Terror and Tyranny

[Nur]

Terror and tyranny

 

What powerful states call terrorism may be an inevitable response to injustice

 

Seumas Milne

Thursday October 25, 2001

The Guardian

 

For a war that, in the words of US Vice-President Dick Cheney, " may never end", the enemy is proving embarrassingly hard to define. Of course, we know all about Osama bin Laden, supposed mastermind of the twin towers attacks, and his Taliban protectors, and we have become ominously aware of the demands from within the US administration that Iraq be brought into the frame. But this campaign is intended to be something grander still. The bombs and missiles now raining down on Afghanistan have been proclaimed as the curtain-raiser of a war against terror itself, which will not cease until the scourge of political violence is dealt with once and for all. The days of toleration for any form of terrorism from Baghdad to Ballymurphy are, it is said, now over. British ministers may mutter that the war is aimed at al-Qaida and the Taliban alone - but then they are not in charge.

 

Yet for all the square-jawed resolution on display in western capitals about the prosecution of this war, there is little agreement even within the heart of the coalition about what terrorism actually means. Both the EU and the UN are struggling to come up with an acceptable definition. The European Commission has produced a formulation so broad it would include anti-globalisation protesters who smash McDonald's windows; while Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, warned wearily that reaching a consensus would be well-nigh impossible since "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". President Bush has pledged that the war will not cease so long as "anybody is terrorising established governments" and Britain's latest terrorism legislation outlaws support for groups opposing any regime, including an illegal one, with violence.

 

Pacifists apart, however, virtually everyone across the political spectrum supports terrorism in practice - or, rather, what passes for terrorism under the rubric being promulgated by western chancelleries. The transformation from terrorist to respected statesman has become a cliche of the international politics of the past 50 years, now being replayed in Northern Ireland. Almost every society, philosophy and religion has recognised the right to take up arms against tyranny or foreign occupation. In History Will Absolve Me, his 1953 trial speech after the abortive Moncada barracks attack, Fidel Castro reels off a string of thinkers and theologians - from Thomas Aquinas and John Salisbury to John Calvin and Thomas Paine - who defended the right to rebel against despots. In modern times, few would question the heroism or justice of the wartime resistance to the Nazis or of armed rebellions against British or French colonial rule, all damned as terrorists by those they fought.

 

More recently still, the US government trained and funded the armed contra rebellion against Nicaragua - ably assisted by John Negroponte, the current US ambassador to the UN and in defiance of the international court in the Hague. Along with its faithful British ally, the US also backed the Afghan mojahedin (even before the Soviet intervention), as it is now funding opposition groups waging bombing campaigns in Iraq. So the Bush administration's problem with terrorism is evidently not about breaking the state's monopoly of violence.

 

The right to resist occupation is in any case recognised under international law and the Geneva convention, which is one reason why routine western denunciations of Palestinian violence ring so utterly hollow. Having failed to dislodge the Israeli occupation after 34 years or implement the UN decision to create a Palestinian state after 54 years, there are few reasonable grounds to complain if those living under the occupation fight back. But the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian, which last week assassinated Israel's racist tourism minister in response to the Israeli assassination of its leader in August, is officially regarded as a terrorist organisation by the US government, which has now successfully pressured the Palestinian leadership to ban its military wing.

 

The tendency in recent years, encouraged by the scale of last month's atrocity in New York, has been to define terrorism increasingly in terms of methods and tactics - particularly the targeting of civilians - rather than the status of those who carry it out. Such an approach has its own difficulties. Liberation movements which most would balk at branding terrorist, including the ANC and the Algerian FLN, attacked civilian targets - as so mesmerisingly portrayed in Pontecorvo's film Battle of Algiers. But more problematic for western governments is the way such arguments can be turned against them. The concept of modern terrorism derives, after all, from the French revolution, where terror was administered by the state - as it is today by scores of governments around the world.

 

If paramilitary groups become terrorists because they kill or injure civilians, what of those states which bomb television stations, bridges and power stations, train and arm death squads or authorise assassinations? After days when hundreds of Afghan civilians are reported to have died as a result of Anglo-American bombardment - while hundreds of thousands are fleeing for their lives - Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's remark that the aim was to "frighten" the other side couldn't have more sharply posed the paradox of terror.

 

In his City of God, Saint Augustine tells a story about an encounter between Alexander the Great (the last ruler successfully to garrison Afghanistan) and a pirate captain he had caught on the high seas. Ordering the pirate to heave to, Alexander demands: "How dare you molest the seas as a pirate?" "How dare you molest the whole world?" retorts the plucky pirate. "I have a small boat, so I am called a thief and a pirate. You have a great navy, so you are called an emperor, and can call other men pirates." Substitute terrorist or rogue state for pirate and the episode neatly encapsulates the morality of the new world order.

 

Political violence emerges when other avenues are closed. Where people suffer oppression, are denied a peaceful route to justice and social change and have exhausted all other tactics - the point the ANC reached in the early 1960s - they are surely entitled to use force. That does not apply to adventurist and socially disconnected groups like Baader Meinhof or the Red Brigades, nor does it deal with the question of whether such force is advisable or likely to be counter-productive. Islamist "jihad" groups, especially networks like al-Qaida with a "global reach" and a religious ideology impervious to accommodation, are considered by many to be beyond any normal calculus of repression and resistance. Certainly, the September 11 atrocity was an unprecedented act of non-state terror. But such groups are also unquestionably the product of conditions in the Arab and Muslim world for which both Britain and the US bear a heavy responsibility, through their unswerving support of despotic regimes for over half a century. It was precisely that blockage of democratic development that led to the failure of secular politics, which in turn paved the way for the growth of Islamist radicalism. Groups like al-Qaida offer no future to the Muslim world, but Bin Laden and his supporters have their boots sunk deep in a swamp of grievance. As the assault on Afghanistan continues, no one should delude themselves that cutting off

head or destroying its Afghan lair will put an end to this eruption.

 

Roots of Terror

[Nur]

Let's Admit It: It is Evilness for the Sake of Evilness

 

Gilad Atzmon

 

There is a trend amongst us all, the critical voices of Israel and Zionism. Time after time we compare Israel to the Third Reich; we equate the IDF to the Wehrmacht, we find a resemblance between the Israeli Air Force's tactics to the blitz technique of the Luftwafe, we occasionally associate Sharon's and Olmert's war crimes with those of Hitler. I myself have fallen into this very trap more than once. But I have now made up my mind. This fashion of speaking must be stopped once and for all.

 

To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Zio-centric discourse. To regard Hitler as the wickedest man and the Third Reich as the embodiment of evilness is to let Israel off the hook. To compare Olmert to Hitler is to provide Israel and Olmert with a metaphorical moral shield. It maintains Hitler at the lead and allows Olmert to stay in the tail.

 

My mother, indeed a very clever woman, challenged me a long time ago asking: " Tell me Gilad, why is it that you and your friends always compare Israel to the Nazis? Isn't Israel bad enough? " At the time I found her remark rather amusing, but my mother's cynical instinct was more than correct. Israel is indeed bad enough. Israel has already established a unique interpretation of the notion of wickedness that has managed to surpass any other evil. It is about time we internalize the fact that Israel and Zionism are the ultimate Evil with no comparison.

 

And if this is not enough, unlike Nazism that belongs to the past, Zionism's wickedness is a crime which is still unfolding and worsening. Chavez obviously has the absolute right to say what he said, yet I have to remind the adorable Venezuelan president that Hitler has never flattened a country for no reason at all, and this is exactly what the Israelis have been doing in Lebanon for four weeks already and in Gaza for years and years. Looking at the carnage and the devastation in Lebanon doesn't leave any room for doubt. The current Israeli brutality is nothing but evilness for the sake of evilness. Retribution that knows no mercy. Israel is a devastating collective resurrection of the Biblical Samson. It is a modern representation of the man who kills women, children and the elderly, the Hebraic victorious master of blind indiscriminate retaliation.

 

For years, politically correct liberals who present themselves as leftists have been insisting upon telling us that Israeli aggression should be understood in expansionist colonial terms. This line of thinking is still promoted by more than a few Jewish peace activists around the world. The reason is simple: As long as Israel is a colonialist state, then the archaic 19th century Marxist orthodox paradigm can be applied to the conflict. Moreover, if Israel is indeed an expansionist colonial regional force, then nothing is categorically wrong with the Israelis; they are just like the British were, but 150 years too late.

 

Nonsense! The above dated interpretation is fundamentally wrong and deliberately misleading. Moreover, it is not applicable anymore, not even as a Judeo-centric PC fig leaf. Watching the devastation the Israeli Air Force has left in its wake, looking at the death and carnage in Lebanon doesn't leave any room for doubt. It has nothing to do with colonialism or expansionism.

 

Hence, there is no room for comparison between Israel and the Nazis. If a comparison is to be made, then it is the Israelis who win the championship of ruthlessness and the reasons are obvious. Nazi Germany was a tyranny, Israel is a democracy led by a center-left national unity government. While we do not have any formal objective tool to determine the German people's approval of Nazi crimes ( in the first place, Germans were not informed about Nazi homicidal crimes. Secondly, there was no objective independent poll system active in Germany at the time ), the Israelis collectively approve their government's crimes in Lebanon and this fact is overwhelmingly documented in more than a few polls.

 

By now, every Arab knows that the Israeli Army isn't that glamorous anymore. In fact the photos of the Israeli military boot left on Lebanese soil says it all. In this war, it is the Israeli soldier who is taking off his military boots and running away for his life. Does Israel want to secure its populated centers? Surely it has achieved the very opposite. The more Israel hits Lebanon's infrastructure, the greater are the barrages of missiles that are falling on Israeli cities. In fact, it is just a question of time before Tel Aviv gets a glimpse into the notion of life in Gaza and Beirut. Indeed Israel has no plan or strategy; instead it practices the lowest form of collective barbarian zeal. The Israelis demolish for the sake of demolishing. Israel is indeed an evil with no comparison.

 

Yet, we have to admit that Nazis were pretty good in provoking some international outrage. Not many loved Hitler beyond the Germanic world (and the English aristocracy). Israeli cannibalism, on the other hand, is adored by some Western leaders, and it is Blair, Bush and even Merkel who are afraid to stand up to Zionist barbarism. While Nazism was defeated 12 years after it took power, Zionist brutality is a snowball of repulsive anger that knows no boundaries and no end. It rolls over the West and recruits the most morally deteriorated forces around, whether they are Blair and his ilk or some radical American Christian fundamentalists. Zionism aims at turning our planet into a bloody battlefield.

 

It is about time to get out of the closet and to say it all loudly. Israel and Zionism endanger our world. It isn't just Lebanon, Palestine and the Arabs who suffer. It is now Britain and America that are dragged into an idiotic war.

 

It is the entire West that is asked to rescue what the Israelis left out of Lebanon. We all have to de-Zionise ourselves before it is too late. We have to admit that Israel is the ultimate evil rather than Nazi Germany.

 

Abe Foxman and the ADL are correct for a change, we all need a reality check. We should never compare Israel to Nazi Germany. As far as evilness is concerned, we should now let Israel take the lead.

 

- Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military .

[Viking]

It is true, they are getting away with much more than Nazi Germany did, and with almost no condemnation. Until today, Jews who survived the Holocaust visit schools and educate youngsters on the evils of the Third Reich but no Jews go around in schools condemning Zionism. How would Israel be perceived in 50 years? Would there still be as much spin in the media? Or will their role as the regional bully and agressor change as soon as the USA starts declining and losing it's "superpower status"?

[Castro]

I'm stunned an article like this would be published by anyone. Do you have the source sheikh Nurow? What courage this man has.

[Nur]

Viking bro.

 

You question:

 

How would Israel be perceived in 50 years?

 

 

Well, not very good, as the world becomes closer and closer ( the net) information will be shared faster than ever, exposing the hidden agendas the Zionist owned media was hiding all these years, and then, the whole world will realize how much deception and evil has taken place behind their own backyards.

 

 

Castro bro.

 

Here is the source

 

Nur

[Captain Xalane]

The world only knows one terrorist and that is the US and its so called allies and the rest are just a pple who stand up to their aggression.They speak of an injustice that is done to some 200 pple and massacre thousands of pple in cold blood in the name of democracy.Anyways,the americans war on terror is nothing but the american war on the third world.The below video is a nice watch in regards to the empire's war on the rest of the world.

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3453261789658676035&q=war+on+the+third+world&hl=en

[Nur]

Sins of Statecraft: The War on Terror Exposed

 

Theories on Militarism, and Prospects for Transformation

 

By Brian Bogart

 

07/29/06 "ICH" -- Few things are more crucial to our global situation today than a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental habits and recent overtly aggressive trend present in United States foreign policy. To achieve such requires a look into the long-standing tradition of creating external threats to conceal unsavory imperial operations conducted elsewhere in the world. This paper includes an examination of the US-USSR Cold War and the so-called “war on terror” as covers for expansion of imperialism, and 9-11 in the context of provoked and internally engineered first strikes throughout American history, devoting much of its contents to theories on militarism and post-World War II influence on policymaking - how and why those in power do what they do.

 

The reasons for the use of the long-standing instruments of fear and militarism in the cause of navigating the contours and undulations of the Cold War are revealed in the context of the post-Cold War “war on terror,” which employs the same rhetoric and means of manipulation. Such revelations are not limited to identical methods, but spring forth from statements voiced by the manipulators themselves. A recent example (among many) came from the wife of Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, founder of the Committee for the Free World, and cofounder of a plethora of single-minded think tanks ranging from the second incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation, Coalition for a Democratic Majority, to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). In a 2004 Los Angeles interview, Decter stated, “ We’re not in the Middle East to bring sweetness and light to the world. We’re there to get something we and our friends in Europe depend on. Namely, oil .”

 

Statements like these surface after years, even decades, of manipulations that use very different and far more publicly palatable rhetoric to arrive at the tipping point when pretexts “to get” what manipulators want are achieved and exploited.

 

Regarding methods, again reflecting undulations in tensions between presidents and individuals acting in groups to influence policy - groups whose objectives invariably have little or nothing to do with democracy and the welfare of the American people - a clear pattern of self-serving interests emerges from the comparison of the ascendancy of 32 CPD members to posts in the pro-Cold War Reagan administration with the ascendancy of a roughly similar number of PNAC members to posts in the pro-“war on terror” Bush administration. Though the precise reasons have somewhat varied between the end of World War II and today, they have in common the convergent interests of such influential groups with likeminded groups outside the US, who together stood to gain from imperial ambitions pursued under the cloak of American projection of force as a response to the well-fashioned threats of “communist enslavement” and “international terrorism” respectively.

 

All of this is and has been about control of Central Asia and counteracting or inhibiting Russian and Chinese moves to control its resources. As Zbigniew Brzezinski observes, “For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia.... Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America’s primacy.” Importantly, he adds, “Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat,”[ii] a statement that should be understood in the context of one made earlier in his book: “The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.”[iii]

 

Daniel Yergin identified two axioms of Soviet intentions that led up to the creation and eventual adoption in 1950 of the most important foreign policy document of the last 56 years, NSC-68: the Riga axiom of belligerency (a militarized version of George Kennan’s early, hostile viewpoints while stationed in Riga and Moscow before and during World War II) and the Yalta axiom (based on the greater understanding achieved at the Yalta Conference with regard to postwar visions that would employ cooperation, compromise, and face-to-face diplomacy).[iv] While in 1945 great strides were being made under the Yalta axiom in Moscow meetings with Joseph Stalin, at home the Yalta axiom was under attack from an inner circle of State Department officials who recognized an economic opportunity in the vacuum left by the fall of the Third Reich and the exhaustion of old European powers. Notably, many in this inner circle that would later trumpet the adoption of NSC-68 had worked together in Wall Street investment firms, served in high military positions, or were otherwise intimately connected to the corporate web from which they stood to reap massive profits in a heightened military state. These State Department officials, projecting the Riga axiom, insisted that Russia was an aggressive totalitarian power bent on world conquest, contradicting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessments.[v] Thus, between 1946 and late 1950 the Yalta axiom came to be rejected by a confused and pliant President Truman, setting in motion a lucrative tragedy and an escalating trend that continues to this day.[vi]

 

Two points illustrated by Jerry Sanders’ book, Peddlers of Crisis, are useful in understanding manipulation. Firstly, NSC-68, while presented as a military strategy in response to an imminent threat, was in reality an economic strategy requiring military buildup to suggest that a threat existed. Secondly, CPD was formed by supporters of NSC-68 to manipulate the public and Congress into embracing NSC-68’s recommendations. NSC-68 itself, drafted in January 1950 and signed by Truman in April 1950, was not enough to persuade, nor was the advent of the Korean War in June 1950. Only after CPD was formed and issued a series of media statements, followed by echoing statements from President Truman in December 1950, did the public and Congress perceive a threat grave enough to motivate the adoption of NSC-68’s recommendations for “a three-fold increase in military spending on nuclear and conventional forces - a bold program of rearmament.”[vii] In April 1950, when NSC-68 was signed, four months after Truman had approved the hydrogen bomb program, the US possessed some 500 atomic weapons and was producing them at the rate of four per week, while the Soviets had only recently tested their first atomic bomb and possessed at most a dozen such weapons.[viii]

 

This perception - or deception - highlights the thesis of this study: that the US majority acquiesces to an aggressive arrogance arising whenever the three spheres of financial, military, and political powers fall into the hands of an elite self-serving minority that is highly influential through media, lobbying, one-on-one persuasion, and key connections within these spheres.

 

As NSC-68 reveals in its own language, and as revealed in the statements of its supporters, the notion of an external threat (in this case, the Soviet Union) was required to maintain US-European trade advantages gained from World War II. The illusion of a Soviet threat in Europe was key to preventing European trade partners from ratifying the prevailing desire among Soviets and Europeans alike for a neutralist trade environment, while the external threat in the US was necessary to persuade the public and Congress into acceptance of NSC-68’s huge defense budget increases, ostensibly to provide protection, but in reality to legitimize the threat and produce economic growth both in the US and Europe (whereas growth in Europe meant more growth in the US).[ix]

 

In other words, the threat was not as real as NSC-68’s economic goals, but only the threat could achieve those goals, and only through exaggeration. NSC-68 was therefore an offensive strategy disguised as a defense against “communist enslavement.” The resulting new foreign policy of what Sanders calls Containment Militarism, adopted by Truman (and which should not be confused with the conventional notion generated from the term “containment policy”), consisted of a structure that grew and prevails today, requiring new external threats to maintain today’s US-global trade advantages, mainly produced in the intervening years (and previously) through imperial coercion. Thus, the degree of deceit necessary to sway public opinion also grew, often employing first strikes against Western assets both to satisfy this demand for acceptance/acquiescence, and to serve as pretexts for the placement of forces in geostrategic regions and approval of finances necessary to sustain key areas of the structure.

 

Today this geostrategy is directly linked to the predicted peak in world oil production. Since lucrative control of renewable resources is much more difficult to concentrate in the hands of a few, Western nations have chosen to maintain their immediate investments and establish supremacy over remaining energy reserves by supporting US foreign policy, though they have little choice but to acquiesce and follow US policy because of the strength of its military. In any event, the exaggeration of threats in the “war on communism” have given way to more virulent preemptive and preventive policies in the “war on terror” that represent a trend far more devastating to American founding principles and produce a danger to global security on a scale not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

Between 1798 and 2004, the United States conducted 322 operations involving US forces abroad, not counting covert operations, disaster relief, and routine alliance stationing and training exercises.[x] 153 of these occurred between 1946 and 2004, and have dramatically increased in frequency decade by decade. This astounding number represents the most prolific global projection of power by any empire in history. Even worse, no nation in modern times has worked so hard to kill independence movements, and the US has routinely done so in the name of freedom and democracy.

 

In The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Threat, published in 1979, Alan Wolfe states that, “Without a sharply negative view of an enemy, it is difficult to justify an activist foreign policy.”[xi] He rightly suggested that “postwar American policy has gone through two peaks, two valleys, and now seems to be entering a third peak,” with a peak being a US assertion of strength against Soviet ideology represented by an increased defense budget or interventions and symbolic displays such as moving the American fleet. For the first peak, Wolfe pointed to the period from the end of World War II to the early 1950s, particularly the decision to build the hydrogen bomb and the issuance of NSC-68, the blueprint for every belligerent strategy report issued by the Pentagon under the Bush administration, and similar documents drafted by Paul Wolfowitz and PNAC prior to the ascendancy of George W. Bush to the presidency. The second peak began in 1957 with the Gaither Report and culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The third peak began in 1976 with the Team B Report, authorized by then CIA director George Bush Sr.; the resulting push for intelligence community reform; and the reappearance of CPD, which flooded the media with false notions of an impending Soviet first strike.[xii] (Paul Nitze was instrumental in all three peaks as primary author of each of the three belligerent documents.)

 

It could be argued that a third valley arrived with the collapse of the Soviet Union, so sudden as to deflate and disappoint such staunch neoconservatives as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. When asked in 1990 why he had stopped writing, Podhoretz lamented that he had lost his compass and no longer knew what to think, humorously noting that Kristol had moved all the way to Washington just as “the spirit blew out of the Beltway.”[xiii] However, as Stephen Cohen argues below, the US-USSR Cold War never ended. Indeed, the consistent belligerent and bipartisan condescension of US foreign policy toward Russia since 1991 is indicative of deep-rooted and fundamental flaws that have plagued the US majority in the form of an aggressive arrogance that arises whenever financial, military, and political powers fall into the hands of a negative-activist minority. (I apply the term “negative” to signify the decidedly self-serving and willful use of violence in the process of manipulating the majority.)

 

Stephen Blank, professor and expert on Russia at the US Army War College, states: “The obvious implication of current policy is that NATO under US leadership will become an international policeman and hegemon in the Trans-Caspian, and define the limits of Russian participation in the region’s expected oil boom.”[xiv]

 

Immediately after 9-11, Vladimir Putin promised support for Bush’s “war on terror,” with the caveat that NATO cease its eastward push. Bush agreed, and just as immediately set about pushing NATO eastward. Professor Stephen Cohen of NYU points out that (thus) the Cold War never ended, and with the US today openly stating that Georgia and Ukraine are to become NATO partners, with US troops present - and with Putin having drawn the line with Ukraine, as Russia subsidizes much of Ukraine’s economy - a new and very real tension has risen once again between the two largest possessors of nuclear arms. (In fact, a US warship and 200 Marines were chased out of the Russian province of Crimea just weeks ago by a massive group of protesters.)[xv]

 

Implicit in the above is that the illusion or projection of Cold War triumphalism asserted under the Clinton and Bush II administrations has lent additional leverage to those negative activists who were already seeking global supremacy and a new external threat in the wake of the Cold War. (While Russians saw the end of the Cold War as an agreement between East and West, negative-activists in the US declared a triumph of “freedom and democracy” over a “tyrannical regime.”)

