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

[Bill Totten]

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org (March 04 2009)


Being serious about torture. Or not.

In Cambodia they're once again endeavoring to hold trials to bring some
former senior Khmer Rouge officials to justice for their 1975-79 war
crimes and crimes against humanity. The current defendant in a United
Nations-organized trial, Kaing Guek Eav, who was the head of a Khmer
Rouge torture center, has confessed to atrocities, but insists he was
acting under orders {1}. As we all know, this is the defense that the
Nuremberg Tribunal rejected for the Nazi defendants. Everyone knows
that, right? No one places any weight on such a defense any longer,
right? We make jokes about Nazis declaring: "I was only following
orders!" ("Ich habe nur den Befehlen gehorcht!") Except that both the
Bush and Obama administrations have spoken in favor of it. Here's the
new head of the CIA, Leon Panetta: "What I have expressed as a concern,
as has the president, is that those who operated under the rules that
were provided by the Attorney General in the interpretation of the law
[concerning torture] and followed those rules ought not to be penalized.
And ... I would not support, obviously, an investigation or a
prosecution of those individuals. I think they did their job." {2}
Operating under the rules ... doing their job ... are of course the same
as following orders.

The UN Convention Against Torture (first adopted in 1984), which has
been ratified by the United States, says quite clearly, "An order from a
superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a
justification of torture". The Torture Convention enacts a prohibition
against torture that is a cornerstone of international law and a
principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery and genocide.

Of course, those giving the orders are no less guilty. On the very day
of Obama's inauguration, the United Nation's special torture rapporteur
invoked the Convention in calling on the United States to pursue former
president George W Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for
torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners {3}.

On several occasions, President Obama has indicated his reluctance to
pursue war crimes charges against Bush officials, by expressing a view
such as: "I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other
hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to
looking backwards." This is the same excuse Cambodian Prime Minister Hun
Sen has given for not punishing Khmer Rouge leaders. In December 1998 he
asserted: "We should dig a hole and bury the past and look ahead to the
21st century with a clean slate" {4}. Hun Sen has been in power all the
years since then, and no Khmer Rouge leader has been convicted for their
role in the historic mass murder.

And by not investigating Bush officials, Obama is indeed saying that
they're above the law. Like the Khmer Rouge officials have been. Michael
Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center
for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary
to set future anti-torture policy. "The only way to prevent this from
happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the
torture program pay the price for it. I don't see how we regain our
moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the
torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they
are not held accountable." {5}

One reason for the non-prosecution may be that serious trials of the
many Bush officials who contributed to the torture policies might reveal
the various forms of Democratic Party non-opposition and collaboration.

It should also be noted that the United States supported Pol Pot (who
died in April 1998) and the Khmer Rouge for several years after they
were ousted from power by the Vietnamese in 1979. This support began
under Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, and continued under Ronald Reagan. {6} A lingering
bitterness by American cold warriors toward Vietnam, the small nation
which monumental US power had not been able to defeat, and its perceived
closeness to the Soviet Union, appears to be the only explanation for
this policy. Humiliation runs deep when you're a superpower.

Neither should it be forgotten in this complex cautionary tale that the
Khmer Rouge in all likelihood would never have come to power, nor even
made a serious attempt to do so, if not for the massive American "carpet
bombing" of Cambodia in 1969-70 and the US-supported overthrow of Prince
Sihanouk in 1970 and his replacement by a man closely tied to the United
States {7}. Thank you Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Well done, lads.

By the way, if you're not already turned off by many of Obama's
appointments, listen to how James Jones opened his talk at the Munich
Conference on Security Policy on February 8: "Thank you for that
wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the
most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my
daily orders from Dr Kissinger." {8}

Lastly, Spain's High Court recently announced it would launch a war
crimes investigation into an Israeli ex-defense minister and six other
top security officials for their role in a 2002 attack that killed a
Hamas commander and fourteen civilians in Gaza {9}. Spain has for some
time been the world's leading practitioner of "universal jurisdiction"
for human-rights violations, such as their indictment of Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet a decade ago. The Israeli case involved the
dropping of a bomb on the home of the Hamas leader; most of those killed
were children. The United States does this very same thing every other
day in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Given the refusal of American presidents
to invoke even their "national jurisdiction" over American
officials-cum-war criminals, we can only hope that someone reminds the
Spanish authorities of a few names, names like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Powell, Rice, Feith, Perle, Yoo, and a few others with a piece missing,
a piece that's shaped like a conscience. There isn't even a need to rely
on international law alone, for there's an American law against war
crimes, passed by a Republican-dominated Congress in 1996 {10}.

The noted Israeli columnist, Uri Avnery, writing about the Israeli case,
tried to capture the spirit of Israeli society that produces such war
criminals and war crimes. He observed: "This system indoctrinates its
pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally ethnocentric, which sees in
the whole of world history nothing but an endless story of Jewish
victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen People, indifferent to
others, a religion without compassion for anyone who is not Jewish,
which glorifies the God-decreed genocide described in the Biblical book
of Joshua." {11}

It would take very little substitution to apply this statement to the
United States - like "American" for "Jewish" and "American
exceptionalism" for "a Chosen People".


