| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue May 04, 2004 7:11 pm Post subject: NO WIN WAR |
| http://www.amconmag.com/2004_05_10/buchanan.html
May 10, 2004 issue
Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative
Fallujah: High Tide of Empire?
by Pat Buchanan
At Versailles, 1919, Lloyd George, having seized oil-rich Iraq for the empire, offered Woodrow Wilson mandates over Armenia and Constantinople. “When you cease to be President we will make you Grand Turk,” laughed Clemenceau.
As there were “no oil fields there,” writes historian Thomas Bailey, “it was assumed that rich Uncle Sam would play the role of Good Samaritan.” Though unamused, Wilson accepted the mandates.
Fortunately, Harding won in 1920 and reneged on the deal. Lloyd George and Churchill were left to face the Turks all by their imperial selves. Had we accepted Constantinople, Americans would have ended up fighting Ataturk’s armies to hold today’s Istanbul.
After 9/11, however, our neoconservatives, who had been prattling on about “global hegemony” and a “crusade for democracy” since the end of the Cold War, sold President Bush on their imperial scheme: a MacArthur Regency in Baghdad.
And so it is that we have arrived at this crossroads.
What Fallujah and the Shi’ite uprisings are telling us is this: if we mean to make Iraq a pro-Western democracy, the price in blood and treasure has gone up. Shall we pay it is the question of the hour. For there are signs Americans today are no more willing to sacrifice for empire than was Harding to send his nation’s sons off to police and run provinces carved out of the Ottoman Empire.
In bringing Bush’s “world democratic revolution” to Iraq, we suffer today from four deficiencies: men, money, will, and stamina.
First, we do not have the troops in country to pacify Iraq. Some 70 percent of our combat units are committed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Korea already. If we are going to put more men into Iraq, U.S. military forces must expand.
Those who speak of democratizing Iraq as we did Germany tend to forget: in 1945, we had 12 million men under arms and four million soldiers in Europe. German resistance disappeared in 1945 with the death of Hitler. There was no guerrilla war against us. Today, our army is only 480,000 strong and scattered across 100 countries. And we have 129,000 troops in an Iraq that is as large as California and an escalating war against urban guerrillas.
Second, we are running out of money. The U.S. deficit is $500 billion and rising. The merchandise trade deficit is headed toward $600 billion, putting downward pressure on a dollar that has been falling for three years. Nations with declining currencies do not create empires, they give them up.
Then there is the deficit in imperial will. President Bush sold the war on Iraq on the grounds that Saddam was a man of unique evil who could not be trusted with a weapon of mass destruction. Today, whatever threat Saddam posed is gone.
While America supported the president in going to war, we have not bought into the idea that we must democratize the Islamic world or we are unsafe in our own country. Polls show that nearly half the nation believes we should start coming home.
Which brings us to our fourth deficiency, stamina. Empire requires an unshakeable belief in the superiority of one’s own race, religion, and civilization and an iron resolve to fight to impose that faith and civilization upon other peoples.
We are not that kind of people. Never have been. Americans, who preach the equality of all races, creeds, and cultures, are, de facto, poor imperialists. When we attempt an imperial role as in the Philippines or Iraq, we invariably fall into squabbling over whether a republic should be imposing its ideology on another nation. A crusade for democracy is a contradiction in terms.
While it would be nice if Brazil, Bangladesh, and Burundi all embraced democracy, why should we fight them if they don’t, and why should our soldiers die to restore democracy should they lose it? Why is that our problem, if they are not threatening us?
What Iraq demonstrates is that once the cost in blood starts to rise, Americans tend to tell their government that enough is enough, put the Wilsonian idealism back on the shelf, and let’s get out.
If attacked, Americans fight ferociously. Unwise nations discover that. Threatened, as in the Cold War, we will persevere. But if our vital interests are not threatened, or our honor is not impugned, most of us are for staying out of wars.
That is our history and oldest tradition. It may be ridiculed as selfish old American isolationism, but that is who we are and that is how we came to be the last world power left standing on the bloodstained world stage after the horrific 20th century.
Americans will cheer globaloney. They just won’t fight and die for it. Nor should they.
May 10, 2004 issue
Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative
Also read this ‘Whose War?’ article by Pat Buchanan as you can then understand how the JINSA/CSP/PNAC Neoconservative (Israel firster) cabal pushed us to war in Iraq for Israel:
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
See the ‘War Conceived in Israel’ article which is linked under the map of ‘greater Israel’ after scrolling down to it on the left at http://www.nowarforisrael.com
NO US SOLDIER/MARINE SHOULD BE DYING IN IRAQ FOR ISRAEL:
http://www.nogw.com/warforisrael.html
May 10, 2004 issue
Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative
The Best of Bad Choices
http://www.amconmag.com/2004_05_10/cover.html
Given the Iraq War’s mounting costs and impossible goals, America should transfer sovereignty and come home.
By Christopher Layne
The administration’s Iraq policy is in shambles. Iraq has become a geopolitical humpty-dumpty that America cannot put back together, and the time has come for the United States to withdraw.
We now face a full-blown uprising against the occupation of Iraq. Events plainly belie the administration’s spin that order will soon be restored and that the revolt is just the work of a few Iraqi extremists and a handful of terrorists from other Middle Eastern states. Even top officials in the British government—America’s most loyal ally—understand that the administration’s take on Iraq is divorced from reality. As British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said, “The lid on the pressure cooker has come off. There is no doubt that the current situation is very serious and it is the most serious we have faced. It plainly is the fact today that there are larger numbers of people, and they are people on the ground, Iraqis, not foreign fighters, who are engaged in this insurgency.” Americans should not allow the administration’s “perception management” campaign—a fancy bureaucratic term for lying—to pull the wool over their eyes.
From a policy standpoint, an even greater concern is that the administration believes its own disinformation about events in Iraq. But there are three disturbing facts about the insurrection that cannot be swept under the rug. First, what began as a small-scale insurgency mounted by Sunni “dead-enders” and “former regime elements” now has morphed into a broad-based popular rebellion joined by large numbers of Shi’ites. The Shi’ite revolt is especially troubling because—to the extent that the Bush II administration had any strategy at all for administering postwar Iraq—it was based on the assumption that the United States could co-opt the Shi’ites and gain their support for Washington’s plans to create a “democratic” Iraq. Second, Iraq’s Sunnis and Shi’ites —heretofore deeply antagonistic to each other—now are finding common ground in resisting the occupation. Here U.S. policy seems to be having a bitterly ironic and quite unintended consequence. Previously, Iraq, which Britain artificially cobbled together from the Ottoman Empire’s wreckage, lacked a sense of national identity. Now, however, resentment of the American occupation is creating an Iraqi nationalism shared by Sunnis and Shi’ites. Third, outrage at America’s heavy-handed use of military power to suppress the uprising has alienated the very Iraqis Washington has counted upon to form the core of a new government to which “sovereignty” can be transferred. Although they were handpicked by U.S. officials, leading members of the Iraqi Governing Council now are condemning American policy and distancing themselves from Washington.