 

Moreover, for the average American, the valleys described by Alan Wolfe - the mid 1950s, the 1960s and early 1970s (and the Clinton years) - seemed to offer hope, but a sustained increase in general prosperity that a shift away from the spending of a national security state and toward domestic growth never arrived. Such a shift would have required a sincere and sustained investment in the rise of an international justice system, and the removal of US military forces from around the world. Persistent extremists in elite US foreign policy circles did all they could through these valleys to see that this would never happen; America was the only true force for good in the world, they argued, and had “a duty” to project that force - with heavy emphasis on “force.”

 

The United States has shipped much its infrastructural technology and economic wealth to Japan, South Korea, Germany, and elsewhere in exchange for its continued overseas military presence and expansion, some of it due to an obsession with roots in the racisms of 19th century Manifest Destiny, all of it due to a determination to control the economic affairs of the world through intimidation rather than chart an equitable new course: “Indeed, if there is one common thread running from 1945 to the present, it is the ever-widening sphere of American containment of an unruly world, with no end in sight.”[xvi]

 

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Cold War with the Soviet Union was less about confrontation between two superpowers and more about two superpowers ultimately exploiting the illusion of confrontation for domestic and global ventures of a profitable nature. For Soviet leaders, this illusion permitted the resolution and consolidation of its internal difficulties, most prominently rooted in its multiculturalism. Its borders grew more secure, and the suppression of dissent became easier. For the United States, exploiting the “threat of Soviet communism” in Europe fostered its wider economic command in European and global affairs. There were actually three cold wars, two of which are still raging: in East Asia, and in Latin America. The United States found this “threat” convenient in both of these regions, lending an easy excuse for basing its troops in East Asia - which again goes back to America’s historic obsession with China - and providing a distracting cover for long-standing exploits in Latin America, installing dictators to allow American fruit companies and other businesses to perpetually exploit the land while indigenous farmers suffer immensely.[xvii] In fact, the best thing that ever happened to help cover the United States’ imperial ambitions in Latin America was the rise of Fidel Castro, allowing the US to point to the “spread of communism” and thus legitimize military operations, particularly under President Reagan, which in nearly every case targeted and killed the rise of national independence efforts, also known as democracy movements.[xviii]

 

As an undergraduate recipient of Oregon’s most prestigious award for overseas study in Japan, and as a graduate with honors in Japanese history, I was shocked to learn only after creating my nontraditional independent masters degree program in Peace Studies how the transfer of power in Korea, from Japanese to American hands in September 1945, held in place much of the divisive Japanese colonial structure and kept in power Koreans who had sided with the Japanese, thus alienating nearly all Koreans and serving to thwart attempts at reunified independence to allow occupation by US forces to this day - a shameful trend repeated in Vietnam and countless locations throughout recent history.[xix]

 

If we for a moment equate occupation with terrorism rather than the one-sided equating of anti-occupation movements with terrorism, another advantage of using terrorism is illustrated by Harvard Professor Stephen Rose (director of the Olin Institute, a primary funding source for extremist think tanks): “The maximum amount of force can and should be used as quickly as possible for psychological impact - to demonstrate that the empire cannot be challenged with impunity. We are in the business of bringing down hostile governments and creating governments favorable to us. Imperial wars end, but imperial garrisons must be left in place for decades to ensure order and stability.”[xx]

 

To approach an understanding of the nature of US foreign policy, it is useful to begin with an assessment of arguably the most crucial juncture in policymaking between the end of World War II and the present: a period spanning the mid 1970s to the early 1980s.

 

Let us, therefore, back up to the subject of Midge Decter and husband Norman Podhoretz for the sake of highlighting once again their true objectives. Podhoretz’s end-of-the-Cold-War lament did not last long, and indeed both he and his wife had apparently overlooked the solution to their need for a new external threat, which was present through a simple reorientation of a tactic laid out in the 1979 Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism they had attended. (This recount is best served with a brief discussion of the years leading up to 1979, most of which is common knowledge.)

 

In 1974, when Gerald Ford took over for Richard Nixon in the White House after Watergate, Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld insisted that Ford appoint Dick Cheney as Assistant to the President. Ford had no idea who Cheney was, but under the pressure of Rumsfeld’s insistence, Ford approved Cheney’s appointment.

 

The following year, on November 4, 1975, Rumsfeld and Cheney executed the infamous Halloween Massacre, persuading Ford to severely reduce the powers of the pro-détente, anti-Cold War Henry Kissinger, limit the role of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, and most importantly, replace the proud Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William Colby with the extremely anti-détente and pro-Cold War oil man George Bush Sr. Rumsfeld also bumped himself up to Secretary of Defense, and Cheney moved up to Rumsfeld’s old position of White House Chief of Staff.[xxi]

 

This set the stage for devastating intelligence reforms and the eventual return of brutal policies in the CIA that had been drastically curtailed after Watergate, Vietnam, and other sins of statecraft.

 

Each year the CIA produces National Intelligence Estimates (NIE), and William Colby had staunchly defended their veracity in showing that the Soviet Union urgently sought parity through diplomacy (as it had all along), was in severe decline economically, and strongly desired an end to the Cold War. The NIE produced in 1976 showed precisely this, but the new DCI George Bush Sr. called for an independent team of outside analysts to challenge his CIA’s own findings. Far from independent, each member of this group, called Team B, was closely tied to the defense industry and all were extreme anti-Soviet, anti-détente, pro-Cold War hawks. Members included Paul Nitze, who had authored the scariest documents throughout the Cold War, indeed had officially launched the Cold War with his NSC-68 (while serving in the State Department as Director of Policy Planning), and Paul Wolfowitz, Nitze’s protégé, who has since produced the scariest post-Cold War documents.

 

Dissenting views were allowed in NIE in the form of footnotes, and the most prolific writer of dissenting footnotes in the NIE of 1976 was General George Keegan.[xxii] Keegan had a history of creating pretexts, among them the Northwoods plan (below), and the “death ray scare” of the early 1970s designed to build public and military opposition to détente. Keegan also had close ties, in the religious fundamentalist sense, with Jack Kemp, Gary Bauer, General Daniel O. Graham, and many other figures prominent in the rise of interventionist policy after Team B.[xxiii]

 

Team B did not challenge any facts whatsoever, but simply embarrassed the youthful CIA team by alleging with great skill and flourish that the Soviets were building fantastical new weapons in preparation for a first strike. In any event, the outcome was that Bush used Team B’s perspective to reform the entire basis for assessing Soviet capabilities, so that henceforth NIE were based not on facts (a.k.a. intelligence) but on imagined potential.

 

The results, coupled with increasing pressure from the reincarnated CPD, forced the incoming President Carter to adopt a hard-line foreign policy to the extent that by 1980 he was so strongly outgunned by pro-Cold War people within the intelligence community and the Pentagon, as well as within his own administration, that he announced in his State of the Union address precisely what had been put before him rather than what he may have believed or desired.

 

Chronologically digressing for a moment to provide useful background, among the previous sins of statecraft in US history were Operation Northwoods and Operation Mongoose of 1962, two parts of one plan designed with help from both General Keegan and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Lyman Lemnitzer. Northwoods was a plan to target American citizens in several cities and put the blame on Cuba, serving as a pretext for invasion of Cuba. (President Kennedy rejected the plan, and some contend that this rejection led Keegan, Lemnitzer, E. Howard Hunt, and others to plot his assassination.) In the declassified Northwoods documents, suggestions also include building a plane that looked like a Cuban MIG fighter jet to shoot down a chartered US commercial plane filled with students flying over Cuba on their way to a Caribbean holiday; staging a military strike on the US base at Guantanamo dressed as Cuban soldiers; and flying a remote-controlled commercial plane over Miami and using a fake Cuban MIG fighter to shoot it down in broad daylight for the American public to witness.

 

I pause to mention this because pretexts such as these have been used throughout US history, and represent the rising trend - from national to international - of organized assertions of combined powers of influence exercised in the hands of a negative-activist minority upon the majority in the form of terrorism. First strikes on US assets have served as pretexts for almost every major war in which it was involved . Even in its struggle for independence from Britain, rebels in 1770 engineered a first strike against colonists, called the Boston Massacre, to galvanize public opinion and demonize an enemy. In extremely organized fashion, British soldiers were provoked into killing five colonists - a pivotal event leading to the War of Independence. Boston revolutionaries under the leadership of Samuel Adams portrayed the event as a “cold-blooded slaughter of defensive colonists revealing England as murderous and oppressive,” and “proof that there was no alternative to war.”[xxiv] The findings of deep research into actual details of this event as noted in Nafeez Ahmed’s The War on Truth are both startling and instructive in understanding the efficiency of such methods.

 

Widely praised as the best critique of the official inquiry into 9-11, the final chapter of The War on Truth illustrates America’s legacy of arranging first strikes against itself to establish new external threats, to legitimize these threats in the minds of congressional leaders, and to galvanize public sentiment for war. Executive director of Britain’s Institute for Policy Research and Development, Ahmed highlights Professor John McMurtry’s explanation of such events as follows:

 

Shocking attacks on symbols of American power as a pretext for aggressive war is, in fact, an old and familiar pattern of the American corporate state…with an attendant corporate media frenzy focusing all public attention on the Enemy to justify the next transnational mass murder. Throughout there is one constant to this long record of hoodwinking the American public into bankrolling ever rising military expenditures and periodic wars for corporate treasure…to provide the pretext and the public rage to launch wars of aggression against convenient and weaker enemies by which very major and many-leveled gains are achieved for the US corporate-military complex.

 

Ahmed’s final chapter describes how such methods were systematically applied to the Mexican-American War, and by the sinking of the Maine, which sparked the Spanish-American War; the sinking of the Lusitania, which ultimately brought the US into World War I; Pearl Harbor, with overwhelming evidence that the Japanese attack was deliberately provoked and allowed to occur to generate public support for entry into World War II; Operation Northwoods, the rejected plan to carry out acts of terrorism within US cities designed to spark a war with Cuba; and the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an official lie that succeeded as a pretext for US expansion of the Vietnam War.[xxv] In this context, Ahmed points out, “it is perfectly reasonable to consider the possibility that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were the outcome of the same sort of geostrategic thinking - rooted in long-standing political, social, and economic forms - that gave rise to previous US operations along a similar framework.”

 

Now back to 1979, the year that international terrorism found a new incarnation through consolidation of converging interests and the “war on terror” was conceived. (Its conception was necessarily followed by a process of maturation: first applied to the Cold War and in rhetoric within limited theaters, such as in Latin America and the Palestine-Israel situation; second in the post-Cold War formulation of a global “war on terror” plan during the 1990s; and third in its implementation after 9-11.) On January 21, 1979, 170 admirals and generals published a letter to President Carter in major US newspapers, calling for US military superiority over the Soviet Union, the recognition of Israel’s strategic value and the reinforcement of its military capabilities, and a final renunciation of détente. The organizers of this campaign were the previously mentioned General Lemnitzer, the Operation Northwoods Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman from the early 1960s; General Daniel O. Graham, a major Team B participant; and General Keegan, the second half of the Northwoods leftovers and the footnote man from the 1976 NIE.[xxvi]

 

Around June of 1979, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The United States launched a covert operation to bolster anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan at least six months before the 1979 Soviet invasion of that country. We did not push the Russians into invading, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.”[xxvii] The US had actively recruited Afghan warlords to form terrorist groups along the northern border, forcing the USSR to conduct a full-scale invasion in December to counter the US destabilization program. Among the methods used by the US in this program was the production and distribution of textbooks to schools (madrassas) promoting the war-values of murder and fanaticism, fostering a generation steeped in violence.

 

The US government ‘in collusion with Pakistan’s leaders took abusive advantage of the opportunity…to rule out the creation of any responsible and independent organization among Afghans…in complete disregard to the Afghan people’s sovereignty and sacrifices.’[xxviii]

 

In other words, the United States once again crushed a democratic uprising, resulting in the occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet forces, and allowing the US to form its own resistance group against the occupation. This is where the bin Laden family became deeply involved. The family helped fund the rebellion, and enthusiastically supported Osama bin Laden’s decision to join the struggle.

 

Between July 2 and July 5, 1979, in Nafeez Ahmed’s words from The War on Truth, citing Philip Paull’s brilliant 1982 thesis on the organized reinvention of international terrorism,

 

“ a group of powerful elites from various countries gathered at an international conference in Jerusalem to promote and exploit the idea of ‘international terrorism.’ The (Jerusalem) conference (on International Terrorism, or JCIT) established the ideological foundations for the ‘war on terror.’ JCIT’s defining theme was that international terrorism constituted an organized political movement whose ultimate origin was in the Soviet Union. All terrorist groups were ultimately products of, and could be traced back to, this single source, which - according to the JCIT - provided financial, military, and logistical assistance to disparate terrorist movements around the globe. The mortal danger to Western security and democracy posed by the worldwide scope of this international terrorist movement required an appropriate worldwide anti-terrorism offensive, consisting of the mutual coordination of Western military intelligence services ”[xxix]

 

The nonexistent target of this antiterrorist program leads us to ask what the real target was.

 

According to former State Department official Richard Barnet, the inflation of Soviet-sponsored ‘international terrorism’ was useful precisely for demonizing threats to the prevailing US-dominated capitalist economic system.[ xxx]

 

It is crucial to identify the architects of the JCIT’s terrorism project. Thanks to Philip Paull, we know they were, “present and former members of the Israeli and United States governments, new right politicians, high-ranking former United States and Israeli intelligence officers, the anti-détente, pro-Cold War group associated with the policies of Senator Henry M. Jackson - a group of neoconservative journalists and intellectuals - and reactionary British and French politicians and publicists.” Among prominent individuals who participated were Menachem Begin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, and George Bush Sr. (The aforementioned anti-détente, pro-Cold War group associated with the policies of Senator Henry Jackson are well known to be Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Robert Kagan, Charles Horner, and James Woolsey, to name a few.)[xxxi]

 

Importantly, Paull’s thesis includes the entire list of the JCIT participants, many of them intimately connected to the 1976 Team B assault on National Intelligence Estimates and to CPD. Participants from the United States at this conference, arranged by Benjamin Netanyahu and George Bush Sr., were neoconservative organizers Norman Podhoretz and his wife Midge Decter (CPD), Senator John Danforth, Professor Joseph Bishop, General George Keegan (Team B), Ray Cline (former CIA deputy director who had assisted with Operation Northwoods, and director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies), Jack Kemp (CPD), Lane Kirkland (CPD’s connection to the AFL-CIO), journalist George Will, nuclear physicist and staunch Cold War hawk Edward Teller, Richard Pipes (Team B, CPD), Bayard Rustin (CPD’s connection to the A. Philip Randolph Institute), Professor Thomas Schelling (RAND), Ben Wattenberg (CPD), Claire Sterling, and Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson. Participants also came from Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, West Germany, Canada, Ireland, and the largest contingency was comprised of Israeli military, government, and intelligence service personnel. The bulk of the international representatives not from Israel and the US were media propagandists long connected to covert operations.[xxxii]

 

In 1981, some of the conference attendees published books, including Claire Sterling’s The Terror Network, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s International Terrorism Challenge and Response: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, asserting the existence of this Soviet-backed threat.

 

For a decade or more, the United States government, like the governments of most Western powers, was largely silent on the question of Soviet complicity in international terrorism. Beginning in about 1979, and culminating in 1981 with the publication of Claire Sterling’s book, The Terror Network, the evidence that the Soviet Union had provided substantial supplies and training to a broad spectrum of terrorist organizations became so compelling that it was difficult to deny it.[xxxiii]

 

In 1982, within just a few years of this conference, Philip Paull, the masters degree student at San Francisco State University, used his thesis to demonstrate that the JCIT’s literature and source documentation was profoundly flawed, with authors citing each other and altering official documents. Its assertion that there was a ten-fold increase in international terrorism between 1968 and 1978 had been deliberately fabricated, and contradicted CIA data showing a decline.

 

According to Ahmed: “ It also routinely relied on techniques of blatant disinformation, misquoting and misrepresenting Western intelligence reports, as well as recycling government sponsored disinformation published in the mainstream media . Paull thus concludes that the 1979 JCIT was:

 

 

 

... a successful propaganda operation... the entire notion of ‘international terrorism’ as promoted by the Jerusalem Conference rests on a faulty, dishonest, and ultimately corrupt information base.... The issue of international terrorism has little to do with fact, or with any objective legal definition. The issue, as promoted by the JCIT and used by the Reagan administration, is an ideological and instrumental issue. It is the ideology, rather than the reality, that dominates US foreign policy today .”

 

Nevertheless, Ahmed continues,

 

The new ideology of ‘international terrorism’ justified the Reagan administration’s shift to ‘a renewed interventionist foreign policy,’ and legitimized a ‘new alliance between right-wing dictatorships everywhere’ and the government. Thus, the administration had moved to ‘legitimate their politics of state terrorism and repression,’ while also alleviating pressure for the reform of the intelligence community and opening the door for ‘aggressive and sometimes illegal intelligence action,’ in the course of fighting the international terrorist threat.[xxxiv]

 

In other words, this plan was similar in nature to the Team B assault on intelligence in that it was an effort to fan Cold War flames and produce stronger intelligence community cover for continued and further imperial projections, which was the primary purpose of the US-USSR Cold War in the first place (as University of Chicago professor of history Bruce Cumings and East Asia expert and former CIA analyst Chalmers Johnson suggest).

 

Upon taking office in January 1981, Reagan outlined his new foreign policy in a speech by Alexander Haig, which boiled down to an adoption of the JCIT theme: “International terrorism will take the place of human rights in our concern.”[xxxv] Thus, the 1979 US destabilization program using terrorist groups to lure the Soviets into Afghanistan was used by the US to call the Soviet invasion “terrorism” and to point to that invasion as a model for “Soviet-backed terrorism” around the world.

 

A nation of such greed and superior strength will often allow itself to be attacked because it can afford to do so, and because in the minds of a negative-activist minority it makes strategic sense to do so. In Inventing the Axis of Evil, Bruce Cumings notes that:

 

From Polk’s attack on Mexico to the South’s shelling of Fort Sumter, the sinking of the Maine and the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the Korean War, the Tonkin Gulf incident, and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, presidents who were bent on war or not, expecting it to erupt or not, nonetheless waited until the enemy made the first move.[xxxvi]

 

Cumings goes on to point out that the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq did not fit that typical pattern - though it is now clear from documents and statements, many of them authored by Paul Wolfowitz, that this administration (and its supporting base of influential negative-activist groups) was obsessed with Middle East intervention and global dominion via force long before they took office, with Iraq as their first stepping stone. Thus, 9-11 was a plausible pretext, and one for which President Bush’s administration was willing to wait.

 

Paul Wolfowitz’s obsession with Iraq dates back at least to 1973. It was then that Wolfowitz - who had studied under the pro-Cold War nuclear weapons advocate Albert Wohlstetter at the University of Chicago, and whose father had been Albert Wohlstetter’s math teacher at Columbia University - visited the Pentagon and asked why there were no war room contingencies for the Persian Gulf. Later, while serving under President Carter in the capacity of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Programs and tasked with generating a Limited Contingency Study to examine possible third-world threats in regions including the Middle East, Wolfowitz voiced the view that no attention was being paid to the possibility of the Soviets turning southward to seize the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. He advised the deployment of military equipment to the Gulf, but his advice was rejected. Indeed, the first written expression of such Middle East contingencies appeared in the 1977 Military Strategy and Force Posture Review authorized by President Carter (also known as Presidential Review Memorandum 10/NSC-10), which incorporated Wolfowitz’s studies.[xxxvii] After joining the Reagan administration, his advice was accepted and tankers of military equipment were anchored in the Persian Gulf (and later used by George Bush Sr.).

 

In 1986, according to Ahmed:

 

Osama bin Laden’s activities occurred ‘with the full approval of the Saudi regime and the CIA.’ Under contract with the CIA, he and the family company built the multi-billion dollar caves known as the Tora Bora complex: ‘to serve as a major arms storage depot, training facility, and medical center for the Mujaheddin.’[xxxviii]

 

With CIA support to override visa requirements, Osama rounded up recruits and sent them into the United States for terrorist training by the CIA; the recruits then returned to fight against Soviet forces. At the height of this operation, the US was shipping 65,000 tons of arms annually to Osama bin Laden’s fighters. Pakistani operatives in contact with bin Laden received assistance from “American Green Beret commandos and Navy SEALS in various US training establishments,” and by 1988, Jane’s Defense Weekly reported that “with US knowledge, bin Laden created Al-Qaeda (The Base): a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across at least 26 countries.”[xxxix]

 

When Iraq invaded Kuwait after the fall of the Soviet Union, Osama bin Laden attempted to rally the Saudi royal family to organize civil defense and raise a group of Afghan war veterans to fight against Iraq. This offer was declined, and instead the royal family accepted the stationing of 300,000 US soldiers. This is said to be the point at which Osama chose to become an enemy of the Saudi regime, although according to a classified intelligence report, a deal was struck with the tacit approval of the CIA that allowed Osama to leave Saudi Arabia with his funding and supporters. The deal also stipulated that funding for his activities would continue with the caveat that he not target the Saudi kingdom.[xl]

 

Al-Qaeda subsequently received increased funding through Saudi Arabia, stronger organizational support from Pakistani intelligence services, and more equipment and training from the CIA. Its network received direct assistance from these three sources, with active and tacit support of Western intelligence agencies in spreading to 40 countries and conducting pro-Western operations in Macedonia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Chechnya (and Moscow), Bosnia, Philippines, Spain, Morocco, Kenya, and others (including the US and United Kingdom), covering key regions where Western interests are at stake: the Balkans, the Caucasus, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Asia Pacific - all central to control of the Eurasian continent.[xli] Thus, in the wake of the Cold War with Russia, US means of statecraft grew more aggressive.

