The question is how can we substantiate a contention? Simple: prove it wrong by a method similar to scientific refutation -- if you cannot prove it wrong, then it is probably right!

Under this premise, what is deliberation? Did Isaac Newton's apple fall down deliberately so he could make his observations on gravity? We do not know if that naughty apple wanted to tease Newton’s scientific curiosity (!), or if he purposefully invented the whole deal to spice up his discovery! What we know for sure, however, is that the Muscovites burned Moscow deliberately before the arrival of Napoleon, so he and his frostbitten starving army could not find a standing city welcoming invaders, and in doing so, they turned his invasion into defeat.

Inevitably, did the U.S. deliberately use radioactive “depleted” uranium in Iraq, as it deliberately used Agent Orange in Vietnam and as it deliberately burnt Hiroshima and Nagasaki with its atomic bombs?

The answer is a categorical yes.

Based on the mentality, ideology, and objectives of hyper-imperialism, as well as on the history of U.S. military interventions and wars, the categorical answer of yes is, dialectically and factually, difficult to refute, especially considering past actual events that left their indelible imprints on history. Just think of Truman’s premeditation in creating both Cold War and the Korean War after North Korean Communists tried to unify a divided Korea by force, and McArthur’s deliberate role in expanding it. Think also of Johnson’s ruse to expand the Vietnam War; the scheming of Kissinger to bomb North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; and Reagan’s deliberate invasion of Grenada and his attack against Libya. To complete the picture, think of Clinton’s premeditation when he attacked Yugoslavia, Bush I in invading Panama and attacking Iraq, and finally the deliberation of Bush II in invading Iraq.

The extent of U.S. deliberate military interventions around the world is such that we need some statistics. Gore Vidal, an acute investigator of the American Empire, observed that the Federation of American Scientists counted 197 known military operations (including wars, interventions, and covert operations) of U.S. forces outside its national boarders and that is only in the period from June 26, 1948 to June 11, 1999. [2] If we add the wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, that number becomes 199, and that is without counting operations in Yemen, the Philippines, Indonesia, and elsewhere consequent to 9/11. In the end, if we add all covert operations in the same period, the number of U.S. interventions becomes staggering.

To conclude, in the modern era, while small nations may go to war in the name of territorial claims; imperialistic nations go to war deliberately for imperialistic objectives. In the case of U.S. wars, however, imperialistic motivations, albeit clear to many people, are elusive to the majority and shrouded with pre-packaged rationalizations or ad hoc ideology aiming at justifying interventions, while the true objectives and type of each deliberate war or intervention remain out of reach to the public domain.

Consequently, deliberation -- not as a process leading to a decision but as a decision reached without a process – becomes only partially ideological, while the fundamental motivation that created it resides in different places, i.e. in the true objectives of hype-imperialism. A deliberation such as this is the highest level of rigorous pre-calculation of an event or sum of inter-related events that if implemented would yield certain expected results in the future.

Expectation in world relations, especially in wars of imperialism and colonialism, is a different matter and a more complex issue. For example, when Truman dropped his atomic bombs on Japan just when Japan was seeking a conditional surrender, and only three days before the Soviet Union would have officially entered the war against it, the decision to burn Hiroshima first and Nagasaki three days later was a deliberate action. It aimed at, or expected the exclusion of the USSR from any say on the future of Japan as well as a deliberate move to use a destructive weapon to show Stalin and the world the extent of American capability to inflict death.

In particular, why did the U.S. bomb Nagasaki without waiting to see what happened first in Hiroshima the day after the nuclear holocaust? Or, even better, why did the U.S. refuse to negotiate a Japanese conditional surrender especially knowing that because of the allies ruthless firebombing of Tokyo, Japan was in no condition but to accept even the most humiliating kind of surrender! The argument against the use of atomic bombs becomes even more intense since Truman knew, by his own admission, about their destructiveness. Most importantly, the deliberation to detonate the first nuclear device in history can be confirmed when he refused the recommendation of some scientists that the U.S. give the Japanese a token demonstration on an isolated island of what might happen to them if they were to refuse his conditions? The criminal intent of a homicidal president was evident when he re-confirmed, seven years before his death in 1972, that he, “would do it again”.

Two separate deliberations were at work there. First: the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 was the same exact day of the expected entry of the USSR in war against Japan; in which case, the U.S. was clearly telling Stalin to stay away from Japan. Second, while, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was small and made of fissionable uranium, the bomb on Nagasaki was larger and made of fissionable plutonium. This means the U.S. wanted to experiment with both radioactive materials to see which one would be more effective at vaporizing biological life, thus putting on a showcase of superior American military power although European minds created American nuclear power, and later missile technology.