Where does U.S. policy go from here? There are three options: internationalizing the occupation, increasing U.S. troop strength and cracking down hard on the insurgency, or withdrawal.
Internationalizing the occupation by bringing in the UN and/or NATO is a non-starter—pure political grandstanding. First, Iraq now is so dangerous and chaotic it is doubtful that the UN wants to step in and take responsibility for trying to fix things. Second, for the same reasons, other nations are not going to rush in and send troops to restore order in Iraq. Indeed, it now is apparent that others are concluding that their best option is staying out—or, if they already have troops there, getting out—of Iraq. Third, although some individual NATO members have token contingents in Iraq, the alliance has its hands full in Afghanistan (and the Europeans are stretched to the breaking point by their non-NATO Balkan and West African peacekeeping commitments). NATO just doesn’t have more troops that it can send to help the U.S. in Iraq.
There is another reason internationalization cannot be a real option as long as the Bush II administration remains in office. Even if the UN agreed to step in, it would do so only if Washington agreed to give the international community real decision-making authority in Iraq. The Bush administration will not do this because giving up control over Iraq would be tantamount to abandoning the very goals for which it went to war in the first place: using Iraq as a platform for establishing American military dominance in the Persian Gulf; transforming Iraq into a dependable, oil-supplying client state; and using Iraq as the launching pad for the proposed “democratic transformation” of the entire Middle East.
Increasing American troop levels and suppressing the insurgency is not a viable option, either. Although the U.S. has enough firepower to dampen down the insurrection—at least for a while—this would be a self-defeating policy because there no longer is a military solution in Iraq. There is a good reason —to quote the title of Andrew Mack’s important article that appeared some years ago in the journal World Politics—big states lose small wars.
Insurgencies start small but gain widespread political support by driving a wedge between the civilian population and the occupation forces. Here, insurgents count on the occupation forces to be their unwitting accomplices. When the occupying forces resort to violent and coercive measures, they lose politically by alienating the population. As events in Fallujah and elsewhere demonstrate, such tactics fan widespread popular anger and resentment. Regardless of what happens in Iraq in the next several weeks, a watershed has been reached. Iraq’s population is seething and hostile, and if the United States stays on in Iraq, henceforth it will face broad-based political, and armed, resistance to the occupation. In that setting, the U.S. will confront the asymmetry in motivation that causes big states to lose small wars; the Iraqis are fighting for their country, but the United States is fighting for goals that are ephemeral.
Contrary to what Mr. Bush has said, the growing numbers of Iraqis supporting the insurgency do not “hate freedom.” It is just that they define “freedom” as freedom from American rule. Now, in this regard, the administration hopes it can placate Iraqi nationalism by handing over “sovereignty” on June 30. But Iraqis are not fooled by this, and Americans shouldn’t be either. As things now stand, Iraq will be sovereign in name only because the U.S. will still be wielding military, economic, and political control in Baghdad.
The administration has dug a hole in Iraq. It is time to stopping digging deeper. The war was a tragic, avoidable mistake, and those who opposed it have been vindicated. The administration should be held accountable, both for leading the nation in war under false pretenses and for its willful failure to think through the consequences of going to war with Iraq. As James Fallows recently pointed out in the Atlantic, the administration was warned about many things. It was warned by the then-Army Chief of Staff that stabilizing postwar Iraq would require the long-term commitment of several hundred thousand U.S. troops. It was warned by the Army War College that if American forces remained in postwar Iraq for any length of time, they would soon cease to be viewed as liberators and be seen instead as a hostile occupation army. And it was warned that Iraq was a singularly poor candidate for a “democracy transplant” because it lacked the essential prerequisites for a successful democratic transition. (And if by some chance the U.S. did transplant democracy to Iraq, we would rue the day. A democratic Iraq would be virulently anti-American and anti-Israeli.) The administration turned a deaf ear to these warnings because it considered them to be “antiwar”—that is, undermining its already decided-upon policy of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. And, of course, the administration was correct: these warnings did cut the legs from underneath its case for going to war because they demonstrated that the administration’s policy would lead the U.S. into an Iraqi quagmire.
Of course, it can be said that all this is true but is just water under the bridge: we are in Iraq now, and it is “defeatist” to suggest that the United States “cut and run.” There are arguments that can be marshaled to support continuing American involvement, but they are not very convincing. And if they are accepted, it will mean that the U.S. has to stay in Iraq for a long, long time no matter what the cost in lives and treasure—and even though there is scant prospect of ultimate success.
First, some will claim that if the U.S. withdraws Iraq will fall into chaos. Of course, the U.S. has been in Iraq for a year and that country is in chaos. Second, it might be claimed that if America withdraws Iraq will become a terrorist haven. But the truth is that the longer the United States stays in Iraq, the more that country will become a magnet for Islamic fighters who want to take us on. Staying the course will not make things better, because America’s bloody suppression of the current uprising not only is alienating many Iraqis who were—up to now—acquiescing in the occupation (however reluctantly) but also is stirring up anti-Americanism and creating more terrorism throughout the Middle East. Third, it is said that if America fails to prevail in Iraq, our enemies—not just in the Middle East, but worldwide—will doubt U.S. resolve and will be tempted to challenge the United States in future crises. Well, the same arguments were made against withdrawing from Vietnam. But the United States withdrew from Vietnam, and it survived to triumph in the Cold War: the dominoes did not topple, America’s world position did not crumble, and neither its allies nor its adversaries questioned Washington’s determination to defend vital U.S. interests.
There is a more heart-wrenching argument against U.S. withdrawal: how can we justify the loss of American lives to the parents of those military personnel who have been killed in Iraq? The real question, however, is how many more parents do we wish to send into mourning. The argument about sunk costs—whether in lives, in wounded (some 3,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in Iraq, many grievously), or dollars (some $121 billion in 2003 and another estimated $50-75 billion this year)—can always be invoked to stick with a failed policy. But staying the course—continuing to pay these costs in pursuit of policy objectives that cannot be attained—is not the answer. Instead of compounding our losses in Iraq, we should be cutting them.
The United States has no good options in Iraq but the least bad is this: Washington should transfer real sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30. It should tell the Iraqis to work out their own political future among themselves and turn over full responsibility for Iraq’s external and internal security to the new regime in Baghdad. Simultaneously, the United States also should suspend all offensive military operations in Iraq, pull its forces back to defensive enclaves well away from Iraq’s cities, and commence a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq that will be completed on December 31 (or on January 20, 2005).
There is no point in being Pollyannaish. In the long run, the U.S. will be better off leaving Iraq. In the short-term, however, there will be consequences—not all of which are foreseeable—if the U.S. withdraws. But that misses the point. Sooner or later the U.S. is going to end up leaving Iraq without having attained its goals. Washington’s real choice is akin to that posed in an old oil-filter commercial that used to run on television: America can pay now, or it can pay later when the costs will be even higher.
