The term comes from a tactic that was commonly employed many centuries ago by all the navies of fledgling empires. Although these navies very occasionally engaged in heroic battles with each other in order to protect the citizens of their countries from invading hoards, as our history books suggest, the far more common use of mighty battleships was for theft. Sinking an enemy ship was never the intention of these engagements, and would have been seen as something of a failure. The purpose was to capture the ship, preferably undamaged, and steal anything and everything from the personal possessions of the crew to the very ship itself, which would then be recycled by the victors. After all, what could possibly be the point of sinking an expensive ship, laden to the gunnels with the riches of plundered foreign colonies, when its capture would serve exactly the same political purpose, as well as providing vast wealth?

The Royal Navy, for example, routinely operated a “prize” system right up until quite recent times; and although acts of piracy don’t form quite the same staple diet in the senior service as they used to do, prize legislation remains on British statute books to this day. Right up until the nineteenth century “prize courts” would routinely assess and divvy-up the wealth of ships that had been attacked and seized by the jolly Jack Tars. Some of the plunder was apportioned to the ship’s crew. Of course, it wasn’t an equal distribution of wealth, where the loblolly boy, say, received as much of a cut as the captain; nor was the cut in any way equal to the share gifted to the high and mighty Lords of the Admiralty, who weren’t required to do anything more dangerous for their cut than over-indulge themselves in London society. However, some small portion of the “prize” would find its way to even the lowliest cabin boy – the original “trickle-down” effect perhaps. In short, the routine day-job of the glorious Royal Navy was plunder. In fact, the only way the great sailors of Nelson’s day differed from common pirates was that the piracy of Nelson’s navy was simply deemed to be legal. It’s a similar principle to the one that’s alive and well to this day, and helping to keep investment bankers out of jail.

But even hardened cynics such as myself find it difficult not to admire the considerable skill that was often required for some of the encounters that took place between the mighty warships of Nelson’s day. In the days before modern communications these great behemoths, seventy metres long with a thousand souls on board, could only use the power of the wind to move around, so finding and engaging and defeating an enemy in thousands of square miles of empty ocean was no easy matter, and the seamanship required for these encounters was often truly amazing. Apart from some acts of genuine courage, with perhaps just a hint of insanity, these sailors also relied on a host of devious tricks and raw cunning to capture a “prize”. Apart from plenty of luck, you also needed a good brain to be an effective captain in Nelson’s day; and it’s hardly surprising, given hundreds of years of regular practice in the dark arts of subterfuge and deceit, that the roots of the British intelligence service were established in the Royal Navy.

One of the many tricks used in the days of sail was to make your ship appear friendly to the watchful telescopes of the prospective prize; and the easiest way to do this was to ensure the flags your ship were flying were not those of your own country but were either exactly the same as those of the prize, or the same as those of whichever country was friendly to the prize. This simple ruse would, of course, eventually be discovered as a trick; and, of course, every ship’s crew knew about the trick. However, it would invariably buy some invaluable time, making all the difference between success and failure, enabling the hunter to get close enough to his prey to capture him before the darkness of night might come to the hapless victim’s rescue.

This tactic is still very much alive and well, and survives in modern language usage as the “false flag” attack, to mean an attack by someone who isn’t quite who they seem to be. Variations of it include attacks perpetrated by people pretending to be enemies of the state. These attacks may be carried out by the state’s own armed forces, or by paid mercenaries, or by allies of the state. History is rich with evidence.

Take, for example, the infamous sinking of the Maine. In 1898, when the US was beginning to flex its expansionist muscles abroad, the battleship USS Maine was blown up in Havana harbour. Although there was no evidence to support it, the incident was blamed on Spain, who controlled Cuba at the time; and it had the desired effect of triggering the Spanish American war which eventually led to Spain’s eviction from the island and the installation of a US puppet regime – a model that would be successfully repeated time and again for many decades to come. Fifty-five years later something very similar happened again – this time without going to the extra expense of actually sinking any ships.

On August 4, 1964 the world was informed that another US warship, the USS Maddox, had come under sustained attack by North Vietnam. It was the event which directly led to ten years of total hell for tens of millions of people in South East Asia, and whose effects are still being felt to this day. Fifty years after the false flag event of the Maddox, declassified documents revealed that the US government was fully aware at the time that no such attack had taken place. But by then, of course, the false flag had long served its purpose.

Although the term “false flag” originated from these naval deceptions, false flag incidents have never been solely confined to the high seas. Armies have always used any number of devices to deceive their victims, and anyone who’s ever watched a Hollywood war movie is probably aware of it; for how many of these movies have included a scene where either the good guys or the bad guys dress up in the uniforms of their enemy in order to carry out some raid or another? Is that not a completely routine story-line? Although many of these movies are obviously fictitious, these deceptions, which might also be called “false flag” adventures, are based on normal military tactics which have been used by almost every army, probably since the beginning of civilisation.

However, Hollywood movies seldom reveal the true evil and cynicism of war. Therefore not many of the 99%, who obtain much of their understanding of the world in general and history in particular from the silver screen, know anything at all about the truly dark side of all armies in general, and their leaders in particular. For how many Hollywood movies tell the stories of how armies routinely slaughter defenceless people? Although they will sometimes depict the enemy of the day carrying out these atrocities, they never show the so-called “good guys” doing it – which creates in the mind of the viewer the impression that our armies never behave in such a beastly fashion. But they most certainly do.

Consider the vast number of movies that came out of Hollywood telling how the west was won – how handfuls of brave adventurers defeated marauding hoards of screaming bloodthirsty savages, which was, in fact, a complete inversion of the truth. And how many war movies told the truth about the bombing of Dresden, or of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? These completely needless events took place in the closing days of World War Two, when Germany and Japan were already crushed nations. They were events which deliberately targeted hundreds of thousands of defenceless civilians, and served absolutely no military purpose whatsoever. They were war crimes, already outlawed by the Geneva Convention. Not many Hollywood movies tell us that.

It’s important to grasp this principle of war that not even Hollywood can glamorise: that our trusted leaders can and do routinely issue orders to slaughter innocent defenceless civilians, and that brainwashed young people then carry out those orders, and that society is then brainwashed into considering these young people to be heroes. Not even Hollywood can glamorise the deep cynicism of that fact.

Although the mass slaughter of defenceless civilians is a different aspect of the cynicism of war, and cannot be considered a false flag adventure, it’s important to cite it as evidence of the psychotic ruthlessness of our own trusted leaders and the brainwashed youngsters who are routinely conditioned to obey an order, any order.

My own personal first-hand experience of false flag adventures was obtained in the late seventies, in Rhodesia, where I was batting out my national service as an intelligence officer. Our army had a small unit of people called the Selous Scouts. They were considered the elite of the elite, and were supposedly originally created by a couple of junior officers serving in the Rhodesian SAS who thought the SAS wasn’t quite hard enough. I did some of my training with the Scouts. They were definitely different.

Later on, when I was operational, I was based in a small rural outpost called Rusape. For me it was a very comfortable posting and, I’m very glad to say, I managed to see out my time there without being injured and, I’m even more glad to say, without causing injury to anyone else.

Each morning, after a leisurely breakfast, I would saunter over to the operations room to see what was going on. Like almost every military operations room in the world, one wall of it was given over to a huge map of our area of responsibility. Most of the time it was just a map of rural Rhodesia, with little coloured stickers on it depicting some sort of recent “terrorist” incident – such as a landmine going off, or an attack on some isolated school or clinic. My job would be to go out to investigate these incidents and report on them. Sometimes it was very harrowing, but mostly it was a fairly pleasant way to sit out the war.

But every now and then I would turn up to the ops room in the morning and would be met with the sight of a sizeable chunk of the map covered over in hatched lines. Everyone understood that that area had been “frozen”. This meant that no army personnel or police were to go into that area. The Scouts had moved into it. For a few weeks after that life went on pretty much as normal everywhere else on the patch; but no information at all emerged from the area with the mysterious hatching; and then one morning I’d turn up for work and the hatching would have been removed from the map as mysteriously as it had first appeared.

Within a day or two of that happening the reports would start rolling in from where the Scouts had been, about “terrorist” murders at some isolated village or another, of a “terrorist” rocket attack on a small business centre perhaps, or a “terrorist” landmine blowing up a rural bus. These would all have been carried out by the Scouts, dressed up as “terrorists” and using “terrorist” weaponry.

The purpose of these attacks was a variation of that old favourite: the hard cop/soft cop routine. The Scouts’ role was to try to out-terrorise the forces working for the likes of Robert Mugabe, to try to alienate the local population from Mugabe’s men by pretending to be Mugabe’s men and committing such atrocities that the locals would be repulsed by them. Then when the soft cops turned up in the shape of government forces, the locals would feel like offering their help and support. It’s called winning hearts and minds, and was a tactic that had already been used by US special forces in Vietnam before that, and by British special forces all over the place before that: Malaya, Congo, Kenya, Aden…

Some would dismiss false flag adventures as conspiracy theory, which is, of course, a very convenient way to persuade the 99% that our trusted leaders couldn’t possibly stoop so low. But history is rich with proof that they most certainly do stoop so low, with amazing frequency. So the really important lesson to learn in all of this is that whenever a so-called “terrorist” outrage occurs, especially those outrages where the perpetrators haven’t been caught in action (and rounding up “suspects” after the event cannot be trusted either – as the “Guildford Four” and “Birmingham Six”, for example, could confirm)… always, always recall the very real world of false flag adventures.

Sane men and women don’t consent to kill, rob and rape, much less be killed, robbed and raped, least of all to enrich their masters, and that’s why their minds must be molested as early and as much as possible. Hence our nonstop media brainwashing us from the cradle, literally, to the grave. Fixated by flickering boxes, even infants are now mind-conditioned to become scatterbrained idiots before they stagger into kindergarten, to begin a lifelong process of becoming docile and slogan-shouting Democrats and Republicans.

Yes, savages killed, but, like apes and monkeys, our ancestors, they mostly tried to intimidate and trash talk their way out of conflicts. There wasn’t a lot of murdering after the haka, frankly. They didn’t wipe out entire cities by defecating exploding metal from the sky, nor sit in a brightly lit and spic-and-span office stroking a joy stick to ejaculate missiles half a planet away. Drone hell fire for y’all, with sides of bank-sponsored debt slavery and austerity, plus an unlimited refill of American pop bullshit. Would you like a public suicide with that? No, sir, these savages need to take webcast courses from us sophisticates when it comes to genocide, or ecocide, or any other kind of cides you can think of. When it comes to pure, unadulterated savagery, these quaint brutes ain’t got shit on us plugged-in netizens chillaxin’ in that shiny upside down condo on da capital-punishment-for the-entire-world, y’all, hill.

You’d think that a government with absolute power would not bother with expensive parades and elaborately-staged rallies in stadia, as are routine in North Korea, but such is the importance of propaganda and mind-control. America has gone way beyond Kim Jong-Un and his Nuremberg-styled pageantry, however, because the Yankee Magical Show is relentlessly pumped into our minds via television and the internet, at home, in office or even as we’re walking down the street, so that we’re always swarmed by sexy sale pitches, soft and hard porn, asinine righteousness and imbecilic trivia. All day long, we can stuff ourselves with unlimited kitsch. Today’s urgent topic, “Sylvester Stallone Spotted in 16th Century Painting.” Yesterday’s, “Tom Cruise’s Daughter Gets Inked.” Imagine a triple-amputee Iraq vet or an unemployed mother, sitting in an about to be foreclosed home with unpaid bills scattered across her kitchen table, staring at such headlines. At 48, I’m old enough to remember when it wasn’t this overwhelmingly stupid, though the dumbing down of America will only accelerate as this cornered and bankrupt country becomes ever more vicious to its citizens and foreigners alike.

Not content to kill and loot, America must do it to pulsating music; cool, orgasmic dancing; raunchy reality shows and violence-filled Hollywood blockbusters, and these are also meant for its victims, no less. In a 1997 article published by the US Army War College, Ralph Peters gushes about a “personally intrusive” and “lethal” cultural assault as a key tactic in the American quest for global supremacy. As information master, the American Empire will destroy its “information victims.” What’s more, “our victims volunteer” because they are unable to resist the seductiveness of American culture.

Defining democracy as “that deft liberal form of imperialism,” Peters reveals how the word is conceived and used these days by every American leader, whether talking about Libya, Syria, Iran or America itself. Recognizing that the lumpens of his country are also victims of empire, Peters frankly acknowledges that “laid-off blue-collar worker in America and the Taliban militiaman in Afghanistan are brothers in suffering.”

Much has been made of the internet as enabling democracy and protest, but whatever utility it may have for the disenfranchised and/or rebellious, the Web is most useful to our rulers. As Dmitry Orlov points out in a recent blog, the internet is a powerful surveillance tool for the state and, what’s more, it also keeps the masses distracted and pacified. Echoing Queen Victoria’s remark, “Give my people plenty of beer, good and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them,” Orlov observes that virtual sex thwarts rebellion. In sum, while the internet may empower some people, as in allowing John Michael Greer, Paul Craig Roberts or Orlov to publish their unflinching commentaries, the same internet also drowns them out with an unprecedented flood of drivel. Defending the empire, Ralph Peters cheerfully agrees, “The internet is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the illusion of empowerment and community.”

Though our only hope is to be expelled from this sick matrix, many of us will cling even more fiercely to these illusions of knowledge, love, sex and community as we blunder forward. A breathing and tactile life will become even more alien, I’m afraid. Here and there, a band of unplugged weirdos, to be hunted down and exterminated, with their demise shown on TV as warning and entertainment. Inhabiting a common waste land, we can each lounge in our private electronic ghetto. Until the juice finally runs out, that is.

(2). The second American Revolution has to follow the path laid out for it by the Constitution or else the first American Revolution will have been in vain.

(3). The Declaration of Independence called imperialism inherently illegal and the Constitution precluded its resurrection except, of course, pursuant to the Amendment Clause.

(4). The victims of imperialism, the foreign Nations and Indian tribes whose lands have been, are being or will be invaded were guaranteed the protection of the Supreme Court by direct application pursuant to the Constitution’s Original Jurisdiction Clause.

(5). Of course We the People of the United States are also victims, in two senses: in virtue of their birth they are being dragged into the role of perpetrators even though neither they nor the founders of the Republic constitutionally consented to the 19th century conversion to imperialism; and secondly previous empires always at some juncture have become tyrants over their own citizens who may protest or dissent, and this has started in earnest with the recent introduction of citizens’ military arrest and detention without trial under the provisions of the National Defence Authorization Act of 2011 signed into law by President Obama on New Year’s Eve.

(6). The reason a second American Revolution is necessary is, the Supreme Court obstructs and ignores such applications attacking the federal imperial statutes pursuant to which the government unconstitutionally assumes imperial powers to invade other than in self defence to repel invasions.

(7). The obstruction and ignoring constitutes treason and the Court must be persuaded or forced to do its duty publicly to address the crucial constitutional question of imperialism which, when done, will signify the success of the second American Revolution.

(8). Constitutional democracy under the rule of law will have been reinstated and, in consequence of it, the eco-genocide attributable to imperialism will be prevented.

(9). The explicit constitutional values of “Justice, Tranquility, Defence, Welfare and Liberty” for “We the People,” meaning all the People without preference for the imperialists, will be established and rendered secure by this second American Revolution: the peaceful, constitutional, rule of law one.

It can be argued that the concessions to the extractive MNC and local ‘leading’ classes assures stability, steady revenues and finances the incremental social expenditures which permit the re-election of the center-left regimes. In other words a de facto alliance between the “top” and “bottom” of the class structure is the unstated bases for center-left electoral successes despite the growing political divergence between the regimes and sections of the social movements.

The Progressive Camp

There is a general consensus that regimes in seven countries in Latin America form what can be called the “progressive camp”: Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru and Venezuela.

The identifying features usually attributable to regimes in these countries include: (1) their past political trajectory: most are led by former leaders and activists from social movements, trade unions or guerrilla formations; (2) their relatively independent foreign policy pronouncements especially regarding US intervention and sanctions policies; (3) their ideological rhetoric rejecting US-led regional bodies and favoring Latin American centered organizations; (4) their populist electoral campaign programs regarding social equity, environmentalism, and human rights; (5) their vehement rejection of ‘neo-liberalism’ and traditional neo-liberal personalities, parties and privatizations; (6) their strategic perspective that envisions a prolonged process of social transformation that emphasizes an agenda featuring modernization, developementalist priorities, and high levels of investment oriented toward global markets; (7) their prolonged political incumbency based on constitutional reforms permitting re-election justified by the need for completing the transformative vision.

The progressive camp has a self-image, projected inward to its electorate as representing a rupture or ‘historical’ break with the past, first with regard to the traditional neo-liberal oligarchy and secondly with the ‘statist’ left. In the case of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela they frequently resort to rhetoric evoking “21st century socialism”. The potency of the appeal to radical novelty has a limited time span dependent on the degree to which the regimes pursue policies in variance with the preceding neo-liberal regime.

The ‘Left-Right Division’ as Represented by the Progressive Camp (PC)

The perceptions of the objective and subjective divergence between the progressive camp and the right vary according to whether they emanate from official sources or from a critical empirical investigation.

According to the ideologues of the “Progressive Camp” (PC) there are at least five major policy areas which reflect the radical rupture with the traditional neo-liberal right.

(1) Nationalism: (a) the PC through renegotiations of contracts with extractive MNC secures a higher rate of taxation, increasing revenues for the national treasury; (b) via increased state investment it converts wholly owned private firms into public-private joint ventures; (c) through increases in royalty payments it lessens ‘foreign exploitation’; (d) through the greater presence of ‘local technocrats’ it increases national oversight of strategic economic decisions.
(2) Foreign Policy: The progressive camp has pursued an independent, if not explicitly anti-imperialist foreign policy. The progressive camp has established several Latin American and Caribbean regional organizations which deliberately exclude the presence of North American and European imperial countries such as ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas) and UNASUR (Union of South American Nations). The PC has rejected sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Gaza and opposed the US-backed NATO war against Libya. They criticized the US position at the Summit of the America’s meeting in April 2012 on at least three major issues – inclusion of Cuba, opposition to British colonial control of the Malvinas, and the de-penalization of drugs. The PC has expressed its opposition to US hegemony, to IMF “structural reforms” and Euro-US control over international lending institutions. With the exception of Venezuela, the PC has diversified its export markets. For example Brazil exports to the US only 12.5% of its goods and services, Argentina 6.9%, and Bolivia 8.2%.
(3) Social Policy: The PC has increased social expenditures, especially toward reducing rural poverty; increased the minimum wage; approved salary and wage increases. In a few countries they provide easy credit and financing to small and medium businesses, have given legal title to land squatters and distributed plots of uncultivated public lands as a kind of ‘agrarian reform’.
(4) Regulation: The PC has, with varying degree of consistency, imposed controls over the financial sector, regulating the flow of speculative capital and the volatility of financial markets. With regard to the extractive sector regulations have been relaxed to permit the large-scale inflow of capital and the pervasive use of toxic chemicals and genetically modified seeds by agro-business. They have permitted the expansion of mining, agriculture, and the timber industry into Indigenous people’s and natural reservations. They have financed large-scale infrastructure projects linking extractive enterprises to export outlets trespassing onto previously regulated, protected natural habitats. Regulatory norms have been harnessed to facilitate ‘productive’ extractive developmentalism and to limit the financialization of the economy.
(5) Labor Policy: has been based on a ‘corporatist model’ of business-state-trade union (tri partite) negotiations and conciliation to limit lockouts and strikes and maintain growth, exports and revenue flows. Labor policy has been conditioned by the policy of limiting budget deficits, fixing wage increases, to the rate of inflation. In line with orthodox fiscal policies, pensions for public sector workers have been frozen or reduced especially among the middle and high end functionaries. Traditional job security guarantees have been maintained not augmented and severance pay has not been raised. Strikes by public sector workers, especially among teachers, medical staff and social service workers have been frequent and have led to government mediation and marginal gains. Government policy has been oriented toward protecting managerial prerogatives, while respecting and upholding the legal status, collective bargaining rights of trade unions. Within nationalized firms, state-appointed directors rule; there is no move toward worker self-management or ‘co-management’-except in limited cases in Venezuela. The structure of labor relations follows the private corporate hierarchical model Labor has, at best, an advisory role regarding health and safety but no determining influences or investment within this corporate framework. Pressure via strikes and protest by trade unions have been necessary, frequently in alliance with community groups, to rectify the most egregious corporate violations of health and safety rules. While the progressive regimes publically eschew neo-liberal “labor flexibility” policies they have done little to expand and deepen labor prerogatives over the labor and productive process.

The principle difference in labor policy between the progressive regimes and the traditional right is the ‘open door’ to labor leaders, their willingness to mediate and grant incremental wage increases, especially of the minimum wage and generally, the reduction of harsh, violent repression.

Continuities and Similarities between Past Neoliberal and Contemporary Progressive Regimes

Writers, academics, and journalists on the Right and Center-left emphasize the difference between the progressive and the past neo-liberal regimes, overlooking the large-scale socio-economic and political structural continuities. A more nuanced, balanced, and objective analysis requires that these continuities be taken into account because they play a major role in discussing the limitations and emerging conflicts and crises facing the progressive regimes. Moreover, these limitations, based on the continuities, highlight the importance of alternative development models proposed by popular social movements.

The agro-mineral export model has demonstrated profound strategic deficiencies in its very structure and performance. The promotion of agro-mineral exports has been accompanied by the large-scale, long-term entrance of foreign capital which in turn determines the rates of investment, the sources for inputs of machinery, technology and ‘know-how’, as well as control over the marketing and processing of raw materials. The MNC “partners” of the progressive regimes have conditioned their involvement on the bases of (a) the de-regulation of environmental controls; (b) the termination of price controls and the introduction of “international prices” for sales to the domestic market; (c) freedom to control foreign exchange earnings and to remit profits overseas.

They also control decisions regarding the exploitation of mineral reserves. Expansion of production is dependent on their own global criteria rather on the needs of the ‘host’ country. As a result, despite the “re-negotiated” contracts, which the progressive regimes hail as a “giant advance” toward “nationalization”, the cumulative losses in revenues and in rebalancing the economy are substantial. If one looks beyond the agro-mineral enclave the negative impact to further development are substantial. The very limited impact that the agro-mineral model has on the economy as whole has led to occasional conflicts between the MNC and the progressive host governments. A case in point is the conflict between the nominally Spanish oil company Repsol and the Argentine government of Cristina Fernandez in April 2012. Repsol’s behavior illustrates all the pitfalls of collaboration with foreign overseas extractive corporations. Repsol refused to increase investments, claiming that local regulated prices reduced profit margins. As a result Argentina’s energy bill rose three-fold between 2010 and 2011 from $3 billion to $9 billion. Furthermore, Repsol repatriated its profits, paid high dividends to overseas stockholders and thus had little impact in creating domestic industries producing inputs or refineries to process petroleum. The attempt by the deceased President Kirchner to increase ‘national ownership’ by bringing in a local private capitalist, (the Peterson Group) had no positive impact, merely entrenching Repsol’s control. When Fernandez took majority shares in order establish public control and increase local production, the entire Eurozone leadership led by the Spanish government and the Western financial press launched a virulent campaign, threatened litigation and predicted economic disaster. The problem of ‘inviting’ foreign MNCs to invest is that it is hard to disinvite them. Once they enter a country no matter how unfavorable their performance, it is difficult to rectify or undo the damage and move onto a new public centered model of development.

All the progressive regimes with the possible exception of Venezuela have signed long-term large-scale contracts with major foreign extractive multi-nationals. Apart from the increase in royalties these agreements do not differ greatly from contracts signed by preceding right-wing neo-liberal regimes.

Evo Morales signed a large-scale exploitation contract with Jindal, an Indian multi-national to exploit the iron-mine Mutun with virtually all inputs — machinery, transport, etc. — imported and with very limited ‘industrializing’ of the raw iron ore, mostly simple iron ‘nuggets’. The bulk of Bolivia’s gas and oil is exploited by foreign MNC-public ‘joint ventures’ and is shipped abroad, leaving most of the 60% rural households without piped gas,and resulting in Bolivia’s importing most of its diesel.

Ecuador under President Correa, another leading progressive president, signed two big contracts with foreign oil groups in February 2012, despite the opposition of the majority of Indian organizations including CONAI. In Ecuador, as in Bolivia, big oil and gas companies, while raising objections to the re-negotiations of contracts leading to an increase in royalty payments and an increased presence of public officials, retain a privileged position in crucial decisions regarding management, marketing, technology and investment. Despite claims to the contrary, the leaders of the progressive regimes sign off on these strategic agreements without consulting the communities affected. Decisions are based exclusively on executive privilege. The style and substance of the distribution of the powers and privileges in the oil and gas agreements between the progressive governments and the multi-nationals are no different than what transpired under previous ‘neo-liberal’ regimes. Moreover, in both Ecuador and Bolivia many of the “technocrats” and administrators who worked under the previous neoliberal regimes play a prominent role in running the joint venture.

While progressive regimes have pursued anti-poverty programs and have registered some successes in reducing poverty levels, they do so as a result of the growth of the economy not via the redistribution of wealth. In fact, the progressive regimes have not pursued redistributive polices: income and land concentrations, including high levels of inequality remain intact. In fact the hierarchy of the class structure has not been altered and in most cases has been reinforced by the inclusion of new entrants into the upper and middle class. These include many former leaders and activists from the lower middle and working class who have entered the government as well as ‘new capitalists’ benefiting from state contract agreements with the progressive regime.

The financial system has remained intact and prospered under the progressive regimes, especially because of the regimes tight fiscal policies, build-up foreign reserves, control over government spending and low rates of inflation. Financial sector profits are especially high in Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Brazil, in particular, has attracted large inflows of speculative capital from Wall Streets and the City of London because of its high interest rates relative to the rates in North America and Europe.

Alongside the concentration of ownership in the extractive and financial sector, the progressive regimes have not introduced progressive taxes to reduce the disparities of wealth. The income of the agro-business elites in Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Ecuador are several hundred times that of the bulk of subsistence farmers, peasants and rural laborers. Many of latter remain subject to brutal working and living conditions. In many cases, the progressive regimes have done little to enforce the labor and health codes in the giant agro-business plantations while workers are subject to unregulated toxic chemical sprays.

If the configuration of ownership and wealth remains relatively unchanged from the neo-liberal past, the progressive governments have accentuated the tendencies toward export specialization. Under the progressive governments the economies have become less diversified and more dependent on agro-mineral and energy exports, and more dependent on large-scale long-term foreign investments for growth. State revenue and growth are more dependent on primary product exports.

The free market policies of the progressive agro-mineral export regimes have stimulated the growth of large-scale commercial activity. The commercial sector is increasingly influenced by the large-scale entrance of foreign owned multi-nationals, like Wal-Mart, who source their products overseas, undermining local-small scale producers and retailers.

The appreciation of the currency has adversely affected traditional manufacturers and the transport industry causing significant job losses especially in textiles, footwear and automobiles in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Moreover, favorable polices promoting large-scale agro-mineral exporters has been accompanied by a credit squeeze on local small business people, especially, producers for local markets who have been bit hard by the import of cheap consumer goods (from Asia). Farmers producing food for local markets have been downgraded in the drive to expand cultivation of export crops like soya.

In summary, the progressive regimes have pursued a multi-faceted double discourse: an anti-imperialist, nationalist and populist rhetoric for domestic consumption while putting into practice a policy of fomenting and expanding the role of foreign extractive capital in joint ventures with the state and a rising new national bourgeoisie. The progressive regimes articulate a narrative of socialism and participatory democracy but in practice pursue policies linking development with the concentration and centralization of capital and executive power.

The progressive regimes preach a doctrine of social justice and equity and a practice of co-optation of social leaders and clientalism via poverty programs for the poorest sectors of society.

The progressive regimes have combined incremented income policies with large-scale structural changes, benefiting the extractive-primary sector. Stability of the PC is utterly dependent on the increasing demand for raw materials, high commodity prices, and open markets. The progressive regimes have successfully linked trade union and sectors of the peasant movement to the state and have undermined or weakened independent class organizations and replaced them with corporate tri-partite structures.

The progressives have successfully ‘reformed’ or replaced the chaotic, de-regulated, conflictual, racialist policies of their predecessors and institutionalized “normal capitalism.” They have introduced rules and procedures favorable to institutional stability, fiscal discipline, and incremental but unequal gains. In other words, the “parameters of neo-liberalism” are now effectively administered and legitimated by faux nationalism based on greater political autonomy and market diversification. Centralized executive decision making based on agreements which require extractive MNC to invest and develop the forces of production is legitimated by an electoral framework and a multi-class political coalition.

