[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Anti-Empire Report

[Bill Totten]

Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org (February 02 2008)


NATO is a treaty on wheels -
It can be rolled in any direction to suit Washington's current policy

Have you by chance noticed that NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, has become virtually a country? With more international
rights and military power than almost any other country in the world?
Yes, the same NATO that we were told was created in 1949 to defend
against a Soviet attack in Western Europe, and thus should have gone out
of existence in 1991 when the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact expired
and explicitly invited NATO to do the same. Other reasons have been
suggested for NATO's creation: to help suppress the left in Italy and
France if either country's Communist Party came to power through an
election, and/or to advance American hegemony by preventing the major
European nations from pursuing independent foreign policies. This latter
notion has been around a long time. In 2004, the US ambassador to NATO,
Nicholas Burns, stated: "Europeans need to resist creating a united
Europe in competition or as a counterweight to the United States" {1}.

The alliance has been kept amongst the living to serve as a very useful
handmaiden of US foreign policy as well as providing American arms and
airplane manufacturers with many billions of dollars of guaranteed sales
due to the requirement that all NATO members meet a certain minimum
warfare capability.

Here's some of what NATO has been up to in recent years as it strives to
find a new raison d'etre in the post-Cold War era.

It is presently waging war in Afghanistan on behalf of the United States
and its illegal 2001 bombing and invasion of that pathetic land. NATO's
forces free up US troops and assume much of the responsibility and
blame, instead of Washington, for the many bombings which have caused
serious civilian casualties and ruination. NATO also conducts raids into
Pakistan, the legality of which is as non-existent as what they do in
Afghanistan.

The alliance, which began with fifteen members, now has 26, in addition
to 23 "partner countries" (under the reassuring name of "Partnership for
Peace"). Combined, that's more than one-fourth of the entire United
Nations membership, and there are numerous other countries bribed and
pressured to work with NATO, such as Jordan which recently sent troops
to Afghanistan. Jordan and Qatar have offered to host a NATO-supported
regional Security Cooperation Centre. NATO has a training mission in
Iraq, and Iraqi military personnel receive training in NATO members'
countries. In recent years, almost all members of the alliance and the
Partnership for Peace have sent troops to Iraq or Afghanistan or the
former Yugoslavia, in each case serving as proxy US-occupation forces.
Israel has had talks with the alliance about the deployment of a NATO
force in their country. India is scheduled to participate in upcoming
NATO war games. The list goes on, as the alliance's outreach keeps
reaching out further, holding international conferences to bring
together new and potential allies, under names such as the Istanbul
Cooperation Initiative, and the Mediterranean Dialogue (Algeria, Egypt,
Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia), or expanding military
ties with existing international organizations such as the Gulf
Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates).

After the September 11 2001 attacks, NATO gave the United States carte
blanche to travel throughout Europe transporting men to be tortured {2}.
It's like a refined gentleman's club with some unusual member
privileges. NATO also goes around monitoring elections, the latest being
in Upper Abkhazia (claimed by Georgia) in January.

The alliance has military bases in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal,
Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe, and regularly conducts "naval
operations in the Mediterranean to actively demonstrate NATO's resolve
and solidarity", as NATO puts it. This includes AWAC (Airborne Warning
and Control) aircraft patrolling the Mediterranean from above and
frequently stopping and boarding ships and boats at sea. "Since the
start of the operation," reports NATO, "nearly 79,000 merchant vessels
have been monitored (as of 12 April 2006) ... The surveillance operation
utilizes ship, aircraft and submarine assets to build a picture of
maritime activity in the Area of Operations". The exercise includes
"actions aimed at preventing or countering terrorism coming from or
conducted at sea and all illegality possibly connected with terrorism,
such as human trafficking and smuggling of arms and radioactive
substances". NATO is truly Lord of the Mediterranean, unelected,
unauthorized, and unsupervised.

NATO, which has ready access to nuclear weapons from several of its
members (only with Washington's approval), has joined the United States
in its operation to surround Russia. "Look", said Russian president
Vladimir Putin about NATO as far back as 2001, "this is a military
organization. It's moving towards our border. Why?" {3} As of December
2007, Moscow's concern had not lessened. The Russian Deputy Foreign
Minister lashed out at NATO's steady expansion into former
Soviet-dominated eastern Europe, saying the policy was "a leftover from
the time of the Cold War" {4}. Finland - which shares a border with
Russia of more than 1300 kilometers - is now being considered for
membership in NATO.

