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Important WeekEnd Reading from MER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 20 January:
“War on Terror”
By Professor Noam Chomsky
Amnesty International Annual Lecture Hosted by Trinity College
Venue: Shelbourne Hall, RDS, Dublin
Date: 18th January 2006
“Terror” is a term that rightly arouses strong emotions
and deep concerns. The primary concern should, naturally, be to take
measures to alleviate the threat, which has been severe in the past,
and will be even more so in the future. To proceed in a serious way, we
have to establish some guidelines. Here are a few simple ones:
(1) Facts matter, even if we do not like them.
(2) Elementary moral principles matter, even if they have consequences that we would prefer not to face.
(3) Relative clarity matters. It is pointless to seek a truly precise
definition of “terror,” or of any other concept outside of the hard
sciences and mathematics, often even there. But we should seek enough
clarity at least to distinguish terror from two notions that lie
uneasily at its borders: aggression and legitimate resistance.
If we accept these guidelines, there are quite constructive ways to
deal with the problems of terrorism, which are quite severe. It’s
commonly claimed that critics of ongoing policies do not present
solutions. Check the record, and I think you will find that there is an
accurate translation for that charge: “They present solutions, but I
don’t like them.” (lecture continued below)
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(lecture continued): Suppose,
then, that we accept these simple guidelines. Let’s turn to the “War on
Terror.” Since facts matter, it matters that the War was not declared
by George W. Bush on 9/11, but by the Reagan administration 20 years
earlier. They came into office declaring that their foreign policy
would confront what the President called “the evil scourge of
terrorism,” a plague spread by “depraved opponents of civilization
itself” in “a return to barbarism in the modern age" (Secretary of
State George Shultz). The campaign was directed to a particularly
virulent form of the plague: state-directed international terrorism.
The main focus was Central America and the Middle East, but it reached
to southern Africa and Southeast Asia and beyond.
A second fact is that the war was declared and implemented by pretty
much the same people who are conducting the re-declared war on
terrorism. The civilian component of the re-declared War on Terror is
led by John Negroponte, appointed last year to supervise all
counterterror operations. As Ambassador in Honduras, he was the
hands-on director of the major operation of the first War on Terror,
the contra war against Nicaragua launched mainly from US bases in
Honduras. I’ll return to some of his tasks. The military component of
the re-declared War led by Donald Rumsfeld. During the first phase of
the War on Terror, Rumsfeld was Reagan’s special representative to the
Middle East. There, his main task was to establish close relations with
Saddam Hussein so that the US could provide him with large-scale aid,
including means to develop WMD, continuing long after the huge
atrocities against the Kurds and the end of the war with Iran. The
official purpose, not concealed, was Washington’s responsibility to aid
American exporters and “the strikingly unanimous view” of Washington
and its allies Britain and Saudi Arabia that “whatever the sins of the
Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his
country’s stability than did those who have suffered his repression” --
New York Times Middle East correspondent Alan Cowell, describing
Washington’s judgment as George Bush I authorized Saddam to crush the
Shi’ite rebellion in 1991, which probably would have overthrown the
tyrant.
Saddam is at last on trial for his crimes. The first trial, now
underway, is for crimes he committed in 1982. 1982 happens to be an
important year in US-Iraq relations. It was in 1982 that Reagan removed
Iraq from the list of states supporting terror so that aid could flow
to his friend in Baghdad. Rumsfeld then visited Baghdad to confirm the
arrangements. Judging by reports and commentary, it would be impolite
to mention any of these facts, let alone to suggest that some others
might be standing alongside Saddam before the bar of justice. Removing
Saddam from the list of states supporting terrorism left a gap. It was
at once filled by Cuba, perhaps in recognition of the fact that the US
terrorist wars against Cuba from 1961 had just peaked, including events
that would be on the front pages right now in societies that valued
their freedom, to which I’ll briefly return. Again, that tells us
something about the real elite attitudes towards the plague of the
modern age.
Since the first War on Terror was waged by those now carrying out the
redeclared war, or their immediate mentors, it follows that anyone
seriously interested in the re-declared War on Terror should ask at
once how it was carried out in the 1980s. The topic, however, is under
a virtual ban. That becomes understandable as soon as we investigate
the facts: the first War on Terror quickly became a murderous and
brutal terrorist war, in every corner of the world where it reached,
leaving traumatized societies that may never recover. What happened is
hardly obscure, but doctrinally unacceptable, therefore protected from
inspection. Unearthing the record is an enlightening exercise, with
enormous implications for the future.
These are a few of the relevant facts, and they definitely do matter.
Let’s turn to the second of the guidelines: elementary moral
principles. The most elementary is a virtual truism: decent people
apply to themselves the same standards that they apply to others, if
not more stringent ones. Adherence to this principle of universality
would have many useful consequences. For one thing, it would save a lot
of trees. The principle would radically reduce published reporting and
commentary on social and political affairs. It would virtually
eliminate the newly fashionable discipline of Just War theory. And it
would wipe the slate almost clean with regard to the War on Terror. The
reason is the same in all cases: the principle of universality is
rejected, for the most part tacitly, though sometimes explicitly. Those
are very sweeping statements. I purposely put them in a stark form to
invite you to challenge them, and I hope you do. You will find, I
think, that although the statements are somewhat overdrawn – purposely
-- they nevertheless are uncomfortably close to accurate, and in fact
very fully documented. But try for yourselves and see.