The domestic and foreign policies of the progressive extractive regimes reflect two contradictory experiences: their radical origins in the lead-up to taking power and their subsequent adoption of an agro-mineral developementalist export strategy, favored by neo-liberal technocrats. The “synthesis” of these two apparently “contradictory” experiences finds expression in the adoption of an independent, critical political position toward imperialist militarism and interventionism and economic collaboration with the agencies of economic imperialism, namely the signing of long-term and large-scale contracts with US-EU-Canadian agro-mining and energy multi-nationals. In other words, the progressive extractive regimes have ‘redefined’ or reduced imperialism to mean its state structures and policies rather than its economic components (MNC) which are engaged in the extraction of raw materials and exploitation of labor. In the same fashion, they redefine ‘anti-imperialism’ to mean opposition to political-military interventions and a ‘fair distribution’ of profits between the regime and its MNC “partner”. This redefinition allows the progressive regimes to claim popular legitimacy on the bases of periodical criticisms of the policies and practices of the imperial state while collaboration and agreements with the MNC allow the progressive regimes to retain support from domestic and overseas business interests. When a progressive regime, as is the case of Argentina ruled by Cristina Fernandez, decides to “nationalize” or more correctly secure the majority shares in Repsol, the nominally Spanish oil multi-national, the entire financial press, the European Union, and Washington denounce the move and threaten reprisals. In other words, the unstated pact between the progressive camp and the imperial regimes is that political differences are tolerable but nationalist economic measures are not acceptable. Renegotiations of contracts to increase state revenues may cause a temporary suspension of new investments but not a political confrontation. However, the public takeover of a foreign extractive firm evokes predictable hostility and retaliation from the imperial states. The Argentine progressive regime’s embrace of a policy of economic nationalism was, however, enterprise and sector specific. The Fernandez regime did not, and has no future plans, to expropriate other extractive firms, nor was the measure part of a general nationalist strategy to shift toward greater public ownership. Rather Repsol’s refusal to increase investments and production was increasing Argentina’s dependence on imported oil, which was deteriorating its balance of payments and foreign currency reserves. Repsol’s refusal to comply with Argentina’s developementalist agenda was based on the Fernandez policy of maintaining the retail price of oil for the domestic market below the international price. Repsol’s decline in production was a way of leveraging the regime to lift price controls. However, a higher petrol price would have a negative impact on industrial and private consumers, raising costs and reducing the competitiveness of the Argentine exporters and domestic producers. In effect, Repsol’s intransigence threatened to undermine the social and political balance of forces between labor and capital and between extractive exporters and popular consumers, which sustained the regimes majoritarian coalition. In brief, the measure was nationalist in form but capitalist developementalist in content.

Even so the measure polarized the global economy between the imperial west and the Latin American left, with the usual imperial satraps in Latin America (Mexico’s Calderon and Colombia’s Santos) backing Repsol.

Divisions between the Progressive Regimes and the Social Movements

Prior to coming to power via electoral processes, the progressive leaders maintained close ties and actively supported and participated in the ‘street action’ and mass struggle of the social movements. They embraced the banners of economic nationalism, ecological conservation and respect for the natural reserves of the Indigenous communities, social equality, and reconsideration of the foreign debt including the repudiation of ‘illegal debts’.

The social movements played a major role in politicizing and mobilizing the working and peasant classes to elect the progressive presidents. This convergence was short-lived. Once in power, the progressive regime appointed orthodox economic ministers to run the economy. They adopted the extractive strategy, shifted from a nationalist public sector economy, designed to diversify the economy, to a ‘mixed economy’ based on joint ventures with overseas extractive capital. First, the Indigenous communities of Peru, Ecuador, and some sectors in Bolivia went into opposition, on the bases that their interests were neglected and they were not consulted. Second, sectors of the working class and public employees struck demanding higher salaries, an increase in public spending. Small farmers and manufacturers demanded economic stimulus for family farms and local industry rather than subsidies for agro-mineral MNC, fiscal orthodoxy, and export strategies based on lower labor costs and neglect of the domestic market.

Radical trade union peasant and Indigenous leaders of the social movements called into question the entire agro-mineral extractive strategy, the distribution and administration of state revenues and expenditures. They reasserted their support for a social program embracing agrarian reform, including the expropriation of large plantations and the redistribution of land to landless peasants. Workers’ leaders called for an industrial policy to process ‘raw materials’ in order to create manufacturing jobs. Some trade unionists called for the nationalization of strategic industries and banks. However, despite some major protests, the bulk of the followers of the social movements and the majority of their leaders soon shifted from radical rejection of the extractive model to demands for a bigger share of the revenues. The progressive regimes attracted the bulk of the social leaders to tri-partite councils of conciliation to negotiate and secure incremental changes. The progressive regimes highlighted their opposition to “neo-liberalism.” They redefined it as unregulated capitalism based on low royalties and underfunding of social programs. The progressive regimes successfully divided the social movements between “utopian” radical opponents and progressive reformists. In time of social strife, the progressive regimes evoked a “left-right alliance,” charging their social critics of acting on behalf of imperialism, impervious to their own collaboration with imperial based multi-nationals. Presidential appeals, a nationalist populist discourse, and increased revenues which funded increased social expenditures weakened the left opposition. Moderate but sustained increases in anti-poverty programs and minimum wages neutralized the appeal of the radical leaders in the social movements. Despite the progressive regime’s break with its ‘radical egalitarian roots,’ it was more than able to secure large-scale mass-electoral support, based on the overall dynamic growth of the economy and steady growth of income. Both were underpinned by long-term high commodity prices.

Popular extractivist presidents repeatedly won elections by substantial majorities and were able to mobilize sectors of the moderate social movements to counter anti-extractivist social movements. The high prices of commodities and multiple opportunities for exploitation of resources attracted foreign investors despite higher royalty payments. Foreign investors were attracted by the social stability ensured by the progressive regimes in contrast to the instability of the previous neo-liberal regimes. The progressive regimes thrived on economic ties with the MNC and an electoral alliance with the lower classes.

Case Studies of Extractive Capitalism and the Progressive Camp

While the seven regimes which form the ‘progressive camp’ share a common development strategy based on the export of primary commodities there are significant differences in the levels of diversity of their economies, the nature and character of the commodities which they export, the degrees of social polarization and social cohesion and the size and scope of the opposition. In line with these differences there are also substantial differences in the degree to which the “progressive and extractive model” is sustainable or subject to upheaval or reversal.

The progressive camp can be divided in many ways: between those regimes based on charismatic leaders and extreme dependence on primary exports (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela) and those with developed industrial sectors and ‘institutionalized political leadership (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay). There are also significant differences in the degree of class and ethnic conflict: Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador are experiencing significant mass resistance from substantial Indigenous communities, while in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, where the Indigenous population is sparse, there is only isolated opposition. In terms of class struggles, Bolivia, has experienced widespread protests by health, education, mining, and factory workers. Venezuela has faced lockouts and boycotts organized by the economic elite (“class struggle from above”). Ecuador faced widespread protests from the police. Most of the rest of the countries (Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay) faced limited strikes largely on wage issues. With the exception of Bolivia, the major trade union confederations work closely and collaborate with the progressive regimes; in contrast, the peasant and rural workers movements in Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru have retained a greater degree of independence and militancy largely because they have been the most prejudiced by the agro-mineral export strategies. In Venezuela and Brazil, landlord’s private armies have played a major role in combatting land reform beneficiaries with relative impunity.

The most pervasive and environmental degradation has occurred in Brazil, where millions of acres of rainforest have been “cleared” during the decade of Workers Party rule. Chemical exploitation of agriculture is strong in most countries especially in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay where soya production has become a dominant crop. All the major agro-industrial exporters (Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay) rely on toxic chemicals and GM seeds with numerous cases of toxic consequences for indigenous residents and their natural habitat. The issue of toxicity and environmental degradation resulting from the giant mining and timber companies has been well documented in Peru, Ecuador, and Uruguay. Overall, the greater the urban population and the more dispersed the rural communities adversely, affected, the smaller the environmental protest and the likelihood that NGO ecologists play a leading role in protest.

Since the extractive industries are outside of the major urban centers, since most of the major trade union confederations collaborate with the progressive regimes and secure incremental wage increases, and since the overall economy has been growing and unemployment has declined, macro-economic imbalances, commodity dependency and related structural vulnerabilities have not resulted in major confrontations between labor and capital. The most contentious conflicts which have occurred have been between the orthodox neoliberal elites backed by US and European powers and the progressive regimes. Several cases come to mind.

On April 12, 2002 and in December 2002-February 2003 the Venezuelan capitalist class backed by the US and Spain organized an abortive coup which was reversed and a petrol industry lockout that was defeated. An uprising in 2011 led by the police in Ecuador and an abortive coup in Bolivia were put down successfully, before they gained traction. A large-scale agro business protest in Argentina in 2008 which paralyzed the agro-export sector against an export tax ended with regime concessions.

In large part, these “class struggles from above” worked in favor of the progressive regimes because it allowed them to pose the issue as one between a popular democratic regime and a retrograde authoritarian oligarchy. As a result the progressive regimes were able to neutralize, at least temporarily, internal critics from the left. The defeat of “the Right” burnished the credentials of the progressive camp and raised their popularity.

While popular support was important in sustaining the progressive regimes against US and EU backed rightest destabilization campaigns, of equal or greater importance was the backing of the military, sectors of the business elite and extractive capitalists. The progressives by adopting “moderate policies” – including business subsidies and generous pay hikes to the military – were able to divide the elite, retain support of the military and isolate the right-wing opposition. The right-wing has remained electorally marginal and provide very limited leverage for US-EU interference and influence over the progressive agenda.

The degree of “progressiveness” within the progressive extractive capitalist camp varies substantially.

The Chavez government has advanced an anti-imperialist and socialist agenda involving the rejection of US coups, wars and blockade of independent states; it has supported the re-renationalization of oil, aluminum, and other raw material, mining, and energy sources. Its extensive agrarian reform benefiting 300,000 families is aimed at food self-sufficiency. Universal free public health and higher education and subsidized basic food prices via publicly owned supermarkets; and large-scale low-cost public housing for the poor along with literacy campaigns and the formation of thousands of neighborhood councils to adjudicate and resolve local issues have deepened and extended the socialization process

On a far lesser scale, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina have pursued independent foreign policies. Their partial and selective nationalizations are designed to increase revenues rather than as part of a long-term, large-scale strategy of transformation. They have not followed Chavez’s lead on agrarian reform and on greater enhancement of social spending on health, housing, and higher education. They offer remote, public lands of dubious quality as “land reform.” They have been advocates of incremental changes involving wage and social benefits commensurate with the rise in revenues from commodity exports and in line with the rate of inflation, Bolivia and Ecuador have dislodged land squatters and defended the major agro-business land holdings. The least ‘reformist’ regimes with the most dubious ‘progressive’ credentials are Brazil, Uruguay, and Peru (under Ollanta Humala) which have adopted a free-market agenda; they actively promote large inflows of unregulated foreign investments, degrade millions of acres of the rain forests (Brazil especially), promote agro-business and oppose agrarian reform in all of its forms, relying on the dispersion of peasants and landless to the cities, towns where they serve as a labor reserve for capital or join the low paying informal sector. These “moderate” progressive regimes have signed military accords with the US, and adopt a low profile in opposition to US imperial policies in the Middle East. Their “progressiveness” is found in their support of regional integration, their opposition to US hemispheric hegemonism (opposing the US coup in Honduras, blockade of Cuba and interference in Venezuela), and the diversification of overseas markets. Brazil leads the way in catering to Wall Street speculators and in government anti-poverty spending on minimum food baskets. Poverty reduction is matched by the spectacular growth of millionaires linked to the finance and agro-mineral export sector. The “moderate” progressives have the most egregious (and well-documented) record of ongoing environmental degradation. In Peru, Humala has given the green light to mining exploitation threatening the livelihood of thousands of peasants and local business in Cajamarca; Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rouseff, of the Workers Party, promoted the destruction of millions of acres of the Amazon rain forest and displacement of scores of Indian communities in a decade. In Uruguay, the Broad Front Presidents Tabaré Vasquez and Mujica promoted the highly polluting Botina cellulose factory contaminating the Parana River despite mass protests.

In summary, it is difficult to generalize about the performance of the progressive camp given the divergences in social and economic policies. But a “report card” of sorts can be drawn up.

All regimes have lowered poverty levels and increased dependence on agro-mineral exports and investments. All have signed and/or renegotiated contracts with extractive MNC’ few have diversified their economies. Those with a substantial industrial base (Argentina, Brazil, Peru) have suffered a severe decline in the manufacturing sector because of appreciating currencies and loss of competitiveness resulting from high prices for commodity exports. Incremental wage agreements have led to low level social conflicts in the cities (except in Bolivia), but displacement of peasants and degradation have intensified conflicts in the interior between rural communities and the MNC leading to state repression (Peru).

The social impact of the progressive regimes has the widest variation, with Venezuela registering the most far-reaching structural changes and the rest lacking any vision or project for redistributing wealth, income, or land. Their common support for regional integration is matched by important divergences in accommodation to US military policy. Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, the members of ALBA, reject military treaties, while Brazil, Uruguay, and Peru have signed military agreements with the Pentagon.

The overall economic performance is mixed. Brazil’s economy, especially its manufacturing sector, is stagnating with zero or negative growth in 2011-2012, Venezuela is recovering, but with over a 20% rate of inflation while the rest of the PC is experiencing steady growth, but increasing dependence on commodity exports to the Asian (China) market.

Alternatives to the status quo extractive economies vary enormously. In Venezuela, the regime has made diversification a high priority; the Brazilian and Argentine regimes are taking protectionist measures to promote industry with limited success especially as their policies are countermanded by the real expansion of acreage for soya production and exports. Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia talk of diversification but have avoided taking measures to shift to food production and family farming and have yet to take concrete measures to stimulate local industry via a publicly funded industrialization policy.

Most Americans are unaware of Jeju or of the U.S. policy of increasing its military presence in Korea, Japan, and the rest of the Pacific — even moving the Marines into Australia. But for the people of Jeju, attempting to nonviolently resist the construction of a new military base, there is an eerie sense of déjà vu.

In fact Jeju’s history is central to how the United States became the militarized nation it has been for over half a century.

Veterans for Peace (VFP) recently sent members to Jeju to monitor the local resistance to this militarization, but they were refused entry by Korean security officials who gave no reasons other than following orders. VFP represents thousands of U.S. military veterans who have participated in various overt and covert U.S. interventions violating the sovereignty of countless countries. This aggressive foreign policy, little mentioned in our history classes, has caused incalculable harm to people, cultures, and the environment. Our personal experiences summon us to carefully re-examine the nature and patterns of U.S. foreign policy. Our clear understanding of past and present imperial adventures compel us to passionately and tenaciously oppose further militarism, war and aggression which we see as severe obstacles to the continuation of our species.

In examining U.S. interventions since World War II, historian William Blum has recently catalogued the following disgraceful record: (1) attempted overthrow of more than 50 governments; (2) attempted suppression of populist and nationalist movements in 20 countries; (3) interference in democratic elections in at least 30 countries; (4) bombing of citizens in 30 countries; and (5) attempted assassinations of more than 50 foreign political leaders.

Shockingly, when all the empirical evidence is scrutinized, the U.S. has militarily intervened nearly 400 times since World War II in nearly 100 countries, while covertly intervening thousands of times. Millions of human beings have been murdered, maimed, and displaced as a result of this egregious, unlawful behavior. Adherence to international and Constitutional law, and honest diplomacy, have been thwarted over and over.

One of the darkest, virtually unknown chapters of U.S. intervention occurred in the southern portions of Korea prior to the Korean War. In 1945, a Joint U.S. Army-Navy Intelligence Study reported that the vast majority of Koreans possessed a strong desire for independence and self-rule, and were vehemently opposed to control by any successor to the hated Japanese who had ruled them since 1910. A subsequent U.S. study reported that nearly 80 percent of Koreans wanted a socialist, rather than capitalist system.

Despite the conclusions of these internal documents, U.S. President Harry Truman, after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, imposed a purportedly temporary partition at Korea’s 38th Parallel dividing a 5,000-year homogenous culture. He then commanded U.S. General Douglas MacArthur to “govern” the people living south of the 38th Parallel. In October 1945, needing a trusted Korean with “an [U.S.] American point of view” to be the U.S. strongman, MacArthur flew 71-year-old Korean-born Syngman Rhee from the U.S. to Seoul on MacArthur’s personal plane. Rhee, a Methodist who had lived in the United States for 40 years, was to be a surrogate ruler of Korea that was largely Buddhist and Confucianist.

Rhee unilaterally chose to hold separate elections in 1948 to “legally” create an artificially divided Korea, despite vigorous popular opposition throughout the Peninsula, north and south of the 38th Parallel, including residents of Cheju Island (now called Jeju, hereafter identified as such). What is referred to as the April 3 (1948) uprising on Jeju in response to these elections, actually lasted into 1950, and is the single greatest massacre in modern Korean history. The Jeju uprising in 1948 may be seen as a microcosm for the impending Korean War.

A CIA National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Rhee was so unpopular that the newly-established Republic of Korea (ROK) would not survive “without massive infusion of U.S. aid.”

The U.S. Embassy described the repression in response to the Jeju opposition to Rhee as a “scorched earth” campaign of “extermination.” Secret protocols placed all Korean Constabulary, police, ROK forces, and paramilitary units under USAMGIK’s (United States Army Military Government In Korea) control.

CIA documents concluded that politics under the USAMGIK and Rhee regime were dominated by a tiny elite class of wealthy Koreans who repressed dissent of the vast majority, using “ruthlessly brutal” policies similar to those of the previous Japanese machinery hated by most Koreans.

Then U.S. Military Governor of Korea, John Reed Hodge, briefed U.S. Congressional Representatives that “Cheju was a truly communal area that is peacefully controlled by the People’s Committee.” Despite this understanding, he commanded three U.S. military officers (among others) – Colonel Harley E. Fuller, Captain John P. Reed, and Captain James Hausman – to advise and coordinate the “extermination” and “scorched earth” campaign. Koreans who had collaborated with the hated Japanese occupiers now served in the U.S.-trained Korean Constabulary and police. Right wing paramilitary units became a brutal element of Rhee’s security apparatus. U.S. advisers accompanied all Korean Constabulary and police (and additional ROK units after 1948) in ground campaigns; U.S. pilots flew C-47s to ferry troops, weapons, war materiel while occasionally directing bombings; and U.S. intelligence officers provided daily intelligence. Additionally U.S. Navy war ships, including the USS Craig, blockaded and bombed the Island, preventing supplies and additional opposition forces from arriving, while preventing flight of boatloads of desperate Islanders.

Hodge’s successor, General William Roberts, declared it was of “utmost importance” that dissenters “be cleared up as soon as possible.” The repressive Japanese organization, “National League To Provide Guidance” (Bo Do Yun Maeng), was expanded by the Rhee regime. Used to systematically identify any Koreans who had opposed Japanese occupation, the League now worked to identify those who opposed the de facto brutal U.S./Rhee rule. Thousands were murdered, jailed, and tortured, and many dumped into the sea as a result.

The Governor of Jeju at the time admitted that the repression of the Island’s 300,000 residents led to the murder of as many as 60,000 Islanders, with another 40,000 desperately fleeing in boats to Japan. Thus, one-third of its residents were either murdered or fled during the “extermination” campaign. Nearly 40,000 homes were destroyed and 270 of 400 villages were leveled. One of Robert’s cohorts, Colonel Rothwell Brown, claimed that the Islanders were simply “ignorant, uneducated farmers and fishers,” a weak excuse for repressing those who, Brown asserted, refused to recognize the “superiority” of the “American Way.”

U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and George Kennan, head of the State Department’s Policy Planning, agreed in 1949 that suppression of the internal threat in South Korea, (i.e., Koreans’ passion for self-determination), with assistance of the newly created CIA, was critical to preserving Rhee’s power, and assuring success of the U.S.’s worldwide containment policy. The 1949 Chinese Revolution made repressing the neighboring Korean’s passion for self-determination indispensable for success in the emerging “Cold War,” complementing successful U.S. efforts using CIA covert actions to thwart any socialist movements in Europe following World War II.

The 1949-50 National Security Council study, known as NSC-68, laid out U.S. aims to assure a global political system to “foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish.”

The Korean War that lasted from June 1950 to July 1953, was an enlargement of the 1948-50 struggle of Jeju Islanders to preserve their self-determination from the tyrannical rule of U.S.-supported Rhee and his tiny cadre of wealthy constituents. Little known is that the U.S.-imposed division of Korea in 1945 against the wishes of the vast majority of Koreans was the primary cause of the Korean War that broke out five years later. The War destroyed by bombing most cities and villages in Korea north of the 38^th Parallel, and many south of it, while killing four million Koreans – three million (one-third) of the north’s residents and one million of those living in the south, in addition to killing one million Chinese. This was a staggering international crime still unrecognized that killed five million people and permanently separated 10 million Korean families.

Following the Korean War, Dean Acheson concluded that “Korea saved us,” enabling the U.S. to implement its apocalyptic imperial strategy laid out in NSC-68. In Korea, this meant that the U.S. consistently assured dictatorial governments for nearly 50 years, long after Rhee was forced out of office at age 85 in 1960. Since 1953, the U.S. and South Korea have lived under a Mutual Defense Treaty, Status of Forces Agreements, and a Combined Forces Command headed by a 4-star U.S. general. The fact is that despite claims to the contrary, Korea has never assumed sovereignty since the U.S. imposed division of Korea in 1945. The U.S. has possessed more than 100 military bases and nearly 50,000 troops on Korean soil, and even today has dozens of bases and 28,000 troops stationed there. For decades, the U.S. maintained its main Asian bombing range south of Seoul.

Despite this gruesome history, Koreans began to successfully assert some semblance of democratic governments in the 1990s. However, despite creation of a constitution that protects free speech and basic human rights, Koreans once again are experiencing egregious repression. The Korean residents of pristine Jeju Island vigorously oppose the construction of a deep-water port to host Korean and U.S. guided missile-equipped Aegis Destroyers at the village of Gangjeong. The South Korean government headed by reactionary President Lee Myung Bak is ruthlessly repressing their legitimate, constitutionally-protected free speech. This is not acceptable. The residents of Jeju have a long history of living in peace and harmony. They were brutalized in the late 1940s for wanting independence, and are being brutalized once again for attempting to preserve self-determination. It is déjà vu.

We have been following the daily brutal repression by as many as 1,500 Korean police and security forces of Jeju’s 1,500 residents whose voices of passionate and nonviolent opposition have been completely ignored. When we called the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C. to ask why this deep-water port construction continues in Gangjeong over objections of more than 90 percent of its residents, the answer has been, “Don’t call us, call your own (U.S.) government.” Political pressure from the U.S. continues to interfere with sovereignty of the Korean people as their own government disrespects, then represses, the free speech of its own citizens despite protections inscribed in the Korean constitution.

We read reports in the Korean press of more than 2600 politicians, journalists and civilians being secretly, illegally spied upon during the current Lee administration. In January 2009, Korea Broadcasting Service (KBS) aired a program that disclosed a secret deal made by the CIA-style Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS), Korean police, and components of the Jeju Island government, to quash any opposition movement to the planned construction of a Jeju deep-water military port, saying such opponents are, in effect, traitors. It is being built by the huge South Korea conglomerate, Samsung, despite watchdog Public Eye citing its history of over 50 years of environmental pollution, trade union repression, corruption and tax flight. Samsung’s power in South Korea is so great that many citizens speak of the “Samsung Republic.”

And we note that the NIS has raided Korean citizens and organizations, even on the mainland, who support the valiant villagers of Gangjeong on Jeju Island who resist the militarization of their Island, of their coastline, of their villages.

The stakes are much higher now that U.S. President Barack Obama has chosen a dangerous policy to militarize the Asia-Pacific region, due to obvious U.S. political intentions to encircle resource-rival China. Jeju, only 300 miles from China’s mainland, is located in a strategic sea route between Japan, Korea, and China. Obama recently dispatched U.S. troops to a northern port of Australia (2,500 miles from China) as part of this plan, while possessing existing jet landing strips in Okinawa (400 miles), Guam (1,900), and new landing bases in Afghanistan (1,000) and Turkmenistan (1,500), and increased strategic relationships with Singapore (1,200) and Philippines (750).

The immensely biodiverse Jeju Island is a most inappropriate location for a deep-water port to host highly armed U.S. and Korean Navy war ships. Former Korean President Roh Moo Kyum designated Jeju as “Jeju Island of Global Peace” when he formally apologized for the April 1948 massacre. A popular tourist vacation spot, famous for honeymooners and sometimes called “women’s Island” due to its matriarchal history, it is also called the “Island of the Gods.” It is Jeju’s incredible unique ecosystem that makes the island so inappropriate for militarizing a deep-water port in quiet coastal village of Gangjeong. It is sheer madness to blow up sacred lava rocks to make way for violent war machines. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has designated no less than three World Heritage sites on Jeju, including the Gureombi Lava Rocks being blown up for construction of the Navy destroyer port that are being covered with cement along the coast. UNESCO has also designated nine Geo-Parks on Jeju, as well as designating it as a protected Global Biosphere Reserve that includes Jeju coastlines and its fragile coral reefs.

The Korean government has claimed the deep-water port will also host commercial cruise ships. Their huge weight and 1,000-foot length makes them twice as heavy and long as the 500-550 foot Aegis Destroyers. The port will not be capable of hosting these tourist ships, revealing this dual-use claim as fanciful propaganda.

Our military experiences tell us this plan by Korea and the U.S. to host missile-equipped Aegis Destroyers as part of its global anti-ballistic missile system on the pristine Island of Jeju is extremely threatening to world peace, destroys the peace of the residents of Jeju and Gangjeong village, and flaunts Korea’s Constitutional assurances of protecting free speech of its citizens. We urge the Korean government act decisively to end its continued deference to pressures from the United States, and instead commence pursuing Korea’s legitimate dignity and sovereignty.

More on Jeju Island

An all out war against newly independent South Sudan might not be in Sudan’s best interest. South Sudan’s saber-rattling is not an entirely independent initiative; its most recent territorial transgressions – which saw the occupation of Sudan’s largest oil field in Heglig on April 10, followed by a hasty retreat ten days later – might have been a calculated move aimed at drawing Sudan into a larger conflict.

Stunted by the capture of Heglig, which, according to some estimates, provides nearly half of the country’s oil production, Bashir promised victory over Juba. Speaking to large crowd in the capital of North Kordofan, El-Obeid, Bashir affectively declared war. “Heglig isn’t the end, it is the beginning,” he said, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Bashir also declared a desire to ‘liberate’ the people of South Sudan from a government composed of ‘insects.’ Even when Heglig was declared a liberated region by Sudan’s defence minister, the humiliation of defeat was simply replaced by the fervor of victory. “They started the fighting and we will announce when it will end, and our advance will never stop,” Bashir announced on April 20.

Statements issued by the government of South Sudan are clearly more measured, with an international target audience in mind. Salva Kiir, President of South Sudan, simply said that his forces departed the region following appeals made by the international community. This includes a statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which described the attack on Heglig as “an infringement on the sovereignty of Sudan and a clearly illegal act” (Reuters, April 19). A day before the hasty withdrawal, South Sudan government spokesman Barnaba Marial Benjamin claimed there had been no conflict in the first place. His statement was both bewildering and patronizing. He considered Sudan, which was then rallying for war to recapture its oil-rich area, a neighbor and “friendly nation”, and claimed that “up to now we have not crossed even an inch into Sudan” (Associated Press, April 19).

The fact remains, however, that wherever there is oil political narratives cannot possibly be so simple. Sudan is caught in a multidimensional conflict involving weapons trade, internal instabilities, multiple civil wars and the reality of outside players with their own interests. None of this is enough to excuse the readiness for war on behalf of Khartoum and Juba, but it certainly presents serious obstacles to any attempt aimed at rectifying the situation.

With a single act of aggression, a whole set of conflicts are prone to flaring up. It is the nature of proxy politics, as many armed groups seek opportunities for territorial advances and financial gains. News reports already speak of a possible involvement of Uganda should the fledging war between Khartoum and Juba cross conventional boundaries. “As the possibility of a full-fledged war became unnervingly higher, General Aronda Nyakairima, chief of Uganda’s defense forces, said that his army might be compelled to intervene if Bashir did overthrow South Sudan’s regime,” reported Alexis Okeowo in the New Yorker website (April 20). Both Sudans are fighting their own war against various rebel groups. Despite the lack of basic food in parts of the region, plenty of weapons effortlessly find inroads to wherever there is potential strife.

In a statement published last July, Amnesty International called on UN member states to control arm shipments to both Sudan and South Sudan. It accused the US, Russia and China of fueling violations in the Sudan conflict through the arms trade.

US support of South Sudan is already well known. “The US reportedly provided $100 million-a-year in military assistance to the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army),” according to Russia Today on April 19, citing a December 2009 diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks.

According to political author and columnist Reason Wafawarova, US interest in South Sudan is neither accidental nor motivated by humanitarian issues. He told RT, “It would not be surprising if the US is trying to capitalize on the vulnerability of South Sudan in its efforts to establish the AFRICOM base somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.” RT goes on to reference Sudan’s Al-Intibaha newspaper for its reports on Israeli weapon supplies to Juba.