Some 45 years ago, France found itself involved in a conflict very much like that in which the U.S. is involved in Iraq. Algeria was a bitter, bloody, and interminable struggle. The French could not prevail but were unwilling to bow to reality. Charles de Gaulle—a statesman of great vision and courage—cut the Gordian knot and extricated France from the unwinnable war in Algeria. Although painful, it was the right decision. George W. Bush is no de Gaulle. He is incapable either of admitting that his administration blundered into Iraq or of cutting America’s losses and disengaging. Whether any other political leader in the U.S. is capable of stepping up to the plate and demonstrating de Gaulle-like wisdom—which might require admitting to having made a misjudgment in initially backing the decision to go to war—remains to be seen. But plainly, the time has come for a statesman to step forward and ask the American people the question that must be asked: if the United States remains in Iraq, how do we tell the U.S. troops there that one of them will be the last one to die for a mistake?
_____________________________________________________
Christopher Layne, a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and a Visiting Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, writes frequently about American and international politics.
May 10, 2004 issue
Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative
Cheney is also associated with JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs)/PNAC (Project for the New American Century) which pushed for war in Iraq for Israel for a long time before 9/11:
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles114.htm
Here is the 'Men from JINSA and CSP' article (from 'The Nation') that Fisk mentions in the above article:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest
PNAC mentioned here:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php
http://www.sundayherald.com/27735
http://www.sundayherald.com/37707
AND YOU STILL DON'T THINK THE WAR IN IRAQ WAS FOR ISRAEL -- YEA, RIGHT...
Israeli Businesses Invade Iraq:
http://www.peopleforchange.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10048
Incredible how Zionists in Israel and in the USA have successfully (so far) manipulated the USA into fighting wars in the Middle East for Israel (like what is currently happening in Iraq) with young American soldiers/marines dying in the process.... This is exactly what American Jew Jack Bernstein warned us about in his 'Life of an American Jew in Racist/Marxist Israel' which you can read by accessing the following URL:
http://www.rense.com/general31/lifeof.htm
The following 'Whose War?' article (by Pat Buchanan who is a REAL REPUBLICAN and is not a Trotskyist JINSA/PNAC Neocon - psuedo-Republican) explains so eloquently the motivation why we invaded Iraq (which was for Israel, of course):
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
Even the executive director of the 9/11 Commission had mentioned that the Iraq invasion was for Israel:
Head of September 11th Commission Said Iraq War for Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/03/head-of-sept-11-commission-said-iraq-war-for-israel.php
See the following article as well:
http://www.leftcurve.org/LC28WebPages/WarForIsrael.html
Read the 'War Conceived in Israel' article which is linked under the map of 'greater Israel' on the left after scrolling down to it at:
http://www.nowarforisrael.com
NO US SOLDIER/MARINE SHOULD HAVE TO DIE FOR ISRAEL IN IRAQ:
http://www.nogw.com/warforisrael.html
NY TIMES: NEOCONS COOKED INTEL FOR IRAQ WAR:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/30/ny-times-neocons-cooked-intel-for-iraq-war.php
Frank Gaffney: Feith’s Fight (Damage Control for the neocons):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/30/frank-gaffney-feith-s-fight-damage-control-as-neocons-bleed.php
Zionist propagandist Ted Koppel was on ABC's 'Nightline' last night trying to equate the 'War on Terror' with World War 2. Our problem with terror is brought about by our continuous vast financial support (see the link at the upper left of www.wrmea.com for how many US taxpayer BILLIONS have been flowing to Israel when US states, Medicare and Social Security are going broke) of Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinians which contributed to the motivation for the tragic 9/11 (World Trade Center) attack as former Republican Congressman Paul Findley mentions this as well in the third edition of his excellent 'They Dare to Speak Out' book. Bin Laden warned us back in 1998 that we would be attacked on our own soil if our Zionist occupied government continued to support Israel to the extent that it still does, but the US 'protect Israel first' press/media did not convey this warning to us to the extent that it should have:
http://www.investigate911.com/binladensez.htm
Our support of Israel contributes to our terror problem:
http://www.investigate911.com/binladensez.htm
Israeli Mossad and 9/11:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spyring.html
Remember the treacherous Israeli attack on the USS Liberty:
http://www.ussliberty.com
Remember Israel's treacherous attack on the USS Liberty:
http://www.ussliberty.com
Israeli Mossad Spies and their association with 9/11:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spyring.html
Keep an eye on www.whatreallyhappened.com for additional material which is essentially to know in order to take America back from the Zionists who have no problem with US soldiers/marines dying in the Middle East for Israel.. Even Wolfowitz (shown at www.nowarforisrael.com) did not know how many Americans had died for his 'War for Israel' in Iraq... | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue May 04, 2004 8:04 pm Post subject: NEOCON ISRAEL FIRSTERS GOING BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM |
| April 23, 2004
Going Back Where They Came From
by Patrick J. Buchanan
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=2371
"If we have to make common cause with the
more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me," William Kristol has told the New York Times. The Weekly Standard editor added that the neoconservatives may just abandon the Right altogether and convert to neo-liberalism. Alluding to his father Irving's definition of a neoconservative as a liberal who has been mugged by reality, Kristol describes a neoliberal as a "neoconservative who has been mugged by reality in Iraq." Ranking his political preferences, Kristol added, "I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan....If you read the last few issues of The Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives." Yes, it does. But as John Kerry backs partial birth abortion, quotas, raising taxes, homosexual unions, liberals on the Supreme Court and has a voting record to the left of Teddy Kennedy, how can Kristol prefer him to other conservatives? Answer: War and Israel. Like Kristol, Kerry wants more U.S. troops sent to Iraq where they can advance the neocons' project for empire. And at a fund-raiser in Juno Beach, Fla., Kerry declared eternal fealty to Israel: "I have a 100 percent record – not a 99, a 100 percent record – of sustaining the special relationship and friendship that we have with Israel." Kristol's warning that the neocons could break with the Right and go to Kerry is an admission of what many conservatives have long argued. To neocons, Israel comes first, second, and third, conservative principles be damned. The day after Kristol said he preferred Kerry to conservatives skeptical of committing more troops to Iraq, this item appeared in The Wall Street Journal: "Mr. Kristol thinks Mr. Bush should use the revelations [from the Woodward book] to shake up his war cabinet by firing Mr. Powell...along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has pushed for smaller deployments of U.S. forces than some critics, including Mr. Kristol, think wise." Set aside the suicidal folly of Bush dynamiting his war cabinet in an election year by firing its most famous members, and consider the ingratitude, the ruthlessness, and the cynicism on display here. When it was launched in 1995, The Weekly Standard called on Colin Powell to run for president and offered its endorsement. Purpose: Hook up with the most popular man in the GOP who could restore the neocons and Kristols to preeminence and power. Powell rebuffed the offer. Ever since, he has been a target of abuse for having repelled the boarding party. As for Rumsfeld, he has been a hero of neoconservatives for two decades. He co-signed the neocons' 1998 open letter to Clinton urging war on Iraq. He brought Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith into his Pentagon in the No. 2 and 3 slots. He put Perle in charge of the Defense Review Board. After 9/11, according to Richard Clarke, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were making the case for attacking Iraq immediately, even before Bush had ousted the Taliban enablers