by Dennis Kucinich
Six years ago the United States attacked, invaded and consequently occupied Iraq at the great expense of the blood and treasure of the people of the United States and Iraq. The terms and dates of a total U.S. pullout have been so conditional and so qualified, that no one can say for sure when the occupation will end.
At such a grim anniversary, it is timely to recount the reasons we went to war. The Bush administration, operating in a climate of fear and the collective anger generated by 9/11, created a false cause for war against Iraq and then sold it to the Congress and the American people. They told us Iraq helped plan 9/11. They told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They told us terrorists would attack us unless we attacked first. They promised the war would be short and cheap; that we would be greeted as liberators. None of these assertions were true. The architects of the war inside the Bush administration should be investigated and prosecuted by the Justice Department for deliberately misrepresenting a cause for war against Iraq.
Not everyone believed the lies. I led the opposition in Congress against the war. In the autumn of 2002, I circulated a detailed analysis of the Administration's war resolution. Nearly two thirds of the Democratic caucus voted against the war, despite the fact that the then leader of the Democratic Party stood next to President Bush at the White House and announced his support. Within a few months, protests against the war swept across the nation and around the world. Notwithstanding the lack of a legal, factual basis for war, notwithstanding massive public protest, the Administration commenced with its "shock and awe" display of violence against the people of Iraq. Lost in the pyrotechnics and the smoke was the truth.
The monetary cost of the Iraq war is still being calculated. It may reach $3 trillion. There are other costs: More than 4,200 Americans have been killed, another 30,000 wounded.
The people of Iraq have suffered grievously. It has been estimated that at least one million innocent Iraqis have lost their lives. What an extraordinary tragedy that those deaths as a result of the military assault and occupation on Iraq.
This war has ripped apart our nation. Only the balm of truth will heal it. That is why those who took us into this war based upon lies, as well as those who profited unjustly from the war, must be held accountable under national law. It should not be up to another nation to call for a legal accounting.
The healing cannot be complete until America ends the occupation, closes the military bases and brings the troops home, while setting in place an international peace-keeping and security force which stabilizes Iraq. We must also take steps to repair the damage done to the Iraqi people, to their homes, their families, their way of life. We must provide further financial, health and emotional support for our soldiers who in good faith shouldered their military duties.
Upon this anniversary, it is also appropriate to question the use of war as an instrument of national policy. Our nation has a right and a duty to defend ourselves. Yet we now know definitively that the war in Iraq was not necessary for our national security, and in fact was contrary to our national security interests.
It is time for America to consider a broader range of responses to security challenges in the future, so that we can be properly respectful of the readiness of our troops to sacrifice. I have proposed a Cabinet-level, Department of Peace, which will offer a President a range of practical alternatives to military action. The Department of Peace will offer a broad-based approach to peaceful, non-violent conflict resolution at both the domestic and international levels. Creating and keeping peace is an extension of the science of human relations. It requires vision and patience, vigilance and tough-mindedness. Perhaps one day, people will remember the Iraq war not only as just one of America's longest wars, but as one of our last.
Congressman Kucinich, a former Democratic Presidential candidate, led opposition to the Iraq war in the House of Representatives and has been the most consistent and vocal opponent to the Iraq war.
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Saturday, March 21, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
What Happened to the War?
by Laurence M. Vance
As of today, March 20, it has now been six years since the United States invaded Iraq. Yes, the United States still has tens of thousands of troops in Iraq, although we don’t hear much about the war any more. What happened to the war?
The war should have been an issue in the election. It wasn’t. And thanks to the disaster that is the Republican revolution that wasn’t, it didn’t even have to be. We hardly heard about the war after the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions. Republicans were perfectly willing to exchange one war criminal for another. Many Democrats only opposed the war because it was a Republican war. And now that Obama is president, no one from either party seems to mind that he wants to send 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
The war is still an immoral, aggressive, unjust, unconstitutional, unnecessary, and senseless war that that violates every "just war" principle ever formulated. It was a manufactured war based on manipulated intelligence, bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction, and an assortment of other lies.
The war is still making terrorists and enemies of the United States. Although Fred Barnes wrote (in the Weekly Standard) that the invasion of Iraq was "the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another," we know that it was instead, as Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, described it: "The greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."
The war is still draining the treasury. The cakewalk that was supposed to cost $50 billion has bled U.S. taxpayers for almost a trillion dollars. About $12 billion was spent fighting the Iraq war each month last year. It costs about $390,000 to deploy one soldier to Iraq for one year. The cost for a lifetime of support and medical care for each severely wounded American soldier is in the millions.
The war is still resulting in the deaths of Iraqis – thanks to the U.S. invasion and occupation and the genocide we unleashed. The latest estimate of the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration, and continued by the Obama administration, is about 1 million. Additionally, there are the millions of Iraqis who are wounded, disabled, displaced, homeless, refugees, widows, or orphans.
The war is still destroying the lives of American soldiers and their families. Many thousands of U.S. soldiers have been severely wounded. Hundreds of these have had limbs amputated. Untold numbers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Defense Department doctors have recently reported that there may be as many as 360,000 U.S. soldiers who have suffered wartime brain injuries. Some returning soldiers will spend the rest of their lives unable to hold down a job. Others will live out their days as physical and/or emotional basket cases.
The war is still killing American soldiers. When I wrote about the war on its third anniversary, 2,317 American soldiers had died for a lie. On the fourth anniversary, that number had risen to 3,218. On the fifth, 3,992. The number of dead American soldiers is now up to 4,259. Although the total number of American deaths per year is falling, there are two ways in which American deaths are rising: military suicides and the war Afghanistan. There were more American soldiers who killed themselves in January of this year than died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military suicides are not only up for the fourth year in a row, they are at the highest level they have ever been. The number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan is now up to 666.God only knows how many men from Obama’s 17,000-troop surge will be added to that number. Yet, none of these soldiers had to die. They died neither for our freedoms nor the freedoms of anyone else. They all died in vain.
What happened to the war? Nothing happened to the war. It is still just as wrong as ever. It is still just as deadly ever. I’m afraid that most Americans, like Rhett Butler, just don’t give a damn. As William Lloyd Garrison once said: "The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead."
March 20, 2009
Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from Pensacola, FL. He is the author of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State. His newest book is The Revolution that Wasn't.
Copyright © 2009 Laurence Vance
As of today, March 20, it has now been six years since the United States invaded Iraq. Yes, the United States still has tens of thousands of troops in Iraq, although we don’t hear much about the war any more. What happened to the war?
The war should have been an issue in the election. It wasn’t. And thanks to the disaster that is the Republican revolution that wasn’t, it didn’t even have to be. We hardly heard about the war after the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions. Republicans were perfectly willing to exchange one war criminal for another. Many Democrats only opposed the war because it was a Republican war. And now that Obama is president, no one from either party seems to mind that he wants to send 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
The war is still an immoral, aggressive, unjust, unconstitutional, unnecessary, and senseless war that that violates every "just war" principle ever formulated. It was a manufactured war based on manipulated intelligence, bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction, and an assortment of other lies.
The war is still making terrorists and enemies of the United States. Although Fred Barnes wrote (in the Weekly Standard) that the invasion of Iraq was "the greatest act of benevolence one country has ever done for another," we know that it was instead, as Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, described it: "The greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."
The war is still draining the treasury. The cakewalk that was supposed to cost $50 billion has bled U.S. taxpayers for almost a trillion dollars. About $12 billion was spent fighting the Iraq war each month last year. It costs about $390,000 to deploy one soldier to Iraq for one year. The cost for a lifetime of support and medical care for each severely wounded American soldier is in the millions.
The war is still resulting in the deaths of Iraqis – thanks to the U.S. invasion and occupation and the genocide we unleashed. The latest estimate of the number of Iraqis who have died in the war instigated by the Bush administration, and continued by the Obama administration, is about 1 million. Additionally, there are the millions of Iraqis who are wounded, disabled, displaced, homeless, refugees, widows, or orphans.
The war is still destroying the lives of American soldiers and their families. Many thousands of U.S. soldiers have been severely wounded. Hundreds of these have had limbs amputated. Untold numbers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Defense Department doctors have recently reported that there may be as many as 360,000 U.S. soldiers who have suffered wartime brain injuries. Some returning soldiers will spend the rest of their lives unable to hold down a job. Others will live out their days as physical and/or emotional basket cases.
The war is still killing American soldiers. When I wrote about the war on its third anniversary, 2,317 American soldiers had died for a lie. On the fourth anniversary, that number had risen to 3,218. On the fifth, 3,992. The number of dead American soldiers is now up to 4,259. Although the total number of American deaths per year is falling, there are two ways in which American deaths are rising: military suicides and the war Afghanistan. There were more American soldiers who killed themselves in January of this year than died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military suicides are not only up for the fourth year in a row, they are at the highest level they have ever been. The number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan is now up to 666.God only knows how many men from Obama’s 17,000-troop surge will be added to that number. Yet, none of these soldiers had to die. They died neither for our freedoms nor the freedoms of anyone else. They all died in vain.
What happened to the war? Nothing happened to the war. It is still just as wrong as ever. It is still just as deadly ever. I’m afraid that most Americans, like Rhett Butler, just don’t give a damn. As William Lloyd Garrison once said: "The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead."
March 20, 2009
Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from Pensacola, FL. He is the author of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State. His newest book is The Revolution that Wasn't.
Copyright © 2009 Laurence Vance
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Our Troops and Iraqis are Still Dying
An Open Letter to the Peace/Anti-War Movement from Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace
After six years of war and the historic election of a new President, we as veterans, military and Gold Star families felt an urgent need to reach out to the larger peace/anti-war movements to make our position on Iraq clear during this time of political and economic uncertainty. Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace continue to stand together in our demand to Bring the Troops Home Now! We ask all those who have stood with us in the past to stay faithful to the cause.
President Obama has announced a plan to gradually reduce troop levels in Iraq. Many in the peace/anti-war movements are breathing a sigh of relief, and suggesting that it is time for us to scale back our efforts to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq. But for our troops on the ground, their families and the Iraqi people, the nightmare continues. They need all of us to stay in the struggle. IVAW, MFSO and VFP have been long united in our call for an immediate and complete end to the occupation of Iraq and will not shift our stance under any circumstances.
President Obama's plan will result in more casualties and suffering for U.S. troops, their families and Iraqis. To the American public facing hard times here at home, two and a half more years of occupation may not sound like that long — but for our troops and their families it means two and a half more years of fear, pain, and separation in a war and occupation based on lies. Hundreds of the troops deployed in the next two and a half years will not come home alive. Many more will return forever scarred by deep wounds to their bodies, minds, and spirits. Well over a million Iraqis have died as a result of this war — many more will be killed as the occupation continues.
We cannot afford the cost of empire. Today we are in the midst of the worst economic crisis most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Yet our government continues to allow the occupation to drain $10 billion a month from our nation's coffers. Meanwhile, veterans and military families struggle to put food on the table and get decent housing and adequate medical care. Women and men who risked their lives for this country are often forced to fight tooth and nail to get health care from an underfunded and overburdened Veterans Administration. Hundreds of thousands of veterans are homeless.
The occupation of Iraq is the source of the violence not the solution. Living under occupation the people of Iraq are held back from taking control of their own lives to determine their destiny. The continued U.S. military presence there is a cause of the violence they face, not its solution. U.S. continued interference contradicts the principles of democracy and self-determination our country was founded on.
IVAW, MFSO and VFP will continue to keep pressure on Congress and the President to bring all our troops home from Iraq NOW, ensure that veterans receive the care they need and deserve, and that the U.S. provides resources to rebuild a country we destroyed. But we cannot do that alone. We need your help to reach out to the vast majority of the American people who are completely isolated from the realities of this war. Please don't abandon this struggle or shift your position before the occupation is over and our veterans and the Iraqi people are on the path to healing.
— Signed by Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace
After six years of war and the historic election of a new President, we as veterans, military and Gold Star families felt an urgent need to reach out to the larger peace/anti-war movements to make our position on Iraq clear during this time of political and economic uncertainty. Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace continue to stand together in our demand to Bring the Troops Home Now! We ask all those who have stood with us in the past to stay faithful to the cause.
President Obama has announced a plan to gradually reduce troop levels in Iraq. Many in the peace/anti-war movements are breathing a sigh of relief, and suggesting that it is time for us to scale back our efforts to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq. But for our troops on the ground, their families and the Iraqi people, the nightmare continues. They need all of us to stay in the struggle. IVAW, MFSO and VFP have been long united in our call for an immediate and complete end to the occupation of Iraq and will not shift our stance under any circumstances.
President Obama's plan will result in more casualties and suffering for U.S. troops, their families and Iraqis. To the American public facing hard times here at home, two and a half more years of occupation may not sound like that long — but for our troops and their families it means two and a half more years of fear, pain, and separation in a war and occupation based on lies. Hundreds of the troops deployed in the next two and a half years will not come home alive. Many more will return forever scarred by deep wounds to their bodies, minds, and spirits. Well over a million Iraqis have died as a result of this war — many more will be killed as the occupation continues.
We cannot afford the cost of empire. Today we are in the midst of the worst economic crisis most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Yet our government continues to allow the occupation to drain $10 billion a month from our nation's coffers. Meanwhile, veterans and military families struggle to put food on the table and get decent housing and adequate medical care. Women and men who risked their lives for this country are often forced to fight tooth and nail to get health care from an underfunded and overburdened Veterans Administration. Hundreds of thousands of veterans are homeless.
The occupation of Iraq is the source of the violence not the solution. Living under occupation the people of Iraq are held back from taking control of their own lives to determine their destiny. The continued U.S. military presence there is a cause of the violence they face, not its solution. U.S. continued interference contradicts the principles of democracy and self-determination our country was founded on.
IVAW, MFSO and VFP will continue to keep pressure on Congress and the President to bring all our troops home from Iraq NOW, ensure that veterans receive the care they need and deserve, and that the U.S. provides resources to rebuild a country we destroyed. But we cannot do that alone. We need your help to reach out to the vast majority of the American people who are completely isolated from the realities of this war. Please don't abandon this struggle or shift your position before the occupation is over and our veterans and the Iraqi people are on the path to healing.
— Signed by Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans For Peace
Protesters Call for Peace on Anniversary of Iraq Invasion
by Chris Freiberg
FAIRBANKS - Today marks the sixth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Members of the Alaska Peace Center and the Fairbanks Coalition for Peace erect a banner reading "end the occupation" Wednesday, March 18, 2009, in Veterans Memorial Park to protest the war. Thursday marks the sixth year of the war in Iraq. ( Photo by Sam Harrel)And as they have done periodically since even before the war began, the Alaska Peace Center and the Fairbanks Coalition for Peace and Justice met in Veterans Memorial Park to protest the war.
About a dozen people braved single digit temperatures to erect a banner that read simply, "END THE OCCUPATION."
"One of the things we've said since the very beginning is that this was an illegal attack," one of the protesters, David Koester, said. "It was a hostile action, and it was fiscally irresponsible as we now see."
As in many cities across the country, the peace movement in Fairbanks began about 2002 when the Bush administration began pushing for a regime change in Iraq. The peace movement in Fairbanks brought together several hundred people at various rallies throughout the years, though only a handful showed up at the park Wednesday evening.
Nearly everyone in attendance remembered those early protests and how many people who drove past would display a more-than-unfriendly one-fingered gesture. Traffic was light after the group put up its banner and waved peace flags, and those who drove by did not seem to pay them much attention.
"I understand why we need to keep troops there to stave off disaster, but ultimately, the Iraqi people will need to solve their own problems," said Don Ross, one of several Vietnam veterans who attended Wednesday's rally.
Ross enlisted in the Air Force voluntarily during the Vietnam War but said he grew disenchanted with war after witnessing it first hand.
"From a moral and spiritual standpoint, I understood after Vietnam that violence is self-perpetuating and nothing good can come from it," he said.
There has been some good news for peace activists recently. On Wednesday, the Department of Defense announced an end to its stop loss policy that required enlisted troops to serve longer than they had signed on for.
Those at the rally said they were hopeful President Barack Obama would do more to end the war than his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Obama has suggested that all combat brigades will be out of Iraq by August 2010.
"There's a lot of inertia for Obama to keep this going according to plan," Koester said. "It's really important for people concerned about Iraq to let the administration know how they feel."
© 2009 Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
FAIRBANKS - Today marks the sixth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Members of the Alaska Peace Center and the Fairbanks Coalition for Peace erect a banner reading "end the occupation" Wednesday, March 18, 2009, in Veterans Memorial Park to protest the war. Thursday marks the sixth year of the war in Iraq. ( Photo by Sam Harrel)And as they have done periodically since even before the war began, the Alaska Peace Center and the Fairbanks Coalition for Peace and Justice met in Veterans Memorial Park to protest the war.
About a dozen people braved single digit temperatures to erect a banner that read simply, "END THE OCCUPATION."
