Nasir Khan
Professor Herbert Bix discusses how the American rulers use torture, murder and assassinations to expand their global hegemony and power. This article is a must read for those who want to know the facts about American rulers' barbarism, inhumanity and false propaganda. However, the American Establishment keeps on claiming that America stands only for freedom and democracy in the world. I agree with George Orwell's remark: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
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Z Magazine Online
July/August 2005 Volume 18 Number 7/8
Foreign Policy
Torture, Racism, & the Sovereign President
Torture, murder, and assassination have become vital to U.S. empire-building
By Herbert P. Bix
President George W. Bush has embedded murder, assassination, torture, and mistreatment of prisoners into the structure of the U.S. system of global domination. Many U.S. citizens, rightly outraged, want to know why this sort of barbaric, sadistic violence has become an integral part of U.S. security policy, and what the Administration’s justification of torture means institutionally for the future governance of this country. Above all, they want to know how Bush has been able to avoid impeachment for committing high crimes.
Here is a select list of typical tortures, abuses, and “outrages against human dignity” inflicted by U.S. forces and mercenaries on enemy captives in the course of their arrest, detention and interrogation:
* Beating, kicking, and treading on bodies
* Sleep deprivation and forced injection of drugs
* Rape and sodomy
* Water torture, a traditional U.S. Army practice since at least the Indian wars and the Philippines insurrection at the end of the 19th century
* Hanging prisoners whose arms are bound behind their back by shackles or handcuffs until their limbs pop from their sockets—a new U.S. form of lynching
* Tight handcuffing, close-shackling, and blindfolding or “hooding” for extended periods; sometimes the hoods are marked in order to alert the U.S. torturer to the particular crime that the prisoner is suspected of having committed
* Forced stripping of Muslim prisoners and keeping them naked for long periods
* Religious humiliation
* Sexual humiliation, insult, and debasement, including smearing with feces, urine, and what appears to be menstrual blood
* Screaming racial insults before, during, and after unleashing violence against captives
* Shocking with electrical instruments, another method of torture commonly used by U.S. troops in Vietnam
* Exposure for prolonged periods to extremes of light and dark, heat and cold, and noise so deafening as to rupture the eardrums
* Extraction of nails, burning skin with cigarettes, stabbing or cutting the bodies of prisoners
* Threatening prisoners or their relatives with death or by having them watch other victims being tortured
* Threatening with dogs or allowing dogs to actually assault prisoners during or before interrogation
* Forcing prisoners to stand or to remain in painful positions for extended periods
* Isolation in cells, cages, wooden boxes, and barbed wire-enclosed trailers for prolonged periods
* Depriving prisoners of food, water, drink, and toilet facilities
* Extreme or enforced rendition, i.e., torture by proxy in foreign countries
These acts were performed both before and after the Bush administration had unilaterally exempted itself from legal liabilities under international and domestic law. Some members of the U.S. military abused prisoners because senior military commanders such as Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez had explicitly authorized them to do so; some tortured the enemy because they found it to be “fun”; but most seem to have acted in the belief that their conduct was condoned because the White House and the Department of Defence had adopted a policy of fighting terror with terror.
In the U.S. mass media the routine, sometimes bone-shattering beating of prisoners in U.S. custody receives relatively little attention except as a public relations problem. Moral and legal concern seems to be reserved for the less common, more secretive practice of “rendition,” in which officials of the executive branch are protected because the abuse takes place outside the U.S., avoiding monitoring by the Red Cross and due process. More so than other modes of torture, this type of contract crime may be ordered mainly for reasons of deterrence—i.e., to teach an object lesson to all people who fall afoul of the U.S., regardless of their national origin. European governments rightly consider it to be a blatant violation of their local sovereignty and are investigating.
A Total War Strategy
The Bush administration’s increasing reliance on imprisonment, torture, and assassination as elements in its “war on terror,” needs to be explained from multiple angles, as part of a total war strategy for eliminating new challenges to the U.S. global empire. Fear, racism, and colonial wars in poverty-stricken Afghanistan and Iraq are historical frames that highlight the scope and complexity of the problem. The collapse of separation of powers, the decay of democratic processes and values, Congress’s unwillingness to destroy the perception of presidential impunity, and the increasingly secret nature of government combine to constitute a fourth frame. Let me touch briefly on each.
From the earliest days of the U.S., fear and racism have been striking features of U.S. culture. Although closely related, they are distinguishable. By fear I mean the inordinate susceptibility of the U.S. public to fits of real panic, during which fear and extremism override reason. Usually fear spreads when political elites sound the alarm and rally the country to fight some unbelievably powerful force that is out to destroy the world they inhabit. The threat can come from within or from outside, from a modern or a “failed state,” or from a social movement. But once defined, U.S. citizens imagine that only extraordinary leaders, willing to ignore the law, can protect them from the menace. Under strong presidents, citizens fight back in self-defense against the insidious enemy, using catastrophic weapons created by their technological genius. The enemy can be Indians, Blacks, or Chinese; it can be Britain in one period, Spain, Japan, the Soviet Union, or international terrorists in another. In almost every case, the enemy that their leaders exhorted them to hate later turns out to be whoever had something we wanted. The pattern is old and recurs throughout the history of U.S. empire. The most spectacular case of “punishing an aggressor” with an unprecedented new super weapon was President Truman’s nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
By racism I mean attitudes of hatred and contempt directed toward those who are unlike us, mainly for reasons of color. In multicultural, allegedly color-blind U.S., with its many racial minorities, racism and de facto segregation continues. When Bush declared his “war on terror,” this old dynamic assumed forms suited to 21st century conditions. Racial profiling returned; civil rights for minorities and immigrants eroded; and both developments went hand in hand with war atrocities committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo, Cuba.
The effects of racial bias can be seen in the world’s largest, expanding prison system, where the percentage of Blacks, Latinos, and Hispanics remains high and racial violence and mistreatment of minority inmates occurs frequently. Not surprisingly, in the atmosphere of revenge galvanized by the 9/11 attacks, racial violence quickly spread from the domestic prisons and police departments to U.S. military prisons abroad. Abusive jailers and police officers from the U.S. volunteered to fight and ended up torturing prisoners at camps in Kandahar, Baghram, Guantanamo Bay, Mosul, Bucca in southern Iraq, and Abu Ghraib near Baghdad.
The Pentagon also recruited patrol officers and officials from the federal and state prisons for its war on terror and sent them to the U.S.-run prisons in Iraq. According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, the U.S. state prison system is far larger than the federal system and in 2003 held nearly 1.2 million inmates, most of them ethnic minorities. Local jails contained 700,000 inmates; juvenile facilities over 100,000. Racial violence and mistreatment of inmates by guards is more likely to occur in the state prisons and local jails where the level of discipline is lower, the use of force greater. But from the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, where hundreds of Muslim detainees were recently abused, to the U.S. military prisons spread throughout the world, wherever prisoners of color have been tortured by guards, racism usually lies close to the surface.
Furthermore, race rather than national origin fundamentally shapes the U.S. soldiers’ image of the terrorist. The Army sent to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq was “whiter” than it had been since 2000 as a result of five straight years of declining Army recruitment of black Americans. The 17,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan reportedly turned virtually the entire country into one huge secret prison in which military guards and CIA interrogators inflicted gratuitous pain on the bodies of individual Afghani captives who are held incommunicado without charge or trial, according to a March 19, 2005 report in the Guardian. Whenever this happens the likelihood is great that they are exercising “racially-informed,” irrational violence against both their victims and the entire society to which they belong. The same phenomenon can be seen in Iraq where U.S. soldiers call the inhabitants “sand niggers” and “ragheads.”
A third framework for understanding the torture scandal is the regressive, colonial-like character of the current U.S. wars. Nothing illustrates this better than the bloody struggle to control Fallujah, a Sunni city located west of Baghdad on the edge of the Iraq desert, which before the U.S. invasion had a population estimated at 300,000.
The initial skirmish in what became the first battle of Fallujah (March and early April 2004) was fought after four U.S. military contractors were brutally murdered by young Iraqis. The killings were in revenge for the murder in Gaza of the paraplegic Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, by Israelis who were flying U.S. helicopters. Marines went into Fallujah allegedly searching for the killers of the civilian mercenaries but were forced out by its residents. To redeem their honor they mounted a full-scale assault. After three weeks of rebellion the casualty figures ranged from a low of 600 combatant and non-combatants killed and over 1,200 injured to estimates ranging upward from 1,000.
The second battle to retake Fallujah from its inhabitants began five months later in November 2004, after Marines again cut off food, water, and electricity to the city in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Their illegal acts of collective retribution were designed to empty the city of its women, children, and elderly while preventing the departure of able-bodied Iraqi civilian males. When something similar happened in Srebrenica, Bosnia in 1995 it was universally condemned in Europe and the U.S. as “genocide.” The main difference was that in Srebrenica the Serbs evacuated the women and children by truck while in Fallujah the U.S. bombed them out.
As U.S. ground attacks on entrances to the besieged city of Fallujah increased, aerial bombardment—torture from the air—commenced. A U.S. specialty since 1945, the bombing of cities tends to take a primary toll on civilians while seeking to force both noncombatants and combatants to sue for peace.