Hell hath no fury like an imperialist scorned

Hugo Chavez's greatest sin is that he has shown disrespect for the
American Empire. Or as they would say in America's inner cities - He's
dissed the Man. Such behavior of course cannot go unpunished lest it
give other national leaders the wrong idea. Over the years, the United
States has gotten along just fine with brutal dictators, mass murderers,
torturers, and leaders who did nothing to relieve the poverty of their
population - Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, the Greek Junta, Ferdinand
Marcos, Suharto, Duvalier, Mobutu, the Brazil Junta, Somoza, Saddam
Hussein, South African apartheid leaders, Portuguese fascists, et
cetera, et etera, terrible guys all, all seriously supported by
Washington at one time or another; for none made it a regular habit, if
ever, to diss the Man.

The latest evidence, we are told, that Hugo Chavez is a dictator and a
threat to life as we know it is that he pushed for and got a
constitutional amendment to remove term limits from the presidency. The
American media and the opposition in Venezuela often make it sound as if
Chavez is going to be guaranteed office for life, whereas he of course
will have to be elected each time. Neither are we reminded that it's not
unusual for a nation to not have a term limit for its highest office.
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, if not all of Europe and much
of the rest of the world, do not have such a limit. The United States
did not have a term limit on the office of the president during the
nation's first 162 years, until the ratification of the 22nd Amendment
in 1951. Were all American presidents prior to that time dictators?

In 2005, when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe succeeded in getting term
limits lifted, the US mainstream media took scant notice. President Bush
subsequently honored Uribe with the American Presidential Medal of
Freedom. But in the period leading up to the February 15 referendum in
Venezuela, the American media were competing with each other over who
could paint Chavez and the Venezuelan constitutional process in the most
critical and ominous terms. Typical was an op-ed in the Washington Post
the day before the vote, which was headlined: "Closing in on Hugo
Chavez". Its opening sentence read: "The beginning of the end is setting
in for Hugo Chavez" {12}.

For several years now, the campaign to malign Chavez has at times
included issues of Israel and anti-Semitism. An isolated vandalism of a
Caracas synagogue on January 30th of this year fed into this campaign.
Synagogues are of course vandalized occasionally in the United States
and many European countries, but no one ascribes this to a government
policy driven by anti-semitism. With Chavez they do. In the American
media, the lead up to the Venezuelan vote was never far removed from the
alleged "Jewish" issue.

"Despite the government’s efforts to put the [synagogue] controversy to
rest", the New York Times wrote a few days before the referendum vote,
"a sense of dread still lingers among Venezuela’s 12,000 to 14,000 Jews"
{13}.

A day earlier, a Washington Post editorial was entitled: "Mr Chavez vs
the Jews - With George W Bush gone, Venezuela's strongman has found new
enemies" {14}. Shortly before, a Post headline had informed us: "Jews in
South America Increasingly Uneasy - Government and Media Seen Fostering
Anti-Semitism in Venezuela, Elsewhere" {15}.

So commonplace has the Chavez-Jewish association become that a leading
US progressive organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) in
Washington, DC, recently distributed an article that reads more like the
handiwork of a conservative group than a progressive one. I was prompted
to write to them as follows:

Dear People,

I'm very sorry to say that I found your Venezuelan commentary by Larry
Birns and David Rosenblum Felson to be remarkably lacking. The authors
seem unable, or unwilling, to distinguish between being against Israeli
policies from anti-semitism. It's kind of late in the day for them to
not have comprehended the difference. They are forced to fall back on a
State Department statement to make their case. Is that not enough said?

They condemn Chavez likening Israel’s occupation of Gaza to the
Holocaust. But what if it's an apt comparison? They don't delve into
this question at all.

They also condemn the use of the word "Zionism", saying that "in nine
times out of ten involving the use of this word in fact smacks of
anti-Semitism". Really? Can they give a precise explanation of how one
distinguishes between an anti-Semitic use of the word and a
non-anti-semitic use of it? That would be interesting.

The authors write that Venezuela's "anti-Israeli initiative ...
revealingly transcends the intensity of almost every Arabic nation or
normal adversary of Israel". Really. Since when are the totally gutless,
dictator Arab nations the standard bearer for progressives? The ideal we
should emulate. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are almost never
seriously and harshly critical of Israeli policies toward the
Palestinians. Therefore, Venezuela shouldn't be?

The authors state: "In a Christmas Eve address to the nation, Chavez
charged that, 'Some minorities, descendants of the same ones who
crucified Christ ... took all the world’s wealth for themselves'. Here,
Chavez was not talking so much about Robin Hood, but rather
unquestionably dipping into the lore of anti-Semitism." Well, here's the
full quote: "The world has enough for all, but it turns out that some
minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ,
descendants of the same ones who threw Bolivar out of here and also
crucified him in their own way at Santa Marta there in Colombia ..."
Hmm, were the Jews so active in South America?

The ellipsis after the word "Christ" indicates that the authors
consciously and purposely omitted the words that would have given the
lie to their premise. Truly astonishing.