This most elementary of moral truisms is sometimes upheld at least in
words. One example, of critical importance today, is the Nuremberg
Tribunal. In sentencing Nazi war criminals to death, Justice Robert
Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States, spoke eloquently, and
memorably, on the principle of universality. “If certain acts of
violation of treaties are crimes,” he said, “they are crimes whether
the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are
not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others
which we would not be willing to have invoked against us....We must
never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the
record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these
defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.”
That is a clear and honorable statement of the principle of
universality. But the judgment at Nuremberg itself crucially violated
this principle. The Tribunal had to define “war crime” and “crimes
against humanity.” It crafted these definition very carefully so that
crimes are criminal only if they were not committed by the allies.
Urban bombing of civilian concentrations was excluded, because the
allies carried it out more barbarically than the Nazis. And Nazi war
criminals, like Admiral Doenitz, were able to plead successfully that
their British and US counterparts had carried out the same practices.
The reasoning was outlined by Telford Taylor, a distinguished
international lawyer who was Jackson’s Chief Counsel for War Crimes. He
explained that “to punish the foe – especially the vanquished foe – for
conduct in which the enforcing nation has engaged, would be so grossly
inequitable as to discredit the laws themselves.” That is correct, but
the operative definition of “crime” also discredits the laws
themselves. Subsequent Tribunals are discredited by the same moral
flaw, but the self-exemption of the powerful from international law and
elementary moral principle goes far beyond this illustration, and
reaches to just about every aspect of the two phases of the War on
Terror.
Let’s turn to the third background issue: defining “terror” and
distinguishing it from aggression and legitimate resistance. I have
been writing about terror for 25 years, ever since the Reagan
administration declared its War on Terror. I’ve been using definitions
that seem to be doubly appropriate: first, they make sense; and second,
they are the official definitions of those waging the war. To take one
of these official definitions, terrorism is “the calculated use of
violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political,
religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion,
or instilling fear,” typically targeting civilians. The British
government’s definition is about the same: “Terrorism is the use, or
threat, of action which is violent, damaging or disrupting, and is
intended to influence the government or intimidate the public and is
for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, or ideological
cause.” These definitions seem fairly clear and close to ordinary
usage. There also seems to be general agreement that they are
appropriate when discussing the terrorism of enemies.
But a problem at once arises. These definitions yield an entirely
unacceptable consequence: it follows that the US is a leading terrorist
state, dramatically so during the Reaganite war on terror. Merely to
take the most uncontroversial case, Reagan’s state-directed terrorist
war against Nicaragua was condemned by the World Court, backed by two
Security Council resolutions (vetoed by the US, with Britain politely
abstaining). Another completely clear case is Cuba, where the record by
now is voluminous, and not controversial. And there is a long list
beyond them.
We may ask, however, whether such crimes as the state-directed attack
against Nicaragua are really terrorism, or whether they rise to the
level of the much higher crime of aggression. The concept of aggression
was defined clearly enough by Justice Jackson at Nuremberg in terms
that were basically reiterated in an authoritative General Assembly
resolution. An “aggressor,” Jackson proposed to the Tribunal, is a
state that is the first to commit such actions as “Invasion of its
armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of
another State,” or “Provision of support to armed bands formed in the
territory of another State, or refusal, notwithstanding the request of
the invaded State, to take in its own territory, all the measures in
its power to deprive those bands of all assistance or protection.” The
first provision unambiguously applies to the US-UK invasion of Iraq.
The second, just as clearly, applies to the US war against Nicaragua.
However, we might give the current incumbents in Washington and their
mentors the benefit of the doubt, considering them guilty only of the
lesser crime of international terrorism, on a huge and unprecedented
scale.
It may also be recalled the aggression was defined at Nuremberg as “the
supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in
that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” – all
the evil in the tortured land of Iraq that flowed from the US-UK
invasion, for example, and in Nicaragua too, if the charge is not
reduced to international terrorism. And in Lebanon, and all too many
other victims who are easily dismissed on grounds of wrong agency –
right to the present. A week ago (January 13), a CIA predator drone
attacked a village in Pakistan, murdering dozens of civilians, entire
families, who just happened to live in a suspected al-Qaeda hideout.
Such routine actions elicit little notice, a legacy of the poisoning of
the moral culture by centuries of imperial thuggery.
The World Court did not take up the charge of aggression in the
Nicaragua case. The reasons are instructive, and of quite considerable
contemporary relevance. Nicaragua’s case was presented by the
distinguished Harvard University law professor Abram Chayes, former
legal adviser to the State Department. The Court rejected a large part
of his case on the grounds that in accepting World Court jurisdiction
in 1946, the US had entered a reservation excluding itself from
prosecution under multilateral treaties, including the UN Charter. The
Court therefore restricted its deliberations to customary international
law and a bilateral US-Nicaragua treaty, so that the more serious
charges were excluded. Even on these very narrow grounds, the Court
charged Washington with “unlawful use of force” – in lay language,
international terrorism – and ordered it to terminate the crimes and
pay substantial reparations. The Reaganites reacted by escalating the
war, also officially endorsing attacks by their terrorist forces
against “soft targets,” undefended civilian targets. The terrorist war
left the country in ruins, with a death toll equivalent to 2.25 million
in US per capita terms, more than the total of all wartime casualties
in US history combined. After the shattered country fell back under US
control, it declined to further misery. It is now the second poorest
country in Latin America after Haiti – and by accident, also second
after Haiti in intensity of US intervention in the past century. The
standard way to lament these tragedies is to say that Haiti and
Nicaragua are “battered by storms of their own making,” to quote the
Boston Globe, at the liberal extreme of American journalism. Guatemala
ranks third both in misery and intervention, more storms of their own
making.