Iraqi popular resistance forces responded to these U.S. assaults by stepping up attacks in Baghdad, Samarra, Ramadi, and elsewhere, killing and wounding more foreign occupiers and their Iraqi collaborators by the week. Fallujah’s struggle to end U.S. occupation spread the nationalist resistance.
The retaking of Fallujah during November and early December through ruthless air, tank, and artillery bombardment resulted in the city’s complete destruction. Under rules of engagement approved in Washington, U.S. forces reportedly used banned napalm and poison gas, killed civilians holding white flags or white clothes over their heads, murdered the wounded, killed unarmed Iraqis who had been taken prisoner, and destroyed mosques, hospitals, and health centers protected under international law. One of the most amazing, well reported scenes from this battle took place at the Fallujah General Hospital where U.S. forces kicked down doors, cut the telephone lines, molested doctors, forced patients from their beds, and manacled their hands behind their backs. The hospital, said U.S. military spokesperson, was releasing casualty figures useful for the propaganda of the resistance fighters.
Fallujan residents were dispossessed of their homes and forced to live as refugees in surrounding towns and villages. To this day no one knows how many people died in the bloodbath. But a few months earlier, in September 2004, an Iraqi mortality researcher and his interviewer, working on a public health study jointly sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, managed to enter the city. What they discovered was such a high number of civilian deaths that they decided to exclude the Fallujah data from their final, conservative estimate of about 100,000 Iraqi civilians (mostly women and children) killed since the U.S. invaded. In a population estimated at 24 million, that is the U.S. proportional equivalent of 1.2 million deaths.
When legal restraints are removed during a war, needless death and destruction occurs; invariably the main victims are highly vulnerable civilians. In World War II, the “kill ratio” was one civilian death (mostly children, women, and the elderly) for every soldier killed. The smaller wars fought after 1945 ran the civilian-soldier count up to 8:1. But in Iraq the kill ratio is conservatively estimated to be much higher. Why do tens of millions of Americans refuse to confront this reality? Perhaps because they never heard about the Lancet study, thanks to the U.S. corporate media. Or perhaps misguided patriotism and militarism, drummed into youth through film, television, and video games, lead them to consider the enormous civilian loss and suffering as unavoidable “collateral damage” or a product of military necessity. Whatever the reasons, not only the Administration, but the mainstream press and many citizens profess to care only about the lives of fellow Americans and remain unconcerned about the barbaric treatment their soldiers mete out to Iraqis and Afghanis.
U.S. Assertion of Dominion
The problem of widespread, individualized interrogation-by-torture is inseparable from the pain and suffering inflicted on all those who resist U.S. assertion of dominion. In late April 2004, as the initial battle for Fallujah was winding down, the first photos appeared of uniformed, grinning U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison. Since then, the illegal acts of the Bush administration, its armed forces, and intelligence operatives have received relentless news media attention abroad and only desultory attention within the United States.
Earlier, there had been news reports coming out of Afghanistan about teams of U.S. Special Forces and their Northern Alliance allies committing war atrocities at Baghram, Kandahar, and other places in Afghanistan. UN officials had documented how uniformed U.S. officers connived in the mass killing of surrendered Taliban soldiers at Dash-E Leili. NGOs in many countries, including the International Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, had compiled massive dossiers documenting, from early 2002 onward, U.S. soldiers severely beating and kicking bound, helpless prisoners, and of Army medical personnel conniving in the abuse. Often recessed into the background of such reports was mention of U.S. forces treating Afghanis mercilessly, as subhuman, denigrating them through the use of racial epithets, demeaning their national culture.
Many people in the U.S. took news of atrocity charges in stride. During 2003, stories broke of Israeli military advisers being invited into Iraq and to Fort Bragg, North Carolina to train U.S. assassination squads. Neither did video pictures of U.S. helicopter pilots murdering wounded Iraqis lying on the ground or the U.S. seizure without charge of foreign nationals and their shipment to prisons outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts for purposes of torture. Well before the obscene photos from Abu Ghraib and their broadcast on national television struck a spark, the foreign place-names for atrocities committed by U.S. forces were steadily increasing. But the U.S. chose either not to know or to passively accept the president’s disregard of international law. When Bush boasted in his State of the Union speech in 2003, “The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others,” apologists for his unilateralism chimed in that “lawful” and “unlawful” had ceased to be meaningful terms.
By the time the torture scandal broke, Iraqi resistance against the U.S. presence had intensified and public support for the war was waning. The Bush administration rushed to deny that torture was intentionally ordered or widely practiced and blamed all abuses on a few rotten apples, acting on their own. Neither Bush nor Rumsfeld offered a public apology for torture nor admitted that they had prior knowledge of it. Congress and the public accepted the official White House/Pentagon version of events.
Yet the daily routine of U.S. war crimes was too widespread to be covered up. The story of the prisons staffed with racists and sadists, just as in the U.S, kept deepening; the number of prisoners kept on increasing—in Iraq, 8,000 at the time of the Abu Ghraib pictures, 10,500 as of March 2005; and in Afghanistan 500 as of January 2005.
Bush policy-makers had expressed from the outset a strong desire to inflict pain on enemy captives. They had denied the occupied peoples proper prisoner-of-war treatment, set aside the law of occupation, and ordered military strategies of indiscriminate violence against all who resisted their aims. Documents generated in the White House and the Departments of Justice and Defense appeared in the press after lawsuits were brought by the ACLU. They bore out that the president, by fiat, had set aside the Geneva Conventions, denied prisoner-of-war status to Taliban and Al Qaeda captives taken in Afghanistan, and sent them for indefinite detention to the naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba. This meant they would be interrogated without legal restriction under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s rules, which violated the Constitution, not to mention Bush’s worthless public promise to treat them humanely.
The torture documents reveal a mindset within the White House and Pentagon intent on destroying what remains of democratic processes. Right after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Bush issued a secret directive authorizing the torture by proxy in foreign jails of those suspected of having information about terrorist operations. Thereafter he used the “war on terror” and his commander-in-chief authority to expand the little known “state-secrets privilege,” for which no constitutional foundation exists, in order to prevent the courts from discovering what crimes he has directed the CIA to commit.
The torture debate is about the Pentagon’s and the White House’s cover-up of the massive war crimes committed by members of the U.S. armed forces and CIA against Afghanis and Iraqis. But at a deeper level it is part of a larger debate in which the issues at stake are:
* Bush’s usurpation of power and his attempt to elevate the myth of presidential sovereignty
* Bush’s illegal attempt to exempt the U.S. from the Geneva Conventions and his Administration’s invention of the false category of “unlawful combatants” as a way of legitimating indefinite confinement and torture
* The evocation of “presidential secrecy” by executive officials to prevent the federal courts from prying into matters of national security both as they concern the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s global prison systems and Bush’s dereliction in the performance of his duties
* The federal Constitution’s modeling of the presidency on monarchy and its failure to protect from periodic presidential usurpations of power, which is exactly what its chief author, James Madison, intended
Turning to government memoranda, we see the most senior-level bureaucrats, lawyers, politicians, and soldiers—all of whom had sworn oaths to uphold the Constitution—debating, over a two-year period, (a) how to justify Bush’s decision to use interrogation techniques that were explicitly banned by international and domestic law; (b) how to limit the president’s legal exposure in the event that a federal district court tried to block him from getting around the law by issuing a writ of habeas corpus; and (c) how to prevent a court from assessing whether U.S. conduct in Afghanistan violated the norms of international law.
Another little known finding is that the U.S. may never have ratified any human rights convention without adding reservations that exempted itself—not the 1949 Geneva Conventions, not the subsequent protocols to it, and not even the 1948 Genocide Convention, which is the first of the post-World War II human rights treaties. Technically the Senate ratified the 1984 Torture Convention in 1994, but only after changing the definition of torture to make it more restrictive “than that set out in the Convention,” and thus more “interrogator-friendly.”
The torture documents show President Bush and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld using the legal opinions of their lawyers—including the now notorious August 1, 2002 memo written by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee—to assert a right to order the torture, maiming, and even murder of prisoners. Drawing on his commander-in-chief authority and the advice of his counsel, Alberto Gonzales, Bush suspended the Geneva Conventions, but later, in order to protect himself, issued a written directive cautioning all military interrogators to treat detainees “humanely.” At the same time, he allowed CIA interrogators to continue using cruel and unusual methods of interrogation. Bush also authorized the use of torture techniques against prisoners detained in the war on Iraq, which initially had nothing to do with the war against the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld took charge and turned the Pentagon into the “nerve center for directing torture and conducting secret missions.”
Over the years since U.S. forces entered Afghanistan and later attacked and occupied Iraq, U.S. soldiers have scoured villages, towns, and cities in both countries, searching for “insurgents.” Overall, they succeeded mainly in creating chaos and lawlessness, spreading armed resistance to their presence, and generating a keen desire for future revenge against the United States. The more U.S. forces have devastated Iraq, contaminated its land, destroyed its cities, and mistreated the Iraqi people in their local communities and inside their homes, the more resistance to U.S. presence has grown.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, as well as al-Qaeda suspects and Taliban fighters, have been rounded up and imprisoned under medieval conditions. U.S. soldiers, CIA agents (“case officers”), and mercenaries (“civilians”) working for privatized military firms under contract to the Pentagon, are known to have sadistically tortured large numbers of them while having their deeds photographed and filmed so that they could be seen by friends back home.