Ever since it undertook a Washington-instigated 78-day bombing of the
former Yugoslavia in 1999, NATO has been operating in the Balkans like a
colonial Governor-General. Along with the UN, it's been leading a
peacekeeping operation in Kosovo and takes part in the policing of
Bosnia, including searching people's homes looking for suspected war
criminals wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia. The triumvirate of NATO, the United States, and the European
Union have been supporting Kosovo's plan to unilaterally declare
independence from Serbia, thus bypassing the UN Security Council where
Serbia's ally, Russia, has a veto. We therefore have the Western powers
unilaterally declaring the independence of a part of another country's
territory; this because the Kosovo ethnic Albanians are regarded as much
more reliably "pro-West" than is Serbia, which has refused to look upon
the free market and the privatization of the world known as
"globalization" as the summum bonum, nor shown proper enthusiasm for an
American or NATO military installation upon its soil. Kosovo, however,
does have a large US military base on its territory. Any attempt by
Serbia to militarily prevent Kosovo from seceding would in all
likelihood be met by NATO/US military force. You may wonder what a
United States military base is doing in Kosovo. People all over the
world wonder the same about their local American bases.

You may also wonder: What force exists to slow down the growth of the
Mediterranean Monster? Who can stand up to it? The military elite of the
triumvirate take such a question seriously. What they apparently fear
the most is nuclear weapons in the hands of the wrong people; that is,
those who don't recognize the triumvirate's right to dictate to the
world. On January 22 the Guardian of London reported that the former
armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the
Netherlands had released a manifesto which insists that a "first strike"
nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is
"simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world". The paper had
earlier been presented to NATO's secretary general and to the Pentagon.
It is likely to be discussed at a NATO summit in Bucharest in April,
along with the possible extension of the alliance to include five more
countries which had been part of, or bordered on, the Soviet Empire:
Croatia, Georgia, Macedonia, Albania and Ukraine.

The five generals who authored the report could have advocated a serious
international campaign to begin the process of actually creating a
nuclear-free world. Instead, they call for an end to the European
Union's "obstruction" of and rivalry with NATO and a shift from
consensus decision-taking in NATO bodies to majority voting, meaning an
end to national vetoes.

So there you have it. The international military elite are demanding yet
more power and autonomy for NATO. Questioning voices in the alliance, in
the European Union, or anywhere else should forget their concerns about
a nuclear-free world, international law, pre-emptive war, wars of
aggression, national sovereignty, and all that other United Nations
Charter and human-rights nonsense. We're gonna nuke all those Arab
terrorists before they have a chance to say Allah Akbar.

The arrogance continues, with the manifesto specifying "no role in
decision-taking on Nato operations for alliance members who are not
taking part in the operations", calling also for the use of force
without UN Security Council authorization when "immediate action is
needed to protect large numbers of human beings". Now who can argue
against protecting large numbers of human beings?

The paper also declares that "Nato's credibility is at stake in
Afghanistan" and "Nato is at a juncture and runs the risk of failure".
The German general went so far as to declare that his own country, by
insisting upon a non-combat role for its forces in Afghanistan, was
contributing to "the dissolution of Nato". Such immoderate language may
be a reflection of the dark cloud which has hovered over the alliance
since the end of the Cold War - that NATO has no legitimate reason for
existence and that failure in Afghanistan would make this thought more
present in the world's mind. If NATO hadn't begun to intervene outside
of Europe it would have highlighted its uselessness and lack of mission.
"Out of area or out of business" it was said. {5}


Democracy is a beautiful thing, except that part about letting just any
old jerk vote.

"The people can have anything they want.
The trouble is, they do not want anything.
At least they vote that way on election day".
-- Eugene Debs, American socialist leader, early 20th century

Why was the primary vote for former presidential candidate Dennis
Kucinich so small when anti-Iraq war sentiment in the United States is
supposedly so high, and Kucinich was easily the leading anti-war
candidate in the Democratic race, indeed the only genuine one after
former Senator Mike Gravel withdrew? Even allowing for his being cut out
of several debates, Kucinich's showing was remarkably poor. In Michigan,
on January 15, it was only Kucinich and Clinton running. Clinton got 56%
of the vote, the "uncommitted" vote (for candidates who had withdrawn
but whose names were still on the ballot) was 39%, and Kucinich received
but 4%. And Clinton, remember, has been the leading pro-war hawk of all
the Democratic candidates.

I think much of the answer lies in the fact that the majority of the
American people - like the majority of people all over the world -
aren't very sophisticated politically, and many of them aren't against
the war for very cerebral reasons. Their opposition perhaps stems mainly
from the large number of American soldiers who've lost their lives, or
because the United States is not "winning", or because America's
reputation in the world is being soiled, or because a majority of other
Americans express their opposition to the war, or because of George W's
multiple character defects, or because of a number of other reasons you
couldn't even guess at. Not much especially perceptive or learned in
this collection.

I think there are all kinds of intelligence in this world: musical,
scientific, mathematical, artistic, academic, literary, mechanical, and
so on. Then there's political intelligence, which I would define as the
ability to see through the bullshit which the leaders and politicians of
every society, past, present and future, feed their citizens from birth
on to win elections and assure continuance of the prevailing ideology.

