ARTICLES FROM THE AFTERMATH OF 9 -11
"Rogue Nation"
by
Richard DuBoff
First published in Z-Magazine
21st December 2001
1. In December 2001, the United States officially
withdrew from the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, gutting the landmark agreement - the
first time in the nuclear era that the US renounced a major arms control accord.
2. 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention ratified by 144 nations including the
United States. In July 2001 the US walked out of a London conference to discuss a 1994
protocol designed to strengthen the Convention by providing for on-site inspections. At
Geneva in November 2001, US Under Secretary of State John Bolton stated that "the
protocol is dead," at the same time accusing Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Sudan,
and Syria of violating the Convention but offering no specific allegations or supporting
evidence.
3. UN Agreement to Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms, July 2001: the US
was the only nation to oppose it.
4. April 2001, the US was not re-elected to the UN Human Rights Commission, after years of
withholding dues to the UN (including current dues of $244 million) - and after having
forced the UN to lower its share of the UN budget from 25 to 22 percent. (In the Human
Rights Commission, the US stood virtually alone in opposing resolutions supporting
lower-cost access to HIV/AIDS drugs, acknowledging a basic human right to adequate food,
and calling for a moratorium on the death penalty.)
5. International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty, to be set up in The Hague to try political
leaders and military personnel charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Signed
in Rome in July 1998, the Treaty was approved by 120 countries, with 7 opposed (including
the US). In October 2001 Great Britain became the 42nd nation to sign. In December 2001
the US Senate again added an amendment to a military appropriations bill that would keep
US military personnel from obeying the jurisdiction of the proposed ICC.
6. Land Mine Treaty, banning land mines; signed in Ottawa in December 1997 by 122 nations.
The United States refused to sign, along with Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq,
Vietnam, Egypt, and Turkey. President Clinton rejected the Treaty, claiming that mines
were needed to protect South Korea against North Korea's "overwhelming military
advantage." He stated that the US would "eventually" comply, in 2006; this
was disavowed by President Bush in August 2001.
7. Kyoto Protocol of 1997, for controlling global warming: declared "dead" by
President Bush in March 2001. In November 2001, the Bush administration shunned
negotiations in Marrakech (Morocco) to revise the accord, mainly by watering it down in a
vain attempt to gain US approval.
8. In May 2001, refused to meet with European Union nations to discuss, even at lower
levels of government, economic espionage and electronic surveillance of phone calls,
e-mail, and faxes (the US "Echelon" program).
9. Refused to participate in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
sponsored talks in Paris, May 2001, on ways to crack down on off-shore and other tax and
money-laundering havens.
10. Refused to join 123 nations pledged to ban the use and production of anti-personnel
bombs and mines, February 2001
11. September 2001: withdrew from International
Conference on Racism, bringing together 163 countries in Durban, South Africa
12. International Plan for Cleaner Energy: G-8 group of industrial nations (US, Canada,
Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, UK), July 2001: the US was the only one to oppose
it.
13. Enforcing an illegal boycott of Cuba, now being made tighter. In the UN in October
2001, the General Assembly passed a resolution, for the tenth consecutive year, calling
for an end to the US embargo, by a vote of 167 to 3 (the US, Israel, and the Marshall
Islands in opposition).
14. Comprehensive [Nuclear] Test Ban Treaty. Signed by 164 nations and ratified by 89
including France, Great Britain, and Russia; signed by President Clinton in 1996 but
rejected by the Senate in 1999. The US is one of 13 non-ratifiers among countries that
have nuclear weapons or nuclear power programs. In November 2001, the US forced a vote in
the UN Committee on Disarmament and Security to demonstrate its opposition to the Test Ban
Treaty.
15. In 1986 the International Court of Justice (The Hague) ruled that the US was in
violation of international law for "unlawful use of force" in Nicaragua, through
its actions and those of its Contra proxy army. The US refused to recognize the Court's
jurisdiction. A UN resolution calling for compliance with the Court's decision was
approved 94-2 (US and Israel voting no).
16. In 1984 the US quit UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and
ceased its payments for UNESCO's budget, over the New World Information and Communication
Order (NWICO) project designed to lessen world media dependence on the "big
four" wire agencies (AP, UPI, Agence France-Presse, Reuters). The US charged UNESCO
with "curtailment of press freedom," as well as mismanagement and other faults,
despite a 148-1 in vote in favor of NWICO in the UN. UNESCO terminated NWICO in 1989; the
US nonetheless refused to rejoin. In 1995 the Clinton administration proposed rejoining;
the move was blocked in Congress and Clinton did not press the issue. In February 2000 the
US finally paid some of its arrears to the UN but excluded UNESCO, which the US has not
rejoined.
17. Optional Protocol, 1989, to the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, aimed at abolition of the death penalty and containing a provision banning the
execution of those under 18. The US has neither signed nor ratified and specifically
exempts itself from the latter provision, making it one of five countries that still
execute juveniles (with Saudi Arabia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria). China
abolished the practice in 1997, Pakistan in 2000.
18. 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
The only countries that have signed but not ratified are the US, Afghanistan, Sao Tome and
Principe.
19. The US has signed but not ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,
which protects the economic and social rights of children. The only other country not to
ratify is Somalia, which has no functioning government.
20. UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966, covering a
wide range of rights and monitored by the Committee on Economic,Social and Cultural
Rights. The US signed in 1977 but has not ratified.
21. UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,1948. The US
finally ratified in 1988, adding several "reservations" to the effect that the
US Constitution and the "advice and consent" of the Senate are required to judge
whether any "acts in the course of armed conflict" constitute genocide. The
reservations are rejected by Britain, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece,
Mexico, Estonia, and others.
22. Is the status of "we're number one 1" Rogue," overcome by generous
foreign aid to given less fortunate countries? The three best aid providers, measured by
the foreign aid percentage of their gross domestic products, are Denmark (1.01%), Norway
(0.91%), and the Netherlands (0.79%), The three worst: USA (0.10%), UK (0.23%), Australia,
Portugal, and Austria (all 0.26%).
"I plead guilty to the charge of
`foaming malevolence' "
by
Mark Steel
The Independent
20th September 2001
Dare to suggest that there may just possibly be a slight link between America's past
behaviour and the hijackings, and out pour the accusations. If you do, you are said to be
guilty of "foaming malevolence", according to one paper yesterday. Because all
decent people know the only humanitarian response is to shake your head, mutter a sentence
containing the words "evil" and "monsters" and demand that someone,
somewhere gets bombed.
Maybe they argue amongst themselves, these types. Perhaps they approach a fellow columnist
and say, "How callous to describe the terrorists as `evil' when they're at least
`despicably evil' - though I care more than anyone, because I wrote: `Words can't describe
this despicable evil.' Top that."
Strangely, many of those who appear the most horrified haven't always been so sensitive
about the loss of innocent lives. They managed to watch the Gulf War on telly, for
example, and even seemed to enjoy the experience. I wonder whether Iraqi TV showed the New
York disaster in the same way we covered the bombing of Baghdad. Maybe a panel of experts
sat around a table chatting about the extraordinary accuracy of the pilots, while the
presenter said, "And we're being told that so far there's not a single Iraqi
casualty, so that really is fantastic news, isn't it?"
Some people are almost poetic in their selective grief. On Radio 4 one morning we were
treated to an `adviser' to Vladimir Putin, sombrely running through his "evils"
and "despicables", beside himself with bewilderment at how anyone could cause
such carnage. Well, if I was his counsellor I might suggest he works through his confusion
by asking the bloke he advises: who slaughtered 50,000 civilians in the city of Grozny?
Some Palestinians were so malicious they danced in the streets, raged the newspaper that
screamed "Gotcha!" after the drowning of 300 conscripted Argentinians. It could
be argued that that was different, because they weren't civilians. But the 500 women and
children blasted by a cruise missile in a Baghdad bomb shelter certainly were. As were
countless Nicaraguans, or one million Vietnamese, such as the victims in this account of
the My Lai massacre by US forces: "The killings began without warning. Soldiers began
shooting women and children who were kneeling, weeping and praying round a temple.
Villagers were killed in their homes. Helicopters shot down those who fled. Many of the
GIs were laughing, `Hey, I got me another one. Chalk one up for me.' Soldiers took breaks
to rest and smoke before resuming the killing."
Maybe this was a long time ago and therefore irrelevant to today's story, except that when
George Bush senior launched the war against Iraq, he promised that it "won't be like
Vietnam, where we were fighting with one hand tied behind our back". And this has
summed up their attitude ever since - "We lost in Vietnam because we were too bloody
liberal." All that stopping for fags between killings, it's no wonder they lost.
Then there was Chile and Lebanon and so on, thousands of innocent people with innocent
families, amongst them firemen and fathers and people with faces who were never displayed
on the centre pages of the Daily Mail, never remembered with silences at the start of
football matches.
So how can it be explained, this erratic caring of presidents and advisors and those who
are opposed to "foaming malevolence"?
Could it be that their grieving is, perchance, in some way politically motivated? That
they weep not for the devastated families, shell-shocked citizens and unimaginable torment
of the victims, but in horror and disbelief that this could happen to America?
Now the selective grievers demand retribution, and don't seem too bothered who against.
The implication is that anything less than devastation of somewhere or other would be
showing a lack of respect for the victims. Like teenage lovers, they're pleading: "Go
on, you'd do it if you really, really cared."
So, it looks as if Afghanistan will do for a start - though I can't see the point in
bombing buildings there, since the Taliban seem happy to blow them up themselves. After a
cruise missile strike, they'd probably send Bush a note saying, "Cheers George,
that's saved us from doing that infidel street, with its provocative curvy bit."
Still, there's probably a Chinese Embassy somewhere that could be flattened.