The Logic of Torture
A fourth frame for understanding why torture became just another weapon in the U.S. arsenal relates to the long decline in the spirit of democratic government that preceded 9/11. The growing immunity of the military from Congressional oversight is but an aspect of this phenomenon. At its heart is the corruption of the Congress under one-party control and the connivance of Senators and House members in shielding the president and his advisers from criminal liability for waging wars of aggression in which they themselves were complicit. The U.S. was already out of step with the rest of the world and sliding into an anti-democratic mode of governance long before the rise of the religious right and the neo-cons hastened this process. When a group of fundamentally dishonest ideological extremists took control of the presidency and the Congress, the corrupt condition of the U.S. political system began to be revealed in all sorts of criminal acts.
The conclusions I draw from this are, first, that in Europe during two world wars the United States seems not to have stooped to officially ordering the torture and mistreatment of prisoners of war, though only because arrayed against it were fighting forces that held U.S. prisoners and could retaliate. But in three Asian-Pacific wars—against Japan, North Korea, and the peoples of Indochina—the greater capabilities of U.S. forces made the fighting far more one-sided. In World War II, victorious U.S. troops in the Pacific confronted an enemy equipped with inferior weapons, usually took no prisoners, and often mutilated and murdered the wounded with impunity. The Japanese army too mistreated Allied prisoners and civilians on the battlefield and in occupied territories, but they alone were held criminally accountable for their actions. Vietnam and later interventions were unprovoked colonial wars against much weaker enemies. When going against the weak, the U.S. military has invariably used torture tactics on a wide scale.
Bush built on the legacy of war crimes and atrocities ordered by past presidents, including his own father and Bill Clinton, both of whom had issued presidential directives authorizing “extraordinary rendition.” In 2001 Bush expanded this practice without furnishing any meaningful guidelines. He is not the first president who ever turned his back on the fundamental principles that underpin the international order; but he and his top officials are certainly the first to have shattered the torture taboo while openly and repeatedly expressing contempt for international law. They are also the first to threaten the use of nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear states.
Today in the United States no strong public pressure exists for upholding the laws against torture of persons considered “enemy.” In 2002 a poll indicated “that one-third of Americans favored the use of torture on terrorist suspects.” The most recent Gallup poll, released March 1, 2005, suggested that 39 percent would support torturing “known terrorists if they know details about future terrorist attacks.” Clearly a large minority, whose views this Administration represents, believes that it is acceptable, if not wholly justified, to employ the tactics of torture in the fight against terrorist suspects in order to extract information that might save innocent lives. What this surely reflects is the passionate denial of the educated classes that the U.S. has been deeply involved in the gravest of international crimes.
To intentionally inflict pain and suffering on helpless detainees, whether or not they engaged in combat, is illegal and morally wrong, besides being cowardly and counter-productive. The legal prohibition on torture is absolute and unambiguous and can never be justified under any conditions. The only problem is that the U.S. government never actually ratified any humanitarian law without inserting loopholes that would allow it to make a claim of exemption.
The best available evidence suggests that torturing defenceless captives to obtain information doesn’t deter terrorist attacks. The information extracted under White House and Pentagon torture policy has proven singularly ineffective in defeating a popular resistance movement that has the support of the local population. In Iraq, Bush policies have only succeeded in creating terrorists, fuelling the flames of resistance to the U.S. presence, and breaking up the coalition of governments that unwisely sent troops to Iraq. Furthermore, the history of modern warfare shows that guerilla resistance movements do not depend on hierarchical chains of command that can be broken by such interrogation methods. To stop their pain, prisoners will say anything, rendering what they say unreliable.
Secretary of State Colin Powell found this out when he delivered his infamous address to the UN Security Council in February 2003, “which argued the case for a preemptive war against Iraq.” In his speech, Powell drew on the testimony of an unnamed “senior terrorist operative” who had told his interrogators that Saddam Hussein had offered to train Al-Qaeda operatives in the use of ‘chemical or biological weapons.’” After the U.S. invasion, it turned out that the terrorist, one Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, had been tortured by his CIA and Egyptian interrogators. Later, at Guantanomo, Libi recanted and admitted that he had lied. So much for evidence obtained through torture and the spin master who relied on it to justify aggression.
U.S. leaders have been intent on controlling the world ever since the Truman administration ended the war with Japan in a five-month orgy of conventional bombing before destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs. Their greed, ambition, and lack of foresight have left them with no solution but to pit themselves against the nationalism and desire for self-determination of weaker states throughout the world. Presidents and generals solved the problem of discovering who the enemy is by defining the entire population as enemy. When the “enemy” is the civilian population who won’t do our bidding, not only do the kill ratios have to be high, but reliance on torture, murder, and assassination also becomes vital. This is why Afghanistan and Iraq are in the same class as Korea and Vietnam: imperialism produces the logic of torture.
Herbert Bix, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (HarperCollins 2000), is professor of history and sociology at Binghamton University. He has written extensively on problems of war and empire.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Jimmy Carter criticises Blair's cowardly subservience to Bush
Tony Blair, the war criminal
by Nasir Khan, May 19, 2007
In my opinion Blair has been a political charlatan, a puffed-up trickster and a pathetic power-hungry careerist all along, but it is also true to say that he is not the only one of the type around.
In foreign policy matters Blair had earned the unique distinction of being called even by the conservative British media the ‘poodle’ and the ‘lap dog of Bush’. And we all know that he has been a loyal errand boy of Bush all these years running around and selling Bush’s politics of war, terror, lies and more lies.
I would like to remind our readers that Blair is a war criminal who sided blindly with Bush to invade and destroy Iraq. The blood of almost seven hundred thousand Iraqi men, women and children is on the hands of Blair and his Washington boss.
The democratic forces throughout the world should call for the arrest and trial of Blair for war crimes, crimes against humanity and misleading the British people and Parliament about the Iraqi war. His place in the next round should be before the International Court of Justice at the Hague.
In his latest comments former American president Jimmy Carter exposes the pivotal role Blair played as President Bush's hit man in Iraq and also in selling and defending his Washington boss's policies before the world.
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Compliant and subservient: Jimmy Carter's explosive critique of Tony Blair
By John Preston and Melissa Kite
Last Updated: 1:37am BST 28/08/2006
Tony Blair's lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism, according to the former American president Jimmy Carter.
Outspoken: Jimmy Carter, who condemns the pre-emptive strike on Iraq
Outspoken: Jimmy Carter condemns the Iraq invasion
"I have been surprised and extremely disappointed by Tony Blair's behaviour," he told The Sunday Telegraph.
"I think that more than any other person in the world the Prime Minister could have had a moderating influence on Washington - and he has not. I really thought that Tony Blair, who I know personally to some degree, would be a constraint on President Bush's policies towards Iraq."
In an exclusive interview, President Carter made it plain that he sees Mr Blair's lack of leadership as being a key factor in the present crisis in Iraq, which followed the 2003 invasion - a pre-emptive move he said he would never have considered himself as president.
Mr Carter also said that the Iraq invasion had subverted the fight against terrorism and instead strengthened al-Qaeda and the recruitment of terrorists.
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"In many countries where I meet with leaders and private citizens there is an equating of American policy with Great Britain - with Great Britain obviously playing the lesser role.
"We now have a situation where America is so unpopular overseas that even in countries like Egypt and Jordan our approval ratings are less than five per cent. It's a shameful and pitiful state of affairs and I hold your British Prime Minister to be substantially responsible for being so compliant and subservient."
The outspoken attack by the former Democratic president shows the extent of the alienation between the Labour Party and its traditional Democrat allies in America.
It will embarrass the Prime Minister on his return from his summer family holiday in Barbados and comes as Mr Blair prepares to make a defiant speech warning his party that it risks losing the next election if it does not unite behind him.
As friends of the Prime Minister mounted frenzied briefings in his defence yesterday, the Downing Street spin machine appeared to run out of control. A statement first put out on Friday was reissued, in which Mr Blair made a desperate defence of his Government, insisting that "after nearly a decade in office the PM is convinced that his Government has the experience and authority to meet these challenges".
Later officials at Downing Street admitted that they had simply re-dated the identical statement before sending it out to the press.
At 81, Mr Carter - the 39th American president, from 1977 to 1981, and the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize - plainly has no intention of sitting on his porch and nodding quietly away as the sun goes down over his peanut farm. He has just published a book, Faith and Freedom, in which he savages the American administration for leading the country into insularity and intolerance.
"We've never before had an administration that would endorse pre-emptive war - that is a basic policy of going to war against another country even though our own security was not directly threatened," he said. In his book, President Carter writes: "I have been sorely tempted to launch a military attack on foreigners."
But had he still been president, he says that he would never have considered invading Iraq in 2003.