In the Western canon, none of this exists. All is excluded not only
from general history and commentary, but also quite tellingly from the
huge literature on the War on Terror re-declared in 2001, though its
relevance can hardly be in doubt.
These considerations have to do with the boundary between terror and
aggression. What about the boundary between terror and resistance? One
question that arises is the legitimacy of actions to realize “the right
to self-determination, freedom, and independence, as derived from the
Charter of the United Nations, of people forcibly deprived of that
right..., particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and
foreign occupation...” Do such actions fall under terror or resistance?
The quoted word are from the most forceful denunciation of the crime of
terrorism by the UN General Assembly; in December 1987, taken up under
Reaganite pressure. Hence it is obviously an important resolution, even
more so because of the near-unanimity of support for it. The resolution
passed 153-2 (Honduras alone abstaining). It stated that “nothing in
the present resolution could in any way prejudice the right to
self-determination, freedom, and independence,” as characterized in the
quoted words.
The two countries that voted against the resolution explained their
reasons at the UN session. They were based on the paragraph just
quoted. The phrase “colonial and racist regimes” was understood to
refer to their ally apartheid South Africa, then consummating its
massacres in the neighboring countries and continuing its brutal
repression within. Evidently, the US and Israel could not condone
resistance to the apartheid regime, particularly when it was led by
Nelson Mandela’s ANC, one of the world’s “more notorious terrorist
groups,” as Washington determined at the same time.
Granting legitimacy to resistance against “foreign occupation” was also
unacceptable. The phrase was understood to refer to Israel’s US-backed
military occupation, then in its 20th year. Evidently, resistance to
that occupation could not be condoned either, even though at the time
of the resolution it scarcely existed: despite extensive torture,
degradation, brutality, robbery of land and resources, and other
familiar concomitants of military occupation, Palestinians under
occupation still remained “Samidin,” those who quietly endured.
Technically, there are no vetoes at the General Assembly. In the real
world, a negative US vote is a veto, in fact a double veto: the
resolution is not implemented, and is vetoed from reporting and
history. It should be added that the voting pattern is quite common at
the General Assembly, and also at the Security Council, on a wide range
of issues. Ever since the mid-1960s, when the world fell pretty much
out of control, the US is far in the lead in Security Council vetoes,
Britain second, with no one else even close. It is also of some
interest to note that a majority of the American public favors
abandonment of the veto, and following the will of the majority even if
Washington disapproves, facts virtually unknown in the US, or I suppose
elsewhere. That suggests another conservative way to deal with some of
the problems of the world: pay attention to public opinion.
Terrorism directed or supported by the most powerful states continues
to the present, often in shocking ways. These facts offer one useful
suggestion as to how to mitigate the plague spread by “depraved
opponents of civilization itself” in “a return to barbarism in the
modern age”: Stop participating in terror and supporting it. That would
certainly contribute to the proclaimed objections. But that suggestion
too is off the agenda, for the usual reasons. When it is occasionally
voiced, the reaction is reflexive: a tantrum about how those who make
this rather conservative proposal are blaming everything on the US.
Even with careful sanitization of discussion, dilemmas constantly
arise. One just arose very recently, when Luis Posada Carriles entered
the US illegally. Even by the narrow operative definition of “terror,”
he is clearly one of the most notorious international terrorists, from
the 1960s to the present. Venezuela requested that he be extradited to
face charges for the bombing of a Cubana airliner in Venezuela, killing
73 people. The charges are admittedly credible, but there is a real
difficulty. After Posada miraculously escaped from a Venezuelan prison,
the liberal Boston Globe reports, he “was hired by US covert operatives
to direct the resupply operation for the Nicaraguan contras from El
Salvador” – that is, to play a prominent role in terrorist atrocities
that are incomparably worse than blowing up the Cubana airliner. Hence
the dilemma. To quote the press: “Extraditing him for trial could send
a worrisome signal to covert foreign agents that they cannot count on
unconditional protection from the US government, and it could expose
the CIA to embarrassing public disclosures from a former operative.”
Evidently, a difficult problem.
The Posada dilemma was, thankfully, resolved by the courts, which
rejected Venezuela’s appeal for his extradition, in violation of the
US-Venezuela extradition treaty. A day later, the head of the FBI,
Robert Mueller, urged Europe to speed US demands for extradition: “We
are always looking to see how we can make the extradition process go
faster,” he said. “We think we owe it to the victims of terrorism to
see to it that justice is done efficiently and effectively.” At the
Ibero-American Summit shortly after, the leaders of Spain and the Latin
American countries “backed Venezuela's efforts to have [Posada]
extradited from the United States to face trial” for the Cubana
airliner bombing, and again condemned the “blockade” of Cuba by the US,
endorsing regular near-unanimous UN resolutions, the most recent with a
vote of 179-4 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau). After strong
protests from the US Embassy, the Summit withdrew the call for
extradition, but refused to yield on the demand for an end to the
economic warfare. Posada is therefore free to join his colleague
Orlando Bosch in Miami. Bosch is implicated in dozens of terrorist
crimes, including the Cubana airliner bombing, many on US soil. The FBI
and Justice Department wanted him deported as a threat to national
security, but Bush I took care of that by granting him a presidential
pardon.