"One of the things we've said since the very beginning is that this was an illegal attack," one of the protesters, David Koester, said. "It was a hostile action, and it was fiscally irresponsible as we now see."
As in many cities across the country, the peace movement in Fairbanks began about 2002 when the Bush administration began pushing for a regime change in Iraq. The peace movement in Fairbanks brought together several hundred people at various rallies throughout the years, though only a handful showed up at the park Wednesday evening.
Nearly everyone in attendance remembered those early protests and how many people who drove past would display a more-than-unfriendly one-fingered gesture. Traffic was light after the group put up its banner and waved peace flags, and those who drove by did not seem to pay them much attention.
"I understand why we need to keep troops there to stave off disaster, but ultimately, the Iraqi people will need to solve their own problems," said Don Ross, one of several Vietnam veterans who attended Wednesday's rally.
Ross enlisted in the Air Force voluntarily during the Vietnam War but said he grew disenchanted with war after witnessing it first hand.
"From a moral and spiritual standpoint, I understood after Vietnam that violence is self-perpetuating and nothing good can come from it," he said.
There has been some good news for peace activists recently. On Wednesday, the Department of Defense announced an end to its stop loss policy that required enlisted troops to serve longer than they had signed on for.
Those at the rally said they were hopeful President Barack Obama would do more to end the war than his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Obama has suggested that all combat brigades will be out of Iraq by August 2010.
"There's a lot of inertia for Obama to keep this going according to plan," Koester said. "It's really important for people concerned about Iraq to let the administration know how they feel."
© 2009 Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Battle Lines for Childish War Games
By Robert Thompson
Mar 18, 2009, 16:53
President Obama of the U.S.A. has spoken, and on a smaller scale so has his latest poodle, our President Sarkozy, to be followed on Tuesday by President Medvedev.
The first has confirmed his desire to surround the Russian Federation with interception and surveillance equipment, the second has announced the handing over of the control of our armed forces to the rulers of the U.S.A., and the third has, quite understandably, reacted as we could expect to the move by the first.
The only good news on this front is that the Czech Republic has put in doubt the part of President Obama's plan which required the setting up spy-stations on its soil.
All this follows on from the earlier proposals to flatten Afghanistan, bomb Pakistan and destroy Iran. In the meantime, the Zionists will no doubt be given every help with their plan to effect a "final solution" of the stubborn existence of the Palestinian people, following in the footsteps of the Nazis.
What this means for the world is that the euphoria born of his election has gone completely to the head of the new President of the U.S.A., and that we are promised more of his predecessors' moves towards imperialist domination by those who were and are behind them all.
The childishness of such behaviour is terrifying, and bodes ill for us all, including the optimists who hoped for so much genuine CHANGE as promised by the candidate Obama so few months ago. It will only take a few tantrums in the playground to destroy our peaceloving way of life, if he and his vassals should at any time decide that they are strong enough to take on and defeat the rest of the world.
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_29914.shtml
© Copyright 2009 by AxisofLogic.com
This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you!
Mar 18, 2009, 16:53
President Obama of the U.S.A. has spoken, and on a smaller scale so has his latest poodle, our President Sarkozy, to be followed on Tuesday by President Medvedev.
The first has confirmed his desire to surround the Russian Federation with interception and surveillance equipment, the second has announced the handing over of the control of our armed forces to the rulers of the U.S.A., and the third has, quite understandably, reacted as we could expect to the move by the first.
The only good news on this front is that the Czech Republic has put in doubt the part of President Obama's plan which required the setting up spy-stations on its soil.
All this follows on from the earlier proposals to flatten Afghanistan, bomb Pakistan and destroy Iran. In the meantime, the Zionists will no doubt be given every help with their plan to effect a "final solution" of the stubborn existence of the Palestinian people, following in the footsteps of the Nazis.
What this means for the world is that the euphoria born of his election has gone completely to the head of the new President of the U.S.A., and that we are promised more of his predecessors' moves towards imperialist domination by those who were and are behind them all.
The childishness of such behaviour is terrifying, and bodes ill for us all, including the optimists who hoped for so much genuine CHANGE as promised by the candidate Obama so few months ago. It will only take a few tantrums in the playground to destroy our peaceloving way of life, if he and his vassals should at any time decide that they are strong enough to take on and defeat the rest of the world.
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_29914.shtml
© Copyright 2009 by AxisofLogic.com
This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you!
The Charles Freeman Ordeal and the Decline of American Power
Israel's American Chattel
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
-- Ambassador Charles Freeman on declining his appointment as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2009
Many conservatives take vicarious pleasure in America’s superpower status. Bush’s flaunting of American power is one reason conservatives took scant notice of Bush’s police state measures and ill-conceived wars. Conservatives were so delighted with Bush giving the finger to the UN, the world community and especially France, a country conservatives have despised ever since Charles DeGaulle refused to follow the American line, that conservatives paid no attention to Bush’s assault on civil liberty and his squandering of America’s reputation.
I wonder how much longer conservatives will be strutting around now that the “defeated” Taliban are denying the Peshawar/Khyber Pass supply route to the unipower’s military for resupply of its troops in Afghanistan. The US has had to go hat in hand to the Russians to request a resupply route through Russian territory, and has been told it can transport non-munition supplies only. The Russians might be willing for Obama to send arms through if Obama repudiates Bush’s decision to put anti-ballistic missile defenses in the American puppet states of Poland and Czech Republic.
The Polish government is concerned about repeating its World War II mistake of putting its fate in the hands of a distant protector instead of with the military power on its border and recently admonished Washington not to renege on the missile deal. Poland is clinging desperately to Bush’s promise of nuclear war in defense of Poland, just as seven decades ago the Polish colonels thought they could stick their finger in Hitler’s eye, because Britain had given Poland a guarantee.
Iraq is another embarrassment for conservatives, with the Iranian-allied Shi’ite party, not the superpower, dictating the withdrawal agreement. The US remains in Iraq only as a useful scapegoat for the Shi’ite rulers.
But what’s really going to blow the legs out from under conservatives is the realization that the great superpower is the chattel goods of the Israel Lobby.
The Obama administration, despite the Democrats’ decisive electoral victory in last November’s election, has demonstrated that the superpower cannot appoint its own
chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Charles Freeman, a distinguished and independent-minded American, former ambassador and former Assistant Secretary of Defense, found his appointment blocked by Steve Rosen, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) currently under indictment as an Israeli spy, and a handful of American Jewish neoconservatives closely identified with the right-wing government in Israel.
How is the United States a superpower when it cannot appoint the official who oversees the National Intelligence Estimate without the approval of the Israeli right-wing government and its American agents?
Conservatives will say, of course, that Israel is the “only democracy in the Middle East.” The question whether Israel, or, for that matter, America, is a democracy is beside the point. The point is that Israel has shown that it can control not merely US foreign policy but also US intelligence policy.
Last Thursday America’s Overlord sent the Chief of Staff of the American-financed and supplied Israel Defense Forces, General Gabi Ashkenazi, to meet with President Barack Obama, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General James Jones, National Security Advisor, and Dennis Ross, the US State Department’s Special Advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that General Ashkenazi will also meet with “senior American journalists and with the heads of AIPAC, the American pro-Israel lobbyist group.”
General Ashkenazi will also “be a guest of honor at the annual ‘Supporters of the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces]” convention in the city of New York and will address its participants.
General Ashkenazi will also be meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger “as well as with the heads of the New York Jewish Federation.”
The official reason for General Ashkenazi’s visit is to warn America about the threat that Iran presents to the United States. In reality, the general has been sent to stir up an American attack on Iran.
The military/security complex will welcome the opening of a new front on the “war on terror.” The American arms industries desperately need a new war to replace Iraq. “Our” government in Washington desperately needs new reasons to suppress American civil liberties. The traitorous Bush Republicans and their Democratic enablers desperately need justification for committing America to multi-trillion dollar illegal wars. The neoconservatives desperately need a rationale for the lies they told to start what they hope are long-term wars in the Middle East. The neocon madmen even want to overthrow Saudi Arabia, one of America’s largest creditors.
Conservatives will welcome these developments with open arms. America will have a chance to redeem itself. America can yet prove it is a superpower by conquering both Iran and Afghanistan. Once these victories are in hand, Israel can destroy both Hamas and Hezbollah, and the new Israel can incorporate Palestine and southern Lebanon.
While conservatives dream these dreams, China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, expressed on Friday, March 13, his fears that the US Treasury’s credit is not good and that his country’s $1 trillion investment in American debt is endangered. Premier Wen said, “We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.”
Contrast Premier Wen’s concern with the optimism coming out of the Obama administration and what remains of Wall Street.
Then exercise Charles Freeman’s independent thinking and make up your own mind. Is America a superpower, or is America a rapidly declining country destroyed by gratuitous wars and shyster banksters?
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
“I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.
“The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.
“There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.”
-- Ambassador Charles Freeman on declining his appointment as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2009
Many conservatives take vicarious pleasure in America’s superpower status. Bush’s flaunting of American power is one reason conservatives took scant notice of Bush’s police state measures and ill-conceived wars. Conservatives were so delighted with Bush giving the finger to the UN, the world community and especially France, a country conservatives have despised ever since Charles DeGaulle refused to follow the American line, that conservatives paid no attention to Bush’s assault on civil liberty and his squandering of America’s reputation.
I wonder how much longer conservatives will be strutting around now that the “defeated” Taliban are denying the Peshawar/Khyber Pass supply route to the unipower’s military for resupply of its troops in Afghanistan. The US has had to go hat in hand to the Russians to request a resupply route through Russian territory, and has been told it can transport non-munition supplies only. The Russians might be willing for Obama to send arms through if Obama repudiates Bush’s decision to put anti-ballistic missile defenses in the American puppet states of Poland and Czech Republic.
The Polish government is concerned about repeating its World War II mistake of putting its fate in the hands of a distant protector instead of with the military power on its border and recently admonished Washington not to renege on the missile deal. Poland is clinging desperately to Bush’s promise of nuclear war in defense of Poland, just as seven decades ago the Polish colonels thought they could stick their finger in Hitler’s eye, because Britain had given Poland a guarantee.
Iraq is another embarrassment for conservatives, with the Iranian-allied Shi’ite party, not the superpower, dictating the withdrawal agreement. The US remains in Iraq only as a useful scapegoat for the Shi’ite rulers.
But what’s really going to blow the legs out from under conservatives is the realization that the great superpower is the chattel goods of the Israel Lobby.
The Obama administration, despite the Democrats’ decisive electoral victory in last November’s election, has demonstrated that the superpower cannot appoint its own
chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Charles Freeman, a distinguished and independent-minded American, former ambassador and former Assistant Secretary of Defense, found his appointment blocked by Steve Rosen, a former official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) currently under indictment as an Israeli spy, and a handful of American Jewish neoconservatives closely identified with the right-wing government in Israel.
How is the United States a superpower when it cannot appoint the official who oversees the National Intelligence Estimate without the approval of the Israeli right-wing government and its American agents?
Conservatives will say, of course, that Israel is the “only democracy in the Middle East.” The question whether Israel, or, for that matter, America, is a democracy is beside the point. The point is that Israel has shown that it can control not merely US foreign policy but also US intelligence policy.
Last Thursday America’s Overlord sent the Chief of Staff of the American-financed and supplied Israel Defense Forces, General Gabi Ashkenazi, to meet with President Barack Obama, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General James Jones, National Security Advisor, and Dennis Ross, the US State Department’s Special Advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that General Ashkenazi will also meet with “senior American journalists and with the heads of AIPAC, the American pro-Israel lobbyist group.”
General Ashkenazi will also “be a guest of honor at the annual ‘Supporters of the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces]” convention in the city of New York and will address its participants.
General Ashkenazi will also be meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger “as well as with the heads of the New York Jewish Federation.”
The official reason for General Ashkenazi’s visit is to warn America about the threat that Iran presents to the United States. In reality, the general has been sent to stir up an American attack on Iran.
The military/security complex will welcome the opening of a new front on the “war on terror.” The American arms industries desperately need a new war to replace Iraq. “Our” government in Washington desperately needs new reasons to suppress American civil liberties. The traitorous Bush Republicans and their Democratic enablers desperately need justification for committing America to multi-trillion dollar illegal wars. The neoconservatives desperately need a rationale for the lies they told to start what they hope are long-term wars in the Middle East. The neocon madmen even want to overthrow Saudi Arabia, one of America’s largest creditors.
Conservatives will welcome these developments with open arms. America will have a chance to redeem itself. America can yet prove it is a superpower by conquering both Iran and Afghanistan. Once these victories are in hand, Israel can destroy both Hamas and Hezbollah, and the new Israel can incorporate Palestine and southern Lebanon.
While conservatives dream these dreams, China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, expressed on Friday, March 13, his fears that the US Treasury’s credit is not good and that his country’s $1 trillion investment in American debt is endangered. Premier Wen said, “We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.”
Contrast Premier Wen’s concern with the optimism coming out of the Obama administration and what remains of Wall Street.
Then exercise Charles Freeman’s independent thinking and make up your own mind. Is America a superpower, or is America a rapidly declining country destroyed by gratuitous wars and shyster banksters?
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Obama and the Empire
Will He Sell Himself Into His Own Defeat?
By Bill and Kathleen Christison
Various people have asked recently, “What are the implications of the global economic crisis for US policies in the Middle East, and will Middle East countries lean more or less toward the US as they suffer their own economic crises?” Not simple questions, but here, presented very briefly, are our first shots at them.
Let’s start by discussing what US policies affecting the Middle East may emerge in coming months. A preliminary point that is necessary to make is that present policies inherited from the Bush administration are a mess. Practically everyone of every nationality who lives in the Middle East -- and elsewhere for that matter -- believes that the economic crises now moving in on the world were largely caused by the US’s own extreme version of capitalism with its massive emphasis on privatization and on elimination of regulations that might have provided some protections for ordinary people. At the minimum, there are widespread feelings of Shadenfreude over the pain the US is now suffering, and at a political level there is intense dislike of the US for policies that are seen, correctly, as arising from US and Israeli colonialism and empire-building and that are blamed for the economic woes and inequalities now affecting nations everywhere.
There are two major scenarios of how US Middle East policies may develop in the next year or so. Even now, no one knows enough about President Obama to know which scenario or variation on it might be likely. Increasingly, though, it appears that in foreign affairs, he is not going to change very much. We hope this is wrong. At least on the central issue of Palestine-Israel, Obama made it clear from the start of his campaign, well before the election, that he will support the right-wing elements of the Israel lobby led by AIPAC. But there still is the question of how strong his support will be.
The first scenario is that Obama will just bumble along, changing as little as he can get away with from Bush’s policies, except for clearing away some of the roughest edges of Bush policies on torture. Obama is expanding the war in Afghanistan and continuing the war in Iraq longer than he said he would. Under this scenario, he will try to keep talking as long as possible over Iran and try to avoid fighting. He will try to keep supporting a civilian government in Pakistan, but would not really oppose a return to military dictatorship in that country, if Pakistan would continue supporting his Afghanistan and Iran policies.
That’s the first scenario. Although its support for empire and colonialism makes it an undesirable scenario, at least Obama would be trying to avoid a major war.
The second, much more militaristic scenario is far worse, possibly involving more wars, but it describes what Obama’s policies in the Middle East may well turn into as the remaining months of 2009 pass by.
Right now Obama is faced with domestic economic difficulties greater than he would have thought, during most of his campaign, could conceivably happen as rapidly as they did. But he is also faced with a military-industrial complex that is now pushing for ever larger military expenditures and more aggressive foreign policies, among other things as a way to help solve US economic difficulties. In addition to this, Obama is faced with the prospect of an Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu that is even more right-wing than the present one, supported by that portion of the Israel lobby led by AIPAC. This part of the lobby is probably the strongest ally of the military-industrial complex in supporting more wars and more aggressiveness in US Middle East policies. Obama showed his support for the lobby throughout his campaign and, most recently, did nothing to oppose the lobby’s successful trashing of Charles Freeman, a fine candidate for a senior intelligence position whom the lobby charged with being anti-Israel. Since a majority of US voters generally support Israel without thinking much about it, the disorganized justice and peace movement in the United States is not very effective in opposing either the military-industrial complex or the right-wing Israel lobby.
Obama has by now clearly shown that he does not want to be the American leader who loses the American empire. In general, most European governments, most of the Arab governments, and the Japanese government as well, will not oppose him. Public opinion in these countries, in contrast to the governments, will be somewhat stronger in opposing US policies of empire, but it is doubtful that the publics in these countries will be able to accomplish very much.
So the conclusion that one comes to if this second scenario turns out to be true is that we are facing a very dangerous period in world history. There are indeed forces in both the United States and Israel that want a clash of civilizations and are definitely not against further wars, and these forces are powerful. Obviously, the first nation to be affected by implementation of this scenario would be Iran. At this point it is impossible to know whether Obama will want to, or be able to, prevent these forces from dominating future US policies throughout the Middle East.