US and Israeli military support of Juba is not a new phenomenon. Sudan’s civil war (1983-2005), which cost an estimated 2.5 million lives, could not have lasted as long as it did without steady sources of military funding. And while the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the January 9-15, 2011 referendum, and finally the independence of South Sudan in July were all meant to usher in a new era of peace and cooperation, none actualized. Sudan’s territorial concessions proved most costly, and South Sudan, destroyed and landlocked, was ripe for outside exploitation.

Both countries are now caught in a deadly embrace. They can neither part ways completely, nor cooperate successfully without a risk of war at every turn. Bashir also knows he is running out of options. While Khartoum has already “lost three-quarters of its oil revenue after the secession,” according Egypt’s Al Ahram Weekly, “now it is poised to lose the rest.”

Naturally, a conflict of this magnitude cannot be resolved by empty gestures and reassuring statements. The conflict has been festering for decades, and war has been the only common language. Powerful countries, including the US, Russia, China, but also Israel and regional Arab and Africa players exploited the conflict to their advantage whenever possible. In a recent analysis, the International Crisis Group in Brussels advised that a “new strategy is needed to avert an even bigger crisis.” The crisis group recommends that the “UN Security Council must reassert itself to preserve international peace and security, including the implementation of border monitoring tasks as outlined by UN Interim Security Force in Abyei.”

Expecting the Security Council to act in political tandem seems a bit too optimistic, however. Considering that the US is arming and supporting South Sudan, and that Russia and China continue to support Khartoum, the rivalry in fact exists within the UN itself.

For a sustainable future peace arrangement, Sudan’s territorial integrity must be respected, and South Sudan must not be pushed to the brink of desperation. Rivalries between the US, China and Russia cannot continue at the expense of nations that teeter between starvation and civil wars. And whatever hidden hands that continue to exploit Sudan’s woes now need to be exposed and isolated.

Justice as fairness is intended as a political conception of justice. While a political conception of justice is, of course, a moral conception, it is a moral conception worked out for a specific kind of subject, namely, for political,
social, and economic institutions.

– John Rawls (1921-2002)

PART 1. Pictorial Argument

There were many massacres of Indian peoples before the advent of photography. There is also a famous set of photographs regarding the event of December 29, 1890, known to Indians as the Massacre at Wounded Knee and to the United States government as the Battle of Wounded Knee. Some of these in conjunction with the moccasin telegraph taught a lesson not to be forgotten to the still-surviving illiterate tribes if North America: the end of times was upon them and the unity with which they identify. Some of the photographs are reproduced below. Please try to see them as they would have been seen and still are perceived by the Indian peoples, perhaps even before considering the text that accompanies them at Wikipedia, Wounded Knee Massacre.

PART 2. Written Argument

(1). The Declaration of Independence settled that one People has no right to possess another’s homeland or to dictate how the other shall govern itself, and the Constitution of the United States of America gave certain Peoples direct access to the Supreme Court of the United States to enforce that STRUCTURALLY-CRITICAL fundamental principle.

(2). Specifically, the Commerce Clause enacts Congress can regulate trade with “foreign Nations and Indian Tribes”, those being the two explicitly-identified categories of other sovereign Peoples organized as States for constitutional law purposes. The Defence Clause stipulates that their lands can not be invaded unless they invade the United States first. The Treaty Clause adopts the long established convention of public international law that ambassadors or other public ministers of sovereign states may, however, contract for rights of consensual entry into each other’s territory.

(3). The Supreme Court of the United States confirmed the continuity of the previously established international and constitutional law “doctrine of discovery.” It holds that indigenous Tribes are sovereign “States” for the purpose of the legal remedy of direct access to the Supreme Court, the same as foreign Nation type States; although, being “indigenous”, they are not “foreign”. Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia (1831).¹

(4). As a matter of procedural law the direct application to the Supreme Court to declare void a breach by the United States of the principle of non-interference with the possession and government of the sovereign territories of other Peoples, i.e., foreign Nations and indigenous Tribes, can only be made in the name of an ambassador or other public minister.

(5). After both had retired and renewed their old friendship the second president of the United States John Adams in a letter to the third, Thomas Jefferson, said: “Your [aristocrats] are the most difficult Animals to manage, of anything in the whole Theory and practice of Government. They will not suffer themselves to be governed. They not only exert all their own Subtilty Industry and courage, but they employ the Commonalty, to knock to pieces every Plan and Model that the most honest Architects in Legislation can invent to keep them within bounds.”

(6). The crucial fact of world history, indeed the fact upon which the continuity of life of earth let alone the freedom of Peoples depends, is that subsequent to 1871 the Supreme Court of the United States chose to side with the “aristocrats” and against the principle, from all appears by instructing each generation’s Clerk of the Court not to file applications submitted by Indian Tribes pursuant to the constitution’s original jurisdiction clause. We say “from all that appears” only because it seems inconceivable that an administrator such as the Clerk, whose jurisdiction under Rule 1 of the Supreme Court Rules is limited to matters of form not jurisdictional and jurisprudential substance, would usurp the power to amend the constitution by willful blindness without at least talking it over with the head administrative judge, i.e., the Chief Justice of the United States, and that he, in turn, would discus it with his colleagues on the bench. No legal or political issue is or can ever be of greater moment and weight.

(7). In consequence of that fact, it has come about that the “aristocrats,” i.e., the super-rich or best-born, purchase or influence the enactment of the Federal Imperial Statutes that frustrate the anti-imperial legislative intent of the Constitution of the United States; the intent to create a society of laws serving, as the Preamble proclaimed, “Justice” “Tranquility” “defence” “Welfare” and “Liberty”.

(8). On behalf of imperialism and against constitutionalism the Supreme Court obstructs and ignores the constitution’s legislative intent by putting “Liberty” at the head of the list of values, taking it to signify an ungovernable license to the rich to plunder foreign Nations and Indian tribes and tyrannize “We the People” with indefinite detention, based on nothing more than the suspicion of the President in his capacity as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, which arbitrary power is the definitive hallmark of all empires, and therefore refutes everything that the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution were proclaimed and waged to preclude.

(9). In the result the five constitutional values have been corrupted to serve “absolute despotism” (i.e., the type of government rejected by the Declaration of Independence) over everyone and everything on earth, based upon Injustice instead of Justice, Turmoil instead of Tranquility, Aggression instead of Defence, Exploitation instead of Welfare, and Domination instead of Liberty.

(10). Adams’ and Jefferson’s great plan as recorded by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—to end the lawlessness and cruelty of the previously established era of empires—was frustrated in all respects; specifically, by the US Supreme Court’s treasonable willful blindness to constitutional questions that challenge any of the three manifestly unconstitutional Federal Imperial Statutes: first, the Appropriations Act of 1871 against the Indian Tribes; secondly the War Powers Act of 1973 against any foreign Nations who may object to the absolute despotism of empire; and thirdly the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 against “We the People” of the United States.

(11). The only pacific solution is the reestablishment of the rule of law by means of a Marbury v. Madison judicial review, by the US Supreme Court, of the non-compliance of the Federal Imperial Statutes with the Constitution’s Amendment, Commerce, Defence, Original Jurisdiction and Treaty Clauses and the Bill of Rights. This can be achieved only by overcoming the treasonable obstruction and ignoring by the Clerk of the Case of the Mahican and Mi’kmaq Tribal Ambassadors.

(12). These times not only try men’s souls but the soul of the United States of America and of each of the constitutional democracies she leads. Two hundred twenty three years ago the United States was brought into existence to end the inherent and self evident evil of imperialism. To fulfill the country’s mission specifically in the terms laid out by its Constitution and the most fundamental of the original interpretive precedents Marbury v. Madison (1803) and Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia (1831), one absolutely must not start all over with a fresh revolution as if the ancestors’ blood sacrifice was in vain.

(13). Instead, we must adopt the forty years of painstaking legal research and preparation of the presently-obstructed classic constitutional case against imperialism of the Mahican and Mi’kmaq Tribes, and now carry it forward, into so very many courts that the judicial stone wall unjustly and unfairly blocking the critical question of the Federal Imperial Statutes’ breach of the Constitution’s anti-imperialism is undermined and collapses, without more bloodshed.

(14). Only that is capable of achieving salvation in time and in peace by means of constitutional triumph; as opposed to the triumph of violence leading inexorably to the global suicide guaranteed by continuing the imperial cycle in the nuclear age.

Therefore, please read and implement the remedy identified by the following PDF file article: LEGALLY OCCUPY THE COURTS! Judicial Review. Judicial Notice. Judicial Empire. Three concepts for citizens to establish justice, without imperialism, and by means of the rule of law.

1. See, “Justice-as-Truth Legal Proof,” infra, Document 8, pages 2 and 3, paragraph 4 DETERMINATIVE PRECEDENT.

Once I had gotten past the Prologue – which I thought did not belong at the beginning of the book – Khan’s narrative never lost its power to sustain my interest. The book takes the reader through many unexpected shifts in the protagonist’s life – from cricket to charity work, from charity work to politics, from the life of a celebrity to a life of piety, from disdain for Islam to a deepening respect for its richness and depth, from contempt (a colonial legacy common to Pakistan’s elites) for ordinary Pakistanis to a growing concern for their tormented lives, from wilting shyness before audiences to a determination to face the glare of public life, from growing anxiety about Pakistan’s problems to an unshakable resolve to do something about them; etc. In short, the book takes the reader through the life of an extraordinary man, at first fully immersed in the privileges of his class and his cricket celebrity but slowly turning inwards, questioning the colonial mindset of his own privileged class, angry at the limitless corruption of Pakistan’s rulers, and, finally, reaching resolution in his commitment to take Pakistan back from its corrupt elites. A politician with Imran Khan’s record would be rare in Western ‘democracies.’ In a country like Pakistan, mired for decades in the corruption of rapacious elites, he is an anomaly – an outlier. Should the Pakistanis embrace Imran Khan, should they give him the chance to pick and lead the nation’s political team, this could be a game-changer for their country.

While describing his spiritual journey following the pain of his mother’s death, Imran Khan sums up his life in an aphorism, “A spiritual person takes responsibility for society, whereas a materialist only takes responsibility for himself (87).” Quite apart from the truth-value of this statement (since a ‘materialist’ or someone without belief in God or afterlife may also choose to take responsibility for society), this sentiment very aptly describes the author’s long and tortuous passage from indifference towards larger questions – both metaphysical and political – to a deepening engagement with God and the history and fate of Pakistanis and Muslims. In time, after much soul-searching, Imran Khan chooses to take “responsibility for society.” Once he has formed a conviction, Imran Khan has shown that there is no turning back for him.

Imran Khan’s autobiography contains some homespun theology too. At one point, he describes how cricket nudged him towards faith; it began with observations on cricketing luck. A game can turn on the toss of a coin; success in bowling can depend on the way the ball is stitched, on umpiring mistakes, on fortuitous injuries, on the weather, etc. In other words, “there seemed to be a zone beyond which players were helpless, and it was called luck (84).” He muses, “… could what we call luck actually be the will of God?” Is it possible, amidst the infinite complexity that produces any outcome, that God intervenes in our lives, nudges a particle here a particle there to confront us with outcomes that surprise us, overthrow our certainties, deflate our egos, forcing us to think of higher forces?

After his mother’s painful death from cancer, Imran Khan turned away from God. Questions of theodicy troubled him. He worried that his life’s accomplishments could vanish in a moment. In the face of this vulnerability, persuaded by a logic that recalls Pascal’s wager, he resumed his salaat. “This was really like an insurance policy – a sort of safety net in case God really did exist.” It is likely that Imran had arrived at his reasoning on his own, or he had encountered this argument in the Qur’an. Unknown to most Muslims, the Qur’an makes this argument on several occasions; it is then taken up by Hazrat Ali, the Prophet’s cousin, and in the eleventh century by al-Ghazzali.

Imran Khan speaks reverently of the influence of Mian Bashir on his life, an obscure but spiritually gifted man who gently led him to discover the inwardness and beauty of Islam. People who have lost touch with metaphysics will likely frown at this influence. Untroubled by such skeptics, Imran Khan recognizes this obscure sufi as the “single most powerful spiritual influence” on his life. I respect this openness to the Unseen, this divinely implanted ‘naiveté’ – if you will – that lies at the heart of all authentic religious experience, and that Western rationalism and scientism have nearly destroyed in modern man. Despite the materialism that assails us, we can stay in touch with this ‘naiveté.’ In better times too, very few men and women could reach the summits of the mystical ascent; but they sought spiritual sustenance in the baraka of the valis, friends of God. Unknown to Pakistan’s militant secularists, Asadullah Khan Ghalib too – despite his celebrated skepticism – sought intimacy with God through veneration of Hazrat ‘Ali and his family.

2.

Imran Khan is nothing if not resolute in pursuing the goals he sets for himself; and his goals have never been modest. “Over the years,” he writes, “I came to the conclusion that ‘genius’ is being obsessed with what you are doing (63).” Quite early in his cricket career, spurred by the example of Dennis Lillee, he decided to remake himself as a fast bowler. His teammates and coach warned him that he “had neither the physique nor the bowling action to become a fast bowler (118)” and he could ruin his career if he tried to change his bowling style. Imran Khan was not deterred. He remodeled his “bowling action to become a fast bowler,” and as he worked hard towards this goal – he writes – “my body also became stronger for me to bowl fast.” Most cricket commentators agree that Imran Khan went on to establish himself as one of the greatest fast bowlers of all time. Fewer still have combined his eminence in fast bowling with skill at batting and leading his team.

When Imran Khan set out in 1984 to establish Pakistan’s first cancer hospital – he ran into a wall of skepticism. When he presented his plans for the Hospital to the leading Pakistani doctors in Lahore and Lon-don, they were dismissive; he did not give up. Working indefatigably to collect mostly small donations from tens of thousands of people at home and abroad, Imran Khan began construction work on the project in April 1991. The Hospital admitted its first patients in December 1994, with a com-mitment to provide free care to all poor patients. Skeptics had warned that this policy was not viable, but generous Pakistanis proved them wrong. Now plans are underway for building two more cancer hospitals in Peshawar and Karachi.

Our author has shown the same dogged persistence in the arena of politics. When he announced his entry into politics in 1996 – with the for-mation of a new party, Tehreek-e-Insaaf, dedicated to fighting corrup-tion in public life – Pakistanis ignored him. In the first elections it contested in 1997, the Tehreek won no seat; in the second election in 2002, it won a single seat. Imran Khan could draw large crowds to his rallies, but they were drawn to their cricket hero not the political leader who promised to deliver a better future for them. Perhaps, Imran Khan had not done his homework. His promise to fight corruption did not yet carry a broad appeal; his message did not resonate with workers, peasants, students, clerks and small shop-keepers. Pakistanis knew that their leaders are corrupt, but they did not see Imran Khan as the force that could pry Pakistan out of their dirty but powerful grip. Imran Khan had not begun the hard work of building his party from the ground up, creating a cadre of committed workers and donors. He spent too much time on talk shows and too little time organizing his party.

The failure of Tehreek-e-Insaaf to make an impact in the 2002 elections may well have ended Imran Khan’s political career; but he was not ready to quit the field. He persisted in his attacks on Pakistan’s corrupt elites through regular appearances on television talk shows that had proliferated following General Musharraf’s liberalization of the media. Then came the attacks of 9-11, the US decision to draft Pakistan into its so-called Global War Against Terror. Gleefully, Pakistan’s generals accepted every demand that the US made on Pakistan’s sovereignty; they gave the US air and land corridors to Afghanistan, control of one or more airbases in Pakistan, and free run of Pakistan to CIA operatives. Only the religious parties and jihadi factions opposed this surrender of Pakistan’s sovereignty, but they occupied limited political space in Pakistan. With few exceptions, Pakistan’s ‘liberal’ and ‘left’ intellectuals also supported the US War; they were happy to see the Taliban driven out by the American invaders. The political tides were begging to turn for Imran Khan. This was his opportunity to broaden his critique of Pakistan’s corrupt political classes; their corruption now veered towards treason. None of this was surprising, but it did bring out into the open Pakistan’s descent to the depths of servitude.

As events unfolded, the charge of treason would gain greater plausibility. General Musharraf’s government kept the Americans happy by killing the Taliban who had sought refuge in Pakistan; others were captured and handed over to the Americans. In open violation of Pakistan’s constitution, the government also began to disappear Pakistanis who were then secretly transferred to the Americans. Pakistan’s involvement in America’s war entered a new phase in 2004 as the CIA mounted its first drone strikes on Pakistani territory. On American demand, the generals also directed the Pakistani military to attack Taliban sanctuaries in Waziristan. Pakistan’s political classes had now privatized the army. Pakistani soldiers now killed the Taliban and Pakistanis to enrich the country’s political elites.

While the generals collected cash from the US, Pakistanis would pay the price for this treason. Pakistan’s war against the Taliban and their Pashtun hosts produced a frightening backlash that has continued to grow. The logic of this backlash was simple, as Imran Khan also explains. No doubt encouraged by the Afghan Taliban, the families of the Pashtun victims – calling themselves the Pakistani Taliban – mounted devastating retaliatory attacks against military and civilian targets in Pakistan, but mostly against the latter. There was no change in Pakistan’s commitment to America’s war when a civilian government, led corrupt politicians rehabilitated under a deal hatched in Washington, replaced General Musharraf in 2008. While Pakistan’s liberal and left intellectuals wanted the government to exterminate the Pakistani Taliban; they insisted that the Pakistani Taliban was an Islamic fundamentalist movement to take power in Pakistan and had nothing to do with the war Pakistani military had unleashed against the Pashtuns. Imran made the opposite argument. Terminate the war against the Pashtuns and Afghans, and the Pakistani Taliban would cease their attacks; they would disappear as quickly as they had appeared.

After a long delay, Imran Khan’s strategy began to pay off. As Pakistan escalated the war against its own people in two of its four provinces, as Paki-stani capital fled and foreign capital shunned the country, as the economy worsened, as poverty deepened, as political factions in Karachi engaged in bloody turf battles, as power outages persisted, as supply of cooking gas be-come intermittent, the anger and desperation of Pakistanis also grew. Who could lift Pakistan from this descent into chaos? Pakistanis knew better than to expect a savior to emerge from the military or the established political classes: for they had produced the mayhem and were its chief beneficiaries. In this gloom, Imran Khan beckoned to Pakistanis. His calls for justice grew louder, his jeremiads against corrupt politicians became sharper, his critique of the generals became unsparing. Slowly, his message began to resonate with Pakistani youth and the urban middle classes in Pakistan. Starting in mid-2011, the polls signaled a surge in his popularity.

On October 30 2011, Imran Khan was ready to take a measure of his popularity with a rally in Lahore. The rally was a great success; more than two hundred thousand people showed up. Most people agreed that nothing like this had been seen since the days of the charismatic Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s. On December 25, the Tehreek organized a second rally in Karachi, the stronghold of a local ethnic party, with the same results. Finally, some sixteen years after his entry into politics, people were beginning to rally around Imran Khan and his party. This surge in his popularity suddenly changed the political map of Pakistan. It also produced some unwelcome results; now that his prospects looked brighter, some members of the established political class began to knock on the Tehreek’s door. Imran Khan was now a political force; after wandering for many years on the margins, he had arrived with a bang on Pakistan’s political scene.

Imran Khan offered a more optimistic assessment of his prospects. He described the surge in his popularity as a political tsunami that would in time sweep out the old corrupt order. Was this a case of excessive self-congratulation? This would depend on whether the Tehreek could sustain the momentum it had generated, whether it could capitalize on this surge to build a grassroots organization, whether it could expand its program to incorporate the interests of workers and peasants, and whether it could create an intellectual cadre that would disseminate its message through print, television and the internet. Can Imran Khan energize the people, raise their hopes of change to a fever pitch, so that attempts to defeat them by extra-legal means could backfire and persuade the Tehreek to lead an uprising? I will return to these questions; but first, I wish to turn to the increasingly shrill and frenzied attacks against Imran Khan by Pakistan’s putative liberal and left-leaning intelligentsia; these attacks are most visible in the English-language print media. Their shrill commentary suggests that they are beginning to take him seriously.

3.

Pakistan’s ‘liberal’ and ‘left-leaning’ groups bring three related charges against Imran Khan: he is an Islamist (or fundamentalist), a partisan of the Taliban, and a rightist. They rely on less than half-truths in making their case.

Imran Khan is certainly Islamic in his thinking, inspiration and identity but he is not an Islamist, a term that generally applies to Muslims who subscribe to a literalist interpretation of the Qur’an and the Traditions of the Prophet. Unlike many Pakistanis who identify themselves as liberals or leftists – and take a Kemalist view of Islam as a backward religion that must be rigorously excluded from the public discourse and even public space – Imran Khan derives his identity from Islam and seeks inspiration in the Qur’an and the Traditions. In regards to the relevance of some of the legal aspects of the Qur’an, together with Allama Iqbal and Fazlur Rahman (for many years, a professor of Islamic Studies at University of Chicago), he recognizes the need for revisiting some of the rulings that were given currency by the consensus of a previous age. In this sense, it would be appropriate to describe Imran Khan as an Islamic modernist; but unlike most Islamic modernists he also feels a strong affinity for the sufi tradition of Islam that has emphasized the spirit and inward content religion without neglecting its outward practice. In both respects, I doubt if there are Islamists who would admit Imran Khan into their inner circles.

Is Imran Khan then a partisan of the Taliban? The United States has used its hegemonic control over mainstream global discourse – especially since launching its global military offensive under the cover of the Global War Against Terror – to smear all freedom fighters it does not support as terrorists. The discourse on terrorism is very cleverly designed to focus the world’s attention on the relatively insignificant acts of violence by oppressed peoples and thereby legitimize the massive acts of violence perpetrated by Western nations against the rest of the world. In American demonology, anyone fighting against the US occupation of Afghanistan is a terrorist – whether he is Afghan or Pakistani. Most ‘liberal’ and ‘left’ writers in Pakistan have internalized this American rhetoric; it follows that the Afghans and Pakistanis fighting the US occupation do not have a legitimate cause regardless of what fighting tactics they employ. In describing Imran Khan as Taliban sympathizer, then, these writers hope to smear him as a terrorist-sympathizer. This smear will not stick. Most Pakistanis recognize that Imran Khan supports the right of Afghans to rid their country of US occupation; other than that and his ethnic kinship with the Pashtuns, there can exist little affinity between him and the Afghan Taliban.

It is time now to explain the scare quotes surrounding the political labels left, right and liberal. In much of the Islamicate, politics has moved into strangely dubious territory, where these labels retain very little of their original meaning. As the liberal or left-oriented political elites in much of the Islamicate began to lose their legitimacy starting the 1970s – because of their dismal failure to create free, sovereign and prosperous polities – and faced growing opposition from various Islamist movements, they chose to sacrifice their ideology in order to cling to power. They had risen to power on an anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist and, in some cases, socialist platform. Starting in the 1970s, the survival of the increasingly repressive regimes they led was tied to the support of Western powers in return for keeping the Islamists out of power; this was the pact they made with the devil. It was an enduring pact that crushed any opposition to these regimes until the recent Arab uprising. The liberal and left factions in Pakistan also reprogrammed themselves after the end of the Cold War. Under Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistan People’s Party, once left-leaning, anti-imperialist, sought legitimacy in Washington and quickly embraced its neoliberal program to open the economy to Western capital.

If the formerly liberal and left leaning forces completed this metamorphosis with little difficulty, this is not entirely surprising. Even when they proclaimed socialist ideals or employed anti-imperialist rhetoric, the thinking of the politically dominant classes in much of the Islamicate had been shaped by an Orientalist narrative. After the Western powers had destroyed or marginalized the traditional learned classes – judges and jurisprudents trained in Shariah, theologians, physicians, engineers, architects and artists – this created space for the emergence of new intellectual classes that were beholden to their colonial masters. More often than not, they were secular and nationalist in their politics, and, following their Orientalist mentors, they blamed Islam for their backwardness; as a result, even when they paid lip service to Islam, they were determined to exclude it from their political discourse. In keeping with their colonialist thinking, they affected Western styles and mannerisms but did little to acquire the institutions, sciences and technology that were the motors of Western power and prosperity. It is no exaggeration to assert that these new elites – despite their nationalist rhetoric – felt closer to their colonial masters they had replaced than to the people they claimed to lead.

In consequence, as Islamist opposition movements began to reject their claims to leadership, the failed political elites retreated into the arms of their former colonial masters. They sought to convince the Western world that they faced a common enemy; the Islamist parties eager to replace them would turn the clock back on human rights, women’s rights and the rights of minorities. Worse, should the Islamist opposition gain power they would pursue policies openly hostile to Western interests. Despite the about-turn in their policies, however, these elites continued to sport their old political labels. They were ‘nationalists’ but owed their survival to Western arms, money, diplomatic support, intelligence, and advice. They were ‘liberals’ but they were happy to use the police state to suppress opposition to their regimes. They were ‘socialists’ but eagerly embraced the neoliberal dictates of the IMF and the World Bank.

In Pakistan, different factions of the ruling elites – who variously claim to be ‘nationalists,’ ‘liberals’ or ‘leftists’ – strenuously lobby the Americans or the British to gain power or to keep it. They outbid each other in sacrificing vital national interests; they never tire of proclaiming that the nation’s economic salvation depends on attracting foreign investment; they have backed unconditionally America’s so-called war on terrorism; they oppose the Afghans’ right to free their country of foreign occupiers; they cheered when General Musharraf used Pakistan’s military to fight Pakistanis who aided the Afghans; they privately assure the Americans that – despite their public stance – they stand firmly behind the deadly drone strikes against ‘targets’ inside Pakistan. Disregarding Pakistan’s Islamic sensibilities, a tiny minority of ‘secularists’ in Pakistan want to impose Western sexual mores on Pakistan; they have campaigned to abrogate the nation’s laws against blasphemy, not prevent its abuse or mitigate its penalties; they refuse to defend the rights of Muslim minorities in Western countries; they support America’s demands to shut down the madrasas in Pakistan but have long supported a colonial system of education for the elites that uses syllabi and exams designed in Cambridge.

Indeed, recently, one columnist at Dawn – a leading English newspaper – lampooned Imran Khan for refusing to share the podium with Salman Rushdie at a literary event in India. I do not know what inner demons drove Rushdie to produce his obscene caricature of Islam, but it does seem odd that a writer – that any person with imagination – would seek to sully and shatter a sacred treasure of humanity only because he finds himself excluded from its deep mystery. Needless to say, I did not support Ayatollah Khomenei’s call for Rushdie’s assassination; nor do I support the death penalty for apostasy. Islam supports free choice in matters of conscience, but the state may limit the activities of well-funded foreign missionaries that use pecuniary inducements to gain converts.

4.

Imran Khan has a great deal to say about the canker of Pakistan’s colonial legacy; the cultural divide that separates the class of brown sahibs and the great mass of Pakistanis who remain anchored in their history and traditions; and the new American masters this class has served since the departure of the British.

He also writes about his own struggles to overcome the Orientalist culture into which he was born, the culture of the brown sahibs, their sneering contempt for Islam, their denigration of the ‘natives’ and their culture. He describes his long and distinguished career in cricket that reveals a perfectionist and a man undaunted by failures. He shares with the readers his personal discovery of God, about growing spiritually through his own struggles in cricket and his charity work; finding inspiration in Islam’s great thinkers, poets and sages – most of all the great Islamic poet, visionary and philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal – but also seeking the blessings of nameless sufis, who prefer to live in obscurity and poverty despite their spiritual gifts. This review can only look at some of these issues; to accompany Imran Khan on his life journey, to walk through the many stages of his life, to explore his personal narrative of Pakistan’s political failures you have to read his Pakistan: A Personal History.

Quite rightly, Imran Khan blames the brown sahibs – a few thousand of the most powerful military officers, bureaucrats, and influential landed families – for never giving Pakistan the chance to develop into a self-respecting, sovereign and prosperous country. This class had retained or acquired its social rank, wealth and power during the colonial era by rendering loyal service to the British rulers; demonstrating their servility to their foreign masters by adopting their dress, mimicking their life style and mannerisms, and gaining familiarity with the history of British royalty, British place names, and British writers. They turned to jaundiced Orientalists for their knowledge of Islam, the history of Muslims and of India; and from them they acquired their deep contempt for Islam, the Muslims and their languages and traditions. Like their British masters, they interacted with the ‘natives’ – those who did not speak English or spoke it with a native accent – only as social inferiors, as clerks, peons, servants, peasants, low-ranking military officers and nameless jawans in the army.

Imran Khan provides several vignettes from the social life of these brown sahibs in Pakistan. “In the Gymkhana and the Punjab Club in Lahore,” he writes, “Pakistanis pretended to be English. Everyone spoke English including the waiters; the men dressed in suits; we, the members’ children, watched English films while the grown-ups danced to Western music on a Saturday night (43).” At Aitchison College, where the sons of Punjab’s landed elites were trained to become brown sahibs, boys “caught speaking in Urdu during school hours were fined, despite it being the official language of Pakistan (47).” Elsewhere, he writes, “When I was a boy I remember one of my uncles asking a cousin of mine, who was wearing shalwar kameez, why he was dressed like a servant (49-50).” Asked if he could speak Urdu – I can recall – the son of leading civil servant who served during General Ayub Khan’s tenure, shot back, “Only a little, when talking to the servants.”