of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. Agree or disagree with the defense secretary, Rumsfeld has been a lion in the neocon cause. To see the Weekly Standard snake on him like this brings to mind that wretched crowd in Yankee Stadium that took to booing Joe Dimaggio at the end of his career. With Iraq turning into the Mesopotamian morass some of us warned it would become, the neo- Jacobins have decided they are not going to be the ones to ride the tumbrels. In times like this character comes through. By turning on the men they persuaded to go to war, by fabricating alibis and inventing excuses to absolve themselves of culpability for what they labored to create, they have revealed themselves for what they are: hustlers and opportunists devoid of principle, driven by an ideology of power and a passionate attachment to a nation not their own. The Old Right curmudgeons who warned us against giving these vagabonds food, shelter and a warm place by the fire were right. We should have put them back out on the street. President Bush should have listened to his father who kept the neocons at some remove, and he had best beware, because they have a major card yet to play. That card is escalation. With the situation in Iraq deteriorating, the neocon agenda is to widen the war into Syria, Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, and convert it into "World War IV," the war of their dreams, a war of civilizations, an Armageddon, with America and Israel on one side and Islam on the other. Exiting Iraq with honor and avoiding the wider war for which the neocons are even now scheming is the first duty of patriots. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue May 04, 2004 8:09 pm Post subject: Standard-Bearer of Democracy Becomes Great Satan |
| Subj: Standard-Bearer of Democracy Becomes Great Satan
Date: 5/3/04 11:50:32 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Friend,
Standard-Bearer of Democracy Becomes Great Satan
The official fairy tale was that US had come as beneficent power to liberate Iraq and create democracy, which would then transform the entire Middle East into one harmonious prosperous democratic region. The democratic Middle Eastern peoples, ridding themselves of their evil tyrants and terrorists (just a few bad eggs) would then just get along perfectly with Israel, because everyone knows that there is no real reason for Arabs to be angry at the Jewish state, which has never caused any harm to anyone.
Reality, however, has done in the fairy tale.
As the first article by Shibley Telhami of the liberal Brookings Institution points out:
"Certainly the painful pictures from Iraq a year after the war -- including humiliating scenes of abused Iraqi prisoners -- have turned that country into a model to be feared and avoided in the eyes of many in the Middle East, and a tool in the hands of governments reluctant to change. It is a far cry from the anticipated model of inspiration the administration promised would spur demands for democracy in the Arab world."
In the second article paleocon Paul Craig Roberts takes a harsher view:
"In his war propaganda, President Bush portrays America as a morally superior country whose innate virtue is the reason we are in Iraq. America alone is willing to tax its citizens and send its sons to die in order to bring freedom and democracy to other lands. Bush describes our mission as one in which our troops are dying and we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars not to acquire a colony or to control the oil, but to liberate Iraqi women and to make Iraqis safe from torture.
"With the US now guilty of war crimes as defined by Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, our sanctimonious president will never again be able to wear American virtue on his sleeve without the entire world laughing in his face."
No one with any intelligence and knowledge of the region and its history could honestly believe the democracy fairy tale—so it could be assumed that it was not really believed by the neocons who manufactured it. And it is certainly the diametrical opposite of the position of the neocons’ friends on the Israeli Right. (Though if one looked beneath the surface, it was apparent that what the neocons proclaimed as "democracy" was anything but. Their "democracy" proposals frequently entailed minority rule, extensive censorship, and government propaganda) http://venus.soci.niu.edu/~archives/ABOLISH/rick-halperin/apr03/0243.html
http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/2003/04/20030407.php http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/jg20030503.shtml
The fact of the matter is that the neocons—at least the leading neocons—never really held this roseate view of democracy, which simply served as war propaganda just like the non-existent WMD danger. Rather, the neocons believed that the war would destabilize and fragmentize the Middle East, with various little ethnic and religious groups fighting among themselves. By weakening Israel’s enemies, Israel’s security would be enhanced.. This fits in with the fundamental Likudnik view going back to Lev Jabotinsky, the ideological father of the Israeli right, that the Jewish state could only survive through force—the "iron wall."
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2001/441/441p21.htm http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/
This Likudnik destabilization and fragmentation policy was put forth in a 1982 policy paper entitled, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," authored by Oded Yinon. Yinon proposed that Israel should engage in military action to bring about the dissolution of its Middle East enemies [http://www.theunjustmedia.com/the%20zionist_plan_for_the_middle_east.htm]
The neoconservatives adopted this Likud strategy. Richard Perle, David Wurmser, Douglas Feith, and others openly pushed this destabilization strategy in their 1996 study, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," which was originally prepared as a working paper for then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. In this work, the elimination of Saddam's regime would serve as a first step towards eliminating the anti-Israeli governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
[The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000," "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm ]
Notably, there was no mention of democracy in these 1996 proposals (which were created by the same people who brought about the US war on Iraq). The goal was not to create stable, productive Middle East states, but instead dissolved, fragmented entities that would not be any threat to Israel. It was realpolitik pure and simple.
It is quite apparent that the war on Iraq has achieved positive results from the neocon/Likudnik perspective—the weakening of Israel's Middle East enemies, the US planted more firmly in the Middle East in opposition to Israel's enemies, the worsening of the Palestinian position, a firmer alliance between Israel and the US, the Middle Eastern states faced with destabilizing terror attacks, and international pressure being placed on Iran and Syria to eliminate nuclear program. Even the fact that the Arabs/Muslims now detest the US, which means the greater likelihood that the Americans will be the victims of Islamic terror attacks, is a positive achievement from the Likudnik position. In short, not only is Israel not alone as an enemy of the Arabs/Muslims, it would actually seem that the US has replaced Israel as the foremost enemy (the Great Satan)--a grand achievement from the position of Israeli national security. In short, the US is now connected with Israel against what had primarily been Israel’s Middle East enemies. And the US is now taking the brunt of the Arab/Islamic hostility and perhaps can be induced to launch the neocons’ World War IV against Islam, should a major terrorist event occur. At the very least, it appears that the US cannot escape the Middle East quagmire. Mainstream opinion holds that for the US to pull out would wreck American global credibility. Kerry, of course, supports America’s continued occupation of Iraq.
None of this is to deny that the neocons would prefer to have even greater achievements: regime change throughout the entire Middle East with pro-Israel puppet regimes installed by the US. But again it should be emphasized that from the neocon/Likudnik perspective the power situation in the Middle East has much improved since 9/11/2001.
_________________________________________________________________________
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58096-2004Apr30?language=printer
washingtonpost.com
Double Blow To Mideast Democracy
By Shibley Telhami
Saturday, May 1, 2004; Page A21
Events in Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have dealt a fatal blow to the Bush administration's plans for Middle East reform even before they are formally unveiled. These events may come to symbolize the end of democracy as a serious policy objective in the Middle East.