Bill and Kathleen Christison have been writing on the Middle East for several years and have co-authored a book, forthcoming in June from Pluto Press, on the Israeli occupation and its impact on Palestinians. Thirty years ago, they were analysts for the CIA. They can be reached at kb.christison@earthlink.net
By Bill and Kathleen Christison
Various people have asked recently, “What are the implications of the global economic crisis for US policies in the Middle East, and will Middle East countries lean more or less toward the US as they suffer their own economic crises?” Not simple questions, but here, presented very briefly, are our first shots at them.
Let’s start by discussing what US policies affecting the Middle East may emerge in coming months. A preliminary point that is necessary to make is that present policies inherited from the Bush administration are a mess. Practically everyone of every nationality who lives in the Middle East -- and elsewhere for that matter -- believes that the economic crises now moving in on the world were largely caused by the US’s own extreme version of capitalism with its massive emphasis on privatization and on elimination of regulations that might have provided some protections for ordinary people. At the minimum, there are widespread feelings of Shadenfreude over the pain the US is now suffering, and at a political level there is intense dislike of the US for policies that are seen, correctly, as arising from US and Israeli colonialism and empire-building and that are blamed for the economic woes and inequalities now affecting nations everywhere.
There are two major scenarios of how US Middle East policies may develop in the next year or so. Even now, no one knows enough about President Obama to know which scenario or variation on it might be likely. Increasingly, though, it appears that in foreign affairs, he is not going to change very much. We hope this is wrong. At least on the central issue of Palestine-Israel, Obama made it clear from the start of his campaign, well before the election, that he will support the right-wing elements of the Israel lobby led by AIPAC. But there still is the question of how strong his support will be.
The first scenario is that Obama will just bumble along, changing as little as he can get away with from Bush’s policies, except for clearing away some of the roughest edges of Bush policies on torture. Obama is expanding the war in Afghanistan and continuing the war in Iraq longer than he said he would. Under this scenario, he will try to keep talking as long as possible over Iran and try to avoid fighting. He will try to keep supporting a civilian government in Pakistan, but would not really oppose a return to military dictatorship in that country, if Pakistan would continue supporting his Afghanistan and Iran policies.
That’s the first scenario. Although its support for empire and colonialism makes it an undesirable scenario, at least Obama would be trying to avoid a major war.
The second, much more militaristic scenario is far worse, possibly involving more wars, but it describes what Obama’s policies in the Middle East may well turn into as the remaining months of 2009 pass by.
Right now Obama is faced with domestic economic difficulties greater than he would have thought, during most of his campaign, could conceivably happen as rapidly as they did. But he is also faced with a military-industrial complex that is now pushing for ever larger military expenditures and more aggressive foreign policies, among other things as a way to help solve US economic difficulties. In addition to this, Obama is faced with the prospect of an Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu that is even more right-wing than the present one, supported by that portion of the Israel lobby led by AIPAC. This part of the lobby is probably the strongest ally of the military-industrial complex in supporting more wars and more aggressiveness in US Middle East policies. Obama showed his support for the lobby throughout his campaign and, most recently, did nothing to oppose the lobby’s successful trashing of Charles Freeman, a fine candidate for a senior intelligence position whom the lobby charged with being anti-Israel. Since a majority of US voters generally support Israel without thinking much about it, the disorganized justice and peace movement in the United States is not very effective in opposing either the military-industrial complex or the right-wing Israel lobby.
Obama has by now clearly shown that he does not want to be the American leader who loses the American empire. In general, most European governments, most of the Arab governments, and the Japanese government as well, will not oppose him. Public opinion in these countries, in contrast to the governments, will be somewhat stronger in opposing US policies of empire, but it is doubtful that the publics in these countries will be able to accomplish very much.
So the conclusion that one comes to if this second scenario turns out to be true is that we are facing a very dangerous period in world history. There are indeed forces in both the United States and Israel that want a clash of civilizations and are definitely not against further wars, and these forces are powerful. Obviously, the first nation to be affected by implementation of this scenario would be Iran. At this point it is impossible to know whether Obama will want to, or be able to, prevent these forces from dominating future US policies throughout the Middle East.
Bill and Kathleen Christison have been writing on the Middle East for several years and have co-authored a book, forthcoming in June from Pluto Press, on the Israeli occupation and its impact on Palestinians. Thirty years ago, they were analysts for the CIA. They can be reached at kb.christison@earthlink.net
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Iraqi Women Want US Out
by Yifat Susskind
If you haven't thought about the Iraq war as a story of U.S. allies systematically torturing and executing women, you're not alone. Likewise if you were under the impression that Iraqi women were somehow better off under their new, U.S.-sponsored government.
In the spring of 2003, Fatin was a student of architecture at Baghdad University. Her days were filled with classes and hanging out in her favorite of Baghdad's many cafes, where she and her friends studied, shared music, and spun big plans for successful careers, happy marriages, and eventually kids.
Today, Fatin says that those feel like someone else's dreams.
Soon after the U.S. invasion, Fatin began seeing groups of bearded young Iraqi men patrolling the streets of Baghdad. They were looking for women like her, who wore modern clothes or were heading to professional jobs. The men screamed terrible insults at the women and sometimes beat them.
By the fall, ordinary aspects of Fatin's life had become punishable by death. The "misery gangs," as Fatin calls them, were routinely killing women for wearing pants, appearing in public without a headscarf, or shaking hands and socializing with men.
As the occupying power, the U.S. was legally obligated to stop these attacks. But the Pentagon, preoccupied with battling the Iraqi insurgency, simply ignored the militias' reign of terror.
In fact, some of the most treacherous armed groups belonged to the very political parties that the U.S. had brought to power. By 2005, the Pentagon was giving weapons, money and military training to these Shiite militias, in the hope that they would help combat the Sunni-led insurgency.
Fatin's closest encounter with the militias occurred when armed men burst into her university classroom one morning, threatening to kill any female student without a head scarf. After that, young women dropped out in droves. The next semester, Fatin's parents refused to allow her to re-enroll.
While the Pentagon was arming militias bent on brutally ousting Iraqi women from public life, the U.S. State Department was busy brokering the new Iraqi Constitution. Hailed as "progressive" and "democratic" in Washington, the new Constitution designates religious law, which discriminates against women, as the basis of all legislation. It also restricts women's rights by upending one of the most progressive family status laws in the Middle East -- a law that Iraqi women fought for and won in 1959, before Saddam Hussein took power.
For Fatin, the bitter irony is that her new Constitution, courtesy of the USA, destroyed women's rights that were once guaranteed in Iraq, even under the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.
Fatin has now been out of school and unemployed for more than three years. Her mother, a pharmacist, and her aunt, trained as a veterinarian, have also been unemployed for years now and are too afraid to try to find work.
So what are Iraqi women saying on the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion? The same thing they've been saying since 2003: End the occupation. Polls consistently show that a majority of Iraqis want U.S. troops out.
We've been told that if the U.S. withdraws, violence would again soar in Iraq. That's a compelling argument for those of us who care about the suffering that the U.S. has already visited on Iraqi women and their families. But Iraqis themselves, who have the best grasp of their security situation, say that U.S. troops are causing, not confronting, violence. In multiple polls, most Iraqis say they would feel much safer without U.S. troops.
Who can blame them? Since the invasion, over a million Iraqis have died violently and 4 million have been driven from their homes. The resources that women need to care for their families -- electricity, water, food, fuel, and medical care -- have become dangerously scarce, sometimes totally unavailable.
Last week marked six years since the U.S. invaded Iraq. In that time, women have not only faced mounting violence -- they have also organized a movement to confront U.S. occupation and violence against women.
Looking for a way to speak out against the repression she witnessed, Fatin joined the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI). In partnership with MADRE, an international women's human rights organization based in New York, OWFI has worked to promote women's human rights, creating a network of women's shelters to protect women fleeing violence.
The women of Iraq are creating the foundation on which a peaceful and just future will be built. It's time we started listening to them.
© 2009 American Forum
If you haven't thought about the Iraq war as a story of U.S. allies systematically torturing and executing women, you're not alone. Likewise if you were under the impression that Iraqi women were somehow better off under their new, U.S.-sponsored government.
In the spring of 2003, Fatin was a student of architecture at Baghdad University. Her days were filled with classes and hanging out in her favorite of Baghdad's many cafes, where she and her friends studied, shared music, and spun big plans for successful careers, happy marriages, and eventually kids.
Today, Fatin says that those feel like someone else's dreams.
Soon after the U.S. invasion, Fatin began seeing groups of bearded young Iraqi men patrolling the streets of Baghdad. They were looking for women like her, who wore modern clothes or were heading to professional jobs. The men screamed terrible insults at the women and sometimes beat them.
By the fall, ordinary aspects of Fatin's life had become punishable by death. The "misery gangs," as Fatin calls them, were routinely killing women for wearing pants, appearing in public without a headscarf, or shaking hands and socializing with men.
As the occupying power, the U.S. was legally obligated to stop these attacks. But the Pentagon, preoccupied with battling the Iraqi insurgency, simply ignored the militias' reign of terror.
In fact, some of the most treacherous armed groups belonged to the very political parties that the U.S. had brought to power. By 2005, the Pentagon was giving weapons, money and military training to these Shiite militias, in the hope that they would help combat the Sunni-led insurgency.
Fatin's closest encounter with the militias occurred when armed men burst into her university classroom one morning, threatening to kill any female student without a head scarf. After that, young women dropped out in droves. The next semester, Fatin's parents refused to allow her to re-enroll.
While the Pentagon was arming militias bent on brutally ousting Iraqi women from public life, the U.S. State Department was busy brokering the new Iraqi Constitution. Hailed as "progressive" and "democratic" in Washington, the new Constitution designates religious law, which discriminates against women, as the basis of all legislation. It also restricts women's rights by upending one of the most progressive family status laws in the Middle East -- a law that Iraqi women fought for and won in 1959, before Saddam Hussein took power.
For Fatin, the bitter irony is that her new Constitution, courtesy of the USA, destroyed women's rights that were once guaranteed in Iraq, even under the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.
Fatin has now been out of school and unemployed for more than three years. Her mother, a pharmacist, and her aunt, trained as a veterinarian, have also been unemployed for years now and are too afraid to try to find work.
So what are Iraqi women saying on the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion? The same thing they've been saying since 2003: End the occupation. Polls consistently show that a majority of Iraqis want U.S. troops out.
We've been told that if the U.S. withdraws, violence would again soar in Iraq. That's a compelling argument for those of us who care about the suffering that the U.S. has already visited on Iraqi women and their families. But Iraqis themselves, who have the best grasp of their security situation, say that U.S. troops are causing, not confronting, violence. In multiple polls, most Iraqis say they would feel much safer without U.S. troops.
Who can blame them? Since the invasion, over a million Iraqis have died violently and 4 million have been driven from their homes. The resources that women need to care for their families -- electricity, water, food, fuel, and medical care -- have become dangerously scarce, sometimes totally unavailable.
Last week marked six years since the U.S. invaded Iraq. In that time, women have not only faced mounting violence -- they have also organized a movement to confront U.S. occupation and violence against women.
Looking for a way to speak out against the repression she witnessed, Fatin joined the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI). In partnership with MADRE, an international women's human rights organization based in New York, OWFI has worked to promote women's human rights, creating a network of women's shelters to protect women fleeing violence.
The women of Iraq are creating the foundation on which a peaceful and just future will be built. It's time we started listening to them.
© 2009 American Forum
Zionism is the Problem
The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace.
by Ben Ehrenreich
It's hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with "the concept of a racial state -- the Hitlerian concept." For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism.
Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as an impious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist Jews -- my grandparents among them -- tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.
To be Jewish, I was raised to believe, meant understanding oneself as a member of a tribe that over and over had been cast out, mistreated, slaughtered. Millenniums of oppression that preceded it did not entitle us to a homeland or a right to self-defense that superseded anyone else's. If they offered us anything exceptional, it was a perspective on oppression and an obligation born of the prophetic tradition: to act on behalf of the oppressed and to cry out at the oppressor.
For the last several decades, though, it has been all but impossible to cry out against the Israeli state without being smeared as an anti-Semite, or worse. To question not just Israel's actions, but the Zionist tenets on which the state is founded, has for too long been regarded an almost unspeakable blasphemy.
Yet it is no longer possible to believe with an honest conscience that the deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza and the West Bank come as the result of specific policies, leaders or parties on either side of the impasse. The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.
It has been argued that Zionism is an anachronism, a leftover ideology from the era of 19th century romantic nationalisms wedged uncomfortably into 21st century geopolitics. But Zionism is not merely outdated. Even before 1948, one of its basic oversights was readily apparent: the presence of Palestinians in Palestine. That led some of the most prominent Jewish thinkers of the last century, many of them Zionists, to balk at the idea of Jewish statehood. The Brit Shalom movement -- founded in 1925 and supported at various times by Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem -- argued for a secular, binational state in Palestine in which Jews and Arabs would be accorded equal status. Their concerns were both moral and pragmatic. The establishment of a Jewish state, Buber feared, would mean "premeditated national suicide."
The fate Buber foresaw is upon us: a nation that has lived in a state of war for decades, a quarter-million Arab citizens with second-class status and more than 5 million Palestinians deprived of the most basic political and human rights. If two decades ago comparisons to the South African apartheid system felt like hyperbole, they now feel charitable. The white South African regime, for all its crimes, never attacked the Bantustans with anything like the destructive power Israel visited on Gaza in December and January, when nearly1,300 Palestinians were killed, one-third of them children.
Israeli policies have rendered the once apparently inevitable two-state solution less and less feasible. Years of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have methodically diminished the viability of a Palestinian state. Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has even refused to endorse the idea of an independent Palestinian state, which suggests an immediate future of more of the same: more settlements, more punitive assaults.
All of this has led to a revival of the Brit Shalom idea of a single, secular binational state in which Jews and Arabs have equal political rights. The obstacles are, of course, enormous. They include not just a powerful Israeli attachment to the idea of an exclusively Jewish state, but its Palestinian analogue: Hamas' ideal of Islamic rule. Both sides would have to find assurance that their security was guaranteed. What precise shape such a state would take -- a strict, vote-by-vote democracy or a more complex federalist system -- would involve years of painful negotiation, wiser leaders than now exist and an uncompromising commitment from the rest of the world, particularly from the United States.
Meanwhile, the characterization of anti-Zionism as an "epidemic" more dangerous than anti-Semitism reveals only the unsustainability of the position into which Israel's apologists have been forced. Faced with international condemnation, they seek to limit the discourse, to erect walls that delineate what can and can't be said.
It's not working. Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, "turn justice into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground."
Establishing a secular, pluralist, democratic government in Israel and Palestine would of course mean the abandonment of the Zionist dream. It might also mean the only salvation for the Jewish ideals of justice that date back to Jeremiah.
© 2009 The Los Angeles Times
Ben Ehrenreich is the author of the novel "The Suitors."
by Ben Ehrenreich
It's hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with "the concept of a racial state -- the Hitlerian concept." For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism.
Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as an impious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist Jews -- my grandparents among them -- tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.
To be Jewish, I was raised to believe, meant understanding oneself as a member of a tribe that over and over had been cast out, mistreated, slaughtered. Millenniums of oppression that preceded it did not entitle us to a homeland or a right to self-defense that superseded anyone else's. If they offered us anything exceptional, it was a perspective on oppression and an obligation born of the prophetic tradition: to act on behalf of the oppressed and to cry out at the oppressor.
For the last several decades, though, it has been all but impossible to cry out against the Israeli state without being smeared as an anti-Semite, or worse. To question not just Israel's actions, but the Zionist tenets on which the state is founded, has for too long been regarded an almost unspeakable blasphemy.
Yet it is no longer possible to believe with an honest conscience that the deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza and the West Bank come as the result of specific policies, leaders or parties on either side of the impasse. The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.
It has been argued that Zionism is an anachronism, a leftover ideology from the era of 19th century romantic nationalisms wedged uncomfortably into 21st century geopolitics. But Zionism is not merely outdated. Even before 1948, one of its basic oversights was readily apparent: the presence of Palestinians in Palestine. That led some of the most prominent Jewish thinkers of the last century, many of them Zionists, to balk at the idea of Jewish statehood. The Brit Shalom movement -- founded in 1925 and supported at various times by Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem -- argued for a secular, binational state in Palestine in which Jews and Arabs would be accorded equal status. Their concerns were both moral and pragmatic. The establishment of a Jewish state, Buber feared, would mean "premeditated national suicide."
The fate Buber foresaw is upon us: a nation that has lived in a state of war for decades, a quarter-million Arab citizens with second-class status and more than 5 million Palestinians deprived of the most basic political and human rights. If two decades ago comparisons to the South African apartheid system felt like hyperbole, they now feel charitable. The white South African regime, for all its crimes, never attacked the Bantustans with anything like the destructive power Israel visited on Gaza in December and January, when nearly1,300 Palestinians were killed, one-third of them children.