So now an atrocity is likely to be answered with atrocity, together with the inevitable
webs of lies bound up as part of a package. Already we're told that the CIA satellites can
"pinpoint a cigarette". Really. Yet they haven't the foggiest idea where Bin
Laden is. I suppose the one thing they didn't reckon on was that he doesn't smoke. If only
he stopped for one occasionally between killings, they'd have him in a flash.
You can be - and if you're human, should be - extraordinarily moved by both sets of
victims. But if you're only extraordinarily moved by the victims on one side, you're at
least halfway to foaming.
As Mark Steel's article above vividly illustrates, the overwhelming bias towards what Noam Chomsky terms 'worthy victims' is highly prevalent in the Western press. To suggest that the US and other Western states have culpability in the deaths of 'unworthy victims' is simply not newsworthy. Who now remembers what happened to the Sudanese people after the US detsroyed the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in August 1998, claiming it manufactured chemical weapons? Who knows that between 10,000 and 30,000 people have died in Sudan, directly and indirectly, as a result? And who remembers what happened in Bhopal, India in 1984? The death tolls of just these two these terrible events puts the attacks on the World Trade Centre in a very grim perspective.
Here's another, concise, accurate, and even more passionate article by a former Booker prize winner....
The algebra of infinite justice
by
Arundhati Roy
Justice for Bhopal - Corporate Crimes and Their Body Count
Published on July 15, 2002
http://www.bhopal.net/corporatecrimes.html
by Rahul Mahajan
Recently, Americans have been focused on corporate crimes that cheated stockholders and
taxpayers out of money to benefit executives and politicians.
This week we must focus on a crime that cost thousands their lives, as executives and
politicians try to cut a deal to escape what little accountability remains.
To persuade us of its importance, Rashida Bi -- one victim of that corporate crime -- is
risking her life on hunger strike (for constant updates on the hunger strike, as well as
details about the strikers' demands, see http://www.bhopal.net/hunger-index.html).
The story began goes back to the 1984 Union Carbide accident in Bhopal, India, which
released a cloud of methyl isocyanate (MIC), hydrogen cyanide, and other toxins. Somewhere
between 4000 and 8000 people died at the time, and victims' advocates estimate that in
total over 20,000 have died as a
result of this largest industrial accident ever, with 150,000 suffering continuing
injuries and medical problems
The cause was extreme corporate malfeasance. The plant was not up to minimal Union Carbide
safety standards -- large quantities of MIC were unwisely stored in a heavily populated
area, the refrigeration unit for the MIC (which is supposed to kept at temperatures below
32 F) was deliberately kept turned off to save $40 per day in Freon costs, the safety
systems were dismantled, and the alarm system was turned off. This even though the same
plant had earlier suffered potentially lethal accidental releases of gases like the deadly
nerve agent phosgene. Both civil and criminal charges were filed, including a charge of
culpable homicide against Warren Anderson, then Carbide's CEO.
The civil case was settled, after extreme obstructionism on the part of Carbide, for a
paltry $470 million -- a few hundred dollars each for victims still suffering a
nightmarish array of cancer, tuberculosis, severe birth defects, reproductive and
menstrual abnormalities, eye problems, and more. The settlement, reached without
consulting the victims, was so favorable that when it transpired Carbide's stock jumped
two points.
Carbide's callousness is so extreme that it has disclosed neither the exact chemical
composition of the gas cloud, calling it a "trade secret," nor the results of
its own medical studies on the effects of MIC. As a result, the few doctors available to
help the victims have great difficult working out the best methods of treatment.
The U.S. government has consistently refused to honor its own extradition treaty with
India, which requires it to send Anderson to be tried in India for his reckless
indifference to human life.
Dow Chemical, which acquired Union Carbide in 2001, refuses to admit any liability for
Carbide's actions. Dow also plans to mass-market Dursban, a product banned by the EPA in
2000 because it can cause severe neurological damage (especially to children), to Indians
as a household insecticide (see http://www.bandursban.org).
This happy state of affairs, however, is not enough for Dow. It has also pressured the
Vajpayee government in India to reduce the charges on Anderson and others from
"culpable homicide" to "hurt by negligence," a non-extraditable
offense -- and also to use part of the pathetically low compensation to victims for
cleanup of the area, shifting liability from the polluter to the victims of the pollution.
The final decision on some charges will be made on July 17.
Rashida, another victim named Tara Bai, and activist Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group
for Action and Information are ready to fast to the death to prevent these moves. Although
the fast is just into its third week, because of the extreme heat in Delhi and the
crippling effects of gas injuries, Rashida and Tara are failing fast.
The fast is also intended to draw world attention to the continuing exigent circumstances
of Carbide's victims. For years, none of the victims had access to any sustained
affordable medical care. More recently, the Sambhavna trust (http://www.bhopal.org), a nonprofit NGO, provides some
care to about 10,000, barely 6% of the total number of surviving victims. At least 5000
families must still regularly drink water contaminated by mercury and roughly a dozen
volatile organic compounds as a result of the accident.
It is easy to focus on the shameful complicity of the Indian government, which has
consistently shown more interest in courting foreign investors than in the health of its
citizens -- and activists are calling for Americans to complain to the Indian ambassador
(see http://www.corpwatchindia.org/action/PAA.jsp?articleid=1843).
It's also clear that Dow must be held accountable.
But let's not forget the actions of our own government, which consistently goes to bat for
U.S. corporations, no matter how disgusting their actions. Enron was a major beneficiary,
with both Clinton and Bush officials on numerous occasions pressuring India, Mozambique,
Argentina, and countless other countries into signing sweetheart deals that benefited
Enron stockholders and not their own people (see http://www.nowarcollective.com/enron.htm).
Enron was hardly unusual, however; U.S. corporations count on this kind of coercion in
their international dealings. Although this latest initiative is still new, and there is
as yet no direct evidence in the news that U.S. government officials are running
interference for Dow, whatever we find out later - presumably after the hunger strikers
are dead - will hardly come as a surprise, with the most pro-corporate administration in
U.S. history currently in power.
Recent scandals make it very clear that we are governed by politicians who are little more
than corporate shills, enriching themselves as they defraud the public. This is no mere
matter of individuals, but a cancer at the heart of our political system. Rashida and her
associates remind us that these scandals are not just about ill-gotten gains for a few
folks like George W. Bush. They have a body count.
Three Indian activists are on hunger strike in New
Delhi, ready to fast to the death in protest of proposed Indian government actions that
would essentially eliminate the responsibility of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical (which
acquired Carbide in 2001) to provide any further restitution for the approximately 150,000
surviving victims of the 1984 Bhopal disaster, the worst industrial accident in history. A
woman in Texas is about to join them on hunger strike (see http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR071502.htm)
We are asking people to take two actions:
1. Register protest of Indian government actions with the Indian ambassador to the United
States. There is a form (with more info) at
http://www.corpwatchindia.org/action/PAA.jsp?articleid=1843
2. Write to Dow and urge it to accept its legal liability for Carbide's actions, to do
more to provide for the victims, and to abandon its plans to
introduce the toxic pesticide Dursban, banned by the EPA, into Indian households. A form
is available at http://www.dow.com/assistance/thoughts.htm.
If you are interested in helping in other ways, please email
ntangri@essential.org
Thank you,
India Action
Dirty Bombs and Civil Rights
NY Times [Lead Editorial]
June 12, 2002
The word from Washington yesterday was that Abdullah al-Muhajir, the American citizen
accused of plotting a "dirty bomb" attack on the United States, may never be
given a trial, or at least not anytime soon. "We are not interested in trying and
punishing him at the moment," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared
yesterday. "We are interested in finding out what he knows." What the Bush
administration must realize is that its job, even during these challenging times, is to do
both: to investigate terrorism while also protecting the constitutional rights of those
caught in the dragnet.
Mr. Muhajir is an American of Puerto Rican descent who was born Jose Padilla in Brooklyn,
grew up in Chicago and changed his name as part of his conversion to Islam. Federal law
enforcement officials contend that he became part of Al Qaeda's terrorist network, and
that he talked with network leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan about a plot to build and
detonate a radioactive bomb. Mr. Muhajir was taken into custody on May 8 at O'Hare
International Airport in Chicago, upon returning from Pakistan.
It is difficult, at least at this point, to gauge the strength of the case against Mr.
Muhajir. He was picked up on a material witness warrant and has not been charged with any
crime. Law enforcement officials concede that whatever he might have been plotting never
got beyond the discussion stage. So far, the government has produced no evidence that a
dirty-bomb plot existed, or of Mr. Muhajir's role in one. We do, however, have President
Bush's assurance, given when he was meeting with members of Congress at the White House
yesterday, that "This guy Padilla is a bad guy."
If Mr. Muhajir's case had proceeded along the normal criminal-law path, it would have
triggered procedures designed to protect his rights. He was scheduled for a hearing
yesterday at which prosecutors might have had to decide whether to charge him with a
crime. And he would have been able to challenge his detention; a federal judge in New York
ruled recently that material witnesses cannot be held indefinitely. Instead the government
chose to label Mr. Muhajir, who is now in a high-security jail in South Carolina, an
"enemy combatant." The administration contends that merely by labeling him in
this way, it can hold him indefinitely.
The government's position is unacceptable. Our Constitution guarantees that those
suspected of crimes must be informed of the charges against them, be able to confront
their accusers, consult with a lawyer and have a speedy and open trial. But that means
very little if the government can revoke all those rights merely by labeling someone a
combatant. And as Mr. Mujahir's case shows, the government is prepared to strip away the
rights of American citizens as readily as those of foreigners.
The real problem with the government's approach is one that has been evident since Sept.
11: The Bush administration has too little faith in the criminal justice system. The
government must be vigilant about fighting terrorism, but this war can be waged without
suspending the Constitution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/opinion/12WED1.html?ex=1024884904&ei=1&en=c337b6ee2cfb7d71
Summer of All Fears
NY Times
June 12, 2002
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON -- Washingtonians are well known for being hypersensitive to the elements. A
dusting of snow or a heat wave can shut down schools. A Code Red unhealthy air alert, as
we had here yesterday, leaves the streets deserted.