 

Following the departure of Soviet forces, Afghanistan experienced heavy conflict between various factions; among the most brutal of these was the Northern Alliance (whose portrayal in US media after 9-11 was anything but brutal). By the mid 1990s, several factions joined to form the Taliban movement, which captured Kabul and took power in 1996, reportedly orchestrated by Pakistani intelligence and the oil company Unocal,[xlii] and approved by the CIA, to provide easier oil pipeline negotiations and the greater chance of its successful construction through Afghanistan. In other words, the Taliban were installed because they were easier to bribe than the previous leadership. These negotiations occurred during the mid to late 1990s between the Taliban and current US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad (then a Unocal advisor). The negotiations involved Condoleeza Rice (then an advisor for Chevron), current President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai (then an advisor for Unocal), and Enron, which paid $750,000 for the pipeline survey using a grant funded by US taxpayers.[xliii] However, the negotiations deteriorated in the year prior to 9-11, leading to a major US invasion plan,[xliv] for which wargames were conducted in January 2001.[xlv] From February to May 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney gathered executives from the world’s major energy corporations for his Energy Task Force meetings. Maps acquired by Judicial Watch show the carving up among these corporations of Iraq’s oilfields and much of its other infrastructural assets.[xlvi]

 

In 1993, the bombing of the World Trade Center had led investigators to a wealth of evidence indicating intelligence community complicity, and warnings of another, larger attack. In 1995, Project Bojinka, in which eleven commercial jets were to be hijacked and flown into major buildings in the United States, was thwarted, producing another mass of evidence that planes would be used as flying bombs. The top concern of Olympic officials for the 2000 Sydney games, in fact, was an airliner-based attack by al-Qaeda.[xlvii] Subsequent investigations strongly indicated that the next attack date would be September 11, the anniversary of the 1996 conviction of those caught in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing campaign.[xlviii] Throughout the years leading up to 9-11, especially in the nine months prior to the attacks, investigators and representatives from dozens of nations and within US borders attempted to warn top White House and US intelligence officials of an attack set for the second week of September 2001 using hijacked planes as flying bombs. All attempts were systematically ignored. Statements by top officials immediately after the attacks, that no one was prepared for or could have predicted the events - and that no plans for an invasion of Afghanistan existed - therefore, were lies. In fact, in October 2000, the Pentagon held an evacuation drill with the theme that an airplane had been hijacked and flown into the building.[xlix] Warned of an impending al-Qaeda attack on the Genoa, Italy, G8 Summit in July 2001, the office of President Bush, who was scheduled to attend, arranged to have the skies cleared and secured, just as they had been for the 2000 Olympic games.[l] Also in July 2001, US representative Tom Simons warned Taliban leaders, “we will offer you a carpet of gold or bury you with a carpet of bombs.”[li]

 

So, the US had at last put its reinvented (post-Cold War) international terrorism plan to work, knowingly paving the path to the “war on terror” well before it began. This military option was perfect for those who longed for a new Pearl Harbor for economic gain at the hands of “international terrorists.” The groundwork was complete; the evil mastermind created, and all that was needed to complete the Unocal pipeline was a legitimate excuse for taking control of the region. The CIA was still negotiating the pipeline deal in August 2001 while troops were already stationed in surrounding states. Thus, all that was needed was a trigger, a pretext to galvanize public opinion.

 

In June 2001, Paul Wolfowitz’s speech to the graduating class at West Point had cited Pearl Harbor and stressed the imminence of a similar surprise.[lii] On September 9, two days before the attacks, President Bush was presented with detailed plans to invade Afghanistan and remove the Taliban before the heavy snowfalls of the Afghan winter.[liii] The plans highlighted a global campaign against al-Qaeda. How long, we must ask, were the Pentagon and CIA drawing up these plans simultaneous to their operations that had created and supported the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the first place? The answer, according to law professor Francis Boyle, is four years, with wargames and troop gatherings in neighboring states for this invasion commencing in 1997.[liv]

 

After September 11, top insiders of the military-industrial-academic-congressional-thinkta nk complex exploited a fearful electorate, not because of a real threat, but because the door to profits had been kicked open. This is why security has not improved, only the spending for war and the price of oil to pay for it have increased while profits have skyrocketed.

 

According to Ahmed:

 

A plausible conclusion from all this is that the (2001-present) US military campaign in Afghanistan, assisted by Pakistani military intelligence, was not really designed to destroy al-Qaeda at all. Rather, it was designed to crush the (uncooperative) Taliban regime, in the knowledge that al-Qaeda would be displaced elsewhere to safety. Fighting a ‘war on terror’ against al-Qaeda had never been the real goal of the plans for a military invasion of Afghanistan, which had been formulated years before 9-11. Those plans were motivated by other strategic and economic interests. But the 9-11 terrorist attacks happened to provide a convenient and powerful pretext to implement those plans, as well as other geostrategic imperatives.[lv]

 

In other words, the US created the threat and, through the resultant fear, the worldwide authoritarian means to pretend to deal with it while exercising the full scope of its imperial ambitions. This is why the US has more than 750,000 troops in at least 134 countries today.[lvi] Moreover, that the US knowingly harbored al-Qaeda cells throughout the 1990s and up to if not beyond 9-11 lends a new perspective to President Bush’s post-9-11 promise to “make no distinction between those who committed these terrible acts and those who harbor them.”

 

On September 16, 2001, Osama bin Laden issued a statement to Al Jazeera: “The US government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it. I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons.”[lvii] Evidence appears to support his contention that 9-11 was not a result of his orders, but rather a convenient outcome of manipulations of people within his sphere of influence by oil company representatives, intelligence services, and others in preceding years.

 

Speaking of Enron, it is Professor Peter Dale Scott’s opinion that the American people remain traumatized by the 2000 election, a crisis that was substantially influenced by Enron’s interests in Afghanistan. Enron paid Christian Coalition president Ralph Reed $500,000 to stop John McCain’s campaign, and was the biggest donor to the Bush campaign.[lviii] (Enron was also one of the largest donors to the Gore campaign.) It is plausible that 9-11 was on the table of persons other than Osama bin Laden, especially in light of revelations regarding 9-11 complicity of top-level American Airlines officials at its center in Fort Worth, Texas.[lix]

 

Regardless, Professor Scott is correct in stating that:

 

We are living in an atmosphere which creates the possibility for minorities to govern acquiescent majorities. Covert power produces fallout similar to nuclear power: trained terrorists turn on their former trainers, the criminal complicity of governments which hinders prosecution of such people, and society’s overall corruption. The result is deep politics: the immersion of public political life in an immobilizing substratum of unspeakable scandal and bad faith, and the result in practice is 9-11.[lx]

 

The fallout of training people how to blow things up and kill others gives them an upper hand, because secrets are shared that cannot be revealed in the homeland, in this case the US. All parties complicit agree not to implicate one another.

 

Americans had double agents in al-Qaeda and in the Project Bojinka group (the Philippines’ Abu Sayyaf), which merged and melded with al-Qaeda from the very beginning. Double agents become triple agents, and their intermediaries are up to their own misdeeds or simply unable to report all the information to their superiors. All in all, with Enron’s stake in the Central Asian Republics [and Halliburton, Unocal, Chevron, et al] and the 2000 election, the best possible outcome for those who were put in office - and setting conditions for the indefinite control of the majority in the US - was 9-11, legitimizing entry into the region on a massive scale whether engineered or not.[lxi]

 

The Cold War phenomenon of a foreign policy driven more by domestic politics than concerns for national security has in the transition to “war on terror” become reversed: domestic policies are in large part driven today by the peripheral effects of and blowback from the rise to prominence of a grand neo-Manifest Destinarian vision. In the words of Bruce Cumings, “Not since McKinley seized the Philippines have we had a president who justifies his aggression by virtue of an open pipeline to God.”[lxii]

 

This points to an almost self-fulfilling prophecy or cultivation of an international terrorist threat as envisioned by the JCIT back in 1979, again, invented and then reinvented not to counter Soviet actions, but “useful for demonizing threats to the prevailing US-dominated capitalist economic system.” The crux of Philip Paull’s thesis is that the JCIT represented a precisely coordinated and globally oriented propaganda network for the purposes of selling a pretext for war. This is what the so-called “war on terror” really is, and Americans would not have accepted it without a massive media propaganda effort accompanying an attack against the United States, or with the kind of enlightenment about such tyrannical behavior that a truly competent education system should provide.

 

Democrat and Republican administrations have been equally complicit in using invented threats as cover for imperial expansion. No fundamental changes in this pattern have occurred as a result of the election of a new president - ever. The current Bush administration has made the most effective use of the ideology of international terrorism; the only difference is the Soviet Union as the alleged sponsor has been replaced by the newly invented and CIA-approved transnational Islamist threat at taxpayer expense. This point is crucial: Power in the United States is conventionally believed to be derived from the consent of the governed, yet the governed have unknowingly paid the salaries of every Taliban leader and member (thus tacitly supported the immense suffering under their leadership), paid for Pakistani intelligence services, paid for pipeline surveys and construction, paid for CIA and Pentagon black operations and negotiations between US representatives and Taliban leaders, paid for every gun and bullet used in installing and removing them, and for everything throughout the Cold War and since that had nothing to do with promoting the general welfare.

 

This small story of Afghanistan is just the tip of the tyranny iceberg. For example, since abandoning the democratization of Japan in 1952 in favor of using it as a permanent military base, the US continues to pay Japan (and other nations) with the exportation of technology, and jobs lost in the US, in exchange for acquiescence to and support for the US military presence of some 100,000 troops in East Asia.

 

Nearly all of these wars and external threats are and have been for US economic gain in various regions of the world. Corporations feed on profits from conflict and the threat of conflict. In my research, I went looking for companies on the Pentagon payroll, expecting to find weapons manufacturers. But, in a stroke of lucrative genius, Dick Cheney had begun the outsourcing boom of every aspect of militarism to the private sector before leaving office in January 1993 by commissioning Halliburton to conduct a study on hiring firms to move US forces abroad rapidly. Halliburton itself responded by accepting the task of transporting troops to Somalia, and by subsequently hiring Cheney (who, while in public service, nevertheless continues to receive kickbacks from Halliburton[lxiii]). The Clinton administration then fueled the boom with great zeal, hiring Halliburton to assist in outsourcing everything from milk shakes and missiles to all-beef patties with special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on sesame-seed buns.[lxiv]

 

During the Cold War with Russia, US weapons production was dispersed among the 50 states to motivate representatives to continually approve weapons programs for the sake of jobs in their respective states, however wasteful these weapons were for the taxpayer, however destructive they were to social progress. But from the 1990s outsourcing, I found more than 300,000 companies on the Pentagon payroll, including Campbell’s Soup, Avon Cosmetics, Bumble Bee Seafood, and Hallmark Cards. I also found more than 350 universities among these companies. San Diego city proper has 3,600 DOD-dependent companies, including 12 colleges.[lxv] In my town, Eugene, Oregon, there are 56 companies on the Pentagon payroll, including my school, University of Oregon. In Lowell, Oregon, with a population of 750 people, ten companies work for the Pentagon, and whether they make shovels, ladders, or gun barrels, that small town pulls in $1.5 million a year, making it a junior partner in the structure of dependence on militarism, not to mention less likely to question the aggressive actions of its government.[lxvi] Moreover, many board members of the largest consumer product firms also sit on the boards of the largest media and defense corporations.[lxvii]

 

America’s top industry since 1950 has been weapons. The US is addicted to conflict, and in a capitalist society, profits must escalate. Thus, it was remarkably profitable for the Bush administration to invent an “axis of evil” in a famous January 2002 speech, despite the complete falsehoods employed in doing so. By 2002, Iraq, as is now widely known, was a nation on its knees. Iran had undergone a twelve-year pro-democracy reformation in the wake of the Iran-Iraq war, with women performing a far greater role in society than ever before. North Korea had signed an agreement with the Clinton administration in 1994 that halted its nuclear ambitions, provided a window for reunification with South Korea, and would have led to the removal of US forces.[lxviii]

 

Therein lies the reason for the Bush administration breaking of this agreement and the inclusion of North Korea in the “axis of evil” speech. With that one speech all three nations became external threats, alienating them immediately, and thus to an extent fulfilling Bush’s assertion that they are anti-American. In light of the fact that North Korea today insists on direct talks with Washington alone indicates that the issue for North Korea is about the breaking of the previous agreement. The fact that the US insists on bringing four additional nations into the discussion can thus be seen as an effort to legitimize the status quo (of US forces in South Korea, and the separation of North and South).

 

The recent US response to the testing of missiles by North Korea illustrates the extent to which deceit is employed in White House rhetoric to maintain military forces abroad. The rhetoric is designed to suggest that the world community is united with the Bush administration’s determination to maintain a military presence in South Korea, and that indeed it is North Korea that is refusing to be rational in joining the world community as a separate nation, while the previous (1994) agreement framework and the desire on the part of both North and South to reunify without the presence of US forces are rendered as non-issues. Even before the tests were over, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill asserted that not only were nations united against North Korea’s actions, but that North Korea was stubbornly refusing a rational solution, as if the previous agreement had never existed:

 

Just about every responsible country in the world weighed in against it… So, the first thing they have done is to unite us all…. Well, the provocation is that - you know, we put out, last September, a pretty in-depth agreement, an agreement in principle on how we could denuclearize North Korea, and, in return, they would be offered an open road into the international community. And, so, instead, they seem to want to go in another direction.

 

In reality, by breaking the 1994 agreement, it is the Bush administration that has chosen “another direction.” Moreover, out of the group of six nations the Bush administration has tasked to “settle” the situation - aside from the US and North Korea itself - two, Japan and South Korea, are essentially US military states, far from being capable of issuing opposing opinions on the matter; and the other two, China and Russia, are anything but united or aligned with the Bush administration’s position. This is well known, and Hill touches on it in his own statements, which, as seen between the lines and in light of statements by China and Russia, carry a heavy degree of condescension toward the two larger powers and attempts to force North Korea into “international organizations” that the US clearly dominates:

 

The six parties - you know, originally, or…back in the 1990s, we were trying to deal with this bilaterally. And it was basically the US and North Korea. And the US and North Korea was not prepared, really, to reach agreement. So, Japan is a part of that. South Korea is part of that. China and Russia are all part of the six-party process. And the point is that when we reach settlement - and I do believe that, at some point, we will reach a settlement - all of these countries have a role to play. I mean, we are very concerned about this. The - we have been talking to our South Korean allies, our Japanese allies. And we’re going to start having some in-depth discussions with the Chinese. And we’re going to see what we can do. Part of the draft, the September agreement, was that North Korea needs energy. Well, South Korea is going to be providing them energy. They need economic assistance. Japan was prepared, under the September agreement, to provide that kind of economic assistance. We’re prepared to help them - help North Korea get into international organizations. [Emphasis mine.]

 

The US position, as seen in Hill’s comments, can also be seen as a pretext for pushing missile defense:

 

So, it is a provocation. I mean, we’re obviously going to have to be working with our partners about how to protect ourselves. After all, we had a little country firing off six missiles in different directions. You know, clearly, this is a threat to a number of countries in the region. So, we have to look at the whole issue of how to defend ourselves.[lxix]

 

Again, Bruce Cumings helps illustrate the dangers inherent in concentrating power in the hands of a few:

 

In a classic article in 1941, Harold Lasswell defined ‘the Garrison State’ as one in which ‘the specialists on violence are the most powerful group in society.’ North Korea is a classic garrison state, perhaps the best example in world history of a thoroughly militarized nation; this was their (unfortunate) answer to the defining crisis of the regime - occupation by an American army. But we are also well advanced toward a national security-dominated system, making the country of the founding fathers unrecognizable above all to them.[lxx]

 

It can be safely argued that a fourth and permanent “peak” in Alan Wolfe’s ups and downs of militarist postures and rhetorical gestures arrived in the form of official statements following the events of September 11, 2001, and in national security documents under the Bush administration beginning in 2002 and culminating with the Quadrennial Defense Review and National Security Strategy of 2006, which openly declare a “long global war” to “rid the world of evil,” and cite several future enemies, including China. These public documents - to which the public is largely oblivious - have deep roots in NSC-68.

 

The rhetorical summation of NSC-68 as a blueprint for all subsequent scary documents intended to motivate citizens and representatives alike can be observed in a single sentence, typifying Paul Nitze’s style: “The Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.”

 

In light of the fact that Paul Wolfowitz began working closely with Paul Nitze in 1969, it is of interest to compare that statement with these excerpts from an April 2004 speech by Paul Wolfowitz, honoring Paul Nitze at The Johns Hopkins University’s Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (where Wolfowitz had both taught and served as dean during the Clinton years):

 

When Don Rumsfeld and I had lunch with members of the 9-11 commission recently, one member asked what could they do to ensure that their report would make a real difference. What I told them, basically, was to write something similar to George Kennan’s Long Telegram or Paul Nitze’s NSC-68.

 

I hope that we might agree that the phenomenon of terrorist fanaticism has presented itself to us with such a horrible and menacing face that we need to confront it with the same openness of mind and breadth of vision that a young Paul Nitze confronted the menace of Soviet communism with more than 50 years ago. Like 50 years ago, there is an urgency and a need to act. As NSC-68 explained so well, the Soviet threat was not just military, but ideological. In some ways, the ideology of terrorist fanaticism is even more dangerous. With them, we face an enemy who hides among the shadows, shifting positions and methods with the wind. As they go about their ugly business, they exploit the freedom of open societies. There is one constant, however, across half a century. Theirs, too, is an ideology of evil. But today we face an enemy that not only hates freedom; it hates life itself and worships death.

 

This is not about America imposing its values on other people. It’s about America enabling other people to enjoy the values from which we benefit so enormously.[lxxi]

 

In other words, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had lunch with members of the 9-11 Commission (tasked with investigating government failures) during its deliberations, whereupon Wolfowitz advised them to write what was essentially a declaration of war.[lxxii]

 

It is a fact that Iraq was discussed within the Bush Cabinet just hours after the attacks on 9-11, and it is a fact that two months later, during the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, President Bush asked Donald Rumsfeld to begin plans for invading Iraq. What we are left with, then, with this “long war” to “rid the world of evil,” is a permanent state of defense buildup and preparation for advanced warfare, and other lucrative perpetual peaks of power assertion via real interventions and official (and belligerent) Pentagon strategies. It is not comforting that likely and so-called moderate presidential candidates such as Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton support the war in Iraq, or that Republican Senator John McCain, who speaks against torture, also stated that, “The United States is the greatest force for good in the world. We have not an obligation to go out and start wars but to spread democracy and freedom throughout the world.”[lxxiii] Both views keep the past ghosts of our manifest failures alive to threaten our future while fortunes flow to the ruling minority.

 

Coincidentally, the 9/11 attacks were ultimately fortuitous for the Bush administration, which was facing both a domestic and an international crisis of legitimacy prior to 9/11. Under the mantle of the new ‘war on terror’ that followed the attacks, the government was able to significantly divert and reverse these trends. The domestic crackdown on basic civil rights, combined with the demonization of dissent, has arrived part and parcel with the granting of unlimited war powers - lending the US state a free hand to embark on a new unlimited war against any regime that challenges US interests.[lxxiv]

 

In a Meet the Press interview televised on March 2, 2003, Richard Perle was asked about the Bush administration’s policy toward Iraq. Perle gave this reply: “If the whole world were democratic, we’d live in a much safer international security system, because democracies do not wage aggressive wars.”[lxxv] His associate, Michael Ledeen, asserts that “ Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world that we mean business .”[lxxvi] Likewise, in an interview with Ted Koppel, William Kristol, cofounder of PNAC (along with Perle, Ledeen, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld), justified the policy of invading Iraq by saying, “This is a bold and ambitious American foreign policy. I think it’s right for us and right for the world.”[lxxvii] Another important perspective is voiced in a lengthy essay by Major Ralph Peters, which can be summed up in one statement: “There will be no peace. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy, and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.”[lxxviii]

 

Outrageous in their arrogance, these quotes represent a euphoria descended from power and propelled through the cohesive and expanding self-reinforcing and self-congratulatory nature of elite negative-activist circles, wherein the motivation is not democracy, domination through force, geostrategic primacy, or even oil in and of itself. The motivating force common in all similar pursuits of empire is money and the maintenance of lucrative power. A natural product of escalating corruption in an almost totally unchecked government system is the merging of corporate, military, and administrative forces. When these spheres are dominated by negative-activist minority circles, and their deeds are disguised as acts of goodness, liberation, and protection, the total abuse of power becomes possible, if not inevitable. The majority (“the people”) in such a “democracy” is irrelevant, except as workers, soldiers, and voters to equip, expand, and legitimize “democracy’s” imperial conquests for money and the maintenance of lucrative power under the fearful illusion of external threats.

 

None of this is new; all of this has been refined over centuries. The only difference today is the scope of the negative consequences of empire, which presents the question of how long the Earth’s ecosystem will tolerate empire’s exhaust. Thanks to the complete failure of democracy in the American experiment, America’s time - empire’s time - has reached its closing act. There is no substantial residual value in America’s founding documents, and very little real power left among the common people. All that remains is a countdown to catastrophe, one (or many) that may or may not allow the people to demand a paradigm shift. Such a shift should begin with legal action against those who have neglected the people’s general welfare in favor of a lucrative warfare state. The total US withdrawal from the Kyoto Accords presents one such basis for legitimate action. The increasing defense budget in light of the accompanying increase in carbon emissions through industry and conflict presents another. The absence of any law that requires US citizens to pay taxes from wages is clearly a cause for legal action.[lxxix]

 

The contrast between reality and status quo rhetoric is both comedic and tragic, as illustrated by Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, David Chu, who, attempting to justify the raising of age brackets for Army recruitment goals, explained that upping the age level to 42 is not a change in standards, “because people are living longer these days.” The other reason for upping the age bracket is that Donald Rumsfeld is turning 74 and becomes “quite offended when anyone suggests that 42 is ‘old’.” Chu went on to tout a 75-year-old serviceperson who is currently on his third tour of duty.[lxxx]

 

Typically as empires end, their rulers become more ruthless and authoritarian, often using unexpected tactics. To illustrate this today, some neoconservatives are turning to the Democratic Party and speaking with green tongues about climate change: tactics to keep power by playing the current anti-Bush sentiment to their advantage. In any event, their installed neo-Manifest Destinarian military strategies stand to be honored by both parties beyond the tenure of this administration. While human nature, as Noam Chomsky explains, may preclude the majority from stealing ice cream out of the hands of children, it obviously does not prevent the rise of equally reprehensible indicators among the minority inner circles of humans motivated when presented with seemingly irresistible opportunities for abuse in the combined spheres of finance, warfare, and politics.