Israeli policies have rendered the once apparently inevitable two-state solution less and less feasible. Years of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have methodically diminished the viability of a Palestinian state. Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has even refused to endorse the idea of an independent Palestinian state, which suggests an immediate future of more of the same: more settlements, more punitive assaults.
All of this has led to a revival of the Brit Shalom idea of a single, secular binational state in which Jews and Arabs have equal political rights. The obstacles are, of course, enormous. They include not just a powerful Israeli attachment to the idea of an exclusively Jewish state, but its Palestinian analogue: Hamas' ideal of Islamic rule. Both sides would have to find assurance that their security was guaranteed. What precise shape such a state would take -- a strict, vote-by-vote democracy or a more complex federalist system -- would involve years of painful negotiation, wiser leaders than now exist and an uncompromising commitment from the rest of the world, particularly from the United States.
Meanwhile, the characterization of anti-Zionism as an "epidemic" more dangerous than anti-Semitism reveals only the unsustainability of the position into which Israel's apologists have been forced. Faced with international condemnation, they seek to limit the discourse, to erect walls that delineate what can and can't be said.
It's not working. Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, "turn justice into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground."
Establishing a secular, pluralist, democratic government in Israel and Palestine would of course mean the abandonment of the Zionist dream. It might also mean the only salvation for the Jewish ideals of justice that date back to Jeremiah.
© 2009 The Los Angeles Times
Ben Ehrenreich is the author of the novel "The Suitors."
Plan to Split Taliban Lures Obama Deeper Into War
by Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Advanced reports on the Barack Obama administration's strategy to "peel off" a majority of insurgent commanders from the "hard core" of Taliban suggest that it will be presented as a political route to victory in Afghanistan that would not require U.S. and NATO troops to win militarily.
But experts warn that the strategy is unlikely to work. And by appearing to provide a political route to victory, the strategy is luring the administration into a renewed commitment to war in Afghanistan and diverting it away from a deal with the Taliban leadership aimed at keeping al Qaeda from having a presence there.
News reports this past week have raised the possibility of negotiations by Afghan, Saudi and Pakistani officials with the Taliban leadership that could result in an agreement not to allow an al Qaeda presence on Afghan territory in return for U.S. and NATO withdrawal and assurances that they will not intervene in the country as long as al Qaeda is kept out.
The strategy of splitting off "reconcilable" insurgents may make commitment to an indefinite continuation of the U.S. military effort more palatable to key U.S. officials, including Obama himself, who know that the war cannot be won through military efforts.
The new administration strategy was reported last week after briefings of Congressional leaders by Gen. David Petraeus, head of CENTCOM, and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the State Department special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Petraeus has been a strong supporter of the strategy of trying to divide the Afghan insurgency by offering money and jobs to those willing to accept the government in Kabul. He has said that his strategy of outreach to what he has described as "reconcilables" among the insurgents in Iraq might be applicable in Afghanistan as well.
The premise of the plan being advanced by administration officials, at least for public consumption, was articulated by Vice President Joseph Biden in a speech in Brussels last week. Biden said only 100 to 1,000 Taliban or al Qaeda members - representing about 5 percent of the Taliban insurgency - are "incorrigible", and that at least 70 percent were involved in the insurgency only because they are "getting paid".
Biden was reflecting the view of the insurgency held by senior military officials at the NATO regional headquarters in Kandahar. Officials there see the insurgency in the south as made up largely of "young freelance fighters who are motivated more by money than religious zealotry," according to a report by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in the Washington Post Sunday.
But that extraordinarily optimistic assumption is not shared by most experts on the insurgency in Afghanistan. A report by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times last Wednesday quotes "several Western diplomats and officials in Afghanistan, including those already in contact with the Taliban" as saying that attempts to split off individual commanders or groups from the Taliban leadership "would not work."
The reason, according to those officials, is that the plan would require those commanders to surrender and accept an Afghan government and a foreign military presence in which they have no trust.
Jonathan Landay of McClatchy newspapers reported from Kabul Sunday that experts on the Taliban express "serious doubts" about the splitting strategy, because insurgent leaders believe they are winning and the Hamid Karzai government is growing weaker.
In contrast to the reported premise that most insurgents are motivated by material gain, most specialists on the insurgency emphasised the dominant role of Pashtun anger at foreign military operations in their locality killing members of their family or tribe.
An alternative strategy of seeking a deal with the Taliban aimed at separating them from al Qaeda was first raised by New York University Afghanistan specialist Barnett Rubin and Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine last December. The article proposed that NATO offer to end military action in Afghanistan if the Taliban agrees "to prohibit the use of Afghan (or Pakistani) territory for international terrorism."
Rubin and Rashid have been hired by Holbrooke as adviser and short-term consultant, respectively, according to a report by national security correspondent Laura Rozen at Foreign Policy.
The option proposed by Rubin and Rashid has now been given new credibility by reports that Saudi Arabia is engaged in an effort to persuade the Taliban to separate itself clearly from al Qaeda.
The London Times published a report by Christina Lamb Sunday that Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi intelligence chief, visited Islamabad, Delhi and Kabul in January to talk to both Taliban and Afghan government officials.
Lamb also reported that Taliban Chief Mullah Omar had given his approval to peace talks with the Afghan government for the first time, citing a "mediator" with the Taliban, Algerian former Mujahideen fighter in Afghanistan Abdullah Anas and an Afghan government official involved in the negotiations as the sources.
The Afghan government negotiator told Lamb that government officials "have been in contact both with Mullah Omar's direct representatives and commanders from the front line."
Asked for a comment on this development, Rubin, the Columbia University expert, told IPS in an e-mail that the Lamb story "is accurate".
A report published by Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) last week by director of Middle East analysis Kamran Bokhari and Scott Stewart also noted the Saudi intelligence chief's trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. In meetings with actual Taliban commanders in both countries, the Saudis have offered financial support if the Taliban agrees to divorce itself completely from al Qaeda, according to the report.
Bokhari, a Pakistani specialist on Islamist groups, has had extensive contacts with high-ranking Pakistani and Saudi officials in the past.
The Saudi regime, once reluctant to crack down on al Qaeda, has pursued a very successful political strategy against al Qaeda within Saudi Arabia since 2003. Saudi Arabia has credibility with the Taliban leadership because of shared religious beliefs and because it is one of the few foreign governments that continued to recognise the Taliban after 9/11.
The Taliban chief, Mullah Omar, had rejected U.S. and Saudi pressures to expel Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan prior to the 9/11 attacks. But the question of ties between the Taliban and al Qaeda have been far less clear since the expulsion of both organisations from Afghanistan in late 2001.
Amin Tarzi, director of the Middle East Studies Program at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, wrote in an essay for the 2007 book "Taliban and the Crisis in Afghanistan" that there was "no evidence of concerted cooperation" between what he called the "neo- Taliban" and al Qaeda in southern Afghanistan.
Some factions in the north and northeast, however, had "resurrected old ties with al Qaeda" to obtain funds, recruits and technical support, according to Tarzi.
Tarzi cited a comment by Taliban spokesman Mohammad Hanif to an Italian newspaper in March 2006 that the movement had "no operational ties" to al Qaeda, but that they had "tactical alliances based given circumstances and territorial situations".
As suggested in the Rubin-Rashid proposal, any deal with the Taliban will have to include a date for withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces. In October 2007, The Guardian reported that senior Taliban commanders in Helmand province had sent a list of demands to the Karzai government through intermediaries that included control of 10 southern provinces, a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops and the release of all Taliban prisoners within six months.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
Copyright © 2009 IPS-Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON - Advanced reports on the Barack Obama administration's strategy to "peel off" a majority of insurgent commanders from the "hard core" of Taliban suggest that it will be presented as a political route to victory in Afghanistan that would not require U.S. and NATO troops to win militarily.
But experts warn that the strategy is unlikely to work. And by appearing to provide a political route to victory, the strategy is luring the administration into a renewed commitment to war in Afghanistan and diverting it away from a deal with the Taliban leadership aimed at keeping al Qaeda from having a presence there.
News reports this past week have raised the possibility of negotiations by Afghan, Saudi and Pakistani officials with the Taliban leadership that could result in an agreement not to allow an al Qaeda presence on Afghan territory in return for U.S. and NATO withdrawal and assurances that they will not intervene in the country as long as al Qaeda is kept out.
The strategy of splitting off "reconcilable" insurgents may make commitment to an indefinite continuation of the U.S. military effort more palatable to key U.S. officials, including Obama himself, who know that the war cannot be won through military efforts.
The new administration strategy was reported last week after briefings of Congressional leaders by Gen. David Petraeus, head of CENTCOM, and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the State Department special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Petraeus has been a strong supporter of the strategy of trying to divide the Afghan insurgency by offering money and jobs to those willing to accept the government in Kabul. He has said that his strategy of outreach to what he has described as "reconcilables" among the insurgents in Iraq might be applicable in Afghanistan as well.
The premise of the plan being advanced by administration officials, at least for public consumption, was articulated by Vice President Joseph Biden in a speech in Brussels last week. Biden said only 100 to 1,000 Taliban or al Qaeda members - representing about 5 percent of the Taliban insurgency - are "incorrigible", and that at least 70 percent were involved in the insurgency only because they are "getting paid".
Biden was reflecting the view of the insurgency held by senior military officials at the NATO regional headquarters in Kandahar. Officials there see the insurgency in the south as made up largely of "young freelance fighters who are motivated more by money than religious zealotry," according to a report by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in the Washington Post Sunday.
But that extraordinarily optimistic assumption is not shared by most experts on the insurgency in Afghanistan. A report by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times last Wednesday quotes "several Western diplomats and officials in Afghanistan, including those already in contact with the Taliban" as saying that attempts to split off individual commanders or groups from the Taliban leadership "would not work."
The reason, according to those officials, is that the plan would require those commanders to surrender and accept an Afghan government and a foreign military presence in which they have no trust.
Jonathan Landay of McClatchy newspapers reported from Kabul Sunday that experts on the Taliban express "serious doubts" about the splitting strategy, because insurgent leaders believe they are winning and the Hamid Karzai government is growing weaker.
In contrast to the reported premise that most insurgents are motivated by material gain, most specialists on the insurgency emphasised the dominant role of Pashtun anger at foreign military operations in their locality killing members of their family or tribe.
An alternative strategy of seeking a deal with the Taliban aimed at separating them from al Qaeda was first raised by New York University Afghanistan specialist Barnett Rubin and Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine last December. The article proposed that NATO offer to end military action in Afghanistan if the Taliban agrees "to prohibit the use of Afghan (or Pakistani) territory for international terrorism."
Rubin and Rashid have been hired by Holbrooke as adviser and short-term consultant, respectively, according to a report by national security correspondent Laura Rozen at Foreign Policy.
The option proposed by Rubin and Rashid has now been given new credibility by reports that Saudi Arabia is engaged in an effort to persuade the Taliban to separate itself clearly from al Qaeda.
The London Times published a report by Christina Lamb Sunday that Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi intelligence chief, visited Islamabad, Delhi and Kabul in January to talk to both Taliban and Afghan government officials.
Lamb also reported that Taliban Chief Mullah Omar had given his approval to peace talks with the Afghan government for the first time, citing a "mediator" with the Taliban, Algerian former Mujahideen fighter in Afghanistan Abdullah Anas and an Afghan government official involved in the negotiations as the sources.
The Afghan government negotiator told Lamb that government officials "have been in contact both with Mullah Omar's direct representatives and commanders from the front line."
Asked for a comment on this development, Rubin, the Columbia University expert, told IPS in an e-mail that the Lamb story "is accurate".
A report published by Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) last week by director of Middle East analysis Kamran Bokhari and Scott Stewart also noted the Saudi intelligence chief's trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. In meetings with actual Taliban commanders in both countries, the Saudis have offered financial support if the Taliban agrees to divorce itself completely from al Qaeda, according to the report.
Bokhari, a Pakistani specialist on Islamist groups, has had extensive contacts with high-ranking Pakistani and Saudi officials in the past.
The Saudi regime, once reluctant to crack down on al Qaeda, has pursued a very successful political strategy against al Qaeda within Saudi Arabia since 2003. Saudi Arabia has credibility with the Taliban leadership because of shared religious beliefs and because it is one of the few foreign governments that continued to recognise the Taliban after 9/11.
The Taliban chief, Mullah Omar, had rejected U.S. and Saudi pressures to expel Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan prior to the 9/11 attacks. But the question of ties between the Taliban and al Qaeda have been far less clear since the expulsion of both organisations from Afghanistan in late 2001.
Amin Tarzi, director of the Middle East Studies Program at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, wrote in an essay for the 2007 book "Taliban and the Crisis in Afghanistan" that there was "no evidence of concerted cooperation" between what he called the "neo- Taliban" and al Qaeda in southern Afghanistan.
Some factions in the north and northeast, however, had "resurrected old ties with al Qaeda" to obtain funds, recruits and technical support, according to Tarzi.
Tarzi cited a comment by Taliban spokesman Mohammad Hanif to an Italian newspaper in March 2006 that the movement had "no operational ties" to al Qaeda, but that they had "tactical alliances based given circumstances and territorial situations".
As suggested in the Rubin-Rashid proposal, any deal with the Taliban will have to include a date for withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces. In October 2007, The Guardian reported that senior Taliban commanders in Helmand province had sent a list of demands to the Karzai government through intermediaries that included control of 10 southern provinces, a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops and the release of all Taliban prisoners within six months.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.
Copyright © 2009 IPS-Inter Press Service
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Time to Quit Afghanistan
by Eric Margolis
It's taken far too long for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to finally admit the war in Afghanistan cannot be won. Better late than never. Kudos to Harper for facing facts and telling Canadians the truth.
If the war can't be won, why risk lives of Canadian troops for nothing? Why stay in harm's way a day longer when the writing is on the wall in Afghanistan? President Barack Obama, who is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, ought to be asking himself the same questions.
We must think hard about waging an increasingly bloody war against lightly-armed mountain tribesmen who face the 24/7 lethal fury of the U.S. air force's heavy bombers, strike aircraft, helicopter and AC-130 Spectre gunships, killer drones and heavy artillery. Do we really want a test of wills against men who have the courage to endure cluster bombs with thousands of sharp fragments, white phosphorus that burns through flesh to the bone, fuel/air explosives that burst the lungs and tear apart bodies? Will Canada's use of Soviet helicopters and Israeli drones win Afghan hearts and minds?
Our propaganda brands these Pashtun tribesmen as "Taliban terrorists." They call themselves warriors fighting occupation by the western powers and their local Communist, Tajik and Uzbek allies.
Al-Qaida's few hundred members long ago vanished.
Fatuous claims we occupy Afghanistan to protect women are belied by the continued plight of Afghan females under western rule. A British report just concluded 100,000 Indian women are burned alive each year for their dowries. Will we now send troops to India?
Only the first step
Admitting the U.S. and NATO cannot bludgeon the Afghan resistance into submission is only the first step. If the war can't be won, then Canadian soldiers should remain in their bases, stop aggressive patrolling and cease attacks on Taliban supporters and civilians. Other NATO members are doing so.
The next step is to understand that wars are waged for political objectives, not simply to kill your enemies.
The U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan have no coherent political objectives. The U.S.-installed Karzai regime in Kabul has no political legitimacy and commands no respect or loyalty. It is engulfed by corruption and massive drug dealing. The Obama administration is casting about for a new puppet, but so far can't find one who could do any better than poor Karzai. You can't make a puppet into a real national leader.
Worse, as Kabul flounders and the Taliban and its allies are on the offensive, events in neighbouring Pakistan are going from awful to calamitous. The West cannot wage war in Afghanistan without the support of Pakistan's army, air bases, intelligence service and logistical infrastructure. That means keeping a government in power in Islamabad responsive to U.S. demands and that will continue renting its army to Washington.
But Pakistan is in political chaos. After easing former discredited dictator Pervez Musharraf out of power, Washington eased into power Pakistan People's Party leader, Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto. His popularity ratings are rock bottom.
Zardari recently got his stooges on the corrupt Supreme Court to ban Pakistan's most popular democratic opposition leader, Pakistan Muslim League chief Nawaz Sharif, from running for office. Nawaz's brother, Shabaz, also was judicially deposed as minister of Punjab, Pakistan's largest state.
Violent demonstrations against Zardari's dictatorial ploy are shaking Pakistan. It would be surprising if the unpopular Zardari, who is dogged by grave corruption charges, manages to cling to power. But Nawaz also has plenty of skeletons in his closets. The army -- Pakistan's other government -- is watching the nation's descent into bankruptcy and political chaos with mounting concern.
The military fortunes of the U.S. and NATO in South Asia thus rest on political quicksand in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Plans by the U.S. to arm tribes on Pakistan's North-West Frontier are sure to bring even more violence and chaos.