So you can imagine the panic spread by the prospect of radioactive mist settling on
monuments, and uranium-laced, cell-mutating gamma rays ricocheting down Pennsylvania
Avenue.
John Ashcroft's announcement that the military has in custody a bona fide Al Qaeda
operative who was exploring how to set off a dirty bomb in D.C. or elsewhere was designed
both to make our teeth chatter and our gratitude well up. Weren't we thankful that the
Bushies were finally catching somebody and protecting us?
To maximize the drama of the moment, Ashcroft aides went into the Justice Department in
the pre-dawn hours to prepare the attorney general to give the news live by satellite from
Moscow.
On the Hill yesterday, Republican lawmakers were using headlines about the dirty-bomb plot
to try to hurriedly push through the president's homeland security makeover.
"This is what's at stake," said Representative Mac Thornberry of Texas.
"This kind of attack, using chemical, biological, nuclear weapons, radiological
weapons, or some other kinds of suicide bombers of the kind we've seen. We must act
quickly."
It's bad enough that the terrorists are using fear as a device. Does the Bush
administration have to do the same thing?
The Islamic enemy strums on our nerves to hurt our economy and get power. The American
president strums on our nerves to help his popularity and retain power.
Both the bad guys and the good guys are playing with our heads and ratcheting up the fear
factor.
If you'd only paid cursory attention lately, you'd think the government had grabbed the
offensive against terrorists and that the C.I.A. and F.B.I. were now cuddle buddies. But
the question is being asked here: Is the Bush crowd hyping things?
First the government leaked word that it had identified a Qaeda mastermind of the 9/11
plot, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a development hailed as an investigative coup. But the creep
is still at large.
Then the president unveiled his Homeland Security Department plan. But yesterday even top
Republicans were dubious about whether it could work without the F.B.I. and C.I.A. under
its umbrella.
And on Monday Mr. Ashcroft, Bobby Three Sticks and Paul "Bomb Iraq" Wolfowitz
breathlessly told the nation that they had thwarted a scary radiological bombing plot.
In its eagerness to convince itself and us that it has prevented something, the Bush
administration has built up the dirty bomber into an Atta-like terrorist capable of
leveling downtown Washington.
But privately it acknowledges that he may be far less than that. The plotter was a Chicago
street punk named Jose Padilla, a hothead with a long criminal record who was thrown in
jail in Florida for shooting at a motorist in a road-rage incident.
Even law enforcement officials and counterterrorism experts were skeptical about whether
he had the brains, know-how and materials to build a dirty bomb from scratch, or whether
he was even an officially sanctioned Qaeda terrorist.
"There is no indication he had the means to do it or was given the authority to do
it," said a law enforcement official in New York familiar with the case. "It is
a bit of stretch to say he was here to do it."
The mind games of fear begin with Abu Zubaydah, the U.S. captive, one of Osama bin Laden's
top lieutenants, who fingered Padilla.
Based on nuggets and head fakes given to them by Zubaydah, American agents are fanning out
all over the world, possibly going on wild goose chases. Some of his tips have checked
out, some have not.
The feds do not know for sure if Zubaydah is playing them, or if he has led them into a
wilderness of mirrors. With Padilla, is Zubaydah throwing agents a decoy? A small fish
that they're turning into a big marlin, while there's another Mohamed Atta running around
undetected in this country?
The Qaeda leadership has regrouped. Osama and Mullah Omar are out there scheming
somewhere. But Mr. Ashcroft says we can sleep more soundly tonight: Jose Padilla, Chicago
street thug, is in the brig.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/opinion/12DOWD.html?ex=1024887759&ei=1&en=697ae829659ed646
We won't deny our consciences
Prominent Americans have issued this statement on the war on terror
Friday June 14th 2002
The Guardian
Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government
declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression. The signers
of this statement call on the people of the US to resist the policies and overall
political direction that have emerged since September 11 and which pose grave dangers to
the people of the world.
We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free
from military coercion by great powers. We believe that all persons detained or prosecuted
by the US government should have the same rights of due process. We believe that
questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such
rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.
We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own
governments do - we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name.
Thus we call on all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the
world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral and illegitimate. We choose to
make common cause with the people of the world.
We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11. We too mourned the
thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage - even as
we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City and, a generation ago, Vietnam. We too
joined the anguished questioning of millions of Americans who asked why such a thing could
happen.
But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit
of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of "good v evil" that was taken up
by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had
happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid
political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression
at home.
In our name, the Bush administration, with near unanimity from Congress, not only attacked
Afghanistan but arrogated to itself and its allies the right to rain down military force
anywhere and anytime. The brutal repercussions have been felt from the Philippines to
Palestine. The government now openly prepares to wage all-out war on Iraq - a country
which has no connection to the horror of September 11. What kind of world will this become
if the US government has a blank cheque to drop commandos, assassins, and bombs wherever
it wants?
In our name the government has created two classes of people within the US: those to whom
the basic rights of the US legal system are at least promised, and those who now seem to
have no rights at all. The government rounded up more than 1,000 immigrants and detained
them in secret and indefinitely. Hundreds have been deported and hundreds of others still
languish today in prison. For the first time in decades, immigration procedures single out
certain nationalities for unequal treatment.
In our name, the government has brought down a pall of repression over society. The
president's spokesperson warns people to "watch what they say". Dissident
artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked, and
suppressed. The so-called Patriot Act - along with a host of similar measures on the state
level - gives police sweeping new powers of search and seizure, supervised, if at all, by
secret proceedings before secret courts.
In our name, the executive has steadily usurped the roles and functions of the other
branches of government. Military tribunals with lax rules of evidence and no right to
appeal to the regular courts are put in place by executive order. Groups are declared
"terrorist" at the stroke of a presidential pen.
We must take the highest officers of the land seriously when they talk of a war that will
last a generation and when they speak of a new domestic order. We are confronting a new
openly imperial policy towards the world and a domestic policy that manufactures and
manipulates fear to curtail rights.
There is a deadly trajectory to the events of the past months that must be seen for what
it is and resisted. Too many times in history people have waited until it was too late to
resist. President Bush has declared: "You're either with us or against us." Here
is our answer: We refuse to allow you to speak for all the American people. We will not
give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a
hollow promise of safety. We say not in our name. We refuse to be party to these wars and
we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare. We
extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies; we will show our
solidarity in word and deed.
We who sign this statement call on all Americans to join together to rise to this
challenge. We applaud and support the questioning and protest now going on, even as we
recognise the need for much, much more to actually stop this juggernaut. We draw
inspiration from the Israeli reservists who, at great personal risk, declare "there
is a limit" and refuse to serve in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
We draw on the many examples of resistance and conscience from the past of the US: from
those who fought slavery with rebellions and the underground railroad, to those who defied
the Vietnam war by refusing orders, resisting the draft, and standing in solidarity with
resisters. Let us not allow the watching world to despair of our silence and our failure
to act. Instead, let the world hear our pledge: we will resist the machinery of war and
repression and rally others to do everything possible to stop it.
From:
Michael Albert
Laurie Anderson
Edward Asner, actor
Russell Banks, writer
Rosalyn Baxandall, historian
Jessica Blank, actor/playwright
Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange
William Blum, author
Theresa Bonpane, executive director, Office of the Americas
Blase Bonpane, director, Office of the Americas
Fr Bob Bossie, SCJ
Leslie Cagan
Henry Chalfant,author/filmmaker
Bell Chevigny, writer
Paul Chevigny, professor of law, NYU
Noam Chomsky
Stephanie Coontz, historian, Evergreen State College
Kia Corthron, playwright
Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange
Ossie Davis
Mos Def
Carol Downer, board of directors, Chico (CA) Feminist Women's Health Centre
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, professor, California State University, Hayward
Eve Ensler
Leo Estrada, UCLA professor, Urban Planning
John Gillis, writer, professor of history, Rutgers
Jeremy Matthew Glick, editor of Another World Is Possible
Suheir Hammad, writer
David Harvey, distinguished professor of anthropology, CUNY Graduate Centre
Rakaa Iriscience, hip hop artist
Erik Jensen, actor/playwright
Casey Kasem
Robin DG Kelly
Martin Luther King III, president, Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Barbara Kingsolver
C Clark Kissinger, Refuse & Resist!
Jodie Kliman, psychologist
Yuri Kochiyama, activist
Annisette & Thomas Koppel, singers/composers
Tony Kushner
James Lafferty, executive director, National Lawyers Guild/LA
Ray Laforest, Haiti Support Network
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor, Tikkun magazine
Barbara Lubin, Middle East Childrens Alliance
Staughton Lynd
Anuradha Mittal, co-director, Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First
Malaquias Montoya, visual artist
Robert Nichols, writer
Rev E Randall Osburn, executive vice president, Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Grace Paley
Jeremy Pikser, screenwriter
Jerry Quickley, poet
Juan Gumez Quiones, historian, UCLA
Michael Ratner, president, Centre for Constitutional Rights
David Riker, filmmaker
Boots Riley, hip hop artist, The Coup
Edward Said
John J Simon, writer, editor
Starhawk
Michael Steven Smith, National Lawyers Guild/NY
Bob Stein, publisher
Gloria Steinem
Alice Walker
Naomi Wallace, playwright
Rev George Webber, president emeritus, NY Theological Seminary
Leonard Weinglass, attorney
John Edgar Wideman
Saul Williams, spoken word artist
Howard Zinn, historian
Contact the Not In Our Name statement
nionstatement@hotmail.com
If Mr. Bush doesn't want talk of outrageous conspiracies, then let's merely speculate a little. The followin garticle, in retrospect on many aspects, was stunningly accurate, considering that it was written just one week later.