"No," he said, "I would never have ordered it. However, I wouldn't have excluded going into Afghanistan, because I think we had to strike at al-Qaeda and its leadership. But then, to a major degree, we abandoned the anti-terrorist effort and went almost unilaterally with Great Britain into Iraq."
This, Mr Carter believes, subverted the effectiveness of anti-terrorist efforts. Far from achieving peace and stability, the result has been a disaster on all fronts. "My own personal opinion is that the Iraqi people are not better off as a result of the invasion and people in America and Great Britain are not safer."
Asked why he thinks Mr Blair has behaved in the way that he has with President Bush's belligerent regime, Mr Carter said he could only put it down to timidity. Yet he confessed that he remains baffled by the apparent contrast between Mr Blair's private remarks and his public utterances.
"I really believe the reports of former leaders who were present in conversations between Blair and Bush that Blair has expressed private opinions contrary to some of the public policies that he has adopted in subservience."
Thursday, May 10, 2007
An Appeal to American People Against the War in Iraq
Nasir Khan
The former prime minister of Malaysia Dr Mahathir Mohamad appeals to the Americans to stop killing the people of Iraq. Right from the start this was a blatant war of aggression and a major crime against humanity. However, a growing number of Americans oppose Bush's policy of war to gaining 'victory' in Iraq. But are they in a position to influence him to change his disastrous course? I believe, people have the power to influence the Bush Administration. The great American people have to rise to the occasion to stop this barbarous and cowardly war of Bush.
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Iraq, An Appeal to the American People
It is time we renounce killing masses of people in order to solve international disputes
by Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad
Global Research, May 10, 2007
The war in Iraq is getting worse. More and more American soldiers are being killed. Of course Iraqis are being killed in greater numbers.
This war was started by President Bush and supported by Prime Minister Tony Blair. They had lied in order to invade Iraq.
What has this war gained for America and Britain? Nothing except the unnecessary deaths of American soldiers, destruction of Iraq and higher oil prices. There is no democracy in Iraq, for which American soldiers were supposed to die.
Invading a country today does not end in conquest and subjugation of the people. The occupying forces would be continuously attacked by guerrillas and terrorists.
War is no longer an option for even the most powerful countries in the settlement of international disputes.
Killing people to achieve a national objective is primitive and barbaric.
Modern wars kill and destroy more.
The majority of those killed are non-combatants; old people, sick people, children and babies.
War makes a mockery of our claims to be civilised, to care for human life, human rights etc.
War reduces us to being brutish animals.
It is time we renounce killing masses of people in order to solve international disputes. It is time we renounce WAR! Defensive war would not be necessary in the absence of wars of aggression. Trillions of dollars would be saved as nations scale down their war machines.
I appeal to the American people to reject candidates in the Presidential primaries and election who do not reject killing people, who do not reject war as a policy option for the United States of America.
Elect only candidates who categorically declare they reject war and killing people.
If the United States does this, then candidates in elections in other countries will have to reject war.
Americans – you have a duty to yourselves – you have a duty to humanity at large.
Please do not fail in this moral duty.
Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad
Chairman,
Perdana Global Peace Organisation
Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad is the former Prime Minister of Malaysia.
The former prime minister of Malaysia Dr Mahathir Mohamad appeals to the Americans to stop killing the people of Iraq. Right from the start this was a blatant war of aggression and a major crime against humanity. However, a growing number of Americans oppose Bush's policy of war to gaining 'victory' in Iraq. But are they in a position to influence him to change his disastrous course? I believe, people have the power to influence the Bush Administration. The great American people have to rise to the occasion to stop this barbarous and cowardly war of Bush.
-------------------------------------
Iraq, An Appeal to the American People
It is time we renounce killing masses of people in order to solve international disputes
by Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad
Global Research, May 10, 2007
The war in Iraq is getting worse. More and more American soldiers are being killed. Of course Iraqis are being killed in greater numbers.
This war was started by President Bush and supported by Prime Minister Tony Blair. They had lied in order to invade Iraq.
What has this war gained for America and Britain? Nothing except the unnecessary deaths of American soldiers, destruction of Iraq and higher oil prices. There is no democracy in Iraq, for which American soldiers were supposed to die.
Invading a country today does not end in conquest and subjugation of the people. The occupying forces would be continuously attacked by guerrillas and terrorists.
War is no longer an option for even the most powerful countries in the settlement of international disputes.
Killing people to achieve a national objective is primitive and barbaric.
Modern wars kill and destroy more.
The majority of those killed are non-combatants; old people, sick people, children and babies.
War makes a mockery of our claims to be civilised, to care for human life, human rights etc.
War reduces us to being brutish animals.
It is time we renounce killing masses of people in order to solve international disputes. It is time we renounce WAR! Defensive war would not be necessary in the absence of wars of aggression. Trillions of dollars would be saved as nations scale down their war machines.
I appeal to the American people to reject candidates in the Presidential primaries and election who do not reject killing people, who do not reject war as a policy option for the United States of America.
Elect only candidates who categorically declare they reject war and killing people.
If the United States does this, then candidates in elections in other countries will have to reject war.
Americans – you have a duty to yourselves – you have a duty to humanity at large.
Please do not fail in this moral duty.
Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad
Chairman,
Perdana Global Peace Organisation
Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad is the former Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Nearly 40% Americans want to impeach Bush and Cheney
39% of Americans support impeachment
Michael Roston
Published: Tuesday May 8, 2007
A poll published Tuesday shows that close to 40% of Americans favor the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, according to an article at Townhall.com.
"Few serious observers think things will ever get to actual impeachment. And yet the American public seems more open to the concept than many imagine, according to a new national poll," wrote Matt Towery, CEO of InsiderAdvantage, which commissioned the poll. "The implications of this public sentiment could be huge for the 2008 presidential elections."
The poll from InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion asked a sample of 621 Americans, "Would you favor or oppose the impeachment by Congress of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney?"
A total of 39% who answered said they favored impeachment, according to Towery. In opposition were 55% of respondents, with 6% answering undecided or don't know. There was a 4% margin of error.
Towery noted that a high proportion of independent voters, who traditionally decide elections, favored impeachment.
"Forty-two percent of independents want Bush and Cheney impeached. These aren't just voters who disapprove of the White House. Instead, they're for initiating a process that could remove them from office," he wrote.
InsiderAdvantage's polls have "been praised by national media ranging from CNN’s Judy Woodruff to Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, and have appeared in Knight-Ridder newspapers, The Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Post, Business Week, US News and World Report, and CBS News/CBS Marketwatch," according to the company's website.
Michael Roston
Published: Tuesday May 8, 2007
A poll published Tuesday shows that close to 40% of Americans favor the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, according to an article at Townhall.com.
"Few serious observers think things will ever get to actual impeachment. And yet the American public seems more open to the concept than many imagine, according to a new national poll," wrote Matt Towery, CEO of InsiderAdvantage, which commissioned the poll. "The implications of this public sentiment could be huge for the 2008 presidential elections."
The poll from InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion asked a sample of 621 Americans, "Would you favor or oppose the impeachment by Congress of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney?"
A total of 39% who answered said they favored impeachment, according to Towery. In opposition were 55% of respondents, with 6% answering undecided or don't know. There was a 4% margin of error.
Towery noted that a high proportion of independent voters, who traditionally decide elections, favored impeachment.
"Forty-two percent of independents want Bush and Cheney impeached. These aren't just voters who disapprove of the White House. Instead, they're for initiating a process that could remove them from office," he wrote.
InsiderAdvantage's polls have "been praised by national media ranging from CNN’s Judy Woodruff to Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, and have appeared in Knight-Ridder newspapers, The Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Post, Business Week, US News and World Report, and CBS News/CBS Marketwatch," according to the company's website.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Islam in Western mirror
Nasir Khan
Present-day images of Muslims and Islam in Western media vary considerably. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union the general drift of Western concerns has been to portray Islam as the main enemy of the West and the Muslim world as a hotbed of terrorism that threatens Western civilisation and its democratic values. Thus in the present-day hegemonic world order -- under which all norms of civilised behaviour in the conduct of foreign policy have been discarded by the Bush Administration and its allies in London and Tel Aviv -- Muslims are associated with terrorism. We have seen over the last few years the expansion of Mr Bush’s destructive war, the inhuman treatment of captive population of Iraq and Afghanistan, rampant abuse of prisoners from Muslim countries by American and British forces, total indifference towards the human rights of prisoners of war or of those suspected of resisting or opposing the American occupation of their countries and false propaganda to cover up the real objectives of the neocon rulers in Washington and London.
Needless to say, the so-called ‘Islamic challenge’ is based on assumptions that have no basis in reality. They misrepresent, distort and mislead rather than enlighten and inform. Over the last fifteen years a number of publications have appeared that have borne sensational titles like ‘Sword of Islam’, ‘The Islamic Threat’, ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage’, ‘Islam’s New Battle Cry’ and ‘What went wrong with Islam?’. They reveal the sort of preconceived image of Islam their writers had intended to convey to their readers. According to such projections, Islam is a challenge to Western values as well as to West’s economic and political interests. But in view of the real power wielded by the West in general and America in particular throughout the Middle East and beyond, the so-called ‘threat of Islam’ is quite groundless.