On the other hand, deliberation can be also an ideological cover (i.e., ideology overshadows and substitutes true motivations but does not excluded them; e.g. the invasion of Iraq); in this case, deliberation is contextually equivalent to, and functionally interchangeable with all of its synonyms including “intentionality”, “pre-determination," “on purpose," and “by design." The most important aspect of ideology, however, is that it is only a secondary subcategory of and an alibi for imperialistic gluttony, racist mentality of decision makers, and a supremacist tendency or belief in using only military power to resolve international conflicts of interest. In other words, for imperialistic gluttony to succeed, it needs supportive fuel or multiple rationalizations having a specific purpose, which in turn form the foundation of ideology.

In the specific case of Iraq where many factors and motives (for example Zionist motives) are driving the war agenda, the gamut of deliberations or pre-determined decisions follows precise ideological steps or chronological scheduling similar to “Critical Path Method” used in military procurement. If we place these steps one after another in the order in which they happened, we would clearly see the method by which the U.S.-Israel managed to keep Iraq under their thumb. Although you will find a detailed account of these steps further down in this series, I must mention two facts to illustrate deliberation.

Israel and the U.S. sealed Iraq’s fate from the moment that Iraq was successful in testing medium range missiles, and from the moment that an over-verbose and jingoistic Saddam threatened to incinerate half of Israel if it were to attack Iraq again (in 1982, Israel attacked Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor). Also, keep in mind, if Saddam was criminally reckless in his statement, Israel was no less genocidal if, indeed, allegations that it researched or developed genetic weapons targeting Iraqi Arabs only, turn to be true). Everything that came later was one deliberate action after another; and Saddam Hussein, a trivial reactionary, as well as an important U.S. ally, and a former CIA collaborator, was the principle factor in making it happen as if per pact.

The question is: how does the deliberation for using radioactive material work in the midst of other deliberations when extraordinary circumstances (9/11) made the idea of colonialist conquest an attractive option for Sharon, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Perle, and a mediocre president with only a banal ideology of power as a cultural package? Definitely, a specific ideological deliberation for a specific physical action against a specific nation or group of people precedes and supplants thoughtful (not necessarily rational, logical, or practical) decision-making toward that nation or group. In a strict sense, it is racial prejudice as in the Japanese occupation of Korea, Hitler’s behavior towards Jews, Menachem Begin and Meier Kahane’s loathsome philosophy toward Palestinians, the KKK lynching of African Americans, and Saddam Hussein’s treatment of Iraqi Shiite Arabs and Kurds, or as the conduct of Zionist-controlled USA towards Iraq.

Yet, the only difference that distinguishes acts of deliberation in war from all other acts is that the criminal intent is the central part revolving around the so-called “war conditions” and military planning and requirements.” For example, what is the compelling military reason for the U.S. and Britain to use radioactive material in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and again in Iraq? In other words, did these two countries need RDU to win their wars? The answer this time is a categorical no; (I detailed this aspect in part five in relation to the Iraqi example). From a military viewpoint, the wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq are similar in all respects, in the sense that those conflicts happened when big military powers launched military aggressions against countries that the West had previously destabilized through wars and interventions in order to ease future partial or total occupation, and in the Iraqi example, a contemplated conquest.

Therefore, being incapable adversaries, the U.S. could have won against those countries combined by the sole use of “conventional” bombardment. Yet, because Washington civilian planners did not choose that way, the only remaining question is, “why the deliberate use of radioactive material on Iraq twice in a decade?” The answer to this question is attainable only through reasoning, comparisons, and based on historical precedents. Generic speculations, superficial analyses, or a cursory meta-comprehension cannot provide clues on the matter and that is because policy makers will never divulge their true intentions or private dinner conversations. This is true regardless of the political nature of the state.

What it is more criminal about U.S. conduct and long-term planning is the fact that it is continuing with the practice of not informing the Iraqi population to stay away from contaminated areas, at least as a precaution. What is the reason for that? Simple: if the U.S. (whose Congress has now approved the production of “mini-nukes” to use in urban battlefields of future invented enemies) would warn of serious effects because of contamination, then it would admit that DU is still radioactive nuclear material! This means the U.S. would expose itself as a hypocritical power with a self-awarded license to use prohibited weapons despite all its rhetorical garbage against the spread of, and use of the same.

Still, “why did the U.S. use radioactive material, especially in Iraq, and how DU can be a weapon, as well as a medium for invisible decimation of a certain group of people over time and, finally, in which way would it facilitate conquest?”

The answer cannot be but one: a slow genocide or gradual destruction of the natural demographic development of a population for variety of motives chief among them imperialistic and colonialist planning of control supported by ideology and with an aberrational infatuation with killing acting as a catalyst.