Why Washington Wants Afghanistan
by
Jared Israel, Rick Rozoff & Nico Varkevisser
18th September 2001
Emperor's Clothes
www.tenc.net
"Does my country really understand that this is World War III? And if this attack
was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means there is a long, long war ahead."
- Thomas Friedman, 'New York Times,' September 13, 2001
Key U.S. government representatives and media figures have used the bombing of the WTC and
Pentagon to create an international state of fear. This has swept Washington's closest
allies (notably Germany and England, though not Italy) into agreeing carte blanche to
participate in U.S. reprisals.
It has also served to obscure a most important question: does Washington have a hidden
agenda here, a strategy other than hurling bombs? If so, what
is it, and what does it mean for the world?
Amid the increasingly implausible and frequently contradictory explanations [1] offered by U.S. government officials for their inability or
unwillingness to intervene effectively before and during this past vTuesday's aerial
attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. - and as the cries for war drown out voices of
reason - a deadly scenario is unfolding.
Columns in major mainstream newspapers have borne such titles as:
"World War III" ('New York Times,' 9/13)
"Give War A Chance" ('Philadelphia Inquirer,' 9/13)
"Time To Use The Nuclear Option" ('Washington Times,' 9/14)
A government that claims it had no knowledge of or was at a loss knowing how to deal with
painstakingly organized terrorist attacks, now calls for "exterminating"
previously unseen assailants by "ending states who sponsor terrorism," in the
words of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. [2]
Henry Kissinger argues ('Los Angeles Times,' 9/14) that alleged terrorist networks must be
uprooted wherever they exist. Former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu writes an article
entitled "Dismantle Terrorist Supporting Regimes" ('Jerusalem Post,' 9/14). And
to raise the level of international intimidation a notch, we have R.W. Apple, Jr. in the
'Washington Post' (9/14):
"In this new kind [of] war...there are no neutral states or geographical confines. Us
or them. You are either with us or against us."
Initially, a mix of countries was threatened as so-called 'states supporting terrorism,'
who are not with us and therefore against us: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan
and Syria. Although differing in most respects, especially political ideology, they are
alike three ways: They all bear decades of U.S. government hostility; they all have
secular governments; they all have no connection to Osama bin Laden.
In, "Give War A Chance" ('Philadelphia Inquirer') David Perlmutter warns that if
these states do not do Washington's bidding, they must:
"Prepare for the systematic destruction of every power plant, every oil refinery,
every pipeline, every military base, every government office in the entire country...the
complete collapse of their economy and government for a generation."
[My note: These actions are fundamental breaches of the
Geneva Conventions and The Nuremberg Charter, and other than attacking a military base,
war crimes each and every one.]
Meanwhile, the countries which collaborated to create
the Taliban, training and financing the forces of Osama bin Laden, and which have never
stopped
pouring money into the Taliban, namely Pakistan, close U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates, and the United States itself (documentation below) have not been
placed on the "we've got to get them"list. Instead these states are touted as
core allies in the New World War against terrorism.
Raising the pitch, yesterday:
"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the US would engage in a 'multi-headed
effort' to target terrorist organizations and up to 60 countries believed to be supporting
them. The US, Mr. Rumsfeld told American TV, "had no choice" other than to
pursue terrorists and countries giving them refuge."
The threats to bomb up to a third of the world's countries has scared many people,
worldwide. This, we think, is the intention. It serves two functions.
First, it means that if Washington limits its aggressive action mainly to attacking
Afghanistan, the world will breathe a sigh of relief.
And we think Washington will mainly attack Afghanistan - at first. Other immediate
violations of sovereignty, such as the forced use of Pakistan, will be backup action to
support the attack on Afghanistan.. There may also be some state terror, such as
increased, unprovoked bombing of Iraq, as a diversion. But the main immediate focus will,
we think, be Afghanistan.
Second, this scare tactic is meant to divert attention from Washington's real strategy,
far more dangerous than the threat to bomb many states. Washington wants to take over
Afghanistan in orderto speed up the fulfillment of its strategy of pulverizing the former
Soviet Republics as Washington in the same way that Washington has been pulverizing the
former Yugoslavia. This poses the gravest risks to mankind.
WHAT DOES WASHINGTON WANT WITH IMPOVERISHED AFGHANISTAN?
To answer this question, look at any map of Europe and Asia. Consider the immense spread
of the former Soviet Union, particularly Russia.
European Russia is 1,747,112 square miles. That's between a third and half the landmass of
all Europe. Add the Asian part of Russia and you get 6,592,800 sq. mi. That's equal to
most of the US and China combined. More than half of Africa.
Russia borders Finland on the far West. It borders Turkey and the Balkans on the south. It
extends to the edge of Asia in the Far East. It is the rooftop of Mongolia and China.
Not only is Russia spectacularly large, with incalculable wealth, mostly untapped, but it
is the only world class nuclear power besides the U.S. Contrary to popular opinion,
Russia's military might has not been destroyed; indeed, it is arguably stronger, in
relation to the US, than during the early period of the cold war. It has the most
sophisticated submarine technology in the world.
If the U.S. can break up Russia and the other former Soviet Republics into weak
territories, dominated by NATO, Washington would have a free hand. Despite talk of Russia
and the U.S. working together, this remains the thrust of US policy. [3]
Afghanistan is strategically placed, not only bordering Iran, India and even, for a small
stretch, China (!) but most important, sharing borders and a common religion with the
Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union (SU), Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and
Tajikistan. These in turn border Kazakhstan, which borders Russia.
Central Asia is strategic not only for oil, as we are often told, but more important for
position. Were Washington to take control of these Republics, NATO would have military
bases in the following key areas: the Baltic region; the Balkans and Turkey; and these
Republics. This would constitute a noose around Russia's neck.
Add to that Washington's effective domination of the former Soviet Republics of Azerbaijan
and Georgia, in the south, and the US would be positioned to launch externally instigated
'rebellions' all over Russia.
NATO, whose current doctrine allows it to intervene in states on its periphery, could then
initiate "low intensity wars" including the use of tactical nuclear weapons,
also officially endorsed by current NATO doctrine, in 'response' to myriad 'humanitarian
abuses.'
It is ironic that Washington claims it must return to Afghanistan to fight Islamist
terrorism, because it was precisely in its effort to destroy Russian power that Washington
first created the Islamist terrorist apparatus in Afghanistan, during the 80s.
This was not, as some say, rewriting history, a matter of aiding rebels against Russian
expansionism. Whatever one thinks about the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, it was in
fact conceived as a defensive action to preserve, not alter, the world balance of power.
It was the United States which took covert action to 'encourage' Russian intervention,
with the goal of turning the conservative rural Afghan tribesmen into a force to drain the
Soviet Union. This is admitted by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the key National Security chief at
the time.
Consider excerpts from two newspaper reports. First the 'N.Y. Times':
"The Afghan resistance was backed by the intelligence services of the United
States and Saudi Arabia with nearly $6 billion worth of weapons. And the territory
targeted last week [this was published after the August, 1998 U.S. missile attack on
Afghanistan], a set of six encampments around Khost, where the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden
has financed a kind of 'terrorist university,' in the words of a senior United States
intelligence official, is well known to the Central Intelligence Agency."
"... some of the same warriors who fought the Soviets with the C.I.A.'s help are
now fighting under Mr. bin Laden's banner...." ('NY Times,' 24 August 1998 pages
A1 & A7 )
And this from the London 'Independent':
"The Afghan Civil War was under way, and America was in it from the start - or
even before the start, if [former National Security Adviser, and currently top foreign
policy strategist Zbigniew] Brzezinski himself is to be believed. '"We didn't push
the Russians to intervene,' he told an interviewer in 1998, 'but we consciously increased
the probability that they would do so. This secret operation was an excellent idea. Its
effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap. You want me to regret that?'
"The long-term effect of the American intervention from cold-warrior Brzezinski's
perspective was 10 years later to bring the Soviet Union to its knees. But there were
other effects, too. "To keep the war going, the CIA, in cahoots with Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan's military intelligence agency ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate),
funneled millions and millions of dollars to the Mujahedeen. It was the remotest and the
safest form of warfare: the US (and Saudi
Arabia) provided funds, and America also a very limited amount of training. They also
provided the Stinger missiles that ultimately changed the face of
the war.
"Pakistan's ISI did everything else: training, equipping, motivating, and advising.
And they did the job with panache: Pakistan's military ruler at the time, General Zia ul
Haq, who himself held strong fundamentalist leanings, threw himself into the task with a
passion." ('The Independent' (London) 17 September 2001)
Right up to the present, U.S. ally Saudi Arabia has been perhaps the key force in
maintaining the Taliban. BUt the U.S. has helped directly, as well. Despite the Taliban's
monstrous record of humanitarian abuse:
"The Bush administration has not been deterred. Last week it pledged another $ 43
million in assistance to Afghanistan, raising total aid this year to $124 million and
making the United States the largest humanitarian donor to the country."
Why have the US and its allies continued - up to now - to fund the Taliban? And why
nevertheless is the US now moving to attack its monstrous creation?
It is our conviction, and that of many observers from the region in question, that
Washington ordered Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to fund the Taliban so the Taliban could do a
job: consolidate control over Afghanistan and from there move to destabilize the formerly
Soviet Central Asian Republics on its borders.
But the Taliban has failed. It has not defeated the Russian-backed Northern Alliance.
Instead of subverting Central Asia in businesslike fashion, it has indulged in blowing up
statues of Buddha and terrorizing people who deviate from the most regressive
interpretation of Islam.
At the same time, Russia has been moving in the 'wrong' direction. The completely
controllable Yeltsin has been replaced with President Putin, who partially resists the
U.S., for example, putting down the CIA-backed takeover of Chechnya by Islamist
terrorists, linked to Afghanistan. Worse, China and Russia have signed a mutual defense
pact. And despite immense European/U.S. pressure, Russian President Putin refused to
condemn Belarussian President Lukashenko who, like the jailed but unbroken Yugoslav
President Milosevic, calls for standing up to NATO.