Led by Iqbal, Jinnah and a small band of dedicated leaders – from the various provinces of British India – the struggles and sacrifices of ordinary Muslims had created a country they had hoped would make them proud, a country that would be guided by the highest Islamic ideals of justice, a country where they would be safe, where they could prosper, a country that would be a source of strength for the Muslims they had left behind in India, a country that would offer inspiration and leadership to the Islamicate. This was not to be. Within a few years of gaining independence, the brown sahibs in Pakistan seized control over the affairs of the country. That was the beginning of Pakistan’s descent into a shameless kleptocracy in the service of foreign powers.

“Far from shaking off colonialism,” writes Imran Khan, “our ruling elite slipped into its shoes (43-44).” Our brown sahibs made no significant changes to the colonial structures developed by the British to keep their Indian subjects on a tight leash. This omission was deliberate: the intent was to keep the ‘natives’ down, to continue to smother their long-suppressed energies, to stifle their creativity. As a result, the economy that Pakistan’s elites promoted soon became dependent on foreign loans; its capitalist class built its wealth on defaulted loans; its manufacturing sector could not move too far beyond processing raw materials; the educational standards at state institutions were allowed to deteriorate so that quality education was confined to the rich; and sixty years after independence more than half the population remains illiterate.

Over time, the emerging middle classes too began to mould themselves in the image of the brown sahibs. Since Urdu or the regional languages would get them nowhere in Pakistan’s private or public sectors, they began sending their children to English schools. Under colonial rule, the Muslim middle classes had abandoned Arabic and Persian, thus losing contact with the classics of their civilization; in the sixty years since gaining nominal independence, the new generations that attended English schools have become strangers to Urdu as well. Were it not for the logic of audience ratings – most viewers do not understand English – that forced the proliferating television channels to run their programs in Urdu, spoken Urdu too would be on its way out. Nevertheless, many of the actors who play lead roles in the Urdu serials can scarcely carry on a conversation in Urdu; the credits for these serials too are often presented in English. A growing number of commercial billboards in the cities also display their Urdu slogans and jingles in Roman letters.

The style of education at Aitchison College – the elite boarding school that he attended – Imran Khan writes, transformed Pakistani students “into cheap imitations of English public school boys.” These students adopted Western sportsmen, actors and pop stars as their role models. Only much later did Imran Khan come to understand how much this “education dislocated our sense of ourselves as a nation.” A generation later, this cultural dislocation is being reproduced on a much larger scale in dozens of elite schools – all run as profit-making enterprises – that prepare their students for the Cambridge O-level and A-level exams. As a result, writes Imran Khan, “Today our English-language schools produce ‘Desi Americans’ – young kids who, though they have never been out of Pakistan, have not only perfected the American twang but all the mannerisms (including the tilt of the baseball cap) just by watching Hollywood films.” In imitation, poorer children too are deserting the state-run Urdu schools to attend poorly staffed English medium schools run out of apartments but carrying exotic labels. Some are named after Catholic saints, in a tawdry attempt to bask in the prestige of Christian missionary schools. Others carry more hilarious names. One school, less inclined to borrow the halo of Catholic saints, calls itself, Oxford and Cambridge Islamic English-Medium School. I am aware that this faux Anglicization is being driven by global forces as well, but – in the Islamic world alone – Turkey, Iran and Indonesia continue to give primacy to their national languages.

A slavish Westernization among the elites has forced Pakistan into intel-lectual sterility. Over the past century, these Westernized classes have produced little world-class scholarship on the country’s history or social and economic structures; their scientific production too remains mostly meager and mediocre, if not worse. Nearly all the great Muslim thinkers and writers of the previous hundred and fifty years in South Asia had received their early education in wholly or partly traditional setting; and this includes Ghalib, Hali, Syed Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Iqbal, Abul Kalam Azad, Shibli Nu’mani, Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, Syed Abul ‘Ala Maududi, Saleemuzzaman Siddiqui, and Faiz, to name only a few illustrious figures from that period. Yet the growing cohorts of Western-educated Muslims since the 1900s have produced scarce any thinker or writer who could stand comparison with their predecessors. As the middle classes too increasingly submit themselves to the same shallow Westernization, this has deepened the poverty of Muslim intellect in South Asia. As the shift towards Western education has drained the Madrasas of its recruits from the middle classes, this has produced another deleterious effect: the coarsening of the Islamic discourse that flows from the madrasas. Imran Khan is deeply cognizant of this intellectual malaise. “If our Westernized classes started to study Islam,” writes Imran Khan, “not only would it be able to project the dynamic spirit of Islam but also help our society fight sectarianism and extremism… How can the group that is in the best position to project Islam do so when it sees Islam through Western eyes? The most damaging aspect of the gulf between the two sections of our society is that it has stopped the evolution of both religion and culture in Pakistan (340-1).”

The coarsening of religious discourse in the West too flows in large part from similar causes: the abandonment and denigration of religion and its mystical traditions by the intellectual classes. In the West this process began with the Renaissance and the Reformation, gained strength with the Enlightenment, and reached its apogee in the nineteenth century with the launching of Darwinian evolutionalism. As a result, over the past three centuries, Christianity has increasingly adopted hard fundamentalist positions – especially in the United States – that draw their inspiration from the conquest narratives of the Old Testament not the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. Over the past half century, especially, the more fundamentalist variants of Christianity have become the refuge of whites who have been marginalized by the rapid economic and social changes in the United States. They vent their anger at immigrants, blacks and Muslims, at women who take charge of their bodies, and – paradoxically – at ‘big’ government, the only institution that could help reverse their economic marginalization. Increasingly also, they have been led by Christian Zionism and Israel’s military successes to identify with Jewish colonization of Palestine. In their commitment to Israeli expansionism, these messianic Christians are more intransigent than the Israelis themselves.

5.

Imran Khan blames the Westernized elites for the Pakistan’s deepening problems. Quite early on, these elites ensured that independence would merely exchange one set of white masters for another: the Americans for the British. Unlike the British, the Americans would rule over Pakistan through local surrogates; the brown faces of these surrogates would maintain the happy illusion that Pakistanis were in control of their destiny.

Although this neocolonial relationship has seen some ups and downs, starting in the 1990s, the top echelons of Pakistan’s governments have been appointed by Washington and, accordingly, their activities are monitored and supervised by the US ambassador in Islamabad. In turn, the Pakistani rulers and their cronies use the government to capture rent, much of which is transferred to foreign bank accounts. Pakistan’s subordination to the US reached a new low after the 9-11 attacks as the rulers – civilian and military – rented the country’s ports, highways, airspace, air bases, and, soon, its military to the US for moneys that have largely gone into private coffers.

Although Imran Khan does not spell out the manifold linkages that bind Pakistan’s corrupt rulers to the United States, he understands that Pakistan cannot move forward unless it ends its neocolonial ties to the United States. To this end, he sets himself several interrelated tasks. A Tehreek government will pull Pakistan out of America’s so-called war on terrorism; this means stopping the drone attacks on Pakistani territory, revoking all the territorial concessions General Musharraf made to the United States, and ending Pakistan’s war against its own people in Pakhtunkhwa. “Pakistan should disengage from this insane and immoral war,” writes Imran Khan (360). If this could be done, the chief factor that has been destabilizing Pakistan, pushing it to the edge of a civil war, will disappear. Pakistan’s military disengagement from the US will be followed by efforts to end Pakistan’s dependency on foreign loans to pay for gov-ernment programs, much of which have been diverted to private coffers in the past.

Is all this doable? Despite the dire warnings of slanted commentators, should Pakistan withdraw from the US war against terror, it is extremely unlikely that it would face a war. At present, the US has no stomach for starting another war even as it and Israel threaten to start a war against Iran. The US will certainly stop payments of the blood money, but this should not hurt Pakistan since most of this money finds its way back where it came from. China too will oppose any US attacks against Pakistan, and will stand ready to tide Pakistan through its balance of payments difficulties.

Pakistan can gain economic independence – Imran Khan argues – by ending tax evasions; this alone will double the government’s revenues. Ending corruption at the highest levels of government, therefore, is the Tehreek’s signature policy goal. Imran Khan has sought to develop a culture opposed to corruption in his own party; the Tehreek requires the party’s office bearers to declare their assets and tax returns; it has set in motion steps to elect all office bearers to the party; it will deny the party’s ticket to anyone with a record of corruption; and, it has promised to make all elected and unelected officials accountable to an independent National Accountability Board. Ending corruption at the top – Imran Khan maintains – will banish corruption from lower levels of government. I am afraid this is a wish not a well-considered expectation. It will take a lot of hard work – a variety of administrative reforms – to push back against Pakistan’s rampant corruption.

Reforming the country’s education system is a fundamental goal of the Tehreek. The country’s three-tiered system – consisting of private English-medium schools, public schools using Urdu and local lan-guages, and the madrasa system – is divisive. The English schools reproduce the class of brown sahibs and spread their pernicious culture to the growing middle classes; the poorly staffed and poorly equipped public schools deny the great majority of the country’s population a decent education; and the madrasas have become a welfare system for the poorest children. The plan is to replace this multi-tiered educational system, one that has perpetuated the colonial mindset, with a uniform system of education for everyone that will embrace mathematics, the natural and social sciences, and history while giving their proper place to the Pakistani languages, English, and the Islamic sciences.

Another important policy goal of the Tehreek is to create a system of local governance for Pakistan’s 50,000 villages. This will take local development funds out of the hands of politicians and put them in the hands of elected village councils, who will decide how this money is spent. They will also serve as the local government for the villages, with responsibility for maintaining municipal services, including a registry of births, deaths and marriages; and reviewing the work of local officials responsible for policing, health, irrigation, and education. In addition, like the panchayats of the pre-colonial era, the village councils will provide cheap and quick adjudication of local disputes.

Imran Khan has not articulated – at least in his book – an economic policy. Most likely, this omission is deliberate; he has had many occasions to set forth his economic policies but he has persisted in reiterating his position on a few signature issues, including corruption, lawlessness, and the betrayal of Pakistan’s , national interests by the rulers. As a result, we know very little about what policies he favors on infrastructure, industry, agriculture, urban labor, urban transportation, exports, energy, water, R&D, etc. This appears to suggest that he takes a rather Adam Smithian view of economic development. If you provide honest governance – I have heard him say this a few times – this will create the right incentives for all other matters to move in the right direction; the proverbial invisible hand will sort things out for the best. With their property rights secured, private individuals, pursuing their own interest, will generate savings, investments, innovation and, therefore, rapid economic growth. It is possible that Imran Khan has not had time to formulate policies in these areas; or he believes that the focus on a small number of core issues will best help to energize support for his party. In either case, it is this writer’s view, that he should quickly remedy this neglect. For good governance alone will not energize Pakistan’s people to become active economic agents of change. In addition, from an electoral standpoint, he is more likely to expand his support base by articulating his position on issues that are vital to the inter-ests of workers, peasants, ordinary citizens anxious for their health, and pro-spective investors in Pakistan’s economy.

Certainly, better governance will be a hugely positive thing for Pakistan; it can start to reverse the ruination produced by decades of rampant corruption. But good governance alone will not lift Pakistan out of poverty nor will it produce economic miracles. Objectively considered, no one will contest the British claim that they instituted ‘good governance’ in India once the rule of the East India Company was replaced by representatives of the Crown. Nevertheless, the evidence is also clear that during their long stay in India the British produced a great deal of economic misery; unfettered British imports destroyed India’s manufactures; British capital displaced indigenous capital from the most vital areas of the economy; their destruction of indigenous educational institutions produced mass illiteracy; and they pauperized the Indians. Good governance alone will not produce economic development if that governance is not used to encourage the growth of indigenous capital, institutions, technology, education and skills. Good governance must also be used to correct past social inequities and the new ones that a capitalist system is certain to produce. If good governance is used only in support of markets and capital, it will very quickly be overthrown by the inequities produced by the capitalist system. Let us not forget that Western democracies – especially in the United States and Britain – are now mostly hollow institutions; they are tolerated by corporate leaders only because they can game these systems to perpetuate their wealth and power.

6.

Notwithstanding the surge in his popularity in the cities, what are the chances that the Tehreek, if given the chance, will be able to form the country’s next government?

If Pakistan had a presidential system of government, it is more than likely that Imran Khan would sweep the polls; the rivals that any party might place against him would look like cretins. Under Pakistan’s parliamentary system, however, he faces an uphill task. In this decentralized system, where elections have to be won in several hundred local constituencies, the Tehreek candidates will have to fight against the power of corrupt local incumbents who will use their traditional authority, their money, dirty tricks, thugs, and help from their foreign masters to defeat a challenge that threatens to end their plundering binge. Winning a majority of these local contests cannot be easy.

On his path to power, Imran Khan will have to face a showdown with several factions of Pakistan’s corrupt elites. Many top generals, bureaucrats, politicians, media barons, loan-defaulting mill-owners, journalists, television anchors, and leaders of civil society have become entangled with American interests: they have cultivated ties with various US agencies; they or their close relatives hold green cards; they or their relatives work for subsidiaries of Western corporations; they have advised or worked for Western think tanks; their NGOs have thrived on foreign funding; and they have become rich and are hungry for more. Perhaps, the corrupt elites may concede victory to the Tehreek, since they may soon engineer a return to power; but it appears more likely that they will fight back, since this will end even if temporarily the bonanza they have enjoyed since 2001.

If it appears that the Tehreek is going to win the next elections scheduled for 2013, will these elections be held or, if they are allowed to proceed, will they not be rigged to ensure the Tehreek’s defeat? Alternatively, the political parties in power may try to increase the chaos in Pakistan’s cities, and thus pave the way for a military takeover that may end Imran Khan’s political career. More simply, the CIA or some segment of the corrupt elites, or the two working together, may assassinate Imran Khan. Can Imran Khan forestall these subterfuges? None of these options are certainties, but not to anticipate them and have contingent plans to deal with them would be reckless.

The power of the corrupt elites will be hardest to dislodge in Pakistan’s rural hinterlands that are still dominated largely by traditional power barons: the landlords, dynasties of so-called pirs, and tribal chiefs. Despite his tremendous charisma and notwithstanding his populist rhetoric, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto chose the easy route to electoral victory by co-opting the traditional rural power barons. This compromise brought an easy victory but, bending to the power of these barons, Bhutto proceeded to marginalize the left block in his party. At the same time, he implemented his farcical ‘socialist’ agenda of destroying Pakistan’s nascent capitalist class; he seized and handed over their industries, banks and even schools to the stalwarts in his party. Imran Khan too is aware of the handicap he faces in a parliamentary system; and – on a smaller scale so far – he too has opened leadership positions in his party to the old power barons. This compromise is certain to alienate the old workers in his party, but it also carries the more serious risk of alienating the young voters who have pinned their hopes for change on the Tehreek’s commitment to establish a just order in Pakistan. The propagandists of the old order are already hammering home this point. It does not inspire confidence when the Tehreek takes a strong stand against drone strikes but appoints a former foreign minister – who supported these strikes during his tenure – as the vice-chairman of his party.

Imran Khan’s defense of these compromises is not convincing. These old politicians – he parries – are welcome to join his party but he will vet them for corruption before he awards them the party’s tickets to the national and provincial assemblies. If the Tehreek cannot win the rural constituencies without enlisting the local power barons, he will have to embrace many more of their kind. Should he do this, however, he will surrender his chief strength – the unwavering commitment to reform the old order. Once the scions of the traditional political families begin to fill his party – even if they look less corrupt than others – the Tehreek cannot implement the reforms that will hurt the economic and political interests of this class of people.

Aware of these risks, Imran Khan is seeking to strengthen his hand by organizing his base, consisting of younger voters. He has launched a drive to register them as members of the Tehreek. Once the membership rolls are ready, he promises that they will elect their local, regional and national leaders. It is a formidable undertaking; it has never been done by any party other than the Jamat-e-Islami that restricts membership to practicing Muslims. If the Tehreek succeeds in this endeavor, this may begin to alter the dynamics of power at the local levels. As a grass-roots party with a strong organization, it could stand up more effectively against the power of the local barons. This will reduce the need to bring these rural barons into the party; the Tehreek could use them selectively to win a few seats in districts where its support base is weakest.

The Tehreek has a chance to extend its populist appeal to the rural areas with its plan to institute thousands of elected village councils. This is the only program that carries the prospect of mobilizing the peasants behind the Tehreek, but for this populist appeal to take roots, the party has to do two things. It must ensure that the rural population hears about this program and understands the benefits it can bring to them. More importantly, the Tehreek has to come up with a plan to assure the rural poor that these village councils will not be captured by the local power barons. How is this to be done? If the party members can be organized at the level of the villages, they can pit their organized strength against the bullying of the local thugs. The Tehreek should also create mobile brigades of young idealist college students who will be ready to travel and deploy to the villages to support – with their disciplined but non-violent presence – the rural poor during the elections to the village councils. The elections can be staggered to ensure that these college volunteers are available at the village elections. In addition, these elections should be held only after the Tehreek has had time to reform the police force.

Since it began drawing crowds, its rivals have accused the Tehreek of receiving support from the ‘establishment,’ a code word for the security agencies working under the umbrella of the Pakistan army. This is a smear. The Tehreek‘s support has grown because the people can see more plainly than before their country being pushed ever closer to the brink by the unbridled corruption of their rulers: and they see Imran as their only real chance of reversing their country’s slide into chaos. The Tehreek should continue to distance itself from any material assistance of the security agencies, but I hope that that it enjoys the tacit sup-port of the mid-level and junior officers and the jawans in the military, who cannot be too happy at having to kill other Pakistanis and whose lives were sacrificed by the military leadership so that they and the civilians leaders could collect blood money from the United States. In 1996, the Pakistan army faced a spate of desertions from its ranks as they were asked to fight the Afghan resistance and their Pakistani hosts. Although these desertions were contained, it cannot be doubted that resentment still simmers in the army’s rank and file against the military leadership for their readiness to do the bidding of the United States for pecuniary gain. One hopes that as the Tehreek ratchets its campaign, it will work in subtle ways to win the esteem of the rank and file in Pakistan’s army. The knowledge that their own rank and file have their eyes on their backs will restrain the generals who may want to extend their profitable partnership with the United States.

The Tehreek should also send out signals – convincing signals – that it has a second arrow in its quiver. It must let Pakistanis know that it is ready to mobilize its ranks for more forceful action if the corrupt political elites will use dirty tricks to extend their corruption binge for another five years. Pakistan cannot survive another five years of their depredations. In times of crisis – and Pakistan has never faced a greater crisis than it does now – the movement to save the country must be ready to proceed along two tracks: change through the electoral process but if that is obstructed the people must be ready to bring down the corrupt rulers through massive and sustained but non-violent protests. Victory only comes to those who are prepared to broaden their democratic struggle if change becomes impossible through the ballot box.

Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone …

— Maya Angelou, 1928 – Present

If destabilization, duplicity, insurgency and mass murder could surprise yet again, with the blame of the victim adding to the “shock and awe”, after Libya, Syria would certainly be a case in point.

America’s decades long plan  for another puppet government and quasi client state status for the country is well underway. Any observer of the shenanigans within the US Embassy in Damascus would be forgiven for mistaking it for a covert operations centre rather that a seat of diplomacy.

Michel Chossudovsky gives graphic life to Ambassador Ford’s – surely coincidentally – eminently pertinent and relevant qualifications.

Of course, no plan for a country’s ruination is complete without the help of the UN. Think Libya and Resolution 1973, the green light for a “humanitarian” blizkrieg, regime change, razed towns, murder from air and ground on an industrial scale, including most of the country’s leading family, its small grandchildren, and the butchering of Colonel Gaddafi, the country’s sovereign leader, whose body is still unaccounted for.

Lynch-law ruled under UN mandate.

Who then, better to be appointed “Peace Envoy” to Syria than Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General (1997-2006) who silently acquiesced to the deaths on average of 6,000 children a month in Iraq from “embargo-related causes”, throughout the 119 months of his tenure, bowing to the US-UK driven UN embargo?

Inevitably, for his silence, the man who one diplomat described as “like Pontius Pilate, he washes his hands”, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, jointly with the UN for, amongst other delusional rubbish, his “emphasizing its obligations as with regard to human rights.”

Presumably this “emphasis” also applied to his deafening muteness as America and Britain illegally bombed Iraq for his entire tenure, often daily, routinely re-destroying vital infrastructure and erasing lives in uncounted numbers.

The UN’s Baghdad cabal, with its fine restaurant and barbecue parties, ensconced at the Canal Hotel at Iraq’s expense were in a perfect position to visit these sites, record and account. They never bothered.

That was yesterday. Apart from Annan, the UN has another weapon for Syria — UN diplomats’ wives.

The wives of the German and British Ambassadors to the UN, Frau Huberta Voss-Wittig and Lady Sheila Lyall Grant, have released a video appeal and an online petition to President Assad’s wife, Syria’s First Lady, Asma al Assad. A performance of skin crawling, patronizing, head patting, treacled trash, which reflects nothing but the UN’s duplicity and its representatives privileged, reality- removed lives in its ivory tower.

The “initiative”, the pampered pair stress, is entirely independent, theirs alone, and nothing to do with their husbands.

Of course, ladies.

Frau Voss-Wittig’s involvement, it might be surmised, lies in “The German ‘no’ to the US about Iraq”, in 2002.  “Historically this was the deepest ever division between the White House and any post-cold-war German Chancellor.”

Additionally, in August 2002, Germany and France agreed on the “Declaration of Schwerin”, named for the German town where their representatives had a working dinner, resolving that they “had to oppose the war … and that they had to do it in public and as forcefully as possible.” An overt collision course with the US and UK.

Only when Angela Merkel took office were links tentatively repaired formally, but “shock-waves” remained. Two wives have clearly taken delivery of bricks and tools and set about erecting bridges, never mind demolishing those of others.

Sheila Lyall Grant is the wife of Sir Mark Lyall Grant, former political Director General of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a post with wide responsibilities including for Iraq, 2007-2009, and also line manager of post-invasion UK Ambassadors to Iraq.

He was senior policy adviser to the Foreign Secretary on various strategic Foreign Office priorities regarding Iraq, in which capacity he attended major European, G8, UN, OSCE and NATO meetings.

Sir Mark clearly went through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s rigorous and scrupulous selection process as to suitability for key posts:  “I was not an Arabist. I haven’t been posted in the Middle East”, he told the Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq on January 20, 2010.

However, he added,  “It naturally fell to the Foreign Office to look at where Britain’s long-term strategic interests were in Iraq and in the wider region …”

The Iraq priority for Sir Mark had been “a strong economy”.

Whilst an  “abidance of human rights and better social conditions, better social delivery to the people (were) highly desirable, I don’t say it is absolutely essential in the near future”, he told the Inquiry. (Emphasis mine.) “Let them rot” comes to mind.

Given that Nuri al Maliki’s Iraq is now firmly allied with Iran, and a disaster on every level, with economy, health, malnutrition and social conditions worse than the embargo years, it might be thought that the Foreign Office and Sir Mark would think twice before stepping aside, as his “independent” wife became another regional unguided missile.

The wives petition, which is pretty much the same as their toe-curling video reads, in part:

Dear Asma,

Some women care for style and some women care for their people. Some women struggle for their image and some women struggle for their survival. Some women have forgotten what they preached about peace and some women can only pray for their dead.

Hundreds of Syrian children have already been killed or injured. One day, our children will ask us what we have done to stop this bloodshed. What will your answer be, Asma? That you, Asma had no choice?

Every single child had a name and a family. Their lives will never be the same again. Asma, when you kiss your own children goodnight, another mother will find the place next to her empty.

These children could all be your children. They are your children. Stand up for peace, Asma. Speak out now. Stop being a bystander. No one cares about your image. We care about your action. Right now.

Lady Lyall Grant, has been a diplomat since 1980. Her most recent post was Head of VIP Visits at the Protocol Directorate in the heart of government, Whitehall.

Clearly her induction course in protocol did not include instructions on how to address the wife of a Head of  State.

Incidentally, Sir Mark apparently cares as little about the UN as he did Iraq. Asked at the Inquiry about the current role of UN in Iraq, he replied that they were no longer there after the bombing of their building in, he hesitated, then said,“2005, was it?”

The bombing of the Canal Hotel, which killed seventeen, including the Head of Mission, Sergio de Mello, and injured scores, was on August 19, 2003.

Corrected by the Chairman, Sir Mark responded,  “2003, was it? I apologise”, apparently as sanguine about his colleagues being blown to bits as in assessing that basic provisions to sustain Iraqi lives were not “absolutely essential.”

Now, for Syria, in a  crisis so clearly manipulated from without, as Kofi Annan ratchets up the number of “UN Observers” from ten to three hundred – surely as with Iraq, many will be meddlers, spies and worse — Sheila Lyall Grant writes,  “One day, our children will ask us what we have done to stop this bloodshed.”  Every child “had a family and a name.”

The child victims of Afghanistan, decimated by the invasion, also had names – but the Taliban was blamed. As did their small counterparts in Iraq since that illegal takeover, the 4.5 million orphans, 600.000 of whom live on the streets, are still somehow the fault of Saddam Hussein, and their traumatized little global siblings in Libya are still somehow the fault of Colonel Gaddafi, who brought the country the best welfare and highest living standard in Africa.

Perhaps the diplomatic duo have not noticed that Syria, generous host country to two million Iraqis fleeing their “liberation” now have their own nationals fleeing in fear over the border to Jordan; Syrians now joining the near similar number of Iraqis there, refugees themselves. Iraqis in Syria have nowhere to run.

The ladies have seemingly also missed the media coverage of senior, experienced Al Jazeera journalists, who have walked away from their livelihood in protest and disgust at the media distortion and manipulation of Syria’s plight, the portrayal, of course, that all blame lies with President al Assad.

Further, “Peace Envoy” Kofi Annan has already let slip that both he and the “truce monitors should help pave the way for much needed political process”.  Presumably he means with those insurgents with foreign passports. Read “regime change”.

And no planned destruction, overthrow, and general catastrophe would be complete without hidden weaponry and hardware with which the leader “oppresses his own people.” Syria, say – as ever – unnamed “activists” is hiding tanks and weapons in government compounds.

The media faithfully repeats the mantra. None seem to have mentioned that one of the “Peace Envoy’s” stipulations, to which Bashar al Assad agreed, was to take tanks and weapons off the streets. Where rebel violence is such that government troops are not forced to respond, they have been withdrawn — back to government compounds. Mr. Annan seemingly has not thought to point this out.

China’s Ambassador, Li Baodong, appears to be watching more closely than most. He expressed the hope that “the Supervision Mission will fully respect Syria’s sovereignty and dignity, act in strict accordance with the authorization of the Security Council, adhere to the principles of neutrality and impartiality …”   Quite!

If Lady Lyall Grant cares about children, which could equally be “her” children, she should ponder on, and tell her humanity-deficient husband of just one, which represents the trauma of every child, in every street, in every country targeted by an unholy Western alliance – and the UN.

It is an Iraqi boy of about five in an orphanage asleep. He has drawn a huge picture, depicting his mother on the floor, her arms outstretched. He is curled up on it. Every night he goes to sleep the same way — on the floor between her arms.

Well past time for the powerful to grow the hell up. Those children could be your children.

It has now been over half a century since Fidel Castro led a successful armed, popular revolt against U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Washington, though, is long in forgetting those that openly challenge and defy U.S. power (witness U.S. policy towards Iran). Thus, the collective punishment of the Cuban people has long since been cemented as an unquestionable tenet of U.S. foreign policy—the longest and most foolhardy embargo in history remains.

However, with the rise of center-left governments through the Americas, coupled with the weakening of U.S. regional influence attributable to its imperial overstretch in the Middle East, a growing push-back against U.S. Cuban policy has finally begun to take hold. In 2009, for example, the Organization of American States (OAS) voted in defiance of the U.S. to lift its nearly 50-year membership ban on Cuba. (Cuba still refuses to seek entry in the OAS, claiming that the organization is a tool of U.S. imperialism.)

Significantly, this growing impatience with U.S. Cuban policy has not been limited to the continent’s ascendant coalition of center-left governments. In fact, right-wing Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, a stanch ally of the U.S. and avid fighter of the Colombian Marxist rebel group F.A.R.C., publicly expressed his frustration with the obstinate U.S. posture towards Cuba just prior to this weekend’s summit. As Santos warned:

It would be just as unthinkable to hold another hemispheric meeting with a prostrate Haiti, as it would be with Cuba absent… isolation, embargo and indifference have shown their ineffectiveness. It’s an anachronism that keeps us anchored to a Cold War era that’s been overcome for decades now.

Indeed, for Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa boycotted the weekend’s summit, directly citing U.S. policy towards Cuba. The foreign ministers of Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay, moreover, stated prior to the summit that their presidents would refrain from signing any summit declaration unless the US removed its veto of future Cuban participation.