But right-wing political manipulators and Christian fundamentalists can very easily provoke major crises between the Muslim world and the West; we have only to recall the case of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The real aim of some Danish and Norwegian right-wing newspapers to publish these cartoons was to provoke hostile reactions from Muslims and thus cause more bitterness and resentment between the Muslims and Christians. They tried to cover up their anti-Islamic campaign behind the smokescreen of the argument that publishing the cartoons was a demonstration of the West’s freedom of expression. They were xenophobic, racist and disrespectful of immigrant cultures in Europe and the Islamic culture in particular. How could hurting the feelings of over one billion Muslims was to serve the interests of free Press, freedom of expression or civil liberties? An anti-Islam fundamentalist Christian by the name of Mr Selbekk, the Norwegian editor of Magazinet reprinted the cartoons which were first published in Denmark. He was asked if he would also publish any cartoons that insulted Jesus, said: No. Thus this gentleman’s vaunted ideal of ‘freedom of expression’ was limited to insulting the Prophet Muhammad and obviously did not extend to insulting the gods, prophets and spiritual avatars of any other major religion.
However, it is important to look at the strategic goals of such editors and publishers. They did succeed in their objective, which was to cause maximum provocation to Muslims worldwide and to create an atmosphere of contempt and hatred towards them among the followers of other religions. Muslims were predictably and understandably offended and their reactions led to some horrible incidents in various parts of the globe. What those who reacted violently did not realise was that they had fallen in the trap of anti-Muslim mischief-mongers, who, through provocation had achieved their goal. Now the stage was set to repeat the old charge: Muslims were fanatics, volatile and irrational — they were ‘terrorists’! The divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’ as cultural opposites was reinforced and widened.
The anti-Muslim media keep on churning out the common stereotypes that portray Muslims, compared to Westerners, as more prone to conflict and violence. These media publish accounts of conflicts in the Muslim countries as self-evident truths to reinforce the image. There is a general tendency to oversimplify or ignore altogether diverse trends and complex socio-economic factors that lead to instability and conflicts in various Muslim countries. The explanations offered and conclusions drawn sometimes are based on implicit, but more often, explicit assumptions about the superiority of Western, ‘Judaeo-Christian’ culture, while the Islamic world is thought to be an epicentre of brutality and disharmony.
A very common stereotype in the Western media is that Islamic countries are inherently prone to violence, fanaticism, medieval ideas and prejudices. This means that Islam, both as a religion and as a cultural influence, is to bear the responsibility for all such regional ills. The West is the harbinger of sweetness and light (but occasionally also darkness and misery), peace and civility (but occasionally predatory wars and barbarism), rationality and open-mindedness (but occasionally irrationality, racism and prejudice, and always is focused on its own interests). All those who have taken the trouble to look at the last few centuries’ history of Western colonialism, extending from time of the so-called ‘discoveries’ of America by Columbus in 1492 and of India by Vasco de Gama in 1498 by sea routes, the ‘discovery’ of Africa by the European for slave trade show the ‘noble’ hands of Western nations that were extended to the people of Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia have left their marks on every continent. We cannot go into historical details here. But the global expansion of Western colonialism is the story of plunder and destruction across continents. No doubt, the seeds of Western civilisation were sown in this way. Within Western societies, the internal conflicts, violence and wars present us with a gory history. This superior culture when seen in the limited sphere of geopolitics and international relations in the last one hundred years only leaves a legacy of two World Wars, more wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq), invasions and coups (Guatemala, Grenada, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Congo, southern Africa), concentration camps, racist massacres undertaken on a large scale by the flag-bearers of Western civilisation.
It is obvious that cultural differences between nations and peoples of the world are a fact of history. And in this context generalising about cultural differences is unavoidable. But in no way can such differences be equated with mutual exclusiveness or inevitable hostility between different cultures. Where the initial instinct is not to enter into an anthropological or historical study of comparative cultures, but rather to foment strife and hatred between nations and religions for ulterior motives the consequences can be disastrous. Let us take the events in the aftermath of the bombing of Oklahoma City in the United States on 19 April 1995. The media rushed to spread rumours that a ‘Middle Eastern man’ [i.e. a Muslim Arab] was responsible for the carnage. As a result Muslims throughout the United States were targeted for physical abuse, rough treatment and social ostracism. Their mosques were desecrated, Muslim women ere harassed and cars belonging to ‘Middle Easterns’ damaged. A British newspaper Today published on its front page a frightening picture of a fireman carrying the burnt remains of a dead child under the headline ‘In the name of Islam’. Identifying the perpetrator of such a reprehensible act alone would not be sufficient; Islam also had to be brought in to ignite the communal passions of people against members of another faith. However, it soon became evident that the bomber was a fair-haired American soldier, a decorated Gulf War (1991) veteran. The faith of this right-wing terrorist was not Islam but Christianity. But no one in either American or British media labelled him a ‘Christian terrorist’ or apologised to Muslims for the wrongs done to them. Once again the freedom to tell the truth and report events fairly had taken a back seat.
The second instance is the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon by a few persons, most of whom came from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a close ally of America. They saw the policies pursued by the US in the Middle East and its support for the anachronistic rule by the House of Saud as the stumbling block towards a fair social order in their country as well as the rest of the Middle East. No matter what the nature of their grievances, I regard this attack terribly wrong. It provided ammunition to the neocons and right-wing fanatics in Washington to unleash the reign of terror, war, death and destruction in the Middle East and the petroleum regions in the general vicinity. At the same time, we ask a simple question: What had these bombings to do with millions of ordinary Muslim citizens of Europe and America? The answer is: nothing whatsoever. We witnessed that they were victimised everywhere by many white Westerners in the most grotesque and despicable ways.
During my stay in Europe for more than four decades, I have become acutely aware that the negative images of Islam and Islamic civilisation need a serious historical analysis for general readers as well as academic scholars that enables us to rise above oft-repeated and worn-out clichés of media and partisan scholarship and thus show the facts of the problematic relations between the two world religions and their civilisations. My book Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms (2006) deals these themes and issues. It is clear that both Islam and the West suffer from the perceptual problems of adversary relationship going far back in history. Their mutual perceptions have been distorted by religious dogmas, political developments and traditional prejudices. If we take a look at the history of European colonial expansion in Americas, Australia and in the East (China, India, the Middle East and North Africa, etc.) the old balance of power between the East and the West had changed. The colonial power over other nations also strengthened the collective consciousness of the industrial West, or its assumption that it was more powerful and therefore superior to the rest of the world. The colonised and subjugated people also started to perceive the West as materially, culturally, and morally superior. It is true the West was superior in producing machines, modern weaponry and efficient armies to invade and subjugate other countries of the world. This made Western nations more powerful, but that did not mean they were morally or intellectually superior. But the subjugated races were not in a position to advance such challenging views. In such uneven power relations under colonialism no genuine communication was possible. The same is true of the current neo-colonial war in Iraq by the Bush Administration to achieve full control over the oil resources and assert political hegemony over the entire Middle East.
The Western ways to see Islam as a monolithic religious and political force is against all historical facts and contemporary political realities. Islam is not a monolithic force; the diversity within the Islamic world is wider than most Westerners think. Within three decades after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslim community split into Sunni and Shia factions following a civil war. This division proved to be permanent, and further divisions within the two main branches have characterised Islamic faith and polity for fourteen centuries. The spread of Islam followed different paths in different countries and regions of the world. At present over one billion people of all races, languages, nationalities and cultures are Muslims. Their socio-cultural conditions as well as their doctrinal affiliations show much diversity and complexity. What this means is that Islam as a universal religion, like Christianity, is not a monolithic entity; this is despite the fact that Muslims share some fundamental beliefs in One God and His revelations through the prophets.
However, historical and religious traditions and myths have a life of their own. Once they have become part of a culture they continue to shape and restructure the collective consciousness of vast populations. The anti-Islamic tradition in the Christendoms has a long historical pedigree and it continues to be a dynamic factor affecting and determining international relations. The study of history helps us to see facts in their historical evolutionary process and thus lighten the cultural baggage that has often poisoned relationships between the two religious communities. An honest and balanced study of the past and the present-day geopolitical realities of the global hegemonic world order means that we no longer have to passively accept distorted legacies and close our eyes to what is happening in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and also in Pakistan at the hands of the United States, its allies and the marionette Muslim ruling cliques.
The question of ‘Islamic terrorism’, the denial of women’s rights under Islam and the alleged irreconcilability of Islamic and Western values appear all the time in the Western media. But such accusations reveal a deep-rooted ignorance and confusion. They have no relationship to reality. We should bear in mind that a follower of a religion is not necessarily a true representative or spokesperson of that religion. Neither can the individual acts of terrorism, state-terrorism or superpower-terrorism be imputed to religion whether it be Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Hinduism. If an individual or group from a Muslim community resorts to extremism in political or religious spheres for whatever reason or commits a crime, the general tendency is to hold the whole Islamic tradition responsible. What happens if someone from Western culture or a Christian right-wing extremist resorts to violence or commits a crime? He is held responsible as an individual and no one blames the Western culture or Christianity for his actions. Do we not have some powerful leaders in the West who are Christian right-wingers and are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslim men, women and children? Does anyone blame Christianity for that? We ask this question and expect our readers to ask this question and try to find an answer.
