Taboo Inhibits Frank Iran/Israel Talk
Posted on 12. Mar, 2010 by Radical Daily in War & Peace
Participants at an otherwise informative discussion on “Iran at a Crossroads” at the Senate on Wednesday seemed at pains to barricade the doors against the proverbial elephant being admitted into the room — in this case, Israel.
This, despite the fact that the agenda virtually dictated that the elephant be allowed in. The cavernous hearing room also could have accommodated it — however awkward and untidy the atmosphere might have become.
Otherwise, as was entirely predictable, the discussion would be lacking a crucial element. Which it turned out to be.
The tongue-tied impediment displayed by some of the presenters can be chalked up mostly to the all-too-familiar timidity on Capitol Hill to countenance candid discussion of any issue on which Israel can be revealed to be a fly in the ointment.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, obtained use of the hearing room for the organizers of the discussion, the thoroughly professional National Iranian American Council headed by Professor Trita Parsi. This is to Levin’s credit, in my view.
At the same time, Sen. Levin holds the all-time-high record for PAC contributions from groups affiliated with the self-described “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby” — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
In any case, a truly distinguished panel launched the discussion on “The U.S. and Iran: Back to Confrontation?” which Professor Parsi moderated. The panelists began by setting a fact- and reality-based context, which in turn raised hopes of a no-holds-barred discussion. Their observations included, or implied, the following:
-The status of the U.S. as the “world’s sole remaining superpower” may have “turned a corner.” In many key respects, China, India, Russia and Brazil now represent a rival “superpower” strong enough to thwart American policy objectives.
-The consequences of nuclear weapons proliferation in the general area of the Persian Gulf are so truly ominous that “everything imaginable” should be done to head it off.
-The main “positive” of robust sanctions against a country like Iran is simply that those who impose them can feel good. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to target sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps without hurting the Iranian people at large.
-The experience of the past several years demonstrates that the U.S. and Iran share — and can act on — common interests (in Afghanistan, for example). Neither country would profit from hostilities involving Iran.
-Iran is nowhere near a nuclear weapon, so there is time to reconsider what guarantees could be offered to Tehran to dissuade it from pursuing a nuclear weapons option.
-No member of Congress has set foot in Iran since 1979.
With these observations on the table, it was as if the doors to the hearing room were clanked shut and bolted, lest the Israeli elephant be allowed to intrude. And this, despite a palpable yearning in the audience for the panelists to address uncomfortable questions like:
-If there are no intrinsic factors dictating implacable hostility between Iran and the U.S., how does one account for its persistence? What promotes, what feeds it?
There was, of course, the sad history of 1953 when the CIA engineered the overthrow of Iran’s democratic government and the unpleasant memory of Iran holding 52 American hostages for 444 days at the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
But aside from those incidents, could the mutual hostility have anything to do with Israel and what it perceives as its security interests?
-Do the Iranian leaders see as contrived the oft-expressed concern that Iran might eventually obtain a nuclear weapon, when American officials do nothing about Israel’s actual nuclear weapons, or for that matter, those of Pakistan and India?
-Is the real objective of Israel and, by extension, the U.S. the same as it was with respect to Iraq seven years ago — that is, “regime change”? (How I dislike using the euphemism in vogue for what we used to call overthrowing governments!)
Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton let drop last month that, even if Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon, this does not “directly” threaten the United States.
-Is it true, as one of the panelists asserted, that “No one believes that the Green (opposition) movement in Iran is supported by outside forces; rather it is clearly an entirely indigenous, spontaneous movement.”
Into the memory hole went the past news reports about the Bush administration earmarking $400 million to support covert operations designed to frustrate Iran’s nuclear program and to destabilize its political system. There also have been troubling reports that the United States has helped “good” terrorist organizations, like Jundullah, in striking violent blows against Iran’s regime.
-Is it a given, as one very distinguished panelist suggested, that “Everyone knows that the Israelis would only use their considerable nuclear arsenal to defend itself”? It seems that when Israel is mentioned in these affairs the comments must only be in the most positive light and there can be no suggestion that Israel might use, say, bunker-busting tactical nukes to destroy hardened Iranian targets.
-Does the Israeli government honestly perceive an “existential threat” in Iran’s possible acquisition of a few nuclear weapons against the 200-300 devices already in Israel’s arsenal? If so, is Israel prepared to “defend itself” by attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, using the preventive-war justification which has long been a staple of Israeli policy, and was adopted kit and caboodle by Bush and Cheney?
-Are the Israelis counting on U.S. logistical support for such a preventive attack —intelligence and operational planning support of the kind that enabled its surgical strike on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981? Are they expecting the kind of political support the United States provided in the wake of Israel’s September 2007 attack on a suspect nuclear-related facility being built in Syria?