It is this unfavorable series of developments that has caused Washington to increase its
reliance on Washington's all-time favorite tactic: extreme brinkmanship.
Thus, on the very eve of recent Belarussian presidential elections:
"[Ambassador to Belarus Michael Kozak wrote to a British newspaper that]
America's 'objective and to some degree methodology are the same' in Belarus as in
Nicaragua, where the US backed the Contras against the left-wing Sandinista Government in
a war that claimed at least 30,000 lives." ("The Times" (UK), 3
September 2001.) [4]
As you may recall, the Contras were a U.S.-financed terrorist outfit that specialized in
attacking farming villages and slaughtering supporters of the left-wing nationalist
Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Just as a few weeks ago, U.S. Ambassador Kozak openly advocated a policy of state terror
against the former Soviet Republic of Belarus in the Baltic area - for no phrase other
than 'state terror' can describe the U.S. sponsorship of the Contras in Nicaragua -
Washington has decided to intervene directly in strategic Afghanistan, set smack in the
middle of Asia and positioned so as to complete a three-pronged encirclement of Russia:
Central Asia, the Balkans and the Baltic.
Washington has cynically used the mass slaughter at the World Trade Center and the lesser
attack on the Pentagon to rally its NATO forces, invoking Article Five of NATO's charter,
under which all members of NATO must respond to an attack on any one, with the goal of:
a) putting together a "peacekeeping force" for Afghanistan
b) launching air and possibly ground attacks
c) eliminating the obstinate and incompetent leadership of theTaliban, and
d) taking direct control through the creation of a U.S. dominated NATO military
presence.
Some argue that NATO would be crazy to try to pacify Afghanistan. They say the British
failed to do it in the 1800s, and the Russians failed in the 1980s.
But Washington does not need or intend to pacify Afghanistan. It needs to create a
military presence sufficient to organize and direct indigenous forces to penetrate the
Central Asian republics and instigate armed conflict, to (as we shall hear groups like
Human Rights Watch saying soon enough) "free victims of humanitarian abuses from the
oppressive hand of soviet style governments," etc.
Rather than trying to defeat the Taliban, Washington will make the Taliban an offer they
cannot refuse: fight the U.S., and die, or join it, getting plenty of money and guns, plus
a free hand to handle the drug trade, just as the U.S. has permitted the KLA to make a
fortune from drugs in the Balkans. [5]
This would duplicate what Washington did in Kosovo, training and consolidating a Kosovo
Liberation Army-type terrorist force, in this case out of elements of the Taliban and
others, and directing this army against the former Soviet Central Asian Republics, just as
it has directed the KLA against Macedonia. At the same time it could increase its offers
of military assistance to these same Republics, thus penetrating the region on both sides
of conflict in fact instigated by Washington, simultaneously attacking and defending
Central Asia - precisely as it has done in Macedonia. The goal: decimated, NATO-dominated
territories in place of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. [6]
This strategy cannot be sold to the American people. We repeat: it cannot be sold.
It is for that reason, that the Bush administration is using the tragic nightmare of
murder in New York, which itself occurred under circumstances suggesting the complicity of
American covert forces, to create an international hysteria in order to drag NATO into the
strategic occupation of Afghanistan and an intensified assault on the former Soviet Union.
[7]
Before anyone sighs with relief, thinking, "Thank God this is all that's
happening," consider that apart form the violation of national sovereignty and many
other very negative aspects of Washington's plans, the attack on Afghanistan brings NATO
to Russia's Central Asian doorstep. This is a strategic escalation of conflict, moving us
all much closer - nobody knows how much closer and nobody knows how fast things will
escalate - to worldwide nuclear war.
Will Washington get away with it? Washington, and the giant capitalists who control it,
obviously think Russia will let itself be destroyed. But then, as the Greeks say,
"Pride is followed by self-destruction."
The Russians are very deceptive. They try to avoid a fight. But as Mr. Hitler discovered,
when they are pushed to the wall, they fight with the ferocity of lions. And they have
tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.
Thus Washington is playing with the possibility of a war which would make the horror that
occurred last Tuesday at the World Trade Center, or even the much larger-scale horror of
NATO's terror-bombing of Yugoslavia, look like minor incidents. [8]
Further Reading:
[1] 'Criminal Negligence
or Treason' Can be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/treason.htm
[2] Like a man with a guilty conscience, the U.S. government
and its NATO allies constantly denounce terror, while in fact routinely using it in
international affairs. See for example:
'WASHINGTON: PARENT OF THE TALIBAN AND COLOMBIAN 'DEATH SQUADS' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/mis.htm
'WHAT NATO OCCUPATION WOULD MEAN FOR MACEDONIANS' First-hand report of the state of terror
instituted when NATO took over Kosovo. Can be read at http://www.emperors-clothes.com/misc/savethe-a.htm
''Five Years On & the Lies Continue.' Discussion of the use by the U.S.-sponsored
Islamist regime in Sarajevo of systematic terror against Serbian villagers in Bosnia. Can
be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/texts.htm
'Meet Mr. Massacre' - Concerning U.S. Balkans envoy William Walker's death squad
activities in Latin American. Can be read at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/analysis/meetmr.htm
[3] 'Why is NATO Decimating the Balkans and Trying to Force
Milosevic to Surrender?' by Jared Israel and Nico Varkevisser. Can be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/whyisn.htm
[4] 'Tough Measures Justified in Belarus' by Jared Israel at
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/tough.htm
[5] 'WASHINGTON: PARENT OF THE TALIBAN AND COLOMBIAN DEATH
SQUADS' by Jared Israel. Can be read at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/mis.htm#a
[6] 'SORRY VIRGINIA BUT THEY ARE NATO TROOPS, NOT 'REBELS'
Can be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/mac/times.htm
[7] - Click here please. [My note:
sorry....have lost the link.]
[8] 'Yugoslav Auto Workers Appealed to NATO's Humanity...'
Can be read at
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/misc/car.htm
[9] Rick Rozoff takes a critical look at Washington's
response to Tuesday's tragedies in 'Bush's Press Conference: Into the Abyss' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/rozoff/abyss.htm
[10] While Washington points to Osama bin Laden as
"suspect # 1" in yesterday's horrific violence, the truth is not being told to
the American people: 'Washington Created Osama bin Laden' by Jared Israel can be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/sudan.html#w
[11] If one looks carefully, one can find in the
Western media evidence that bin Laden has been involved - on the U.S.-backed side - in
Kosovo, Bosnia and now Macedonia. Can be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/mis.htm
[12] Bin Laden was propelled into power as part of the U.S.
drive to create an Islamist terrorist movement to crush the former Soviet Union. See, the
truly amazing account from the 'Washington Post,' 'Washington's Backing of Afghan
Terrorists: Deliberate Policy.' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/anatomy.htm
[13] Head of Russian Navy says official scenario couldn't
have happened. See 'Russian Navy Chief Says Official 9-11 Story Impossible' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/navy.htm
[14] Emperor's Clothes has interviewed Rudi Dekkers from the
Huffman Aviation facility, at which two of the hijack suspects were students a year ago.
Though Mr. Dekkers' told the interviewer he had received many calls, the media has not
published his comments. The interview was taped and the text on Emperor's Clothes is a
verbatim transcript, including the grammatical errors common in daily speech. See
"Interview With Huffman Aviation Casts Doubt on Official Story" at
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/dekkers.htm
HOON'S TALK OF PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKES COULD BE
CATASTROPHIC
by
HUGO YOUNG
THE DEFENCE SECRETARY'S DEFIANCE MAKES NUCLEAR WAR
MORE LIKELY
Before Jack Straw went to the subcontinent to lecture India and Pakistan on the
consequences of nuclear war, he irritably brushed aside a pertinent question. Asked by
John Humphrys why they should pay attention to a country that had itself never renounced
first use of nuclear weapons, he said everyone knew the prospect of Britain (and the US
and France) using nuclear weapons was "so distant as not to be worth
discussing". It sounded like a reassuring platitude. In fact it was about as
misleading an answer as can be found in the entire record of Britain's conduct as a
nuclear power.
Normally, British ministers are reticent about their nuclear weapons. The standard formula
is to say, if asked, that we don't rule anything out if anyone attacks us. All this has
now changed. The first person who says nuclear use is worth discussing happens to be
Straw's colleague, Geoff Hoon, the defence
secretary. In March, Hoon said, in the context of Iraq: "I am absolutely confident,
in the right conditions, we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons."
Those who heard him say this, including some expert advisers, were startled. Such
explicitness broke a norm that even Washington has usually observed. But they thought it
was an accidental one-off occurring, as it did, at the end of a select committee session
and without obvious premeditation. However, a few days later Hoon gave more particulars to
Jonathan Dimbleby, insisting that the nuclear option would be taken pre-emptively, if we
thought British forces were about to be attacked by Iraqi chemical or biological weapons.
My colleague Richard Norton-Taylor reported and commented on this at the time, but there
was little political fall-out.
Then, to make sure we understood, Hoon said it for a third time, telling the full House of
Commons: "A British government must be able to express their view that, ultimately
and in conditions of extreme self-defence, nuclear weapons would have to be used."
This triple whammy, insisting on Britain's right to use nukes, pre-emptively if necessary,
against states of concern that aren't themselves nuclear powers, has made the quietest of
impacts. Yet it has no precedent in the policy of any government, Labour or Conservative.
It's not merely the words that are new. Some officials close to high policy making tried
to pretend to me that Hoon was merely saying what any informed interpreter of British
nuclear policy could have known all along. This is nonsense. Dr Stephen Pullinger, author
of an instructive recent Isis paper on military
options against Iraq, shows clearly how much has changed.