NATO, which has no strategic interest in the region, would be wise to get its troops out of this boiling mess.
Copyright © 2009 Toronto Sun
It's taken far too long for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to finally admit the war in Afghanistan cannot be won. Better late than never. Kudos to Harper for facing facts and telling Canadians the truth.
If the war can't be won, why risk lives of Canadian troops for nothing? Why stay in harm's way a day longer when the writing is on the wall in Afghanistan? President Barack Obama, who is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, ought to be asking himself the same questions.
We must think hard about waging an increasingly bloody war against lightly-armed mountain tribesmen who face the 24/7 lethal fury of the U.S. air force's heavy bombers, strike aircraft, helicopter and AC-130 Spectre gunships, killer drones and heavy artillery. Do we really want a test of wills against men who have the courage to endure cluster bombs with thousands of sharp fragments, white phosphorus that burns through flesh to the bone, fuel/air explosives that burst the lungs and tear apart bodies? Will Canada's use of Soviet helicopters and Israeli drones win Afghan hearts and minds?
Our propaganda brands these Pashtun tribesmen as "Taliban terrorists." They call themselves warriors fighting occupation by the western powers and their local Communist, Tajik and Uzbek allies.
Al-Qaida's few hundred members long ago vanished.
Fatuous claims we occupy Afghanistan to protect women are belied by the continued plight of Afghan females under western rule. A British report just concluded 100,000 Indian women are burned alive each year for their dowries. Will we now send troops to India?
Only the first step
Admitting the U.S. and NATO cannot bludgeon the Afghan resistance into submission is only the first step. If the war can't be won, then Canadian soldiers should remain in their bases, stop aggressive patrolling and cease attacks on Taliban supporters and civilians. Other NATO members are doing so.
The next step is to understand that wars are waged for political objectives, not simply to kill your enemies.
The U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan have no coherent political objectives. The U.S.-installed Karzai regime in Kabul has no political legitimacy and commands no respect or loyalty. It is engulfed by corruption and massive drug dealing. The Obama administration is casting about for a new puppet, but so far can't find one who could do any better than poor Karzai. You can't make a puppet into a real national leader.
Worse, as Kabul flounders and the Taliban and its allies are on the offensive, events in neighbouring Pakistan are going from awful to calamitous. The West cannot wage war in Afghanistan without the support of Pakistan's army, air bases, intelligence service and logistical infrastructure. That means keeping a government in power in Islamabad responsive to U.S. demands and that will continue renting its army to Washington.
But Pakistan is in political chaos. After easing former discredited dictator Pervez Musharraf out of power, Washington eased into power Pakistan People's Party leader, Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto. His popularity ratings are rock bottom.
Zardari recently got his stooges on the corrupt Supreme Court to ban Pakistan's most popular democratic opposition leader, Pakistan Muslim League chief Nawaz Sharif, from running for office. Nawaz's brother, Shabaz, also was judicially deposed as minister of Punjab, Pakistan's largest state.
Violent demonstrations against Zardari's dictatorial ploy are shaking Pakistan. It would be surprising if the unpopular Zardari, who is dogged by grave corruption charges, manages to cling to power. But Nawaz also has plenty of skeletons in his closets. The army -- Pakistan's other government -- is watching the nation's descent into bankruptcy and political chaos with mounting concern.
The military fortunes of the U.S. and NATO in South Asia thus rest on political quicksand in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Plans by the U.S. to arm tribes on Pakistan's North-West Frontier are sure to bring even more violence and chaos.
NATO, which has no strategic interest in the region, would be wise to get its troops out of this boiling mess.
Copyright © 2009 Toronto Sun
Obama’s Manufactured Troop Withdrawal
By Ghali Hassan
On February 27, 2009, President Barack Obama announced a plan to withdraw U.S. troops occupying Iraq by September of 2010. However, Obama’s withdrawal is nothing short of a colonial Occupation of Iraq, and a betrayal of Mr. Obama’s promise to end the U.S. war on the Iraqi people.
During the election campaign, Obama promised that if he is elected president of the United States, he would make changes to American foreign policies by “ending the war” on Iraq and “bring U.S. troops home”. Today, many people start to feel disappointed over Obama's failure to match his words with deeds. It seems that Obama will continue the same criminal (religio-fascist) policies that characterised Bush’s administration. In short, violence and murderous occupation will continue in pursuit of U.S. imperialist domination.
Obama’s troop withdrawal is clouded by a plan that would leave more than 50,000 occupying troops in place until the end of 2011, and possibly beyond. That is more than half of the foreign troops occupying Afghanistan. These troops will be classified as “non-combat” troops or a “transitional force”, but they’ll be free to conduct raids, kill Iraqis, and attack Iraqi properties as they see fit. In other words, their old role doesn’t change and is not going to deceive the Iraqi people. Like changing the name of Abu Ghraib prison to ‘Baghdad Central Prison’ doesn’t change what is happening inside the U.S.-controlled “House of Horror”, and doesn’t erase people’s memory. Obama also said that ending the Occupation depends on the “conditions on the ground”, which are controlled by U.S. occupying forces and changing according to U.S. imperialist interest.
It is important to remember that Obama’s opposition to the U.S. aggression against Iraq was very vague, unprincipled and opportunistic. Obama called the invasion as a "strategic blunder”, not a war of aggression. However, while Obama said he “opposed the war”, he never hesitated from supporting the Occupation and never missed a vote to continue funding for it. Obama wanted to get elected and once he got in office, he succumbed and veered to the right. Obama’s real colour starts to appear and he has shown that he is just a creation of the white American ruling class.
According to Obama’s withdrawal plan, the “transitional force” – as Obama re-labelled his occupying troops – will carry out the same criminal functions they have been doing in Iraq since the invasion. In other words, the Occupation will continue, justified by lies and deception. Obama’s aim is simply to deceive the public and justify an ongoing colonial Occupation, by renegotiating “agreement” with an illegitimate weak puppet government.
The so-called U.S. “agreement” with the current puppet government is null and void, because it is an illegitimate government (under foreign military Occupation) that still has to learn the lessons of Iraq’s history. Under Obama, the objectives of U.S. imperialist strategy in Iraq remain the same; (1) the division of Iraq into smaller fiefdoms, dependent on U.S. military presence and serving U.S.-Israel Zionist interests in the Middle East, including control over Iraq’s oil resources; and (2) the permanent destabilisation of the region – openly called “creative chaos” – through ongoing U.S.-Israel political interference and state-sponsored terrorism.
Furthermore, Obama failed to address whether the U.S. will vacate the illegally acquired “Green Zone” and the permanent military bases in Iraq. Are they just reminders that the U.S. wants its Iraqi collaborators to remember who is in control of Iraq? Obama also made no promise to withdraw the 150,000 to 180,000 mercenaries and private military contractors stationed in Iraq. As journalist and author Jeremy Scahill articulated on Democracy Now on March 04, 2008, just changing the name from Blackwater mercenaries to ‘Xe’ mercenaries in an attempt to rebrand a criminal mercenary force doesn’t end the terror in Iraq.
By keeping U.S. troop in Iraq, Obama wants to make sure that the upcoming December elections will favour the American stooges at the expense of the Iraqi people. In his speech at Camp Lejuene in North Carolina, Obama ignored acknowledging the Iraqi Resistance role in his “new strategy” and the Iraqi people’s overwhelming opposition to the Occupation and struggle to be free from U.S. domination. Obama is confusing the Iraqi people with the collection of expatriate criminals, conmen and Iranian extremists brought to Iraq on the back of U.S. tanks, and today forming the U.S.-imposed illegitimate puppet government in the fortified “Green Zone”, the Iraqi façade of a colonial dictatorship. It is important to note that the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi Resistance are not negotiating less than a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and total freedom from U.S. domination.
In his speech, Obama said: “We Americans have offered our most precious resource – our young men and women – to work with you to rebuild what was destroyed by despotism; to root out our common enemies; and to seek peace and prosperity for our children and grandchildren, and yours.” Obama must know that Iraq’s common enemies are America’s closest allies, and that ‘America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world’, not peace. It was an imperialist speech which ignores the historic war crime of an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation based on fabricated lies.
Obama failed to acknowledge that the Iraqi state was destroyed by U.S.-British forces in a Nazi-like wanton destruction. At least 1.5 million innocent Iraqis civilians, the majority murdered in cold blood by U.S.-British forces, makes the Iraq Genocide the biggest single mass murder of modern time. Almost every Iraqi family has lost at least one close relative. There are an estimated 4.5 million orphans in Iraq, 500,000 of them are homeless.
Hundreds of Iraqis are killed every month in pervasive violence across the country. On 25 January 2009, U.S. occupation forces murdered five brothers in Albu Seif, including two children, one 8-year-old and 14-year-old. This is a small village south-east of the centre of the city of Mosul. The mayhem is continuing in an endless genocide waged by the world’s largest and most offensive military machine, against a virtually defenceless population. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been wounded and maimed. Thousands Iraqi professionals and prominent individuals have simply disappeared in a systematic campaign of terror funded and supervised by the U.S.
In addition to the mass killing of Iraqi civilians and a deliberately wanton destruction, U.S. forces committed cultural genocide against the Iraqi national heritage and Iraqi treasures. "Not even the Nazis would have allowed such crimes", wrote the Indian scholar, Aijaz Ahmad. “Every single Article of the Geneva Convention and the U.N. Charter was violated, and a whole range of war crimes committed, with impunity. Yet, not a single member of the so-called ‘international community’ has come forward to say so”, added Ahmad.
Nearly six years since the invasion, Iraqis continue to flee their occupied country. Some 2.5 million have fled Iraq to neighbouring countries, and another 2.8 million Iraqis are “internally displaced”. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, including thousands of women and children, are languishing in militias and U.S.-run prisons and torture centres throughout Iraq. They are subjected to horrific torture and abuses of human rights. The Occupation not only generates violence against innocent Iraqis, it is also responsible for sowing the seeds of division and sectarianism in Iraq. Baghdad, once the region’s most vibrant capital, is described as a “bewildering maze of concrete walls, check points and sealed-off enclaves” under U.S. Occupation.
After nearly six years of murderous Occupation, the living conditions in Iraq are disastrous. Countless Iraqi lives are threatened every day by poverty, cuts to power and water supplies, food and medical shortages, and rising violence against women and girls. The U.S Occupation continues to imprison women and deny them equal human rights. According to Iraq’s Ministry of Education, more than 70 percent of girls and young women are no longer attending school or college. The literacy rate for women, once the highest in the region, is now among the lowest as families fear risking kidnap and rape by sending girls to school. Meanwhile, more than 1 million women have been displaced from their homes, and 1-2 million have become widows and are unable to work or get government assistance. According to a new report by the British aid agency, Oxfam International, Iraqi women remain “forgotten victims of the recent [U.S.] war”.
In its report on Iraqi children, Oxfam International found a dramatic increase in malnutrition among Iraqi children. The report estimated 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, compared to 19 percent before the 2003 invasion. More than 11 percent of newborn babies were born underweight in 2006, compared with 4 percent in 2003. The combination of malnutrition and lack of water, along with deteriorating sanitary conditions, places Iraq among countries with the highest rates of infant mortality. Cholera, which was non-existent before the invasion, is now ravaging the country. The 13 years of U.S.-Britain sponsored genocidal sanctions have left the country's economy and infrastructure in ruins and devastated the fabric of Iraqi society, effecting mostly women and children.
The education system, once the envy of people in the region, is nearing collapse. Hundreds, if not thousands, of academics, including teachers and professors from universities across Iraq, have been murdered in a systematic campaign targeting Iraqi professionals in order to destroy the Iraqi nation. At least 3000 academics have fled the country. Schools and universities are barely functioning. Some one million children have stopped attending primary school, and only half of those who completed primary school continue with their education. Nearly 80 per cent of children in Baghdad, and more than 50 per cent in the province of Basra, cannot attend school. Some 250,000 refugee children in neighbouring countries are denied their right to education (UNESCO).
UNICEF reported on March 28, 2003 that, “The Education system in Iraq, prior to 1991, was one of the best in the region, with nearly 100% Gross Enrolment Rate for primary schooling and high levels of literacy, both of men and women. Higher Education, especially the scientific and technological institutions, was of an international standard, staffed by high quality personnel”. In the 1980s, a successful government program to eradicate illiteracy among Iraqi men and women was implemented. U.S. wars and Occupation have reversed all past Iraqi achievements in education and health.
The CICR warned that the humanitarian situation in Iraq remains among the most critical in the world today. ‘Iraq’s 27 million people have no functioning drinking water and 80 percent lack basic sanitation’. Electricity supply has become as scarce as drinking water, affecting the operations of hospitals and health care centres. The CICR report says Iraq’s healthcare system is now in its worst shape ever, and on the verge of total collapse. Of 34,000 doctors living in Iraq in 2003, most have fled the country and more than 2,000 have been murdered. According to Midact, Iraq has only around 9,000 doctors, a ratio of six doctors for every 10,000. Is there another way to destroy a country?
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO); “Iraq had a modern sanitary infrastructure with an extensive network of water-purification and sewage-treatment systems. Water networks distributed clean, safe water to 95% of the urban population and to 75% of those in rural areas. In 1990, Iraq was ranked 50th out of 130 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index”, which measures national achievements in health, education, and per capita GDP.
Finally, as a result of U.S. wars and the use of Uranium-based munitions by U.S. and British invading forces since 1991, the Iraqi environment has been destroyed and contaminated beyond belief. According to recent research findings, existing uranium contamination of the surrounding environment is a continuous source of low level radiation (LLR) exposure to civilians. The rate of cancer, particularly among children, has increased dramatically reaching 25 per 100,000, more than six times the 1990 rate of 4 per 100,000. About 50 percent of the population in the province of Basra are susceptible to cancer. Birth defects have increased by ten-fold. Thousands of Iraqi children are suffering from LLR-related diseases such as congenital heart diseases, chromosomal aberrations, and multiple malformations.
In a just and civilised world, the same principles that led to the indictment of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese Arab President for alleged war crimes in Sudan’s region of Darfur, should be used against George Bush, his war cabinet (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and others) and Tony Blair for orchestrating a campaign of illegal war of aggression, murder, ethnic cleansing, torture, and rape in Iraq. There is ample evidence that the illegal aggression against Iraq constituted a supreme international war crime that has been condemned by the majority of civilised and law-abiding nations and peoples.
Will the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issue arrest warrants for Bush, his criminal gang, and Tony Blair? Or is it just the usual sickening Western hypocrisy and double standards in international law and justice? Why haven’t they been indicted for the slaughter of Iraqi civilians? Or why haven’t Israeli war criminals been indicted for the massacre of Palestinian children? “No nation should ignore its duty to bring war criminals to justice or otherwise shield its own leaders or soldiers from charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes”. The Obama Administration has a duty to bring war criminals to justice.
The idea that the U.S. and its allies are in Iraq (and in Afghanistan) for the sake of introducing “democracy” is a farce. The U.S. is the enemy of democracy. The 2005 Iraqi general elections under U.S. Occupation were deeply flawed and rigged. In February 2009 local elections, only half of Iraq’s 14 million registered voters went to the polls, and tens of thousands of internally displaced Iraqis were unable to vote. What if the Iraqi people decided to elect an anti-Occupation candidate? Are they going to endure the same blockade and terror as the Palestinians in Gaza are enduring? Only the end of the Occupation will guarantee Iraq’s sovereignty and independence.
The U.S. ruling class, as Michael Parenti explained, “Democracy becomes a problem … not when it fails to work but when it works too well; helping the populace move toward a more equitable and liveable social order, narrowing the gap, however modestly, between the superrich and the rest of us. So democracy must be diluted and subverted, smothered with disinformation, media puffery, and mountains of campaign costs; with rigged electoral contests and partially disfranchised publics, bringing faux victories to more or less politically safe major-party candidates”. That is exactly what is happening in Iraq right now. In the 2006 elections, U.S. forces interfered overtly in favour of its “strongman” and loyal stooge, Nuri al-Maliki as Prime Minister.
By backsliding on ending the Occupation of Iraq and other crimes committed by the Bush administration, Obama not only betrayed millions who voted for him, but he also shows that U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East is not determined by the White House. It is determined by a collection of politically and financially powerful anti-Arab/anti-Muslim Zionists, including the pro-Israel Jewish lobby, religious extremists, hardcore Neocon fascists, and corporate conmen. The fact that there is no difference between the Democrat and the Republican and that their policies are mirror images of each other is a case in point. In short, U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East is “institutionalised” and does not change regardless of who is President.
Obama, the President, proved to be an opportunist capable of betraying millions of people who voted against violent imperialism. Obama’s manufactured troop withdrawal is simply a cover-up for ongoing U.S. colonial Occupation of Iraq and crimes against the Iraqi people.
Obama failed to restore the Iraqi people’s hope for peace and prosperity. The only way to guarantee peace and restore Iraq’s sovereignty and national independence is the immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.
