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

[Bill Totten]

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org (July 03 2009)


Much ado about nothing?

What is there about the Iranian election of June 12 that has led to it
being one of the leading stories in media around the world every day
since? Elections whose results are seriously challenged have taken place
in most countries at one time or another in recent decades. Countless
Americans believe that the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were
stolen by the Republicans, and not just inside the voting machines and in
the counting process, but prior to the actual voting as well with numerous
Republican Party dirty tricks designed to keep poor and black voters off
voting lists or away from polling stations. The fact that large numbers of
Americans did not take to the streets day after day in protest, as in
Iran, is not something we can be proud of. Perhaps if the CIA, the Agency
for International Development (AID), several US government-run radio
stations, and various other organizations supported by the National
Endowment for Democracy (which was created to serve as a front for the
CIA, literally) had been active in the United States, as they have been
for years in Iran, major street protests would have taken place in the
United States.

The classic "outside agitators" can not only foment dissent through
propaganda, adding to already existing dissent, but they can serve to
mobilize the public to strongly demonstrate against the government. In
1953, when the CIA overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh,
they paid people to agitate in front of Mossadegh's residence and
elsewhere and engage in acts of violence; some pretended to be supporters
of Mossadegh while engaging in anti-religious actions. And it worked,
remarkably well. {1} Since the end of World War Two, the United States has
seriously intervened in some thirty elections around the world, adding a
new twist this time, twittering. The State Department asked Twitter to
postpone a scheduled maintenance shutdown of its service to keep
information flowing from inside Iran, helping to mobilize protesters. {2}
The New York Times reported: "An article published by the Web site
True/Slant highlighted some of the biggest errors on Twitter that were
quickly repeated and amplified by bloggers: that three million protested
in Tehran last weekend (more like a few hundred thousand); that the
opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi was under house arrest (he was
being watched); that the president of the election monitoring committee
declared the election invalid last Saturday (not so)". {3}

In recent years, the United States has been patrolling the waters
surrounding Iran with warships, halting Iranian ships to check for arms
shipments to Hamas or for other illegal reasons, financing and "educating"
Iranian dissidents, using Iranian groups to carry out terrorist attacks
inside Iran, kidnaping Iranian diplomats in Iraq, kidnaping Iranian
military personnel in Iran and taking them to Iraq, continually spying and
recruiting within Iran, manipulating Iran's currency and international
financial transactions, and imposing various economic and political
sanctions against the country. {4}

"I've made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the
Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran's
affairs", said US President Barack Obama with a straight face on June 23.
"Some in the Iranian government [have been] accusing the United States and
others outside of Iran of instigating protests over the elections. These
accusations are patently false and absurd." {5}

"Never believe anything until it's officially denied", British writer
Claud Cockburn famously said.

In his world-prominent speech to the Middle East on June 4, Obama
mentioned that "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a
role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government". So
we have the president of the United States admitting to a previous
overthrow of the Iranian government while the United States is in the very
midst of trying to overthrow the current Iranian government. This will
serve as the best example of hypocrisy that's come along in quite a while.

So why the big international fuss over the Iranian election and street
protests? There's only one answer. The obvious one. The announced winner,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a Washington ODE, an Officially Designated Enemy,
for not sufficiently respecting the Empire and its Israeli
partner-in-crime; indeed, Ahmadinejad is one of the most outspoken critics
of US foreign policy in the world.

So ingrained is this ODE response built into Washington's world view that
it appears to matter not at all that Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's main opponent
in the election and very much supported by the protesters, while prime
minister 1981-89, bore large responsibility for the attacks on the US
embassy and military barracks in Beirut in 1983, which took the lives of
more than 200 Americans, and the 1988 truck bombing of a US Navy
installation in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons. Remarkably, a
search of US newspaper and broadcast sources shows no mention of this
during the current protests. {6} However, the Washington Post saw fit to
run a story on June 27 that declared: "the authoritarian governments of
China, Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month
of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to
demand democratic reforms".

Can it be that no one in the Obama administration knows of Mousavi's
background? And do none of them know about the violent government
repression on June 5 in Peru of the peaceful protests organized in
response to the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement? A massacre that took the
lives of between twenty and 25 indigenous people in the Amazon and wounded
another 100. {7} The Obama administration was silent on the Peruvian
massacre because the Peruvian president, Alan Garcia, is not an ODE.