Certainly the painful pictures from Iraq a year after the war -- including humiliating scenes of abused Iraqi prisoners -- have turned that country into a model to be feared and avoided in the eyes of many in the Middle East, and a tool in the hands of governments reluctant to change. It is a far cry from the anticipated model of inspiration the administration promised would spur demands for democracy in the Arab world.
But the challenge for the administration's reform plans is far greater than the pictures in Iraq convey. A year after major combat was declared over, the administration is in greater need than before of help from the very governments it seeks to reform. And the administration's support for the unilateral disengagement plan of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon necessitates yet more help from Arab governments in implementing an unpopular plan without unleashing instability.
Add to this increasing public anger in the Arab world with the United States over both Iraq and the Palestinian issue -- and with their own governments for supporting the United States. This exacerbates the rulers' insecurity and inclines them toward increased repression.
Because our strategic and political objectives are now urgent, they outweigh our desire for reform, even if we continue to pay lip service to it. In the history of U.S. foreign policy, such concessions are always portrayed as necessary short-term measures. Too often, however, long-term U.S. behavior in the region simply looks like a series of short-term concessions.
Despite our claim before the Iraq war that the prospects of democracy in the region would improve, public opinion there has gone the other way. In an opinion survey I conducted in six Arab countries on the eve of the war, majorities of Arabs expressed the view that the Middle East would be less democratic after the war. It was a seemingly puzzling view given how little democracy already existed. But there are two primary reasons for this assessment that we cannot ignore.
First, there was widespread mistrust of American intentions. When you don't trust the messenger, you don't trust the message, even if it's a good one. While the lack of trust was based on many factors, including a historical gap between what we say and what we do, the primary measure of confidence toward the United States in Arab minds remains the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. While Arabs have always complained about perceived American "bias," their level of confidence in the United States has not been constant. In the spring of 2000, for example, when it looked as if the United States was genuinely trying to mediate an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, more than 60 percent of Saudis expressed confidence in this country. Immediately after the collapse of the negotiations that fall, confidence began to slide, and it continued to do so, reaching single digits in the past year.
No matter what else we do in the region, the Arab-Israeli conflict remains the "prism of pain" for Arabs through which they read U.S. intentions, in the same way that the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and associated terrorism are now the prism of pain through which Americans will continue to see the Arab and Muslim worlds. Regardless of the objective meaning of the administration's support for Sharon, the regional perception of that support is likely to outweigh anything we say on reform -- or even Iraq.
Second, while Arab and Muslim public views of the United States are often wrong and unjustified, their skepticism about our policy toward reform is reasonable. We have not been fully honest in our own public discourse about where democracy ranks in our priorities. It is true that many in our government and media have come to believe that democracy is now a strategic priority, because its absence fuels terrorism. But we fear anarchy and instability even more in areas where we have strategic interests, and we fear the emergence of unfriendly governments, even if democratically elected.
In Pakistan, our strategic priority is to get maximum support from the besieged government of Pervez Musharraf for fighting our top strategic threat, al Qaeda. We fear most the disintegration of a nuclear state in an area where al Qaeda is strong. In Iraq today, we would like to see democracy, but our priority is to limit the casualties of our troops, to ensure an outcome that favors our other interests, especially oil. We want democratic rulers, but only if they are sure allies. The result is that what we say and what we do are visibly in conflict.
The difficulty in bringing stability, let alone democracy, to Iraq, where we have direct control and are spending enormous resources, should be a sobering example of the limits of our power. Above all two conclusions must be drawn: First, it is impossible to succeed in our reform policy without having in place a robust Arab-Israeli peace process that commands regional trust. Second, we cannot succeed if we continue to ignore public opinion in the region. The gap between governments and publics increases the rulers' incentive to repress at the same time that it decreases our leverage with them.
The writer is Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
________________________________________
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=2455
May 1, 2004
The Great Satan
by Paul Craig Roberts
The current issue of National Review advocates that the US adopt Saddam Hussein’s policies toward Iraqis. Nothing less will subdue them, says the conservative publication. To beat them, National Review says, we must become like them.
No sooner said than done. The US has appointed Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard General, Jasim Muhammed Saleh to deal with the Fallajuh insurgency. And, judging from news reports and photographs of tortured Iraqis, the US has put Saddam Hussein himself back in charge of the notorious prison, Abu Ghraib.
US prestige will never recover from the photos of Americans abusing Iraqi detainees. With no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, with no terrorist link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, President Bush’s last remaining excuse for his invasion of Iraq was his boast that the torture prisons have been closed.
In his war propaganda, President Bush portrays America as a morally superior country whose innate virtue is the reason we are in Iraq. America alone is willing to tax its citizens and send its sons to die in order to bring freedom and democracy to other lands. Bush describes our mission as one in which our troops are dying and we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars not to acquire a colony or to control the oil, but to liberate Iraqi women and to make Iraqis safe from torture.
With the US now guilty of war crimes as defined by Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, our sanctimonious president will never again be able to wear American virtue on his sleeve without the entire world laughing in his face.
The US military is making a big show of dealing with the Saddam Hussein imitators in its ranks, but the sickening fact is that both the US government and the American media sat on the story for one month, keeping it a secret until the photos began circulating independently.
The neocons, whose war this is, were quick to say that the US should be judged by what it proclaims, not by what it does. What’s a little torture after all, compared to building freedom and democracy?
It was ten minutes into the news hour on the day the story broke before the Ministry of Propaganda, a.k.a. Fox News, could bring itself to mention, fleetingly, the torture story. Americans who rely on Fox News for their understanding of the war must be scratching their heads.
By showing the true nature of the US occupation, the photos may have broken the rush to wider war and the return to military conscription. Polls released at the end of April show that a majority of Americans had soured on the war prior to the torture story. The photographic evidence that US troops are committing atrocities will further reduce support for the war.
The impact on the Muslim world will be different. For decades extremists have called the US "the Great Satan." The US invasion and violent occupation of Iraq have given credibility to this characterization of America. Our Middle Eastern puppets are sending us frantic signals that unprecedented hatred of America is endangering the stability of their countries. One thing is certain: the photographs showing a female US soldier laughing at the sexual humiliation of Muslim men will not make Americans safer.