Ghali Hassan (Ph.D.) was born in Iraq and was educated in Iraq, Europe and Australia. He is a research scholar, specialising in the areas of science education and educational psychology. His interest in world affairs is the result of careful observation of U.S.-Western policies � naked aggression, double standards, classic hypocrisy � and their detrimental impacts on the lives of ordinary people. His articles have appeared on the Internet, in newspapers and periodicals around the world, including the Arab World, Australia and New Zealand. While considering himself a nomad, Ghali lives in the Blue Mountains (near Sydney), Australia.
On February 27, 2009, President Barack Obama announced a plan to withdraw U.S. troops occupying Iraq by September of 2010. However, Obama’s withdrawal is nothing short of a colonial Occupation of Iraq, and a betrayal of Mr. Obama’s promise to end the U.S. war on the Iraqi people.
During the election campaign, Obama promised that if he is elected president of the United States, he would make changes to American foreign policies by “ending the war” on Iraq and “bring U.S. troops home”. Today, many people start to feel disappointed over Obama's failure to match his words with deeds. It seems that Obama will continue the same criminal (religio-fascist) policies that characterised Bush’s administration. In short, violence and murderous occupation will continue in pursuit of U.S. imperialist domination.
Obama’s troop withdrawal is clouded by a plan that would leave more than 50,000 occupying troops in place until the end of 2011, and possibly beyond. That is more than half of the foreign troops occupying Afghanistan. These troops will be classified as “non-combat” troops or a “transitional force”, but they’ll be free to conduct raids, kill Iraqis, and attack Iraqi properties as they see fit. In other words, their old role doesn’t change and is not going to deceive the Iraqi people. Like changing the name of Abu Ghraib prison to ‘Baghdad Central Prison’ doesn’t change what is happening inside the U.S.-controlled “House of Horror”, and doesn’t erase people’s memory. Obama also said that ending the Occupation depends on the “conditions on the ground”, which are controlled by U.S. occupying forces and changing according to U.S. imperialist interest.
It is important to remember that Obama’s opposition to the U.S. aggression against Iraq was very vague, unprincipled and opportunistic. Obama called the invasion as a "strategic blunder”, not a war of aggression. However, while Obama said he “opposed the war”, he never hesitated from supporting the Occupation and never missed a vote to continue funding for it. Obama wanted to get elected and once he got in office, he succumbed and veered to the right. Obama’s real colour starts to appear and he has shown that he is just a creation of the white American ruling class.
According to Obama’s withdrawal plan, the “transitional force” – as Obama re-labelled his occupying troops – will carry out the same criminal functions they have been doing in Iraq since the invasion. In other words, the Occupation will continue, justified by lies and deception. Obama’s aim is simply to deceive the public and justify an ongoing colonial Occupation, by renegotiating “agreement” with an illegitimate weak puppet government.
The so-called U.S. “agreement” with the current puppet government is null and void, because it is an illegitimate government (under foreign military Occupation) that still has to learn the lessons of Iraq’s history. Under Obama, the objectives of U.S. imperialist strategy in Iraq remain the same; (1) the division of Iraq into smaller fiefdoms, dependent on U.S. military presence and serving U.S.-Israel Zionist interests in the Middle East, including control over Iraq’s oil resources; and (2) the permanent destabilisation of the region – openly called “creative chaos” – through ongoing U.S.-Israel political interference and state-sponsored terrorism.
Furthermore, Obama failed to address whether the U.S. will vacate the illegally acquired “Green Zone” and the permanent military bases in Iraq. Are they just reminders that the U.S. wants its Iraqi collaborators to remember who is in control of Iraq? Obama also made no promise to withdraw the 150,000 to 180,000 mercenaries and private military contractors stationed in Iraq. As journalist and author Jeremy Scahill articulated on Democracy Now on March 04, 2008, just changing the name from Blackwater mercenaries to ‘Xe’ mercenaries in an attempt to rebrand a criminal mercenary force doesn’t end the terror in Iraq.
By keeping U.S. troop in Iraq, Obama wants to make sure that the upcoming December elections will favour the American stooges at the expense of the Iraqi people. In his speech at Camp Lejuene in North Carolina, Obama ignored acknowledging the Iraqi Resistance role in his “new strategy” and the Iraqi people’s overwhelming opposition to the Occupation and struggle to be free from U.S. domination. Obama is confusing the Iraqi people with the collection of expatriate criminals, conmen and Iranian extremists brought to Iraq on the back of U.S. tanks, and today forming the U.S.-imposed illegitimate puppet government in the fortified “Green Zone”, the Iraqi façade of a colonial dictatorship. It is important to note that the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi Resistance are not negotiating less than a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and total freedom from U.S. domination.
In his speech, Obama said: “We Americans have offered our most precious resource – our young men and women – to work with you to rebuild what was destroyed by despotism; to root out our common enemies; and to seek peace and prosperity for our children and grandchildren, and yours.” Obama must know that Iraq’s common enemies are America’s closest allies, and that ‘America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world’, not peace. It was an imperialist speech which ignores the historic war crime of an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation based on fabricated lies.
Obama failed to acknowledge that the Iraqi state was destroyed by U.S.-British forces in a Nazi-like wanton destruction. At least 1.5 million innocent Iraqis civilians, the majority murdered in cold blood by U.S.-British forces, makes the Iraq Genocide the biggest single mass murder of modern time. Almost every Iraqi family has lost at least one close relative. There are an estimated 4.5 million orphans in Iraq, 500,000 of them are homeless.
Hundreds of Iraqis are killed every month in pervasive violence across the country. On 25 January 2009, U.S. occupation forces murdered five brothers in Albu Seif, including two children, one 8-year-old and 14-year-old. This is a small village south-east of the centre of the city of Mosul. The mayhem is continuing in an endless genocide waged by the world’s largest and most offensive military machine, against a virtually defenceless population. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been wounded and maimed. Thousands Iraqi professionals and prominent individuals have simply disappeared in a systematic campaign of terror funded and supervised by the U.S.
In addition to the mass killing of Iraqi civilians and a deliberately wanton destruction, U.S. forces committed cultural genocide against the Iraqi national heritage and Iraqi treasures. "Not even the Nazis would have allowed such crimes", wrote the Indian scholar, Aijaz Ahmad. “Every single Article of the Geneva Convention and the U.N. Charter was violated, and a whole range of war crimes committed, with impunity. Yet, not a single member of the so-called ‘international community’ has come forward to say so”, added Ahmad.
Nearly six years since the invasion, Iraqis continue to flee their occupied country. Some 2.5 million have fled Iraq to neighbouring countries, and another 2.8 million Iraqis are “internally displaced”. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, including thousands of women and children, are languishing in militias and U.S.-run prisons and torture centres throughout Iraq. They are subjected to horrific torture and abuses of human rights. The Occupation not only generates violence against innocent Iraqis, it is also responsible for sowing the seeds of division and sectarianism in Iraq. Baghdad, once the region’s most vibrant capital, is described as a “bewildering maze of concrete walls, check points and sealed-off enclaves” under U.S. Occupation.
After nearly six years of murderous Occupation, the living conditions in Iraq are disastrous. Countless Iraqi lives are threatened every day by poverty, cuts to power and water supplies, food and medical shortages, and rising violence against women and girls. The U.S Occupation continues to imprison women and deny them equal human rights. According to Iraq’s Ministry of Education, more than 70 percent of girls and young women are no longer attending school or college. The literacy rate for women, once the highest in the region, is now among the lowest as families fear risking kidnap and rape by sending girls to school. Meanwhile, more than 1 million women have been displaced from their homes, and 1-2 million have become widows and are unable to work or get government assistance. According to a new report by the British aid agency, Oxfam International, Iraqi women remain “forgotten victims of the recent [U.S.] war”.
In its report on Iraqi children, Oxfam International found a dramatic increase in malnutrition among Iraqi children. The report estimated 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, compared to 19 percent before the 2003 invasion. More than 11 percent of newborn babies were born underweight in 2006, compared with 4 percent in 2003. The combination of malnutrition and lack of water, along with deteriorating sanitary conditions, places Iraq among countries with the highest rates of infant mortality. Cholera, which was non-existent before the invasion, is now ravaging the country. The 13 years of U.S.-Britain sponsored genocidal sanctions have left the country's economy and infrastructure in ruins and devastated the fabric of Iraqi society, effecting mostly women and children.
The education system, once the envy of people in the region, is nearing collapse. Hundreds, if not thousands, of academics, including teachers and professors from universities across Iraq, have been murdered in a systematic campaign targeting Iraqi professionals in order to destroy the Iraqi nation. At least 3000 academics have fled the country. Schools and universities are barely functioning. Some one million children have stopped attending primary school, and only half of those who completed primary school continue with their education. Nearly 80 per cent of children in Baghdad, and more than 50 per cent in the province of Basra, cannot attend school. Some 250,000 refugee children in neighbouring countries are denied their right to education (UNESCO).
UNICEF reported on March 28, 2003 that, “The Education system in Iraq, prior to 1991, was one of the best in the region, with nearly 100% Gross Enrolment Rate for primary schooling and high levels of literacy, both of men and women. Higher Education, especially the scientific and technological institutions, was of an international standard, staffed by high quality personnel”. In the 1980s, a successful government program to eradicate illiteracy among Iraqi men and women was implemented. U.S. wars and Occupation have reversed all past Iraqi achievements in education and health.
The CICR warned that the humanitarian situation in Iraq remains among the most critical in the world today. ‘Iraq’s 27 million people have no functioning drinking water and 80 percent lack basic sanitation’. Electricity supply has become as scarce as drinking water, affecting the operations of hospitals and health care centres. The CICR report says Iraq’s healthcare system is now in its worst shape ever, and on the verge of total collapse. Of 34,000 doctors living in Iraq in 2003, most have fled the country and more than 2,000 have been murdered. According to Midact, Iraq has only around 9,000 doctors, a ratio of six doctors for every 10,000. Is there another way to destroy a country?
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO); “Iraq had a modern sanitary infrastructure with an extensive network of water-purification and sewage-treatment systems. Water networks distributed clean, safe water to 95% of the urban population and to 75% of those in rural areas. In 1990, Iraq was ranked 50th out of 130 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index”, which measures national achievements in health, education, and per capita GDP.
Finally, as a result of U.S. wars and the use of Uranium-based munitions by U.S. and British invading forces since 1991, the Iraqi environment has been destroyed and contaminated beyond belief. According to recent research findings, existing uranium contamination of the surrounding environment is a continuous source of low level radiation (LLR) exposure to civilians. The rate of cancer, particularly among children, has increased dramatically reaching 25 per 100,000, more than six times the 1990 rate of 4 per 100,000. About 50 percent of the population in the province of Basra are susceptible to cancer. Birth defects have increased by ten-fold. Thousands of Iraqi children are suffering from LLR-related diseases such as congenital heart diseases, chromosomal aberrations, and multiple malformations.
In a just and civilised world, the same principles that led to the indictment of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese Arab President for alleged war crimes in Sudan’s region of Darfur, should be used against George Bush, his war cabinet (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and others) and Tony Blair for orchestrating a campaign of illegal war of aggression, murder, ethnic cleansing, torture, and rape in Iraq. There is ample evidence that the illegal aggression against Iraq constituted a supreme international war crime that has been condemned by the majority of civilised and law-abiding nations and peoples.
Will the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issue arrest warrants for Bush, his criminal gang, and Tony Blair? Or is it just the usual sickening Western hypocrisy and double standards in international law and justice? Why haven’t they been indicted for the slaughter of Iraqi civilians? Or why haven’t Israeli war criminals been indicted for the massacre of Palestinian children? “No nation should ignore its duty to bring war criminals to justice or otherwise shield its own leaders or soldiers from charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes”. The Obama Administration has a duty to bring war criminals to justice.
The idea that the U.S. and its allies are in Iraq (and in Afghanistan) for the sake of introducing “democracy” is a farce. The U.S. is the enemy of democracy. The 2005 Iraqi general elections under U.S. Occupation were deeply flawed and rigged. In February 2009 local elections, only half of Iraq’s 14 million registered voters went to the polls, and tens of thousands of internally displaced Iraqis were unable to vote. What if the Iraqi people decided to elect an anti-Occupation candidate? Are they going to endure the same blockade and terror as the Palestinians in Gaza are enduring? Only the end of the Occupation will guarantee Iraq’s sovereignty and independence.
The U.S. ruling class, as Michael Parenti explained, “Democracy becomes a problem … not when it fails to work but when it works too well; helping the populace move toward a more equitable and liveable social order, narrowing the gap, however modestly, between the superrich and the rest of us. So democracy must be diluted and subverted, smothered with disinformation, media puffery, and mountains of campaign costs; with rigged electoral contests and partially disfranchised publics, bringing faux victories to more or less politically safe major-party candidates”. That is exactly what is happening in Iraq right now. In the 2006 elections, U.S. forces interfered overtly in favour of its “strongman” and loyal stooge, Nuri al-Maliki as Prime Minister.
By backsliding on ending the Occupation of Iraq and other crimes committed by the Bush administration, Obama not only betrayed millions who voted for him, but he also shows that U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East is not determined by the White House. It is determined by a collection of politically and financially powerful anti-Arab/anti-Muslim Zionists, including the pro-Israel Jewish lobby, religious extremists, hardcore Neocon fascists, and corporate conmen. The fact that there is no difference between the Democrat and the Republican and that their policies are mirror images of each other is a case in point. In short, U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East is “institutionalised” and does not change regardless of who is President.
Obama, the President, proved to be an opportunist capable of betraying millions of people who voted against violent imperialism. Obama’s manufactured troop withdrawal is simply a cover-up for ongoing U.S. colonial Occupation of Iraq and crimes against the Iraqi people.
Obama failed to restore the Iraqi people’s hope for peace and prosperity. The only way to guarantee peace and restore Iraq’s sovereignty and national independence is the immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.
Ghali Hassan (Ph.D.) was born in Iraq and was educated in Iraq, Europe and Australia. He is a research scholar, specialising in the areas of science education and educational psychology. His interest in world affairs is the result of careful observation of U.S.-Western policies � naked aggression, double standards, classic hypocrisy � and their detrimental impacts on the lives of ordinary people. His articles have appeared on the Internet, in newspapers and periodicals around the world, including the Arab World, Australia and New Zealand. While considering himself a nomad, Ghali lives in the Blue Mountains (near Sydney), Australia.
Friday, March 13, 2009
What are US Goals in Afghanistan?
by Helen Thomas
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is making a big mistake in escalating U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan where he already has acknowledged he doesn't believe victory is possible.
We should ask: What are we doing there seven years after the 9/11 attacks by the al-Qaida network? Historically, the country has lacked a strong central government and has been governed by locally strong tribal leaders and warlords.
Al-Qaida was able to take advantage of this loose structure and turn Afghanistan into the plotting ground for the terrorists who struck the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York.
But what are our goals there in 2009?
While the U.S. is supposed to wind down its presence in Iraq in 19 months (rather than the 16 months promised by Obama on the campaign trail), the president has ordered a military buildup in Afghanistan to more than 50,000 troops, both from the U.S. and other NATO members.
He would leave 50,000 Americans in Iraq to cope with the resistance there. Such was the folly of President George W. Bush, who invaded Iraq after his hawkish neoconservative advisers told him we would triumph in a few weeks.
To this day none of Bush's reasons for attacking Iraq have held up to examination. There were no weapons of mass destruction, no Iraqi ties to al-Qaida and no threat to the United States.
There have been no apologies from Bush or his cohorts.
When Obama visited Afghanistan last summer as a presidential candidate, he joined several other senators in a get-tough statement that said: "We need a great sense of urgency because the threat from the Taliban and al-Qaida is growing and we must act. We need determination because it will take time to prevail. But with the right strategy and the resources to back it up, we will get the job done."
What exactly is the job that he says needs to get done? What is the U.S. exit strategy? Does anyone in power remember the lessons we were supposed to have learned from Vietnam?
Afghanistan is known as the "graveyard of empires" because of the repeated failure of invaders over the centuries to achieve their goals in that rugged country.
U.S. prowling around in Afghanistan hasn't aroused anti-war protests as did the March 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. I am puzzled about this. It seems to me we are leaping out of the frying pan into the fire!
American public aversion to our military adventures in Afghanistan has been fueled by our shock at the toll that U.S. planes and aerial drones have inflicted on Afghan civilians.
There have been indications that Obama may start diplomatic overtures to the Taliban at a time when the human and financial costs of the two wars are wearing down the U.S. as it struggles with an economic depression that has no end in sight.
According to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, the president is evaluating the situation in Afghanistan.
Obama would do well to study the trajectory that took us into the Vietnam War and the terrible price we paid there. We lost the war and fled by helicopters from Saigon.
Both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon thought that they could win in Vietnam, but they were brought down as much by the American people -- who rebelled against the war -- as they were by the North Vietnamese.