And neither is Mousavi, despite his anti-American terrorist deeds, because
he's opposed to Ahmadinejad, who competes with Hugo Chavez to be
Washington's Number One ODE. Time magazine calls Mousavi a "moderate", and
goes on to add: "It has to be assumed that the Iranian presidential
election was rigged", offering as much evidence as the Iranian protestors;
that is, none at all. {8} It cannot of course be proven that the Iranian
election was totally honest, but the arguments given to support the charge
of fraud are not very impressive, such as the much-repeated fact that the
results were announced very soon after the polls closed. For decades in
various countries election results have been condemned for being withheld
for many hours or days. Some kind of dishonesty must be going on behind
the scenes during the long delay it was argued. So now we're asked to
believe that some kind of dishonesty must be going on because the results
were released so quickly. It should be noted that the ballots listed only
one electoral contest, with but four candidates.

Phil Wilayto, American peace activist and author of a book on Iran, has
observed:

"Ahmadinejad, himself born into rural poverty, clearly has the support of
the poorer classes, especially in the countryside, where nearly half the
population lives. Why? In part because he pays attention to them, makes
sure they receive some benefits from the government and treats them and
their religious views and traditions with respect. Mousavi, on the other
hand, the son of an urban merchant, clearly appeals more to the urban
middle classes, especially the college-educated youth. This being so, why
would anyone be surprised that Ahmadinejad carried the vote by a clear
majority? Are there now more yuppies in Iran than poor people?" {9}

All of which is of course not to say that Iran is not a relatively
repressive society on social and religious issues, and it's this
underlying reality which likely feeds much of the protest; indeed, many of
the protesters may not even have strong views about the election per se,
particularly since both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are members of the
establishment, neither is any threat to the Islamic theocracy, and the
election can be seen as the kind of power struggle you find in virtually
every country. But that is not the issue I'm concerned with here. The
issue is Washington's long-standing goal of regime change. If the exact
same electoral outcome had taken place in a country that is an ally of the
United States, how much of all the accusatory news coverage and speeches
would have taken place? In fact, the exact same thing did happen in a
country that is an ally of the United States, three years ago when Felipe
Calderon appeared to have stolen the presidential election in Mexico and
there were daily large protests for more than two months; but the American
and international condemnation was virtually non-existent compared to what
we see today in regard to Iran.

Iranian leaders undertook a recount of a random ten per cent of ballots
and recertified Ahmadinejad as the winner. How honest the recount was I
have no idea, but it's more than Americans got in 2000 and 2004.


By what standard shall we judge Barack Obama?

Many of my readers have been upset with me for my criticisms of President
Obama's policies. Following my last two reports, more than a dozen have
asked to be removed from my mailing list. But if you share my view that
the numerous atrocities US foreign policy is responsible for constitute
the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity and happiness, then I think
you have to want leaders who are unambiguously opposed to America's
military adventures, because those interventions are unambiguously
harmful. There's nothing good to be said about dropping powerful bombs on
crowds of innocent people, invading their land, overthrowing their
government, occupying the country, breaking down the doors of the
citizens, killing the father, raping the mother, traumatizing the
children, torturing those opposed to all this ... Barack Obama has no
problem with this, if we judge him by his policies and not his rhetoric.

And neither does Al Franken, who's about to become a Democratic Senator
from Minnesota. The former Saturday Night Live comedian would like you to
believe that he's been against the war in Iraq since it began, but he's
gone to Iraq four times to entertain the troops. Does that make sense? Why
does the military bring entertainers to soldiers? To lift the soldiers'
spirits. Why does the military want to lift the soldiers' spirits? A
happier soldier does his job better. And what's the soldier's job? All the
charming things listed above. Doesn't Franken know what these guys do? He
criticized the Bush administration because they "failed to send enough
troops to do the job right". {10} What "job" did the man think the troops
were sent to do that had not been performed to his standards because of
lack of manpower? Did he want them to be more efficient at killing Iraqis
who resisted the occupation?

Franken has been lifting soldiers' spirits for a long time. This past
March he was honored by the United Service Organization (USO) for his ten
years of entertaining troops abroad. That includes Kosovo in 1999, as
imperialist an occupation as you'll want to see. He called his USO
experience "one of the best things I've ever done". {11} Franken has also
spoken at West Point, encouraging the next generation of imperialist
warriors. Is this a man to challenge the militarization of America at home
and abroad? No more so than Obama.