-Why is it that Robert Hunter, a former American ambassador, and now adviser to RAND, a passionate opponent of nuclear proliferation, can state his support for a “nuclear-free Middle East,” and then with a wan smile simply throw up his hands lamenting that that’s never going to happen (presumably because Israel would never go along).
Why is this thought automatically exempt from the category of doing “everything imaginable” to stave off a worsening crisis from nuclear proliferation?
-If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu feels he can thumb his nose at the U.S. President (and Vice President) on the signal issue of Israeli settlements, is there reason to believe that Netanyahu is inclined to take into account repeated “please pleas” from the likes of Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen, who has warned the Israelis publicly that an attack on Iran would be a “big, big, big problem for all of us?”
Was this week’s chutzpah-laden Israeli move announcing new settlement construction in East Jerusalem – in the midst of a visit by Vice President Joe Biden – a case of practice mouse trapping, a test of whether the Obama administration really has the toughness to push back in a meaningful fashion?
Ambassador Hunter was accompanied on the afternoon panel by prolific writer, Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, and Robert Malley, who served in senior positions at President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council and is now Program Director for Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group in Washington, D.C.
All three have a wealth of experience on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, giving rise to eventually dashed expectations of a more candid discussion.
There are, of course, limits to what can be covered in an hour and a quarter. And yet, there did seem a distinct aversion to including Israel in any discussion of the political obstacles preventing sensible accommodation between Tehran and Washington.
No doubt the main obstacle can be traced to the time-worn “passionate attachment” of U.S. leaders to Israel’s short-term interests as if they were identical to those of the United States. This politically super-sensitive issue needs to be addressed openly and without fear.
Granted, volunteering to sponsor such a discussion would be seen as the kiss of death for the vast majority of lawmakers. Is there no group, no think tank with courage enough to arrange such a forum? For it truly needs to be done, and quickly, somewhere — whether permitted in a Senate office building, or not.
Otherwise, there is virtually no prospect of lessened tensions, and a near-term prospect that things can get dramatically worse — an Israeli provocation and/or a preventive strike on Iran, for example.
Otherwise, like Mrs. Lincoln at Ford Theatre on April 14, 1865, we are all likely to find it difficult to enjoy the rest of the show.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A 27-year veteran of CIA’s analysis division, he now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Did Chomsky Say? :: Iran Pursuing Nuclear Weapons Out of Fear
Posted on 11. Mar, 2010 by Radical Daily in War & Peace
Scholar assails U.S. for hypocritical application of Non-Proliferation Treaty
By Matthew W. Hutchins
Even the most radical conservative can agree with Noam Chomsky on at least one thing. “No one in their right mind wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons.” But to Chomsky, nonproliferation requires reciprocal action, rather than international condemnation. Chomsky’s reputation as a prolific author of books on subjects including linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, political science, and media might lead one to believe that his views stem from esoteric theoretical arguments, but Chomsky takes a pragmatic view of international relations. His conclusion is that Iran is developing nuclear weapons out of a rational fear for its national safety because of the systematically threatening posture of the United States and Israel.
Speaking at Harvard’s Memorial Church on Saturday, March 6th, Chomsky critiqued the foreign policy of President Obama ’91 and explained the historical reasons that Iran would perceive a need to develop nuclear weapons. “If they’re not developing a nuclear deterrent, they are crazy.” The problem, said Chomsky, is the defiant and hypocritical insistence of the United States on holding the constant threat of military action over Iran as a punishment for its noncompliance with United Nations mandates. “Hostile actions of the United States and its Israeli client are a major factor in Iran’s decisions of whether or not to develop a nuclear deterrent.”
In Chomsky’s eyes, Security Council Resolution 1887, which was strongly endorsed by President Obama, calls upon all nations to peacefully participate in the international regimes for nonproliferation. The resolution encourages nations to develop civilian nuclear technology, while stressing the need for conformity to the IAEA’s inspection system, and Chomsky said that the inclusion of language about peaceful action was primarily directed at the United States and its veiled threats that, “We must keep all options open.” Indeed, with its nuclear missile submarines positioned within striking distance of Iran, Chomsky estimates that there is effectively no chance that Iran would ever use a future nuclear weapon for offensive purposes. But he warned, “The threats do have the effect of inducing Iran to develop a deterrent.”