Facing such a diplomatic backlash against his government’s failed Cuban policy, President Obama—quite remarkably, we might add—chose to defend the growing isolation of the U.S. by calling for all to move beyond any Cold War era mindset. As Obama declared:

Sometimes I feel as if in some of these discussions, or at least the press reports, we’re caught in a time warp, going back to the 1950s and gunboat diplomacy and Yankees and the Cold War, and this and that and the other. That’s not the world we live in today.

This, though, is in fact the very world in which U.S. policy remains suspended. And if the past weeks have demonstrated anything in this regard, it is a world in which the U.S. shall long remain.

After all, in mid-March, the U.S. State Department rejected applications from two senior Cuban diplomats to travel to New York City to take part in a panel discussion at the Left Forum. The State Department cited Cuba’s refusal to permit American diplomats freedom of travel outside Havana as reason for the travel ban. But unlike the U.S., Cuba has not once tried to overthrow the U.S. government. But such is life in the U.S. Cold War time warp.

And then, of course, this past week saw the U.S. sports world rise to express its collective outrage at the supposedly incendiary comments made by new Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen. Guillen’s crime: a public expression of admiration for Fidel Castro. For such a grave transgression Guillen was forced to issue an immediate apology, and denounce Castro as a universally hated tyrant. Nonetheless, Guillen was still slapped with a five game suspension for ruffling the feathers of the rabidly anti-Castro Miami community. Free speech, Guillen no doubt learned, has its limits.

(Admiration for the Cuban Revolution, it must be noted, ought not be something to instinctively vilify. Since the 1959 revolution wrestled the island free from the jackboot of U.S. imperialism, life expectancy in Cuba has gone from just under 60 years to just under 80 years. And as governments at all levels in the U.S. take a hatchet to social spending, Cubans continue to enjoy free education and health care at every level.)

So, as the states inhabiting the Americas look toward forging a future free from Cold War antagonisms, the U.S. remains fixated on the imagined red menace looming 90 miles off its coast. No U.S. war, it appears, is easily brought to a close.

Seasoned U.S. analysts seem to agree with the Iranian assessment. Stephen M Walt writes in Foreign Policy, “For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the Obama administration is thinking about Iran… I’m puzzled.” Gary Sick, writing for CNN, predicts dire consequences of an attack on Iran and seems to question its wisdom. So why is Obama being so confrontational? So irrational?

The president as usual tries to position himself in the middle, chiding Republican opponents for “loose talk” about war while assuring Israeli prime minister Netanyahu that the U.S. will move in “lock step” with Israel. But what is the logic of offering Iran a “last chance” to stop doing what it is legally entitled to do? The only logic I can see here–and it is a perverse form–resides in the assumption that as the bombs start to fall Washington will be able to say, “We were patient, we went that last mile, and gave them their opportunity, but they defied the international community and so we (or Israel) had to attack.” It is 2003 all over again.

Recall that Obama was elected in large part due to his opposition to the war in Iraq. In a 2002 speech he declared that he opposed “the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.” But he never really denounced the campaign of lies, or expressed moral indignation at the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, the uprooting of millions, the spread of ethnic and sectarian conflicts following the U.S. attack Rather, he saw the war as a “strategic blunder.” Still, he was widely regarded as the “anti-war” candidate.

Once elected, however, he proved to be a virtual Bush clone in foreign affairs. He chose hawkish Hilary Clinton (who had strongly supported the attack on Iraq and defended her position until late in her campaign) as Secretary of State, to the applause of the neocons who correctly anticipated that she would provide continuity with their own regime-change policies. He ordered U.S. troops out of Iraq, but he can’t take credit for the withdrawal. It occurred in accordance with the agreement between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government worked out in 2008. (Indeed Obama attempted to renegotiate the agreement to allow for the continued presence of U.S. troops and bases but was thwarted by the Iraqis who detested the occupation. In other words: it is despite not because of Obama that the U.S. has pulled its troops out of Iraq.)

On Iran, Obama made it clear from his very first post-election press conference that he would maintain a policy of confrontation. Asked about Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s message congratulating him on his election, he sidestepped the question but sternly (and obviously according to a script) declared that “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon” is “unacceptable.” And ever since his administration has promoted the assumption that Iran has a secret, active military nuclear program which must be stopped by any means necessary.

(This is the case even when, as in recent days, the White House agrees that there is no hard evidence for the existence of a nuclear weapons program! The more or less open discussion with the Israelis involves the establishment of the “red line” that would justify military action. What seems to really be “unacceptable” is the mere knowledge and ability to produce nuclear weapons. But you can’t say that too often in public. You can’t say, “We will deny Iran the right to reach the technological level that many other countries have done, legally and without our objection–because we don’t like Iran!)

Exactly like George W. Bush, Obama has repeatedly stated that he leaves “no options off the table” including military force.

How have we reached this “last chance” interval? The irrationality is in fact mind-boggling. How is it that while the entire U.S. intelligence community has on the basis of exhaustive research and analysis concluded–twice–that Iran terminated its (incipient) program of research in 2003 and does not have a nuclear weapons program; and while the Joint Chiefs of Staff is firmly opposed to an attack on Iran; and while the IAEA has repeatedly reported no evidence for diversion of enriched uranium for military purposes–Obama can still treat Iran’s civilian program as an imminent danger? And threaten war?

Since 9/11 we have seen how powerful campaigns of misinformation can shape public opinion. Hermann Goering’s observation (that if you tell people they’re under attack you can always drag the people along to support a military response) has been repeatedly confirmed. To justify the attack on Iraq, Madison Avenue techniques were used: coordinated talking-points made in televised interviews (“We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud over New York City); leaking of dubious “intelligence products” through cooperative journalists like Judith Miller and Jeffrey Goldberg; proliferating charges of “drones of death” carrying biological and chemical weapons, al-Qaeda training camps, meetings between al-Qaeda figures and Baathist officials including Saddam himself, mobile biological weapons factories, etc.

All lies! When no evidence of weapons of mass production or al-Qaeda ties surfaced, the administration brushed it off as the result of “faulty intelligence” and urged people to look forward, not backward.

This is what Obama said too, as he took office. He was urged by some to have the Justice Department prosecute those responsible for the criminal war based on lies. “We need to look forward, not backwards,” he replied. He then moved forward to accelerate the Afghan War, increasing U.S. troops from around 10,000 to over 90,000. He moved on to bomb Pakistan and Yemen with drones, to bomb Libya to achieve regime change, and is now threatening Syria. The current administration is as bloody as the last one.

Preparations for an attack on Iran have been made, like those for the Iraq War, through a media campaign involving terrifying phrases and accusations. “Mushroom cloud over New York” has been replaced with “existential threat,” “nuclear holocaust,” “threats to wipe Israel off the map,” “calls for the destruction of Israel.” This is fear-mongering with a twist. Few are suggesting that Iran constitutes a major threat to the U.S.; instead the focus is on the putative threat to Israel.

Many have pointed out that key architects of the Iraq War (including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser) authored a report under Perle’s leadership in 1996 for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. (They did so presumably in their capacity as U.S.-Israeli dual nationals.) The paper, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” advocated pre-emptive strikes against Iran and Syria, regime change in Iraq, and the abandonment of “land for peace” negotiations with Palestinians. In fact, the Israeli government was delighted with the toppling of Saddam Hussein, a supporter of militant Palestinian groups. But the war propagandists said little about Israel’s interests in regime change. They surely didn’t want to encourage the perception that this would be a “war for Israel.”

This time is different. Obama might tell Jeffrey Goldberg–as he did in an interview last week–that the U.S. would “still be a profound national-security interest of the United States to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon” even if “Israel weren’t in the picture.” But Israel’s plainly at the center of the political discourse on Iran in this country.

Norman Podhoretz, the “father of neoconservativism,” begged the Bush administration to bomb Iran in 2007, arguing that the world was at a crossroads such as 1938, and that appeasement was likely to produce another holocaust. We’ve been hearing this shrill rhetoric for years. It is illogical. Ahmadinejad is not a Hitler. He has limited powers under the Iranian system, and does not control foreign policy. If he was inclined to annihilate Jews, you’d think he’d begin with the 25,000 or so Jews in Iran, but he distinguishes them from Zionists and says he respects their rights.

Let’s dissect some of the sensationalistic language underlying the (joint U.S.-Israeli) drive for confrontation.

Iran’s nuclear weapons program. If you do a Google search, you’ll find tens of thousands of journalistic references to this concept as though it were a fact. I have not seen a poll showing how many people in this country truly assume that such a program exists, but I’d wager most do. So the Big Lie has been effective.

What if mainstream journalists made it a point to constantly reiterate the following?

• The Iranians have consistently stated that they do not have or want a nuclear weapons program. They want to enrich uranium for nuclear medicine and for electrical power. They are not necessarily doing anything other than what Brazil, Argentina, Japan and other countries have done under IAEA investigation, and as signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they are absolutely entitled to do so. (The language of the treaty is clear: signatory nations have the “inalienable right” to develop civilian Nuclear programs.)

• The chief decision-maker in Iran is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. His religious edicts (fatwa) are considered binding law by Shiite Muslims. In 2005 he issued a fatwa banning the production, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons as un-Islamic.

• The entire U.S. intelligence community (CIA, FBI, military intelligence, etc.) in two National Intelligence Estimates (in 2007 and 2010) concluded with a high degree of confidence that Iran does not have an active nuclear program.

• Israeli intelligence has concluded the same thing.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has never found any evidence for a nuclear weapons program. It has found some evidence for concealment of information, and complained of some lack of cooperation. But due to political manipulation, and the appointment of Yukiya Amano as director in 2009, the agency has become increasingly critical of Iran, packaging dated and dubious data to put pressure on Tehran. (A U.S. diplomatic cable leaked by the Guardian states that while campaigning for the appointment to replace the independent, respected scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei “Amano reminded [the] ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 [the developing countries group], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the US court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.” The 2005 IAEA resolution leading to UNSC sanctions against Iran was determined by politics, not science. 22 of 35 then-member nations of the Agency voted to declare Iran in “non-compliance” with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It was basically a matter of NATO nations voting as a bloc, with Algeria, Brazil, China, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russian Federation, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen opposed or abstaining.)

• The most recent IAEA report, widely reported as damning, really just repeats old charges. The principle one involves the design of a nuclear warhead found on a laptop computer allegedly stolen from a dead Iranian nuclear scientist and presented to the U.S. in 2004. It’s thought to have been provided through the Mujahaddin Khalq (MEK), a militant organization of Iranian exiles (which fought on behalf of Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War, when the U.S. was supporting Saddam’s invasion of the neighboring Country, and which happens to be listed by the State Department as a “terrorist” organization) or by Israeli intelligence. In 2005 after the U.S. shared the find with the IAEA, the New York Times quoted a “senior European diplomat” as stating, “I can fabricate that data”; the material, he said, “is open to doubt.” Iran has stated that the laptop evidence is fake. It does not seem to have caused U.S. intelligence agencies to alter their assessment that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program.

• Last month the IAEA delegation to Iran was denied admission to the Parchin military Base. The IAEA mandate does not include demanding spot checks on military bases, and the Iranians claim that the request last month was inappropriate. Amano depicted this as a matter of serious concern, stoking suspicion of nuclear activity. However Iran consented to thorough examination of base sites by the IAEA in 2004, 2005 (twice) and 2006, and the agency found nothing suspicious.

Iran has called for the destruction of Israel. How many times have we heard that? But what are the specific quotes? The Iranian leadership, along with many and varied forces in the world (including some Israeli Jewish historians), believe that the state of Israel was established through savage violence at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population. They believe the refugee problem was due to Zionist terrorism–which is in fact not a terribly controversial thesis on this planet. (There seems little question that between April 9, 1948 when the terror began and May 15 when Arab armies “invaded” on Palestinians’ behalf over 300,000 had fled for their lives, while the Israeli Haganeh forces systematically wiped 170 Palestinian towns and villages off the map.) Iranians like many people around the world do not like the concept of a “Jewish state” established at others’ expense and feel a sense of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Some Iranian leaders address gatherings where the people shout, “Death to Israel!” just as they shout, “Death to America!” But how does the rhetoric translate into action?

What if mainstream journalists made it a point to constantly reiterate the following?

• In the spring of 2003, the Iranian government of President Mohamed Khatami (usually depicted as a “moderate” and advocate of “the dialogue of civilizations”) sent a letter to the U.S. State Department via the Swiss ambassador to Tehran (who handles U.S.-Iranian relations). The letter proposed normalization of U.S.-Iranian relations, and acknowledged the need to discuss Iranian support for groups the U.S. lists as “terrorist” and also its nuclear program. It indicated that Iran would support the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative endorsed by the Arab League. (This entails support for a two-state solution and recognition of Israel.) Vice President Cheney was infuriated, insisted that the administration ignore the letter, and berated the Swiss diplomat for even passing it on.

Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”. You even see: “…has repeatedly” called for this. It’s not true.

(Keep in mind that the mainstream media has been inclined to circulate disinformation about him Ahmadinejad from the day he was elected in June 2005. He was falsely identified as one of the students who took U.S. embassy personnel hostage during the 1979-81 Hostage Crisis, and President Bush publicly referred to “his involvement” in it. The CIA subsequently quietly concluded that he hadn’t been involved.)

The key statement was made at a conference in Tehran October 2005. Numerous translators have questioned this rendering of his comments, some arguing that there is no such expression as “wipe off the map” in Persian (Farsi). The statement by Ahmadinejad is actually a paraphrase of a statement by the Ayatollah Khomeni (d. 1989), who declared that Israel would go the way of the Shah of Iran’s regime, and that of the Soviet Union.

Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor of Middle East history fluent in Farsi, smelled “the whiff of war propaganda” in the widely reproduced quotation. His own translation runs as follows: “the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shaved).”

The vigorously pro-Israel Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated the phrase as “this regime” must be “eliminated from the pages of history.” The word for “page” can also e translated as “stage.” The Khomeini statement seems a prediction, rather than a call for specific action. (And is it not entirely thinkable that demographics, settlement, and culture might produce within the next hundred years a multicultural, multi-ethnic, non-religious state in what is now Israel/Palestine? Even some prominent Israeli Jews have suggested this.)

In any case the Iranian Foreign Ministry responded to the furor with a clarification. In February 2006 the Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, answered a question at a news conference about Ahmadinejad’s statement. “How is it possible to remove a country from the map?” he asked. “[Ahmadinejad] is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime.”

Ahmadinejad himself has repeatedly said that his remark was misinterpreted. In January 2006, complaining about the “hue and cry” over his statement, he said “Let the Palestinians participate in free elections and they will say what they want.” In July 2008 he told a meeting of the D-8 nations (Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey) that his country would never initiate military action but that the Israeli regime would eventually collapse on its own.

Later that year he was asked by a journalist: “If the Palestinian leaders agree to a two-state solution, could Iran live with an Israeli state?” His response: “If [the Palestinians] want to keep the Zionists, they can stay … Whatever the people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it’s very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums.”

What if mainstream journalists made it a point to constantly reiterate the following?

• Iranian government officials have repeatedly stated that they will defer to the Palestinians in deciding the their future, and expressed openness to the Saudi two-state solution endorsed by the Arab League.

Existential threat. Israeli politicians echoed by U.S. columnists continually refer to the Iranian nuclear program as a threat to the very existence of the state of Israel. But intelligence experts, like Ephraim Halevy, who headed Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad from 1998 to 2002, disagree. “The State of Israel cannot be destroyed,” he told journalists last November. He added: “[Iran is] far from posing an existential threat to Israel” and warned, “An attack on Iran could affect not only Israel, but the entire region for 100 years.” He even declared that Jewish extremism within Israel was a greater problem than Iran: “The growing Haredi radicalization poses a bigger risk than Ahmadinejad.”

Those raising the fear of an existential threat meet with the logical reply: “Given that Israel is armed with (undeclared) nuclear weapons, and could respond many times over to an Iranian attack, why would rational people in Iran ever bomb Israel?” The fear-mongers’ reply is simple: “We’re not dealing with rational people.”

The Iranian leaders, they argue, are Islamist fanatics, eager to court martyrdom and unconcerned about their people’s well-being. They are so driven by anti-Semitism that they would sacrifice millions of Iranians just to wipe out the Jews as Hitler failed to do. The key quote summoned in support of this argument is from former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2001: “If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession, the strategy of colonization would face a stalemate because the application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damage in the Muslim world.”

This statement (in a Friday sermon) noted the obvious. At present, Israel enjoys a regional nuclear monopoly (although we should note that Pakistan, a country in “the world of Islam,” already had nuclear weapons at the time Rafsanjani spoke.) If nearby Muslim countries had nuclear weapons, Israel’s freedom of action (“strategy of colonization”) would be limited. The statement, while ambiguous, does not threaten Israel but implies that given its size an relatively small population Israel would fare far worse in a nuclear exchange than a country like Iran—if Iran were to emulate Israel and acquire nukes.

I have seen this quotation reproduced with the significant section “…the strategy of colonization would face a stalemate because…” omitted, making the statement seem more ominous than it is. It has been used too often as “evidence” that the Iranian leadership positively looks forward to incurring damage to Iran so long as it can bomb Israel, leaving nothing.

This of course requires one to believe that the Iranians are not only eager to annihilate Israeli Jews but indifferent to the lives of Palestinians (about 20% of the Israeli total) and the approximately five percent of Israelis who are neither Jews nor Arabs. Rafsanjani is generally considered a “moderate” and political foe of Ahmadinejad. This interpretation of his statement is (once again) fear-mongering.

What if mainstream journalists made it a point to constantly reiterate the following?

• Iran has not attacked another country in several hundred years. It has no territorial claims on its neighbors and enjoys good relations with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iraq. It spends less than two percent of its GDP on military spending, as compared to Israel’s over six percent, and just about half as much in dollar terms as Israel. Iran spends $89 per capita per year on military spending, as opposed to $1,882 in Israel and $2,141 in the U.S. (the highest in the world).

• U.S. and Israeli military and intelligence officials agree that the Iranian leadership is rational and not reckless. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, recently told CNN that “the Iranian regime is a rational actor.” Meir Dagan, another former Mossad chief (Halevy’s successor, from 2002 to 2009), recently told CBS, “The regime in Iran is a very rational regime… No doubt that the Iranian regime is maybe not exactly rational based on what I call Western-thinking, but no doubt they are considering all the implications of their actions.” Dagan meanwhile calls an Israeli attack on Iran “the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

Finally: Nuclear holocaust. A brilliant propaganda expression, combining the terrifying imagery of the mushroom cloud with the memory of systematic round-ups and genocide.

But if the Iranian leadership seeks to imitate the Nazis and effect a “final solution” to the Jewish question, why did Ayatollah Khomeini issue a fatwa in 1979, when he returned to Iran, Requiring respect for the rights of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians? Why does Iran have a community of some 25,000 Jews (the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel)? Why does the Iranian constitution specify (Art. 64), that out of the 270 members of the legislature “the Zoroastrians and Jews will each elect one representative; Assyrian and Chaldean Christians will jointly elect one representative; and Armenian Christians in the north and those in the south of the country will each elect one representative”?

These are surely inconvenient truths to some, who want to exaggerate to oppression of Jews in Iran to support their apocalyptic Chicken Little scenarios. One finds a classic example in two pieces published in the National Post of Canada in May 2006 alleging that the Iranian parliament hadpassed laws requiring “special insignia” for Jews and other religious minorities. Written by the extreme rightwing journalist Amir Taheri, an Iranian expatriate who had firmly supported the Shah, and Chris Wattie, a Canadian journalist who’d been embedded with Canadian forces in Afghanistan and glorified their mission, it was picked up by UPI.

It was published in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and Jerusalem Post. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was asked about it in a press briefing. “Despicable,” he raged, just like “Germany under Hitler.” Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, readily accepted the report. “This is reminiscent of the Holocaust,” he stated. “”Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.” But it was 100% disinformation! It was quickly refuted by (among others) by the Iranian ambassador to Canada and the indignant Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament. The paper retracted the story and apologized, but some damage had been done–as was surely the intention.

Also in 2006, Netanyahu offered this splendid historical analogy: “In 1938,” he averred, “Hitler didn’t say he wanted to destroy [the Jews]; Ahmadinejad is saying clearly that this is his intention, and we aren’t even shouting. At least call it a crime against humanity. We must make the world see that the issue here is a program for genocide.” Outgoing US UN Ambassador John Bolton called on the UN International Court of Criminal Justice to charge Ahmadinejad with “inciting genocide.” “It’s time to take action,” he told a Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations symposium. “We’re being given early warning, unambiguously, on what his intentions are.” A mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv!

What if mainstream journalists made it a point to constantly reiterate the following?

• There are over 30 operating synagogues in Iran, kosher stores and restaurants and Hebrew schools.

• While by law there is one member of parliament elected per 150,000 people, the Jewish community of 25,000 is guaranteed one seat.

• While life is oppressive for everyone in Iran, an Islamist theocracy, Jews hold jobs in government ministries and state-owned firms. Their lot may be unhappy, like the lot of most Iranians. But it hardly resembles the lot of Jews in Hitler’s Germany.

“The stupidest idea I ever heard,” says the former Mossad chief. Still, the U.S. government headed by “hope” and “change” candidate Obama is telling Iran to submit to U.S. diktat while it has the chance, or get bombed.

It is all, as the Iranian diplomats observe, irrational.

Libya

In his March 19, 2011 interview with Stephen Shalom (“Libyan Developments”) Achcar discusses what he says is the “composition of the opposition,” which he said was the case for “all the other revolts shaking the region.” They were “very heterogeneous,” and that in “all the disparate forces [there] is a rejection of the dictatorship and a longing for democracy and human rights.”¹

This was written and published nearly a month after numerous reports began coming in about vicious “rebel” attacks on black Africans. But for Achcar, who says nothing of the plight of black Africans, their tormentors long for “human rights.”

As for these “disparate forces” Achcar said “the Libyan opposition represents a mixture of forces, and the bottom line is that there is no reason for any different attitude toward them than to any other of the mass uprisings in the region.” But there were not, in places like Egypt, Bahrain and Tunisia, former regime officials (with the likes of former Libyan justice minister, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil) leading the rebels in alliance with the West, nor the racist attacks on minorities. Egypt and Tunisia didn’t need several months of NATO bombings to overthrow their governments, nor did they need to carry out terrorist attacks, indiscriminately shelled civilians, torture, execute and deny humanitarian assistance. And unlike Benghazi, Egyptian and Tunisian didn’t fly Al Qaeda flags over their courts following their revolutions. Achcar’s “bottom line” is simply false. There was and still are plenty of reasons to have a different attitude towards what happened in Libya and what happened in Egypt and Tunisia.²

In Egypt and Tunisia the uprisings were actually greeted with popular support. In Libya it was the Gaddafi regime which retained the popular support, as witnessed by the massive pro-government rally³ in Tripoli in July of 2011, the “citizen volunteers”⁴ of Sirte, and the residents of Bani Walid⁵ who have reclaimed their town since the fall of the government. It’s worth remembering that Libyan “rebels” would never have been able to overthrow the government and unleash the nightmare that they did without the help of NATO. Or as Luis Rumbaut, a Cuban-American lawyer put it:

At its peak, the 26 of July Movement had some 300 fighters, ill fed and poorly armed, bitten by mosquitoes and accompanied by the rain. Against them, Gen. Fulgencio Batista mobilized an army, a navy, an air force, a coast guard, and the Rural Guard, aside from a network of spies and irregular bands of enforcers at his command.

How could the 26 of July Movement have achieved victory? The majority of the people were against Batista and for the 26 of July. There was also an active underground, and organized resistance among student, union, and political organizations. Batista fell because he had no support. Revolutions succeed when the system they replace can no longer survive.

Libya’s rebels are a different story …⁶

In the same interview with Shalom, Achcar spoke of “the urgency of preventing the massacre that would have inevitably resulted from an assault on Benghazi by Gaddafi’s forces, and the absence of any alternative means of achieving the protection goal,” by saying that “no one can reasonably oppose” UN Resolution 1973.

The problem that many on the left had was not so much the wording of the resolution—though it was pointed out how one-sided it was in that the resolution demanded “that the Libyan government comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, human rights and refugee law and take all measures to protect civilians and meet their basic needs, and to ensure the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian assistance,” but said nothing of the legal obligations of the rebels—but that hardly anyone expected the US and NATO to actually protect civilians, de-escalate the conflict, or accept a cease fire (which the resolution made its first demand for). In fact, by the time the resolution was adopted, and Achcar’s interview was published, the Libyan government had already offered a cease fire which was rejected!

Here is a list of the numerous ceasefire offers. The source of the offers is revealing.⁷

February

25| Gaddafi’s Son Sees Negotiaton, Ceasefire in Libya

25| Gaddafi’s Son to Negotiate Ceasefire

March

18| Libya Calls Ceasefire in Response to UN Resolution

18| Pro-Gaddafi Forces to Observe Ceasefire

18| Libya Ceasefire Analysis

18| David Cameron Cautious over Libya Ceasefire Offer

18| Gaddafi’s Ceasefire May Split Coalition

18| Clinton Unimpressed by Libya’s Ceasefire Pledge

19| Libyan Minister Claims Gaddafi is Powerless and the Ceasefire is Solid

21| US-led Forces Reject Gaddafi Ceasefire

27| Turkey Offers to Broker Ceasefire Talks

April

1| Libyan Rebels Prepared to Accept Ceasefire if Gaddafi Lifts Sieges, Allows Protests

1| Libyan Rebels Seek Ceasefire as US Vows to Withdraw Jets

6| Gaddafi Accepts African Roadmap to End Libya Civil War Including Ceasefire

7| Gaddafi Writes to Obama, Urging End to Airstrikes

10| Libyan Rebels Spurn African Union Ceasefire Unless Gaddafi Gives Up Power

11| Ceasefire ‘Must Meet UN Conditions’ says Hague

11| Benghazi Rebels Reject African Union Truce Plan

13| Crucial Libya Talks as Rebels Again Reject Ceasefire

19| UN Appeals for Libya Ceasefire

30| Gaddafi Calls for Ceasefire as NATO Strikes Tripoli

30| Muammar Gaddafi Calls for Ceasefire in Libyan TV Address

30| Libyan Rebels Reject Gaddafi Offer

30| Libyan Opposition Rejects Gaddafi Truce Offer

30| Rebels and NATO dismiss Gaddafi Truce Offer

May

3| Turks Offer Libya Ceasefire Plan as Western, Arab Officials Meet in Rome

26| Libya Ready for Ceasefire, Demands End to NATO Strikes

26| Libyan Regime Makes Peace Offer that Sidelines Gaddafi

26| Libya’s Prime Minister Calls for Ceasefire

26| White House Says Libya Ceasefire Not Credible

26| Libya Ceasefire Offer Regarded Coldly by the West

26| Libya Approaches Spain for NATO Ceasefire

27| Comment: Why no mention of a Ceasefire for Libya, Obama?

27| US Rejects Libya Ceasefire, Vows War will Continue

28| Talks Under Way to End Libya Fighting

29| South Africa PM to Visit Gaddafi, Push for Ceasefire and Talks

31| Zuma Says Gaddafi Ready for Truce

31| Gaddafi Wants Truce in Libya, Says Zuma, but Terms Remain Unclear

June

2| Comment: NATO’s Strategy in Libya is Working – Talks with Gaddafi Won’t

10| Libya’s Gaddafi Writes to Congress for Ceasefire

11| Gaddafi Ceasefire Letter to USA

11| Gaddafi’s Letter to Congress Urges Ceasefire

21| Arab League Chief Calls for Ceasefire and Political Solution

22| Italy Asks NATO to Consider Ceasefire in Libya

22| Italy Ceasefire Call Exposes NATO Split on Libya

22| Italy Urges Suspension of Hostilities

22| Downing Street Rejects Allies’s Call for Libyan Ceasefire

22| France Rejects Italian Libya Ceasefire Call

23| Italian Minister Calls for Libyan Ceasefire

23| Italy Breaks Ranks to Call for Ceasefire in Libya so Aid can Get Through

26| Calls for Ceasefire in Libya Ring Louder

[Arab League has Second Thoughts About Air-Strike]

26| Gaddafi Vows Not to Put Pressure on AU Peace Talks

27| Comment: Libya is not Ready for a Political Solution

July

3| Libya Rebels Welcome African Union’s Gaddafi-Free Talks Offer

12| Nato Suggests Ramadan Libya Ceasefire

17| NATO Chief Cautious on Libya Ceasefire

20| France: Ceasefire Deal Could Include Gaddafi Remaining in Libya

21| France Says Gadaffi Can Stay in Libya if He Relinquishes Power

22| UN Peace Envoy Suggests a Ceasefire to be Declared

22| UN Plan Sees Unity Government in Post-Gaddafi Libya

26| Comment: Libya’s Stalemate Shows it is Time to Tempt Gaddafi Out, Not Blast Him Out

28| UN Official: Truce and Transitional Pact Key to Ending Libya Crisis

August

12| UN Calls for Ceasefire in Libya and Political Talks by Gaddafi and Rebels

15| UN Envoy Seeks Ceasefire to Break Impasse in Libya with Tunisia Meetings

18| Gaddafi Regime Urges Ceasefire as Libya Rebels Claim Control of Key Refinery

18| Casualties Mount in West Libya as Regime Urges Ceasefire

18| Libya Regime PM Calls for a Ceasefire

19| Libya Regime Calls for Ceasefire

24| Gaddafi’s Son Offers to Broker Ceasefire

September

1| NATO Keeps War Footing Until Gaddafi Regime is Smashed

4| The UN was Hijacked on Libya

28| Venezuela Calls for Libyan Ceasefire

Notice the date of the offers and those that preceded Achcar’s interview and his comment about “the absence of any alternative means of achieving the protection goal.” And let’s not forget that President Obama responded to the African Union’s attempt to negotiate a peaceful settlement by sending an envoy to the region to pressure them to stop their efforts.⁸

Which brings up another thing. Achcar wrote of “the urgency of preventing the massacre that would have inevitably resulted from an assault on Benghazi by Gaddafi’s forces.” Elsewhere in the interview Achcar also said, “The fact remains, nevertheless, that if Gaddafi were permitted to continue his military offensive and take Benghazi, there would be a major massacre,” and that “from an anti-imperialist perspective one cannot and should not oppose the no-fly zone, given that there is no plausible alternative for protecting the endangered population.”