Obama could go deeper in history and check out President Dwight D. Eisenhower's career for a lesson on how to end a war.
When running for the White House in 1952, when the American public was growing frustrated about the long U.S. involvement in the Korean War, Eisenhower told voters: "I shall go to Korea."
And he did. The Korean War ended in a standoff in 1953 -- much to the relief of the American people.
Despite some ensuing skirmishes in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, a truce has endured ever since.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama indicated that he was willing to speak to all parties in the military or diplomatic disputes we were involved in. He was criticized for his plan for outreach to the militants in Afghanistan.
But there is no alternative.
Sooner or later American presidents should learn that people will always fight for their country against a foreign invader. And peace should be the only goal.
© 2009 The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. Among other books she is the author of Front Row at The White House: My Life and Times.
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is making a big mistake in escalating U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan where he already has acknowledged he doesn't believe victory is possible.
We should ask: What are we doing there seven years after the 9/11 attacks by the al-Qaida network? Historically, the country has lacked a strong central government and has been governed by locally strong tribal leaders and warlords.
Al-Qaida was able to take advantage of this loose structure and turn Afghanistan into the plotting ground for the terrorists who struck the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York.
But what are our goals there in 2009?
While the U.S. is supposed to wind down its presence in Iraq in 19 months (rather than the 16 months promised by Obama on the campaign trail), the president has ordered a military buildup in Afghanistan to more than 50,000 troops, both from the U.S. and other NATO members.
He would leave 50,000 Americans in Iraq to cope with the resistance there. Such was the folly of President George W. Bush, who invaded Iraq after his hawkish neoconservative advisers told him we would triumph in a few weeks.
To this day none of Bush's reasons for attacking Iraq have held up to examination. There were no weapons of mass destruction, no Iraqi ties to al-Qaida and no threat to the United States.
There have been no apologies from Bush or his cohorts.
When Obama visited Afghanistan last summer as a presidential candidate, he joined several other senators in a get-tough statement that said: "We need a great sense of urgency because the threat from the Taliban and al-Qaida is growing and we must act. We need determination because it will take time to prevail. But with the right strategy and the resources to back it up, we will get the job done."
What exactly is the job that he says needs to get done? What is the U.S. exit strategy? Does anyone in power remember the lessons we were supposed to have learned from Vietnam?
Afghanistan is known as the "graveyard of empires" because of the repeated failure of invaders over the centuries to achieve their goals in that rugged country.
U.S. prowling around in Afghanistan hasn't aroused anti-war protests as did the March 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. I am puzzled about this. It seems to me we are leaping out of the frying pan into the fire!
American public aversion to our military adventures in Afghanistan has been fueled by our shock at the toll that U.S. planes and aerial drones have inflicted on Afghan civilians.
There have been indications that Obama may start diplomatic overtures to the Taliban at a time when the human and financial costs of the two wars are wearing down the U.S. as it struggles with an economic depression that has no end in sight.
According to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, the president is evaluating the situation in Afghanistan.
Obama would do well to study the trajectory that took us into the Vietnam War and the terrible price we paid there. We lost the war and fled by helicopters from Saigon.
Both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon thought that they could win in Vietnam, but they were brought down as much by the American people -- who rebelled against the war -- as they were by the North Vietnamese.
Obama could go deeper in history and check out President Dwight D. Eisenhower's career for a lesson on how to end a war.
When running for the White House in 1952, when the American public was growing frustrated about the long U.S. involvement in the Korean War, Eisenhower told voters: "I shall go to Korea."
And he did. The Korean War ended in a standoff in 1953 -- much to the relief of the American people.
Despite some ensuing skirmishes in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, a truce has endured ever since.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama indicated that he was willing to speak to all parties in the military or diplomatic disputes we were involved in. He was criticized for his plan for outreach to the militants in Afghanistan.
But there is no alternative.
Sooner or later American presidents should learn that people will always fight for their country against a foreign invader. And peace should be the only goal.
© 2009 The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. Among other books she is the author of Front Row at The White House: My Life and Times.
Israel's War Crimes
Israel blamed its earlier wars on the threat to its security, even that against Lebanon in 1982. However, its assault on Gaza was not justified and there are international calls for an investigation. But is there the political will to make Israel account for its war crimes?
by Richard Falk
For the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948 the government is facing serious allegations of war crimes from respected public figures throughout the world. Even the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, normally so cautious about offending sovereign states - especially those aligned with its most influential member, the United States - has joined the call for an investigation and potential accountability. To grasp the significance of these developments it is necessary to explain what made the 22 days of attacks in Gaza stand shockingly apart from the many prior recourses to force by Israel to uphold its security and strategic interests.
In my view, what made the Gaza attacks launched on 27 December different from the main wars fought by Israel over the years was that the weapons and tactics used devastated an essentially defenceless civilian population. The one-sidedness of the encounter was so stark, as signalled by the relative casualties on both sides (more than 100 to 1; 1300-plus Palestinians killed compared with 13 Israelis, and several of these by friendly fire), that most commentators refrained from attaching the label "war".
The Israelis and their friends talk of "retaliation" and "the right of Israel to defend itself". Critics described the attacks as a "massacre" or relied on the language of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the past Israeli uses of force were often widely condemned, especially by Arab governments, including charges that the UN Charter was being violated, but there was an implicit acknowledgement that Israel was using force in a war mode. War crimes charges (to the extent they were made) came only from radical governments and the extreme left.
The early Israeli wars were fought against Arab neighbours which were quite literally challenging Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state. The outbreaks of force were of an inter-governmental nature; and even when Israel exhibited its military superiority in the June 1967 six day war, it was treated within the framework of normal world politics, and though it may have been unlawful, it was not criminal.
But from the 1982 Lebanon war this started to change. The main target then was the presence of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in southern Lebanon. But the war is now mainly remembered for its ending, with the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Although this atrocity was the work of a Lebanese Christian militia, Israeli acquiescence, control and complicity were clearly part of the picture. Still, this was an incident which, though alarming, was not the whole of the military operation, which Israel justified as necessary due to the Lebanese government's inability to prevent its territory from being used to threaten Israeli security.
The legacy of the 1982 war was Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and the formation of Hizbullah in reaction, mounting an armed resistance that finally led to a shamefaced Israeli withdrawal in 1998. This set the stage for the 2006 Lebanon war in which the announced adversary was Hizbullah, and the combat zone inevitably merged portions of the Lebanese civilian population with the military campaign undertaken to destroy Hizbullah. Such a use of hi-tech Israeli force against Hizbullah raised the issue of fighting against a hostile society with no equivalent means of defending itself rather than against an enemy state. It also raised questions about whether reliance on a military option was even relevant to Israel's political goals, as Hizbullah emerged from the war stronger, and the only real result was to damage the reputation of the IDF as a fighting force and to leave southern Lebanon devastated.
The Gaza operation brought these concerns to the fore as it dramatised this shift away from fighting states to struggles against armed resistance movements, and with a related shift from the language of "war" to "criminality". In one important respect, Israel managed to skew perceptions and discourse by getting the media and diplomats to focus the basic international criminal law question on whether or not Israeli use of force was "disproportionate".
This way of describing Israeli recourse to force ignores the foundational issue: were the attacks in any legal sense "defensive" in character in the first place? An inquiry into the surrounding circumstances shows an absence of any kind of defensive necessity: a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that had been in effect since 19 July 2008 had succeeded in reducing cross-border violence virtually to zero; Hamas consistently offered to extend the ceasefire, even to a longer period of ten years; the breakdown of the ceasefire is not primarily the result of Hamas rocket fire, but came about mainly as a result of an Israeli air attack on 4 November that killed six Hamas fighters in Gaza.
Disproportionate force?
In other words, there were no grounds for claiming the right of self-defence as Israel was not the object of a Hamas attack, and diplomatic alternatives to force existed and seemed credible, and their good-faith reliance was legally obligatory. On this basis the focus of legal debate should not be upon whether Israeli force was disproportionate. Of course it was. The focus should be on whether the Israeli attacks were a prohibited, non-defensive use of force under the UN charter, amounting to an act of aggression, and as such constituting a crime against peace. At Nuremberg after the second world war, surviving Nazi leaders were charged with this crime, which was described in the judgment as "the supreme crime" encompassing the others.
The Gaza form of encounter almost by necessity blurs the line between war and crime, and when it occurs in a confined, densely populated area such as Gaza, necessarily intermingles the resistance fighters with the civilian population. It also induces the resistance effort to rely on criminal targeting of civilians as it has no military capacity directly to oppose state violence. In this respect, the Israeli attacks on Gaza and the Hamas resistance crossed the line between lawful combat and war crimes.
These two sides should not be viewed as equally responsible for the recent events. Israel initiated the Gaza campaign without adequate legal foundation or just cause, and was responsible for causing the overwhelming proportion of devastation and the entirety of civilian suffering. Israeli reliance on a military approach to defeat or punish Gaza was intrinsically "criminal", and as such demonstrative of both violations of the law of war and the commission of crimes against humanity.
There is another element that strengthens the allegation of aggression. The population of Gaza had been subjected to a punitive blockade for 18 months when Israel launched its attacks. This blockade was widely, and correctly, viewed as collective punishment in a form that violated Articles 33 and 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention governing the conduct of an occupying power in relation to the civilian population living under occupation. This policy was itself condemned as a crime against humanity, as well as a grave breach of international humanitarian law.
It also had resulted in serious nutritional deficiencies and widespread mental disorders on the part of the entire Gaza population, leaving it particularly vulnerable to the sort of "shock and awe" attack mounted by Israel from land, air and sea. This vulnerability was reinforced by Israel's unwillingness to allow Gaza civilians to seek safety while the tiny Strip was under such intense combat pressure. Two hundred non-Palestinian wives were allowed to leave, which underscored the criminality of locking children, women, the sick, elderly and disabled into the war zone, and showed its ethnically discriminatory character. This appears to be the first time in wartime conditions that a civilian population was denied the possibility of becoming refugees.
In addition to these big picture issues, there are a variety of alleged war crimes associated with Israeli battlefield practices. These charges, based on evidence collected by human rights groups, include IDF firing at a variety of civilian targets, instances where Israeli military personnel denied medical aid to wounded Palestinians, and others where ambulances were prevented from reaching their destinations. There are also documented claims of 20 occasions on which Israeli soldiers were seen firing at women and children carrying white flags. And there are various allegations associated with the use of phosphorus bombs in residential areas of Gaza, as well as legal complaints about the use of a new cruel weapon, known as DIME, that explodes with such force that it rips body parts to pieces.
These war crimes concerns can only be resolved by factual clarifications as to whether a basis exists for possible prosecution of the perpetrators, and commanders and political leaders to the extent that criminal tactics and weaponry were authorised as matters of Israeli policy. In this vein too are the Israeli claims relating to rockets fired at civilian targets and to Hamas militants using "human shields" and deliberately attacking from non-military targets.
Even without further investigation, it is not too soon to raise questions about individual accountability for war crimes. The most serious allegations relate to the pre-existing blockade, the intrinsic criminality and non-defensiveness of the attack itself; and the official policies (eg confinement of civilian population in the war zone) have been acknowledged. The charges against Hamas require further investigation and legal assessment before it is appropriate to discuss possible arrangements for imposing accountability.
A question immediately arises as to whether talk of Israeli war crimes is nothing more than talk. Are there any prospects that the allegations will be followed up with effective procedures to establish accountability? There are a variety of potentially usable mechanisms to impose accountability, but will any of these be available in practice? This issue has been already raised by the Israeli government at the highest levels in the form of official commitments to shield Israeli soldiers from facing war crimes charges.
The most obvious path to address the broader questions of criminal accountability would be to invoke the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court established in 2002. Although the prosecutor has been asked to investigate the possibility of such a proceeding, it is highly unlikely to lead anywhere since Israel is not a member and, by most assessments, Palestine is not yet a state or party to the statute of the ICC. Belatedly, and somewhat surprisingly, the Palestinian Authority sought, after the 19 January ceasefire, to adhere to the Rome Treaty establishing the ICC. But even if its membership is accepted, which is unlikely, the date of adherence would probably rule out legal action based on prior events such as the Gaza military operation. And it is certain that Israel would not cooperate with the ICC with respect to evidence, witnesses or defendants, and this would make it very difficult to proceed even if the other hurdles could be overcome.
The next most obvious possibility would be to follow the path chosen in the 1990s by the UN Security Council, establishing ad hoc international criminal tribunals, as was done to address the crimes associated with the break-up of former Yugoslavia and with the Rwanda massacres of 1994. This path seems blocked in relation to Israel as the US, and likely other European permanent members, would veto any such proposal. In theory, the General Assembly could exercise parallel authority, as human rights are within its purview and it is authorised by Article 22 of the UN charter to "establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its function". In 1950 it acted on this basis to establish the UN Administrative Tribunal, mandated to resolve employment disputes with UN staff members.
The geopolitical realities that exist within the UN make this an unlikely course of action (although it is under investigation). At present there does not seem to be sufficient inter-governmental political will to embark on such a controversial path, but civil society pressure may yet make this a plausible option, especially if Israel persists in maintaining its criminally unlawful blockade of Gaza, resisting widespread calls, including by President Obama, to open the crossings from Israel. Even in the unlikely event that it is established, such a tribunal could not function effectively without a high degree of cooperation with the government of the country whose leaders and soldiers are being accused. Unlike former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Israel's political leadership would certainly do its best to obstruct the activities of any international body charged with prosecuting Israeli war crimes.
Claims of universal jurisdiction
Perhaps the most plausible governmental path would be reliance on claims of universal jurisdiction (1) associated with the authority of national courts to prosecute certain categories of war crimes, depending on national legislation. Such legislation exists in varying forms in more than 12 countries, including Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, Britain and the US. Spain has already indicted several leading Israeli military officers, although there is political pressure on the Spanish government to alter its criminal law to disallow such an undertaking in the absence of those accused.
This path to criminal accountability was taken in 1998 when a Spanish high court indicted the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and he was later detained in Britain where the legal duty to extradite was finally upheld on rather narrow grounds by a majority of the Law Lords, the highest court in the country. Pinochet was not extradited however, but returned to Chile on grounds of unfitness to stand trial, and died in Chile while criminal proceedings against him were under way.
Whether universal jurisdiction provides a practical means of responding to the war crimes charges arising out of the Gaza experience is doubtful. National procedures are likely to be swayed by political pressures, as were German courts, which a year ago declined to proceed against Donald Rumsfeld on torture charges despite a strong evidentiary basis and the near certainty that he would not be prosecuted in the US, which as his home state had the legally acknowledged prior jurisdictional claim. Also, universal jurisdictional proceedings are quite random, depending on either the cooperation of other governments by way of extradition or the happenchance of finding a potential defendant within the territory of the prosecuting state.
It is possible that a high profile proceeding could occur, and this would give great attention to the war crimes issue, and so universal jurisdiction is probably the most promising approach to Israeli accountability despite formidable obstacles. Even if no conviction results (and none exists for comparable allegations), the mere threat of detention and possible prosecution is likely to inhibit the travel plans of individuals likely to be detained on war crime charges; and has some political relevance with respect to the international reputation of a government.
There is, of course, the theoretical possibility that prosecutions, at least for battlefield practices such as shooting surrendering civilians, would be undertaken in Israeli criminal courts. Respected Israeli human rights organisations, including B'Tselem, are gathering evidence for such legal actions and advance the argument that an Israeli initiative has the national benefit of undermining the international calls for legal action.
This Israeli initiative, even if nothing follows in the way of legal action, as seems almost certain due to political constraints, has significance. It will lend credence to the controversial international contentions that criminal indictment and prosecution of Israeli political and military leaders and war crimes perpetrators should take place in some legal venue. If politics blocks legal action in Israel, then the implementation of international criminal law depends on taking whatever action is possible in either an international tribunal or foreign national courts, and if this proves impossible, then by convening a non-governmental civil society tribunal with symbolic legal authority.
What seems reasonably clear is that despite the clamour for war crimes investigations and accountability, the political will is lacking to proceed against Israel at the inter-governmental level, whether within the UN or outside. The realities of geopolitics are built around double standards when it comes to war crimes. It is one thing to proceed against Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic, but quite another to go against George W Bush or Ehud Olmert. Ever since the Nuremberg trials after the second world war, there exists impunity for those who act on behalf of powerful, undefeated states and nothing is likely to challenge this fact of international life in the near future, thus tarnishing the status of international law as a vehicle for global justice that is consistent in its enforcement efforts. When it comes to international criminal law, there continues to exist impunity for the strong and victorious, and potential accountability for the weak or defeated.
It does seem likely that civil society initiatives will lead to the establishment of one or more tribunals operating without the benefit of governmental authorisation. Such tribunals became prominent in the Vietnam war when Bertrand Russell took the lead in establishing the Russell Tribunal. Since then the Permanent Peoples Tribunal based in Rome has organised more than 20 sessions on a variety of international topics that neither the UN nor governments will touch.
