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

[Bill Totten]

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org (September 01 2010)

Things which don't go away. Things the American government and media don't
let go of. And neither do I.

Iraq

"They're leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their
hearts", declared Colonel John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade in
Iraq. {1}

It's enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him
choke up.

Enough to make him forget.

But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the
society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The
Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for twelve years, with one excuse or
another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed
wantonly, tortured ... the people of that unhappy land have lost
everything - their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean
water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their
archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their
state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their
health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious
tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents,
their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half
the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally
displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood and genes
drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ...
unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up ... an
army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders;
they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the
Middle East, Europe and Central Asia ... a river of blood runs alongside
the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back
together again.

"It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better
before the US-led invasion in 2003", reported the Washington Post on May 5
2007.

No matter ... drum roll, please ... Stand tall American GI hero! And don't
even think of ever apologizing. Iraq is forced by the United States to
continue paying reparations for its own invasion of Kuwait in 1990. How
much will the American heroes pay the people of Iraq?

    Unhappy the land that has no heroes ...
    No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes.

    -- Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo


    What we need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent
of war; something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war
does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has
proved to be incompatible.

    -- William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience


Perhaps the groundwork for that heroism already exists ... February 15
2003, a month before the US invasion of Iraq, probably the largest protest
in human history, between six and ten million protesters took to the
streets of some 800 cities in nearly sixty countries across the globe.

Iraq. Love it or leave it.


PanAm 103

The British government recently warned Libya against celebrating the
one-year anniversary of Scotland's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the
Libyan who's the only person ever convicted of the 1988 blowing up of
PanAm flight 103 over Scotland, which took the lives of 270 largely
Americans and British. Britain's Foreign Office has declared:

    On this anniversary we understand the continuing anguish that
al-Megrahi's release has caused his victims both in the UK and the US. He
was convicted for the worst act of terrorism in British history. Any
celebration of al-Megrahi's release would be tasteless, offensive and
deeply insensitive to the victims' families.



John Brennan, President Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, stated that the
United States has "expressed our strong conviction" to Scottish officials
that Megrahi should not remain free. Brennan criticized what he termed the
"unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision" to allow Megrahi's
return to Libya on compassionate grounds on August 20 2009 because he had
cancer and was not expected to live more than about three months.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement saying that the
United States "continues to categorically disagree" with Scotland's
decision to release Megrahi a year ago. "As we have expressed repeatedly
to Scottish authorities, we maintain that Megrahi should serve out the
entirety of his sentence in prison in Scotland" {2}. The US Senate has
called for an investigation and family members of the crash victims have
demanded that Megrahi's medical records be released. The Libyan's failure
to die as promised has upset many people.

But how many of our wonderful leaders are upset that Abdel Baset
al-Megrahi spent eight years in prison despite the fact that there was,
and is, no evidence that he had anything to do with the bombing of flight
103? The Scottish court that convicted him knew he was innocent. To
understand that just read their 2001 "Opinion of the Court", or read my
analysis of it at killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm.

As to the British government being so upset about Libya celebrating
Megrahi's release - keeping in mind that it strongly appears that UK oil
deals with Libya played more of a role in his release than his medical
condition did - we should remember that in July 1988 an American Navy ship
in the Persian Gulf, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane,
taking the lives of 290 people; that is, more than died from flight 103.
And while the Iranian people mourned their lost loved ones, the United
States celebrated by handing out medals and ribbons to the captain and
crew of the Vincennes {3}. The shootdown had another consequence: It
inspired Iran to take revenge, which it did in December of that year,
financing the operation to blow up PanAm 103 (carried out by the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command).

Why do they hate us?

Passions are flying all over the place concerning the proposed building of
an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from 9/11 Ground Zero in
New York. Even people who are not particularly anti-Muslim think it would
be in bad taste, offensive. But implicit in all the hostility is the idea
that what happened on that fateful day in 2001 was a religious act,
fanatic Muslims acting as Muslims attacking infidels. However - even if
one accepts the official government version of nineteen Muslims hijacking
four airliners - the question remains: Why did they choose the targets
they chose? If they wanted to kill lots of American infidels why not fly
the planes into the stands of packed football or baseball stadiums in the
midwest or the south? Certainly a lot less protected than the Pentagon or
the financial center of downtown Manhattan. Why did they choose symbols of
US military might and imperialism? Because it was not a religious act, it
was a political act. It was revenge for decades of American political and
military abuse in the Middle East. {4} It works the same all over the
world. In the period of the 1950s to the 1980s in Latin America, in
response to continuous hateful policies of Washington, there were
countless acts of terrorism against American diplomatic and military
targets as well as the offices of US corporations; nothing to do with
religion.

Somehow, American leaders have to learn that their country is not exempt
from history, that their actions have consequences.

Afghanistan

In their need to defend the US occupation of Afghanistan, many Americans
have cited the severe oppression of women in that desperate land and would
have you believe that the United States is the last great hope of those
poor ladies. However, in the 1980s the United States played an
indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively
progressive Afghan government, one which endeavored to grant women much
more freedom than they'll ever have under the current government, more
perhaps than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual
on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government concerning
women: "provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and
fixation of the minimum age at marriage at sixteen for women and eighteen
for men"; "abolished forced marriages"; "bring [women] out of seclusion,
and initiate social programs"; "extensive literacy programs, especially
for women"; "putting girls and boys in the same classroom"; "concerned
with changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in
politics". {5}

The overthrow of this government paved the way for the coming to power of
an Islamic fundamentalist regime, followed by the awful Taliban. And why
did the United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing?
Mainly because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and
Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire -
"We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam
War", said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security
Adviser. {6}

The women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to
the status of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some
might argue, is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.