Somehow it is anti-imperialist to go along with an imperialist intervention on the dubious grounds that it’s a “humanitarian intervention.” And like other pro-interventionsts at the time, Achcar says nothing about the validity of the claim itself. Had he bothered to look he would have found out that the claims were made by the rebels themselves, and there was no evidence to support the claim. Nearly three weeks before Achcar talks of “the urgency,” the Russian government said their satellite images revealed no truth to the claim.⁹

This kind of incident is not without an historical precedent. It was in August of 1990 when the US launched Operation Desert Shield for the claimed purpose of protecting Saudi Arabia from an Iraqi invasion, which was said to be imminent as Iraqi troops were moving towards the border. Like the Benghazi claim, Russia furnished evidence to the contrary.

Even the person at the UN who spread the Benghazi claim, later admitted he had no evidence and was basing it on what the rebels told him. It was Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir, the Secretary-General of the Libyan League for Human Rights, who went to the UN to make the claim without it ever being verified. It was accepted hook, line and sinker, and the rest is, as the saying goes, history.¹⁰

And it wasn’t just that many saw the UN resolution as an escalation of the conflict, rather than a de-escalation. Many also didn’t think the US/NATO would protect civilians. Again as noted, by the time the resolution was adopted it was already known that NATO’s racist rebels were already committing massacres of black Africans. And as time went on these massacres turned into a full-blown campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, all of which received no concern or interest from the NATO powers who were “protecting civilians” in Libya, and certainly not activists like Gilbert Achcar who saw the perpetrators as “longing for democracy and human rights.”

Worse, at one point Achcar actually had the nerve to write that he “won’t dwell on the unacceptable arguments of those who try to shed doubt on the nature of the uprising’s leadership.” For Achcar, anyone who dared to criticize them “are most often the same as those who believe Gaddafi is a progressive.” It was very troubling to read a leftist scholar like Achcar say that it is unacceptable to doubt leaders, and to claim that those who do are apologists for a dictator. This was the same argument the pro-war right-wingers used against anti-war activists in the rush to war with Iraq in 2003. If you opposed the war then you were an apologist for Saddam Hussein. This is an observation worth consideration, especially when Achcar’s pro-US war in Syria is being repeated.¹¹

Considering Achcar’s silence on the things mentioned above and his comment in the interview with Shalom that “one must maintain a very critical attitude toward what the Western powers might do,” it is hard to imagine he himself maintained such an attitude. Where was the critical attitude towards the rebel leadership, which he said it was “unacceptable” to have? Where was the critical attitude towards their claims?

It would be bad enough that he made the colossal mistake once, but now Achcar is making it again. This time in regards to Syria. The difference between his mistake on Libya is that he at least had some (though not much) protection of criticism since his comments preceded much of the nightmare that happened afterwards.

For example, the ceasefire offers by the Libyan government continued, while the rebels rejected them and carried out massive war crimes.

Earlier this year the UN released its Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya, where it too notes that there was no evidence of genocide by Gaddafi’s forces. While they did find excessive use of force against their political opponents, “the Commission has not found evidence that one particular group was targeted more than others.” However, they did find extensive evidence of the rebels targeting various communities, including Tawerghans. It also noted that “from the beginning of the uprising in February 2011, dark-skinned migrant workers were targeted – including being killed,” and that, “The Commission continues to receive reports of sub-Saharan Africans, some long-term residents of Libya, being arbitrarily arrested and beaten in detention.” It also noted that it is “deeply concerned that no independent investigations or prosecutions appear to have been instigated into killings committed by [the rebels].” Much of the documented crimes committed by the rebels amount to genocide, though of course considering the politicization of the UN it is not likely that their reasonable “recommendations” will ever be implemented, or that the UN will ever refer it to the ICC.¹²

The report also found no evidence of Gaddafi using mercenaries, or child soldiers. This is not surprising because there was never any proof of the “mercenaries.” Amnesty International was in Libya looking into this from late February to late May. After three months of looking this is what they had to say,

We examined this issue in depth and found no evidence. The rebels spread these rumors everywhere, which had terrible consequences for African guest workers: there was a systematic hunt for migrants, some were lynched and many arrested. Since then, even the rebels have admitted there were no mercenaries, almost all have been released and have returned to their countries of origin, as the investigations into them revealed nothing.¹³

That being said, Amnesty International could have identified foreign mercenaries operating in Libya … against the will of the population. And the whole world already knows the location of their headquarters. They are a composite of professional soldiers from different countries and belong to a single organization they call NATO, whose headquarters is located in Brussels, Belgium.

Back to the UN report. It said that while they “received reports of theft on a small scale perpetrated by Qadhafi forces during the conflict,” what they were able to establish was “widespread pillaging and destruction of public and private property across the country” by the rebels.

As far as sexual violence the report found that most of the claims against Gaddafi’s forces “cannot be relied upon” because they “believe that there is a strong possibility that the confessions were made under torture.”

Furthermore, the claim that Gaddafi attacked civilian institutions was confirmed, however in many instances the Commission either “could not determine without further investigation whether schools, hospitals and mosques and other civilian objects were hit deliberately,” or found that the civilian objects were being used by the rebels and therefore “could not consider them as purely civilian objects,” and “after these buildings could be said to have taken on a military character by encouraging or supporting combat operations [...] their targeting would not necessarily violate international law.”

In other words, the overall picture puts “the disparate forces” who long for “democracy and human rights” as the main perpetrators of the genocidal violence, not Gaddafi’s forces.

Syria

As noted, it is one thing that Achcar made such a mistake once, but twice?

In a recent interview on Syria, again features on ZNet, Achcar says that, “The Syrian National Council is a heterogeneous combination of people.”¹⁴

Déjà vu.

He also says that, “The SNC is held together by the pressure of various states intervening in the Syrian situation,” and that the SNC is staffed “with a number of figures linked to Western governments, the US or France in particular.” This may be the most truthful thing he says, though he downplays it by not specifying the “figures linked to Western governments,” and by stressing that, “The Syrian opposition within the country starts, of course, with the Local Coordination Committees (LCC),” who Achcar says is “the most authentic representation of the uprising in the sense that they are its principal organizers” of which he says “are networks of people, mostly young, coordinating the mobilization.”

As with Libya, it’s worth noting that Achcar steers away from the specifics. Those with links to the Western governments that are holding the SNC together, or the links off the LCC’s to the SNC and foreign governments, again, goes un-named. As is the quality of their claims. Though there is already plenty to draw from. Writers like Patrick Cockburn of The Independent UK and Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation have written on the propaganda of the Syrian activists.

Before continuing it should also be pointed out that Achcar, in his recent interview, continues to defend his pro-intervention position on Libya even after all that is now known. While he says that in Libya there was “no other group challenging [the TNC] as representing the Libyan opposition,” he fails to note how much more popular the regime was, or how it took a nearly eight-month long bombing campaign, coupled with rebels committing ethnic cleansing and indiscriminately bombing civilians and disrupting the delivery of humanitarian aid to overthrow the government, or how the rebels faced stiff resistance from “citizen volunteers” in places like Tripoli, Bani Walid, and Sirte.

And even after Achcar says that Libya is now “a chaotic country with the state being replaced by independent armed groups” he goes on to refer to what happened in Tripoli as “liberation,” with no mention of the well-documented tortures, massacres and executions that followed. And Achcar certainly doesn’t call what the residents of Bani Walid did when they took back their town a “liberation.” In fact, Achcar simply ignores them and their struggle, like that of black Africans or the people of Sirte where Achcar’s rebels said the people “chosen to die” by not siding with them.¹⁵

Achcar even points out that last August he was opposed to continued NATO bombing (note he doesn’t say he was opposed to it entirely, just “the continuation of the bombing by NATO”), though was “calling instead for arms deliveries to the insurgents.” But by August “the insurgents” were already well underway to committing massive war crimes, and crimes against humanity and Achcar continued to support arming them. In fact, Human Rights Watch (HRW)¹⁶ reported on rebel abuses and said that, “How the rebels behave in towns that have supported Gaddafi gives an indication of what they may do if they gain control in other areas, especially if they approach Tripoli.” And when they did approach Tripoli their indication proved all too true. In an article by Independent journalist Kim Sengupta in late August, titled “Rebels settle scores in Libya”, [17]

The killings were pitiless.

They had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in a tent marked clearly with the symbols of the Islamic Crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Some were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot at. A few were on the ground, seemingly attempting to crawl to safety when the bullets came.

Around 30 men lay decomposing in the heat. Many of them had their hands tied behind their back, either with plastic handcuffs or ropes. One had a scarf stuffed into his mouth. Almost all of the victims were black men.¹⁷ [emphasis added]

Back to Syria.

In “The United States Should Stay Out of Syria,” by The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss, the writer wastes no time and gets to the point:

Lined up in support of regime change in Damascus are the Middle East’s major Sunni powers, led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Also backing regime change, though less publicly, is the international network known as the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni powerhouse that is providing much, if not most, of the increasingly militarized Syrian opposition forces, especially in Sunni strongholds such as Homs. And backing the Sunni-led regional forces for regime change is NATO, the United States and its allies, who are outraged, just outraged, that Russia and China would dare to veto a carefully crafted UN Security Council resolution targeting President Bashar al-Assad.¹⁸

Dreyfuss then goes on to quote Aisling Byrne of Asia Times as writing, “What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime ‘more compatible’ with US interests in the region.”

Yet the most explosive comment was when Dreyfuss wrote that,

The killings in Syria are ugly, but no doubt wildly exaggerated. Nearly all, repeat all, of the information about the violence in Syria is coming from a handful of exiled Syrian opposition groups backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and various Western powers. Did 200 people really die in Homs this past weekend, conveniently just on the eve of the UNSC debate? Who knows? The only source for the fishy information, though ubiquitously quoted in the New York Times, the wire services, the network news and elsewhere, are the suspect Syrian opposition groups, who have axes galore to grind.

It’s not just the Times, but even the BBC, and nearly all of the mainstream press.

As for the BBC, in their online article “Syria crisis: Shelling ‘kills dozens’ in restive Homs” we read about how, “The worst shelling has been in the Baba Amr district, where activists say 50 people were killed on Wednesday alone.”¹⁹ [emphasis added]

Who are these “activists”? Why “The Local Co-ordination Committees, a network of anti-government,” of course, or as Dreyfuss put it: “a handful of exiled Syrian opposition groups backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and various Western powers,” and getting considerable coverage from the dominant press.

Patrick Cockburn of The Independent has also written on the propaganda element that is facilitated by the Western media:

The Syrian opposition needs to give the impression that its insurrection is closer to success than it really is. The Syrian government has failed to crush the protesters, but they, in turn, are a long way from overthrowing it. The exiled leadership wants Western military intervention in its favour as happened in Libya, although conditions are very different.

The purpose of manipulating the media coverage is to persuade the West and its Arab allies that conditions in Syria are approaching the point when they can repeat their success in Libya. Hence the fog of disinformation pumped out through the internet.²⁰

Writing for al Akhbar in late February, Sharmaine Narwani wrote in her piece “Questioning the Syrian ‘Casualty List’” about Nir Rosen’s coverage within Syria. Narwani quoted Rosen as saying,

Every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without any explanation of the cause of the deaths. Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters, but the cause of their death is hidden and they are described in reports as innocent civilians killed by security forces, as if they were all merely protesting or sitting in their homes.²¹

All of this, on the claims of the Syrian opposition, precede Achcar’s interview by months. It is amazing that in the nearly 3,500 words Achcar questions the validity of their claims.

And again there is absolutely nothing about the violence of the Syrian opposition. The torture, terrorist attacks, murder, using civilian institutions as military installations, and killing of foreign journalists doesn’t get any mention from Achcar.

While there was a lot of coverage in the mainstream press about the two Western journalists who were killed in Syria earlier this year, it is noteworthy that there was considerable less attention and outrage at a French journalist killed in Syria, especially after it was revealed the victim was killed by armed opposition forces. There is another aspect about the most recent killings of the two journalists that is (predictably) not being emphasized on: they were not only embedded with the Free Syrian Army, but the “media center” they were operating from was in an apartment building—a residential building.

According to Spiegel Online, “They had been in the back of the apartment serving as the “media center” when the first missile shook the room.” Later the article notes that, “Increasingly little word was coming from the surviving activists in the “media center,” which was moved from the third to the first floor of a residential building.”²²

Initially, articles were questioning whether or not the Syrian government was specifically targeting these journalists. Case in point, this recent article by the New York Times says that “citizen journalists in Homs have been killed recently in what activists interpret as part of a deliberate campaign to choke off news of the opposition.” The article also notes that “the two journalists died after shells hit the house in which they were staying…”²³

What is interesting about the coverage is that there is no questioning the FSA for using residential buildings for military operations even though that is a serious war crime. It is using the people as a human shield, and increases the civilian casualty rate. There was no condemnation from the US or other Western powers, and certainly not Qatar, Saudi Arabia, or even Gilbert Achcar.

So when the Times reports that, “The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé also said in a statement that he had called on the Syrian government to order an immediate halt to the attacks on Homs and to respect its ‘humanitarian obligations,’ ” it is strange how there is no mention of the “humanitarian obligations” of the Free Syrian Army, nor was any similar statement issued when Gilles Jacquier was killed at a pro-government rally last month by the resistance, along with Belgian journalist Steven Visner and seven civilians. Rather, Juppé called on the Syrian government “to ensure the security of international journalists on their territory, and to protect this fundamental liberty which is the freedom of information.” To be sure, for the recent incident, Juppé didn’t call on the FSA to provide similar protections.²⁴

This is all a part of the overall coverage, or lack of, that is coming out about Syria. Not only is their quite a bit of silence about the political, religious, and sectarian views of the “resistance,” and their support coming from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, but much of the relevant context is missing. All one is likely to find is a repetitive anti-al-Assad presentation. Al-Assad is evil incarnate, the “resistance” are glorious liberators battling a genocidal dictator. If you don’t support the rebellion then you are an apologist for the dictatorship. The truth is not nearly so black and white.

The Syrian government retains a lot of support, and has shown considerable constraint over the last year—much more than one would expect from the U.S. and other nations who are shedding crocodile tears. When the Arab League sent in an observer mission in December and January progress was made, but when the observer mission issued its report (which noted its success and warned that its discontinuation could lead to a worsening of situation), which was suppressed and the mission suspended the U.N. Security Council quickly tried to push through a resolution that only called for the Syrian government forces to cease fire and withdraw. With Syria facing a foreign-directed rebellion and no serious prospect of a fair settlement coming from either the Arab League or the UN, but rather a concerted effort for regime change, it’s not surprising that they moved in on the rebel stronghold. How indiscriminate the regime is being is hard to tell since the only information we have to go on is coming from the rebels, and even they admit they are operating from “residential buildings.”

So it is strange to read that while “The UN mediation has been accepted by all factions of the Syrian opposition,” according to Achcar, “most people are skeptical about the Syrian regime’s true willingness to implement Kofi Annan’s plan.” Achcar says that, “The regime knows too well that if it were to actually withdraw its armed forces from the cities and stop its bloody repression, the popular mobilization against it will immediately reach new heights — similar to the huge popular rallies that took place in Hama last summer when the regime’s forces refrained from attacking the demonstrations for a short while.”

Notice he talks about the regimes “bloody repression” but says nothing about that of the rebels, or how he mentions “huge popular rallies that took place in Hama last summer” but says nothing about the much larger pro-government rallies, or how one poll found that 55% of Syrians supported retaining al-Assad out of fear for their country (i.e. they fear what the rebels represent more than the tyranny of al-Assad).

As for the claim that “most people are skeptical about the Syrian regime’s true willingness to implement Kofi Annan’s plan,” we can look to the Arab League’s report from earlier this year to get an idea of how accurate that statement is.²⁵

For starters, here are some comments about the “opposition”:

In Homs and Dera‘a, the Mission observed armed groups committing acts of violence against Government forces, resulting in death and injury among their ranks. In certain situations, government forces responded to attacks against their personnel with force. The observers noted that some of the armed groups were using flares and armour-piercing projectiles.

[…]

In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the Observer Mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against Government forces and civilians that resulted in several deaths and injuries. Examples of those acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil. In another incident in Homs, a police bus was blown up, killing two police officers. A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed.

[…]

In Homs, a French journalist who worked for the France 2 channel was killed and a Belgian journalist was injured. The Government and opposition accused each other of being responsible for the incident, and both sides issued statements of condemnation. The Government formed an investigative committee in order to determine the cause of the incident. It should be noted that Mission reports from Homs indicate that the French journalist was killed by opposition mortar shells.

[…]

Recently, there have been incidents that could widen the gap and increase bitterness between the parties. These incidents can have grave consequences and lead to the loss of life and property. Such incidents include the bombing of buildings, trains carrying fuel, vehicles carrying diesel oil and explosions targeting the police, members of the media and fuel pipelines. Some of those attacks have been carried out by the Free Syrian Army and some by other armed opposition groups.

While the opposition is blowing up buses, killing journalists, attacking government security forces and civilians, bombing trains and other acts of sabotage and terrorism, we read how, “In Latakia, thousands surrounded the Mission’s cars, chanting slogans in favour of the President.”

And while the “armed gangs” continue to carry out attacks, the report notes how,

Based on the reports of the field-team leaders and the meeting held on 17 January 2012 with all team leaders, the Mission confirmed that all military vehicles, tanks and heavy weapons had been withdrawn from cities and residential neighbourhoods. Although there are still some security measures in place in the form of earthen berms and barriers in front of important buildings and in squares, they do not affect citizens.

Furthermore, even after we are informed that the government has opened up to an observer mission, offered amnesty, released thousands of detainees, and “withdrawn from cities and residential neighbourhoods” we read of an “armed entity” roaming the streets and “attacking Syrian security forces and citizens, causing the Government to respond with further violence.” More on this in a moment via Wikileaks.

As for the Syrian governments behavior during the mission it is reported that, “The Mission noted that the Government strived to help it succeed in its task and remove any barriers that might stand in its way. The Government also facilitated meetings with all parties. No restrictions were placed on the movement of the Mission and its ability to interview Syrian citizens, both those who opposed the Government and those loyal to it.”

And ever mindful of what happened in Iraq and Libya, the report found that “the citizens believe the crisis should be resolved peacefully through Arab mediation alone, without international intervention.” Translation: We don’t want a NATO “humanitarian intervention,” thanks. No wonder Qatar, who has come out in support of an armed intervention and pretends to support “democracy,” has suppressed the report and went along with the suspension of the mission. Which is at odds with the report itself.²⁶

In the conclusions, it asked for “administrative and logistic support in order allow it to carry out its tasks.” The report said it must have “the media and political support required to create an appropriate environment that will enable it to fulfil its mandate in the required manner,” which includes a “political process [that] must be accelerated and a national dialogue [that] must be launched.” According to the report, “That dialogue should run in parallel with the Mission’s work in order to create an environment of confidence that would contributes to the Mission’s success and prevent a needless extension of its presence in Syria.” The report gave the following warning: “ending the Mission’s work after such a short period will reverse any progress, even if partial, that has thus far been made.” That was very likely the reason for ending the mission, silencing the report, and its ultimate leak. Some want war and regime change, regardless of what the mission observers, or the people of Syria want.

Afterwards one of the observers came out and said that,

The Arab League is entirely discredited by burying the report of its own observers’ mission and its appeal to the Security Council. It missed the opportunity to participate in the settlement of the Syrian affair. All it can offer in the future will be worthless.²⁷

This is at odds with Achcar’s statement about the willingness of the Syrian government to accept and honor a peaceful mediation.

Achcar finds no room for mentioning the violence of the opposition, or the Arab League report. And he certainly doesn’t mention that Wikileaks has already shown that the U.S. has been supporting the opposition forces since before Obama took office,²⁸ or how the U.S. has only been pushing for the Syrian government to cease fire while ignoring the violence and war crimes of the opposition forces. There is also no mention of the new Wikileaks release of Stratfor emails.²⁹

In an email written in December of 2011 it is stated that “SOF teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce missions and training opposition forces,” and that while the U.S. “distanced themselves” from a bombing campaign because “Syrian air defenses are a lot more robust and are much denser, esp around Damascus and on the borders with Israel” it was noted that the plan “is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within.” This means, “There wouldn’t be a need for air cover, and they wouldn’t expect these Syrian rebels to be marching in columns anyway.”

The Stratfor emails makes another startling comment. “[U.S. forces] think the US would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn’t reach that very public stage.” If there can be “enough media attention on a massacre” then the U.S., who is “already on the ground . . . training opposition forces” would find it easier to carry out a bombing campaign like they did in Libya and “would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn’t reach that very public stage,” which with the current state of media subservience to the Western establishment is very likely. U.S. use of force is almost always treated as “constructive,” whereas so-called “enemies” use of force (i.e. Syria under al-Assad) is “nefarious.”

The last interesting revelation on the Stratfor email is the date: December 7, 2011. This is just over two weeks before the Arab League sent their observer mission.

Why is it that Achcar doesn’t mention the bogus propaganda of the opposition, or their violence, or the Arab League report, or how the Stratfor emails show that the US plan “is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns”?

It all comes to a disastrous end when Achcar ends his recent interview on Syria by saying that,

Anyone who is truly not a supporter of Bashar al-Assad and opposes hypothetic arms deliveries to the Syrian insurgents — in the name of an idealistic commitment to non-violence, for instance — should focus their opposition on the very real and massive Russian and Iranian arms deliveries to the Syrian regime in order to remain consistent.

Yet again we are told that unless you “focus [your] opposition on the very real and massive Russian and Iranian arms deliveries to the Syrian regime”—what Achcar calls remaining “consistent”—then you are a “supporter of Bashar al-Assad.”

There is no concern for consistency in regards to opposing the violence and politics of the armed rebels that are serving the American Empire’s interests. It is not even a concern for consistency to get the facts right. The “focus” should be on Iran and Russia arming the Syrian regime that is defending itself from a foreign-directed rebellion using civilian buildings as military installations for their terrorist and guerrilla attacks, assassinations, torture and more. Even Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the SNC late last month expressing their “concern about increasing evidence … of kidnappings, the use of torture, and executions by armed Syrian opposition members.” Again, arousing no comment from Achcar.³⁰

What are readers to make of Achcar’s position on Libya and Syria? The one “consistent” theme I have found in Achcar’s position is he is selective in how he approaches and frames them. He ignores the violent and criminal aspect of the foreign-directed rebellions, and says anyone who doesn’t support them is a supporter of the dictatorship. He claims we must “focus” on the crimes and armaments of America’s enemies, and even attempts to describe this as an “anti-imperialist perspective.” This is a very odd position for a supposed anti-imperialist leftist to take. It is also radically juxtaposed to Noam Chomsky’s comments to the UN about the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, which the conflicts in Libya and Syria are intimately a part of:

The discussions about R2P, or its cousin “humanitarian intervention,” are regularly disturbed by the rattling of a skeleton in the closet: history, to the present moment. Throughout history, there have been a few principles of international affairs that apply quite generally. One is the maxim of Thucydides that the strong do as they wish while the weak suffer as they must. A corollary is what Ian Brownlie calls “the hegemonial approach to law-making”: the voice of the powerful sets precedents. Another principle derives from Adam Smith’s account of policy-making in England: the “principal architects” of policy — in his day the “merchants and manufacturers” — make sure that their own interests are “most peculiarly attended to” however “grievous” the effect on others, including the people of England – but far more so, those who were subjected to “the savage injustice of the Europeans,” particularly in conquered India, Smith’s own prime concern. A third principle is that virtually every use of force in international affairs has been justified in terms of R2P, including the worst monsters. Just to illustrate, in his scholarly study of “humanitarian intervention,” Sean Murphy cites only three examples between the Kellogg-Briand pact and the UN Charter: Japan’s attack on Manchuria, Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler’s occupation of parts of Czechoslovakia, all accompanied by lofty rhetoric about the solemn responsibility to protect the suffering populations, and factual justifications. The basic pattern continues to the present.³¹

Achcar’s comments on Libya and Syria also stand in stark contrast with Chomsky’s classic work on “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” where Chomsky wrote nearly fifty years ago that, “Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments [and their media parrots], to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions,” and that, “Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.” In short, Chomsky argues persuasively that, “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.”³²

Rather than expose, analyze, seek, and speak the truth lying hidden behind the propaganda that has been filling the media, Achcar has apparently accepted and repeated much of it.

Opposing the rebellions doesn’t necessarily make one a supporter of Gaddafi or al-Assad, just as opposing the Iraq War didn’t make one an apologist for Saddam Hussein. It is sufficient to oppose the armed rebellions on the grounds that they are not popularly supported, and run the very real risk of making things worse, as Vietnam, Rwanda, Congo, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and now Syria can attest to. If one wants to “remain consistent” they would look at not only the crimes and injustices (or how much support they retain) of the various dictatorships, whether they are supported or opposed by the US, but that of the armed opposition as well. When it comes to Gilbert Achcar on Libya and Syria it is hard to imagine he did so, and come to the remarks and conclusions he draws.

1. Libyan Developments, Gilbert Achcar, Znet, March 19. 2011.
2. Flying proudly over the birthplace of Libya’s revolution, the flag of Al Qaeda, Daily Mail UK, November 2, 2011.
3. One Third of Libya Turns Out to Support Qaddafi in World’s Largest March Ever, Mathaba, July 7, 2011.
4. Fighters Enter Qaddafi Stronghold City as Toll Rises, NYT, September 26, 2011.
5. Libya: Libyan city of Bani Walid still run by Gadaffi loyalists, AllVoices, March 1, 2012.
6. NATO’s Rebel Forces, Luis Rumbaut, MR Zine, August 24, 2011.
7. [7]
8. US bids to break Gaddafi Regime, Financial Times, August 9, 2011.
9. “Airstrikes in Libya did not take place” – Russian military, RT, March 1, 2011.
10. Humanitarian War in Libya : There is no evidence !, Youtube, November 28, 2011.
11. Libya: a legitimate and necessary debate from an anti-imperialist perspective, Gilbert Achcar, ZNet, March 25, 2011.
12. Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya, UN Human Rights Council, March 2, 2012.
13. “Es fand eine regelrechte Jagd auf Migranten statt“, derStandard, July 6, 2011.
14. ‘There’s a fear that the fall of Assad would lead to worse for Western interests and Israel…‘, Gilbert Achcar, ZNet, April 6, 2012.
15. Libya: exodus from Sirte as thousands flee rebel offensive, The Telegraph UK, September 28, 2011.
16. Libya: Contact Group Should Press Rebels to Protect Civilians, HRW, July 15, 2011.
17. Rebels settle scores in Libyan capital, Kim Sengupta, The Independent UK, August 27, 2011.
18. The United States Should Stay Out of Syria, Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation, February 6, 2012.
19. Syria crisis: Shelling ‘kills dozens’ in restive Homs, BBC, February 9, 2012.
20. Whose hands are behind those dramatic YouTube pictures?, Patrick Cockburn, The Independent UK, January 15, 2012.
21. Questioning the Syrian “Casualty List”, Sharmine Narwani, Al-Akhbar, February 4, 2012.
22. Syria’s ‘Srebrenica: Situation Grows Increasingly Grim in Rebel Stronghold of Homs, Spiegel Online, February 23, 2012.
23. Two Western Journalists Killed in Syria Shelling, NYT, February 22, 2012.
24. French journalist, several others killed in Syria, MSNBC, January 11, 2012.
25. League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria, Global Research.
26. Syria Accuses Qatar of Arming Rebels, Defense News, January 18, 2012.
27. What you won’t read in the Western and Arab media, The Angry Arab News Service, February 8, 2012.
28. U.S. secretly backed Syrian opposition groups, cables released by WikiLeaks show, Washington Post, April 17, 2011.
29. INSIGHT – military intervention in Syria, post withdrawal status of forces, Wikileaks.
30. Open Letter to the Leaders of the Syrian Opposition, HRW, March 20, 2012.
31. Statement by Professor Noam Chomsky to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, July 23, 2009.
32. The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, Chomsky.info, February 23, 1967.