In 2005 the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul, heard evidence from 54 witnesses, and its jury, presided over by the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, issued a Declaration of Conscience that condemned the US and Britain for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and named names of leaders in both countries who should be held criminally accountable.
The tribunal compiled an impressive documentary record as to criminal charges, and received considerable media attention, at least in the Middle East. Such an undertaking is attacked or ignored by the media because it is one-sided, and lacking in legal weight, but in the absence of formal action on accountability, such informal initiatives fill a legal vacuum, at least symbolically, and give legitimacy to non-violent anti-war undertakings.
The legitimacy war
In the end, the haunting question is whether the war crimes concerns raised by Israel's behaviour in Gaza matters, and if so, how. I believe it matters greatly in what might be called "the second war" - the legitimacy war that often ends up shaping the political outcome more than battlefield results. The US won every battle in the Vietnam war and lost the war; the same with France in Indochina and Algeria, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Shah of Iran collapsed, as did the apartheid regime in South Africa, because of defeats in the legitimacy war.
It is my view that this surfacing of criminal charges against Israel during and after its attacks on Gaza resulted in major gains on the legitimacy front for the Palestinians. The widespread popular perceptions of Israeli criminality, especially the sense of waging war against a defenceless population with modern weaponry, has prompted people around the world to propose boycotts, divestments and sanctions. This mobilisation exerts pressure on governments and corporations to desist from relations with Israel, and is reminiscent of the worldwide anti-apartheid campaign that did so much to alter the political landscape in South Africa. Winning the legitimacy war is no guarantee that Palestinian self-determination will be achieved in the coming years. But it does change the political equation in ways that are not fully discernable at this time.
The global setup provides a legal framework capable of imposing international criminal law, but it will not be implemented unless the political will is present. Israel is likely to be insulated from formal judicial initiatives addressing war crimes charges, but will face the fallout arising from the credibility that these charges possess for world public opinion. This fallout is reshaping the underlying Israel/Palestine struggle, and giving far greater salience to the legitimacy war (fought on a global political battlefield) than was previously the case.
© 2009 Le Monde
Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and in 2008 was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
by Richard Falk
For the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948 the government is facing serious allegations of war crimes from respected public figures throughout the world. Even the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, normally so cautious about offending sovereign states - especially those aligned with its most influential member, the United States - has joined the call for an investigation and potential accountability. To grasp the significance of these developments it is necessary to explain what made the 22 days of attacks in Gaza stand shockingly apart from the many prior recourses to force by Israel to uphold its security and strategic interests.
In my view, what made the Gaza attacks launched on 27 December different from the main wars fought by Israel over the years was that the weapons and tactics used devastated an essentially defenceless civilian population. The one-sidedness of the encounter was so stark, as signalled by the relative casualties on both sides (more than 100 to 1; 1300-plus Palestinians killed compared with 13 Israelis, and several of these by friendly fire), that most commentators refrained from attaching the label "war".
The Israelis and their friends talk of "retaliation" and "the right of Israel to defend itself". Critics described the attacks as a "massacre" or relied on the language of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the past Israeli uses of force were often widely condemned, especially by Arab governments, including charges that the UN Charter was being violated, but there was an implicit acknowledgement that Israel was using force in a war mode. War crimes charges (to the extent they were made) came only from radical governments and the extreme left.
The early Israeli wars were fought against Arab neighbours which were quite literally challenging Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state. The outbreaks of force were of an inter-governmental nature; and even when Israel exhibited its military superiority in the June 1967 six day war, it was treated within the framework of normal world politics, and though it may have been unlawful, it was not criminal.
But from the 1982 Lebanon war this started to change. The main target then was the presence of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in southern Lebanon. But the war is now mainly remembered for its ending, with the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Although this atrocity was the work of a Lebanese Christian militia, Israeli acquiescence, control and complicity were clearly part of the picture. Still, this was an incident which, though alarming, was not the whole of the military operation, which Israel justified as necessary due to the Lebanese government's inability to prevent its territory from being used to threaten Israeli security.
The legacy of the 1982 war was Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and the formation of Hizbullah in reaction, mounting an armed resistance that finally led to a shamefaced Israeli withdrawal in 1998. This set the stage for the 2006 Lebanon war in which the announced adversary was Hizbullah, and the combat zone inevitably merged portions of the Lebanese civilian population with the military campaign undertaken to destroy Hizbullah. Such a use of hi-tech Israeli force against Hizbullah raised the issue of fighting against a hostile society with no equivalent means of defending itself rather than against an enemy state. It also raised questions about whether reliance on a military option was even relevant to Israel's political goals, as Hizbullah emerged from the war stronger, and the only real result was to damage the reputation of the IDF as a fighting force and to leave southern Lebanon devastated.
The Gaza operation brought these concerns to the fore as it dramatised this shift away from fighting states to struggles against armed resistance movements, and with a related shift from the language of "war" to "criminality". In one important respect, Israel managed to skew perceptions and discourse by getting the media and diplomats to focus the basic international criminal law question on whether or not Israeli use of force was "disproportionate".
This way of describing Israeli recourse to force ignores the foundational issue: were the attacks in any legal sense "defensive" in character in the first place? An inquiry into the surrounding circumstances shows an absence of any kind of defensive necessity: a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that had been in effect since 19 July 2008 had succeeded in reducing cross-border violence virtually to zero; Hamas consistently offered to extend the ceasefire, even to a longer period of ten years; the breakdown of the ceasefire is not primarily the result of Hamas rocket fire, but came about mainly as a result of an Israeli air attack on 4 November that killed six Hamas fighters in Gaza.
Disproportionate force?
In other words, there were no grounds for claiming the right of self-defence as Israel was not the object of a Hamas attack, and diplomatic alternatives to force existed and seemed credible, and their good-faith reliance was legally obligatory. On this basis the focus of legal debate should not be upon whether Israeli force was disproportionate. Of course it was. The focus should be on whether the Israeli attacks were a prohibited, non-defensive use of force under the UN charter, amounting to an act of aggression, and as such constituting a crime against peace. At Nuremberg after the second world war, surviving Nazi leaders were charged with this crime, which was described in the judgment as "the supreme crime" encompassing the others.
The Gaza form of encounter almost by necessity blurs the line between war and crime, and when it occurs in a confined, densely populated area such as Gaza, necessarily intermingles the resistance fighters with the civilian population. It also induces the resistance effort to rely on criminal targeting of civilians as it has no military capacity directly to oppose state violence. In this respect, the Israeli attacks on Gaza and the Hamas resistance crossed the line between lawful combat and war crimes.
These two sides should not be viewed as equally responsible for the recent events. Israel initiated the Gaza campaign without adequate legal foundation or just cause, and was responsible for causing the overwhelming proportion of devastation and the entirety of civilian suffering. Israeli reliance on a military approach to defeat or punish Gaza was intrinsically "criminal", and as such demonstrative of both violations of the law of war and the commission of crimes against humanity.
There is another element that strengthens the allegation of aggression. The population of Gaza had been subjected to a punitive blockade for 18 months when Israel launched its attacks. This blockade was widely, and correctly, viewed as collective punishment in a form that violated Articles 33 and 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention governing the conduct of an occupying power in relation to the civilian population living under occupation. This policy was itself condemned as a crime against humanity, as well as a grave breach of international humanitarian law.
It also had resulted in serious nutritional deficiencies and widespread mental disorders on the part of the entire Gaza population, leaving it particularly vulnerable to the sort of "shock and awe" attack mounted by Israel from land, air and sea. This vulnerability was reinforced by Israel's unwillingness to allow Gaza civilians to seek safety while the tiny Strip was under such intense combat pressure. Two hundred non-Palestinian wives were allowed to leave, which underscored the criminality of locking children, women, the sick, elderly and disabled into the war zone, and showed its ethnically discriminatory character. This appears to be the first time in wartime conditions that a civilian population was denied the possibility of becoming refugees.
In addition to these big picture issues, there are a variety of alleged war crimes associated with Israeli battlefield practices. These charges, based on evidence collected by human rights groups, include IDF firing at a variety of civilian targets, instances where Israeli military personnel denied medical aid to wounded Palestinians, and others where ambulances were prevented from reaching their destinations. There are also documented claims of 20 occasions on which Israeli soldiers were seen firing at women and children carrying white flags. And there are various allegations associated with the use of phosphorus bombs in residential areas of Gaza, as well as legal complaints about the use of a new cruel weapon, known as DIME, that explodes with such force that it rips body parts to pieces.
These war crimes concerns can only be resolved by factual clarifications as to whether a basis exists for possible prosecution of the perpetrators, and commanders and political leaders to the extent that criminal tactics and weaponry were authorised as matters of Israeli policy. In this vein too are the Israeli claims relating to rockets fired at civilian targets and to Hamas militants using "human shields" and deliberately attacking from non-military targets.
Even without further investigation, it is not too soon to raise questions about individual accountability for war crimes. The most serious allegations relate to the pre-existing blockade, the intrinsic criminality and non-defensiveness of the attack itself; and the official policies (eg confinement of civilian population in the war zone) have been acknowledged. The charges against Hamas require further investigation and legal assessment before it is appropriate to discuss possible arrangements for imposing accountability.
A question immediately arises as to whether talk of Israeli war crimes is nothing more than talk. Are there any prospects that the allegations will be followed up with effective procedures to establish accountability? There are a variety of potentially usable mechanisms to impose accountability, but will any of these be available in practice? This issue has been already raised by the Israeli government at the highest levels in the form of official commitments to shield Israeli soldiers from facing war crimes charges.
The most obvious path to address the broader questions of criminal accountability would be to invoke the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court established in 2002. Although the prosecutor has been asked to investigate the possibility of such a proceeding, it is highly unlikely to lead anywhere since Israel is not a member and, by most assessments, Palestine is not yet a state or party to the statute of the ICC. Belatedly, and somewhat surprisingly, the Palestinian Authority sought, after the 19 January ceasefire, to adhere to the Rome Treaty establishing the ICC. But even if its membership is accepted, which is unlikely, the date of adherence would probably rule out legal action based on prior events such as the Gaza military operation. And it is certain that Israel would not cooperate with the ICC with respect to evidence, witnesses or defendants, and this would make it very difficult to proceed even if the other hurdles could be overcome.
The next most obvious possibility would be to follow the path chosen in the 1990s by the UN Security Council, establishing ad hoc international criminal tribunals, as was done to address the crimes associated with the break-up of former Yugoslavia and with the Rwanda massacres of 1994. This path seems blocked in relation to Israel as the US, and likely other European permanent members, would veto any such proposal. In theory, the General Assembly could exercise parallel authority, as human rights are within its purview and it is authorised by Article 22 of the UN charter to "establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its function". In 1950 it acted on this basis to establish the UN Administrative Tribunal, mandated to resolve employment disputes with UN staff members.
The geopolitical realities that exist within the UN make this an unlikely course of action (although it is under investigation). At present there does not seem to be sufficient inter-governmental political will to embark on such a controversial path, but civil society pressure may yet make this a plausible option, especially if Israel persists in maintaining its criminally unlawful blockade of Gaza, resisting widespread calls, including by President Obama, to open the crossings from Israel. Even in the unlikely event that it is established, such a tribunal could not function effectively without a high degree of cooperation with the government of the country whose leaders and soldiers are being accused. Unlike former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Israel's political leadership would certainly do its best to obstruct the activities of any international body charged with prosecuting Israeli war crimes.
Claims of universal jurisdiction
Perhaps the most plausible governmental path would be reliance on claims of universal jurisdiction (1) associated with the authority of national courts to prosecute certain categories of war crimes, depending on national legislation. Such legislation exists in varying forms in more than 12 countries, including Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, Britain and the US. Spain has already indicted several leading Israeli military officers, although there is political pressure on the Spanish government to alter its criminal law to disallow such an undertaking in the absence of those accused.
This path to criminal accountability was taken in 1998 when a Spanish high court indicted the former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and he was later detained in Britain where the legal duty to extradite was finally upheld on rather narrow grounds by a majority of the Law Lords, the highest court in the country. Pinochet was not extradited however, but returned to Chile on grounds of unfitness to stand trial, and died in Chile while criminal proceedings against him were under way.
Whether universal jurisdiction provides a practical means of responding to the war crimes charges arising out of the Gaza experience is doubtful. National procedures are likely to be swayed by political pressures, as were German courts, which a year ago declined to proceed against Donald Rumsfeld on torture charges despite a strong evidentiary basis and the near certainty that he would not be prosecuted in the US, which as his home state had the legally acknowledged prior jurisdictional claim. Also, universal jurisdictional proceedings are quite random, depending on either the cooperation of other governments by way of extradition or the happenchance of finding a potential defendant within the territory of the prosecuting state.
It is possible that a high profile proceeding could occur, and this would give great attention to the war crimes issue, and so universal jurisdiction is probably the most promising approach to Israeli accountability despite formidable obstacles. Even if no conviction results (and none exists for comparable allegations), the mere threat of detention and possible prosecution is likely to inhibit the travel plans of individuals likely to be detained on war crime charges; and has some political relevance with respect to the international reputation of a government.
There is, of course, the theoretical possibility that prosecutions, at least for battlefield practices such as shooting surrendering civilians, would be undertaken in Israeli criminal courts. Respected Israeli human rights organisations, including B'Tselem, are gathering evidence for such legal actions and advance the argument that an Israeli initiative has the national benefit of undermining the international calls for legal action.
This Israeli initiative, even if nothing follows in the way of legal action, as seems almost certain due to political constraints, has significance. It will lend credence to the controversial international contentions that criminal indictment and prosecution of Israeli political and military leaders and war crimes perpetrators should take place in some legal venue. If politics blocks legal action in Israel, then the implementation of international criminal law depends on taking whatever action is possible in either an international tribunal or foreign national courts, and if this proves impossible, then by convening a non-governmental civil society tribunal with symbolic legal authority.
What seems reasonably clear is that despite the clamour for war crimes investigations and accountability, the political will is lacking to proceed against Israel at the inter-governmental level, whether within the UN or outside. The realities of geopolitics are built around double standards when it comes to war crimes. It is one thing to proceed against Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic, but quite another to go against George W Bush or Ehud Olmert. Ever since the Nuremberg trials after the second world war, there exists impunity for those who act on behalf of powerful, undefeated states and nothing is likely to challenge this fact of international life in the near future, thus tarnishing the status of international law as a vehicle for global justice that is consistent in its enforcement efforts. When it comes to international criminal law, there continues to exist impunity for the strong and victorious, and potential accountability for the weak or defeated.
It does seem likely that civil society initiatives will lead to the establishment of one or more tribunals operating without the benefit of governmental authorisation. Such tribunals became prominent in the Vietnam war when Bertrand Russell took the lead in establishing the Russell Tribunal. Since then the Permanent Peoples Tribunal based in Rome has organised more than 20 sessions on a variety of international topics that neither the UN nor governments will touch.
In 2005 the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul, heard evidence from 54 witnesses, and its jury, presided over by the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, issued a Declaration of Conscience that condemned the US and Britain for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and named names of leaders in both countries who should be held criminally accountable.
The tribunal compiled an impressive documentary record as to criminal charges, and received considerable media attention, at least in the Middle East. Such an undertaking is attacked or ignored by the media because it is one-sided, and lacking in legal weight, but in the absence of formal action on accountability, such informal initiatives fill a legal vacuum, at least symbolically, and give legitimacy to non-violent anti-war undertakings.
The legitimacy war
In the end, the haunting question is whether the war crimes concerns raised by Israel's behaviour in Gaza matters, and if so, how. I believe it matters greatly in what might be called "the second war" - the legitimacy war that often ends up shaping the political outcome more than battlefield results. The US won every battle in the Vietnam war and lost the war; the same with France in Indochina and Algeria, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Shah of Iran collapsed, as did the apartheid regime in South Africa, because of defeats in the legitimacy war.
It is my view that this surfacing of criminal charges against Israel during and after its attacks on Gaza resulted in major gains on the legitimacy front for the Palestinians. The widespread popular perceptions of Israeli criminality, especially the sense of waging war against a defenceless population with modern weaponry, has prompted people around the world to propose boycotts, divestments and sanctions. This mobilisation exerts pressure on governments and corporations to desist from relations with Israel, and is reminiscent of the worldwide anti-apartheid campaign that did so much to alter the political landscape in South Africa. Winning the legitimacy war is no guarantee that Palestinian self-determination will be achieved in the coming years. But it does change the political equation in ways that are not fully discernable at this time.
The global setup provides a legal framework capable of imposing international criminal law, but it will not be implemented unless the political will is present. Israel is likely to be insulated from formal judicial initiatives addressing war crimes charges, but will face the fallout arising from the credibility that these charges possess for world public opinion. This fallout is reshaping the underlying Israel/Palestine struggle, and giving far greater salience to the legitimacy war (fought on a global political battlefield) than was previously the case.
© 2009 Le Monde
Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and in 2008 was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
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