Cuba

Why does the mainstream media routinely refer to Cuba as a dictatorship?
Why is it not uncommon even for people on the left to do the same? I think
that many of the latter do so in the belief that to say otherwise runs the
risk of not being taken seriously, largely a vestige of the Cold War when
Communists all over the world were ridiculed for following Moscow's party
line. But what does Cuba do or lack that makes it a dictatorship? No "free
press"? Apart from the question of how free Western media is, if that's to
be the standard, what would happen if Cuba announced that from now on
anyone in the country could own any kind of media? How long would it be
before CIA money - secret and unlimited CIA money financing all kinds of
fronts in Cuba - would own or control most of the media worth owning or
controlling?

Is it "free elections" that Cuba lacks? They regularly have elections at
municipal, regional and national levels. Money plays virtually no role in
these elections; neither does party politics, including the Communist
Party, since candidates run as individuals. {7} Again, what is the
standard by which Cuban elections are to be judged? Most Americans, if
they gave it any thought, might find it difficult to even imagine what a
free and democratic election, without great concentrations of corporate
money, would look like, or how it would operate. Would Ralph Nader finally
be able to get on all fifty state ballots, take part in national
television debates, and be able to match the two monopoly parties in media
advertising? If that were the case, I think he'd probably win; and that's
why it's not the case. Or perhaps what Cuba lacks is our marvelous
"electoral college" system, where the presidential candidate with the most
votes is not necessarily the winner. If we really think this system is a
good example of democracy why don't we use it for local and state
elections as well?

Is Cuba a dictatorship because it arrests dissidents? Thousands of
anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the United States in
recent years, as in every period in American history. Many have been
beaten by police and mistreated while incarcerated. And remember: The
United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington,
only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the
United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon
Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New
York and Washington on September 11 2001. (This is documented by Cuba in a
1999 suit against the United States detailing $181.1 billion in
compensation for victims: the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding or
disabling of 2,099 others. The Cuban suit has been in the hands of the
Counter-Terrorism Committee of the United Nations since 2001, a committee
made up of all fifteen members of the Security Council, which of course
includes the United States, and which may account for the inaction on the
matter.)

Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political
and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US
government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and
engaging in repeated meetings with known members of that organization? In
recent years the United States has arrested a great many people in the US
and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot
less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents' ties to the
United States. Virtually all of Cuba's "political prisoners" are such
dissidents. While others may call Cuba's security policies dictatorship, I
call it self-defense. {8}

The terrorist list

As casually and as routinely as calling Cuba a dictatorship, the
mainstream media drops the line into news stories that "Hezbollah [or
Hamas, or FARC, et cetera] is considered a terrorist group by the United
States", stated as matter-of-factly as saying that Hezbollah is located in
Lebanon. Inclusion on the list limits an organization in various ways,
such as its ability to raise funds and travel internationally. And
inclusion is scarcely more than a political decision made by the US
government. Who is put on or left off the State Department's terrorist
list bears a strong relation to how supportive of US or Israeli policies
the group is. The list, for example, never includes any of the anti-Castro
Cuban groups or individuals in Florida although those people have carried
out literally hundreds of terrorist acts over the past few decades, in
Latin America, in the US, and in Europe. As you read this, the two men
responsible for blowing up a Cuban airline in 1976, taking 73 lives,
Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada, are walking around free in the Florida
sunshine. Imagine that Osama bin Laden was walking freely around the
Streets of an Afghan or Pakistan city taking part in political
demonstrations as Posada does in Florida. Venezuela asked the United
States to extradite Posada five years ago and is still waiting.

Bosch and Posada are but two of hundreds of Latin-American terrorists
who've been given haven in the United States over the years {9}. Various
administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have also provided close
support of terrorists in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Chechnya,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, including those with known
connections to al Qaeda. Yet, in the grand offices of the State Department
sit learned men who list Cuba as a "state sponsor of terrorism", along
with Syria, Sudan and Iran {10}. That's the complete list.

Meanwhile, the five Cubans sent to Miami to monitor the anti-Castro
terrorists are in their twelfth year in US prisons. The Cuban government
made the very foolish error of turning over to the FBI the evidence of
terrorist activities gathered by the five Cubans. Instead of arresting the
terrorists, the FBI arrested the five Cubans (sic).

Steroids

"Hall of Shamer: Clemens Indicted" - page one headline in large type about
fabled baseball pitcher Roger Clemens charged with lying to Congress about
his use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs {11}. Of all the
things that athletes put into their bodies to improve their health,
fitness and performance, why are steroids singled out? Doesn't taking
vitamin and mineral supplements give an athlete an advantage over athletes
who don't take them? Should these supplements be banned from sport
competition? Vitamin and mineral supplements are not necessarily any more
"natural" than steroids, which in fact are very important in our body
chemistry; among the steroids are the male and female sex hormones.
Moreover, why not punish those who follow a "healthy diet" because of the
advantage this may give them?

Notes

1. Washington Post, August 19 2010

2. Associated Press, August 21 2010

3. Newsweek, July 13 1992

4. See chapter one of Blum's book Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only
Superpower

5. US Department of the Army, Afghanistan, A Country Study (1986), pages
121, 128, 130, 223, 232

6. See Brzezinski's Wikipedia entry

7. See Anti-Empire Report of September 25 2006, 3rd item, for more
information about the Cuban election process

8. For a detailed discussion of Cuba's alleged political prisoners see
article 'Cuba and the Number of "Political Prisoners"', Huffington Post,
August 24 2010

9. Rogue State, Chapter 9

10. See State Department: www.state.gov/s/ct/c14151.htm

11. The Examiner (Washington, DC), August 20 2010

_____

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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