There are other such examples. We might want to bear them in mind when
we read Bush II’s impassioned pronouncement that “the United States
makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those
who support them, because they’re equally as guilty of murder,” and
“the civilized world must hold those regimes to account.” This was
proclaimed to great applause at the National Endowment for Democracy, a
few days after Venezuela’s extradition request had been refused. Bush’s
remarks pose another dilemma. Either the US is part of the civilized
world, and must send the US air force to bomb Washington; or it
declares itself to be outside the civilized world. The logic is
impeccable, but fortunately, logic has been dispatched as deep into the
memory hole as moral truisms.
The Bush doctrine that “those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as
the terrorists themselves” was promulgated when the Taliban asked for
evidence before handing over people the US suspected of terrorism –
without credible evidence, as the FBI conceded many months later. The
doctrine is taken very seriously. Harvard international relations
specialist Graham Allison writes that it has “already become a de facto
rule of international relations,” revoking “the sovereignty of states
that provide sanctuary to terrorists.” Some states, that is, thanks to
the rejection of the principle of universality.
One might also have thought that a dilemma would have arisen when John
Negroponte was appointed to the position of head of counter-terrorism.
As Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, he was running the world’s
largest CIA station, not because of the grand role of Honduras in world
affairs, but because Honduras was the primary US base for the
international terrorist war for which Washington was condemned by the
ICJ and Security Council (absent the veto). Known in Honduras as “the
Proconsul,” Negroponte had the task of ensuring that the international
terrorist operations, which reached remarkable levels of savagery,
would proceed efficiently. His responsibilities in managing the war on
the scene took a new turn after official funding was barred in 1983,
and he had to implement White House orders to bribe and pressure senior
Honduran Generals to step up their support for the terrorist war using
funds from other sources, later funds illegally transferred from US
arms sales to Iran. The most vicious of the Honduran killers and
torturers was General Alvarez Martínez, the chief of the Honduran armed
forces at the time, who had informed the US that “he intended to use
the Argentine method of eliminating suspected subversives.” Negroponte
regularly denied gruesome state crimes in Honduras to ensure that
military aid would continue to flow for international terrorism.
Knowing all about Alvarez, the Reagan administration awarded him the
Legion of Merit medal for “encouraging the success of democratic
processes in Honduras.” The elite unit responsible for the worst crimes
in Honduras was Battalion 3-16, organized and trained by Washington and
its Argentine neo-Nazi associates. Honduran military officers in charge
of the Battalion were on the CIA payroll. When the government of
Honduras finally tried to deal with these crimes and bring the
perpetrators to justice, the Reagan-Bush administration refused to
allow Negroponte to testify, as the courts requested.
There was virtually no reaction to the appointment of a leading
international terrorist to the top counter-terrorism position in the
world. Nor to the fact that at the very same time, the heroine of the
popular struggle that overthrew the vicious Somoza regime in Nicaragua,
Dora María Téllez, was denied a visa to teach at the Harvard Divinity
School, as a terrorist. Her crime was to have helped overthrow a
US-backed tyrant and mass murderer. Orwell would not have known whether
to laugh or weep.
So far I have been keeping to the kinds of topics that would be
addressed in a discussion of the War on Terror that is not deformed to
accord with the iron laws of doctrine. And this barely scratches the
surface. But let us now adopt prevailing Western hypocrisy and
cynicism, and keep to the operative definition of “terror.” It is the
same as the official definitions, but with the Nuremberg exception:
admissible terror is your terror; ours is exempt..
Even with this constraint, terror is a major problem, undoubtedly. And
to mitigate or terminate the threat should be a high priority.
Regrettably, it is not. That is all too easy to demonstrate, and the
consequences are likely to be severe.
The invasion of Iraq is perhaps the most glaring example of the low
priority assigned by US-UK leaders to the threat of terror. Washington
planners had been advised, even by their own intelligence agencies,
that the invasion was likely to increase the risk of terror. And it
did, as their own intelligence agencies confirm. The National
Intelligence Council reported a year ago that “Iraq and other possible
conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds,
technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists
who are `professionalized’ and for whom political violence becomes an
end in itself,” spreading elsewhere to defend Muslim lands from attack
by “infidel invaders” in a globalized network of “diffuse Islamic
extremist groups,” with Iraq now replacing the Afghan training grounds
for this more extensive network, as a result of the invasion. A
high-level government review of the “war on terror” two years after the
invasion `focused on how to deal with the rise of a new generation of
terrorists, schooled in Iraq over the past couple years. Top government
officials are increasingly turning their attention to anticipate what
one called “the bleed out” of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained
jihadists back to their home countries throughout the Middle East and
Western Europe. “It's a new piece of a new equation,” a former senior
Bush administration official said. “If you don't know who they are in
Iraq, how are you going to locate them in Istanbul or London?”’
(Washington Post)
Last May the CIA reported that “Iraq has become a magnet for Islamic
militants similar to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan two decades ago and
Bosnia in the 1990s,” according to US officials quoted in the New York
Times. The CIA concluded that “Iraq may prove to be an even more
effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was
in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world
laboratory for urban combat.” Shortly after the London bombing last
July, Chatham House released a study concluding that “there is `no
doubt’ that the invasion of Iraq has `given a boost to the al-Qaida
network’ in propaganda, recruitment and fundraising,` while providing
an ideal training area for terrorists”; and that “the UK is at
particular risk because it is the closest ally of the United States”
and is “a pillion passenger” of American policy” in Iraq and
Afghanistan. There is extensive supporting evidence to show that -- as
anticipated -- the invasion increased the risk of terror and nuclear
proliferation. None of this shows that planners prefer these
consequences, of course. Rather, they are not of much concern in
comparison with much higher priorities that are obscure only to those
who prefer what human rights researchers sometimes call “intentional
ignorance.”