In cold war days Britain, like Nato as a whole, opposed a policy of no-first-use because
we feared superior Warsaw pact conventional forces might make the nuclear option
imperative to save Europe. The scenario Hoon envisages is quite different. Instead of
deploying nukes in a conflict initiated by the other side, we claim the right to start
nuclear war before any attack is made; and we contemplate doing so, for the first time,
against a state that is neither nuclear itself nor allied with a nuclear power.
The best case for this language is that it's intended to be deterrent. Leaders unversed in
the calculations that sustained nuclear inertia in the cold war need to be reminded in
plainest detail of the terrible risks they might be running. That certainly seems to be
true of Pakistan. But if further evidence were needed of how much has changed in the case
of Iraq, it's supplied by what happened under the Major government, at which time Saddam
Hussein was deterred from using chemical and biological (CB) weapons, which he had in
plenty, by less apocalyptic means. John Major was asked about that at the start of the
Gulf war. He said Britain had a range of weapons and resources to deal with CB attacks on
her troops. "We [do] not envisage the use of nuclear weapons," he added.
"We would not use them."
It's still possible to argue that his successors are engaged in sabre-rattling against a
reckless enemy, though Saddam didn't show that kind of recklessness in 1991. There's not
much doubt, either, that Iraq is trying to become nuclear-equipped. Maybe intelligence
sources think they're closer to getting there than the public can be allowed to know, and
far sooner than outside experts have contemplated. In which case a break with the old
nuclear grammar might start to be defensible.
What's more obviously happening is a change in the rules of the game being written in
Washington. Hoon's readiness to import first-strike thinking into his public discourse,
which has shocked old nuclear hands, is consistent with many hours spent in the company of
the visitor whom Tony Blair and he received in Downing Street yesterday, the US defence
secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. The Pentagon's nuclear posture review, leaked in March,
scatters nuclear threats around the globe, listing Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran and North
Korea, as well as any Chinese threat to Taiwan, as potentially necessary first-strike
targets. It also
spells out a plan for the US to develop new nuclear weapons, allegedly low-yield,
"smart", mini not mega, perhaps bunker-busting bombs eventually applicable
against al-Qaida's caves and Saddam's labs alike.
Britain has no such weaponry. Our usable nukes are almost entirely on top of Trident
ICBMs. Is this what Hoon means we might use against Baghdad? What exactly would be our
targets? How hard have we thought about Iraqi civilian casualties? Or about what we say
when Saddam turns out to have survived our nuclear strike? These are questions of detail,
which the defence secretary should surely answer. But more general issues arise from the
strategic turmoil that's replacing the nuclear discipline of the cold war.
First, what's supposed to happen to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the bulwark on
which so much depends? A crucial element of the treaty was the 1978 pledge by the US,
Britain and the Soviet Union never to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states,
except when they started a war in alliance with a nuclear state. In 1995, China and France
joined in reiterating this. More than 180 non-nuclear states accepted the deal. If the US
or Britain takes Iraq as a pretext to break the promise, what's to stop many countries
rushing to acquire the only weaponry they think might keep them safe?
Second, and more acutely, we're witnessing the banalisation of nuclear weapons. Suddenly
they seem to have lost their unique horror. Pakistan and India needed teaching about the
truth, and may yet not have learned it even with a potential 12 million deaths held out
for their inspection. The British case is much worse. The defence secretary's strutting
defiance makes the nuclear option sound like merely a stepped-up version of a regular
battlefield weapon. Every time he flourishes it, his insouciance renders it more normal,
instead of the most terrible calamity that could be visited on the earth. Any use of it,
by any power, at any time, would fit such a description. What is it about our times that
allows a Labour minister - a Labour minister - to forget that?
Copyright 2002 The Guardian.
There is a firestorm coming, and it is being provoked
by Mr Bush
by
Robert Fisk
More and more, President Bush's rhetoric sounds like the crazed videotapes of Osama bin
Laden
The Independent, 25th May 2002
So now Osama bin Laden is Hitler. And Saddam Hussein is Hitler. And George Bush is
fighting the Nazis. Not since Menachem Begin fantasised to President Reagan that he felt
he was attacking Hitler in Berlin - his Israeli army was actually besieging Beirut,
killing thousands of civilians, "Hitler" being the pathetic Arafat - have we had
to listen to claptrap like this. But the fact that we Europeans had to do so in the
Bundestag on Thursday - and, for the most part, in respectful silence - was extraordinary.
I'm reminded of the Israeli columnist who, tired of the wearying invocation of the Second
World War to justify yet more Israeli brutality, began an article with the words: "Mr
Prime Minister, Hitler is dead." Must we, forever, live under the shadow of a war
that was fought and won before most of us were born? Do we have to live forever with
living, diminutive politicians playing Churchill (Thatcher and, of course, Blair) or
Roosevelt? "He's a dictator who gassed his own people," Mr Bush reminded us for
the two thousandth time, omitting as always to mention that the Kurds whom Saddam
viciously gassed were fighting for Iran and that the United States, at the time, was on
Saddam's side.
But there is a much more serious side to this. Mr Bush is hoping to corner the Russian
President, Vladimir Putin, into a new policy of threatening Iran. He wants the Russians to
lean on the northern bit of the "axis of evil", the infantile phrase which he
still trots out to the masses. More and more, indeed, Mr Bush's rhetoric sounds like the
crazed videotapes of Mr bin Laden. And still he tries to lie about the motives for the
crimes against humanity of 11 September. Yet again, in the Bundestag, he insisted that the
West's enemies hated "justice and democracy", even though most of America's
Muslim enemies wouldn't know what democracy was.
In the United States, the Bush administration is busy terrorising Americans. There will be
nuclear attacks, bombs in high-rise apartment blocks, on the Brooklyn bridge, men with
exploding belts - note how carefully the ruthless Palestinian war against Israeli
colonisation of the West Bank is being strapped to America's ever weirder "war on
terror" - and yet more aircraft suiciders. If you read the words of President Bush,
Vice-President Dick Cheney and the ridiculous national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice,
over the past three days, you'll find they've issued more threats against Americans than
Mr bin Laden.
But let's get back to the point. The growing evidence that Israel's policies are America's
policies in the Middle East - or, more accurately, vice versa - is now being played out
for real in statements from Congress and on American television. First, we have the
chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee announcing that Hizbollah - the
Lebanese guerrilla force that drove Israel's demoralised army out of Lebanon in the year
2000 - is planning attacks in the US. After that, we had an American television network
"revealing" that Hizbollah, Hamas and al- Qa'ida - Mr bin Laden's organisation -
have held a secret meeting in Lebanon to plot attacks on the US.
American journalists insist on quoting "sources" but there was, of course, no
sourcing for this balderdash, which is now repeated ad nauseam in the American media. Then
take the "Syrian Accountability Act" that was introduced into the US Senate by
Israel's friends on18 April. This includes the falsity uttered earlier by Israel's Foreign
Minister, Shimon Peres, that Iranian Revolutionary Guards "operate freely" on
the southern Lebanese border. Now there haven't been Iranian Revolutionary Guards in
Lebanon - let alone the south of the country - for 18 years. So why is this lie repeated
yet again?
Iran is under threat. Lebanon is under threat. Syria is under threat - its
"terrorism" status has been heightened by the State Department - and so is Iraq.
But Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister held personally responsible by Israel's own
enquiry for the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1,700 Palestinians in Beirut in 1982, is -
according to Mr Bush - "a man of peace". How much further can this go? A long
way, I fear.
The anti-American feeling throughout the Middle East is palpable. Arab newspaper
editorials don't come near to expressing public opinion. In Damascus, Majida Tabbaa has
become famous as the lady who threw the US Consul Roberto Powers out of her husband's
downtown restaurant on 7 April . "I went over to him," she said, "and told
him, 'Mr Roberto, tell your George Bush that all of you are not welcome - please get
out'." Across the Arab world, boycotts of American goods have begun in earnest.
How much longer can this go on? America praises Pakistani President Musharraf for his
support in the "war on terror", but remains silent when he arranges a
dictatorial "referendum" to keep him in power. America's enemies, remember, hate
the US for its "democracy". So is General Musharraf going to feel the heat?
Forget it. My guess is that Pakistan's importance in the famous "war on terror"
- or "war for civilisation" as, we should remember, it was originally called -
is far more important. If Pakistan and India go to war, I'll wager a lot that Washington
will come down for undemocratic Pakistan against democratic India.
Across the former Soviet southern Muslim republics, America is building air bases, helping
to pursue the "war on terror" against any violent Muslim Islamist groups that
dare to challenge the local dictators. Please do not believe that this is about oil. Do
not for a moment think that these oil and gas-rich lands have any economic importance for
the oil-fuelled Bush administration. Nor the pipelines that could run from northern
Afghanistan to the Pakistani coast if only that pesky Afghan loya jirga could elect a
government that would give concessions to Unocal, the oddly named concession whose former
boss just happens to be a chief Bush "adviser" to Afghanistan.
Now here's pause for thought. Abdelrahman al-Rashed writes in the international Arabic
daily Asharq al-Awsat that if anyone had said prior to 11 September that Arabs were
plotting a vast scheme to murder thousands of Americans in the US, no one would have
believed them. "We would have charged that this was an attempt to incite the American
people against Arabs and Muslims," he wrote. And rightly so.
But Arabs did commit the crimes against humanity of 11 September. And many Arabs greatly
fear that we have yet to see the encore from the same organisation. In the meantime, Mr
Bush goes on to do exactly what his enemies want; to provoke Muslims and Arabs, to praise
their enemies and demonise their countries, to bomb and starve Iraq and give uncritical
support to Israel and maintain his support for the dictators of the Middle East.
Each morning now, I awake beside the Mediterranean in Beirut with a feeling of great
foreboding. There is a firestorm coming. And we are blissfully ignoring its arrival;
indeed, we are provoking it.