The escalation of tensions between Iran and the United States is entirely absurd to Chomsky in light of the widespread acceptance of the rights of Iranians to develop civilian nuclear technology. He sees the cult of American Empire in the government’s condemnations of Iran for refusing to follow the demands of the international community, because the definition of “international community” used in such rhetoric amounts to little more than the opinion in Washington, D.C. and among its allies. He cited to the hypocrisy of the U.S. position in its historical relationships with the three nations that did not ratify the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty: Israel, India, and Pakistan. These three nations, said Chomsky, have all received nuclear technology from the United States in violation of security council resolutions, but most Americans would not realize this, given the pro-government bias of the media.
Essentially, Chomsky believes that President Obama’s foreign policy has embodied a continuation of the policies of George W. Bush’s second term in office. But he believes we are fortunate to be living in a time when the anti-war movement is much stronger than it was during the 1960′s. He recalled a demonstration he was involved in during 1965, when state police violently dispersed a crowd from Boston Common. The next day, the Boston Globe, one of the most liberal newspapers in the country, denounced the protesters. Just three years later, following the Tet Offensive, public sentiment had moved enough that protests became common, but he ascribed this to a growing sentiment on Wall Street that the country had paid too high a price in Vietnam. Looking back at the lessons of that war, Chomsky said that the United States had essentially achieved its goal of “innoculating” the region from the domino-theory chain reaction by 1970 by installing dictators in neighboring countries and helping Suharto come to power in Indonesia.
Prize-winning journalist Amy Goodman noted in her introduction of Chomsky that he had played a crucial role in bringing the attention of the world to the oppression of the people of East Timor by Indonesia. She recounted the beatings and massacres she witnessed while traveling there as a journalist, as well as the elation when the nation achieved independence. “This nation of survivors had prevailed. They had resisted, and they had won.” Chomsky, when speaking about activism and civil disobedience, stressed the need for determined persistence. “You’re not going to win tomorrow. You are going to have a lot of defeats, but you have to keep at it.”
(Harvard Law Record)
American Gulag :: Obama to Indefinitely Imprison Detainees Without Charges
Posted on 22. Jan, 2010 by Radical Daily in Current Affairs
One of the most intense controversies of the Bush years was the administration’s indefinite imprisoning of “War on Terror” detainees without charges of any kind. So absolute was the consensus among progressives and Democrats against this policy that a well-worn slogan was invented to object: a “legal black hole.” Liberal editorial pages routinely cited the refusal to charge the detainees — not the interrogation practices there — in order to brand the camp a “dungeon,” a “gulag,” a “tropical purgatory,” and a “black-hole embarrassment.” As late as 2007, Democratic Senators like Pat Leahy, on the floor of the Senate, cited the due-process-free imprisonments to rail against Guantanamo as “a national disgrace, an international embarrassment to us and to our ideals, and a festering threat to our security,” as well as “a legal black hole that dishonors our principles.” Leahy echoed the Democratic consensus when he said:
The Administration consistently insists that these detainees pose a threat to the safety of Americans. Vice President Cheney said that the other day. If that is true, there must be credible evidence to support it. If there is such evidence, then they should prosecute these people.
Leahy also insisted that the Constitution assigns the power to regulate detentions to Congress, not the President, and thus cited Bush’s refusal to seek Congressional authorization for these detentions as a prime example of Bush’s abuse of executive power and shredding of the Constitution.
But all year along, Barack Obama — even as he called for the closing of Guantanamo — has been strongly implying that he will retain George Bush’s due-process-free system by continuing to imprison detainees without charges of any kind. In his May “civil liberties” speech cynically delivered at the National Archives in front of the U.S. Constitution, Obama announced that he would seek from Congress a law authorizing and governing the President’s power to imprison detainees indefinitely and without charges. But in September, the administration announced he changed his mind: rather than seek a law authorizing these detentions, he would instead simply claim that Congress already “implicitly” authorized these powers when it enacted the 2001 AUMF against Al Qaeda — thereby, as The New York Times put it, “adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.”
Today, The New York Times’ Charlie Savage reports:
The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.
The Washington Post says that these decisions “represent the first time that the administration has clarified how many detainees it considers too dangerous to release but unprosecutable because officials fear trials could compromise intelligence-gathering and because detainees could challenge evidence obtained through coercion.” Once that rationale is accepted, it necessarily applies not only to past detainees but future ones as well: the administration is claiming the power to imprison whomever it wants without charges whenever it believes that — even in the face of the horrendously broad “material support for terrorism” laws the Congress has enacted — it cannot prove in any tribunal that the individual has actually done anything wrong. They are simply decreed by presidential fiat to be “too dangerous to release.” Perhaps worst of all, it converts what was once a leading prong in the radical Bush/Cheney assault on the Constitution — the Presidential power to indefinitely imprison people without charges — into complete bipartisan consensus, permanently removed from the realm of establishment controversy.