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=2455 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue May 04, 2004 8:15 pm Post subject: C-SPAN 2 Phone Call about Professor Kevin MacDonald |
| Forwarded:
Subj: C-SPAN 2 Phone Call about Professor Kevin MacDonald
Date: 5/3/04 4:49:11 PM Pacific Daylight Time
To: nferguso@stern.nyu.edu
Professor Ferguson,
I had mentioned Professor Kevin MacDonald's excellent 'Thinking about Neoconservatism' article during your 'In Depth' presentation ( http://www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segid=4485&schedID=267 ) on C-SPAN 2 yesterday as your response was disingenuous. Especially when you mentioned that Israel was a 'democracy' and that the neoconservatives are in desire of establishing 'democracy' in Iraq (and beyond). Israel is hardly a democracy in the way it brutally oppresses the Palestinian people as many think that Israel is a Jewish (Apartheid-like) South Africa. Access Professor MacDonald's 'Thinking about Neoconservatism' article via the embedded link at the URL:
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/offsite_snieg_raimondo.htm
In addition, you mentioned that the Rothchild family had no connection to the Zionist hijacking of Yukos in Russia (as your saying such is in direct contrast to what is mentioned in the 'Countdown to Armageddon' article - by By M. Raphael Johnson - which can by located by scrolling down to it at the following URL):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2003/11/18/us-air-force-lt-colonel-speaks-out-against-bush-neocons.php
Additional material on Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2003/11/18/us-air-force-lt-colonel-speaks-out-against-bush-neocons.php
'War Conceived in Israel':
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_conc1.htm
Whose War?:
A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.
by Patrick J. Buchanan
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
War for Israel?:
http://www.leftcurve.org/LC28WebPages/WarForIsrael.html
Even the executive director of the 9/11 Commission mentioned that the Iraq war was for Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/03/head-of-sept-11-commission-said-iraq-war-for-israel.php
Frank Gaffney: Feith’s Fight (Damage Control for the neocons):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/30/frank-gaffney-feith-s-fight-damage-control-as-neocons-bleed.php
Cheney is also associated with JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs)/PNAC (Project for the New American Century) which pushed for war in Iraq for Israel for a long time before 9/11:
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles114.htm
Here is the 'Men from JINSA and CSP' article (from 'The Nation') that Fisk mentions in the above article:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest
PNAC mentioned here:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php
http://www.sundayherald.com/27735
http://www.sundayherald.com/37707
Israeli Businesses Invade Iraq:
http://www.peopleforchange.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=10048
Subj: Standard-Bearer of Democracy Becomes Great Satan
Date: 5/3/04 11:50:32 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Friend,Standard-Bearer of Democracy Becomes Great Satan The official fairy tale was that US had come as beneficent power to liberate Iraq and create democracy, which would then transform the entire Middle East into one harmonious prosperous democratic region. The democratic Middle Eastern peoples, ridding themselves of their evil tyrants and terrorists (just a few bad eggs) would then just get along perfectly with Israel, because everyone knows that there is no real reason for Arabs to be angry at the Jewish state, which has never caused any harm to anyone. Reality, however, has done in the fairy tale. As the first article by Shibley Telhami of the liberal Brookings Institution points out:"Certainly the painful pictures from Iraq a year after the war -- including humiliating scenes of abused Iraqi prisoners -- have turned that country into a model to be feared and avoided in the eyes of many in the Middle East, and a tool in the hands of governments reluctant to change. It is a far cry from the anticipated model of inspiration the administration promised would spur demands for democracy in the Arab world."In the second article paleocon Paul Craig Roberts takes a harsher view: "In his war propaganda, President Bush portrays America as a morally superior country whose innate virtue is the reason we are in Iraq. America alone is willing to tax its citizens and send its sons to die in order to bring freedom and democracy to other lands. Bush describes our mission as one in which our troops are dying and we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars not to acquire a colony or to control the oil, but to liberate Iraqi women and to make Iraqis safe from torture."With the US now guilty of war crimes as defined by Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, our sanctimonious president will never again be able to wear American virtue on his sleeve without the entire world laughing in his face."No one with any intelligence and knowledge of the region and its history could honestly believe the democracy fairy tale—so it could be assumed that it was not really believed by the neocons who manufactured it. And it is certainly the diametrical opposite of the position of the neocons’ friends on the Israeli Right. (Though if one looked beneath the surface, it was apparent that what the neocons proclaimed as "democracy" was anything but. Their "democracy" proposals frequently entailed minority rule, extensive censorship, and government propaganda)
http://venus.soci.niu.edu/~archives/ABOLISH/rick-halperin/apr03/0243.htm
http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/2003/04/20030407.php
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/jg20030503.shtml
The fact of the matter is that the neocons—at least the leading neocons—never really held this roseate view of democracy, which simply served as war propaganda just like the non-existent WMD danger. Rather, the neocons believed that the war would destabilize and fragmentize the Middle East, with various little ethnic and religious groups fighting among themselves. By weakening Israel’s enemies, Israel’s security would be enhanced.. This fits in with the fundamental Likudnik view going back to Lev Jabotinsky, the ideological father of the Israeli right, that the Jewish state could only survive through force—the "iron wall."
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2001/441/441p21.htm http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/
This Likudnik destabilization and fragmentation policy was put forth in a 1982 policy paper entitled, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," authored by Oded Yinon. Yinon proposed that Israel should engage in military action to bring about the dissolution of its Middle East enemies
[http://www.theunjustmedia.com/the%20zionist_plan_for_the_middle_east.htm]
The neoconservatives adopted this Likud strategy. Richard Perle, David Wurmser, Douglas Feith, and others openly pushed this destabilization strategy in their 1996 study, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," which was originally prepared as a working paper for then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. In this work, the elimination of Saddam's regime would serve as a first step towards eliminating the anti-Israeli governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. [The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000," "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,"
http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm
Notably, there was no mention of democracy in these 1996 proposals (which were created by the same people who brought about the US war on Iraq). The goal was not to create stable, productive Middle East states, but instead dissolved, fragmented entities that would not be any threat to Israel. It was realpolitik pure and simple. It is quite apparent that the war on Iraq has achieved positive results from the neocon/Likudnik perspective—the weakening of Israel's Middle East enemies, the US planted more firmly in the Middle East in opposition to Israel's enemies, the worsening of the Palestinian position, a firmer alliance between Israel and the US, the Middle Eastern states faced with destabilizing terror attacks, and international pressure being placed on Iran and Syria to eliminate nuclear program. Even the fact that the Arabs/Muslims now detest the US, which means the greater likelihood that the Americans will be the victims of Islamic terror attacks, is a positive achievement from the Likudnik position. In short, not only is Israel not alone as an enemy of the Arabs/Muslims, it would actually seem that the US has replaced Israel as the foremost enemy (the Great Satan)--a grand achievement from the position of Israeli national security. In short, the US is now connected with Israel against what had primarily been Israel’s Middle East enemies. And the US is now taking the brunt of the Arab/Islamic hostility and perhaps can be induced to launch the neocons’ World War IV against Islam, should a major terrorist event occur. At the very least, it appears that the US cannot escape the Middle East quagmire. Mainstream opinion holds that for the US to pull out would wreck American global credibility. Kerry, of course, supports America’s continued occupation of Iraq. None of this is to deny that the neocons would prefer to have even greater achievements: regime change throughout the entire Middle East with pro-Israel puppet regimes installed by the US. But again it should be emphasized that from the neocon/Likudnik perspective the power situation in the Middle East has much improved since 9/11/2001. _________________________________________________________________________
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58096-2004Apr30?language=printerwashingtonpost.com
Double Blow To Mideast Democracy
By Shibley Telhami