Once again we find, very easily, a way to reduce the threat of terror:
stop acting in ways that – predictably – enhance the threat.
Though enhancement of the threat of terror and proliferation was
anticipated, the invasion did so even in unanticipated ways. It is
common to say that no WMD were found in Iraq after exhaustive search.
That is not quite accurate, however. There were stores of WMD in Iraq:
namely, those produced in the 1980s, thanks to aid provided by the US
and Britain, along with others. These sites had been secured by UN
inspectors, who were dismantling the weapons. But the inspectors were
dismissed by the invaders and the sites were left unguarded. The
inspectors nevertheless continued to carry out their work with
satellite imagery. They discovered sophisticated massive looting of
these installations in over 100 sites, including equipment for
producing solid and liquid propellant missiles, biotoxins and other
materials usable for chemical and biological weapons, and
high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear and
chemical weapons and missiles. A Jordanian journalist was informed by
officials in charge of the Jordanian-Iraqi border that after US-UK
forces took over, radioactive materials were detected in one of every
eight trucks crossing to Jordan, destination unknown.
The ironies are almost inexpressible. The official justification for
the US-UK invasion was to prevent the use of WMD that did not exist.
The invasion provided the terrorists who had been mobilized by the US
and its allies with the means to develop WMD -- namely, equipment they
had provided to Saddam, caring nothing about the terrible crimes they
later invoked to whip up support for the invasion. It is as if Iran
were now making nuclear weapons using fissionable materials provided by
the US to Iran under the Shah -- which may indeed be happening.
Programs to recover and secure such materials were having considerable
success in the ‘90s, but like the war on terror, these programs fell
victim to Bush administration priorities as they dedicated their energy
and resources to invading Iraq.
Elsewhere in the Mideast too terror is regarded as secondary to
ensuring that the region is under control. Another illustration is
Bush’s imposition of new sanctions on Syria in May 2004, implementing
the Syria Accountability Act passed by Congress a few months earlier.
Syria is on the official list of states sponsoring terrorism, despite
Washington’s acknowledgment that Syria has not been implicated in
terrorist acts for many years and has been highly cooperative in
providing important intelligence to Washington on al-Qaeda and other
radical Islamist groups. The gravity of Washington’s concern over
Syria’s links to terror was revealed by President Clinton when he
offered to remove Syria from the list of states sponsoring terror if it
agreed to US-Israeli peace terms. When Syria insisted on recovering its
conquered territory, it remained on the list. Implementation of the
Syria Accountability Act deprived the US of an important source of
information about radical Islamist terrorism in order to achieve the
higher goal of establishing in Syria a regime that will accept
US-Israeli demands.
Turning to another domain, the Treasury Department has a bureau (OFAC,
Office of Foreign Assets Control) that is assigned the task of
investigating suspicious financial transfers, a central component of
the “war on terror.” In April 2004, OFAC informed Congress that of its
120 employees, four were assigned to tracking the finances of Osama bin
Laden and Saddam Hussein, while almost two dozen were occupied with
enforcing the embargo against Cuba. From 1990 to 2003 there were 93
terrorism-related investigations with $9000 in fines; and 11,000
Cuba-related investigations with $8 million in fines. The revelations
received the silent treatment in the US media, elsewhere as well to my
knowledge.
Why should the Treasury Department devote vastly more energy to
strangling Cuba than to the “war on terror”? The basic reasons were
explained in internal documents of the Kennedy-Johnson years. State
Department planners warned that the “very existence” of the Castro
regime is “successful defiance” of US policies going back 150 years, to
the Monroe Doctrine; not Russians, but intolerable defiance of the
master of the hemisphere, much like Iran’s crime of successful defiance
in 1979, or Syria’s rejection of Clinton’s demands. Punishment of the
population was regarded as fully legitimate, we learn from internal
documents. “The Cuban people [are] responsible for the regime,” the
Eisenhower State Department decided, so that the US has the right to
cause them to suffer by economic strangulation, later escalated to
direct terror by Kennedy. Eisenhower and Kennedy agreed that the
embargo would hasten Fidel Castro's departure as a result of the
“rising discomfort among hungry Cubans.” The basic thinking was
summarized by State Department official Lester Mallory: Castro would be
removed “through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic
dissatisfaction and hardship so every possible means should be
undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba in order to
bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government.”
When Cuba was in dire straits after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Washington intensified the punishment of the people of Cuba, at the
initiative of liberal Democrats. The author of the 1992 measures to
tighten the blockade proclaimed that “my objective is to wreak havoc in
Cuba” (Representative Robert Torricelli). All of this continues until
the present moment.
The Kennedy administration was also deeply concerned about the threat
of Cuban successful development, which might be a model for others. But
even apart from these standard concerns, successful defiance in itself
is intolerable, ranked far higher as a priority than combating terror.
These are just further illustrations of principles that are
well-established, internally rational, clear enough to the victims, but
scarcely perceptible in the intellectual world of the agents.
If reducing the threat of terror were a high priority for Washington or
London, as it certainly should be, there would be ways to proceed –
even apart from the unmentionable idea of withdrawing participation.