There are roughly 200 prisoners left at the camp, which means roughly 25% will be held without any charges at all. Using the administration’s perverse multi-tiered justice system, the rest will either be tried in a real court, sent to a military commission or released. What this means, among other things, is that the President’s long-touted policy of closing Guantanamo is a total sham: the essence of that “legal black hole” — indefinite detention without charges — will remain fully in place, perhaps ludicrously and dangerously shifted to a different locale (onto U.S. soil) but otherwise fully in tact. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Military Commissions Act unconstitutionally denied the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees — a principle the Obama administration has vigorously resisted when it comes to Bagram detainees — but mere habeas corpus review does not come close to a real trial, which the Bill of Rights guarantees to all “persons” (not only “Americans”) before the State can keep them locked in a cage.
Numerous Democrats have spent the year justifying Obama’s desire for indefinite detention with dubious excuses that would have been unthinkable to hear from them during the Bush years. I addressed all of those excuses in full back in May, here. As but one example, the claim most commonly cited to justify Obama’s actions — these detainees can’t be convicted because the evidence against them is “tainted” by torture — is: (a) completely unproven; (b) completely immoral (it’s one of the longest-standing principles of Western justice that tortured-obtained evidence can’t be used to justify imprisonment); and (c) completely contradictory (Democrats spent years claiming, and still do, that torture doesn’t work and produces unreliable evidence; if that’s true, who could possibly justify indefinitely imprisoning someone based on torture-obtained — i.e., inherently unreliable — evidence?). Whatever else is true, both Obama’s policy and the rationale — we must imprison Terrorists without charges because there’s no evidence to convict them but they’re somehow still deemed too dangerous to release — is exactly what the Bush/Cheney faction endlessly repeated to justify its “legal black hole.”
But no matter. If there’s one thing we’ve seen repeatedly all year long, it’s that many Democrats simply do not believe in the axiom best expressed by The New York Times’ Bob Herbert when he said that “Americans should recoil as one against the idea of preventive detention.” As Herbert wrote: “policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House.” That precept should be too self-evident to require expression and yet is widely rejected. Hence, exactly that which very recently was condemned as “a dungeon, a gulag, a tropical purgatory, and a black-hole embarrassment” is now magically transformed into a beacon of sober pragmatism from a man — a Constitutional Scholar — solemnly devoted to restoring America’s Standing and Values.
* * * * *
Yesterday, prior to this decision being announced, I conducted a 20-minute interview with ACLU Exeuctive Director Anthony Romero regarding that group’s newly released report on Obama’s civil liberites record after the first year in office, pointedly entitled: “America Unrestored.” I’ll post that discussion later today. Additionally, I will have an analysis of the Supreme Court’s obviously momentous decision in Citizens United — invaliding restrictions on corporate and union election spending — posted later.
UPDATE: Just to add some thick irony to all of this, today is the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s Executive Order to close Guantanamo within one year — an anniversary the administration decided to celebrate not by fulfilling its terms, but instead by announcing that the central feature of Guanatanamo — indefinite detention with no charges — will continue indefinitely.
The Pictures of War You Aren’t Supposed to See
Posted on 04. Jan, 2010 by Radical Daily in Feminism, War & Peace
An Iraqi woman takes her dead son into her arms. The six-year-old was killed on the way home from enrolling for his first year of school. (AP Photo / Adem Hadei)
By Chris Hedges
War is brutal and impersonal. It mocks the fantasy of individual heroism and the absurdity of utopian goals like democracy. In an instant, industrial warfare can kill dozens, even hundreds of people, who never see their attackers. The power of these industrial weapons is indiscriminate and staggering. They can take down apartment blocks in seconds, burying and crushing everyone inside. They can demolish villages and send tanks, planes and ships up in fiery blasts. The wounds, for those who survive, result in terrible burns, blindness, amputation and lifelong pain and trauma. No one returns the same from such warfare. And once these weapons are employed all talk of human rights is a farce.
In Peter van Agtmael’s “2nd Tour Hope I don’t Die” and Lori Grinker’s “Afterwar: Veterans From a World in Conflict,” two haunting books of war photographs, we see pictures of war which are almost always hidden from public view. These pictures are shadows, for only those who go to and suffer from war can fully confront the visceral horror of it, but they are at least an attempt to unmask war’s savagery.