Tom Hayden wrote this about Franken in 2005 when Franken had a regular
program on the Air America radio network:

"Is anyone else disappointed with Al Franken's daily defense of the
continued war in Iraq? Not Bush's version of the war, because that would
undermine Air America's laudable purpose of rallying an anti-Bush
audience. But, well, Kerry's version of the war, one that can be better
managed and won, somehow with better body armor and fewer torture cells.
This morning Franken was endorsing Senator Joe Biden's proposal to send
5,000 NATO troops to close the Syrian-Iraq border, bring in foreign
trainers for the Iraqi officer corps, and put Iraqis to work cleaning up
the destruction of our invasion ... Now that Bush has manipulated us into
the invasion, Franken thinks we have no choice but to ... stay until we
crush the insurgents. It's a humanitarian excuse for open-ended American
occupation. And it's shared widely by the professional political and
pundit class who think of themselves as the conscience of the American
establishment and the leadership of the Democratic Party." {12}

I know, I know, I'm taking away all your heroes. But such people shouldn't
be your heroes. You can learn to see through the liberal, Democratic Party
apologists for the empire. Only a week ago, documents released by the
Nixon Library in California revealed that five days before US and South
Vietnamese troops made their surprise invasion of Cambodia on April 29
1970 - which elicited widespread, angry protests in the US, resulting in
the fatal shootings by the National Guard of students at Kent State
University in Ohio - President Richard Nixon got approval for the invasion
from the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John
Stennis of Mississippi. Stennis told the president: "I will be with
you ... I commend you for what you are doing". {13}


Long live the Cold War

President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was overthrown in a military coup June
28 because he was about to conduct a non-binding survey of the population,
asking the question: "Do you agree that, during the general elections of
November 2009 there should be a fourth ballot to decide whether to hold a
Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political
constitution?" One of the issues that Zelaya hoped a new constitution
would deal with is the limiting of the presidency to one four-year term.
He also expressed the need for other constitutional changes to make it
possible for him to carry out policies to improve the life of the poor; in
countries like Honduras, the law is not generally crafted for that end.

At this writing it's not clear how matters will turn out in Honduras, but
the following should be noted: the United States, by its own admission,
was fully aware for weeks of the Honduran military's plan to overthrow
Zelaya. Washington says it tried its best to change the mind of the
plotters. It's difficult to believe that this proved impossible. During
the Cold War it was said, with much justification, that the United States
could discourage a coup in Latin America with "a frown". The Honduran and
American military establishments have long been on very fraternal terms.
And it must be asked: In what way and to what extent did the United States
warn Zelaya of the impending coup? And what protection did it offer him?
The response to the coup from the Obama administration can be described
with adjectives such as lukewarm, proper but belated, and mixed. It is not
unthinkable that the United States gave the military plotters the
go-ahead, telling them to keep the traditional "golpe" bloodiness to a
minimum. Zelaya was elected to office as the candidate of a conservative
party; he then, surprisingly, moved to the left and became a strong critic
of a number of Washington policies, and an ally of Hugo Chavez of
Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, both of whom the Bush administration
tried to overthrow and assassinate.

Following the coup, National Public Radio (NPR) showed once again why
progressives refer to it as National Pentagon Radio. The station's leading
news anchor, Robert Siegel, interviewed Johanna Mendelson Forman, of the
conservative think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies:

Siegel: "There hasn't been a coup in Latin America for quite a while".

Forman: "I think the last one was in 1983".

Siegel did not correct her. {14}

This is ignorance of considerable degree. There was a coup in Venezuela in
2002 that briefly overthrew Hugo Chavez, a coup in Haiti in 2004 that
permanently overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and a coup in Panama in 1989
that permanently overthrew Manuel Noriega. Is it because the US was
closely involved in all three coups that they have been thrown down the
Orwellian Memory Hole?

Notes:

1. William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 9

2. Associated Press, June 16 2009

3. New York Times, June 21 2009

4. See Seymour Hersh, New Yorker magazine, June 29 2008; ABC News, May 22
2007; and Paul Craig Roberts in CounterPunch, June 19-21 2009 for
descriptions of some of these and other anti-Iran covert activities.

5. White House press conference, June 23 2009
   
6. The only mention is by Jeff Stein in "CQ Politics" [Congressional
Quarterly], online, June 22 2009, "according to former CIA and military
officials".   

7. Center for International Policy (Washington, DC) report, June 16 2009
   
8. Time magazine, June 29 2009, page 26
   
9. AlterNet.org, June 14 2009; Wilayto is the author of In Defense of
Iran: Notes from a US Peace Delegation's Journey through the Islamic
Republic (2009) 
10. Washington Post, February 16 2004
  
11. Star Tribune (Minneapolis), March 26 2009
  
12. Huffington Post, sometime in June 2005, but it may no longer be there.
  
13. Washington Post, June 30 2009
  
14. NPR, All Things Considered, June 29 2009


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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