The first step, plainly, is to try to understand its roots. With regard
to Islamic terror, there is a broad consensus among intelligence
agencies and researchers. They identify two categories: the jihadis,
who regard themselves as a vanguard, and their audience, which may
reject terror but nevertheless regard their cause as just. A serious
counter-terror campaign would therefore begin by considering the
grievances , and where appropriate, addressing them, as should be done
with or without the threat of terror. There is broad agreement among
specialists that al-Qaeda-style terror “is today less a product of
Islamic fundamentalism than of a simple strategic goal: to compel the
United States and its Western allies to withdraw combat forces from the
Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim countries” (Robert Pape, who has
done the major research on suicide bombers). Serious analysts have
pointed out that bin Laden’s words and deeds correlate closely. The
jihadis organized by the Reagan administration and its allies ended
their Afghan-based terrorism inside Russia after the Russians withdrew
from Afghanistan, though they continued it from occupied Muslim
Chechnya, the scene of horrifying Russian crimes back to the 19th
century. Osama turned against the US in 1991 because he took it to be
occupying the holiest Arab land; that was later acknowledged by the
Pentagon as a reason for shifting US bases from Saudi Arabia to Iraq.
Additionally, he was angered by the rejection of his effort to join the
attack against Saddam.
In the most extensive scholarly inquiry into the jihadi phenomenon,
Fawaz Gerges concludes that after 9/11, “the dominant response to Al
Qaeda in the Muslim world was very hostile,” specifically among the
jihadis, who regarded it as a dangerous extremist fringe. Instead of
recognizing that opposition to Al Qaeda offered Washington “the most
effective way to drive a nail into its coffin” by finding “intelligent
means to nourish and support the internal forces that were opposed to
militant ideologies like the bin Laden network,” he writes, the Bush
administration did exactly what bin Laden hoped it would do: resort to
violence, particularly in the invasion of Iraq. Al-Azhar in Egypt, the
oldest institution of religious higher learning in the Islamic world,
issued a fatwa, which gained strong support, advising “all Muslims in
the
world to make jihad against invading American forces” in a war that
Bush had declared against Islam. A leading religious figure at
al-Azhar, who had been “one of the first Muslim scholars to condemn Al
Qaeda [and was] often criticized by ultraconservative clerics as a
pro-Western reformer, ruled that efforts to stop the American invasion
[of Iraq] are a `binding Islamic duty’.” Investigations by Israeli and
Saudi intelligence, supported by US strategic studies institutes,
conclude that foreign fighters in Iraq, some 5-10% of the insurgents,
were mobilized by the invasion, and had no previous record of
association with terrorist groups. The achievements of Bush
administration planners in inspiring Islamic radicalism and terror, and
joining Osama in creating a “clash of civilizations,” are quite
impressive.
The senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from
1996, Michael Scheuer, writes that “bin Laden has been precise in
telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons
have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but have
everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.”
Osama’s concern “is out to drastically alter U.S. and Western policies
toward the Islamic world,” Scheuer writes: “He is a practical warrior,
not an apocalyptic terrorist in search of Armageddon.” As Osama
constantly repeats, “Al Qaeda supports no Islamic insurgency that seeks
to conquer new lands.” Preferring comforting illusions, Washington
ignores “the ideological power, lethality, and growth potential of the
threat personified by Osama bin Laden, as well as the impetus that
threat has been given by the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Muslim
Iraq, [which is] icing on the cake for al Qaeda.” “U.S. forces and
policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world,
something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but
incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, [Scheuer adds,]
it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin
Laden's only indispensable ally.”
The grievances are very real. A Pentagon advisory Panel concluded a
year ago that “Muslims do not `hate our freedom,’ but rather they hate
our policies,” adding that “when American public diplomacy talks about
bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than
self-serving hypocrisy.” The conclusions go back many years. In 1958,
President Eisenhower puzzled about “the campaign of hatred against us”
in the Arab world, “not by the governments but by the people,” who are
“on Nasser's side,” supporting independent secular nationalism. The
reasons for the “campaign of hatred” were outlined by the National
Security Council: “In the eyes of the majority of Arabs the United
States appears to be opposed to the realization of the goals of Arab
nationalism. They believe that the United States is seeking to protect
its interest in Near East oil by supporting the status quo and opposing
political or economic progress.” Furthermore, the perception is
understandable: “our economic and cultural interests in the area have
led not unnaturally to close U.S. relations with elements in the Arab
world whose primary interest lies in the maintenance of relations with
the West and the status quo in their countries,” blocking democracy and
development.
Much the same was found by the Wall Street Journal when it surveyed the
opinions of “moneyed Muslims” immediately after 9/11: bankers,
professionals, businessmen, committed to official “Western values” and
embedded in the neoliberal globalization project. They too were
dismayed by Washington’s support for harsh authoritarian states and the
barriers it erects against development and democracy by “propping up
oppressive regimes.” They had new grievances, however, beyond those
reported by the NSC in 1958: Washington's sanctions regime in Iraq and
support for Israel's military occupation and takeover of the
territories. There was no survey of the great mass of poor and
suffering people, but it is likely that their sentiments are more
intense, coupled with bitter resentment of the Western-oriented elites
and corrupt and brutal rulers backed by Western power who ensure that
the enormous wealth of the region flows to the West, apart from
enriching themselves. The Iraq invasion only intensified these feelings
further, much as anticipated.