Keep in mind that radioactive material kills and provokes disease equally among all swaths of a population regardless of origin, age, gender, and profession. Furthermore, when the functional capacity or social skills of a society are broken down leading to the disintegration of demographic pillars, that society cannot sustain itself due to the sudden or gradual lack of specialized skills of all ages and groups; consequently, dependency will result, and resistance to the invaders could be manageable. (Unconfirmed reports by international organizations indicate that the cumulative side effects because of the Anglo-American use of radioactive material dropped on Iraq in 1991 and 2003 will kill at least 300,000 people in this decade alone. If this prediction comes true and proper monitoring will confirm it, radioactive “depleted” uranium in Iraq would kill more people than “Little Boy” (the A-bomb) had killed in Hiroshima from the time of its dropping until now.)

We have previously asserted that the capability to inflict death and destruction with impunity leads to infatuation with that capability, and we concluded that the use of radioactive “depleted” uranium was deliberate as it conferred a higher sense of power for possessing weapons no one else possesses. Categorically, and based on the argument I just highlighted, the charge of premeditated ethnic cleansing projected into the future is reasonable.

Let us confirm this finding in another way. Arguably, if what stands between acquiring wealth by colonialist predation and imperialist military conquest of a wealthy foreign land is people, then the hyper-empire can reduce, relocate, kill, decimate, or render that people into modern slaves, and it can re-structure them through sanctions, systemic disease, and partitions of their land to make conquest easier to accomplish. As we just asserted in the case of Iraq, the use of radioactive material (in addition to many other factors that we shall detail in the coming parts) can decidedly facilitate the project of conquest through decomposition of and derailment of the natural growth of population.

History is replete with examples of demographic re-designs including, European appropriation of colonies, American colonists and the federal government’s expulsion of Native Nations from their lands, Israel’s expropriation-appropriation of Palestine, and Saddam’s forced relocation inside Iraq of many Kurds, etc. In the American example, and thanks to the fascist policies of Andrew Jackson whose image adorns some of the paper currency of the U.S., when white settlers and state authorities could not expel the Cherokee Indians from Georgia because of federal rulings, they forced the natives to sign new treaties whereby they gave up their land and accepted self-deportation.

It is certain that racism is an important factor in using exterminating and super-conventional weapons in Iraq and that is for one reason: U.S. hyper-imperialists or Israel would not give a damn if Iraqis become radioactive, die, or become extinct. The indifference of the U.S. authorities is not exclusive to Iraqis but extends to the U.S. soldiers as well, otherwise how can you explain the U.S. denial that radioactive contamination (Gulf War Syndrome) had not affected soldiers? (The same denial happened toward the Vietnam War veterans because of the U.S. use of toxic defoliants -- Agent Orange -- in that war.) Another motive could be the U.S. message to the world that Israeli and American visions for the Middle East cannot stop because of moral concerns for future generations of “natural born terrorists.” George Bush, an arcane and ideological speaker, stated recently that “it is better to fight the “terrorists” in Iraq than here in the U.S.!”

In the coming part, we shall discuss “depleted” uranium” from an angle not related to weapons, formulate a proposal to the U.S. government on the safety of RDU, conclude our discussion on deliberation, and then address another issue pivoting around on how the U.S. has been projecting its military power worldwide, especially under its current phase of hyper-imperialism. We know already that that the U.S. is projecting that power by combining ideology, bribery, aggressive militarism, threats, propaganda, misinformation, and romantic nationalism in one brazenly rationalized matrix to serve a purpose.

Because this matrix has appalling precedents in history, can we define it according to what it is, and not what it pretends to be? Furthermore, based on the type, meaning, and consequences of this same matrix, and considering the U.S. world outlook, the scope of its policy, and foreign military interventions, can we call the U.S. an aggressive fascist state despite the still remaining vestiges of “democracy”?

Next, Part 7: Is Hitlerism a Mentality?   

B. J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American anti-war activist. He can be reached at: bjsabri@yahoo.com.

Other Articles by B. J. Sabri
 

* Splendid Failure of Occupation, Part 5 of 22: America and Depleted Uranium
* Splendid Failure of Occupation, Part 4 of 22: Annan and the Vocabulary of Deception
* Splendid Failure of Occupation, Part 3: Annan, the UN, and Other Stories
* Splendid Failure of Occupation, Part 2: Can We Explain the War on Iraq by Reading Israel?
* The Splendid Failure of Occupation: Part 1
* Beyond Empty Triumphalism
* The Hyper-Imperialist Paradigm, Part One
* The Hyper-Imperialist Paradigm, Part Two
* The Hyper-Imperialist Paradigm, Part Three
* The Hyper-Imperialist Paradigm, Part Four
* Reporting from the Colonialist Side of the Brain
* Thomas Friedman: The Insidious Prophet of Petty Fascism
* Nomen Nudum, Or, Hyper-Imperialists On a Rampage
* Which Prototype is Bush Following: Nero, Holagu, Malthus, Hitler, or Sharon?
* From Guernica to Baghdad Via Dresden and Hiroshima
* Barbaric Era, Year 2003
* When Hercules is Intoxicated, Furious, and Unchained
* War on Iraq and the Pregnant Chads Factor
* Nuclear Blues and the Iraqi Question

NOTES