 

In a speech to the House of Representatives in 2003, Republican Congressman Ron Paul of Texas highlighted the dangers of the three spheres of power:

 

Our obsession with policing the world, nation building, and pre-emptive war are not likely to soon go away, since both Republican and Democratic leaders endorse them. Liberty is virtually impossible to protect when the people allow their government to print money at will. Inevitably, the left will demand more economic interventionism, the right more militarism and empire building. Both sides, either inadvertently or deliberately, will foster corporatism. Those whose greatest interest is in liberty and self-reliance are lost in the shuffle. Though left and right have different goals and serve different special-interest groups, they are only too willing to compromise and support each other’s programs. If unchecked, the economic and political chaos that comes from currency destruction inevitably leads to tyranny - a consequence of which the Founders were well aware .[lxxxi]

 

My final words of indictment against the negative-activist minority involve a heart-wrenching event related to the film The Battle of Algiers, al-Qaeda, and current Pentagon policy. In December 1991, some 26 years after Gillo Pontecorvo made his landmark film, he was asked by Italian media to revisit Algeria and assess the situation in the context of the rise of a new political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which had just won a landslide victory. During his visit (captured on film and available in a three-disc DVD set some nine-hours long), Pontecorvo interviewed the new president of Algeria, Mohamed Boudiaf, a former member of the National Liberation Front (FLN) that had been the subject of Pontecorvo’s 1965 film. Boudiaf pointed to - and the documentary footage clearly shows - tremendous tensions within Algeria in the wake of the 1991 election. One week later, after Pontecorvo’s arrival back in Italy, Boudiaf was assassinated.[lxxxii] In The War on Truth, Nafeez Ahmed points out that:

 

In December 1991, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won a landslide victory in Algeria’s national democratic elections. But before the parliamentary seats could be taken in January 1992, the Algerian military violently overturned democracy. The elections were canceled while the Army rounded up tens of thousands of Algerian FIS voters into concentration camps in the middle of the Sahara…. This was a dark day for democracy. According to Ben Lombardi, who is with the Directorate of Strategic Analysis at the Department of National Defense in Ottawa, Canada: “In 1991, the West supported the coup in Algeria in an effort to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from coming to power through the ballot box.” As noted by John Entelis, professor of political science and director of the Middle East Program at Fordham University in New York: “The Arab world had never before experienced such a genuinely populist expression of democratic aspirations…. Yet when the army overturned the whole democratic experience in January 1992, the United States willingly accepted the results…. In short, a democratically elected Islamist government hostile to American hegemonic aspirations in the region… was considered unacceptable in Washington.”

 

The new junta, in contrast, expressed “willingness to collaborate with American regional ambitions,” which included “collaborating with Israel in establishing a Pax Americana in the Middle East and North Africa. Not long after the coup, hundreds of civilians were being mysteriously massacred by an unknown terrorist group… calling itself the Armed Islamic Group (GIA)…[whose] “core members are the thousands of ‘Afghans,’ men who have received their military training from Afghanistan.” The formation of the GIA was rooted in al-Qaeda.[lxxxiii]

 

Ahmed goes on to state that the death toll from the massacres came to some 150,000 civilians, and that, “According to Stephen Cook, an expert on Algeria at the Brookings Institute, ‘there are Algerian [terrorist] cells spread all over Europe, Canada, and the United States’.”[lxxxiv]

 

Not surprisingly, Algeria’s primary resource is oil.

 

On August 27, 2003, the US Directorate for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict arranged a screening of The Battle of Algiers for a top-level, civilian-led group within the Pentagon. The flier for the showing stated, “How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.” A discussion followed the film, but no details were provided.[lxxxv]

 

The “strategic” lesson of the film is that torture by the French Army ultimately cost them the war in Algeria, though they had won the battle of Algiers. Apparently, judging from Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the process of rendition, the civilian-led group within the Pentagon failed miserably to “understand why.” Or did they? The result of French torture was that all Europeans became targets of the French Army (which later admitted it had planted bombs to provoke attacks on European settlers and thereby justify further urban warfare) and of the Algerian FLN, which had taken the war from the Algerian countryside into the urban setting of the capital to win public sentiment. Ultimately, such tensions produced a nexus that carried out horrific acts against both sides to prevent acceptance of a deal between the French government and the FLN. Herein we see the complexities - militarists would say “the opportunities” - of terrorism.[lxxxvi]

 

This begs the question of who is killing coalition forces in Iraq (and elsewhere). After all, though Westerners are the targets in the “war on terror,” who benefits most? Those who stand to gain and have the greatest motive are the Western (minority) rulers. Using financial and military powers against their own human assets, they reap perpetual profits and geostrategic victories. The human (majority) element is once again the only expendable asset: such people are not power; they are pawns.

 

Moreover, Guantanamo by its very nature breeds worldwide contempt, providing fuel for the fire - a far better strategic rationale for its existence as a place of torture than official explanations offer. Again, there are three primary spheres of concern for rulers: financial (corporate, economic motives), military (threats and demonstrations of force to pursue the motives), and political (manipulation of the people to achieve the motives). The latter is of no moral significance to the rulers; manipulation is the operative word, whether the people are domestic or otherwise. Thus, law is something to be circumvented or reinvented globally at any price and at every opportunity.

 

Featured in the film (and its accompanying interviews) is the issue of French determination not to allow Algerians to form a strong allegiance to the FLN. In my December 2005 London interview with Iraq’s Southern Oil Worker’s Union president, Hassan Juma, he clearly described how the US occupation forces had rented at exorbitant costs all the halls and meeting places in southern Iraq, thus preventing unions from gathering to discuss the possibility of peaceful worker strikes against US occupation. The US also terminated the contracts of the majority of the oil workers and replaced them with non-Iraqis and Kurds, sowing further tensions.

 

What appear to be acts of war between two distinct sides in reality can be something completely different. Where rules of war were once applied, in today’s world there is little such clarity, and opportunists rule the day. Where torture moved the French public to pressure the French government to establish Algerian independence in 1962, the memories of torture at the hands of Nazis or anyone else are today not present in the consciousness of Americans sufficient to produce the same scale of societal rejection. Meanwhile, as one interviewee emphasizes in disc three of The Battle of Algiers, “Torture only leads to revolt.” The battle of ideas is lost as hatred is sown. Thus, the American majority stand to bear the fallout of the acts of the American negative-activist minority in power.

 

Nafeez Ahmed’s concluding thoughts reflect my own, and my words could not state them better:

 

The rise to power of the conglomerate of neoconservative factions represented in the Bush administration and its web of political, financial, and religious connections was, perhaps, merely the inevitable outcome of the very logic of the interests and operations of US and Western power in the post-Cold War period. US/Western military-intelligence policy has consistently been conducted in a manner that is fundamentally unaccountable to meaningful democratic influence. The root of this problem clearly lies in the structure of Western power itself, which - although conventionally believed to be the epitome of democracy - is in reality conjoined to a sprawling network of overarching criminal and financial interests that tends to drive US/Western foreign policies and which in the post-Cold War period has driven the West and international terrorism into an increasingly dynamic (and unstable) interconnected continuum of power.

 

The criminalization of Western power and the corruption of Western democracy is therefore not a new phenomenon exclusively linked to the rise of the Bush administration. On the contrary, the Bush administration has merely followed through with the inner logic of the historical trajectory of the policies of previous US administrations. The rise of the Bush administration simply demonstrated the extreme degree to which the criminalization of power has come to penetrate so deeply into the structure of society. It is therefore crucial to recognize that the cause of the problem here is not a particular group of individuals, or a particular set of ideologies, or a particular party’s political program, linked to the Bush - or any other - administration. The problem, which has plagued both Democratic and Republican administrations to varying degrees and has only grown increasingly entrenched with time, relates fundamentally to the structure of the international system, which Western power dominates. It is these structures that generate the individuals, ideologies, and political programs that promote the climate in which international terrorism flourishes.[ lxxxvii]

 

As Alan Wolfe concluded in 1979, our task is to unmask the illusion of the threat so the underlying undemocratic and monopolistic economic program is revealed. “If Americans wake up to the danger posed from those within their midst who would destroy the best features of their country in order to militarize it against an illusory enemy, they have a chance to create the kind of future that they will then deserve.”[ lxxxviii]

 

Sadly, the trend of the movement against global economic injustice since the death of Dr. King, as I see it, has been near total dysfunction of the whole due to the self, and little more than group therapy in a burning house. This positive-activist movement is dysfunctional because of the flailing and fragmented myopic approach that persists regardless if a true solution or a prime piece of the puzzle is presented. There is a myriad-symptom-addressing “peace” movement when a narrow and more specific root-cause exposure and unified approach is required.

 

Though 9-11 was either an engineered pretext for assertion of power, a conveniently provoked trigger for assertion of power, or both, either way our government brought it on with imperial ambitions in the shadows of deception and public ignorance in a nation founded on power derived from the consent of its people. Such arrogant and longstanding policies of bullying and lying for corporate wealth remain for the moment traditional tools of US foreign and domestic policy. But this “fourth and permanent peak” is in the end likely to prove fatal for the negative-activist continuum, perhaps fatal for humankind itself. Regardless, the positive-activist movement is on the verge of shifting into high gear.

 

Today the world as we know it is in for a serious makeover - what David Korten calls The Great Turning from Empire to Earth Community. The age of global economic injustice driven by the greatest polluter - militarization - cannot survive its own methods. Globalization, militarization, corporatization, overpopulation, domination by a sole superpower - these conditions will be rendered obsolete by nature itself, and humans thus stand to experience a forced awareness quite soon. Those who recognize that time has nothing to do with humankind, who begin to demand a massive shift in priorities to attempt to offset and prepare for the severity of the consequences of empire, and who demand a new paradigm of coexistent cooperation - those who “labor to keep alive in (their) hearts that celestial fire called conscience”[lxxxix] and are willing to adapt will be in the best position to do so. In the face of nature’s vengeance, Dr. King’s dream is still the only path forward. Gandhi’s way of life is the way of the future. Our swift transformation from killers to caretakers will be the only means of surviving together the coming change. Humankind will carry forth a triumph of vision if we do survive - not a triumph of human superiority, but a triumph of surrendering the concept of superiority to the higher power of cooperation, with a perspective of our place as caretakers of life. True security is the rejection of exploitative policies in favor of the selfless surrender of ego as our personal engine and the collective and adaptive surrender to the Earth as our master.

 

Diversity is the struggle to minimize hierarchies and banish prejudices in the selfless effort to maximize life in harmony for the common good, making closed minds the true minority. What is called self-awareness is really the awareness of All and our role as part of All. Beneath the trappings of training for a particular society and in a particular body lies common ground where flexible humans fundamentally agree, where they are one, where the struggle for awakening and productive communing is waged. This awakening or empowerment - this elimination of suffering - cannot progress without its conscious pursuit, without deliberate self-diminishment and deliberate elevation of others in pursuing spiritual equality and material justice.

 

Massive popular demand for change through positive activism will recognize in this challenge its natural allies: that nearly every nation on Earth deplores America’s tyrannical government, that the majority of Americans are good people who simply require a unified and empowering awakening, and that the planet’s increasing rejection of empire’s impact puts Earth itself on our side as the awakening device.

 

Obvious immediate solutions, if we had a choice, might include banning think-tank and corporate lobbying and corporate personhood and standing armies, reforming the banking industry, crushing the Federal Reserve, and diverting excessive wealth. But these are almost irrelevant, as the Earth will soon shudder and reform the human condition, if not banish us altogether.

 

In the age of the end of empire, America is its last vestige, the most selfish construct on Earth. In the process of the end of empire, there comes a time when the illusions and falsehoods of the ruling elite become like an old and irreparable shoe: neither fit to wear in the light of dawning realities nor useful in the expediency of the forward march of life. To use a different metaphor, there comes a time when the passengers of empire’s crumbling slave ship - with its human cargo chained to the anchor - must together and with wisdom free themselves, fashion a new vessel out of faith, and set course toward community, partnership, and life in balance with nature. This will become a clear choice to many Americans as the effects of global climate change and the depletion of resources come home to impact their lives.

 

In the final throes of the end of empire, in fashioning a lifeboat fit to endure Earth’s tortured, irritable seas, the new course must be substantial, built of an understanding of history and of faith in transcendence, generating a brilliance based on a deliberate choice against failed frameworks in favor of the timeless safety of cooperation in the Earth’s embrace. As it rejects the plague of empire, nature provides proof that we must awaken to our silent complicity as consumers, as followers of traditions of conflict and disunity.

 

We will no longer see ourselves as special because of wealth, but because we realize wealth does not make us special. Our sins of statecraft will compel a new responsibility for caretaking an equal world, for sharing a new wealth of spirit, for building a lasting legacy that will absolve us of these sins that have caused untold suffering. To avert extinction, humans can only be special in acting out the desire to transform the suffering of so many into harmony for all.

 

Summing up theoretical conclusions, beyond the human perspective lay other possibilities of driving forces. It is not without a certain degree of gravity that I suggest another documentary, though seemingly innocuous, may have also come to the attention of negative activists in foreign policy circles. Sharks at Risk describes how - absent human intervention - sharks maintain the security of the oceans by eliminating only the old, weak, and injured among marine species, thereby increasing the genetic strength and numbers of each species (and ultimately the number of potential shark victims).[xc] This is not to say that only humans who have seen this documentary would imagine themselves as shark-like predators, but that some human individuals do appear to operate on different frequencies of aggressiveness, to the extent that they seem to others to be acting out of tune, even on a course that, in the case of the overall ecosystem, is decidedly suicidal in the long term.

 

Moving farther beyond the confines of the human experience and conventional theories of militarism and empire, an explanation may lie - and indeed be observed in the microcosm of human behavior - in what physicists call the “string” theory. This theory that apparently unites general relativity with quantum mechanics suggests that everything in the universe, including space that appears to be dark to the human (and the telescopic and scientifically measurable) eye, is composed of a fabric of vibrating strings too small to be measured in any known way, but that are logically independent (individuals, if you will) parts of the whole, operating on a dazzling array of frequencies.[xci] That there are humans who, consciously or not, operate as over-the-top aggressive sharks in moderating the entire chain of life on Earth - and that there are humans of other inclinations of thought - could be a product of this theory as well. Most significantly, and offering a thrillingly hopeful possibility, the theory also suggests that the cosmos is progressing toward a kind of intelligent balance of positive-activist unity, and that everything in the cosmos is part of that progression.

 

In fact, personally, this explains the lifelong driving force that continues to sustain my positive activism. Long before I heard of string theory, my motivation was that we are challenged by a worthy opportunity in the harshest of circumstances and the most dangerous of times surrounding human activity (that we know of), and that perhaps this was a choice made by or for us because it generates a brilliance of positive energy, or ultimately has the potential to do so. In this respect, we are part of a symphony, seeking to play in tune with an orchestra that we can neither see nor yet imagine.

 

So many creation myths and belief systems talk of a transformation, a judgment day, a rapture, whereupon we are judged - or perhaps collectively challenge ourselves through a forced awareness of the full scope of a natural cosmic progression toward positive activism. Mainstream television now speaks of scientists in ninety-nine percent agreement that humans have caused climate change and that the consequences may be unstoppable and ultimately fatal if not urgently addressed within ten years. This presents a collectively physical and self-tasking chasm of the most transformative kind. How we shall respond, whether miserably or magnificently, may depend not on our idea of human nature (wherein that “nature” has been to date contaminated by a minority), but on the ability of the majority to think ahead and take the positive-activist and adaptive leap of faith forward.

 

The Mayan calendar points to an “end” on December 21, 2012.[xcii] Who are we to say that this coinciding and apparently random number is not definitively linked to human behavior and the “string” theory of a positive-activist universe? We do seem to be rushing down a vortex of turmoil, like a star collapsing inward before a supernova. Time will tell, but one thing is certain: if our minds do not change, our fate is sealed - and this vortex toward cataclysm is wholly capable of changing minds in a hurry.

 

What appears random may be anything but random as we collectively recognize the need for, prepare for, and execute the necessarily humbling measures for a leap across the chasm from dark uncertainty to an enlightened existence, changing entirely the connotation of “intelligence,” from the negative-activist “gathering of secret information about an enemy,” to its primary meaning, the positive-activist “ability to use memory, knowledge, experience, understanding, reasoning, imagination, and judgment in order to solve problems and adapt to new situations.”[xciii]

 

In the end, “doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move,” the answer - as in Shakespeare’s time - is that in the micro and macro sense, we do not yet know all it would take to know what drives us. After all, theory is mere conjecture. However, every indication imaginable suggests that this, too, is about to change with a monumental forward leap.

[Nur]

Why do we hate them?

 

By Gilad Atzmon

 

07/04/07 "ICH" -- --- When I came over to Britain some thirteen years ago, I found a very tolerant place. I was amazed to see so many people of so many colours, not just living together in peace, but living in full harmony. At Essex University, the institute where I was doing my postgraduate studies, everyone was enthusiastic about post-colonialism. The Brits, so it seemed to me at the time, were repenting over their embarrassing colonial past. I was mildly impressed but not totally overwhelmed. At the end of the day, it isn’t that difficult to denounce your grandfather’s crimes.

 

I was amazed to see Turks and Cypriots running grocery shops side by side in Green Lane. My first roommate was a Palestinian M.A. student from Beit Sahour, it all felt natural. It didn’t take long before I fell in love with the town and decided to make it into my permanent home.

 

At the time, Britain was very different from the place I came from. In my homeland the human landscape was officially reduced into two types. In a manner of crude binary opposition there was always a clear division between the ‘Good’ and the ‘Bad’, the ‘us’ and the ‘them’, the ‘West’ and the ‘East’ or just the ‘Jews’ and the ‘Arabs’. In the place I came from, peace couldn’t even be seen on the horizon. But in the London of the 1990s, there was no such dichotomy. Painfully enough, this has changed. On a daily basis our media outlets repeat the idiotic question: “Why do they hate us so much?” By now it is rather clear, the binary opposition between ‘us’ and ‘them’ has made it into an integral part of the British discourse as well.

 

When I moved over in the early 1990s, British politics was very boring. John Major was in power. But then, not before long, a young, dynamic, visionary politician removed him from office. This politician is a man who has managed in just ten years to demolish one of the most harmonious societies in the West. Tony Blair, the great new Labour promise, had been running the country for a decade; he managed to drag this country into every possible conflict, and to escalate minor conflict to crisis levels. He has managed to lie repeatedly to his people, his parliament and his cabinet, he has launched an illegal war that cost over 700,000 innocent civilian lives. He obviously failed to see the impact those wars may have on his multi-ethnic society at home.

 

Blair has just left the PM office, thank God for that, however, this country is now on the brink of moral collapse. Its civil rights system is under severe threat. Politicians of all parties are calling for tougher detention laws. The possibility of mass deportation of new immigrants doesn’t look like a remote nightmare. Yet, most worrying is the role of the ‘free’ media in this country. The leading papers and TV are succumbing quite willingly to the official Government line of thinking. It’s something that reminds me too much of the recruited media in my doomed homeland, the place I left thirteen years ago.

 

I find myself wondering, how dare the media ask ‘why do they hate us?’ Don’t they know the answer? Don’t we know the answer? Weren’t we the ones who demolished Iraq? Wasn’t it our PM, Tony Blair, who gave a green light to the Israelis to flatten Lebanon? Wasn’t it Tony Blair’s government who dismissed the democratically elected Hamas in Palestine? Wasn’t it Blair who allowed the Israelis to starve Gaza?

 

For those who still fail to realise, to kill is rather simple, to turn towns into piles of rubble isn’t that complicated either. Yet, to raise a child may take a few years, to build a city takes hundreds of years and to establish harmony between human beings takes thousand of years. We should stop lying to others and to ourselves. We know perfectly well why they hate us, they have some good reasons, as things stand momentarily, we are the ones who are killing them en mass. It is us who demolish their towns and kill their kids.

 

Thus, rather than raising the pathetic question, ‘why do they hate us?’ we’d better evade our self-righteous mode, and ask ourselves, ‘why do we hate them so much?’ or even, ‘why do we hate so much?’ in general.

 

To bring peace to London, Glasgow, Britain and the West is to look in the mirror, to look into our severe and devastating wrongdoings, to repair the damage made by Blair, Bush and company, to revise the dream of ecumenical Western society. It is possible. It is within our capacity. We have been just there not that long ago. I remember it very well, it was only thirteen years ago, I felt it when I landed in Britain.

 

 

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel in 1963 and had his musical training at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem (Composition and Jazz) A multi-instrumentalist he plays Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Baritone Saxes, Clarinet, Sol, Zurna and Flutes. Also a prolific and often controversial writer, Atzmon's essays are widely published his novel 'Guide to the perplexed' and 'My One And Only Love' have been translated into 24 languages all together. Visit his website <a href="http://www.gilad.co.uk/'>http://"http://www.gilad.co.uk/"">http://www.gilad.co.uk/[/i]

[Nur]

Saying NO to the Hunters of Goliath

 

By Gilad Atzmon

 

08/13/07 "ICH " -- - The Israelis tend to personalise conflicts. Yet, by doing this, they are neither original nor innovative. They in fact follow a Biblical lesson. Within the Judaic worldview, history and ethics are often reduced into a banal single binary opposition principle. For instance, the deadly battle between the ‘righteous’ David and the ‘evil’ Goliath personalises the struggle between the ‘good’ Israelites and the ‘bad’ Philistines. Though the Biblical specific tale could be understood in a mere literary terms, the similarities to the Israelite of our time are rather concerning. In Israel, there is a direct express path that leads from the ‘role of the assassin’ to the Government seat. Time after time our contemporary Israelite supplicate their highly decorated assassins to become their kings, to lead their army and then to integrate into the cabinet. This obviously happened to Sharon, Barak, Mofaz, Halutz, Dichter and many more.

 

However, Israelis are not alone here. The tendency to personalise and concretise history is rather common amongst Jews. In the eyes of many Jews the Third Reich is reduced into Hitler and Goebbels. Anti-Semitism is often reduced into Wagner, Marx, Weininger and so on. On the face of it, personification indeed simplifies the surrounding reality, the course of history and its interpretation. Once Hitler is gone, the Third Reich may be gone as well, once Wagner is banned, the same may happen to anti-Semitism. This tendency to personalise conflicts, ideologies and worldviews follows an infantile perception: that which you no longer see may cease to exist. It fits as well with the Biblical “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” paradigm. Yet, it is nothing but a pattern of self-deception. It misleadingly associates the abstract with some banal concretisation. It saves its followers from any intellectual engagement with ideology, criticism or self-reflection.