There are ways to deal constructively with the threat of terror, though
not those preferred by “bin Laden’s indispensable ally,” or those who
try to avoid the real world by striking heroic poses about
Islamo-fascism, or who simply claim that no proposals are made when
there are quite straightforward proposals that they do not like. The
constructive ways have to begin with an honest look in the mirror,
never an easy task, always a necessary one.
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January 2006
Talking To The Enemy Indeed (January 31, 2006)
In Iraq the U.S. is secretly talking with the 'insurgent' enemy... There will have to be actual significant policy changes by the American Empire or else -- especially when it comes to reversing Israeli apartheid and realigning American policies and interests in truly new ways, not just more rhetorical trickery and obfuscation.
Abbas, Shaath, Safieh, Fateh Officials Should Resign or Be Sacked (January 30, 2006)
The danger of fractricidal conflict and civil war in Palestine -- an under-the-table goal pursued by the Israelis for some time no matter how much they deny it -- is now greater than ever. The major figures representing the exposed and corrupt remnants of Fateh are attempting to manipulate their way one way or another to retain money, guns, and power. Rather than resigning as he should Fateh's top man, Mahmoud Abbas, is using his considerable backing from the U.S., Israel, Europe, and the Arab 'client regimes' to attempt to keep himself and his cronies in power one way or another. It is an unprecedented dangerous political poker game of bluff, counter-bluff, and chicken being played out not just in occupied Palestine but on the regional and world stages as well and with quite unpredictable results at this point. Meanwhile the Iranians are racing ahead to prepare themselves for attack, the comatose 'peace process' is all but finally declared dead, international energy supply concerns and escalating prices could trigger more conflict and economic hard-times, and the Neocon/Evangelical regime in Washington (under unprecedented assault as the second article below suggests) is desperately seeking new ways for possible salvation and resurrection before the November 2006 mid-term election even as the still hesitant impeachment movement might yet gain traction.
LAWLESS WORLD Erupting Thursday in London (January 30, 2006)
"...likely to cause a fierce new controversy on both sides of the Atlantic" the new edition of this damning book LAWLESS WORLD will not be published until Thursday in London, just hours after President Bush's State of the Union 2006 address to Congress at 9pm tomorrow. Major pressures are now building in both Washington and London to actually attempt to remove from power those who brought about the Iraq war through such chicanery and duplicity. But if the pressures really get too strong expect the tension with Iran to escalate further and maybe explode into military exchanges and/or another major 'terrorist attack' either from the pertrators most expect or from the underground manipulators connected to those in power whom many now suspect with considerable damning circumstantial evidence
Assassination Backlash - Hamas Landslide (January 26, 2006)
When the Israelis released the founder of Hamas from prison some years ago they did so because they had attempted to assassinate in Amman the man who today heads Hamas from Damascus and they needed to provide King Hussein an excuse to give them back their caught and endangered Mossad henchmen. Then, a few years later, they assassinated Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a blind paraplegic who founded Hamas in the late 1980s, as he emerged from a Gaza Mosque one morning -- this on top of an ongoing anti-Hamas assassination campaign designed to dismember and weaken 'The Islamic Resistance Movement'. The actual result however is what happened yesterday in a sea of Hamas green.
Hamas Wins Big (January 26, 2006)
There's a long history to why Hamas has been so victorious in occupied Palestine. And whatever the Israeli p.r. spin about what has happened they and the U.S. are really the midwives.
Iran Crisis (January 25, 2006)
This day was destined to come sooner or later. With the Israelis having a considerable arsenal of nuclear weapons and the ability to delivery them
tactically to the battlefield as well as strategically by submarine and airplane a gross imbalance has been there in the region for some time already. Furthermore there should be no doubt that Israel's apartheid and bloodletting policies toward the Palestinians have been a major force enflaming Arab and Muslim sentiments throughout the region; while militant neo-imperialist U.S. policies on top of the
American-Israeli alliance and the rise of Christian Fundamentalism have fueled the raging passions and led to today's imbroglio.
Hamastan Indeed (January 24, 2006)
Hamas is not taking power tomorrow in occupied Palestine; it is instead asserting power in what can be seen as a kind of historic political blowback for so many awful years of miserable corruption, gross ineptitude and dastardly co-optation by those whom the U.S., Israel, and the Arab 'client regimes' pushed so hard to date to lord over the millions of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Call it as well a kind of democratic payback for the Israeli/U.S. assassinations of the senior generation of Palestinian leaders including in recent years the founder of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and the long-time Chairman of the PLO, Yasser Arafat.
Questions About 9/11 That Don't Go Away (January 23, 2006)
So much of what is happening now in our world can be traced back to the year 2001 when Bush/Cheney and the Neocons came to power in Washington, Ariel Sharon came to power in Israel, and what we all now simply call 9/11 happened. But just what did really happen? Nagging questions not only are not going away, they are surfacing from credible people and need to be very seriously and independently investigated.
U.S. Caught In The Act In Occupied Palestine (January 22, 2006)
American credibility has rarely been lower; American duplicity has rarely been higher; and the exposure of American lies and hypocrisy has rarely been more evident than in the lead story in today's Washington Post.
