, but it's certainly never too late to try. Americans (if not Iraqis) are a forgiving people, who believe in the second chance. While Blackwater sends in the marketing guys to humanize itself, it looks as if the U.S. military may be moving in another direction when it comes to big-game hunting, as Nick Turse, on the Tomdispatch military beat, reports today. - Tom
(Un)Fair Game
Targeting Iraqis as "Big Game" - By Nick Turse
Earlier this month, news of the military's use of Human Terrain Teams -- U.S. combat units operating in Afghanistan and Iraq that contain anthropologists and other social scientists who have traded in their academic robes for body armor -- hit the front-page of the New York Times. While the incorporation of academic experts into combat units has raised ire in some scholarly circles, their use as "cultural advisers" to aid the war effort has been greeted by the military as "a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations" and in the media as an example of increased cultural sensitivity as well as evidence of a new Pentagon willingness to think outside the box.
But the university is only one of a number of areas where an overstretched military, involved in two losing wars, is in a desperate search for new ideas. And humanizing allies and enemies alike has only been one part of the process. Dehumanizing them has been the other. At a recent conference on urban warfare in Washington, D.C., James Lasswell, a retired Marine Corps colonel who now heads the Office of Science and Technology at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, opened an interesting window into this side of things. He noted that, as part of an instruction course named "Combat Hunter," the Marines have brought in "big-game hunters" to school their snipers in the better use of "optics." According to a September 2007 article by Grace Jean in NationalDefense Magazine, "[T]he lab conducted a war game with Marines, African game hunters and inner city police officers to search for ways to improve training." The program included a 15-minute CD titled "Every Marine a Hunter."
Earlier this year, according to an article by Kimberly Johnson of the Marine Corps Times, Col. Clarke Lethin, chief of staff of the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) -- a unit based in Camp Pendleton, California that took part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and will be returning there soon -- indicated that its commanders "believe that if we create a mentality in our Marines that they are hunters and they take on some of those skills, then we'll be able to increase our combat effectiveness." The article included this curious add-on: "The Corps hopes to tap into skills certain Marines may already have learned growing up in rural hunting areas and in urban areas, such as inner cities, said Col. Clarke Lethin, I MEF's chief of staff." Outraged by the statement, one Sgt. Ramsey K. Gregory wrote a letter to the publication asking, "Just what was meant by that comment about the inner city? I hope to God that he's not saying that people from the inner cities are experts in killing each other and that we all just walk around carrying guns."
While the colonel's language -- defended by some -- did seem to suggest that inner-city dwellers lived in an urban jungle of gun-toting hunters of other humans, none of the letters, pro or con, considered quite a different part of the Colonel's equation: the implicit comparison of enemies in urban warfare, today largely Iraqis and Afghans, to animals that are hunted and killed as quarry. As Lethin had unabashedly noted, "We identified a need to ensure our Marines were being the hunters… Hunting is more than just the shooting. It's finding your game."
That military men might indulge in this sort of description was perhaps less than surprising, given the degree to which "hunting" the enemy has been on the lips of America's commander-in-chief. George W. Bush has, on many occasions, invoked the image: "We're hunting them down, one at a time" he likes to say of, for instance, al-Qaeda terrorists, or "we're smoking them out," as he said in November 2001.
In fact, the President needed no big-game hunters to coach him on his optics or anything else. He's talked incessantly of hunting humans -- in speeches to American troops, at photo ops with foreign leaders, at family fundraisers, even in the midst of remarks about homeownership.
Nor is there anything new about Americans treating racial and ethnic enemies as the equivalent of animals to be abused or killed. In his memoir of the Vietnam War, Dispatches, acclaimed combat correspondent Michael Herr, for example, recalled a young soldier from the Army's 1st Infantry Division who admitted, "Well, you know what we do to animals…. kill 'em and hurt 'em and beat on 'em…. Shit, we don't treat the Dinks [Vietnamese] no different than that." Another veteran, quoted elsewhere remembered, "As soon as I hit boot camp…. they tried to change your total personality…. Right away they told us not to call them Vietnamese. Call them gooks, dinks…. They were like animals, or something other than human…. They told us they're not to be treated with any type of mercy…" Today, the slurs of the Vietnam era have been replaced by "haji" and "raghead," while the big-game hunters and the language that goes with killing animals have added to the atmosphere of dehumanization.
That program of instruction is, however, just one recent example of an undercurrent within the military's institutional culture that implicitly reduces people to animals. It's not just in the language of everyday anger and dismissal by soldiers in a strange land where danger is everywhere and it's difficult to tell friend from foe. It's lodged right in the institutional language, if you care to notice. Last month, a piece in the Washington Post, for example, drew much media attention when it came to light that U.S. Army snipers from the "painted demons" platoon of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division allegedly took part in "a classified program of 'baiting' their targets" to lure insurgents within their sniper scopes.
"Basically, we would put an item [like a spool of wire or ammunition] out there and watch it," said Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of the elite sniper platoon in a sworn statement. "If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces." While there has been much subsequent discussion about the ethics and legality of such a program, nobody seemed to take note of the hunting language involved. After all, when you "bait" a trap (or a hook), it's to lure an animal (or fish) in for the kill. But "bait" for a human?
While the use of anthropologists and other social scientists has made headlines, the utilization of "big-game hunters" as troop trainers for the "urban jungles" of Iraq has been essentially ignored. Programs stressing cultural sensitivity may be covered, but treating Iraqis scavenging in a weapon-strewn war zone as the equivalent of elephants, water buffalo, or other prized trophies of great white hunters has gone largely unexamined in any meaningful way.
From the commander-in-chief to low-ranking snipers, a language of dehumanization that includes the idea of hunting humans as if they were animals has crept into our world -- unnoticed and unnoted in the mainstream media. Perhaps a few linguistics professors or other social scientists might like to step into the breach and offer their views on the subject -- unless, of course, they've already been mustered into those Human Terrain Teams.
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