“Over ninety percent of this soldier’s body was burned when a roadside bomb hit his vehicle, igniting the fuel tank and burning two other soldiers to death,” reads the caption in Agtmael’s book next to a photograph of the bloodied body of a soldier in an operating room. “His camouflage uniform dangled over the bed, ripped open by the medics who had treated him on the helicopter. Clumps of his skin had peeled away, and what was left of it was translucent. He was in and out of consciousness, his eyes stabbing open for a few seconds. As he was lifted from the stretcher to the ER bed, he screamed ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ then ‘Put me to sleep, please put me to sleep.’ There was another photographer in the ER, and he leaned his camera over the heads of the medical staff to get an overhead shot. The soldier yelled, ‘Get that fucking camera out of my face.’ Those were his last words. I visited his grave one winter afternoon six months later,” Agtmael writes, “and the scene of his death is never far from my thoughts.”
“There were three of us inside, and the jeep caught fire,” Israeli soldier Yossi Arditi, quoted in Grinker’s book, says of the moment when a Molotov cocktail exploded in his vehicle. “The fuel tank was full and it was about to explode, my skin was hanging from my arms and face—but I didn’t lose my head. I knew nobody could get inside to help me, that my only way out was through the fire to the doors. I wanted to take my gun, but I couldn’t touch it because my hands were burning.”
Arditi spent six months in the hospital. He had surgery every two or three months, about 20 operations, over the next three years.
“People who see me, see what war really does,” he says.
Filmic and most photographic images of war are shorn of the heart-pounding fear, awful stench, deafening noise and exhaustion of the battlefield. Such images turn confusion and chaos, the chief element of combat, into an artful war narrative. They turn war into porn. Soldiers and Marines, especially those who have never seen war, buy cases of beer and watch movies like “Platoon,” movies meant to denounce war, and as they do so revel in the despicable power of the weapons shown. The reality of violence is different. Everything formed by violence is senseless and useless. It exists without a future. It leaves behind nothing but death, grief and destruction.
Chronicles of war, such as these two books, that eschew images and scenes of combat begin to capture war’s reality. War’s effects are what the state and the press, the handmaiden of the war makers, work hard to keep hidden. If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of the eight schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan a week ago and listen to the wails of their parents we would not be able to repeat clichés about liberating the women of Afghanistan or bringing freedom to the Afghan people. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war’s perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war’s consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining. And the press is as guilty as Hollywood. During the start of the Iraq war, television reports gave us the visceral thrill of force and hid from us the effects of bullets, tank rounds, iron fragmentation bombs and artillery rounds. We tasted a bit of war’s exhilaration, but were protected from seeing what war actually does.
The wounded, the crippled and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted off stage. They are war’s refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myth of glory, honor, patriotism and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless. And those whom fate has decreed must face war’s effects often turn and flee.
Saul Alfaro, who lost his legs in the war in El Salvador, speaks in Grinker’s book about the first and final visit from his girlfriend as he lay in an army hospital bed.
“She had been my girlfriend in the military and we had planned to be married,” he says. “But when she saw me in the hospital—I don’t know exactly what happened, but later they told me when she saw me she began to cry. Afterwards, she ran away and never came back.”
The public manifestations of gratitude are reserved for veterans who dutifully read from the script handed to them by the state. The veterans trotted out for viewing are those who are compliant and palatable, those we can stand to look at without horror, those who are willing to go along with the lie that war is about patriotism and is the highest good. “Thank you for your service,” we are supposed to say. They are used to perpetuate the myth. We are used to honor it.
Gary Zuspann, who lives in a special enclosed environment in his parent’s home in Waco, Texas, suffering from Gulf War syndrome, speaks in Grinker’s book of feeling like “a prisoner of war” even after the war had ended.
“Basically they put me on the curb and said, okay, fend for yourself,” he says in the book. “I was living in a fantasy world where I thought our government cared about us and they take care of their own. I believed it was in my contract, that if you’re maimed or wounded during your service in war, you should be taken care of. Now I’m angry.”
I went back to Sarajevo after covering the 1990s war for The New York Times and found hundreds of cripples trapped in rooms in apartment blocks with no elevators and no wheelchairs. Most were young men, many without limbs, being cared for by their elderly parents, the glorious war heroes left to rot.
Despair and suicide grip survivors. More Vietnam veterans committed suicide after the war than were killed during it. The inhuman qualities drilled into soldiers and Marines in wartime defeat them in peacetime. This is what Homer taught us in “The Iliad,” the great book on war, and “The Odyssey,” the great book on the long journey to recovery by professional killers. Many never readjust. They cannot connect again with wives, children, parents or friends, retreating into personal hells of self-destructive anguish and rage.
“They program you to have no emotion—like if somebody sitting next to you gets killed you just have to carry on doing your job and shut up,” Steve Annabell, a British veteran of the Falklands War, says to Grinker. “When you leave the service, when you come back from a situation like that, there’s no button they can press to switch your emotions back on. So you walk around like a zombie. They don’t deprogram you. If you become a problem they just sweep you under the carpet.”