Saturday, May 1, 2004;
Page A21
Events in Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have dealt a fatal blow to the Bush administration's plans for Middle East reform even before they are formally unveiled. These events may come to symbolize the end of democracy as a serious policy objective in the Middle East.Certainly the painful pictures from Iraq a year after the war -- including humiliating scenes of abused Iraqi prisoners -- have turned that country into a model to be feared and avoided in the eyes of many in the Middle East, and a tool in the hands of governments reluctant to change. It is a far cry from the anticipated model of inspiration the administration promised would spur demands for democracy in the Arab world.But the challenge for the administration's reform plans is far greater than the pictures in Iraq convey. A year after major combat was declared over, the administration is in greater need than before of help from the very governments it seeks to reform. And the administration's support for the unilateral disengagement plan of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon necessitates yet more help from Arab governments in implementing an unpopular plan without unleashing instability.Add to this increasing public anger in the Arab world with the United States over both Iraq and the Palestinian issue -- and with their own governments for supporting the United States. This exacerbates the rulers' insecurity and inclines them toward increased repression.Because our strategic and political objectives are now urgent, they outweigh our desire for reform, even if we continue to pay lip service to it. In the history of U.S. foreign policy, such concessions are always portrayed as necessary short-term measures. Too often, however, long-term U.S. behavior in the region simply looks like a series of short-term concessions.Despite our claim before the Iraq war that the prospects of democracy in the region would improve, public opinion there has gone the other way. In an opinion survey I conducted in six Arab countries on the eve of the war, majorities of Arabs expressed the view that the Middle East would be less democratic after the war. It was a seemingly puzzling view given how little democracy already existed. But there are two primary reasons for this assessment that we cannot ignore.First, there was widespread mistrust of American intentions. When you don't trust the messenger, you don't trust the message, even if it's a good one. While the lack of trust was based on many factors, including a historical gap between what we say and what we do, the primary measure of confidence toward the United States in Arab minds remains the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. While Arabs have always complained about perceived American "bias," their level of confidence in the United States has not been constant. In the spring of 2000, for example, when it looked as if the United States was genuinely trying to mediate an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, more than 60 percent of Saudis expressed confidence in this country. Immediately after the collapse of the negotiations that fall, confidence began to slide, and it continued to do so, reaching single digits in the past year.No matter what else we do in the region, the Arab-Israeli conflict remains the "prism of pain" for Arabs through which they read U.S. intentions, in the same way that the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and associated terrorism are now the prism of pain through which Americans will continue to see the Arab and Muslim worlds. Regardless of the objective meaning of the administration's support for Sharon, the regional perception of that support is likely to outweigh anything we say on reform -- or even Iraq.Second, while Arab and Muslim public views of the United States are often wrong and unjustified, their skepticism about our policy toward reform is reasonable. We have not been fully honest in our own public discourse about where democracy ranks in our priorities. It is true that many in our government and media have come to believe that democracy is now a strategic priority, because its absence fuels terrorism. But we fear anarchy and instability even more in areas where we have strategic interests, and we fear the emergence of unfriendly governments, even if democratically elected.In Pakistan, our strategic priority is to get maximum support from the besieged government of Pervez Musharraf for fighting our top strategic threat, al Qaeda. We fear most the disintegration of a nuclear state in an area where al Qaeda is strong. In Iraq today, we would like to see democracy, but our priority is to limit the casualties of our troops, to ensure an outcome that favors our other interests, especially oil. We want democratic rulers, but only if they are sure allies. The result is that what we say and what we do are visibly in conflict.The difficulty in bringing stability, let alone democracy, to Iraq, where we have direct control and are spending enormous resources, should be a sobering example of the limits of our power. Above all two conclusions must be drawn: First, it is impossible to succeed in our reform policy without having in place a robust Arab-Israeli peace process that commands regional trust. Second, we cannot succeed if we continue to ignore public opinion in the region. The gap between governments and publics increases the rulers' incentive to repress at the same time that it decreases our leverage with them.The writer is Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution. © 2004 The Washington Post Company ________________________________________http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=2455 May 1, 2004 The Great Satanby Paul Craig Roberts The current issue of National Review advocates that the US adopt Saddam Hussein’s policies toward Iraqis. Nothing less will subdue them, says the conservative publication. To beat them, National Review says, we must become like them.No sooner said than done. The US has appointed Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard General, Jasim Muhammed Saleh to deal with the Fallajuh insurgency. And, judging from news reports and photographs of tortured Iraqis, the US has put Saddam Hussein himself back in charge of the notorious prison, Abu Ghraib.US prestige will never recover from the photos of Americans abusing Iraqi detainees. With no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, with no terrorist link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, President Bush’s last remaining excuse for his invasion of Iraq was his boast that the torture prisons have been closed.In his war propaganda, President Bush portrays America as a morally superior country whose innate virtue is the reason we are in Iraq. America alone is willing to tax its citizens and send its sons to die in order to bring freedom and democracy to other lands. Bush describes our mission as one in which our troops are dying and we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars not to acquire a colony or to control the oil, but to liberate Iraqi women and to make Iraqis safe from torture.With the US now guilty of war crimes as defined by Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, our sanctimonious president will never again be able to wear American virtue on his sleeve without the entire world laughing in his face.The US military is making a big show of dealing with the Saddam Hussein imitators in its ranks, but the sickening fact is that both the US government and the American media sat on the story for one month, keeping it a secret until the photos began circulating independently.The neocons, whose war this is, were quick to say that the US should be judged by what it proclaims, not by what it does. What’s a little torture after all, compared to building freedom and democracy?It was ten minutes into the news hour on the day the story broke before the Ministry of Propaganda, a.k.a. Fox News, could bring itself to mention, fleetingly, the torture story. Americans who rely on Fox News for their understanding of the war must be scratching their heads.By showing the true nature of the US occupation, the photos may have broken the rush to wider war and the return to military conscription. Polls released at the end of April show that a majority of Americans had soured on the war prior to the torture story. The photographic evidence that US troops are committing atrocities will further reduce support for the war.The impact on the Muslim world will be different. For decades extremists have called the US "the Great Satan." The US invasion and violent occupation of Iraq have given credibility to this characterization of America. Our Middle Eastern puppets are sending us frantic signals that unprecedented hatred of America is endangering the stability of their countries. One thing is certain: the photographs showing a female US soldier laughing at the sexual humiliation of Muslim men will not make Americans safer.Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=2455 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue May 04, 2004 10:18 pm Post subject: US Diplomats' Letter Criticizes Bush's Mideast Policies |
| US Diplomats' Letter Criticizes Bush's Mideast Policies:
It seems that the list of U.S. diplomats endorsing the letter to Bush that criticized him for his ``unabashed support'' for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is now more than 60 instead of the 50 that I initially reported. Here is the letter and the list of diplomats.
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President:
We former U.S. diplomats applaud our 52 British counterparts who recently sent a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair criticizing his Middle East policy and calling on Britain to exert more influence over the United States. As retired foreign service officers we care deeply about our nation's foreign policy and U.S. credibility in the world. At the request of our government and military colleagues, we have added their names as well.