The military has encroached into all areas of our lives. Our cops are more like soldiers, and battle fatigued soldiers are routinely seen on our streets, restaurants and shopping malls. They also show up regularly on sport broadcasts, and even star in a Hollywood blockbuster. Armored vehicles menace July 4th Parades, and camouflaged trucks deliver Toys for Tots. All this has to be by design, obviously, to drum into our heads that we are a nation at war, and that we are threatened constantly by terrorists that may blow us up at any moment anywhere, but especially transport hubs, necessitating the rough caresses of your grunting TSA agents, when they are not stealing from your luggage. Ah, what’s a missing Ipod or a few thousand bucks compared to the increased security that we’re all enjoying?

If even preschoolers or wheel-chaired farts on their last legs must be frisked for underwear bombs, box cutters and ninja stars, not to mention contraband copies of the Constitution, is it any wonder that our cops are becoming more trigger happy? Post 9/11, the United States has entered a permanent state of psychotic paranoia, all to justify our endless war (profiteering) for oil, and with a host of new laws enabling the state to harass, eavesdrop, strip search, arrest or even kill you without charge; that is, without presumption of innocence before proven guilty, supposedly a bedrock of our democracy and what separates us from all the other nightmare states we’ve always been warned about.

As we sleep, America has become one of those nightmares, I’m afraid, although all still seems relatively normal, for now. The home runs still fly, and the inane commercials still sing. All is normal until you find yourself on the wrong side of an increasingly brutal and arbitrary set of laws, or none at all, just whatever our President, local cop or security guard decides is right, for him, at that moment. You see, a nightmare is when you’re at the total mercy of another man, without recourses to remedy whatever wrong he may inflict on you, without the law or your fellow humans ever coming to your aid. Our tortured foreign detainees have long been acquainted with this evil, but we have looked the other way, because we are not them, you see, at least not yet.

It’s always The Other that is demonized and deserves to be retaliated against and punished. With the Trayvon Martin case, racism has again come to the fore, but what is racism but the most literal and narrow manifestation of self-love, in itself merely a survival instinct, and as natural as air or lust? A racist will defend and cherish only what is most like him, and nothing else, but one must mature from this, and I think many of us have, if only partially.

When one thinks in terms of blacks vs. whites, non-Muslims vs. Muslims, North vs. South or even conservatives vs. liberals, one becomes distracted from the real crisis at hand, because there is only one real battle, and it is waged by the Military Banking Complex against us all. With its gargantuan corruption, systematic looting, here and abroad, and routine mass murder, this is the 1% that the Occupy Movement was trying to identify.

This Obama presidency has been a brilliant move by our ruling class, for this black, personable decoy has managed to pacify vast swaths of an otherwise restless constituency, while enraging others for the wrong reason. Although Obama’s blackness is irrelevant, it has become a fixation to both his detractors and supporters, so that it has become a point of honor to defend or depose this man for his blackness alone, when, in truth, his race does not factor at all in any of his decisions. One should not care that he is black because Obama does not care that he is black, and not in a good way either. Obama is not here to rectify whatever ails the black or any other community. He is only here to facilitate the wishes of the Military Banking Complex, and he’s willing to trample on you all, black, white, brown or yellow, to achieve their goals.

In Chicago recently, I was dismayed and disgusted to see an Obama poster as I entered the Heartland Café, a bastion of progressive politics in that city, but my mood was improved, however, at a Trayvon Martin rally downtown, when I encountered a man with this sign, “OBAMA—IMPERIALIST COMMANDER IN CHIEF.” Of course, he was only stating the obvious, because how can a US President be otherwise under this current setup?

St. Augustine lived in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, in the Roman Empire. In that empire, occupied and occupier got to know one another all too well, from Britain to  Mesopotamia (Iraq) where resistance forces forced a withdrawal Roman troops in 117.

Britons rose up against the Roman occupiers and their Queen Boudicca died fighting around 60 CE. (She’s quoted by Tacitus as determined to avenge “lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters.”) Familiarity bred rebellion resulting in vicious Roman responses, including the suppression of multiple uprisings in Judaea from 66 to 135.

Familiarity bred contempt in India as well as British authorities recruited Indian soldiers into their army from the eighteenth century. The sepoys rebelled in 1857 in protest of promotion policies, pay and assignment issues, reports of Christian proselytization, and the rumor that the cartridges needed to load the soldiers’ rifles were greased with pork fat — a terrible offense to Hindu and Muslim religious sensibilities. The mainly upper-caste Hindu sepoys turned on their British trainers in a bloody uprising that led to the fall of what was left of the Mughal Empire and the transfer of authority from the East India Company to the British crown.

The U.S.A. is today’s Roman Empire and British Empire rolled into one. With its allies the U.S. invaded Afghanistan over 3,825 days ago. The vast majority of people in this country at the time regarded the invasion, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, as a war “of necessity” provoked by those attacks. Even many usually progressive people passively accepted the need for a vindictive response. Those who dissented were treated as naïve at best, traitorous at worst.

The facts, as packaged by officials, seemed clear: the U.S. had been attacked by al-Qaeda; al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan; the rulers in Afghanistan (the Taliban) had “sponsored” Osama bin Laden. So the Talibs needed to be overthrown, while the U.S. bombed and obliterated bin Laden’s camps.

But the U.S. wouldn’t just act in its own self-defense. It would also magnanimously liberate the oppressed Afghanis. The Bush administration posed as the champion of Afghan women in particular, depicting their plight (symbolized by the mandatory wearing of the burqa) as rooted in Taliban rule. (In fact, the burqa had been standard female attire in Afghanistan for hundreds of years, and has remained so since the Taliban were overthrown. One might hope that it will “vanish from the page of time” but that’s likely to require more than an invasion.)

In November 2001, in the opening stage of the war, Laura Bush took over for her husband in delivering the president’s weekly radio address. She told us that “ a regime guilty of “brutal oppression” of women was “now in retreat across much of the country, and the people of Afghanistan, especially women, are rejoicing.” The bombing missions ordered by her husband were bringing joy to the Afghan people!

Actually, while the bombing killed thousands of civilians, a lot of Afghans did welcome  the overthrow of the Taliban and the establishment of a new regime. During the first few years, plausible public opinion polls showed fairly high support for Hamid Karzai, the CIA operative hand-picked by Washington to serve as president. The prospect of being aligned with the U.S., which had aided the Mujahadeen in their decade-long war against the Soviets, and receiving massive doses of U.S. aid for roads and schools, was attractive to some. (But then, the alliance with the USSR, and Soviet aid had been attractive to many Afghans from 1978. Afghanistan like most places contains diverse political forces with differing world views.)

As time passed, Karzai’s weakness and corruption became apparent. Gradually feelings soured, as warlords reestablished control over their former fiefs; as the national police acquired a reputation for abuses including the kidnapping and sexual abuse of children; as  the Taliban and aligned movements resurged and capitalized on the dissatisfaction; as the bombings and drone strikes and night time raids on homes produced such anger that Karzai and the parliament began insisting they must stop — feelings soured. And U.S. public opinion soured on the Afghan War, validating the objections some of us had expressed at the outset.

The behavior of some foreign troops over the last year (collecting body parts as trophies, urinating on dead militants’ bodies, burning Qur’ans, the March 11 massacre of 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar) may have brought us to the tipping-point.

The “Red Team” Study

The U.S. Army has long been concerned about the fact that its soldiers fighting to support the Karzai regime and contain the resurgent Taliban have a terrible relationship with the Afghan soldiers and police they’re obliged to work with and train. A “red team” headed by Jeffrey Bordin, a political and behavioral scientist, was dispatched to Afghanistan last year to investigate. (In the Army, a “red team” is supposed to “provide commanders an independent capability to continuously challenge plans, operations, concepts, organizations and capabilities in the context of the operational environment and from our partners’ and adversaries’ perspectives.” It’s supposed, in other words, to help commanders think outside the box.)

Bordin’s study, completed last May, is entitled “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility: A Red Team Study of Mutual Perceptions of Afghan National Security Force Personnel and U.S. Soldiers in Understanding and Mitigating the Phenomena of ANSF-Committed Fratricide-Murders.” It’s available online.

In the report, Bordin noted that there had been since September. 2009 at least 21 instances of  “fratricide-murder incidents” in which Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) members killed 51 foreign troops, mostly U.S. forces, who had been sent to train them. (The toll has risen to over 80 since. About a quarter of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan this year — including three more on Monday, March 26 — have been killed by Afghan security forces.) He declared that the magnitude of the killings (referred to in U.S. military parlance as “green-on-blue” incidents) “may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern history.” But why is there so much hostility between U.S. forces (and other foreign forces) in Afghanistan and the soldiers they’re supposed to train.

Bordin explained:

 “Factors that fueled the most animosity included U.S. convoys not allowing traffic to pass, reportedly indiscriminant return U.S. fire that causes civilian casualties, naively using flawed intelligence sources, U.S. Forces conducting night raids/home searches, violating female privacy during searches, U.S. road blocks, publicly searching/disarming ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] members as an SOP [standard operating procedure] when they enter bases, and past massacres of civilians by U.S. Forces (i.e., the Wedding Party Massacre, the Shinwar Massacre, etc.). Other issues that led to altercations or near-altercations (including many self-reported near-fratricide incidents) included [U.S. soldiers] urinating in public, their cursing at, insulting and being rude and vulgar to ANSF members, and unnecessarily shooting animals. They found many U.S. Soldiers to be extremely arrogant, bullying, unwilling to listen to their advice, and were often seen as lacking concern for civilian and ANSF safety during combat.”

(The “Wedding Party Massacre” refers to the incident in Nuristan Province in July 2008, when 47 people including 39 women and children were killed by a missile. The deputy speaker of the Afghan parliament stated that none of them had had any connection with either al-Qaeda or the Taliban. The U.S. initially denied that there had been any civilian deaths. The “Shinwar Massacre” refers to the March 2007 incident in which a U.S. convoy in Nangarhar Province killed 19 and injured up to 50 as they fired indiscriminately after a humvee was struck by a minivan laden with explosives that injured one Marine.)

According to the study, U.S. forces for their part held “extremely negative” views of the ANSF, finding among them “pervasive illicit drug use, massive thievery, personal instability, dishonesty, no integrity, incompetence, unsafe weapons handling, corrupt officers, no real NCO corps, covert alliances/informal treaties with insurgents, high AWOL rates, bad morale, laziness, repulsive hygiene and the torture of dogs. Perceptions of civilians were also negative stemming from their insurgent sympathies and cruelty towards women and children.”

Notice that both sides complain of the other’s treatment of women and children. But while the Afghans interviewed complained of specifics — foreigners observing women in a yard from a roof; breaking down a door to enter a female’s room; taking photos of women; searching them without reason; giving children candy even though their proximity can lead to them dying in attacks — the U.S. soldiers’ complaints were more vaguely expressed. “How they treat their women and children is disgusting,” said one GI. “They are just chattel to them.”

Both complain of the other’s treatment of dogs. But the Afghans complain that the U.S. soldiers kill dogs who belong to people — dogs on leashes outside people’s homes. They do it for sport, or to shut them up if they bark, even in the presence of their owners — one of whom according to this report joined the Taliban after his dog was shot to death. The GIs kill cattle and donkeys as well, say the Afghans. The U.S. troops for their part complain that the Afghans kill stray dogs. (Of course, there’s never any excuse to torture an animal, but isn’t it possible that Afghan society has traditionally controlled the population of feral dogs? Neighboring India has a huge population of pariah dogs, who are often rabid — over 70,000 in Mumbai alone. In that city they bite 25,000 people per year. They’re a real management problem most people in this country can hardly imagine. Perhaps this issue of feral dog killing can be seen as a “cultural” issue between the Afghans and the occupiers.)

According to Bordin’s report, U.S. troops in Afghanistan not only dislike and mistrust ANSF — for reasons that seem related to the Afghans’ habits and customs, poverty, and illiteracy (90% among the Afghan troops) — but also have “negative” views of Afghan civilians in general. This, he posits, is due to civilians’ sympathy with the insurgents and because of the “cruelty towards women and children” that occurs in Afghan society.

While the relationship between the occupiers and the people was beyond the scope of Bordin’s assignment, this observation is obviously significant. If the GIs see the Afghans in general –  not just the insurgents, but ANSF (who allegedly form “covert alliances/informal treaties with insurgents”), and even the bulk of the population — so negatively, how can they ever mould ANSF into a viable military and police force, meeting their own expectations? How can they ever crush the Taliban and its allies, and win over the masses?

The Main Problem is Not a Culture Clash

“A Crisis in Trust” is a statistical study that tries to examine the recognized “green-on-blue” problem. But it misses the forest for the trees. The “factors fueling most animosity” are factors generic to invasions and occupations: the arrogance and condescension of the invaders; the insistence on regulating movement of people in the invaded country; the response to (real or imagined) attacks with overwhelming firepower that inevitably kills civilians; the need to recruit local, often unreliable snitches; night raids, etc. These have nothing to do with “cultural incompatibility” but with the arrogance of power bound to produce indignation. How ought Afghans to respond to such national humiliation? Should anyone be surprised that their indignation has mounted over ten-and-a-half years?

In what Bordin calls the “first tier” of Afghan complaints about U.S. troops is the charge that they are “extremely arrogant.” This is related to other “first tier” issues, specifically: night raids, disrespect for Afghan women, roadblocks, refusal to allow Afghan troops to pass U.S. convoys, indiscriminate shooting of Afghans following attacks, killing of many civilians, constant cursing (including calling Afghan troops “motherfuckers”—which is deeply resented), and publicly searching any Afghan soldier entering a U.S. base.

But how can the U.S. troops not be arrogant? Their basic training is designed to inculcate a sense of righteousness about their role. They’re conditioned to believe that they’re on a heroes’ mission to defend family and friends at home, and keep the U.S. safe from another 9/11 type attack. They need to do this by containing the Taliban resistance, which they’re encouraged to associate with al-Qaeda. (They’re also encouraged to associate the Taliban with Iraq and any “bad guy” Muslim force they might read about, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami forces, Iran, Hizbollah, Hamas, Somali pirates, Gaddafi, etc. While they’re routinely told “We respect Islam” they’re also encouraged to see the world in simple “us vs. them” terms, and it just happens that all the enemies are Muslims.)

This simplistic “war on terror” mentality, pitting the “good” warrior against a vague, omnipresent Evil is a key aspect of the problem, for both them and the Afghans. The invaded population may be tradition-bound, largely illiterate, religious fundamentalists. But the invaders are fundamentally deluded about their mission. This is by design, part of the boot camp experience.

Things the Invaders Aren’t Supposed to Know

The troops aren’t briefed about the fact that the Taliban regime — bad as it was – had, and has, a considerable social base. It was preferred by many Afghans to the warlords of the Northern Alliance who are now back in power in much of the country. They’re not told that the Taliban is rooted in the anti-Soviet Mujahadeen of the 1980s which the U.S. eagerly supported, deliberately pitting Islamic fundamentalism against the pro-Soviet regime and its secularist policies. They don’t necessarily realize that U.S. policy helped generate the enemy they now face.

They’re not told that the Taliban took power in most of the country in 1996 with help from Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence, which had worked intimately with the CIA throughout the 1980s. (As the late president Benazir Bhutto once noted in an interview, longtime U.S. ally Pakistan supported the Taliban because it seemed most likely to insure the stability of Central Asian trade routes.)

The troops aren’t told that the Taliban never invited bin Laden into their country. They’re not told that the U.S. agreed in 1996 to allow bin Laden to fly out of Sudan in a C-130 transport plane with 150 men, women and children on board, to refuel in pro-western Qatar (where he was greeted warmly by government officials) and to relocate to Afghanistan where he was welcomed and hosted by anti-Taliban chiefs. (He settled in Qandahar in May 1996. The Taliban only acquired control over Kabul that September.)

They’re not told that the Taliban once in power tolerated bin Laden’s presence and let him maintain his training camps (initially established with CIA help) out of appreciation for his assistance in the war against the Soviets when he was working with the U.S. (They also appreciated his financial assistance to them, at a time when only Saudi Arabia and Pakistan recognized their regime and provided aid, and felt obliged to observe the Pashtunwali code requiring hospitality for strangers.) But they never embraced his program for a global jihad. Indeed they claim that after the USS Cole incident off Yemen in 2000 they placed him under detention and cut off his communications.

U.S. troops aren’t told that Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-American special envoy to Afghanistan in 2002, and later the ambassador to Afghanistan, then Iraq, then the UN — the man who arranged for Karzai to become president –had six years earlier actually written an op-ed supporting U.S. engagement with the Taliban!

“The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran,” the former State Department official declared in the Washington Post in October 1996. “It is closer to the Saudi model.” He later, as a Unocal executive, hosted Taliban leaders at his Texas ranch to discuss a gas pipeline deal in the late 90s.

They’re not told that after the Taliban successfully banned opium cultivation in 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised their effort and delivered $43 billion in aid to them. They’re not told that the Taliban not only sought good relations with the U.S. before 9/11, but even (as reported on Counterpunch) agreed to turn bin Laden over to the U.S. as early as November 2000. It was willing to do so unconditionally after the 9/11 attacks, but the U.S. government never accepted the offer.

(The Taliban issued a statement on September 12, 2001:  “We do not allow Osama bin Laden to use Afghanistan’s territory to launch attacks on any country in the world… We denounce this terrorist attack, whoever is behind it.”)

The troops aren’t told that the current U.S.-backed president Karzai was briefly the foreign minister of the Taliban government (in 1996) and that he still insists there are “good men” among the Taliban. He’s even offered to welcome Taliban chief Mullah Omar to Kabul for negotiations. In 2008 he appealed to Taliban chief Mullah Omar “to return home under guarantees of safety to help bring peace to Afghanistan.” The U.S. sternly objected, prompting an indignant public statement from Karzai that the U.S. had no veto rights on inter-Afghan matters.

The troops aren’t told that none of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghans and that only two of them were known to have ever been in that country at any point for any reason. They’re certainly not told that Attorney General John Ashcroft spoke falsely when he told a press conference after 9/11 that all of the hijackers had been trained in Afghanistan.

U.S. troops aren’t told that many — maybe most — Afghans aren’t even aware of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. (A 2010 study showed that 92% of people in the Pashtun south have never heard about them!) And even if they learn about them, they don’t understand why they would justify the invasion and occupation of their country. It’s not hard to understand why many would assume that the invaders are waging a war on their religion.

U.S. soldiers are encouraged to believe the Taliban and al-Qaeda are closely connected, if not one and the same thing. But this is simply untrue. The Taliban is an inward-looking, Pashtun-Afghan nationalist movement. It wants to impose a version of Muslim law upon a country torn by war since 1978. But it’s shown no interest in joining an international jihad. It merely wants to do what Afghan resistance movements have done from the time of Alexander the Great (which, by the way, was a millennium before the introduction of Islam). It wants to drive the invader out.

Al-Qaeda, now based in Pakistan and Yemen, is actively promoting a global confrontation between Islam and the West. But the Taliban has repeatedly declared it will not allow attacks on other countries from Afghan soil when/if it regains power. (And again it has consistently stated it had no knowledge of al-Qaeda plans while bin Laden was in the country.) Intelligence officials in Pakistan have stated that the Taliban has broken with al-Qaeda and would, if returned to power, crack down on any remnants of the organization in the country.

The U.S. troops are not mainly in Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda from making Afghanistan its base for a global jihad. It’s unlikely that, even if the occupying forces withdrew tomorrow, this decentralized web of groups of unknown size, with franchises and affiliates in Algeria, Yemen, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and elsewhere, would be able to transform Afghanistan into a headquarters for launching attacks on the U.S. (Anyway, weren’t the 9/11 attacks planned more in Germany and Florida than in Afghanistan?)

The foreign troops are not in Afghanistan to fight al-Qaeda, or anyone connected to attacks on the U.S. They’re, rather, to create and leave behind, whenever they leave, a “stable” country with a friendly regime, an effective security apparatus that will contain any “Islamist” forces the U.S. regards as potentially threatening, allow the presence of half a dozen U.S. military bases in the country (close to Iraq, Pakistan and Iran) and cooperate in the construction of a pipeline that will bring Caspian natural gas to the Indian Ocean. (The latter is of major geopolitical importance to Washington since most gas from the region is now piped through Russia, and the U.S. wants a pipeline that also avoids Iranian territory.)

Some of the troops have come to question their mission. Some have even been radicalized by their Afghan experiences and have become antiwar, anti-imperialist activists. But few fully grasp that they’re imperialist invaders, and so receiving the same treatment the Soviets experienced in the 1980s when they tried to occupy Afghanistan. So they cannot understand why the Afghan soldiers they’re supposed to train are so unenthusiastic, and why in general the people are so unwelcoming and unappreciative.

According to the Red Team study, most soldiers’ “perceptions of civilians” are “negative stemming from their insurgent sympathies.” But wasn’t this the case in Vietnam and Iraq as well? Or for that matter the Philippines from 1899 to 1902? Weren’t U.S. soldiers conditioned to expect warm receptions shocked to find the local people so cold and so prone to support the “enemy” instead of themselves?

The Sgt. Robert Bales Case

No one wants to be in a foreign country, asked to accomplish the impossible, surrounded by sullen people who find you rude and vulgar and want you to leave. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales surely didn’t.

Bales, relocated over Afghan objections to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, is accused of going on a rampage the evening of March 11 in Panjwai district in Qandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. He’s been charged with the premeditated murder of 17 Afghan civilians.

According to some reports, a roadside blast in the village of Mokhoyan, blew off the leg of one of Bales’ buddies on March 7 or 8. Villagers say U.S. troops rounded up all the adult males in the village, lined them up against a wall and told them they would “pay a price.” It’s, of course, not clear that this alleged incident influenced Bales’ subsequent actions in two villages. But the “Qandahar Massacre” may be the worst, clearest instance of a soldier to date expressing “negative perceptions of civilians” due to their “insurgent sympathies.”

Bales has his sympathizers, who see him as the victim of repeated deployments in places where U.S. soldiers confront resentful populations. They see him as someone who just “snapped” at a certain point, such that he decided to march off and shoot Afghan women and children, and burn their bodies. “I kind of sympathize for him,” a former neighbor told AP, “being gone, being sent over there four times. I can understand he’s probably quite wracked mentally, so I just hope that things are justified in court. I hope it goes okay.”

This is entirely in the tradition of unconditional “support for the troops” deeply entrenched in our culture. There was widespread outrage in this country when Sgt. William Calley was convicted of mass murder of Vietnamese in 1971. Georgia governor Jimmy Carter established “American Fighting Man’s Day” and urged Georgians to show Calley support. The governor of Indiana asked that all state flags to be flown at half-staff for Calley, and many states’ governors protested the verdict and demanded clemency. How, they wondered, could the U.S. court system persecute a hero-soldier who, fighting for his country and for freedom, just happened to slip up a little on the rules and kill between 22 and 500 Vietnamese civilians?

But Laura King, in the LA Times, takes the opportunity to assert a high American standard of morality, juxtaposing it against an Afghan one. “In American minds, “ she writes, “the moral distinction between the accidental and the deliberate, between the carefully judged risk and the deranged act, is incalculable. But for Afghans, the result — the shrouded bodies, the wailing relatives, the bite of shovels into dusty ground — speaks to the numbing sameness of unexpected and violent death.”

In other words, the “American mind” is highly moral, and while forgiving episodes of Accidental “collateral damage” it recoils in disgust at any deliberate act of terror. King seems to echo Bales’ own words to a home-town reporter in 2007. The soldier after an Iraq deployment expressed contempt for anyone who would put “his family in harm’s way,” adding “I think that’s the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy.” For this accused mass-murderer, Americans are, by definition, “good guys.”

Whatever her intentions, King’s piece seems almost an apologia for U.S. imperialism. U.S. citizens as “their” forces invade maintain this “incalculable moral distinction” between what the soldiers do deliberately and what they do by accident. But the poor natives are unable to distinguish between “the numbing sameness” of the accidental killing of civilians (the “collateral damage” of airstrikes or roadblock incidents) and the occasional deliberate targeting of civilians.

Isn’t the point that the invasion itself was a very deliberate event? A crime against peace? And that such invasions usually produce these sorts of results?

“End of the Rope”

Ekil Hakimi, the Afghan ambassador to the U.S., told CNN recently that Bales’ rampage was “not the first incident; it was the 100th, the 200th and 500th incident.”

Hakemi is very much in the pro-U.S. camp. And yet even he complains to the U.S. mass media that the U.S. is routinely slaughtering civilians in his country.

The Afghan parliament has voted — unanimously! — to withdraw from the existing military agreement with the U.S. in protest of the removal of Bates from Afghanistan and the Afghan legal process. The legislators (even though they obtained their own positions as a result of foreign occupation) see it as an insult to the nation. Karzai probably won’t sign the law; he is, however much he postures as a nationalist, dependent on U.S. aid to secure his own position. But isn’t it significant that even a parliament established under U.S. hegemony, excluding any Taliban forces, favoring the warlords grateful for U.S. support, is making such a statement?

Meanwhile Karzai’s demanding that foreign troops withdraw from villages and return to their bases, declaring U.S.-Afghan relations “at the end of their rope.” These are surely positive developments

Some of those most closely aligned to the U.S. in Afghanistan are saying: Please go away. We don’t like you. Even if we once did, we don’t anymore because you’ve killed too many of us, and insulted and offended us in too many ways. You have overstayed your welcome in our country.

And the U.S. troops are saying: We don’t like these people, and we’re shocked by their ingratitude and hostility.

Of course, mutual animosity shouldn’t generally be a cause for celebration. But mutual animosity between occupied and occupier is normal, and certainly (as Mao Zedong put it) “it’s right to rebel” against oppression. And don’t the host of Afghan grievances cited by Bordin constitute oppression?

At this point the level of animosity has become impossible to conceal with cheery reports of “progress” such as that delivered to Congress by Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, earlier this month. Fallout from the Qandahar Massacre is causing some to predict or urge a speedy pullout. Retired General James A. Marks, senior Army intelligence officer at the time of the Iraq invasion, has said it “not inconceivable” that that massacre might prompt a U.S. withdrawal “in weeks.”

The My Lai Massacre helped turn U.S. public opinion decisively against the Vietnam War, and so maybe we can say that Calley’s victims did not die entirely in vain. The silver lining to the Qandahar Massacre might just possibly be an early withdrawal from Afghanistan. Optimally, these episodes reflecting mutual contempt in Afghanistan might actually bind people in both Afghanistan and the U.S. together — in revulsion towards imperialism.

When the Egyptian people began to gather in Tahrir Square in January 2011, the embers of the immolation that consumed Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi had already sparked the prairie fire that overthrew the dictatorial ruler Ben Ali. The protest in Tahrir Square was the first manifestation of that fire in Egypt but certainly not the last. As everyone must know by now, the fires of protest in Egypt tossed out their dictator less than two months after Mr. Ben Ali was deposed. The feat of that overthrow was not only momentous within the borders of Egypt itself; its repercussions were felt in the halls of Arabia, Asia, Africa and the Americas. In Washington, Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, Paris, and Rome and on Wall Street, there was plenty of catching up to do. Neither the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency or the black ops mangers of the Central Intelligence Agency predicted the end of the Mubarak regime. Indeed, it wasn’t until the bitter end that the political powers in the aforementioned capitals began to side with (and subvert) the popular uprising in the streets of Egypt.

After Mubarak’s fall, the revolutionary fire spread like flames whipped by warm Santa Ana winds. Bahrain to Libya. Yemen to Syria. London and New York. Athens and Oakland. The insurrectionary wave was in motion and nowhere was it more powerful than in the Arab world. Also, nowhere was it met with more determined (and murderous) resistance from the powers that be, internally and externally. Underlying the insurrectionary tide were the economic facts of neoliberalism’s struggle to maintain its global dominance. When it became apparent that this goal could not always be accomplished by continuing to support the old regimes, the capitols of capitalism inserted their agents into the opposition and did their best to manipulate the rebellion into serving the agencies of those capitols. The IMF, World Bank and the rest of the usual suspects saw their moments in each instance and made their moves. As I write, the entire insurrectionary wave is at a stalemate between the forces of popular social justice and just another new face for western imperialism.

Naturally, very little has been written about this aspect of the revolutionary upsurge of 2011-2012 in the organs of neoliberalism. Instead, the fact of IMF arrangements with the post-Mubarak Egypt and the new Tunisia are interspersed with superficial analyses of the rebellions that would have the reader believe that it was social media that provoked them. Even more revealing of the mainstream media’s allegiance to the imperial regime in the insurrection is its lack of coverage of the continuing popular resistance in the Pentagon’s shipyard Bahrain. Instead, we are presented with an ongoing litany of unconfirmed atrocities committed by the Syrian military and a portrayal of the resistance there as essentially untainted by its affiliation with outside governments and militaries.