SchNEWS
Issue 355
Friday 17th May 2002
AMERICAN WET DREAM
On Tuesday the UN Security Council unanimously voted to overhaul the economic sanctions
against Iraq - a move so radical it was immediately condemned by the sanctions-busting
group Voices in the Wilderness, four of whom are currently in Iraq distributing medical
supplies. They called the resolution "a deadly fraud that will do little to alleviate
the ongoing humanitarian crisis."
Forget the cruel tyrant Saddam Hussein (once supported by the West when he towed their
line), what about the ordinary people of Iraq? Who, thanks to these economic sanctions
imposed on them by the West for nearly 12 years have seen 500,000 of their children die.
Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck, who were both at one time responsible for the UN's
humanitarian programme in Iraq, both resigned in protest at what the sanctions were doing.
Last year they wrote, "The death of 5-6,000 children a month is mostly due to
contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition."
And it will be the ordinary Iraqi people who will again be suffering if President Bush and
his cronies use their so-called war on terrorism to start bombing a country, that has
already been bombed back to the dark ages. The Pentagon's 'medium case scenario' is that a
war on Iraq could condemn to death more than 10,000 civilians. But this could be even
worse if, as journalist John Pilger puts it, the Americans "implement their current
strategy of 'total war' and target Iraq's electricity and water."
Not that we should forget that American and British aircraft have, in a largely forgotten
war, been bombing Iraq week-in week-out, for more than four years. The Wall Street Journal
reported that the US and Britain faced a "dilemma" because "few targets
remain." "We're down to the last outhouse" bemoaned a Pentagon official.
Still, the US insists that action is necessary because Iraq has been defying United
Nations resolutions and represents an imminent threat to the world, and to the U.S. in
particular. Excuse us, but defying UN resolutions and ignoring international treaties is
what the Bush administration does best, with Bush making it clear that he will not honour
any treaty if he reckons it might harm U.S. interests. In fact just last week Bush pulled
out of the International Criminal Court - you know that radical idea to create the world's
first permanent tribunal to prosecute people for war crimes, genocide, and other crimes
against humanity (see SchNEWS 326).
Bush and his militaristic government argue that they have to bomb Iraq because Saddam
won't comply with United Nations weapons inspectors. So best forget that the Bush
administration denied international inspectors access to U.S. chemical and biological
weapons-related facilities because it might violate "commercial interests".
Still the truth slipped out earlier this month when US Secretary of State Colin Powell
said "regardless of what the inspectors do, the people of Iraq and the people of the
region would be better off with a different regime in Baghdad." Not that SchNEWS
could disagree with that - a lot of countries would be better off without dictators and
corrupt governments - it's just the US wants another Saddam Hussein, but this time one
who'll do what they say.
Meanwhile Cuba is now being added to the US hit list, because hey the US right has always
hated Cuba. In a speech entitled 'Beyond the Axis of Evil', Under Secretary of State John
Bolton pointed the finger at Cuba because of the country's advanced biomedical industry.
Forget that Cuba's advance biomedics has more do with their better-than-the-US Health
Service and their policy of sending doctors to help third world countries (so hey, let's
add them to the list). Plus Castro's visits last year to three "rogue states"
accused by the US state department of sponsoring terrorism: Iraq, Syria and Libya.
"States that renounce terror and abandon WMD [weapons of mass destruction] can become
part of our effort," Mr Bolton said. "But those that do not can expect to become
our targets."
So it's back to that old "you are either with us or against us" mantra. Each new
stage of the war against terrorism makes it clearer that the real aim has little to do
with what happened on September 11th and more to do with what the American military
describes as "full spectrum dominance". A document from the US Space Command
spells it out: "The United States will remain a global power and exert global
leadership. Widespread communications will highlight disparities in resources and quality
of life - contributing to unrest in developing countries." So while everyone else
must abandon those weapons of mass destruction the US this week got the green light from
Russia this week to go ahead with its plan for the National Missile Defence Project or
Star Wars II to keep us all in check (SchNEWS 307).
Rotten Apple Pie
When it comes to Israel of course then it's a different tune. Israel has been defying U.N.
resolutions for more than 30 years. No action has been taken against their bloody and
illegal rampage through Palestine. Hey, they were after terrorists. They face no sanctions
for blocking a United Nations fact-finding mission into military action at the Jenin
refugee camp. In fact their two fingers to the world earned them a serious reprimand in
the US Senate who er.... voted for an increase in military aid to Israel.
Is this because the Palestinian civilians, just like the Iraqis and the five thousand
Afghani civilians killed in the last holy war against terror, are what John Pilger calls
the Unpeople. "The killing of Iraqi infants, like the killing of Chechens, like the
killing of Afghan civilians, is rated less morally abhorrent than the killing of
Americans."
America's war on terrorism is just another word for imperialism - and Iraq is currently
head of its wish list of countries where a new head of state needs to be put in place, one
that will be a lot more open to Uncle Sam's way of doing things.
Behind 'Plot' on Hussein, a Secret Agenda
by
SCOTT RITTER
Ritter, a former U.N. weapons inspector in
Iraq, is author of "Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem, Once and for All"
(Simon & Schuster, 1999).
President Bush has reportedly authorized the CIA to use all of the means at its
disposal-including U.S. military special operations forces and CIA paramilitary teams-to
eliminate Iraq's Saddam Hussein. According to reports, the CIA is to view any such plan as
"preparatory" for a larger military strike.
Congressional leaders from both parties have greeted these reports with enthusiasm. In
their rush to be seen as embracing the president's hard-line stance on Iraq, however,
almost no one in Congress has questioned why a supposedly covert operation would be made
public, thus undermining the very mission it was intended to accomplish.
It is high time that Congress start questioning the hype and rhetoric emanating from the
White House regarding Baghdad, because the leaked CIA plan is well timed to undermine the
efforts underway in the United Nations to get weapons inspectors back to work in Iraq.
In early July, the U.N. secretary-general will meet with Iraq's foreign minister for a
third round of talks on the return of the weapons monitors. A major sticking point is
Iraqi concern over the use-or abuse-of such inspections by the U.S. for intelligence
collection.
I recall during my time as a chief inspector in Iraq the dozens of extremely fit
"missile experts" and "logistics specialists" who frequented my
inspection teams and others. Drawn from U.S. units such as Delta Force or from CIA
paramilitary teams such as the Special Activities Staff (both of which have an ongoing
role in the conflict in Afghanistan), these specialists had a legitimate part to play in
the difficult cat-and-mouse effort to disarm Iraq. So did the teams of British radio
intercept operators I ran in Iraq from 1996 to 1998-which listened in on the conversations
of Hussein's inner circle-and the various other intelligence specialists who were part of
the inspection effort.
The presence of such personnel on inspection teams was, and is, viewed by the Iraqi
government as an unacceptable risk to its nation's security.
As early as 1992, the Iraqis viewed the teams I led inside Iraq as a threat to the safety
of their president. They were concerned that my inspections were nothing more than a front
for a larger effort to eliminate their leader.
Those concerns were largely baseless while I was in Iraq. Now that Bush has specifically
authorized American covert-operations forces to remove Hussein, however, the Iraqis will
never trust an inspection regime that has already shown itself susceptible to infiltration
and manipulation by intelligence services hostile to Iraq, regardless of any assurances
the U.N. secretary-general might give.The leaked CIA covert operations plan effectively
kills any chance of inspectors returning to Iraq, and it closes the door on the last
opportunity for shedding light on the true state of affairs regarding any threat in the
form of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Absent any return of weapons inspectors, no one
seems willing to challenge the Bush administration's assertions of an Iraqi threat. If
Bush has a factual case against Iraq concerning weapons of mass destruction, he hasn't
made it yet.
Can the Bush administration substantiate any of its claims that Iraq continues to pursue
efforts to reacquire its capability to produce chemical and biological weapons, which was
dismantled and destroyed by U.N. weapons inspectors from 1991 to 1998? The same question
applies to nuclear weapons. What facts show that Iraq continues to pursue nuclear weapons
aspirations?Bush spoke ominously of an Iraqi ballistic missile threat to Europe. What
missile threat is the president talking about? These questions are valid, and if the case
for war is to be made, they must be answered with more than speculative rhetoric.
Congress has seemed unwilling to challenge the Bush administration's pursuit of war
against Iraq. The one roadblock to an all-out U.S. assault would be weapons inspectors
reporting on the facts inside Iraq. Yet without any meaningful discussion and debate by
Congress concerning the nature of the threat posed by Baghdad, war seems all but
inevitable.
The true target of the supposed CIA plan may not be Hussein but rather the weapons
inspection program itself. The real casualty is the last chance to avoid bloody conflict.
The axis of nonsense
The Guardian
15th May 2002
Washington's war is going a la carte. Each passing week is placing both new targets and
new justifications for attack on the menu for military action. There is now not the
slightest pretence that the scope of the US's regime-change wishlist is in any way
tethered to the attacks of September 11. Instead, the world is witnessing the rapid
emergence of a plan to dispose of any government hateful to the sight of US
ultra-conservatism.
First there was the Taliban. Beyond them lay the improbable axis of evil - at the apex of
which is Iraq, clearly still the next target for the unilateral attentions of the
Pentagon. Now the administration's planning has moved "beyond the axis of evil",
in the words of John Bolton, one of the creatures of the night occupying sub-cabinet rank
in the Bush regime. The under-secretary of state identified Syria, Libya and, above all,
Cuba as states that needed to come round to Washington's view of the world before
Washington comes round to them, guns blazing.
The rationale behind the Bolton addendum to the axis - threadbare is perhaps too kind a
word for it - is that the latest "rogue" trio are preparing to threaten the US
with weapons of mass destruction. It is therefore paradoxical that Mr Bolton's boss,
Secretary of State Colin Powell, was at almost the same time asserting that weapons of
mass destruction were no longer really here nor there. When it comes to removing Saddam
Hussein from power, Powell said, the issue of weapons inspection was now to be considered
"separate and distinct and different" from the need for "regime
change".