Torturing Palestinians (January 21, 2006)
From MER in January 1997: Torture of Palestinians is not only routine and systematic, in it actually sanctioned by the Israeli legal system that has been twisted to serve Israeli policies. Going back to the Shinbet scandal of the early 1980's, even more sadistic forms of torture have given way to the kinds of 'legalized' torture methods outlined in this important article from one of the few independent and courageous media sources in Israel, The Alternative Information Center (AIC). Among the reasons the Israelis get away with such systematic torture of Palestinians is that hardly anyone is willing to protest. The so-called "Palestinian Authority" practices similar and even worse torture techniques, as do nearly all of the Arab governments in the region -- so they are hardly in a position to protest. And the "liberal" American Jewish community has been morally bankrupt about such issues for so long now that to speak up at this point would be to condemn themselves for permitting, and even encouraging in many cases, such Nazi-like behavior by the Israelis for decades.
"WAR on TERRORISM" - Noam Chomsky Lecture on 18 Jan (January 20, 2006)
This important lengthy lecture was delivered a few days ago in Dublin. Plus information about how to get a unique and now rare video documentary about the start of the "New World Order" -- available now exclusively from MER. At the start of Gulf War I in 1991 -- the beginnings of the Bush-era "New World Order", Noam Chomsky came to Washington and spoke to a huge overflow audience at George Washington University. This video documentary captures the entirety of his speech as well as the extensive question and answer period that followed. This documentary is essential to a serious understanding of U.S. foreign policy worldwide today. Chomsky uniquely provides the background and understanding needed to appreciate what the War in Iraq is really all about as well as the many misrepresentations and lies Washington propogates so often about the Israeli-Palestinian "Peace Process". From the back of the video by Mark Bruzonsky: "There's no one like Chomsky if you want to truly understand the realities of both U.S. policies and the overall situation in the Middle East...
Any Questions or Comments - CHAT at 12pm today (January 20, 2006)
If you hvae any Questions or Comments about this program or MER use CHAT at 12pm today (Washington, DC time)
Palestinian 'Election' Approaches...Still Maybe (January 19, 2006)
In the end it may be that the failing remnants of the disgraced 'Palestinian Authority' -- after so many years of miserable corruption and co-optation -- are now too weak and fractured to even manage to 'postpone' the long-promised Legislative election... Now the past is coming back to haunt the PA -- and their godfathers as well.
PARADISE NOW or is it PARADISE LOST? (January 18, 2006)
Though they run a far more effective propaganda network the Jewish and Zionist establishments don't always get their way and have in fact lost quite a bit of credibility and following. This article from earlier this week in The Christian Science Monitor. And we certainly hope that those in Iraq who are legitimately and so courageously standing up against the US/UK/Israeli invasion/occupation will decide to release the CSM correspondent they are holding hostage, showing that they are sophisticated enough to distinguish between hostile and friendly Christians and thereby giving hope amidst so much despair and bloodletting.
ISLAM, SEX and the INTERNET (January 17, 2006)
The cultural and emotional differences between Islam and Christianity and Judaism are considerable -- never more so than in the areas relating to women and sexuality. This interesting but not really adequate article is from today's Guardian in the UK: SEMINAL QUESTIONS - As scholars question the place of nudity in marriage, Islamic clerics are hotly debating exactly what sexual practices are acceptable, writes Brian Whitaker
The Faster March To International War (January 16, 2006)
Joining the rising chorus is a growing group of sometimes neo-con, sometimes evangelical, sometimes hustling and/or sponsored academics. They are now contributing to the growing 'New World Order' hysteria that now dominates American political life through the pages of associated magazines and newspapers. While Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson for instance is right indeed to be warning about the great dangers now immediately ahead, his analogies and heroes are so misguided and off the mark one has to wonder just who is really orchestrating and behind this kind of thing. This Ferguson article appeared over the weekend in The Telegraph published in the U.K.
Historic Anti-U.S./Israel Crucible of Hatred and Revenge (January 15, 2006)
One day Pakistan will no longer be lead by a military General empowered by the U.S and manipulated by the CIA. Remember now that today's feared Zawahiri left his Cairo medical practice to oppose the U.S. when he felt Egypt was deceived and co-opted by the U.S. Bin Laden himself, after working with the Americans to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan and working intimately with the American-sponsored Royal Family of Saudi Arabia, turned against the U.S. when American troops on top of the CIA directly occupied his country. And of course Iraq is today a country erupting as a result of U.S. occupation and destruction while Iran is a country today still rebelling after so many years of tortuous rule by the Shah and so much CIA-plotting to control that country.
INFORMATION For Persons Using This Program MiddleEast.Org (January 12, 2006)
Useful INFORMATION For Persons Using This Program always available at MiddleEast.Org/MER
What Sharon Has Wrought; and What He Has Left (January 12, 2006)
Understanding what has happened between Israel and Palestinians over the years requires not only expert analysis but considerable memory, ideological as well as political understanding, and an ability to put the historical pieces all together. Meron Benviniste's article today in Ha'aretz is of considerable help in summarizing the situation past, present, and maybe future.
Ariel Sharon - by Robert Fisk (January 6, 2006)
There are few journalists who have the knowledge and perspective of Robert Fisk. This from his recent book, footnoted at the end and highly recommended.
Chaos and Geostrategic Changes of Historic Consequences Looming (January 6, 2006)
The Year 2006 is now more ominous than ever.
Sharon's Huge Legacy (January 5, 2006)
Sharon's legacy is overwhelming, and not for the positive
MER Mark Bruzonsky on Channel 5 Evening News Tonight in Washington, DC area (January 4, 2006)
MER Mark Bruzonsky on Channel 5 Evening News Tonight in Washington, DC area
Sharon - 'significant stroke' reported tonight in Israel (January 4, 2006)
Sharon - 'significant stroke' reported tonight in Israel
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