“To get you to join up they do all these advertisements—they show people skiing down mountains and doing great things—but they don’t show you getting shot at and people with their legs blown off or burning to death,” he says. “They don’t show you what really happens. It’s just bullshit. And they never prepare you for it. They can give you all the training in the world, but it’s never the same as the real thing.”
Those with whom veterans have most in common when the war is over are often those they fought.
“Nobody comes back from war the same,” says Horacio Javier Benitez, who fought the British in the Falklands and is quoted in Grinker’s book. “The person, Horacio, who was sent to war, doesn’t exist anymore. It’s hard to be enthusiastic about normal life; too much seems inconsequential. You contend with craziness and depression.”
“Many who served in the Malvinas,” he says, using the Argentine name of the islands, “committed suicide, many of my friends.”
“I miss my family,” reads a wall graffito captured in one of Agtmael’s photographs. “Please God forgive the lives I took and let my family be happy if I don’t go home again.”
Next to the plea someone had drawn an arrow toward the words and written in thick, black marker “Fag!!!”
Look beyond the nationalist cant used to justify war. Look beyond the seduction of the weapons and the pornography of violence. Look beyond Barack Obama’s ridiculous rhetoric about finishing the job or fighting terror. Focus on the evil of war. War begins by calling for the annihilation of the others but ends ultimately in self-annihilation. It corrupts souls and mutilates bodies. It destroys homes and villages and murders children on their way to school. It grinds into the dirt all that is tender and beautiful and sacred. It empowers human deformities—warlords, Shiite death squads, Sunni insurgents, the Taliban, al-Qaida and our own killers—who can speak only in the despicable language of force. War is a scourge. It is a plague. It is industrial murder. And before you support war, especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, look into the hollow eyes of the men, women and children who know it.
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent who covered conflicts for two decades in Central America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans, writes a column published every Monday on Truthdig. His latest book is “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.”
“Smart Power” and “Bear Traps” in the Hindu Kush
Posted on 01. Jan, 2010 by Radical Daily in Current Affairs
The US President Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet at the regional powers with his latest Afghan strategy. The constructive ambiguity in his strategy falls in the Kissingerian tradition of negotiating tactic. In a climate of deeply polarized political opinion, he is free to advance matters of vital US interests, while retaining the prerogative to revisit unresolved questions at a date of his choice.
This leaves major regional powers – Pakistan, Iran, India, China and Russia – in some quandary. Obama taunted them to respond within 58 days when they assemble for the London conference on “Afghanisation” on January 28. That’s a tough call.
To be sure, the regional powers are placed at a disadvantage as their internecine tensions preclude scope of a regional initiative materializing. Obama’s strategy is all that is left, therefore, on the table. Pakistan and India are locked in adversarial embrace and that creates much geopolitical space for the US. No doubt, the US military presence seriously destabilized Pakistan. The latest anti-Shi’ite serial terrorist strikes in Karachi testify that in the name of the Taliban, all sorts of forces are operating inside Pakistan – ranging from the CIA to the Blackwater security firm to Wahhabi elements. Pakistan faces a stark choice – fall in line with the US geo-strategy and earn American goodwill, or face the consequences of recalcitrance.
As for the India, Washington holds out the comfort line that Obama is bent on “stabilizing” Pakistan. Washington’s noble endeavour of cleansing Pakistan of militancy pleases Delhi although there is some ennui. At any rate, Delhi is raring to contribute to the “Afghanisation” of the war. Being a natural ally, there is no choice but to cooperate with Washington’s entreaties. On top of it all, there is the larger preoccupation of “catching up” with China’s surge, which modulates the Indian mind at all hours.
Iran presents a case by itself. The US has succeeded in shaking the foundations of Iran-Russia strategic understanding, which was a historic legacy of Evgeniy Primakov’s astute diplomacy with his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Velayati to bring the bloody Tajik civil war to an end. The erosion of Russia-Iran understanding enables Washington to make the brazen attempt at “regime change” in Tehran. The geopolitics of the Greater Middle East hangs in the balance. Of course, Tehran withstood ferocious US assaults in the past and the revolutionary heritage is far from dissipated. Also, China’s continued support impacts on the co-relation of forces.
China’s role is immensely important also with regard to the efficacy of the US policy toward Pakistan. The US ability to “pressure” China is limited and hence Washington’s smart overture for a Sino-American joint venture in South Asia. But China remained reticent, keeping in mind the “big picture” of the security inter-linkages of Xinjiang with Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
America keenly wanted China to wet its toes in the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban but the latter knew a military involvement could prove to be a dangerous gambit. Pakistan presents itself as a showcase of the “collateral damage” of the US-led war. China, which was an accomplice of the Americans in the great Afghan jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet Union, would also know that the US has incredible methods of “synergizing” militant Islam – and, in the present case, Xinjiang’s stability is involved.