With regard to women, the Qur’an gave them legal rights of inheritance and divorce in the seventh-century, which Western women would not receive until the 19th or 20th century. There is nothing in Islam about obligatory veiling of women or their seclusion, either. In fact, such practices came into Islam about three generations after the death of the Prophet Muhammad under the influence of the Greek Christians of Byzantium. In fact there has been a high degree of cultural interaction between Christians and Muslims from the beginning of Islamic history.
The fundamental values of fraternity, respect, justice and peace are common in all the major civilisations and the five major religions. To call democracy ‘a Western value’ is simply bizarre; the monarchical system prevailed in Europe where the kings held absolute powers under the divine right to rule. The evolution of democratic and constitutional form of government took shape much later. Contrary to what the media and populist politicians assert, there is nothing in Islam that goes against democracy and democratic values.
Present-day images of Muslims and Islam in Western media vary considerably. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union the general drift of Western concerns has been to portray Islam as the main enemy of the West and the Muslim world as a hotbed of terrorism that threatens Western civilisation and its democratic values. Thus in the present-day hegemonic world order -- under which all norms of civilised behaviour in the conduct of foreign policy have been discarded by the Bush Administration and its allies in London and Tel Aviv -- Muslims are associated with terrorism. We have seen over the last few years the expansion of Mr Bush’s destructive war, the inhuman treatment of captive population of Iraq and Afghanistan, rampant abuse of prisoners from Muslim countries by American and British forces, total indifference towards the human rights of prisoners of war or of those suspected of resisting or opposing the American occupation of their countries and false propaganda to cover up the real objectives of the neocon rulers in Washington and London.
Needless to say, the so-called ‘Islamic challenge’ is based on assumptions that have no basis in reality. They misrepresent, distort and mislead rather than enlighten and inform. Over the last fifteen years a number of publications have appeared that have borne sensational titles like ‘Sword of Islam’, ‘The Islamic Threat’, ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage’, ‘Islam’s New Battle Cry’ and ‘What went wrong with Islam?’. They reveal the sort of preconceived image of Islam their writers had intended to convey to their readers. According to such projections, Islam is a challenge to Western values as well as to West’s economic and political interests. But in view of the real power wielded by the West in general and America in particular throughout the Middle East and beyond, the so-called ‘threat of Islam’ is quite groundless.
But right-wing political manipulators and Christian fundamentalists can very easily provoke major crises between the Muslim world and the West; we have only to recall the case of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The real aim of some Danish and Norwegian right-wing newspapers to publish these cartoons was to provoke hostile reactions from Muslims and thus cause more bitterness and resentment between the Muslims and Christians. They tried to cover up their anti-Islamic campaign behind the smokescreen of the argument that publishing the cartoons was a demonstration of the West’s freedom of expression. They were xenophobic, racist and disrespectful of immigrant cultures in Europe and the Islamic culture in particular. How could hurting the feelings of over one billion Muslims was to serve the interests of free Press, freedom of expression or civil liberties? An anti-Islam fundamentalist Christian by the name of Mr Selbekk, the Norwegian editor of Magazinet reprinted the cartoons which were first published in Denmark. He was asked if he would also publish any cartoons that insulted Jesus, said: No. Thus this gentleman’s vaunted ideal of ‘freedom of expression’ was limited to insulting the Prophet Muhammad and obviously did not extend to insulting the gods, prophets and spiritual avatars of any other major religion.
However, it is important to look at the strategic goals of such editors and publishers. They did succeed in their objective, which was to cause maximum provocation to Muslims worldwide and to create an atmosphere of contempt and hatred towards them among the followers of other religions. Muslims were predictably and understandably offended and their reactions led to some horrible incidents in various parts of the globe. What those who reacted violently did not realise was that they had fallen in the trap of anti-Muslim mischief-mongers, who, through provocation had achieved their goal. Now the stage was set to repeat the old charge: Muslims were fanatics, volatile and irrational — they were ‘terrorists’! The divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’ as cultural opposites was reinforced and widened.
The anti-Muslim media keep on churning out the common stereotypes that portray Muslims, compared to Westerners, as more prone to conflict and violence. These media publish accounts of conflicts in the Muslim countries as self-evident truths to reinforce the image. There is a general tendency to oversimplify or ignore altogether diverse trends and complex socio-economic factors that lead to instability and conflicts in various Muslim countries. The explanations offered and conclusions drawn sometimes are based on implicit, but more often, explicit assumptions about the superiority of Western, ‘Judaeo-Christian’ culture, while the Islamic world is thought to be an epicentre of brutality and disharmony.
A very common stereotype in the Western media is that Islamic countries are inherently prone to violence, fanaticism, medieval ideas and prejudices. This means that Islam, both as a religion and as a cultural influence, is to bear the responsibility for all such regional ills. The West is the harbinger of sweetness and light (but occasionally also darkness and misery), peace and civility (but occasionally predatory wars and barbarism), rationality and open-mindedness (but occasionally irrationality, racism and prejudice, and always is focused on its own interests). All those who have taken the trouble to look at the last few centuries’ history of Western colonialism, extending from time of the so-called ‘discoveries’ of America by Columbus in 1492 and of India by Vasco de Gama in 1498 by sea routes, the ‘discovery’ of Africa by the European for slave trade show the ‘noble’ hands of Western nations that were extended to the people of Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia have left their marks on every continent. We cannot go into historical details here. But the global expansion of Western colonialism is the story of plunder and destruction across continents. No doubt, the seeds of Western civilisation were sown in this way. Within Western societies, the internal conflicts, violence and wars present us with a gory history. This superior culture when seen in the limited sphere of geopolitics and international relations in the last one hundred years only leaves a legacy of two World Wars, more wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq), invasions and coups (Guatemala, Grenada, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Congo, southern Africa), concentration camps, racist massacres undertaken on a large scale by the flag-bearers of Western civilisation.
It is obvious that cultural differences between nations and peoples of the world are a fact of history. And in this context generalising about cultural differences is unavoidable. But in no way can such differences be equated with mutual exclusiveness or inevitable hostility between different cultures. Where the initial instinct is not to enter into an anthropological or historical study of comparative cultures, but rather to foment strife and hatred between nations and religions for ulterior motives the consequences can be disastrous. Let us take the events in the aftermath of the bombing of Oklahoma City in the United States on 19 April 1995. The media rushed to spread rumours that a ‘Middle Eastern man’ [i.e. a Muslim Arab] was responsible for the carnage. As a result Muslims throughout the United States were targeted for physical abuse, rough treatment and social ostracism. Their mosques were desecrated, Muslim women ere harassed and cars belonging to ‘Middle Easterns’ damaged. A British newspaper Today published on its front page a frightening picture of a fireman carrying the burnt remains of a dead child under the headline ‘In the name of Islam’. Identifying the perpetrator of such a reprehensible act alone would not be sufficient; Islam also had to be brought in to ignite the communal passions of people against members of another faith. However, it soon became evident that the bomber was a fair-haired American soldier, a decorated Gulf War (1991) veteran. The faith of this right-wing terrorist was not Islam but Christianity. But no one in either American or British media labelled him a ‘Christian terrorist’ or apologised to Muslims for the wrongs done to them. Once again the freedom to tell the truth and report events fairly had taken a back seat.
The second instance is the 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon by a few persons, most of whom came from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a close ally of America. They saw the policies pursued by the US in the Middle East and its support for the anachronistic rule by the House of Saud as the stumbling block towards a fair social order in their country as well as the rest of the Middle East. No matter what the nature of their grievances, I regard this attack terribly wrong. It provided ammunition to the neocons and right-wing fanatics in Washington to unleash the reign of terror, war, death and destruction in the Middle East and the petroleum regions in the general vicinity. At the same time, we ask a simple question: What had these bombings to do with millions of ordinary Muslim citizens of Europe and America? The answer is: nothing whatsoever. We witnessed that they were victimised everywhere by many white Westerners in the most grotesque and despicable ways.
During my stay in Europe for more than four decades, I have become acutely aware that the negative images of Islam and Islamic civilisation need a serious historical analysis for general readers as well as academic scholars that enables us to rise above oft-repeated and worn-out clichés of media and partisan scholarship and thus show the facts of the problematic relations between the two world religions and their civilisations. My book Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms (2006) deals these themes and issues. It is clear that both Islam and the West suffer from the perceptual problems of adversary relationship going far back in history. Their mutual perceptions have been distorted by religious dogmas, political developments and traditional prejudices. If we take a look at the history of European colonial expansion in Americas, Australia and in the East (China, India, the Middle East and North Africa, etc.) the old balance of power between the East and the West had changed. The colonial power over other nations also strengthened the collective consciousness of the industrial West, or its assumption that it was more powerful and therefore superior to the rest of the world. The colonised and subjugated people also started to perceive the West as materially, culturally, and morally superior. It is true the West was superior in producing machines, modern weaponry and efficient armies to invade and subjugate other countries of the world. This made Western nations more powerful, but that did not mean they were morally or intellectually superior. But the subjugated races were not in a position to advance such challenging views. In such uneven power relations under colonialism no genuine communication was possible. The same is true of the current neo-colonial war in Iraq by the Bush Administration to achieve full control over the oil resources and assert political hegemony over the entire Middle East.