We also are deeply concerned by your April 14 endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to reject the rights of three million Palestinians, to deny the right of refugees to return to their homeland, and to retain five large illegal settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank. This plan defies U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for Israel's return of occupied territories. It ignores international laws declaring Israeli settlements illegal. It flouts U.N. Resolution 194, passed in 1948, which affirms the right of refugees to return to their homes or receive compensation for the loss of their property and assistance in resettling in a host country should they choose to do so. And it undermines the Road Map for peace drawn up by the Quartet, including the U.S. Finally, it reverses longstanding American policy in the Middle East.
Your meeting with Sharon followed a series of intensive negotiating sessions between Israelis and Americans, but which left out Palestinians. In fact, you and Prime Minister Sharon consistently have excluded Palestinians from peace negotiations. Former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo voiced the overwhelming reaction of people around the world when he said, "I believe President Bush declared the death of the peace process today."
By closing the door to negotiations with Palestinians and the possibility of a Palestinian state, you have proved that the United States is not an even-handed peace partner. You have placed U.S. diplomats, civilians and military doing their jobs overseas in an untenable and even dangerous position.
Your unqualified support of Sharon's extra-judicial assassinations, Israel's Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in occupied territories, and now your endorsement of Sharon’s unilateral plan are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends. Nor is this endorsement even in the best interests of the State of Israel.
It is not too late to reassert American principles of justice and fairness in our relations with all the peoples of the Middle East. Support negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, with the United States serving as a truly honest broker. A return to the time-honored American tradition of fairness will reverse the present tide of ill will in Europe and the Middle East—even in Iraq.
Because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the core of the problems in the Middle East, the entire region—and the world—will rejoice along with Israelis and Palestinians when the killing stops and peace is attained.
Sincerely,
Andrew I. Killgore, Ambassador to Qatar, 1977-1980
Richard H. Curtiss, chief inspector, U.S. Information Agency
Colbert C. Held, Middle East Regional Officer
Thomas J. Carolan, Consul General, Turkey, 1988-1992
C. Edward Bernier, Counselor of Embassy for Information and Culture, Pakistan 1995-1996
Donald A. Kruse, American Consul in Jerusalem
Ambassador Edward L. Peck, former Chief of Mission in Iraq and Mauritania
John Powell, Admin Counselor of Embassy in Lebanon, 1975
John Gunther Dean, Ambassador to India
James Akins, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
Talcott Seelye, Ambassador to Syria
Eugene Bird, Counselor of Embassy in Saudi Arabia
Richard H. Nolte, Ambassador to Egypt
Ray Close, Chief of Station Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 1971-1979
Shirl McArthur, Commercial Attache, Thailand
David Fredrick, Country Director Peace Corps Morocco 1986-1990
Bill Rugh, Ambassador to UAE and Yemen
James Curran, Deputy Chief of Mission Togo 1973-1975
Joseph Cheevers, Office of Inspectors General 1987
Robert L. M. Nevitt, Minister for Press Affairs for the U.N.
John Brady Kiesling, Political Counselor, Greece
E. William Tatge, Counselor for Commercial Affairs, France
Henry Precht, Deputy Chief of Mission, Egypt
John O. Sutter, FSO, The Asia Foundation's Representative for Indonesia, 1982-1984
James J. Halsema, Counselor for Public Affairs, Egypt
Nancy LeRoy, Public Affairs Officer, Mexico
Thomas M. Martin, USIA Congressional Liaison Officer,
Robert C. McLaughlin, USIA Madrid
Edward Alexander, Counselor for Public Affairs, East Berlin, 1976-1979
Roman Lotsberg, Admin Officer, Office of European Affairs
Dr. Shirley Hill Witt, Cultural Affairs Officer, Zambia, 1994-1996
Arthur L. Lowrie, Political Advisor to the Commander in Chief, U.S. Central Command
Carleton Coon, Ambassador to Nepal 1981-1984
Jane Coon, Ambassador to Bangladesh, 1981-1984
George B. Roberts, Ambassador to Guyana, 1979-1981
Robert V. Keeley, Ambassador to Greece
John E. Marsh, First Secretary, Embassy Kuwait, 1971-1973
Thomas W. Fina, Consul General, Milan, 1973-1979
Harland H. Eastman, Consul General, Tangier, Morocco, and Tel Aviv, Israel
Arthur Mudge, Director, USAID Mission to Sudan, 1980-1983
Ronald I. Spiers, Undersecretary of State for Management
Albert L. Seligmann, Director, Office of Japanese Affairs, 1981-1983
Orin D. Parker, President, America-Middle East Educational Services, 1979-1988
Robert C. Amerson, Counselor for Public Affairs, Italy
Christian Freer, Colonel, AUS ret., former chief of CIA stations and War Plans staff
Thomas J. Hirschfeld, Deputy U.S. Rep MBFR Negotiations
Edward R. M. Kane, Deputy Chief of Station, CIA, Iraq
Col. Richard Hobbes, US Army Retired, Politico-Military Adviser to NEA 1974-1977
Col. David Antoon, US Air Force, Retired
Brig. General Augustine A. Verrengia, USAF Ret.
Greg Thielmann, Director, Office for Strategic Proliferation Military Affairs, Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Robin Berrington, Cultural Attache, Japan
Gary S. Usrey, Deputy Chief of Mission, Morocco
Owen Roberts, Ambassador to Togo
Chas W. Freeman, Jr. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Assistant Secretary of Defense, 1993-1994
Edwin Paul Kennedy, Jr., Regional Affairs Officer for N. African, Near Eastern, and S. Asian Affairs, USIA
Thomas J. Scotes, Ambassador to Yemen, 1975-1978
Michael Mennard, Ph.D., Regional Public Affairs Officer, India
Francois M. Dickman, Director Arabian Peninsula Affairs 1972-76, Ambassador to UAE 1976-79 and Kuwait 1979-83
Terrell E. Arnold, Former Deputy Director Office of Counterterrorism and Consul General, Brazil Others
Edy Korthals Altes, Ambassador of the Netherlands in Madrid 1983-1986
Mr. Gerben Meihuizen (The Hague) former Netherlands Ambassador in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Algeria
Former Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL)
Robert Norberg, Director ARAMCO, ret.
Bishop John William Assemby of Yahweh
William Hughes, WWII veteran, retired engineer
Clyde A. Farris
Mary Ann Schwab, teacher, voter
Rev. J. Martin Bailey, Consultant to the Common Global Ministries Board
Henry E. Kydd, retired Army Sergeant, director of homeless shelter, grandfather
Dr. Edna Homa Hunt
David Wade, Ph.D, Researcher
E. Faye Williams, Esq.
Koen Stork, Netherlands Ambassador in Bucarest
W. Lance Haynes, Professor of Speech and Media Studies, University of Missouri-Rolla
David S. Dodge, President, American University of Beirut, ret.
Mrs. Frederick G. Roberts, widow of Frederick Roberts, CIA, Turkey | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