The US is conscious that China (and Russia) does not share its predicament of being in the crosshairs of the Islamists operating in the Hindu Kush. While it got bogged down in a security quagmire, China wisely focused on commerce. Life can be cruel at times. As the doughty scholar on Xinjiang, Frederick Starr told the New York Times, “We [US] do the heavy lifting. And they [China] pick the fruit”.
Thus, in a startling show of “smart power”, the US has presented Taiwan with an invitation to render “non-military” assistance to Afghanistan. It is an invitation that Taipei cannot spurn, as it comes alongside a huge US arms package and in the downstream it holds out the tantalising prospect that Taipei may look a rising star. Arguably, Washington is cocking a snook at Beijing for its refusal to cooperate with Obama’s Afghan (or Iranian) strategy by muddying the waters in the Taiwan Straits.
Russia’s position is equally delicate. Obama’s war is helpful for Russia to the extent that it may arrest the march of Islamism into the heart of Central Asia. Russia has provided supply routes for the NATO countries. Conceivably, Russia regards cooperation in Afghanistan to be helpful for the “reset” of its US ties. Now comes the testy part. Like with China, Washington wants Moscow to wet its toes in the Afghan war. It wants Moscow to supply weapons and to dispatch military advisors to train Afghan armed forces.
However, the fact remains that although the overall atmosphere of ties with the US has improved, the reset as such remains hostage to a range of issues – missile defence, NATO expansion, Moscow’s acquiescence with the containment strategy toward Iran, etc. Meanwhile, in bits and pieces, what emerges is also that far from lapsing into an isolationist policy, the US is searching for a robust geopolitical engagement in the post-Soviet space in Central Asia.
In effect, Washington wants Moscow to help consolidate the US military presence in Afghanistan, which would pave the way for an expansion of American influence in the Greater Middle East, including Central Asia. Unsurprisingly, Russia seems to face a dilemma somewhat similar to China’s but then, Russia-US engagement has a far more complicated history. Obama’s emphasis on “Afghanisation” is welcome. But the medium and long-term US intentions remain obscure. All evidence points toward a long-term – even open-ended – US military presence in Afghanistan. Any lingering doubt was dispelled when in front of the crème de la crème of the American Right, gathered under the canopy of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, Senator McCain openly vowed to be Obama’s “ally in this effort”.
McCain is an indefatigable warrior who leaps out of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Eurasian chessboard. McCain saw three great virtues in Obama’s Afghan strategy. First, Obama affirmed a “counterinsurgency” (as against “counterterrorist”) strategy, which was what the Pentagon passionately sought. Second, “large numbers of US combat troops will likely remain in Afghanistan long after July 2011”. Three, following from the above, the US will remain the “only actor in the region with the strength and the stake” to “check and counter” external influences that are “unhealthy” and to ensure on a long-term footing that Afghanistan ceases to be “a field of regional competition and proxy battles”.
McCain summed up with total clarity of mind that “our [US’s] regional strategy must turn military gains [in Afghanistan] into diplomatic leverage outside the country”.
In fact, the US strategy of widening the gyre of the Afghan strategy to draw in the Central Asian states, is steadily gaining momentum. A study conducted recently by the influential Center of Strategic and International Studies in Washington titled “The Northern Distribution Network and the Modern Silk Road” (co-authored by Starr) proposes the coalescing of Central Asia with the AfPak as the crucial underpinning of the entire US geo-strategy towards Greater Middle East, Russia and China.
As diplomats from the regional capitals warily trudge toward the London conference on “Afghanisation”, there will be a lot on their mind. Is “Afghanisation” a genuinely collective effort under UN leadership? Or is it a mere “bear trap” under a new rubric? There hangs a tale. The chilling reality is that Taliban, too, will be watching – having made clear it will look back in anger at foreign powers that associate with the US’s intervention in the three-decade old fratricidal war.
Interventions R Us :: War on Terror or War on Disaffected Yemenis?