That may seem prudent: with no justification to hand, why not make it clear that
justifications are no longer required? So rumours of possessing weapons of mass
destruction may serve as sufficient pretext to get a regime on to the "must
change" list, but the subsequent provable absence of them will not get it off again.
Only the British government is still playing along with the pretence. Everyone else has
twigged that this is not a "war on terrorism", nor a "war on weapons of
mass destruction". Nor can the nudge-and-a-wink sponsors of the coup against
Venezuela's elected government convince anyone other than hapless Foreign Office junior
Denis MacShane that they are leading a "war for democracy".
It is instead an open-ended war to make the world congenial for the most chauvinistic
elements in US public life. Every government in the world they dislike is to be removed,
every grudge they have been nursing from the cold war (there can be no other reason for
targeting Fidel Castro) is to be exorcised. Military force may be used in some cases;
while in others the well-tried methods of destabilisation, sanctions and coup will be
deployed.
Where evidence and argument fail, the administration relies on effrontery. The national
security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, demanded that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez
"respect the constitution" on the day he was restored to office, following the
failure of the US-backed military coup against the constitution. Bolton, Rice et al seem
to regard themselves as masters of the universe, and show every sign of planning to
implement their maximum global programme before the US people gets the chance to elect
anyone slightly more sensible.
Optimistic Europeans have clung to the illusion that September 11 would help Bush
rediscover the rest of the world. If it has, then that world is to be called Texas. That
may recommend itself to a British prime minister eager to dock benefits from the
impoverished parents of children who truant, a Lone Star idea if ever there was one.
However, he is almost alone. Even governments and peoples who may admire the US economic
and political system increasingly fear the brazen lawlessness of this administration, and
worry at the implications of the endless war, with its ever-expanding list of governments
to be ousted.
Already the axis of evil embraces governments of widely differing kinds on three
continents. Now, three more countries have been casually added to the hitlist. And who can
believe that this represents the limit of US ambitions? The Bush administration and its
friends don't seem to like Europeans much either. Tony Blair may imagine that by
supporting the war to make the world safe for the US, he is helping in some way to make
the US safe for the world. Every utterance from John Bolton and his cronies exposes the
hollowness of that pretension. Britain appears to be determined to defend the
ever-increasingly indefensible - right over the edge of the abyss.
Andrew Murray is chair of the Stop the War Coalition.
apdmurray@hotmail.com
Rense.com
Documentary Of US 'War Crimes' In Afghanistan Stuns Europe
By Clive Freeman in Berlin
13th June
2002
American soldiers have been involved in the torture and murder of captured Taliban
prisoners, and may have aided in the "disappearance" of up to 3,000 men in the
region of Mazar-i-Sharif, according to Jamie Doran, an Irish documentary film-maker.
Doran's latest film, Massacre At Mazar, was shown on Wednesday in in the Reichstag,
the German parliament building in Berlin, and there were immediate calls for an
international commission to be set up to investigate charges made in the documentary.
Andrew McEntee, a leading international human rights lawyer, who has viewed the film
footage and read full transcripts, believes there is prima facie evidence of
serious war crimes having been committed by American soldiers in
Afghanistan. 'The Americans did whatever they wanted.' McEntee, who was in
Berlin for Wednesday's special screening, said war crimes had been committed not
just under international law but, also, "...under the laws of the United States
itself"
Much of the footage shown in Doran's 20-minute documentary was taken secretly, and
although witnesses were said to be living in fear of reprisal from within Afghanistan
itself they had all agreed to appear at any future international war crimes tribunal to
give evidence, it was claimed.
One witness in the film claimed he had seen an American soldier break an Afghan prisoner's
neck and pour acid on others. "The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no
power to stop them," he alleged. Sometimes prisoners who were beaten up and taken
outside had "disappeared", he
said.
In other sequences witnesses, among them two men, claimed they had been forced to drive
into the desert with hundreds of Taliban prisoners. The living were then summarily shot
while 30 to 40 American soldiers purportedly stood by, it was alleged. The prisoners had
been taken there on the orders of the local American commander, according to the
documentary.
In the film, an Afghan witness admitted to killing prisoners himself, and another officer,
allegedly a senior officer in the army of deputy defence minister Dostum's forces, was
said to have gone into hiding following threats to his life.
The far-left Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) arranged for the special showing of
'Massacre At Mazar' in the Reichstag. Party chairman Roland Claus
was cautious regarding its content but did spoke of its attempt at
"authenticity."
Andre Brie, a PDS member of the European Parliament, concerned by reports of ill treatment
of Taliban prisoners, said he would be in favour of
an
international commission looking into "disturbing" questions raised by the
film. At a press conference Brie said he had known of Doran's dangerous film
activity in Afghanistan, and had helped to support him financially. The PDS
party faction had wanted to obtain authentic footage of the war in Afghanistan, he
said.
The film was due to be screened at the European Parliament in Strasbourg later on
Wednesday evening.
Sapa-DPA
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1023894901416B265&set_id=1
ANTI-TERRORISM AS A COVER FOR TERRORISM
By
Edward S. Herman
During the Cold War the United States supported a string of terror states, from the
immediate post-World War backing given Thailand dictator Phibun Songkhram, "the first
pro-Axis dictator to regain power after the war," to its support of Suharto, Marcos,
Mobutu, Diem, Duvalier, Trujillo, Somoza, Pinochet and a string of murderous military
regimes in Latin America. This was all done on the rationale of needing to "stop
Communism," but this excuse was used in cases where the threat was non-existent and
laughable.
In May 1954, just one month before the United States
overthrew an elected government in Guatemala with a proxy army from dictator Somoza's
territory in Nicaragua, the National Security Council issued a report on the threat of
"Guatemalan Aggression in Latin America," and in a mode of panic described that
tiny country as "increasingly an instrument of Soviet aggression in this
hemisphere." Guatemala had not moved an inch outside its territory, was virtually
disarmed by a U.S. boycott, and was quickly overthrown a month later. Did the NSC really
believe their hysterical nonsense? Whether they did or not this was a wonderfully
convenient ploy to deflect attention from the U.S. desire to dominate the hemisphere, and
it was used regularly to create governments of terror that quickly opened their doors to
foreign investment and kept labor markets as "flexible" as the transnationals
and IMF might desire.
Anti-communism was a superb rhetorical instrument for rationalizing U.S. support of
convenient terrorism, and in the 1954 Guatemala case and regularly elsewhere the
mainstream media helped make it work.
There was some reaction to U.S. support of terror regimes in the Carter years in the
1970s, with a claim that this country should give a little more attention to "human
rights." This new look never took hold, except in government rhetoric (and in the
Carter years aid to Indonesia was stepped up as its attack on East Timor reached genocidal
levels in 1977-1978, and relations with Marcos, the Brazilian generals and Mobutu remained
solid). But with the coming of Reagan there was a famous turn-about: from our devotion to
human rights we were going to turn our attention to "terrorism," announced
Secretary of State Alexander Haig in 1981. It was alleged that the Soviet Union was behind
a terror network, and in a book that became the bible of the Reagan administration, The
Terror Network, Claire Sterling claimed a Soviet hand everywhere, from support of
terrorists that threatened governments from Italy and Germany to Argentina and South
Africa.
The problem with this new look is that it focused only on retail terrorism--and
selectively--and ignored state terrorism. It attended to the Red Brigades and
Baader-Meinhof gang in Italy and Germany, but neglected the Cuban refugee terrorist
network working out of Miami, Savimbi and Renamo in Angola and Mozambique, and the
Nicaraguan contras--these were OUR terrorists, therefore "freedom fighters" or
ignored. Even more important, Reagan supported Marcos, Suharto, the murderous governments
of El Salvador and Argentina, and "constructively engaged" South Africa. These
were premier state terrorists; South Africa, crossing its borders into the neighboring
states and killing scores of thousands, was probably the leading terrorist state in the
1980s. Kaddafi's Libya was an insignificant terrorist state by comparison. Argentina,
which Reagan rushed to embrace in 1981, was also a violent terrorist state, and in a
report on the history of that regime sponsored by the Alfonsin government after the
military government's ouster in 1984, it was stated that "the armed forces responded
to the terrorists' crimes with a terrorism infinitely worse than that which they
were combatting." But this had never registered in the U.S. mainstream media while
that terrorism took place; they had always called the retail terrorists terrorists, but
not the "infinitely worse" state terrorists. The Alfonsin report was given very
little attention, and in a miracle of propaganda service the Reagan administration,
supporting the world's worst terrorists, engaging in it directly by military actions in El
Salvador and Nicaragua, and sponsoring terrorism by supporting the Nicaraguan contras and
Savimbi in Angola (among others), was allowed to be fighting terrorism!
So coming to George W. Bush's new dedication to fighting terrorism, we are in familiar
territory. The rule is that terrorism is what the U.S. government says it is--if it or its
allies or clients do precisely the same thing as the named terrorists, that is not
terrorism, by rule of affiliation. Thus, if we bombed Serbian civilian facilities to
intimidate that population, killing many hundreds, that cannot be terrorism because we did
it. It isn't put this crudely of course, it is
merely understood, a silent double standard, just as it is tacitly understood that
international law applies to others but not to us.
And if we have refused to allow Iraq to import equipment to repair its destroyed water
treatment plants, and if this and the overall sanctions regime kills hundreds of thousands
of civilians, as we strive to remove or control Saddam Hussein, this intimidation and
large-scale killings is not terrorism, because we are doing it. U.S. support of the
Colombian army (and indirectly, its paramilitaries) is not sponsoring terrorism, despite
the thousands killed and scores of thousan