 

Clearly, the Zionist interpretation is engaged with nothing more than the concrete symptom, with the simplest manifestation of the animosity that surrounds it rather than with the core of the problem itself. Hitler was indeed defeated, Jews are now more than welcome in Germany and in Europe, yet, the Jewish state and the sons of Israel are at least as unpopular in the Middle East as their grandparents were in Europe just six decades ago. Seemingly, it is the personification of WW2 and the Holocaust that blinded the Israelis and their supporters from internalising the real meaning of the conditions and the events that led towards their destruction in the first place. Would the Zionists understand the real meaning of their Holocaust, the contemporary Israelite may be able to prevent the destruction that may be awaiting them in the future. Similarly, Wagner may be banned in Israel, yet, the conditions that led Marx, Weininger and Wagner to say what they had to say remain unchanged. As it seems, more and more people in wider circles are now reacting critically, politically and ideologically to Israel, Zionism, Jewish tribalism and the atrocious inhuman policies that are implied by Jewish nationalism and its political and cultural offshoots.

 

But let’s face it, it isn’t just the Israelis who personalise conflicts. Thanks to the Neocons and their tremendous current influence within the Anglo-American political realm, we are all subject to some oversimplification and personalisation of almost every Western conflict. Seemingly, every current Western war has a ‘face’ attached to it. The ‘war against terror’ has the bearded face of Osama Bin Laden. The alleged ‘liberation of the Iraqi people’ had Saddam Hussein’s face on top of the ‘hit list’. Within the Neocon’s Zionised war, every ideological conflict becomes a personal ‘targeted assassination’ plot. May I remind us all that before Neocons launched their pretty successful attempt to Zionise America and Britain, these two countries were engaged in proper impersonalised ideological wars and political conflicts. Britain and the USA fought courageously against Third Reich Germany (rather than just against Hitler). They coldly clashed with ‘The Reds’ as well (rather than with just Stalin).

 

Clearly, this isn’t the case anymore. Within a world shaped by Neocons, the political system is reduced into a simplistic Biblical Goliath chase. We the righteous, the Davids, pursue the Goliaths: Saddam, Bin Laden, Assad, and Ahmadinejad.

 

However, by now we should all know how futile this philosophy is. As much as Israel failed to defeat Palestinian resistance by killing every noticeable emerging Palestinian leader, as much as Israel failed to defeat the Hezbollah by aiming at its leadership, America and Britain are doomed to fail in their current murderous Zionised battles. Saddam is dead and yet, Iraq and its oil fields are still far beyond reach. Bin Laden never shows his face in public and yet the war against terror has yet to achieve a thing.

 

I want to believe that the emerging defeat of Israel and its supporting lobbies will be appropriately grasped by the Western public. We must say NO to Zionised tactics, we must say NO to Zionist agents, we must say NO to the hunters of Goliath.

 

Anatomy of a Colossal Defeat

 

One year after the humiliating Israeli defeat in Lebanon I found myself reviewing the Israeli fiasco through the eyes of two renowned Israeli military analysts, Yoav Limor and Ofer Shelah. In a recent book named ‘Captives Of Lebanon’ the two have managed to assemble a very detailed journal of the chain of events that led to the war, the war itself and the endless lists of Israeli operational, tactical and strategic failures. However, Limor and Shelah do not stop just with the Army and its commanders, they skilfully convey an image of a society that has lost its way, a society that has gradually become detached from its own reality and from its surrounding environment. A society that is facing total moral collapse, led by an egotistic, self-centred leadership, both politically and militarily.

 

Israel’s military defeat last year in Lebanon took the world by surprise. It initially shocked Bush’s Administration as well as Tony Blair who were both very quick and keen to give Israel a green light to destroy Lebanon’s Shia leadership, not to mention obliterating Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure. Bush and Blair weren’t the only ones who came in for a shock, it also stunned the Arab world. Arab leaders are not used to the defeat of the Israeli Army. Moderate Arab leaders found themselves following the TV images in which a single Muslim cleric was teaching Israelis what defiance was all about. Seemingly, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and an insignificant number of warriors, proved to be the first Arabs to defeat the Israeli Army on the ground. Their victory left Israel in shatters. The Israeli power of deterrence disappeared completely. It became a subject for historical research. The IDF Supreme Command was shocked as well: a month after the war, General Udi Adam, the IDF Chief Commander of the northern front, had resigned. It didn’t take too long for Dan Halutz, the IDF Chief of Staff, to follow his lead. Amir Peretz, the Minister of Defence, was ousted by former PM Ehud Barak. It is rather clear that the Israelis are fully aware of the scale of their defeat in Lebanon. Yet, it seems as if the Israelis do not know how to amend the damage. They are truly in love with their ‘good life’, they are captivated by the image of technology and wealth.

 

Though I am not so sure whether the book is going to be translated into other languages (it is in Hebrew), I would classify this book as a ‘must read’ for anyone who is interested in the affairs of this region. The book is a glimpse into Israeli society in what seems to be its final dysfunctional yet destructive state. I am convinced that those Americans who have been moronically sponsoring the Israeli death apparatus for almost four decades, those who still believe that Israel is a ‘regional super power’ better read this journal of Israeli military cowardice and general political malfunctioning.

 

Though the book wouldn’t say it, the message is rather clear. Israel operates as a megalomaniac violent Jewish ghetto motivated by some bizarre murderous zeal flooded with American lethal technology. As Limor and Shelah reveal, in spite of the fact that the conflict on the ground took place on a very narrow strip of land (the Israeli border on the south and Litani River on the north), the Israeli artillery had managed to shoot over 170,000 shells. In comparison, in the 1973 war while fighting against two strong state armies over two very large fronts, the Israelis had launched only 53,000 shells. The figures relating to the Air Force are even more striking. Though less than a few concrete targets were available for the IDF intelligence, the IAF (Israeli Air Force) had launched as many as 17,550 combat missions, this translates into 520 missions a day, almost as many as in the 1973 war (605 a day). Yet, in 1973 the IAF was fighting two well-equipped air forces, it was engaged in a fair amount of air-to-air combat and a relentless struggle against the latest Soviet ground-to-air missiles. None of that happened in the Second Lebanon War. The IAF was engaged solely in hammering the Lebanese soil. It literally threw and launched everything it had in its disposal, presenting a merciless method that in places (southern Beirut for instance), had a similar effect to the infamous 1940s Anglo-American carpet bombardment.

 

Why did the Israelis react so harshly to a local border incident? Why did Israeli politicians and military chiefs lose their ability to employ strategic and tactical considerations? Why did they all fail to define achievable military goals, something that would give their war a time frame, shape and justification? In short, why did the Israelis lose their way? This is indeed a crucial question. Though Limor and Shelah refrain from asking these questions, their book manages to provide some answers. I will try to summarise some of their points.

 

The Military

 

Let’s start with the Army. The Israeli Army has undergone a serious transition in the last four decades. In the years that followed the rapid 1967 invasion, it was ground officers and tank brigadiers in particular who were promoted to lead the Army. Post 1967 Israel believed in Blitzkrieg, an offensive onslaught that simultaneously puts into action some large ground forces together with close air support. After the 1973 war, following the limited success of ground forces and tank divisions, this trend has changed. Gradually, it was the veterans of the Israeli special units who had been promoted to high command positions. Probably the most famous among those veterans was Ehud Barak, the highly decorated commando officer who ended his military career as the IDF Chief of Staff. It was Barak who as Chief of Staff appointed his ex subordinates for high positions in the Israeli Supreme Command. Ground officers were pushed aside.

 

This transformation within the Israeli Army had two motivations behind it: first, the intelligence assumption that not a single Arab state would consider a total war against Israel in the near future; and second, since the first Intifada and the general rise of Palestinian civil resistance, the Israeli army found itself engaged in more and more policing operations. Within such a shift there was not much need for massive ground training. Tank and artillery brigades seemed to be useless and even irrelevant to the newly emerging defence needs of the Jewish state. Large units of combatant soldiers were diverted into policing tasks in the West Bank and Gaza. Within the changing scenario, it was initially Israeli special units and security chiefs who took the lead in what the Israelis perceived as their ‘war against terror’. Consequently, more and more Israeli commando veterans found their way to the IDF high command and later straight into the highly militarised Israeli political life.

 

But things didn’t stop just there; it didn’t take long before Israeli special units failed to provide the solutions to what seemed to be a constantly growing Palestinian civil resistance. Sending the salt of the Jewish earth into Gaza in the wee hours proved to be too dangerous. It must be told that as much as Israelis love to see their young boys terrorising Palestinians, they cannot stand seeing their beloved Rambos being ambushed and killed.

 

It was just a question of time before the Air Force was left to deal with Palestinian defiance. Capitalising on some advanced American technologies, Israel let its F-16s and Apache helicopter gunships launch guided missiles against Palestinian civilian and military targets. The philosophy was rather simple: the IAF was there to maintain the Palestinians in a state of a constant awe. As it happened, in the last decade, the IAF has become the leading force in the war against Palestine, the Palestinian people and their imminent Islamic leadership. The IAF was quick to develop a tactic that was soon named ‘targeted assassination’. According to the new Israeli military doctrine, all that was needed was some intelligence on the ground, which would be followed by a single Israeli jet launching an American guided missile in highly populated Gaza. The achievements were rather clear. In many cases targeted Palestinians were assassinated, in very many cases they found their death alongside innocent civilian bystanders who were unlucky enough to be in the proximity. These unfortunate people were in the wrong place at the very wrong time. In many other cases the pilots just missed or were misled by intelligence. As a result, many Palestinian civilians, old people, women and children found their death. Clearly, no one in Israel could care less. When Dan Halutz, still the IAF commander, was asked how it feels to drop a bomb that kills fourteen Palestinian civilians, his answer was short and simple. ‘It feels like a light bounce on your left wing’. Halutz, the cold-blooded officer, the man who ordered the murder of so many Palestinians, was the right man in the right place, it didn’t take long before he was asked to take the lead of the Israeli Army.

 

As time went by, the Israeli government refrained from endangering young Israeli soldiers. The Israeli ‘war against terror’ has become very safe warfare on the verge of a computer game. Sheik Yassin, Dr. Rantisi and many other civilians fell victim to this form of murderous tactic. Apparently, Israeli military leadership has been overwhelmed with the success of their new killing method. The people of Israel had a new God, namely ‘technological superiority’. The last Israeli wave of generals, many of them pilots and special units’ veterans, got accustomed to the belief that Israel may maintain its regional supreme power by capitalising on its technological superiority and overwhelming firepower.

 

As Limor and Shelah reveal in their book, in the last decade Israeli soldiers literarily stopped training of any form of large tactical operations. With the IAF chasing the enemies of Israel in their bedrooms, who needs tanks and artillery? Young Israeli tank drivers were redeployed soon after their initial and minimal training into elementary guard tasks in the occupied territories. In practice not only were those soldiers foreign to their original military tasks in tanks and artillery, they were not familiar at all with any form of large operational tactical manoeuvres. In other words, as far as the Israeli army is concerned, it lost its readiness to war.

 

So The Palestinians Actually Won

 

Many analysts regard the Palestinian resistance as a militarily futile struggle. At the end of the day, not much harm can be inflicted by a bunch of kids throwing stones. Reading Limor and Shelah may imply that in reality, the Palestinian struggle was actually far from being futile. In fact, it was precisely Palestinian civil resistance that has managed to exhaust the Israeli army. It was the Palestinian resistance that led the Israeli army into a state of paralysis. It was the Palestinian resistance that stretched the IDF manpower to its limit and stopped the Israeli army from training towards the ‘next war’. It was the Palestinians who turned the Israeli soldiers and their commanders into a bunch of cowards who prefer to win wars while sitting in front of computer monitors moving joysticks. It was actually the Palestinians who devastatingly dismantled the IDF readiness for war.

 

It is very much as Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has been suggesting in one of his most declamatory speeches. Israel was indeed ‘hiding behind technological superiority just to cover its cowardice and incomprehension of what the living in the Middle East may entail’[2]. The Israeli army has become used to smashing Palestinian civilians in their homes, to murdering their emerging leadership, to terrorising pregnant women in roadblocks, to shelling young kids in their school classes, so this was indeed very easy. Yet, when the IDF was asked to engage some tiny groups of lightly trained paramilitary enthusiasts, it collapsed shamefully. It collapsed in spite of its technological superiority; it was defeated in spite of its overwhelming firepower, in spite of Bush’s and Blair’s disgraceful support. The Israeli Army collapsed because it was incompetent, it was not ready to fight, it did not know how to fight and most concerning for the Israelis, it didn’t even realise what it was fighting for.

 

Soon after the conflict in Lebanon developed into a total war (at least in the eyes of the Israelis) it became clear to most Israeli generals that the IDF doesn’t have the means to address the rain of Hezbollah Katyusha rockets. If the initial Israeli goal was to stop the Katyusha rockets and to bring home the two captured Israeli reserves, these goals proved to be beyond reach. The Israeli commander soon learned that without proper and quality intelligence, their superior firepower and technology lost any relevance. As funny as it may sound, in a matter of a few days the Israeli leadership adopted some post-structuralist vocabulary. Rather than providing the people of Israel with a simple straightforward ‘victory’ they all started to communicate in terms of a ‘narrative of victory’. Days from the launch of the Israeli campaign the Israeli military began to talk in terms of ‘an Image of victory’ rather than ‘victory’ per se. Shimon Peres started to use the term ‘perception’ of a victory. Yet, even ‘perception’ and ‘image’ of a victory proved to be far beyond reach.

 

The Only Democracy in the Middle East

 

As useless as the Israeli army proved to be, the Israeli government wasn’t any better. Ehud Olmert, the PM, the man who was voted to ‘disengage’ from Palestinian territories, had very little understanding of military affairs. If this is not enough, Amir Peretz, the Labour leader, the man whom Olmert appointed to be his Minister of Defence, lacked any significant knowledge in defence matters as well. For the first time in its history, Israel was led by two professional politicians who had no military background. On the face of it, one may expect that such a dramatic shift would curve the Israeli hawkish tendency within the military and political realm. In practice, the opposite happened. Both Peretz and Olmert found themselves dragged and manipulated into a large-scale conflict by the bloodthirsty Chief of Staff. Considering their inexperience and the short time that they had been holding office, neither Olmert nor Peretz could come up with some creative alternative solutions that might avoid conflict yet would achieve something more. Rather than holding the Army back and giving diplomacy a chance, they both let Halutz lead the country towards unnecessary escalation. Without understanding the full picture, the Israeli government ended up promising Halutz the necessary time and support to achieve goals that were beyond reach to start with.

 

But the truth must be said. Olmert and Peretz were not alone in their cabinet. In fact, they were surrounded by military analysts, intelligence experts, ex-generals and security services veterans. Olmert had in his government Reserved General Shaul Mofaz, the ex Chief of Staff, a man who spent the late phase of his military career fighting the Hezbollah. Avi Dichter, a Security Services veteran was there to comment on the IDF operative suggestions. They had in the government Benjamin Ben Eliezer as well, a reserve Brigadier who had been an expert on Lebanese issues for the last three decades. Shimon Peres was himself a Prime Minister and a Defence Minister in the past. Reservist General Ami Ayalon, and ex-IDF General as well as a former Chief of the Internal Security Services offered his help to Amir Peretz. Yet, none of these experts managed to form a decision-making body, none of the above managed to moderate the military enthusiasm of Halutz, Olmert and Peretz. Like a leaf in the wind, the Israeli government was manipulated by the Generals and later by the public opinion that turned dramatically against the leadership and its inadequate achievement.

 

As time went by, with military failure becoming public knowledge, the more desperately Olmert, Peretz and Halutz tried to change the course of the war just to save their future careers. Though they realised that the chances of achieving a victory were melting down by the hour, they were determined to present the public something that would look like a victory or even simply as an achievement. This is apparently what political survival in the Israeli democracy means for real, you have to present something that may look like a victory. To call it a name, Peretz, Halutz and Olmert ordered the Army to cause some real devastation, assuming that this would gratify the Israeli voter. The IAF and the artillery command reacted instantly, some heavy barrages of cluster bombs, missiles and shells rained over southern Lebanon. In the last 48 hours leading to the ceasefire, Israel emptied it entire stock of weaponry. According to Shelah and Limor, Israel’s ammunition stocks reached the ‘red light’ position.

 

In order to save the political careers of Olmert and Peretz, the IDF launched more and more pointless risky operations with very limited tactical value. These operations failed one after the other without achieving a single thing. Yet they exposed the IDF’s weaknesses. They revealed an Army and a political leadership in a state of a panic. Towards the final hours of the war, some isolated patches of Israeli special units were stranded and starved along the southern Lebanese front with no access to water and food. A few units of Hezbollah warriors had managed to encircle top Israeli commandos. Seemingly, no one in Israel dared to risk logistic convoys into the battlefield. Food and ammunition that was dropped from cargo airplanes fell into the hands of the Hezbollah. In some areas, the wounded IDF commandos were lying on the ground, waiting many hours for rescue units. The defeat was total. The humiliation was colossal. Not only was the ‘Israeli Defence Army’ unable to defend Israel anymore, it even failed in defending itself.

 

Limor and Shelah expose many more interesting issues:

 

Brigadiers who failed to fight alongside their soldiers, instead they preferred to run the battle from secluded bunkers inside Israel.

 

Helicopter gunships were not allowed to enter Lebanese air space just to avoid the risk of being shot down, as a result, Israeli commandos were left to fight Hezbollah on equal terms (lacking air support).

 

A Lieutenant Colonel who refused to lead his soldiers into Lebanon admitted being deficient in operative tactical knowledge.

 

Reservist soldiers were heading towards the front with hardly any of their combatant gear because of some severe shortage in the army emergency stockrooms. Some of those reservists ended up spending their own money so that they could buy the necessary gear.

 

More details regarding Dan Halutz’s 12 July stock exchange affair. Apparently, the Chief of Staff, General Halutz phoned up the bank and ordered them to sell his investment portfolio soon after he learned about the clashes in the north. All this happened just before he himself ordered a further escalation.

 

Seemingly, the Israeli army is ‘all over the place’, it is under trained, it is heavy, it is messy, and its leaders are corrupted to the bone. The Israeli political leadership isn’t any better. Though Peretz is no longer at the Ministry of Defence, Olmert, Mofaz, Dichter and now Barak - all qualified mass murderers - are still cabinet members. Considering the state of its army, Israel may have to consider a swift change of direction, it cannot fight anymore. It lacks the endurance. But seemingly this is not going to happen. As it seems, in the next Israeli election we are probably going to see the eloquent yet belligerent Benjamin Netanyahu fighting the belligerent yet far less eloquent Ehud Barak.

 

For years we tended to believe that Israel would not be defeated in the battlefield. Learning in detail the events of the last war allows us to consider that this may not be the case. The Jewish state has already been defeated in battle and this may happen again sooner than we think.

[Nur]

"A Crude War Of Revenge"

 

Tariq Ali on Afghanistan

 

By Mike Whitney

 

11/29/07 "ICH" -- -- -The United States is on its way to losing the war in Afghanistan. The eventual defeat will be political not military. Public sentiment is shifting in Europe. The people have had enough. They want to get out. When European troops withdrawal from Afghanistan; NATO will gradually unravel and the Transatlantic Alliance will collapse. That will be a disaster for America. The US will again be isolated by two great oceans. But not by choice. America's days as an empire will be over.

 

That's why the US perseveres in Afghanistan even though there is nothing to gain. Pipelines corridors will continue to be blocked by enemy fighters for the foreseeable future. The guerrilla war will intensify. American fatalities will mount. Political opposition at home will grow.

 

The Taliban can't be beaten. They've already taken over more than half the country and they are steadily advancing on the Capital. By next spring, there'll be fighting in the neighborhoods of Kabul, just like there is now in Baghdad. American troops will be barricaded in little Greenzones spread across the countryside. Karzai will be locked away in the Presidential Palace surrounded by American mercenaries. There'll be no more foolish talk about "democracy" and "women's rights". The air war will escalate causing more and more civilian casualties. Protests will break out in the cities and tribal leaders will call for an end to the occupation. Politicians in Germany and France will demand a timetable for withdrawal. Most of these things are already happening.

 

There's no policy in Afghanistan and there never has been. Reconstruction is a myth and security is non-existent. The country is a failed, narco-state governed by warlords and drug kingpins. Women are nearly as bad off as under the Taliban.

 

"Every month dozens of women commit self-immolation to end their desolation," says Afghan Parliament member, Malalai Joya. Bush didn't invade Afghanistan to liberate women anyway. It was all a hoax. Bush believed that Taliban would recognize America's superior firepower and run for the hills. They did. But now they're back. And the tide has turned. The Taliban have regrouped, filled their ranks with new recruits, and now they're stronger than ever. Morale is high. The world's best-equipped, high-tech war machine is being beaten by a ragtag collection of medieval-minded fundamentalists armed with muskets and sabers. It's a bigger fiasco than Iraq.

 

The war in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, is a failure of ideology. The Bush Doctrine, the National Security Strategy, and the New World Order are all in ruins. The apologists for "preemption" on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal have suddenly fallen silent. They've lost their voice. The bravado and chest-thumping has stopped. The Afghan resistance has succeeded where Congress, the UN and 10 million protesters failed. They stopped Bush's army in its tracks. In time, the Americans will leave as did the Russians before them. The war is lost.

 

Democracy doesn't come from the barrel of an M-16 and it can't be dropped from 30,000 ft like a Daisy Cutter. The Bush war in Afghanistan has brought only suffering and devastation. Thousands have been killed or displaced. Vast swathes of the countryside have been contaminated with radioactive dust that collects in clouds and sweeps across the interior-plains poisoning the groundwater and spreading cancer; another tragic memento of the US occupation that will last for decades.

 

Afghanistan was supposed to be "the Good War". Originally, 95% of the American people supported the invasion as the proper response to the attacks of September 11. Liberals and conservatives alike joined the rush to war. The world needed to see America's iron-fisted wrath. It was "payback time".

 

Tariq Ali called it, "A crude war of revenge". He was right.

 

The buildup to the war was all glitz and showmanship; a real public relations extravaganza. The media unfurled the flags and pounded the war drums every day until the Bombay-doors opened and the plumes of black smoke began rising everywhere across Afghanistan.

