The Anti-Empire Report

[JBCM2@aol.com]

Subj:   The Anti-Empire Report  
Date:   07/07/2003 10:18:58 AM Eastern Daylight Time    
From:   <A HREF="mailto:BBlum6">BBlum6</A>  
To: <A HREF="mailto:BBlum6">BBlum6</A>  
BCC:    <A HREF="mailto:JBCM2">JBCM2</A>   
    


The Anti-Empire Report, an occasional newsletter of questionable rantings and 
ravings by Bill Blum

The words and actions of the Bush administration have so often been labeled 
"Orwellian" that it's become virtually a cliché.  But one can not resist adding 
to the list.
At a July 1 White House press briefing, a reporter asked spokesman Ari 
Fleischer: "Ari, the United States just declared about 50 countries, including 
Colombia and six prospective NATO members, ineligible for military aid because they 
won't exempt Americans from the International Criminal Court. My question is, 
why is this priority more important than fighting the drug wars, integrating 
Eastern Europe?" 
Fleischer replied: "Well, number one, because the President is following the 
law. This is a law that Congress passed that the President signed, dealing 
with what's called Article 98 actions that would make certain that American 
military personnel and other personnel who are stationed abroad would not be 
subject to a court which has international sovereignty that's in dispute."
So what do we have here?  The Bush administration drafts a law to serve its 
imperial and propaganda needs, pushes it through Congress, and then, when the 
press expresses some skepticism about the law's effect, the same Bush 
administration justifies it by saying: "Well, the President is only following the law."
As to the court's sovereignty being in dispute, this is of course entirely 
centered in a city called Washington, DC.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
     For a dozen years, international groups supporting the Iraqi people 
campaigned to have the UN (read US) sanctions removed, sanctions which Clinton's 
National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, called "the most pervasive sanctions 
every imposed on a nation in the history of mankind".  The United States, 
meanwhile, insisted that the suffering of the population was not due to the 
sanctions, but was the result of Saddam's lavish lifestyle.  ("People of Iraq ... the 
amount of money Saddam spends on himself in one day would be more than enough 
to feed a family for a year," said a Pentagon radio program broadcast into 
Iraq).  So then Saddam and his regime were overthrown.  But the suffering 
continued anyhow in much the same ways.  And then, with their usual lack of 
embarrassment, Washington officials declared that the sanctions are actually harmful 
and that they would have be removed in order to provide humanitarian aid and 
rebuild the country.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Reading about a horribly bloody suicide attack upon a Shiite Muslim mosque in 
Pakistan on July 4 that killed dozens, and which is blamed on members of the 
Sunni Muslims, I imagined what many Americans would think about this: "That's 
good, they should all just kill each other with their uncivilized tribal 
violence if they can't learn how to get along any better than that."
Then I thought about the American tribe which recently killed thousands of 
the Afghan tribe and then thousands more of the Iraqi tribe, for no discernible 
good reason or purpose, cheered on by the many other members of the American 
tribe at home waving their tribal flags.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
US military commanders in Iraq have branded the guerillas as "subversives" 
and "terrorists".
Donald Rumsfeld said there are five groups opposing US forces -- looters, 
criminals, remnants of Saddam Hussein's government, foreign terrorists and 
Iranian-backed Shiites.    
An American official there maintains that many of the people shooting at US 
troops are "poor young Iraqis" who have been paid between $20 and $100 to stage 
hit-and-run attacks on US soldiers. "They're not dedicated fighters," he 
said. "They're people who wanted to take a few potshots."
    Other members of the Bush administration use terms like "well-trained 
militants" and "professional operations".
What no American official dares to have cross his lips is the idea that any 
part of the resistance is composed of Iraqi citizens who do not like being 
bombed, invaded and occupied and are demonstrating their resentment.  Does that 
thought at least cross the minds of these officials?  Or do they assume that 
United States moral authority is as absolute and unchallengeable as its military 
power?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
     The Bush administration is agreeing that Charles Taylor, president of 
Liberia, can and should step down from office and leave the country even though 
Taylor was recently indicted by a UN-sponsored court in Sierra Leone for 
"bearing the greatest responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity and 
serious violations of international humanitarian law" during Sierra Leone's 
civil war.  This is in marked contrast to consistent US government demands of 
recent years that all Serbian officials indicted for similar crimes by the UN 
court in the Hague be turned over to the court, or turn themselves in, with no 
exceptions, no going into exile, no mercy.  To show how serious Washington was 
about this, they pressured the Yugoslav government to kidnap President Slobodan 
Milosevic and hustle him off to the Hague.  But that's because the US had 
globalization designs on Yugoslavia's considerable assets and required that 
Milosevic and his team be replaced with others who would be more amenable to such an 
objective.
In 1998, President Clinton sent Jesse Jackson as his special envoy to Liberia 
and Sierra Leone, which is next door and which was in the midst of one of the 
great horrors of the 20th century -- You may remember the army of mostly 
young boys, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), who went around raping and 
chopping off people's arms and legs.  African and world opinion was enraged against 
the RUF, which was committed to protecting the diamond mines they controlled. 
 Taylor was an indispensable ally and supporter of the RUF and Jackson was a 
friend of his.  Jesse was not sent there to hound Taylor about his widespread 
human rights violations.  Instead, in June 1999, Jackson and other American 
officials drafted entire sections of an accord that made RUF leader, Foday 
Sankoh, Sierra Leone's vice president and gave him control over the diamond mines, 
the country's major source of wealth. (See New Republic of July 24, 2000)