Posted on 01. Jan, 2010 by Radical Daily in War & Peace
By Ron Jacobs
As if the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan were not enough to satiate the Empire’s bloodlust, the calls are increasing for an all-out war on the nation of Yemen. The reason given for this intervention is that the man who apparently wanted to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day 2009 spent some time there and may have received his instructions while he was visiting. Like the increasingly bloody occupation of Afghanistan, Washington wants the world to believe that attacking a nation that hosts organizations intent on resisting US domination will somehow end those organizations existence and make everyone safer. Left unsaid in this rather simplistic equation are the obvious facts. Over eight years of war and occupation of Afghanistan has neither stopped the desire of politically nor religiously motivated individuals to blow up airliners and other structures in their war against US cultural and economic imperialism. Nor has it broken the back of the groups in Afghanistan that also oppose the US intervention in their country. In fact, if we are to believe intelligence reports from various US agencies, these groups are not only still in existence, they have mutated politically and are at least as strong as they were before the US invasion in 2001.
In recent months, parts of Yemen have come under attack by Saudi Arabian forces backing the government there. In recent weeks, the Saudis have been supported by the US military. It seems quite likely that there is more to the growing likelihood of deeper US military involvement in Yemen than the visit of the wannabe bomber Mr. Abdulmutallab. Saudi Arabia and North Yemen fought a war in 1934 when a prince formerly aligned with Ibn Saud switched allegiance to the Yemeni Prince King Yahya, Although Riyadh supported the Zaydi monarchist predecessors (Zaydi Imams) to the Houthi rebels in the 1962 republican revolution in North Yemen, it now supports the successors to those it opposed in 1962 (the Saleh regime). This support is religious and geopolitically based, with the Saleh government being primarily Sunni (with Wahabbist leanings) and the opposition being Shia. The fact that the conflict is primarily occurring in a province on Saudi Arabia’s borders explains Riyadh’s concerns with regard to geography. he victory of the north Yemeni forces began a period that saw increasing repression of forces opposed to Saleh, with human rights groups documenting torture, displacement and extrajudicial killings. Since the defeat of the Zaydi Imams in 1962 by the forerunners of the current Yemeni government, the northwestern province of Sa’adah has been ignored by the Yemeni regime, leaving it to founder economically. Over the years this has naturally caused resentment. By 2004, a full-blown insurgency in Sa’adah shifted the Yemeni military’s interest to this historically ignored region. This rebellion is known as the Houthi insurgency because of its leadership by dissident cleric Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi (rumored to have been killed in US and Saudi airstrikes in November 2009).
South Yemen was a colony of Britain until it achieved independence in 1967 after a struggle led by socialist revolutionaries. After North and South Yemen reunited in 1990, Saleh refused to grant the former members of the Democratic Republic of South Yemen power commensurate with their support. This fact and a desire by the Marxist former leaders of South Yemen for more progressive social policies led to civil war in 1994. Saleh’s government was backed militarily by Saudi Arabia. In 2009, renewed resistance against the Yemeni regime began in southern Yemen led by leftist-leaning forces. Yemeni military forces have met this popular uprising with overt and often violent repression.
On to all this, one must add the group that calls itself Al Qaida of Yemen (AQY). While it seems unlikely that this group (if it is truly a terrorist group and not some kind of black op) is carrying out specific orders of Bin Laden or one of the dozens of supposed Al Qaida leaders, it is reasonable to say that its members are inspired by the philosophy and actions of groups nominally known as Al Qaida. However, as far as the Yemeni regime is concerned, its existence in Yemen in the minds of Washington and the rest of the west is quite useful. After all, if the Pentagon is willing to escalate its low-scale conflict to a full fledged war in the name of fighting terrorism, than Saleh and his military can gain an advantage against the two insurgencies currently being waged against his regime. By claiming that the terrorists are either aligned with one or both of the insurgencies or are at least located in territories controlled by them, Saleh’s regime can direct US airstrikes at those areas of the country. This will most likely disrupt not only the supposed terror cells, but will also interrupt the insurgencies. If it is the Yemeni air force that conducts the raids, it will be with US weaponry that will soon be on its way. In addition, the likelihood of attacks against the insurgencies increases should the Yemen government convince the US to let them run the show (with US supervision). Naturally, military action on this scale will also kill and wound civilians, thereby increasing the likelihood of alliances between the insurgents and AQY, neatly sewing the three elements together and continuing Saleh’s continued rule. I am simultaneously reminded of Israel’s use of US weaponry and funds to subdue the Palestinians and Washington’s deal with Pakistan’s Musharraf after 9-11.
Like Afghanistan, Yemen is a very poor country. It is also somewhat unstable politically, as the above paragraphs describe. Its proximity to Saudi Arabia raises some concerns for Washington primarily because of its fear that the ideas informing the insurgencies might inspire Saudi Arabia’s disenfranchised masses and upset the oil teat America depends on. Also, like Afghanistan, it can be argued that its best promise for stability and a decent life for its citizens was when it had a socialist oriented government–a regime subverted with considerable help from the United States.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net