 

Bush promised to bring them back "Dead or Alive". We were going to "smoke them out of their caves".

 

No one talks about caves anymore-or smoke. The pre-war zeal is gone. Vanished. The "hearts and minds" campaign is lost, too.

 

"The American war on terror is a mockery and so is the US support of the present government in Afghanistan which is dominated by Northern Alliance terrorists," says Malalai Joya.

 

"Far more civilians have been killed by the US military in Afghanistan than were killed in the US in the tragedy of September 11. More Afghan civilians have been killed by the US than were ever killed by the Taliban.....The US should withdrawal as soon as possible. We need liberation not occupation." ("The War on Terror is a Mockery", Elsa Rassbach, Z Magazine Nov 2007)

 

The Bush administration has reneged on every commitment it made to the Afghan people. There was never any attempt to provide security beyond the capital. Never. The US handed over the countryside to the warlords who run their fiefdoms like Mafia Dons. There's no freedom. There's no safety. There's no rule of law. It's all a fabrication---another made-for-TV invasion that's 99% fiction.

 

Last week the Senlis Council released a report saying that, "Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian crisis in which millions face severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa".The vast majority of Afghans are still living in grinding poverty exacerbated by the constant threat of violence. Civilian casualties are soaring and the "The security situation has reached crisis proportion."

 

The Senlis Report adds that the Taliban are "gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change."

 

The US has worn out its welcome. A number of independent journalists confirm that the Taliban has garnered substantial support in the South from disenchanted Afghans who're tired of the broken promises, the lack of employment and reconstruction, and the random bombing of innocent civilians.

 

Last year,there were four times as many air strikes by international forces in Afghanistan than in Iraq. The rising death toll has shocked the public and turned the people against the occupying army. On Monday, 14 engineers and laborers were killed by NATO air strikes in Nuristan Province. The workers, WHO WERE HIRED BY THE US MILITARY TO BUILD A ROAD THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS WERE SLEEPING IN THEIR TENTS WHEN THEY WERE KILLED.

 

"All of our workers have been killed", said Sayed Jalili. (UK Guardian)

 

And so it goes. The US is steadily losing its grip while the tidal wave of resistance continues to grow. Another year of frustration, and the European allies will "pack it in". NATO be damned.

 

Tariq Ali explained why the United States would eventually fail in Afghanistan in a recent interview with Sherry Wolf of the Socialist Worker:

 

"Far from being a "good war", Afghanistan is turning out to be a nasty, unpleasant war, and there's no way the US or other Western forces are going to be able to stay there for too long....The situation is a total mess. The US can never win that war, and the main reason is that the Afghans don't like being occupied. They kicked out the British in the 19th century, the Russians in the 20th century, and , now, they're fighting against the US and its NATO allies." ("Afghanistan Today: six years of a war on Terror, Sherry Wolf, znet)

[Nur]

Strangelove's Wet Dream

 

A Nuclear Free Fire Zone

 

By Peter Chamberlin

 

"You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.

 

You are a slave..., like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind." – Morpheus - The Matrix

 

02/04/08 "ICH" --- - Never before have so few invested so much, for such long a time, to confuse so many people, about so many things. Never before have so many free people willingly betrayed their own country, their own religion, even their own family, in order to gamble for the opportunity to serve the interests of the powerful few, who are known to reward loyalty so extravagantly. This is typical behavior for a country that gambles enough to support its public school system with proceeds from lottery ticket sales.

 

Our government, with the help of the psychos and sycophants who worship at its feet, has created a police state, which the people allow to masquerade as a democracy. The various wars against this or that problem in America, but more specifically, the "war on drugs," have been used successfully by our overlords as an excuse to create a police state apparatus, and with it, new omnipresent agencies which made illegal searches and the invasion of privacy in America commonplace, long before the Patriot Act applied it to every facet of our lives.

 

The American government, in bed with the magnates of big business (the dictionary definition of "fascism"), have been at war with the American people for a very long time. Fat cat Republicans, who regularly bankroll both parties, have long plotted to replace democracy with a fascist dictatorship. (SEE: THE PLOT TO SEIZE THE WHITE HOUSE) Corporations have invested billions in foundations to study the people, in order to make more efficient war upon their minds.

 

America has the largest prison population in the world, not by accident, but by design. Many years ago it became apparent to the masters of our government that the American people would never submit to the involuntary slavery that awaited them. One day, when the people realized what was being done to them, circumstances would devolve into a military confrontation between Washington and the people. When that day comes, it would be better for government mercenary forces if most young men of fighting age were either overseas, or in jail.

 

Like the revolutionary movie "Matrix," every totalitarian state will eventually produce an underground resistance, which will find its own charismatic leaders, who can convince enough fellow slaves to rise-up into an irresistible critical mass. It will be the same way here in America, once Internet researchers finally manage to blow the lid off the 911 cover-up, or one of the other pressure cooker political cover-ups that are now being brought to a boil on the stove. When the people can finally get a clear glimpse of the totalitarian state rising around them, they will throw off all pretense of self-serving self-restraint.

 

The nature of the overthrow will depend upon the length of time required to alert the masses to the dangerous truth. If the people can be aroused to perform their patriotic duty to restrain their government from destroying the world, before it crosses the nuclear threshold, then peaceful change is still possible. The lunatic-in-chief and his supporters in both the political parties are prepared to use nuclear weapons against vast civilian populations, if We the People are unwilling to stop them. This new phase in the war that is allegedly being fought in America's defense will represent the final transmutation of that war into a totally new war, fought to prevent alleged nuclear weapons construction, by unleashing actual nuclear destruction. Strangelove's "wet dream," a nuclear free fire zone.

 

The disaster unfolding in Washington is like nothing the earth has ever seen. The highest form of government ever produced by man is putting the final stages of planning on freedom's demise, and yet the freest people in the history of the world believe that they are powerless to change anything, as they watch excitedly from the sidelines, screaming patriotic hymns to Clinton and McCain. The planners and their stooges ultimately believe in their own ability to carry forward the grand "success" stories of Iraq and Afghanistan into the rest of the Muslim world. The illusion that they can destroy select areas of the rest of the world without destroying us, helps to calm the delirious worry-free psyches of an immoral society, ready to kill the world to save their own sorry asses.

 

The war on terrorism uses our beliefs against us. It has been exposed as a holy war between Christianity and Islam, at least that is evidently what the Jewish neocon authors of the war want it to be. It is only a matter of time before it becomes obvious to everyone that the war of the new world order is a war against all religion. Religious belief and basic human morality must be allowed to serve as the basis for the fight against this war, because it is a war on life itself. The inherent evil of the whole operation must become the rallying point for the people to oppose the war. It is nothing less than an egotistical human attempt to overthrow the moral basis of international law, replacing it with the inhumane law of parasitic capitalist Darwinism. Kill everyone who refuses to be made into a slave!

 

Religious extremists are primary tools for manipulating religious populations into embracing false violent beliefs, in direct contradictions to the peaceful books they were taught from. In both politics and religion, it is the extremists who stand-out, commanding attention, if not respect. It is through the various targeted extremists that the false religious and political beliefs are introduced into the mainstream of ideas. It is within this flow of ideas that we must wade, to fight the false ideas of a war of civilizations and its counterpart a "holy war" between Christianity and Islam.

 

It is time that extremists in the cause of religious truth and freedom took the fight to our corporate government. We do not have to bow before a form of Zionist-sanctioned political correctness, which leaves no room for truth in an entertainment/indoctrination bureau which masquerades as a free press. Our "free press" has allowed itself to become the greatest threat to freedom our nation has ever faced. It is impossible for a free people to defend itself against an administration of deadly lies when the truth is so easily buried. The American people must become their own press, in order to get around the main obstacle to freedom.

 

The revolution must be a national rejection of a political system based on lies and cover-ups. Our national resistance movement must take the form of a fight for truth, and it must take place in the national arena. The truth we have learned from the rest of the world, through the alternative media, must become common knowledge. You would think that the way Americans love ironic, sarcastic humor, the majority would eagerly join us over here in the alternative media, to share our fascination with the hypocritical stage theater now being performed for our national amusement, which masquerades as politics and foreign policy.

 

The national debate has been strangled because of the news blackout over American/Israeli relations and American duplication of Israeli tactics in the war. Criticism of Israel or its tactics which are used by American forces will not be found anywhere in the "legitimate" American press. This news "dead zone," which is geographically centered on Israel, is certain to be where the planned conflict against Iran and everyone associated with Iran will break-out. We have to overcome this news blackout over the selected zone of conflict.

 

The Zionist censorship of American debate relies upon the accusation of "anti-Semitism" as their primary weapon, to silence fair-minded Americans, who would normally refuse to remain silent in the face of such massive cold-blooded murder on this scale. This instantly has the effect of elevating whatever position they are defending from debate to an (so far) unassailable position beyond debate from the "racist" rabble, otherwise known as "anti-Zionists." By openly making Israel's war America's war, the magical talisman of "anti-Semitism" insulates the Israeli roots of the war on Islam from criticism. Israel must be exposed as the progenitor of this war and the even bigger battle about to be let loose upon the innocent Muslims of the world.

 

The real racists are the Zionists. It is impossible to fight the racist basis of the war, without exposing this cold hard fact. Ideas of Jewish superiority based on Biblical accounts of ancient Israel are embraced by "Christian" leaders, who ignore the obvious ethnic cleansing and state policies of today's "Israel" that easily match the accepted international definition of "genocide." The ongoing "Shoah" (holocaust) being inflicted upon the Palestians is ignored by the loyal press, while the most cynical Zionists seek to derail true debate by mislabeling feeble homemade rockets as genocidal weapons. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206632348924&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Once again, the Zionists turn truth on its head, with its genocidal weapons claim, while denying that the truly horrific thermobaric, phosphorus and uranium-based weapons it has used in Gaza and Lebanon were used in contravention of international law. http://uruknet.info/?p=m42553&hd=&size=1&l=e

 

If the indigenous people of Palestine are not made to seem inferior, as somewhat less human than the citizens of the "Jewish state," then it becomes much harder to rationalize a "Shoah" upon them, or to "broom them" from their land, like an infestation of vermin. The war against Islam is based on this false position of superiority over all the Muslim people, just as it has been in previous American wars against other non-white populations, who had land or lives available for the taking. The would-be tyrants of the world have always looked at the American genocide of Native Americans as the ultimate example to follow.

 

For those of you still on the sidelines, who have never been baptized by the fires of vitriol and accusations of "anti-Semitism" that always come from criticizing our government for fighting catastrophic wars to enshrine Israel's security above our own, I invite you to wade into the political waters and be baptized in organized hatred, for daring to speak-out. For I guarantee that the first comments you will hear for breaking the taboo and telling the truth will be very abusive in a special mad dog sort of way. The Jewish extremists (who call themselves Zionists) have manipulated Christians, (who also call themselves Zionists) into fighting a genocidal war against Muslims (whom the Zionists call Islamists), so that the Jewish extremists in Israel could safely, openly, remove all Muslims from "Greater Israel," the land coveted by "the chosen people."

 

It is wrong to allow a new holocaust of one people to fulfill the territorial ambitions of the descendents of the survivors of the last holocaust.

[Nur]

A Dispute about Ideas? A war with Islam ? Or A War On Terror?

 

 

Find Out below!

 

 

Alastair Crooke,

 

The Guardian,

 

Monday March 24 2008, This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday March 24 2008 on p33 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:02 on March 24 2008.

 

The French philosopher Michel Foucault notes that in all societies discourse is controlled - imperceptibly constrained, perhaps, but constrained nonetheless. We are not free to say exactly what we like. The norms set by institutions, convention and our need to keep within the boundaries of accepted behaviour and thought limit what may be touched upon. The Archbishop of Canterbury experienced the backlash from stepping outside these conventions when he spoke about aspects of Islamic law that might be imported into British life.

 

Once, a man was held to be mad if he strayed from this discourse - even if his utterings were credited with revealing some hidden truth. Today, he is called "naive", or accused of having gone "native". Recently, the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) marshalled former senior military and intelligence experts in order to assert such limits to expression by warning us that "deference" to multiculturalism was undermining the fight against Islamic "extremism" and threatening security.

 

Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, in a recent interview with a German magazine, embellished Rusi's complaints of naivety and "flabby thinking". Radical Islam won't stop, he warned, and the "virus" would only become more virulent if the US were to withdraw from Iraq.

 

The charge of naivety is not limited to failing to understand the concealed and duplicitous nature of Hamas and Hizbullah, Iran and Syria; it extends to not grasping the true nature of the wider "enemy" the west is facing. "I don't like the term 'war on terror' because terror is a method, not a political movement; we are in a war against radical Islam," says Kissinger. But who or what is radical Islam? It is those who are not "moderates", he explains. Certainly, a small minority of Muslims believe that only by "burning the system" can a fresh stab at a just society be made. But Kissinger's definition of "moderate" Islam sounds no more than a projection of the Christian narrative after Westphalia, by which Christianity became a private matter of conscience, rather than an organisational principle for society.

 

If radical Islam, with which these experts tell us we should be at war, encompasses all those who are not enamoured of secular society, and who espouse a vision of their societies grounded in the values of Islam, then these experts are advocating a war with Islam - because Islam is the vision for their future favoured by many Muslims.

 

Mainstream Islamists are indeed challenging western secular and materialist values, and many do believe that western thinking is flawed - that the desires and appetites of man have been reified into representing man himself. It is time to re-establish values that go beyond "desires and wants", they argue.

 

Many Islamists also reject the western narrative of history and its projection of inevitable "progress" towards a secular modernity; they reject the western view of power-relationships within societies and between societies; they reject individualism as the litmus of progress in society; and, above all, they reject the west's assumption that its empirical approach lends unassailability and objective rationality to its thinking - and universality to its social models.

 

People may, or may not, agree, but the point is that this is a dispute about ideas, about the nature of society, and about equity in an emerging global order. If western discourse cannot step beyond the enemy that it has created, these ideas cannot be heard - or addressed. This is the argument that Jonathan Powell made last week when he argued that Britain should understand the lessons of Northern Ireland: we should talk to Islamist movements, including al-Qaida. It has to be done, because the west needs to break through the fears and constraints of an over-imagined "enemy".

 

Camouflaged behind a language dwelling exclusively on "their" violence and "their" disdain for rationality, these "realists" propose not a war on terror, nor a war to preserve "our values" - for we are not about to be culturally overwhelmed. No Islamist seriously expects that a "defeated" west would hasten to adopt the spirit of the Islamic revolution.

 

No, the west's war is a military response to ideas that question western supremacy and power. The nature of this war on "extremism" became evident when five former chiefs of defence staff of Nato states gathered at a think-tank in Washington earlier this year. Their aim was not to query the realism of a war on ideas, but to empower Nato for an "uncertain world".

 

"We cannot survive ... confronted with people who do not share our values, who unfortunately are in the majority in terms of numbers, and who are extremely hungry for success," Germany's former chief of defence staff warned. Their conclusion was that the security of the west rests on a "restoration of its certainties", and on a new form of deterrence in which enemies will find there is not, and never will be, a place in which they feel safe.

 

The generals concluded that Nato should adopt an asymmetrical and relentless pursuit of its targets regardless of others' sovereignty; to surprise; to seize the initiative; and to use all means, including the nuclear option, against its enemies.

 

In Foucault's discourse, he identified a further group of rules serving to control language: none may enter into discourse on a specific subject unless he or she is deemed qualified to do so. Those, like the archbishop, who penetrate this forbidden territory - reserved to security expertise - to ask that we see the west for what it has become in the eyes of others, are liable to be labelled as naively weakening "our certainties" and undermining national resolve.

 

But do we, who are brushed out of this discourse by the blackmail of presumed expertise, really believe them? Do we really believe, after so much failure, that Islamist alternative ideas will be suppressed by a Nato plunged into an asymmetrical warfare of assassinations and killings? The west's vision for society holds power only so long as people believe it holds power. Do we really think that if force has not succeeded, that only more and greater force can restore belief in the western vision? If that is the limit to western thinking, then it is these "realists", these armchair warriors fighting a delusional war against a majority who "do not share our values", who are truly naive.

 

· Alastair Crooke is a former security adviser to the EU and founder and director of the Conflicts Forum conflictsforum.org

[Nur]

Christian fundamentalism and Zionism

 

Time To Terminate This Unholy Alliance?

 

 

 

By Alan Hart

 

 

 

23/08/08 "ICH " -- - In the light of the revelation (devine or not) about Pastor John Hagee’s assertion that Hitler was God’s agent, is it too much to hope that Jews everywhere, and Jewish Americans especially, will insist that Zionism terminate its unholy alliance with Christian fundamentalism?

 

This alliance has always seemed to me to be the greatest madness and also the biggest obscenity in the continuing story of conflict in and over Palestine.

 

Historically speaking, Christian fundamentalists were classic Jew haters on the grounds, they said, that the Jews were the “Christ killers”. So what explains Christian fundamentalism’s support for Israel right or wrong - support which today includes much of the money to fund Zionism’s on-going colonisation of the occupied West Bank?

 

The evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell gave this answer.

 

The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was the most crucial event in history since the ascension of Jesus to heaven and

 

“proof that the second coming of Jesus Christ is nigh… Without a State of Israel in the Holy Land, there cannot be the second coming of Jesus Christ, nor can there be a Last Judgement, nor the End of the World.”.

 

Another answer is that provided by Yakov M. Rabkin, the Jewish Canadian Professor of History at the University of Montreal. In his book A Threat From Within, A CENTURY OF JEWISH OPPOSITION TO ZIONISM, he writes:

 

“The massive support extended to the State of Israel by millions of Christian supporters of Zionism is overtly motivated by a single consideration: that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land will be a prelude to their acceptance of Christ (when he returns) or, for those who fail to do so, to their physical destruction.” (My emphasis added).

 

Simply stated, Christian fundamentalism’s only interest in the Zionist state of Israel is in assisting it to become the instrument for bringing about, as foretold by the Christian Bible, the end of the world in a final battle at Armageddon between the forces of good and evil. In this scenario the Jews will have a choice - either to junk their Judaism and become Christians, in which case they will be beamed up to heaven, or to be annihlated… It seems to me that there’s a case for saying that Christian fundamentalism is, potentially, a far bigger threat to Jews and Judaism than all the Arabs and other Muslims of the world put together, including a nuclear-armed Iran!

 

So why is Zionism in alliance with Christian fundamentalism?

 

The short answer needs only two words - political expendiency.

 

On its own and in its various manifestations, the Zionist (not Israel!) lobby is awesomely powerful. It is even more influential, in America especially, in association with Christian fundamentalism. In May 2002, the BBC’s admirable Stephen Sackur presented a remarkable radio documentary, A Lobby to Reckon With. It was honest, investigative journalism at its very best. The programme explained why it was no longer accurate to talk about the Zionist lobby (which in my view was wrongly called the Israel lobby) as the main influence on American policy for the Middle East. There was now a more powerful lobby, one that had been formed, effectively if not institutionally, by the Zionists joining forces with Christian fundamentalism. As Sackur observed, “It is an alliance of the two best organised networks in the U.S.”

 

Another way to put it would be to say that America’s elected representatives, almost all of them including their Presidents, are frightened of offending Zionism too much and sometimes at all, and terrified of offending Zionism in alliance with Christian fundamentalism.

 

A truth about Zionism is that it’s always been ready, willing and able to use or be used by any power or interest when doing so advanced its own cause. It has never needed a spoon, long or short, to sup with the devil. Those who are familiar with the most intimate details of Zionism’s history know that in 1940 there was a Zionist offer to collaborate with Nazi Germany - to participate in the war on Germany’s side and to assist the establishment of Hitler’s New (totalitarian) Order in Europe.

 

To this day Zionism and all supporters of Israel right or wrong deny there was ever a Zionist proposal for collaboration with Nazi Germany, just as they deny Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948/49 and on-going; but 45 years after the offer was made in writing, Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s longest serving director of Military Intelligence, made the following observation about it in his book, Israel’s Fateful Hour:

 

“Perhaps, for peace of mind, we ought to see this affair as an aberrant episode in Jewish history. Nevertheless, it should alert us to how far extremists may go in times of distress, and where their manias may lead.” (My empassis added).

 

It could also that there was a financial consideration in Zionsm’s decision to use and be used by Christian fundamentalism. At some point in the future it’s not impossible that the more American and European Jews realise that Zionism is their enemy, the less they will be willing to pump money into the Zionist state.. In that event, Zionism may have calculated, it will need Christian fundamentalist money more than ever.

 

I’ve never believed that enough Americans would be ****** enough to put Senator John McCain in the White House, and hopefully his better-late-than-never rejection of Hagee’s endorsement will guarantee his defeat.

 

The only “end of times” I wish for is the termination of the unholy alliance between Christian fundamentalism and Zionism. Amen

[Nur]

Legislating Tyranny

 

By Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton

 

07/06/08 "Lew Rockwell" -- -The George W. Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon with an assault on U.S. civil liberty that Bush justified in the name of the “war on terror.” The government assured us that the draconian measures apply only to “terrorists.” The word terrorist, however, was not defined. The government claimed the discretionary power to decide who is a terrorist without having to present evidence or charges in a court of law.

 

Frankly, the Bush administration’s policy evades any notion of procedural due process of law. Administration assurances that harsh treatment is reserved only for terrorists is meaningless when the threshold process for determining who is and who is not a terrorist depends on executive discretion that is not subject to review. Substantive rights are useless without the procedural rights to enforce them.

 

Terrorist legislation and executive assertions created a basis upon which federal authorities claimed they were free to suspend suspects’ civil liberties in order to defend Americans from terrorism. Only after civil liberties groups and federal courts challenged some of the unconstitutional laws and procedures did realization spread that the Bush administration’s assault on the Bill of Rights is a greater threat to Americans than are terrorists.

 

The alacrity with which Congress accepted the initial assault from the administration is frightening. In 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act passed by a vote of 98 to 1 in the Senate and by 357 to 66 in the House. The act was already written and waiting on the shelf before the 9/11 attack. Indeed, the FBI and Department of Justice have tried for years to introduce PATRIOT Act provisions into the law. That act was introduced immediately after the attacks, and few members of Congress read its contents prior to passing it.