Fortunately, we have Vijay Prashad. His latest book, titled Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, attacks the western interpretation of the transitions in Egypt and Libya and explores the actual events from a perspective that explains the players in terms of their allegiances, holdings and politics. In Prashad’s work, the differences between the fighters on the ground and the suits on television are not only acknowledged, they are examined in terms of their meaning to the future. In discussing Egypt, Prashad describes the conflagration of Washington’s imperial needs, Tel Aviv’s paranoiac perception of its security, and the Mubarak clique’s desire to maintain power. He gives lie to the West’s claim that it was interested in democracy (a relatively simple task to be sure), explaining that in the western mindset democracy doesn’t mean democracy, it means a guarantee that the interests and holdings of capital will not be upset. The common term one hears, states Prashad, is stability.

Most of this book is about the battle for Libya. Prashad’s text provides the most detailed description of the events both on the ground and in the office suites. He exposes the humanitarian intervention by NATO for what it was. That is, a means for the western powers to regain unfettered access to Libyan oil and rid themselves of an at best erratic client—Muammar Gaddafi. Unlike many on the Left, Prashad does not take sides for or against the rebellion. Instead, he explains the uprising as a popular and positive thing that was manipulated by the forces of the G7 and NATO. Simultaneously, he discusses Gaddafi’s reign as one that began with many positive changes yet ultimately was a victim of its own excess and greed. If there are any good guys in his narrative, it would be the masses that risked their lives to overthrow the autocracy that had Gaddafi at its helm. Their opposite would be the men on both sides of the battle whose only real interest was in keeping their bank accounts plush while serving their masters in the stock exchanges of the neoliberal world.

Interesting, and as yet not very closely examined, is the role of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. Jordan and Morocco. Prashad makes note of the fact that the western capitals have said very little about the harsh repression visited on the Bahraini uprising or the Saudi intervention there. He also explores the military role played by Qatar in Libya, its current role in Syria, and the inclusion of some GCC states in a NATO adjunct. Perhaps, writes Prashad, this adjunct of NATO will be able to stand in for NATO in future operations in the Arab world, thereby creating another shadow in the workings of modern imperialism.

Despite the (probably) millions of words written about the Libyan uprising and the NATO intervention, nothing written in English has come near the truth. After reading Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, it seems that when all is said and done, Prashad’s work will come the closest.

The medics were already sentenced by a military tribunal (a military tribunal!) to up to 15 years in prison after months of being held in illegal detention, denied legal counsel and subjected to torture.

Moving their case to a civilian court is presumably meant to signal a concession by the regime. But what it illustrates is that the Al Khalifa royal rulers of Bahrain are unreconstructed despots who are implacably set against accepting any kind of democratic reform.

The persecution of the majority Shia population – 70 per cent of the island – by an unelected Sunni elite is business as usual as epitomized by the vindictive targeting of medics whose only “crime” was that they treated hundreds of people injured in the state’s brutal crackdown against the pro-democracy movement.

Recently, Washington has been doing its PR best to present the monarchy in the Persian Gulf kingdom as being belatedly open to reform – this after a year of unrelenting repression against a largely peaceful pro-democracy uprising.

Bahraini grassroots activists are concerned that sections of the official opposition belonging to the Shia Al Wefaq political society are being groomed by the US State Department to accept a “compromise deal” with the royal rulers that would effectively see the monarchy remaining in power and the status quo merely being given a facelift.

King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has been praised in the US corporate media for overseeing “brave” moves towards political power-sharing and dialogue with the mainly Shia-led opposition.

Washington’s envoy on human rights Michael Posner and former national security advisor Elliott Abrams have talked up “important steps” by the Bahraini regime towards reform.

However, no amount of Washington spinning can conceal the facts of life: that the US-backed Bahraini regime will continue violating human rights and international law in order to maintain its stranglehold hold on political and economic power at the expense of the Shia majority.

For 280 years, the Sunni rulers, who invaded the country from neighbouring Qatar, have sat on the chests of the indigenous Shia, and they are not going to give up their privileged seats of comfort. The Al Khalifa dynasty has enriched itself through graft and corruption while the majority of Bahrainis struggle with unemployment and poverty.

The oil wealth of the tiny island has lined the pockets of the Al Khalifas, but for the ordinary Shia it has brought poverty, pollution and sickness. To add insult to injury, when the mainly Shia-led uprising last February peacefully demanded elected government to replace the unelected venal family dynasty, it was met with batons, bullets and brutality, with thousands incarcerated or fired from their jobs, several tortured to death while in prison.

Historically, to maintain this excruciating state of inequality, the Bahraini rulers developed a system of governance and state security apparatus that is “bullet-proof to reform”. Under American and British tutelage, the Bahraini rulers became adept at presenting the kingdom as a relatively benign monarchy. They may have acquired the modern semantics and appearance of political progressivism, such as referring to the kingdom as a constitutional monarchy with a (rigged) parliament instead of an absolute monarchy as in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf sheikhdoms. But not far below the surface, Bahrain’s institutionalized despotism was always the dominant reality.

For example, the kingdom’s prime minister is 78-year-old Prince Khalifa Al Khalifa, the uncle of the incumbent king. He is the world’s longest sitting prime minister, having first occupied the post in 1971 when Bahrain gained nominal independence from Britain. Prime Minister Khalifa – also known locally as Mr Fifty-Fifty – has never faced an electorate and is notorious for siphoning off Bahrain’s oil wealth to become one of the richest men in the world.

For decades, despite glamorous images of mirrored skyscrapers and Formula One Grand Prix, Bahrain has been run with an ironclad National Security Agency. The agency was, and is, a veritable “torture apparatus” headed up by members of the royal family and assisted in its nefarious conduct by ex-colonial power Britain.

Between 1968-98, the main architect of the NSA and its sectarian methods of repression against the Shia population was British colonel Sir Ian Henderson. Henderson, who had previously gained British government commendation for his role in efficiently, that is brutally, suppressing the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya during the 1950s-60s, oversaw the detention and torture of thousands of Bahrainis held for years without trial in the dungeons of Bahrain.

Former detainees told Global Research that one of Henderson’s sadistic methods of interrogation was to force them to sit naked on upright glass bottles, the necks of which had been roughly broken off to leave protruding jagged points. The detainees told how Henderson personally oversaw the torture of inmates.

Today, the British influence on Bahrain’s NSA continues. One of Bahrain’s senior police chiefs is Briton John Yates, formerly of Scotland Yard; another senior police chief is American John Timoney, who formerly ran the force in Miami, Florida. Both men have reputations of corruption and brutality from their previous commands.

Bahrain’s institutionalized despotism under a family dynasty is backed up with a military and police force whose ranks are filled by foreign expatriate Sunnis recruited from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and Jordan. The regime forces serve their Sunni masters with a vicious hatred towards the Shia population.

This fact is attested by the daily and nightly attacks on Shia villages by Saudi-backed regime forces, with massive amounts of tear gas fired into streets and homes. At least 25 people have died from suffocation with tear gas over the past year since Saudi-led forces invaded Bahrain to crush the uprising. The victims range from a five-day-old baby girl to elderly men and women who are too weak or infirmed to escape from their smoke-filled homes.

In the past week, mourners attending the funerals for two men who died from tear gas exposure were themselves attacked by riot police who proceeded to fire more tear gas.

So, on the one hand, we see the Bahraini rulers wearing a velvet glove offering “dialogue” and “reforms”, with Washington and London providing the positive-sounding script; while on the other hand, what is felt is an iron-fist smashing down the doors of homes, firing tear gas into houses, dragging suspects away in the middle of the night, detaining them without trial and torturing to death.

And this is all happening in a supposed new era of reformism and dialogue in Bahrain that Washington assures is underway.

The continued persecution of the Bahraini medics is another fact on the ground to demonstrate the despotic nature of Washington and London’s “important ally” in the Persian Gulf.

The medics were sentenced for up to 15 years by a military court last September on a range of outlandish charges, including “attempting to overthrow the government” and “spreading defamatory information” about the royal rulers.

That verdict caused international protests from human rights groups, who denounced it as a travesty of legal procedure, not least because the sole basis for the prosecution were the confessions of the defendants – confessions that were obtained under torture.

Then, as now, the response from Washington and other Western governments and media was muted.

The medics include world-renowned surgeons Ali Al Ekri and Ghassan Dhaif and his wife, Zahra, and brother and sister, Bassim and Nada. Also sentenced was Rula Al Suffar, the former head of Bahrain’s Nursing Society. These are individuals of impeccable medical professionalism and ethics, who refused to close the doors of Bahrain’s main public hospital, Al Salmaniya, when the regime began butchering protesters last February-March. Global Research can bear witness to the dedication of these medics and countless others who struggled in the wards and corridors of the hospital to patch people up with the most horrendous wounds as wave after wave of injured were ferried in.

Dr Al Ekri was assaulted while performing surgery and hauled into detention by Saudi-backed forces who had smashed their way into Salmaniya Hospital – a crime against humanity, just one of many following the Saudi-led invasion of Bahrain that was given the green light by Washington and London.

There was a faint sign that Washington’s recent talk of progress and reform in Bahrain may have somehow sent the hint to its favoured despots to quietly drop the embarrassing show trial against the medics. But with the continuance of the prosecution – albeit in a civilian court instead of a military tribunal – it seems that institutionalized barbarism cannot overcome its tyrannical instincts for power, even at the behest of its more PR-savvy patron in Washington.

One can only imagine the sanctimonious mouth-foaming reaction by Washington, London and the corporate media if such a travesty was perpetrated against medics in Syria.

But Bahrain is not Syria; it is an ally, therefore Western governments and media suddenly develop blindness and speech impediment in the face of blatant crimes against humanity.

The US-Western-backed dictator Yoweri Museveni is somehow never mentioned in the film. A man whose iron fist, and human rights violations have given rise to a monstrous opposition movement like the Kony-led Lord’s Resistance Army. And Museveni has been involved in numerous atrocities and crimes against humanity himself. And about 40% of the Ugandan people live in immense poverty under Museveni’s authority. Indeed, on Museveni’s inauguration day (23 years ago) he said that Africa’s problems were largely caused by leaders who overstay their time in power: leading to impunity, the promotion of patronage, and corruption. Museveni — from whom the Congo was awarded a $10 billion judgement by an International Court of Justice ruling because of his atrocities — should, undoubtedly, be brought to justice also.

The International Criminal Court (led by Luis Moreno Ocampo) is also highlighted in this film. A court that is already widely discredited in Africa. Since its inception in 2002 the ICC has targeted solely African and other developing world leaders. Jean Ping, the head of the African Union, has said about the ICC and Ocampo, “We Africans and the African Union are not against the International Criminal Court. We are against Ocampo who is rendering justice with double standards.” The ICC has had many opportunities to indict Western war criminals/leaders — such as Bush, Blair, Olmert and Cheney — since it has come into being, and it has, of course, wholly failed to do so.

US militarism being promoted as a solution or panacea is never an answer. American military advisers going into a nation is exceedingly rarely — if ever — good. And certainly not for the ostensible end of humanitarianism. The film and its campaigners are certainly folks to continue to keep a close eye on in my opinion. As suggested earlier, perhaps they are just well meaning dupes, but the film presents a very limited picture as to what ails the Central African nation of Uganda. And again to exuberantly support US militarism, as a goal against the Lord’s Resistance Army, is unequivocally highly suspect to even downright reprehensible at the absolute very worst.

This is a strategy Frances Stonor Saunders outlines in her pivotal Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. According to Sanders, right wing corporate-backed foundations and the CIA have been funding the non-communist left since the late sixties, in the hope of drowning out and marginalizing the voice of more militant leftists. It’s also noteworthy that the governing and advisory board of both AEI and ICNC have been consistently dominated by individuals with either a military/intelligence background or a history of prior involvement with CIA “pass-through” foundations, such as NED and USAID.

Gene Sharp, the Fervent Anticommunist

Much of this debate focuses around America’s godfather of nonviolent resistance, Gene Sharp, the founder and director of the Albert Einstein Institution. Sharp’s handbooks on nonviolent protest were widely disseminated in the Eastern Europe color revolutions, in the Arab spring revolutions and in the Occupy movement in the US (see Nonviolence in the Service of Imperialism). Unfortunately Sharp has become a decoy in this debate, deflecting attention from the larger question of whether the US government is actively financing and promoting the work of the AEI, the ICIC and other high profile organizations that promote nonviolent civil disobedience. The question is extremely important, in my view, because it possibly explains the rigid and dogmatic attitude in the US progressive movement regarding nonviolent civil disobedience. In other words, I think it explains the knee-jerk rejection of more militant tactics, such as smashing windows and other property damage that don’t involve physical violence towards human beings.

Is Military-Intelligence Funding Compatible with Progressive Politics?

The institutional nonviolence clique has cleverly refocused the debate on whether Sharp, who is 83, is a CIA agent and whether he actively participated in US-funded destabilization efforts in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran and elsewhere that resulted in so-called “Arab Spring” revolutions. The obvious answer to both questions is no. For me the more important question is why the alternative media and “official” progressive movement embrace Sharp unconditionally as a fellow progressive without a careful look at his past or his ideological beliefs. Sharp has never made any secret of his fervent anticommunist (and antisocialist – he shares the US State Department’s animosity towards Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez) views.

Sharp makes no secret of the funding he has received from the Defense Department; the Rand Corporation; CIA-linked foundations, such as NED, the IRI and the US Institute of Peace; and George Soros’s Open Society Institute. All this information is readily available from the AEI website. Sharp himself states, “I have been arguing for years that governments and defense departments – as well as other groups – should finance and conduct research into alternatives to violence in politics and especially as a possible basis for a defense policy by prepared nonviolent resistance as a substitute for war.” (See The living library: some theoretical approaches to a strategy for activating human rights and peace, George Garbutt, 2008, Southern Cross University).

Less well known is the role military and intelligence figures have played in helping Sharp set up and run the AEI. I think most progressives would be extremely disturbed by the major role played by the military-intelligence establishment in funding and running the AEI. I think they would find it even more troubling that progressives who refer to any of this on so called “independent” or “alternative” media websites and blogs have their posts removed.

To be continued.

However, the spark was lit. The eruption of popular protest against the neoliberal corporate agenda that most of the world had already experienced by the winter of 2011 had finally reached the nation most responsible for that agenda — the United States. The rest of the year would see the expansion of that protest across the United States grow in dimension and breadth. From further State Capitol occupations to the occupations of city parks, the masterminds and profiteers of the neoliberal economy were put on notice. Meanwhile, protest from like minded citizens of the rest of the world also continued to spread. Politicians scrambled as they figured out how to respond to what was clearly a left-oriented popular movement against those who had bought and sold them long ago.

Naturally, there have been millions of words written and published about this wave of people power. A very recent collection of some of those words edited by Wisconsinites Paul and Mari Jo Buhle, is titled It Started In Wisconsin. Essentially a collection of essays written by various participants and organizers of the Wisconsin protests, It Started In Wisconsin provides a reasonable and objective look at the movement. By discussing its structures and organizational strategies, the politics of the movement are also examined. Like the Wisconsin movement itself, the parameters of the discussion tend to remain limited to the parameters of the liberal-progressive spectrum.

The book begins with the first essayist attempting to place the protests firmly in the tradition of the great Progressive Robert LaFollette. However, the very fact that the movement ended up being confined to the traditional Democrat-Republican contest made even the more left elements of the Progressive philosophy irrelevant in the final outcome. It Started In Wisconsin tends to examine the uprising and its politics from a generally anti-corporate perspective but, like the movement itself, never truly challenges capitalism at its roots as an essentially unequal system that by its nature requires growing levels of inequality.

There is one essay that stands out from the rest of those that analyze the movement in that it does look beyond the façade of neoliberalism. That essay, titled “The Role of Corporations” by Roger Bybee, is the most radical in the book. Radical, that is, in the fundamental definition of the word: “of or going to the root or origin.” The essay is a clear and straightforward description of how neoliberal capitalism works, who it benefits and, to put it bluntly, who it screws. No other analytical piece between these covers quite approaches the clarity and depth of analysis like Bybee’s.

Yet, this book is not really about analysis. It is a collection of stories from those that participated in one of the most inspiring movements to erupt in the US heartland in decades. Those stories provide the observer from afar with a fairly universal and nuanced look at the daily lives of those involved in organizing, occupying, reporting and otherwise participating in those weeks of popular democracy. Interspersed between the tales of the workers, students, farmers and other protesters are a number of photographs and comics. The inclusion of these graphics truly enhances the overall effect.

One of the last two essays in It Started In Wisconsin discusses the position of the Wisconsin uprising in the global insurrections of the past eighteen months. The authors of this short essay, Ashok Kumar and Simon Hardy, briefly discuss the possibilities and take a quick look at the lessons they see to be learned. In addition, and most importantly, they broach the subject of the differences between the radical grassroots and the more conservative entrenched union and political leadership. It is here, they hint, that the real direction of this global movement will be determined. In Wisconsin that outcome has already taken one turn with the shifting of the uprising’s momentum into the recall efforts against Governor Scott Walker. The outcome of this turn to electoral politics is still being hotly debated by many of the uprising’s organizers, with some of them refusing to endorse the Democratic candidate opposing Walker because they see him as just more of the same.

Moving from the local to the global, let us consider another recently published text that takes a look at the international manifestations of this movement. This book, titled Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere is authored by journalist Paul Mason. Like the Buhle’s effort, Mason’s book describes the movements against neoliberal intolerance and authoritarianism that have become part of the collective imagination this past year. Likewise, Mason’s text examines the politics of the movement from what can only be termed a new left viewpoint. What this means is that he places the emphasis on the cry for freedom implicit in these protests while under-emphasizing the economic nature of the oppression the protesters are rebelling against.

Given the broader scope of Mason’s text, there is also a broader discussion. Several different manifestations of the movement — from Greece to London to Cairo to Spain and other points in between — are reported on. These reports are good journalism. One feels as if they are present at the rallies, occupations and riots that Mason describes. The anecdotal tales he provides should remind anyone who participated in any kind of popular resistance in the past decades of the energy and hope one finds and feels at such events. These are the stuff that makes one join such movements.

When it comes to analysis, Mason’s text provides some interesting possibilities. He spends a fair number of words discussing the desire for freedom this global movement represents. The Egyptian opposed to the harshness of the Mubarak authoritarian regime and the British student fearing the limitations a life without affordable education will create are examined through what Mason calls the social laboratory of the self. He emphasizes the role of social networking and the existence of a new dimension in organizing directly related to the existence of networking technology. He rightly questions the validity of the Left, but does not really examine what he means by the Left, choosing instead to adopt the mainstream media’s definition that the Left is composed of political parties like Labour in Britain, various elements of the Democratic Party in the United States, and numerous sects espousing various versions of Leninism.

By dismissing the Left, even in its current splintered formation, Mason is also dismissing a more radical analysis of the true culprit in the global economic catastrophe. It is true, as Mason makes clear, that neoliberal policies are responsible for the numerous maladies the global uprising sprang from. However, what is unexplored in Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere is why neoliberal capitalism is the dominant economic regime on the planet. That explanation can only come from an understanding of the economic works of Marx and his theoretical successors like Nikolai Bukharin, Rosa Luxembourg and even Lenin. It was these thinkers and revolutionaries, after all, that studied and explained the stages of capitalism in the industrial world and how they would come about. So far, they have been pretty damn accurate.

Mason has it right when he places the search for freedom against the authoritarianism of a Mubarak or of neoliberalism in the context of Marx’s discussion of the alienation of the human spirit under capitalism. However, by not taking a similar look at the analysis Marxist economics provides regarding the trajectory of capitalism, the analysis he provides falls short. It would be useful for Mason and the protesters he writes about if they knew that a Marxist anti-imperialist analysis does not mean that a Leninist solution is the necessary result.

Yet, Mason is not much different from the movements he describes. Rightly opposed to the excesses of neoliberal capitalism (which is merely another phase of monopoly capitalism as described by Luxembourg, et al), the current movement runs the risk of merely removing the worst of those excesses. If this is the result, it will only be a few decades before an even harsher manifestation of capitalist greed subordinates the world. Unless, that is, the current movement undertakes a truly radical analysis that places the existence of capitalism itself at the core of the problem.

I don’t expect that capitalism will be removed from the planet. However, without an understanding that it is capitalism that is the root of the problems of inequality and sustainability we are currently facing, there can be no substantive change in the future we face. Then, again, the very fact that many elements of the movement don’t seem too concerned about the Left’s role is a call to those on the Left to get active and make it clear that what passes for the Left in today’s world is for the most part nothing of the sort. Indeed, it is a rejection of the Left’s important and earth-changing history.

Despite the aforementioned shortcomings, these two publications are worthwhile and provocative reads. The authors and editors present the primary actors in the global uprising — students, workers and the marginalized — and describe their passion, joy and fears. They also begin to explain where the global movement against neoliberalism came from and where it is now. Reading them in this context will certainly help guide us through that movement’s next metamorphosis.

The outrage expressed by politicians in the West and Gulf State and in the mass media, about the ‘killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting injustice’ is cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizure of neighborhoods, villages and towns by armed bands, brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs.

The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training. Because of a lack of domestic support, however, to be successful, direct foreign military intervention will be necessary. For this reason a huge propaganda and diplomatic campaign has been mounted to demonize the legitimate Syrian government. The goal is to impose a puppet regime and strengthen Western imperial control in the Middle East. In the short run, this will further isolate Iran in preparation for a military attack by Israel and the US and, in the long run, it eliminates another independent secular regime friendly to China and Russia.

In order to mobilize world support behind this Western, Israeli and Gulf State-funded power grab, several propaganda ploys have been used to justify another blatant violation of a country’s sovereignty after their successful destruction of the secular governments of Iraq and Libya.

The Larger Context: Serial Aggression

The current Western campaign against the independent Assad regime in Syria is part of a series of attacks against pro-democracy movements and independent regimes from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The imperial-militarist response to the Egyptian democracy movement that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship was to back the military junta’s seizure of power and murderous campaign to jail, torture, and assassinate over 10,000 pro-democracy protestors.

Faced with similar mass democratic movements in the Arab world, the Western-backed Gulf autocratic dictators crushed their respective uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. The assaults extended to the secular government in Libya where NATO powers launched a massive air and sea bombardment in support of armed bands of mercenaries thereby destroying Libya’s economy and civil society. The unleashing of armed gangster-mercenaries led to the savaging of urban life in Libya and devastation in the countryside. The NATO powers eliminated the secular government of Colonel Gaddafi, along with having him murdered and mutilated by its mercenaries. Nato oversaw the wounding, imprisonment, torture, and elimination of tens of thousands of civilian Gaddafi supporters and government workers. NATO backed the puppet regime as it embarked on a bloody pogrom against Libyan citizens of sub-Saharan African ancestry as well a sub-Sahara African immigrant workers – groups who had benefited from Gaddafi’s generous social programs. The imperial policy of ruin and rule in Libya serves as “the model” for Syria: Creating the conditions for a mass uprising led by Muslim fundamentalists, funded and trained by Western and Gulf State mercenaries.

The Bloody Road From Damascus to Tehran

According to the State Department ‘The road to Teheran passes through Damascus’: The strategic goal of NATO is to destroy Iran’s principal ally in the Middle East; for the Gulf absolutist monarchies the purpose is to replace a secular republic with a vassal theocratic dictatorship; for the Turkish government the purpose is to foster a regime amenable to the dictates of Ankara’s version of Islamic capitalism; for Al Qaeda and allied Salafi and Wahabi fundamentalists a theocratic Sunni regime, cleansed of secular Syrians, Alevis, and Christians, will serve as a trampoline for projecting power in the Islamic world; and for Israel a blood-drenched divided Syria will further ensure its regional hegemony. It was not without prophetic foresight that the über-Zionist US Senator Joseph Lieberman demanded days after the ‘Al Qaeda’ attack of September 11, 2001: “First we must go after Iran, Iraq, and Syria” before considering the actual authors of the deed.

The armed anti-Syrian forces reflect a variety of conflicting political perspectives united only by their common hatred of the independent secular, nationalist regime which has governed the complex, multi-ethnic Syrian society for decades. The war against Syria is the principle launching pad for a further resurgence of Western militarism extending from North Africa to the Persian Gulf, buttressed by a systematic propaganda campaign proclaiming NATO’s democratic, humanitarian and ‘civilizing’ mission on behalf of the Syrian people.

The Road to Damascus is Paved with Lies

An objective analysis of the political and social composition of the principle armed combatants in Syria refutes any claim that the uprising is in pursuit of democracy for the people of that country. Authoritarian fundamentalist fighters form the backbone of the uprising. The Gulf States financing these brutal thugs are themselves absolutist monarchies. The West, after having foisted a brutal gangster regime on the people of Libya, can make no claim of ‘humanitarian intervention’.

The armed groups infiltrate towns and use population centers as shields from which they launch their attacks on government forces. In the process they force thousands of citizens from their homes, stores and offices which they use as military outposts. The destruction of the neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs is a classic case of armed gangs using civilians as shields and as propaganda fodder in demonizing the government.

These armed mercenaries have no national credibility with the mass of Syrian people. One of their main propaganda mills is located in the heart of London, the so-called “Syrian Human Rights Observatory” where it coordinates closely with British intelligence turning out lurid atrocity stories to whip up sentiment in favor of a NATO intervention. The kings and emirs of the Gulf States bankroll these fighters. Turkey provides military bases and controls the cross-border flow of arms and the movement of the leaders of the so-called “Free Syrian Army”. The US, France and England provide the arms, training and diplomatic cover. Foreign jihadist-fundamentalists, including Al Qaeda fighters from Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, have entered the conflict. This is no “civil war”. This is an international conflict pitting an unholy triple alliance of NATO imperialists, Gulf State despots, and Muslim fundamentalists against an independent secular nationalist regime. The foreign origin of the weapons, propaganda machinery and mercenary fighters reveals the sinister imperial, ‘multi-national’ character of the conflict. Ultimately the violent uprising against the Syrian state represents a systematic imperialist campaign to overthrow an ally of Iran, Russia, and China, even at the cost of destroying Syria’s economy and civil society, fragmenting the country and unleashing enduring sectarian wars of extermination against the Alevi and Christian minorities, as well as secular government supporters.

The killings and mass flight of refugees is not the result of gratuitous violence committed by a blood thirsty Syrian state. The Western backed militias have seized neighborhoods by force of arms, destroyed oil pipelines, sabotaged transportation and bombed government buildings. In the course of their attacks they have disrupted basic services critical to the Syrian people including education, access to medical care, security, water, electricity and transportation. As such, they bear most of the responsibility for this “humanitarian disaster”, (which their imperial allies and UN officials blame on Syrian security and armed forces). The Syrian security forces are fighting to preserve the national independence of a secular state, while the armed opposition commits violence on behalf of their foreign pay-masters – in Washington, Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Ankara, and London.

Conclusions

The Assad regime’s referendum last month drew millions of Syrian voters in defiance of Western imperialist threats and terrorist calls for a boycott. This clearly indicated that a majority of Syrians prefer a peaceful, negotiated settlement and reject mercenary violence. The Western-backed Syrian National Council and the Turkish and Gulf States-armed “Free Syrian Army” flatly rejected Russian and Chinese calls for an open dialogue and negotiations which the Assad regime has accepted. NATO and Gulf State dictatorships are pushing their proxies to pursue violent “regime change”, a policy which already has caused the death of thousands of Syrians. US and European economic sanctions are designed to wreck the Syrian economy, in the expectation that acute deprivation will drive an impoverished population into the arms of their violent proxies. In a repeat of the Libya scenario, NATO proposes to “liberate” the Syrian people by destroying their economy, civil society and secular state.

A Western military victory in Syria will merely feed the rising frenzy of militarism. It will encourage the West, Riyadh and Israel to provoke a new civil war in Lebanon. After demolishing Syria, the Washington-EU-Riyadh-Tel Aviv axes will move on to a far bloodier confrontation with Iran.

The horrific destruction of Iraq, followed by Libya’s post-war collapse provides a terrifying template of what is in store for the people of Syria: A precipitous collapse of their living standards, the fragmentation of their country, ethnic cleansing, rule by sectarian and fundamentalist gangs, and total insecurity of life and property.

Just as the “left” and “progressives” declared the brutal savaging of Libya to be the “revolutionary struggle of insurgent democrats” and then walked away, washing their hands of the bloody aftermath of ethnic violence against black Libyans, they repeat the same calls for military intervention against Syria. The same liberals, progressives, socialists and Marxists who are calling on the West to intervene in Syria’s “humanitarian crises” from their cafes and offices in Manhattan and Paris, will lose all interest in the bloody orgy of their victorious mercenaries after Damascus, Aleppo, and other Syrian cities have been bombed by NATO into submission.