The Western ways to see Islam as a monolithic religious and political force is against all historical facts and contemporary political realities. Islam is not a monolithic force; the diversity within the Islamic world is wider than most Westerners think. Within three decades after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslim community split into Sunni and Shia factions following a civil war. This division proved to be permanent, and further divisions within the two main branches have characterised Islamic faith and polity for fourteen centuries. The spread of Islam followed different paths in different countries and regions of the world. At present over one billion people of all races, languages, nationalities and cultures are Muslims. Their socio-cultural conditions as well as their doctrinal affiliations show much diversity and complexity. What this means is that Islam as a universal religion, like Christianity, is not a monolithic entity; this is despite the fact that Muslims share some fundamental beliefs in One God and His revelations through the prophets.
However, historical and religious traditions and myths have a life of their own. Once they have become part of a culture they continue to shape and restructure the collective consciousness of vast populations. The anti-Islamic tradition in the Christendoms has a long historical pedigree and it continues to be a dynamic factor affecting and determining international relations. The study of history helps us to see facts in their historical evolutionary process and thus lighten the cultural baggage that has often poisoned relationships between the two religious communities. An honest and balanced study of the past and the present-day geopolitical realities of the global hegemonic world order means that we no longer have to passively accept distorted legacies and close our eyes to what is happening in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and also in Pakistan at the hands of the United States, its allies and the marionette Muslim ruling cliques.
The question of ‘Islamic terrorism’, the denial of women’s rights under Islam and the alleged irreconcilability of Islamic and Western values appear all the time in the Western media. But such accusations reveal a deep-rooted ignorance and confusion. They have no relationship to reality. We should bear in mind that a follower of a religion is not necessarily a true representative or spokesperson of that religion. Neither can the individual acts of terrorism, state-terrorism or superpower-terrorism be imputed to religion whether it be Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Hinduism. If an individual or group from a Muslim community resorts to extremism in political or religious spheres for whatever reason or commits a crime, the general tendency is to hold the whole Islamic tradition responsible. What happens if someone from Western culture or a Christian right-wing extremist resorts to violence or commits a crime? He is held responsible as an individual and no one blames the Western culture or Christianity for his actions. Do we not have some powerful leaders in the West who are Christian right-wingers and are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslim men, women and children? Does anyone blame Christianity for that? We ask this question and expect our readers to ask this question and try to find an answer.
With regard to women, the Qur’an gave them legal rights of inheritance and divorce in the seventh-century, which Western women would not receive until the 19th or 20th century. There is nothing in Islam about obligatory veiling of women or their seclusion, either. In fact, such practices came into Islam about three generations after the death of the Prophet Muhammad under the influence of the Greek Christians of Byzantium. In fact there has been a high degree of cultural interaction between Christians and Muslims from the beginning of Islamic history.
The fundamental values of fraternity, respect, justice and peace are common in all the major civilisations and the five major religions. To call democracy ‘a Western value’ is simply bizarre; the monarchical system prevailed in Europe where the kings held absolute powers under the divine right to rule. The evolution of democratic and constitutional form of government took shape much later. Contrary to what the media and populist politicians assert, there is nothing in Islam that goes against democracy and democratic values.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
And misleading propaganda continues
Noble Resolve 07: Four days of “simulated” nuclear terrorist scenarios in the US & Europe
by DL Abrahamson
Global Research, April 20, 2007
False Flag News
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From April, 23 to April 27, the elite echelon of the military are running Noble Resolve 07, a four-day marathon of “simulated” terror attacks across the US and Europe. This includes a simulated detonation of a “loose” ten-kiloton nuclear weapon Virginia harbor, smuggled in by a “foreign nation.”
This week Dick Cheney has also been warning of the “very real” threat of a nuclear attack on an American city. Could the Nobel Resolve drills be used as a screen for a false-flag attack to be blamed on Iran, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, or sheep-dipped Americans like Adam Gadahn?
The drills are being run by Joint Task Force Command (JTFCOM), Northern Command (NORTHCOM), J9 Joint Innovation and Experimentation Directorate, FEMA’s command bunker, the Department of Homeland Security, and Virginia police.
The US Marines are also running “Emerald Express 07” in Virginia on April 24 as part of their Urban Warrior 07 drill package.
It is important to note the “Nobel Resolve” drills are dominated by NORTHCOM, the branch of “homeland defense” based in Colorado and responsible for shutting down the United States under martial law, as well as ushering in the merger of the US, Canada, and Mexico via the SPP.
Meanwhile the J9 Directorate, formulates various terror scenarios and uses advanced computer modeling to run drills and predict human reactions; Recent articles highlight how they are using virtual environments to create and manage realistic war scenarios with millions of “people.”
Some key quotes from the article:
“He said the scenario of the experiment's first phase starts with multinational partners and goes down to individual municipalities. It begins with a threat that originates in Europe and travels toward the United States.”
“Kersh said that as the scenario progresses, other agencies and other layers of government become involved.”
"The problem eventually arrives at the commonwealth of Virginia with that threat making it into port and then blowing up. This will cause us to work the consequence management part of the problem”
“The fusion center is in a state police headquarters and it's collocated with Virginia's emergency operations center.” (ed: Mount Weather)
“coordinated with DHS, possibly to coincide with one of that department's major exercises.”
We must remember that CIA agent Philip Giraldi warned the American Conservative magazine that STRATCOM would launch a nuclear attack on Iran in the wake of a new WMD-style attack on American soil.
And the Russian media and former Russian military members continue to warn that an American and Israeli strike on Iran is imminent.
While many drills are run every month, Nobel Resolve 07, with it’s “realistic” scenarios, comes at a time of increased geopolitical tension. It is reminiscent of the drills in 2005, where a ten-kiloton nuclear weapon was “simulated” to explode in South Carolina. Some speculated that four-star Gen. Kevin Byrnes, of the Fort Meade TRADOC command, was fired due to his exposure of the drill.
We should not live in a constant state of panic and fear, or make any irresponsible predictions about Noble Resolve 07. But in the coming days, we can email this information to blogs, media outlets, friends and family. Congressmen, and others to help inoculate against any possibility that rogue “red teams” inside the drills may be activated.
Global Research Articles by DL Abrahamson
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
To become a Member of Global Research
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright DL Abrahamson, False Flag News, 2007
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ABR20070420&articleId=5444
by DL Abrahamson
Global Research, April 20, 2007
False Flag News
Email this article to a friend
Print this article
From April, 23 to April 27, the elite echelon of the military are running Noble Resolve 07, a four-day marathon of “simulated” terror attacks across the US and Europe. This includes a simulated detonation of a “loose” ten-kiloton nuclear weapon Virginia harbor, smuggled in by a “foreign nation.”
This week Dick Cheney has also been warning of the “very real” threat of a nuclear attack on an American city. Could the Nobel Resolve drills be used as a screen for a false-flag attack to be blamed on Iran, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, or sheep-dipped Americans like Adam Gadahn?
The drills are being run by Joint Task Force Command (JTFCOM), Northern Command (NORTHCOM), J9 Joint Innovation and Experimentation Directorate, FEMA’s command bunker, the Department of Homeland Security, and Virginia police.
The US Marines are also running “Emerald Express 07” in Virginia on April 24 as part of their Urban Warrior 07 drill package.
It is important to note the “Nobel Resolve” drills are dominated by NORTHCOM, the branch of “homeland defense” based in Colorado and responsible for shutting down the United States under martial law, as well as ushering in the merger of the US, Canada, and Mexico via the SPP.
Meanwhile the J9 Directorate, formulates various terror scenarios and uses advanced computer modeling to run drills and predict human reactions; Recent articles highlight how they are using virtual environments to create and manage realistic war scenarios with millions of “people.”
Some key quotes from the article:
“He said the scenario of the experiment's first phase starts with multinational partners and goes down to individual municipalities. It begins with a threat that originates in Europe and travels toward the United States.”
“Kersh said that as the scenario progresses, other agencies and other layers of government become involved.”
"The problem eventually arrives at the commonwealth of Virginia with that threat making it into port and then blowing up. This will cause us to work the consequence management part of the problem”
“The fusion center is in a state police headquarters and it's collocated with Virginia's emergency operations center.” (ed: Mount Weather)
“coordinated with DHS, possibly to coincide with one of that department's major exercises.”
We must remember that CIA agent Philip Giraldi warned the American Conservative magazine that STRATCOM would launch a nuclear attack on Iran in the wake of a new WMD-style attack on American soil.
And the Russian media and former Russian military members continue to warn that an American and Israeli strike on Iran is imminent.