 

Federal courts declared some provisions of the legislation to be unconstitutional. Vague language criminalizing “expert advice or assistance” as material support for terrorism was thrown out, as were gag orders and “National Security Letters” used to obtain private information without judicial oversight. Despite challenges from the American Civil Liberties Union and resolutions passed in 8 states and 396 cities and counties condemning the act for its attack on civil liberties, Congress reauthorized the act in March 2006, making most of it permanent and sending a clear signal that the “war on terror” takes precedence over civil liberty.

 

The PATRIOT Act’s infringements of civil liberty are serious, but they pale by comparison to the Bush administration’s assertion of executive power to set aside habeas corpus protection for both citizens and noncitizens declared by the executive branch to be “enemy combatants.” The Bush administration claimed and exercised the power to hold indefinitely anyone so designated without access to legal representation. In other words, the Bush administration claimed the discretionary and unaccountable power to imprison whomever it wished.

 

In keeping with its self-declared powers, the Bush administration quickly rounded up hundreds of detainees whom it claimed – without evidence – to be “enemy combatants.” Four detainees, Rasul, Hamdi, Padilla, and Hamdan, consisting of a British citizen, two American citizens, and an Afghan, respectively, challenged the administration in federal court cases that reached the Supreme Court.

 

In Rasul v. Bush the Supreme Court ruled in June 2004 that, contrary to Bush administration assertions, the courts have jurisdiction over Guantánamo and that detainees must be allowed to challenge their detention.

 

Also in June 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that Hamdi, an American citizen, was deprived of due process and had the right to challenge his detention. However, the ruling was far from a clean sweep for civil liberty. Both noted civil libertarian Harvey Silverglate (Reason, January 2005) and John Yoo, a Department of Justice apologist for the new tyranny, agree that the Supreme Court decision left flexibility and room for the government to maneuver and prevail in the end.

 

In December 2003, an appellate court ruled that U.S. citizen José Padilla could not be denied habeas corpus protection. To forestall another Supreme Court ruling against the Bush administration, the administration withdrew Padilla’s status as “enemy combatant” and filed criminal charges that bore no relationship to the administration’s original assertions that Padilla was plotting to explode a “dirty bomb” in an American city. As Harvey Silverglate has documented (Boston Phoenix, September 16, 2005), the Padilla case is also an extraordinary story of “forum shopping” (picking a court where judges are friendly to its case) by the Department of Justice.

 

Forced by the federal judiciary to release José Padilla from years of illegal detention or to put him on trial, the Bush administration had to scramble to put together some kind of charges. The best that the Bush administration could do was to charge Padilla not with any terrorist acts, but with wanting to be a terrorist – a “terrorist-wannabe” to use the words of Andrew Cohen (WashingtonPost.com, August 16, 2007).

 

By the time Padilla went to trial, he had been demonized for years in the media as an “enemy combatant” who intended to set off a radioactive bomb. Peter Whoriskey (Washington Post, August 17, 2007) described the Padilla Jury as a patriotic jury that appeared in court with one row of jurors dressed in red, one in white, and one in blue. It was a jury primed to be psychologically and emotionally manipulated by federal prosecutors. No member of this jury was going to return home to accusations of letting off the “dirty bomber.”

 

Evidence, of which there was little, if any, played no role in the case. The chief FBI agent, James T. Kavanaugh, testified in court that the intercepted telephone conversations were innocuous and contained no references to terrorism or Islamic extremism, but the jury wasn’t listening. The judge allowed prosecutors to show the jury a ten-year-old video of Osama bin Laden that had no relevance to the case, but which served to arouse in jurors fear, anger, and disturbing memories of September 11, 2001. The jury convicted Padilla on all counts, despite the total absence of any evidence that he had ever committed a terrorist act or had agreed to commit such an act.

 

By convicting Padilla, the jury opened Pandora’s box and created a Benthamite precedent for imprisoning U.S. citizens on the suspicion that they might commit a terrorist act.

 

In July 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court ruled that Bush’s military tribunals violate U.S. military law and the Geneva Conventions.

 

Republicans, who tend to regard civil liberties as devices that coddle criminals and terrorists, turned to legislation in attempts to subvert the Supreme Court’s defense of the U.S. Constitution. In November 2005, the Senate Republicans passed an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act offered by Lindsay Graham of South Carolina authorizing the president to deny habeas corpus protection to Guantánamo detainees. The fact that it was known by this time that the vast majority of the detainees were hapless individuals who were captured by Afghan warlords and sold to the Americans, who were paying a bounty for “terrorists,” carried no weight with the Republican senators.

 

The Republicans replied to Hamdan v. Rumsfeld with the Military Commissions Act passed in September 2006 and signed by Bush in October. The act strips detainees of protections provided by the Geneva Conventions: “No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights.” Other provisions of the act strip detainees of speedy trials and of protection against torture and self-incrimination. This heinous law has a breathtaking provision that retroactively protects torturers against prosecution for war crimes.

 

The act explicitly denies habeas corpus protection and access to federal courts to any alien detained by the U.S. government as an “enemy combatant” and any alien awaiting determination of his status. The act reads: “No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the US who has been determined by the US to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.”

 

This act is as atrocious a piece of legislation as the world has ever seen. It permits people to be sentenced to death on the basis of hearsay, secret evidence, and on a confession extracted by torture. Indeed, detainees could be shot in the back of the head without undergoing the kangaroo tribunal and no one would ever know or be held legally responsible.

 

A number of legal experts have concluded that there is no assurance that the act cannot be applied to U.S. citizens. Although language in the act refers to “alien unlawful enemy combatant,” other language in the document does not limit the act’s applicability only to aliens. Legal scholars have warned that the legislation defines enemy combatant in such broad language that the act applies to any person whom the executive branch declares has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States. No evidence for the charge is necessary. By seizing the power to decide who is and who is not an “enemy combatant,” the executive branch has seized the power to decide who shall and who shall not be permitted the protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The Bush administration has resurrected the dungeons and torture chambers that Blackstone’s Rights of Englishmen banished from the English-speaking world.

 

It is too early to know how the act will be interpreted and applied to American citizens or whether it can be challenged and overturned on constitutional grounds, but forebodings are severe. What we can say is that the act is draconian and dangerous legislation that is completely unnecessary. If the U.S. government has enough correct information to designate a person truthfully to be an enemy combatant, the U.S. government has enough information to put the person on trial in open court with all the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to defendants. The U.S. government only needs indefinite detention, torture, and secret evidence when it has no evidence. Every American should be concerned that John Yoo, one of the Justice Department authors of this totalitarian legislation, is now a law professor at the University of California. Liberty has no future in America if law schools provide legitimacy to those who would subvert the U.S. Constitution.

 

The Assault on the Constitution

 

We concluded the first edition of this book with a call for “an intellectual rebirth, a revival of constitutionalism.” Alas, far from a rebirth of constitutionalism, we are witnessing a rending that we would not have imagined. On January 17, 2007, the attorney general of the United States, Alberto Gonzales, declared in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that “the Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas.” The chairman of the committee, Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) was incredulous when Gonzales insisted that “there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.”

 

In June 2007, Dick Cheney astonished Americans with his claim that the Office of Vice President is independent of both the executive branch and Congress and is accountable to neither.

 

Americans should pay attention to the power that the Bush administration is claiming over them. If Americans are not protected by habeas corpus, the government can pick us up at its will and cast us into dungeons for the rest of our lives without ever giving any accountability of its action. If the Constitution does not grant habeas corpus protection, the administration is under no compulsion to provide indictments, evidence, and trial. The government can simply imprison at will.

 

The Bush administration is using every strategy to push aside the remains of the legal principles that shield the people from arbitrary government power. It is a short step from denying Americans’ constitutional right to a public trial by an impartial jury to denying every other constitutional right. Clearly, on the basis of an indefinite “war” against an indefinite “terrorist enemy,” the Bush regime is attempting to claim powers that are not limited by the Constitution, Congress, or the courts. It is a life-and-death matter for Americans to understand that the Bush administration is seeking to undermine all rights by shutting off the procedural avenues for enforcing rights.

 

Few Americans seem alarmed. Conservative attorneys, such as members of the Federalist Society who present themselves as defenders of “original intent,” are pushing for more power to be concentrated in the executive. One of the tools used to obtain this goal is Bush’s misuse of “signing statements.” Scholars, such as Phillip J. Cooper of Portland State University writing in the September 2005 issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly, warn that Bush uses signing statements not only as illegal line-item vetoes that evade congressional override but also as “wide-ranging assertions of exclusive authority and court-like pronouncements that redefine legislative powers under the Constitution. They reveal a systematic effort to define presidential authority in terms of the broad conception of the prerogative both internationally and domestically under the unitary executive theory.”

 

Signing statements deserve a closer look than they are receiving. There is no provision in the Constitution for signing statements. Courts often look to congressional debates and proceedings to ascertain legislative intent when a statute’s meaning is not obvious. The Bush administration is endeavoring to establish the judicial practice of also looking to the president’s signing statements in the same way, an absurd idea as the president does not enact legislation. President Bush’s use of signing statements signals the refusal of the executive branch to abide by the rule of law, a frightening prospect.

 

A growing number of thoughtful Americans believe, rightly or wrongly, that the “war on terror” is a hoax that is providing cover for what former President Nixon’s White House counsel, John W. Dean, says is an assault on American liberty by “authoritarian conservatives.” Time will tell whether Americans will continue to tolerate the neoconservatives’ wars and attacks on civil liberty.

 

The Case of Sami Al-Arian

 

The demise of the Rights of Englishmen, the unaccountability of police and prosecutors, the witch-hunt atmosphere created by the “war on terror,” the government’s need to find terrorist suspects in order to maintain the public’s alarm, and the sadistic and bigoted attitudes of many prison guards and even federal prosecutors and judges toward Muslims have resulted in the use of law for persecution. The case of Sami Al-Arian, who was a professor of computer science at the University of South Florida, is a pure example of the use of law as a weapon for persecution.

 

Most Americans know only the Israeli side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinian side is rarely heard. Even prominent Americans, such as former president Jimmy Carter, who point out that there are two sides to the story, are subjected to demonization and name-calling. Sami Al-Arian was gaining success as a voice for a more even-handed Middle East policy. He spoke to intelligence personnel and military commanders at MacDill Air Force Central Command. He gave interviews. He even invited the FBI to attend meetings where he spoke.

 

This was too much for the Israeli Lobby, which has enjoyed a total monopoly on the explanation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. The hysteria following 9/11 created the opportunity to destroy Sami Al-Arian. Alexander Cockburn (CounterPunch, March 3, 2007) reports that “at the direct instigation of Attorney General Ashcroft” trumped-up terrorism and conspiracy charges were leveled at Al-Arian.

 

The neoconservative media and right-wing talk radio went to work on Al-Arian. Pushed by Gov. Jeb Bush, the university fired him. He was arrested and deemed too dangerous for bail. He was held in solitary confinement for two and a half years while the federal government tried to manufacture some evidence against him. Wikipedia reports that “Amnesty International said Al-Arian’s pre-trial conditions ‘appeared to be gratuitously punitive’ and stated ‘the restrictions imposed on Dr. Al-Arian appeared to go beyond what were necessary on security grounds and were inconsistent with international standards for humane treatment.’”

 

The government failed to produce any evidence. The jury acquitted Al-Arian on all serious charges and voted 10–2 for acquittal on all other charges. The jury acquitted him despite U.S. District Court judge James Moody’s many biased rulings against Al-Arian.

 

Knowing that Al-Arian and his family could not stand the strain of solitary confinement for another two and a half years while a new case was prepared, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would retry him. His attorney urged him to make a plea in order to end the ordeal.

 

Al-Arian’s plea is innocuous and bears no relationship to the serious charges on which he was tried. According to Wikipedia, as part of the plea agreement “the government acknowledged that Al-Arian’s activities were non-violent and that there were no victims to the charge in the plea agreement.”

 

Under the plea agreement, Al-Arian’s sentence amounted essentially to time served, but he was double-crossed by Judge Moody, who according to Alexander Cockburn used “inflamed language about Al-Arian having blood on his hands” (a charge rejected by the jury) and handed down the maximum sentence.

 

The “terrorist” prosecutors had yet more in store for Al-Arian. In October 2006, federal prosecutor Gordon Kromberg, reportedly “notorious as an Islamophobe,” demanded, in violation of the plea agreement, that Al-Arian testify before a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, investigating an Islamic research center. According to Wikipedia, “in a verbal agreement that appears in court transcripts, federal prosecutors agreed [as part of the plea agreement] that Al-Arian would not have to testify in Virginia.”

 

Al-Arian’s lawyers saw Kromberg’s subpoena of their client as a setup, and Al-Arian refused to testify. On January 22, 2007, Al-Arian was brought before a federal judge on contempt charges. He described to the judge the extraordinary abuse he had suffered at the hands of federal prison officials. The guards and officers all felt free to abuse Al-Arian, because they had heard the lie on right-wing talk radio and from neoconservative media that he was a terrorist who hated Americans. The hostile judge sentenced Al-Arian to eighteen months more on a civil contempt charge for refusing to testify about a case that he knew nothing about.

 

Kromberg contrived to put Al-Arian in a situation in which truthful answers in court under oath could be turned into a perjury charge by offering the defendants reduced charges in exchange for their testimony that Al-Arian was involved with them in some alleged activity and lied under oath. Alternatively, Al-Arian would be cited for civil contempt for refusal to testify. The ease with which Kromberg violated the plea agreement and abused the prosecutorial power in full view of federal judges should give pause to every American.

 

When a university professor, who has done nothing but try to correct the one-sided story Americans are fed about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, can be treated in this way by the U.S. Department of Justice, civil liberty in the United States is in a precarious condition.

 

The ease with which Al-Arian was transformed into a terrorist should be a lesson to us all. People in charge of Homeland Security are no less inclined than police and prosecutors to make expansive interpretations of their mandate and what constitutes terrorism and suspect behavior. On May 28, 2007, the Associated Press reported that the Alabama Department of Homeland Security had included among terrorist groups listed on its Web site environmentalists, antiwar protesters, abortion opponents, and gay- and animal-rights advocates. It is an ancient practice of government to hype fear in order to gain arbitrary power that can be turned against anyone. Perhaps this expansive definition of terrorist explains the eighty thousand names on the government’s no-fly list.

 

Another problem with arbitrary and undefined power is that it ends up being exercised by people who tend to receive low marks for good judgment and intelligence. English film director Mike Figgis was held for five hours in an interrogation cell at Los Angeles International Airport because U.S. immigration officers are unfamiliar with the professional language of television show producers and lacked the common sense to avoid a misunderstanding. When asked the reason for his visit, Figgis said: “I’m here to shoot a pilot.” “Shoot,” of course, means to film, and “pilot” is the first episode of a new TV show. The people providing our security concluded that Figgis had voluntarily confessed to a plot to come to America in order to murder an airline pilot. Figgis survived his assumption that people in Los Angeles understood movie talk, but the desire of people empowered to thwart terrorism to use their power is great. Any excuse will do.

 

Sliding Toward Dictatorship

 

The assaults of the Bush regime on civil liberty, the Constitution, and the separation of powers are more determined and more successful than its military assaults on the Middle East, which provide the “war time” justification for the attack on civil liberty in the United States. The regime and its supporters are determined to raise the president to dictatorial powers, at least in times of war, the initiation of which is being turned into a presidential prerogative.

 

On May 9, 2007, President Bush signed the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive. If in the president’s opinion a “catastrophic emergency” occurs, the directive places all governmental power in the hands of the president, effectively abolishing the checks and balances in the Constitution. Underlying this directive is the “unitary executive” doctrine, a theory pushed by the Federalist Society, an important source of law clerks, DOJ appointees, and judicial nominees for the Republican Party. The doctrine, supported by Supreme Court justices such as Samuel Alito, claims that the executive power of the president is completely separate and independent of the legislative and judicial powers and not subject to infringement by them. The manner in which this doctrine is being institutionalized is creating the additional claim that executive power is the supreme power. In effect, unitary executive theory is elevating the president to a dictator with the power to ignore or suspend laws.

 

The unitary executive doctrine is a direct attack on the constitutional separation of powers established by the Founding Fathers. One of the alleged advantages of the unitary executive is that the president can act more quickly and efficiently if he is not subject to interference from Congress and the judiciary. However, as Justice Louis Brandeis explained in 1926, “the doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy.”

 

News reports that the Bush administration has contracted with Halliburton to build detention centers in the United States at a cost of $385 million revive memories of the World War II detention of Japanese American citizens. It has not been explained who are the intended detainees for the new detention centers. Do the American people want to trust with detention centers an executive branch, which claims the power to set aside habeas corpus, statutory law, due process, and the prohibition against torture?

 

Polls show that 36 percent of the American public and more than half of New Yorkers lack confidence in the 9/11 Commission Report. Despite a significant percentage of the public’s disbelief in the explanation of the event that took America to war in the Middle East, Congress and the media continue to tolerate the Bush administration’s aggressive rhetoric, which seeks to widen the “war on terror” from Afghanistan and Iraq to Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. The diligence with which Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives press for an attack on Iran, and the extreme position that the Bush administration has taken on executive power, raise the question whether the Bush administration has an agenda that takes precedence over America’s constitutional democracy.

 

Never in its history have the American people faced such danger to their constitutional protections as they face today from those in the government who hold the reins of power and from elements of the legal profession and the federal judiciary that support “energy in the executive.” An assertive executive backed by an aggressive U.S. Department of Justice and unobstructed by a supine Congress and an intimidated corporate media has demonstrated an ability to ignore statutory law and public opinion. The precedents that have been set during the opening years of the twenty-first century bode ill for the future of American liberty.

 

Excerpted from The Tyranny of Good Intentions by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton. Excerpted by permission of Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

 

Paul Craig Roberts a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades.

Lawrence M. Stratton is a Ph. D. candidate in Christian Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary and a former adjunct professor of Georgetown University Law Center. He is currently on the adjunct Ethics faculty at Villanova University. A new edition of their book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has just been released by Random House.

[Nur]

US IRAQI CONTRACT LEAKED!

 

Read all about it, plus the funny Iraqia TV show, SUNNIS SHIAS UNITED TO SERVE CASINOS IN GREEN ZONE!

 

What happens in the Green Zone, Stays in the Green Zone.

 

 

US-Iraqi Agreement: Leaked

 

Full Text

 

By Raed Jarrar

 

09/01/08 -- - - I read about a leaked copy of the US-Iraqi agreement a few days ago when a radio station in Iraq mentioned some of its details, then it was mentioned in some Arab newspapers like Al-Qabas and Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. A couple of days ago, one Iraqi website (linked to an Iraqi armed resistance group) published the leaked draft on their web page for less than a couple of days before their website went offline. (Thankfully, I downloaded the 21 pages agreement and saved them before their server went down)

 

I spent this weekend translating it, and just finished now. you can read the 27 articles August 6th draft below. The title of this draft is "Agreement regarding the activities and presence of U.S. forces, and its withdrawal from Iraq", but this is the same agreement that is referred to as a "status of forces agreement" or "SOFA" or framework or whatever. It's the result of months of negotiations after Bush and Al-Maliki signed the "Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America" by the end of last year.

 

This leaked draft is a treasure of information. It's the first time any document related to this topic is made public. It shows how weak the Iraqi negotiations team is (it is really pathetic to read their "suggestions" on how to fix the disaster of an agreement).

 

There are many outrageous articles in the agreement that violates Iraq's sovereignty and independence, and gives the U.S. occupation authorities unprecedented rights and privileges, but what has draw my attention the most (so far) are three major points:

 

1- the agreement does not discuss anything about a complete US withdrawal from Iraq. Instead, it talks about withdrawing "combat troops" without defining what is the difference between combat troops and other troops. It is very clear that the US is planning to stay indefinitely in permanent bases in Iraq (or as the agreement calls them: "installations and areas agreed upon") where the U.S. will continue training and supporting Iraqis armed forces for the foreseeable future.

 

2- the agreement goes into effect when the two executive branches exchange "memos", instead of waiting for Iraqi parliament's ratification. This is really dangerous, and it is shocking because both the Iraqi and U.S. executive branches have been assuring the Iraqi parliament that no agreement will go into effect without being ratified by Iraq's MPs.

 

3- this agreement is the blueprint for keeping other occupation armies (aka Multi-national forces) in Iraq on the long run. This explains the silence regarding what will happed to other occupiers (like the U.K. forces) after the expiration of the UN mandate at the end of this year.

 

It is really disturbing to read how the U.S. government is still going down the same path of intervention and domination in Iraq.

 

This agreement will not be accepted by the Iraqi people and their elected representatives in the Iraqi parliament, and if the U.S. and Iraqi executive branches try to consider it valid anyway it will lead to more violence in Iraq.

 

Agreement Regarding the Activities and Presence of U.S. forces,

 

and its Withdrawal from Iraq

 

 

August, 6th, 2008 4:00pm

 

 

Foreword

 

 

Iraq and the U.S., referred to here as “both sides”, affirm the importance of: supporting their joint security, participating in global peace and stability, fighting terrorism, cooperation in the fields of security and defense, and deterring threats against Iraq’s sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity.

 

 

Both sides affirm that this cooperation is based on mutual respect of both sides’ sovereignty in accordance with the United Nations’ goals and principles.

 

 

Both sides want to achieve mutual understanding to support their collaboration, without jeopardizing Iraq’s sovereignty over its land, water, and sky, and based on the mutual guarantees given as equal and independent sovereign partners.

 

 

Both sides have agreed on:

 

 

Article One

 

Scope and goal

 

 

This agreement specifies the rules and basic needs that regulate the temporary presence and activities of the U.S. troops and its withdrawal from Iraq.

 

 

Article Two

 

Definitions

 

1- “Installations and areas agreed upon” are the installations and areas agreed upon owned by the Iraqi government and used by the U.S. forces from the date this agreement goes into effect. Such installations and areas agreed upon will be decided in a list provided by the U.S. forces and reviewed by both sides. Such “installations and areas agreed upon” include those provided to the U.S. forces during the time of this agreement after the approval of both sides.

 

 

Iraqi suggestion: The Iraqi delegation has asked the U.S. delegation to submit a list of structures and areas requested to be discussed and agreed upon and add it to the agreement as an appendix.

 

2- “U.S. forces” is the entity that includes the members of the armed forces, civilian members, and all the equipments and materials owned by the U.S. forces in Iraq.

 

 

3- “Members of the armed forces” include any member of the U.S. army, navy, air force, marines or coast guard.

 

 

4- “Civilian members” include any civilian working for the U.S. Ministry of Defense, excluding those members who usually reside in Iraq.