After Chavez won the term-limits referendum with about 55% of the vote,
a State Department spokesperson stated: "For the most part this was a
process that was fully consistent with democratic process". Various
individuals and websites on the left have responded to this as an
encouraging sign that the Obama administration is embarking on a new
Venezuelan policy. At the risk of sounding like a knee-reflex cynic, I
think this attitude is at best premature, at worst rather naive. It's
easy for a State Department a level-or-so above the Bushies, that is,
semi-civilized, to make such a statement. A little more difficult would
be accepting as normal and unthreatening Venezuela having good relations
with countries like Cuba, Iran and Russia and not blocking Venezuela
from the UN Security Council. Even more significant would be the United
States ending its funding of groups in Venezuela determined to subvert
and/or overthrow Chavez.


You've got to be carefully taught

I've been playing around with a new book for awhile. I don't know if
I'll find the time to actually complete it, but if I do it'll be called
something like "Myths of US foreign policy: How Americans keep getting
fooled into support". The leading myth of all, the one which entraps
more Americans than any other, is the belief that the United States, in
its foreign policy, means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they
may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the odd occasion cause more
harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are honorable,
if not divinely inspired. Of that most Americans are certain. And as
long as a person clings to that belief, it's rather unlikely that s/he
will become seriously doubtful and critical of the official stories.

It takes a lot of repetition while an American is growing up to
inculcate this message into their young consciousness, and lots more
repetition later on. Think of some of the lines from the song about
racism from the Broadway classic show, "South Pacific" - "You've got to
be taught" ...

You've got to be taught
from year to year.
It's got to be drummed
in your dear little ear.
You've got to be taught
before it's too late.
Before you are six or seven or eight.
To hate all the people
your relatives hate.
You've got to be carefully taught.

The education of an American true-believer is ongoing, continuous. All
forms of media, all the time. Here is Michael Mullen, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military officer in the United
States, writing in the Washington Post recently:

"We in the US military are likewise held to a high standard. Like the
early Romans, we are expected to do the right thing, and when we don't,
to make it right again. We have learned, after seven years of war, that
trust is the coin of the realm - that building it takes time, losing it
takes mere seconds, and maintaining it may be our most important and
most difficult objective. That's why images of prisoner maltreatment at
Abu Ghraib still serve as recruiting tools for al-Qaeda. And it's why
each civilian casualty for which we are even remotely responsible sets
back our efforts to gain the confidence of the Afghan people months, if
not years. It doesn't matter how hard we try to avoid hurting the
innocent, and we do try very hard. It doesn't matter how proportional
the force we deploy, how precisely we strike. It doesn't even matter if
the enemy hides behind civilians. What matters are the death and
destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided
it. In the end, all that matters is that, despite our best efforts,
sometimes we take the very lives we are trying to protect ... Lose the
people's trust, and we lose the war ... I see this sort of trust being
fostered by our troops all over the world. They are building schools,
roads, wells, hospitals and power stations. They work every day to build
the sort of infrastructure that enables local governments to stand on
their own. But mostly, even when they are going after the enemy, they
are building friendships. They are building trust. And they are doing it
in superb fashion." {16}

How many young servicemembers have heard such a talk from Mullen or
other officers? How many of them have not been impressed, even choked
up? How many Americans reading or hearing such stirring words have not
had a lifetime of reinforcement reinforced once again? How many could
even imagine that Admiral Mullen is spouting a bunch of crap? The great
majority of Americans will swallow it. When Mullen declares: "What
matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation
that we could have avoided it", he's implying that there was no way to
avoid it. But of course it could have been easily avoided by not
dropping bombs on the Afghan people.

You tell the true-believers that the truth is virtually the exact
opposite of what Mullen has said and they look at you like you just got
off the Number 36 bus from Mars. Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia for 78
days and nights in a row. His military and political policies destroyed
one of the most progressive countries in Europe. And he called it
"humanitarian intervention". It's still regarded by almost all
Americans, including many, if not most, "progressives", as just that.

Now why is that? Are all these people just ignorant? I think a better
answer is that they have certain preconceptions; consciously or
unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States
and its foreign policy, most prominent amongst which is the belief that
the US means well. And if you don't deal with this basic belief you'll
be talking to a stone wall.

Notes

1. Associated Press (August 01 2007)

2. Press conference (February 25 2009), transcript by Federal News Service

3. Agence France Presse (AFP) (January 20 2009)

4. New York Times (December 29 1998)

5. Associated Press (November 17 2008)

6. See William Blum, "Rogue State", chapter 10 ("Supporting Pol Pot")

7. See William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 20 ("Cambodia, 1955-1973")

8.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/jones_munich_conference.html
↩

9. Reuters news agency (January 30 2009)

10. The War Crimes Act (18 USC 2441)

11. Haaretz, leading Israeli newspaper (January 30 2009)

12. Washington Post (February 14 2009), column by Edward Schumacher-Matos

13. New York Times (February 13 2009)

14. Washington Post (February 12 2009)

15. Washington Post (February 08 2009)

16. Washington Post (February 15 2009) page B7


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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