While many drills are run every month, Nobel Resolve 07, with it’s “realistic” scenarios, comes at a time of increased geopolitical tension. It is reminiscent of the drills in 2005, where a ten-kiloton nuclear weapon was “simulated” to explode in South Carolina. Some speculated that four-star Gen. Kevin Byrnes, of the Fort Meade TRADOC command, was fired due to his exposure of the drill.
We should not live in a constant state of panic and fear, or make any irresponsible predictions about Noble Resolve 07. But in the coming days, we can email this information to blogs, media outlets, friends and family. Congressmen, and others to help inoculate against any possibility that rogue “red teams” inside the drills may be activated.
Global Research Articles by DL Abrahamson
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
To become a Member of Global Research
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright DL Abrahamson, False Flag News, 2007
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ABR20070420&articleId=5444
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Iran under the threat of war?
By Nasir Khan
Is the United States going to attack Iran? This question is being asked around the world.
The big American military build-up in the Persian Gulf has gone on for some time, and there is every reason to believe that Washington is setting stage for a major offensive against Iran. In fact, the Bush administration has followed a carefully orchestrated strategy with a view to pave the way for a major conflict with Iran. The clearest signal comes from US Vice President Dick Cheney’s latest comments on February 23. At a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Cheney said that ‘all options’ are on the table if Iran continues to defy UN- led efforts to get Tehran to abandon its nuclear programmes. The news conference was held amidst tight security because thousands of protesters were voicing their anger at his visit. They called the main architect of invasion and occupation of Iraq a ‘war criminal’ and they called for the withdrawal of Australian soldiers from Iraq.
Cheney said that the United States remained ‘deeply concerned’ about Iran’s activities, including the ‘aggressive’ sponsoring of terrorist group of Hezbollah and ‘inflammatory statements’ by the by President Ahmadinejad: ‘We worked with European community and the United Nations to put together a set of policies to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations and to resolve the matter peacefully, and that is still our preference.’
‘But I have also made the point, and the president has also made the point, that all options are on the table,’ said Cheney.
Even though Iran says its nuclear programme is for only peaceful purpose, to generate energy, but the United States and some of its allies suspect this could lead to Iran producing nuclear weapons that could challenge the nuclear power and political hegemony of the US and Israel in the Middle East. Only the United States of America and Israel have some kind of ‘God-given’ right to have nuclear and other destructive weapons of mass destruction and to use them whenever they decide to do so. The whole world knows that the US occupation forces used internationally banned weapons during their deadly assault on Fallujah. They also used prohibited substances including mustard gas, nerve gas and other burning chemicals in their attacks. Fallujah residents reported that they saw ‘melted’ bodies in the city, which suggests that US military used napalm gas that makes the human body melt. Last summer, Israeli army littered the whole of south Lebanon with cluster bombs provided by the United States.
Let us recall the similar scenarios in 2002 and early 2003 when Iraq was accused by the United States of possessing weapons of mass destruction. Of course, the Bush administration knew that no such weapons existed in Iraq. But the pretext was used to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. It was in furtherance of the grand strategy to bring the Middle East under America’s political hegemony and to control its oil resources. Now the US administration is using the same methods in the case of Iran.
The BBC recently revealed some clear indications of the US-planned attack on Iran. According to the BBC, the US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country’s military infrastructure. Any such attack would target Iranian air bases, naval bases, missile facilities and command-and-control centres.
Iran is within an hour’s flying time from some American base or aircraft carrier. In case of war, America, most probably America and Israel together, will have no difficulty in destroying Iranian army, its military bases and the economic infrastructure of Iran.
Military plans:
Seymour Hersh, an American Pulitzer Prize winning investigating journalist, reported that American Special Operation Forces were already operating inside Iran in preparation for a possible air ground attack (New Yorker, 24 January 2005). He also later reported that current and former officials told him that one of the options being considered by the Bush administration was against Iran called ‘for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as B61-11, against underground nuclear sites’. (New Yorker, 17 April 2005).
Hersh pointed out last year how the Bush administration had increased the secret activities inside Iran with a view to pave the way for a major air attack. He writes: ‘Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups.’ (New Yorker, 17 April 2006).
The United States has been deeply involved in the affairs and politics of Iran since the Second World War. The Shah of Iran who had inherited throne from his father in 1941 was forced into exile in 1951 by the popular government headed by the Iranian leader Dr Mohammad Mossadegh. He nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. US intervened in 1953 and installed the Shah to power again. He established a dictatorship. In 1957 Washington helped the Shah create SAVAK, the notorious secret police, which silenced all those who criticised the policies of the Shah. The brutal regime of the Shah came to an end in 1979 and Ayatollah Khomeini established the Islamic Republic. America cut off all diplomatic relations and imposed tight economic sanctions against Iran. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) Washington provided seed stock for biological weapons, weapons and financial backing to Iraq.
Iran continues to be a major concern to the US for a number of reasons. Iran, like Iraq, is a big country. It has oil wealth, water resources and a large population. After having occupied Iraq and its oils resources under control, in Washington’s calculation, Iran is the only country in the region that can challenge its domination of the Middle East. As the US controls the political developments throughout the Middle East, the only major country that has not capitulated to Washington is Iran. The stage is set for a new war of aggression and the Bush administration has been busy preparing for a massive attack on Iran.
Bush in his January 10, 2007 speech not only announced sending further US troops to Iraq; he also signalled his determination to reshape the entire Middle East under the domination of the United States.
‘Succeeding in Iraq requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilising the region in the face of the extremist challenge,’ Bush declared. ‘This begins with addressing Iran and Syria.’ What he meant by ‘defending Iraq’s integrity’ and ‘stabilising the region’ was to safeguard the military occupation of Iraq without any complaint from any quarter and extending the US domination over Iran and Syria, who have not been brought to their knees yet. In his speech, Bush also declared: ‘We are taking steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East.’
In fact, a huge military build-up in the Persian Gulf had been gaining momentum. The World Net Daily’s staff writer Dr Jerome Corsi has pointed out that by the end of February, an American armada of 50 warships will be stationed in the area. The USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) aircraft carrier battle group has gone to join the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) aircraft carrier battle group already stationed there. Besides, the USS Boxer (LDH 4) amphibious assault ship is stationed in the Persian Gulf. The USS Bataan (LHD 5) was also sent to the area in January.
A fleet of 12 ships supports each carrier attack group, including two guided missile-cruisers, two guided missile destroyers, and an attack submarine.
American military domination of the Middle East is maintained by a vast network of military bases throughout the region. The US military in case of the war has the capacity to crush Iran by round-the-clock bombing using cruise missiles and hundreds of warplanes. Batteries of Patriot anti-missile systems are at present being installed in the Gulf states to protect vital US military assets.
Despite the clear war preparations that are going on, President Bush continues to declare that the US has no immediate plans to attack Iran. The fact remains that his objective is to have an Iran closely allied with the US as under the Shah and the rest of the Arab rulers. Such an objective will not be achieved by negotiations to end the nuclear standoff but by changing the present rulers of Iran. As no clandestine operations have succeeded so far to bring the clerics to capitulation, the Bush administration thinks that a major blitzkrieg will do the job and protect the American interests in the Middle East. But we all know what those interests are.
The dangerous course followed by Washington has not been the focus of only informed media, but also of some important American public figures. At the end of last year, the Baker-Hamilton report, written by a bipartisan commission of Republicans and Democrats, suggested opening talks with Iran and Syria to resolve the Iraqi crisis. However, President Bush has taken a total opposite direction and blames Iran and Syria for the US military losses in Iraq!
Perhaps the most realistic warning of the dangerous policies followed by the Bush administration came in the February 1, 2007 testimony of the former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to the Senate Foreign relations Committee. Deeply critical of the disastrous policies followed by Bush, Brzezinski said:
‘The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America’s global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.’
Brzezinski fully aware of the policy of the use of overwhelming military power predicted that ‘if the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and much of the world of Islam’.
In a sharp critique of Bush’s so-called ‘war on terror,’ Brzezinski described as ‘a mythical historical narrative’ where the attempts are being made to equate Islamic extremism and Al Qaeda with the threat posed to the US by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Russia:
‘This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and Stalinism was able to mobilise not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine.’
He warned that ‘to argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicentre, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.’ He saw the danger of the White House manufacturing ‘some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the United States’ to blame Iran and using it as a pretext to unleash a ‘defensive’ military action against Iran.
According to the Kuwait-based Arab Times (January14, 2007), an attack on Iran can come anytime. This information was obtained from a reliable source, which said that President Bush had held a meeting with Vice president Cheney, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Codoleezza Rice and other assistants in the White House to discuss the plan for an attack in minute detail. While Gates and Rice seem to have suggested postponing the attack, President Bush and Dick Cheney wanted to go ahead with the attack in the near future.
But there is also opposition to the plans of Bush and Cheney in the military and navy. Some generals and admirals have recently said that they would resign if Bush orders an attack on Iran.
Despite all the military build-up in and around the Middle East war is not a foregone conclusion. Bush and Cheney have also an alternative course by which they can continue to further the interests of American imperialism short of war. They can engage in a meaningful dialogue with Iran and Syria in order to avoid another war and spare the life and livelihood of millions of people.
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