 

 

5- “U.S. contractors” or “workers hired by U.S. contractors” include non Iraqi persons and entities and employees who are U.S. or third country citizens and who are in Iraq to supply goods, services or security to the U.S. forces or on behalf of it in accordance to a contract. This does not include Iraqi entities.

 

 

6- “Official vehicles”: commercial vehicles that may be modified for security reasons, and are designed originally to transport individuals on different terrains.

 

 

7- “Military vehicles”: include all vehicles used by the U.S. armed forces, that were originally designed for combat operations, and have special numbers and signs in accordance to the regulations and laws of U.S. armed forces.

 

8- “defense equipment” include systems, weapons, ammunition, equipment, and materials used in conventional wars only, that the U.S. forces need in accordance to this agreement, and that are not connected in any way to weapons of mass destruction (chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, radiological weapons, biological weapons, and waste related to such weapons).

 

 

9- “storage”: keeping defense equipment needed by the U.S. forces for activities agreed upon in this agreement.

 

 

10- “taxes and custom”: include all taxes, customs (including border customs), and any other tariffs enforced by the Iraqi government and its entities and provinces in accordance to Iraqi laws and regulations. This does not include money paid for the Iraqi government in exchange for services required or used by the U.S. forces.

 

 

Article Three

 

Rule of Law

 

 

All members of the U.S. armed forces and civilian members must follow Iraqi laws, customs, traditions, and agreements while conducting military operations in accordance to this agreement. They must also avoid any activities that do not agree with the text and spirit of this agreement. It is the responsibility of the U.S. to take all necessary measures to insure this.

 

Article Four

 

Responsibilities

 

For the purpose of deterring external and/or internal threats against the Republic of Iraq, and to continue the collaboration to defeat Al-Qaeda in Iraq and other outlaw groups, temporarily, both sides have agreed on:

 

1- The Iraqi government asks for the temporary help of the U.S. forces to support Iraq’s effort in maintaining security and stability of Iraq, including the collaboration in conducting operations against Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and outlaw groups, including the remains of the former regime.

 

- Military operations that are conducted in accordance to this agreement with the approval of the Iraqi government and with full coordination with Iraqi authorities. Coordinating such military operations will be supervised by a joint mobile operations command centers (JMOCC) created in accordance with this agreement. Any military issues that are not resolved by these centers are submitted to a joint committee of ministries.

 

3- Operations must respect the Iraqi constitution and laws, and Iraqi sovereignty and national interests as defined by the Iraqi government. The U.S. forces must respect the Iraqi laws, traditions, and customs.

 

4- Both sides will continue their efforts in collaboration and improving Iraq’s security capacity, including training, supplying, supporting, founding, and upgrading administrative systems.

 

5- There is nothing in this agreement that limits either sides’ rights of self defense.

 

Article Five

 

Property Ownership

 

 

1- Iraq owns all non-mobile buildings and structures that are built on the ground in the installations and areas agreed upon, including those built, used, enhanced, or changed by the U.S. forces.

 

2- The U.S. is responsible for all expenses of construction, remodeling, modification in installations and areas agreed upon used exclusively by the U.S.. The U.S. forces will consult with the Iraqi authorities regarding the works of construction, remodeling, and modification. The U.S. will seek the Iraqi government’s approval for major construction or modification projects. In case of shared use of installations and areas agreed upon both sides are responsible for expenses. The U.S. forces will pay the fees of services used exclusively by the U.S.Both sides cover the expenses of shared installations and areas agreed upon.

 

3- In the case of a discovery of historic or cultural sites, or the discovery of a strategic natural resource, in the installations and areas agreed upon, all work of construction or modification or remodeling must stop immediately, and the Iraqi representatives in the joint committee must be informed.

 

4- The United States will return all installations and areas agreed upon and any non-mobile buildings that were constructed, remodeled, or modified under this agreement, according to mechanisms and priorities agreed upon by the joint committee. They will be returned to Iraq without charge, unless both sides agree otherwise.

 

5- The U.S. will return all installations and areas agreed upon that have special cultural or political importance and that were constructed, remodeled, or modified under this agreement, according to mechanisms and priorities agreed upon by the joint committee. When this agreement goes into effect, the U.S. will immediately return the properties listed in the attached appendix and mentioned in the letter sent by the U.S. embassy to the Iraqi minister of foreign affairs dated (…)

 

6- What remains of installations and areas agreed upon will be returned to the Iraqi authorities after this agreement expires or if the U.S. forces no longer needs them.

 

7- The U.S. forces and U.S. contractors maintain their ownership of all equipment, materials, supplements, mobile structures, and other mobile properties imported to Iraq or obtained in Iraq in accordance to the agreement.

 

Article Six

 

Usage of Installations and areas agreed upon

 

 

1- Iraq guarantees the accessibility of the U.S. forces and U.S. contractors to installations and areas agreed upon according to what both sides agree on, while insuring that Iraq’s sovereignty is not undermined. Installations and areas agreed upon will be returned to Iraq without charge, unless both sides agree otherwise.

 

2- Iraq authorizes the U.S. forces to practice all the authorities and have all the rights to manage construct, use, maintain, and secure installations and areas agreed upon. Both sides coordinate and collaborate regarding shared installations and areas agreed upon.

 

3- The United States forces control the entrances of the installations and areas agreed upon. Both sides coordinate their work in shared installations and areas agreed upon based on mechanisms put by the joint military operations committee.

 

Article 7

 

Storage of defense equipments

 

1- The U.S. forces are authorized to store in the installations and areas agreed upon systems, weapons, ammunition, equipment, and materials used by the U.S. forces and related to the U.S. temporary mission in Iraq. Weapons that are used by the U.S. forces are not connected in any way to weapons of mass destruction (chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, radiological weapons, biological weapons, and waste related to such weapons). The U.S. forces control the use and transportation of such weapons. The U.S. forces guarantees than no weapons or ammunition will be stored near residential areas, and it will inform the Iraqi government with important information regarding their amount and types.

 

Article 8

 

Environmental Protection

 

Both sides agree to implement this agreement while protecting nature and human security and health. The U.S. complies with Iraqi environmental laws, and Iraq should comply with its laws and regulations to protect the health of the U.S. armed forces.

 

Article 9

 

Movement of vehicles, ships, and airplanes

 

 

1- U.S. forces’ vehicles and ships are permitted to enter and exit and move inside Iraqi territories for the purposes of this agreement. The joint committee puts the appropriate regulations to control this movement.

 

2- U.S. government airplanes and civilian airplanes contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense are authorized to fly in the Iraqi airspace, refueling in the air, landing and departing in Iraq. The Iraqi authorities will give a one year authorization to the mentioned airplanes to land and depart from Iraq for the purposes of this agreement. No parties are allowed aboard U.S. government airplanes and civilian airplanes contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense and related ships and vehicles without U.S. forces consent, and they cannot be searched. The joint committee puts the appropriate regulations to facilitate their movement.

 

3- Air traffic control and surveillance are handed over immediately to the Iraqi authorities as soon as this agreement goes into effect.

 

4- Iraq can ask for the U.S. forces to temporarily take responsibility of the control and surveillance of the Iraqi airspace, and these tasks will be handed over to the Iraqi government upon its request. The Iraqi authorities will participate in the control and surveillance of the Iraqi airspace during the temporary period.

 

5- U.S. government airplanes and civilian airplanes contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense are not subject to taxes or related fees, including any fees related to flying in Iraqi airspace, refueling in the air, landing and departing in Iraq. Also, U.S. ships and civilian ships contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense are not subject to taxes or related fees during using Iraqi ports. Airplanes and ships are not subject to any search, and all Iraqi requirements of registration are waived.

 

6- U.S. forces pay money for any services or materials obtained or received in Iraq.

 

7- Both sides exchange maps and other information on mines and other obstacles in the Iraqi lands and waters that might jeopardize either side’s movement in Iraq’s land and waters.

 

Article Ten

 

Contracting

 

U.S. forces are permitted to sign contracts in accordance to U.S. law to obtain materials and services in Iraq, including construction services. U.S. forces can obtain such materials and services from any source, and they must respect Iraq laws when signing contracts, and they will choose Iraqi contractors when possible as long as their bids have the best value. The U.S. forces will inform the Iraqi authorities of the Iraqi importers and Iraqi contractors names and the amount of relevant contracts.

 

Article Eleven

 

Services and telecommunications

 

1- U.S. forces are permitted to produce and generate water and electricity and other services for the installations and areas agreed upon in coordination with the Iraqi authorities through the joint committee.

 

2- The Iraqi government owns all frequencies. The Iraqi authorities allocate special waves for the U.S. forces based on what both sides decide through the joint committee (JMOCC). The U.S. forces will give these waves back after it is done with using them.

 

- The U.S. forces are permitted to operate their own wired and wireless telecommunications (according to the definition of wired and wireless telecommunications in the Convention of the International Telecommunication Union of 1992), including all the special services needed to secure the full capacity of telecommunications operations. The U.S. operates its systems in accordance to the Convention of the International Telecommunication Union whenever it is possible to implement these regulations.

 

4- For the purposes of this agreement, all fees related to the U.S. usage of telecommunications frequencies are waived, including any administrative or other related fees.

 

5- U.S. forces will coordinate with the Iraqi authorities regarding any telecommunications infrastructure projects outside the installations and areas agreed upon.

 

Article Twelve

 

Legal Jurisdictions

 

 

 

1- The U.S. has exclusive legal jurisdiction over U.S. armed forces members and civilian members inside and outside installations and areas agreed upon.Iraqi Suggestion: the Iraqi delegation has suggested the following:

 

The U.S. has the legal jurisdictions over the U.S. armed forces members and civilian members inside installations and areas agreed upon at all times, and outside the installations and areas agreed upon while conducting missions except for intentional crimes and major mistakes.

 

U.S. suggestion: The U.S. delegation suggested the following:

 

As a temporary regulation, and until the withdrawal of the U.S. combat forces is complete as indicated in paragraph 1 of article 26, until the combat missions are over the U.S. has the exclusive legal jurisdiction over U.S. armed forces members and civilian members inside and outside installations and areas agreed upon.

 

 

2- The U.S. will give its full attention to any complaint submitted by Iraq over intentional crimes and major mistakes that break Iraqi laws committed by U.S. armed forces members and civilian members. All complaints submitted by the Iraqi legal authorities will be dealt with by the joint committee and settled by mutual agreement of both sides.

 

 

Iraqi Suggestion: the Iraqi delegation has suggested the following:

 

Iraq has legal jurisdiction over U.S. armed forces members and civilian members who commit intentional crimes or major mistakes that break the Iraqi laws. The related joint committee concerning jurisdictions takes the appropriate action to solve disputes based on mutual agreement.

 

 

3- Iraq has legal jurisdiction over U.S. contractors and their employees when they break Iraqi laws.

 

 

4- U.S. forces will inform the Iraqi authorities of any criminal investigations that relate to members of the U.S. armed forces or civilian members involved in a crime against a victim that usually lives in Iraq. Both sides put the appropriate regulations to contact people related to incidents, provide details of the case and court dates, and help persons involved contact lawyers in accordance to article 21 of this agreement. The U.S. will work on holding the court in Iraq when that is appropriate and when both sides agree on it. In case the court was based in the U.S., the United States will make its best effort to facilitate bringing victims into the court.

 

 

5- Both sides agree to help each other in incidents’ investigations and collecting evidences to support a fair judgment.

 

 

6- All members of U.S. armed forces or civilian members who get arrested by the Iraqi authorities must be surrendered immediately to the U.S. forces authorities.

 

 

Iraqi Suggestion: the Iraqi delegation has suggested the following:

 

All members of U.S. armed forces or civilian members who get arrested by the Iraqi authorities must be surrendered to the U.S. forces authorities within 24 hours.

 

 

Article Thirteen

 

Baring Guns and wearing uniforms

 

U.S. armed forces members and civilian members are authorized to carry U.S. government guns during their presence in Iraq based on the authorities and orders given to them. U.S. armed forces members are also permitted to wear their official uniforms during duty in Iraq.

 

Article Fourteen

 

Entering and Exiting

 

1- For the purposes of the agreement, U.S. armed forces members and civilian members can enter and exit Iraq from official borders using U.S.-issued ID cards. The joint committee puts a mechanism for the Iraqi verification process.

 

2- For purposes of verification the U.S. forces will submit to the Iraqi authorities a list with the names of U.S. armed forces members and civilian members entering and exiting Iraq or through the Installations and areas agreed upon.

 

3- The Iraqi entering and exiting laws can be implemented on others, but not on the U.S. armed forces members and civilian members.

 

Article Fifteen

 

Importing and Exporting

 

 

1- For the purposes of the agreement, including training and services, the U.S. forces and their contractors are permitted to import into Iraq and export from Iraq and re-export from Iraq and transport and use any equipments, supplements, materials, technology, training, or services except for those materials banned in Iraq at the time of signing this agreement. These materials are not subject to search or to license requirement or any other limitations. Exporting Iraqi goods by the U.S. forces is not subject to search or any other limitations either except the license discussed later in this agreement. The joint committee will coordinate with the Iraqi ministry of trade to facilitate getting the required export license in accordance to the Iraqi laws related to exporting goods by U.S. forces.

 

2- U.S. forces members and civilian members are permitted to import, re-export, and use their personal equipment and materials for consumption or personal use. Such materials are not subject to any licenses, limitations, taxes and customs or other fees defined in paragraph 10 of article 2, except for required or obtained services. The amount of imports must be reasonable and for personal use. The U.S. forces authorities will put the needed regulations to insure no materials or articles of cultural or historical value are exported.

 

3- Materials mentioned in paragraph 2 will be searched in a speedy fashion in a specific location agreed upon according to the joint committee.

 

4- If the tax exempt materials in accordance to this agreement were to be sold in Iraq to individuals or entities not included in tax exemption, taxes and customs as defined in paragraph 10 of article 2 are to be paid by the buyer.

 

5- It is not permissible to import any of the materials mentioned in this article for commercial reasons.

 

Article Sixteen

 

Taxes

 

1- Services and goods obtained by U.S. forces in Iraq for official use are not subject to taxes and fees as defined in paragraph 10 of article 2.

 

2- U.S. forces members and civilian members are not subject to any taxes or fees in Iraq except for services obtained or requested by them.

 

Article Seventeen

 

Licenses and Permits

 

1- Iraq agrees to accept valid U.S.-issued drivers’ licenses held by U.S. forces members, civilian members and U.S. contractors without subjecting them to any tests or operation fees for vehicles, ships, and airplanes owned by the U.S. forces in Iraq.

 

2- Iraq agrees to accept valid U.S.-issued drivers’ licenses held by U.S. forces members, civilian members and U.S. contractors to operate their personal cars in Iraq without subjecting them to any tests or fees.

 

Article Eighteen

 

Official and Military Vehicles

 

 

For the purposes of this article:

 

1- Officials vehicles are commercial vehicles that might be modified for security reasons, and they will carry Iraqi license plates to be agreed upon by both sides. Iraqi authorities will issue, based on a request by the U.S. forces authorities, license plates for U.S. forces official cars without fees, and U.S. forces will reimburse the Iraqi authorities for the cost of these plates.

 

2- Iraq agrees to accept the validity of U.S.-issued licenses and registrations for the U.S. forces official vehicles.

 

3- All U.S. military vehicles are exempt from registration and licenses requirements. These vehicles will be identified with distinguishable numbers and signs.

 

Article Nineteen

 

Support Services

 

 

1- U.S. forces, or others acting on its behalf, are permitted to create and manage activities and entities inside the installations and areas agreed upon. This includes providing services to U.S. forces members, civilian members, and their contractors. These activities and entities might include military post offices, financial services, stores selling food, medicine, goods and other services, and it includes other areas providing entertainment and telecommunications. All of the mentioned services do not require a permit.

 

2- Radio, media, and entertainment activities that reache beyond the installations and areas agreed upon must comply with Iraqi laws.

 

3- Support services are for the exclusive use of the U.S. forces members, civilian members, their contractors, and other entities to be agreed upon. U.S. forces will take the required measures to ensure none of the mentioned support services are misused, and to insure services and goods will not be re-sold to unauthorized individuals. The U.S. forces will limit radio and TV broadcasting to authorized receivers.

 

4- Entities and facilities offering services indicated this is article enjoy the same tax exemptions offered to the U.S. forces, including those exemptions mentioned in articles 15 and 16 of this agreement. These entities and facilities offering services are to be operated in accordance to U.S. regulations, and will not be obligated to collect or pay any taxes or fees on its operations.

 

5- Outgoing mail, sent through military postal services, is verified by the U.S. authorities and is exempt from being searched, examined, or confiscated by the Iraqi authorities.

 

 

Article Twenty

 

Currency and Foreign exchange

 

1- U.S. forces are permitted to use any amount of U.S. currency or bonds for the purposes of this agreement. Using Iraqi currency in U.S. military banks must be in compliance with Iraqi laws.

 

2- U.S. forces are permitted to distribute or exchange any amount of currency to the U.S. forces members, civilians’ members, and their contractors for purposes of travelling, including vacations.

 

3- U.S. forces will not take Iraqi currency out of Iraq, and will take all required measures to insure none of the U.S. forces members, civilian members, or their contractors take Iraqi currency out of Iraq.

 

Article Twenty One

 

Claims

 

 

1- Except for contract related claims, both sides waive their rights to request compensation because of any harm, loss, or destruction of property, or request compensation for injury or death of forces members or civilian members from both sides occurring during their official duties.

 

2- Us forces authorities will pay fair and reasonable compensation to settle third party claims arising due to a member of the armed forces or civilian members during their official duties, or due to non-combat accidents caused by U.S. armed forces. The U.S. forces’ authorities may settle claims caused by non-official duties actions. Claims must be dealt with urgently by the U.S. forces’ authorities in accordance to U.S. laws and regulations. When settling claims, the U.S. forces authorities will take in consideration any investigation reports, opinions regarding responsibility, or opinions regarding amount of damages issued by the Iraqi authorities.

 

- The joint committee will study issues related to claims resulting from paragraph 1 and 2 of this article and find resolutions in accordance to U.S. and Iraqi laws.

 

Article Twenty Two

 

Detention

 

 

1- All detention operations in this agreement must be conducted in accordance to the Iraqi law, constitution, sovereignty and national interest as decided by the Iraqi government in accordance to the international law.

 

- All individuals detained by U.S. forces must be prepared to be handed over to the Iraqi authorities within 24 hours.

 

3- No detention operations can take place without a warrant issued by the specialized Iraqi authorities in accordance to the Iraqi law.

 

4- When Iraqi authorities conduct detention operations, they may ask for the help of the U.S. forces.

 

5- Detainees are kept in locations prepared by the Iraqi authorities and under its exclusive supervision and control.

 

6- U.S. forces are not permitted to search houses and other properties without a judicial warrant, unless there was an active combat operation, and in coordinating with the specialized Iraqi authorities.

 

Article Twenty three

 

Extending this agreement to other countries

 

1- Iraq may reach an agreement with any other country participating in the Multi-National forces to ask for their help in achieving security and stability in Iraq.

 

2- Iraq is permitted to reach an agreement that includes any of the articles mentioned in this agreement with any country or international organization to ask for help in achieving security and stability in Iraq.

 

Article twenty four

 

Implementation

 

The following entities are responsible of the implementation of this agreement and the settlement of any disputes over its interpretation and application:

 

1- A joint committee of ministers from both sides that deal with the basic issues needed to interpret the implementation of this agreement.

 

2- A joint committee to coordinate military operations. This committee will be formed by the joint committee of ministers and includes representatives from both sides. The joint committee to coordinate military operations will be jointly led by both sides.

 

3- A joint committee formed by both sides that includes representatives chosen by both sides. This committee deals with all issues related to this agreement that do not fall under the mandate of the joint committee to coordinate military operations; this committee will jointly led by both sides.

 

4- Sub-committees in all different areas created by the joint committee. Subcommittees will discuss issues related to interpretation and implementation of this agreement each in accordance to its expertise.

 

Article twenty five

 

Implementation Arrangements

 

Both sides enter into implementation arrangements to execute this agreement.

 

Article Twenty Six

 

Targeted times to handover complete security responsibilities to the Iraqi security forces, and withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq

 

Iraqi Suggestion: the Iraqi delegation has suggested the following title to this article:

 

Transferring security responsibilities to Iraqi authorities, and the withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Iraq

 

U.S. Suggestion: the U.S. delegation has suggested combining paragraphs 1 and 2 as follows:

 

1- Both sides have agreed on the following time targets to handover complete security responsibilities to the Iraqi security forces and the withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Iraq:

 

A- U.S. combat troops will withdraw from Iraq completely at the latest on (…)

 

B- U.S. forces will withdraw from all cities, towns, and villages at latest by June 30, 2009 unless the Iraqi authorities request otherwise.

 

Note: the head of the U.S. delegation offered to accept the new title only if their combined paragraph is accepted, and he linked the two as one deal

 

3- All U.S. combat troops regroup in installations and areas agreed upon after the date mentioned in paragraph 2 of this article.

 

4- After the withdrawal of all combat troops as mentioned in paragraph 1 of this article, the rest of these forces will stay based on a request from the Iraqi government in accordance to this agreement. The joint committee for operations and coordination will determine the tasks and level of the troops that will focus on training and supporting Iraqi security forces.

 

5- Both sides review the progress towards achieving dates mentioned in this article and the conditions that might lead to one side asking the other to extend or reduce the time periods mentioned in paragraph 1 and paragraph 2 of this article. Any extension or reduction of the time period is subject to both side's approval.

 

6- U.S. forces may withdraw from Iraq before the dates indicated in this article if either of the two sides should so request. Both sides recognize the Iraqi government's sovereign right to request a withdrawal of U.S. forces at anytime.

 

Article Twenty Seven

 

Contract Validity

 

1- This agreement is valid for (…) years unless it is terminated earlier based on a request from either sides or extended with the approval of both sides.

 

2- This agreement can be modified with the written approval of both sides and in accordance to constitutional procedures in both countries.

 

3- Cancellation of this agreement requires a written notice provided on year in advance.

 

4- This agreement goes into effect on the day that diplomatic memos confirming all constitutional procedures have been met in both countries are exchanged.

 

5- These memos will be exchanged before the expiration of UN resolution number 1790 at latest by December 31st, 2008.

 

 

 

Translated from the original Arabic by Raed Jarrar - Visit his blog http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com

 

 

http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com