And what was the Clinton administration's interest in all this?  It's been 
suggested that the US had to deal with the RUF since they more or less 
militarily controlled the Koidu Diamond Mine area whose exploitation contracts were 
held by two Clinton cronies, Jean Raymond Boulle and Robert Friedland.  Moreover, 
there was Maurice Tempelsman, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's 
paramour at the time, whose Antwerp, Amsterdam and Tel Aviv diamond marts arranged 
for Sierra Leone diamond sales to Tiffany and Cartier.             
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
     Take the children out of the room.  What follows is a kind word about 
Saddam Hussein.  During his reign, when the war with Iran and US bombings and 
sanctions made it feasible, the Iraqi people had free education all the way 
through university and medical school, free medical care, regular food packages 
for those in need, women's rights superior to anything in the Arab world, and 
religious toleration for Christians and other non-Muslims.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
     There are all kinds of intelligence in this world: musical, scientific, 
mathematical, artistic, literary, and so on.  Then there's political 
intelligence, which might be defined as the ability to see through the bullshit which 
every society, past, present and future, feeds its citizens from birth on.
Polls conducted in June showed that 42% of Americans believed that Iraq had a 
direct involvement in what happened on September 11, most of them being 
certain that Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers; 55% believed that Saddam Hussein 
had close ties to al Qaeda; 34% were convinced that weapons of mass destruction 
had recently been found in Iraq (7% were not sure); 24% believed that Iraq 
had actually used chemical or biological weapons against American forces in the 
war (14% were unsure).
"If Iraq had no significant WMD and no strong link to Al Qaeda, do you think 
we were misled by the government?"  Only half said yes.
One can only wonder what, besides a crowbar, it would take to pry such people 
away from their total support of what The Empire does to the world.  Perhaps 
if the government came to their homes, seized their first born, and took them 
away screaming?  Well, probably not if the government claimed that the adored 
first born had played soccer with someone from Pakistan who had a friend who 
had gone to the same mosque as someone from Afghanistan who had a picture of 
Taliban leader Mohammed Omar on his wall.
Many Americans, whether consciously or unconsciously, actually pride 
themselves on their ignorance.  It reflects their break with the overly complicated 
intellectual tradition of "old Europe".  It's also a source of satisfaction that 
they have a president who's no smarter than they are.  
All this is bad news for the American anti-war movement which needs to 
enlarge its ranks.  "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens," wrote 
Schiller.  "With stupidity even the gods struggle in vain."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
On several occasions I have been confronted with the argument that powerful 
countries have always acted like the United States,  so why condemn the US so 
much?  I respond that since one can find anti-Semitism in every country, why do 
we condemn Nazi Germany so much?  It's a question of magnitude, is it not?  
The magnitude of US aggression puts it into a league all by itself, just as the 
magnitude of the Nazis' anti-Semitism does.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Cuba has recently been heavily criticized, by various shadings of leftists as 
well as by those to the right, for its sentencing a number of "dissidents" to 
prison because of their very close political and financial connections to 
American officials.  Critics say that Cuba should not have over-reacted so, that 
these people were not really guilty of anything criminal.  
While I personally think that the Cuban trials were too quick and that some 
of the sentences were too long, we have to keep in mind that before the United 
States invaded Iraq there was extensive CIA and US military liaison on the 
ground with Iraqi dissidents and lots of propaganda to soften up the population 
-- propaganda beamed into Iraq with the indispensable help of other Iraqi 
dissidents.  
The United States has been on a ferocious rampage of bombing, invasion, 
taking over countries and threatening the same to others.  The US ambassador to the 
Dominican Republic declared: "I think what is happening in Iraq is going to 
send a very positive signal, and it is a very good example for Cuba."   An 
advisor to Florida Governor Jeb Bush, speaking of Fidel Castro, said: "The 
administration has taken care of one tyrant already. I don't think they would 
vacillate about taking care of another one."   There was in this same period a wave 
of violent hijackings of Cuban planes and boats.  
Can Cuba be expected to ignore all this?  Is Washington's work with Cuban 
dissidents to be seen as a purely harmless undertaking?  Not done for a purpose?  
How can Cuba not feel extremely threatened, even more than the usual threat 
of the past 44 years?  How can they not take precautionary measures?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"The causes of the malady are not entirely clear but its recurrence is one of 
the uniformities of history: power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a 
great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of 
God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations -- 
to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its 
own shining image."  Former US Senator William Fulbright, "The Arrogance of 
Power" (1966)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

William Blum is the author of: 
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2  Rogue 
State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
www.killinghope.org
bblum6@aol.com


 


They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose. 

Constant apprehension of war has the same tendency
to render the head too large for the body.  A standing military 
force with an overgrown executive will not long be safe. 
companions to liberty.  -- Thomas Jefferson


"America is a quarter of a billion people totally misinformed and disinformed 
by their government. This is tragic but our media is -- I wouldn't even say 
corrupt -- it's just beyond telling us anything that the government doesn't 
want us to know." 

Gore Vidal



    




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