This is why it's so important for all of us to continue "preaching to
the choir" and "preaching to the converted". That's what speakers and
writers and other activists are often scoffed at for doing - saying the
same old thing to the same old people, just spinning their wheels. But
long experience as speaker, writer and activist in the area of foreign
policy tells me it just ain't so. From the questions and comments I
regularly get from my audiences, via email and in person, and from other
people's audiences as well, I can plainly see that there are numerous
significant information gaps and misconceptions in the choir's thinking,
often leaving them unable to see through the newest government lie or
propaganda trick; they're unknowing or forgetful of what happened in the
past that illuminates the present; knowing the facts but unable to apply
them at the appropriate moment; vulnerable to being led astray by the
next person who offers a specious argument that opposes what they
currently believe, or think they believe. The choir needs to be
frequently reminded and enlightened.

As cynical as others may think they are, the choir is frequently not
cynical enough about the power elite's motivations. They underestimate
the government's capacity for deceit, clinging to the belief that their
government somehow means well; they're moreover insufficiently skilled
at reading between the media's lines. And this all applies to how they
view political candidates as well. Try asking "anti-war" supporters of
Hillary Clinton if they know what a hawk she is, that - as but one
example - she's promised that American forces will not leave Iraq while
she's president. (And Obama loves the empire as much as Clinton.) When
Ronald Reagan was president, on several occasions polls revealed that
many, if not most, people who supported him were actually opposed to
many of his specific policies.

In sum, even when the hearts of the chorus may be in the right place,
their heads still need working on, on a recurring basis. And in any
event, very few people are actually born into the choir; they achieve
choir membership only after being preached to, multiple times.

When I speak in public, and when I can mention it in an interview, I
raise the question of the motivations of the administration. As long as
people believe that our so-called leaders are well-intentioned, the
leaders can, and do, get away with murder. Literally.

"How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think
against their interests is very clever. It's the cleverest ruling class
that I have ever come across in history. It's been 200 years at it. It's
superb." -- Gore Vidal

Another interesting view of the American electoral system comes from
Cuban leader Raul Castro. He recently noted that the United States pits
two identical parties against one another, and joked that a choice
between a Republican and Democrat is like choosing between himself and
his brother Fidel.

"We could say in Cuba we have two parties: one led by Fidel and one led
by Raul, what would be the difference?" he asked. "That's the same thing
that happens in the United States ... both are the same. Fidel is a
little taller than me, he has a beard and I don't." {6}


Speaking of political intelligence ... take a little stroll with Alice
through the American wonderland ... just for laughs

"This war [in Iraq] is the most important liberal, revolutionary US
democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan ... it is one of the
noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad".
-- Thomas Friedman, much-acclaimed New York Times foreign-affairs
analyst, November 2003 {7}

"President Bush has placed human rights at the center of his foreign
policy agenda in unprecedented ways".
-- Michael Gerson, columnist for the Washington Post, 2007 {8}

The war in Iraq "is one of the noblest endeavors the United States, or
any great power, has ever undertaken".
-- David Brooks, New York Times columnist and National Public Radio
(NPR) commentator (2007){9}


If this is what leading American public intellectuals believe and impart
to their audiences, is it any wonder that the media can short circuit
people's critical faculties altogether? It should as well be noted that
these three journalists are all with "liberal" media.

And when Hillary Clinton says in the January 31 debate with Barack
Obama: "We bombed them [Iraq] for days in 1998 because Saddam Hussein
threw out inspectors", and the fact is that the UN withdrew its weapons
inspectors because the Clinton administration had made it clear that it
was about to start bombing Iraq ...

Obama didn't correct her. Neither did any of the eminent journalists on
the panel, though this particular piece of disinformation has been
repeated again and again in the media, and has been corrected again and
again by those on the left. Comrades, we have our work cut out for us.
The chorus needs us. America needs us.  Keep preaching.


Teaching political intelligence

If you're a high school or college teacher, you might want to look at
http://www.teachpeace.com/highschoolkit.htm for teaching aids to impart
a progressive outlook on US foreign policy and related issues to your
students.


Notes

{1} Jewish Telegraph Agency, international wire service, February 16 2004

{2} The Guardian (London), June 07 2007, article by Stephen Grey, author
of Ghost Plane: The inside story of the CIA Torture Program (2006)

{3} Associated Press, June 16 2001

{4} Focus News Agency (Bulgaria)/Agence France-Presse, December 26 2007

{5} Much of the NATO material can be found on NATO's website:
http://www.nato.int/home.htm. Also see an abundance of material at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages

{6} Associated Press, CNN.com, December 25 2007

{7} New York Times, November 30 2003

{8} Washington Post, September 07 2007

{9} Mary Eberstadt, editor, Why I turned Right: Leading Baby Boom
Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys (2007), page 73
_____

William Blum is the author of:-

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War Two
(Common Courage Press, 1995)

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Zed Books, 2002)

West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (Soft Skull Press, 2002)

Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (Common
Courage Press, 2004)
_____

Portions of the books can be read, and copies purchased, at
http://www.killinghope.org and previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read
at this website.

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