Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May
14, 2004
Stephen
Gowans
Building Democracy in Iraq and Other
Absurdities
May
13, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Where is Kerry?
Colm
O'Laithian
Torture and Degradation: Revenge American Style?
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassan
Wal-Mart: Scrooge with Hi-Tech Accounting
Practices
Ralph
Nader
An Open Letter to Bush on the Inhumane Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
Willliam
James Martin
Deir Yassin Massacre Recalled
Marc
Salomon
Reality TV Bites
Forrest
Hylton
Law 'n Order in La Paz: All Quiet
on the Southern Front?
May
12, 2004
Blanton
/ Kornbluh
Prisoner Abuse: Cheney Warned in
1992
Virginia
Tilley
So, Who's to Blame?
Bruce
Jackson
James Inhofe, the Dumbest Senator
of Them All
Thomas
P. Healy
No Enemies: Making Peace with Bert Sacks
Linda
S. Heard
Racism and Ignorance: a Lethal Cocktail in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
Spinning Torturegate
Lisa
Viscidi
The People's Voice: Community Radio in Guatemala
Jack
Heyman
View from the Bay Bridge: Longshoremen Plan Mass Workers March
on DC
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Rummy's Reprieve
CounterPunch
Wire
Teamsters Corruption Scandal: Hoffa Exec. Assistant Alleged to
Have Quashed Investigation into Mob Influence
Christopher
Brauchli
Detention Camp, USA
William
S. Lind
Bush's Waterloo?
May 11, 2004
Mark
Engler
On the "Necessity" of Torture
Ray
McGovern
More Troops? A March of Folly
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Nukes and Jefferson's Grand Experiment
Mickey
Z.
Less Than Hero
Christopher
Reed
Torture on the Homefront: America's Long History of Prison Abuse
Dennis
Hans
When John Negroponte was Mullah Omar
Bruce
Jackson
Pete Seeger at 85
Mike
Whitney
Killing al Sadr
Simon
Helweg-Larsen
Shrinking the Guatemalan Military
William
A. Cook
The Unconscious Country: Righteous Indignation,
Nakedly Displayed
May
10, 2004
Robert
Fisk
From Hollywood to Abu Ghraib: Racism
and Torture as Entertainment
Wayne
Madsen
The Israeli Torture Template: Rape,
Feces and Urine-Soaked Cloth Sacks
Col.
Dan Smith
The Shame of Abu Ghraib
Joe
Bageant
John Ashcroft, Keep Your Mouth Off My Wife!
Ron
Jacobs
Rummy's Prisongate Blues: Don't Leave Mad; Just Leave
Ben
Tripp
Getting in Touch with Your Inner Savage
Ray
Hanania
Why They Hate Us: Racism, Bigotry and Abuse
Reza
Fiyouzat
"Mishandled" Invasions
Diane
Christian
Images & Abstractions &
Genitals
Website
of the Day
Crushing Iraqi Skulls with Tanks for Sport?
May
8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
May
7, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
10 Prisons; 9,000 Prisoners: US Detention
Facilities in Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
UnAmerican? I Wish It Were So
Robert
Fisk
An Illegal and Immoral War
Ahmad
Faruqui
The 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien
Phu
Alexander
Zaitchik
From Terrell Unit in Texas to Abu Ghraib: Doesn't It Ring a (Prison)
Bell?
Mike
Whitney
The Price of Victory
Norman
Solomon
This War, Racism and Media Denial
M.
Shahid Alam
A Comic Apology
May
6, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
They Did It for Jessica: Smeared with
Shit; Kicked to Death
Kathy
Kelly
May Day in Pekin Prison: Prison Labor
for the War Machine
Werther
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: War as Vegas
Casino Game
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
Totalitarian Democracy
Robert
Fisk
"Smoke Him": Video Shows Wounded
Men Being Shot by US Helicopter
John
Janney
Torturing the Way to Freedom?
Christopher
Ketcham
Outlaw Heterosexual Marriage Now!
Alan
Farago
Dead Oceans: So Long, Thanks for the Fish
Sam
Hamod
Bush on Arab TV: Worthless and Demeaning
James
Brooks
Sullen Spring
William
S. Lind
On the Brink of Defeat in Iraq
May
5, 2004
Maj.
Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Complete US Army Report on Abuse of
Iraqi Prisoners
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Kerry: a Lost Cause for Progressives?
Will
Youmans
Deal with the Devil: a Palestinian
Zionist and the End of the World
Patrick
B. Barr
Terrorists R Us: the Powerful are Exempt from the Label
Lawrence
Magnuson
Nightline's All-American Morgue
Greg
Moses
Pocketbook of Denuded Ideals
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Tormenting Prisoners, Torturing
Truth
Lee
Ballinger
Cinco de Mayo and Unity
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
Website
of the Day
Operation Phoenix & Iraq
May
4, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
A Timeline of Torture and Abuse Allegations
and Responses
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Privatized Torture
David
Peterson
CBS, Self-Censorship & Iraq
Barry
Lando
CACI's Private Torture Chambers
Patrick
Cockburn
Torture: Iraqis Disgusted, But Not Surprised
Dr.
Susan Block
Indecent Insurgents: Watch What You Say
Fidel
Castro
A Mindless, Unnecessary War
Mike
Whitney
Empire of Torture
Sonali
Kolhatkar
How to Stop the War: Demonstrate Against
John Kerry
Josh
Frank
The Lost Sierra Club
Stan
Goff
The Role: Another Open Letter to US Troops in Iraq
Agustin
Velloso
Spare Us Your Disgusting Ethics
Stew
Albert
American Know-How
Website
of the Day
Scenes from a Cover-Up
May
3, 2004
Virginia
Tilley
Let the Wall of Silence Fall
May
1 / 2, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
An Army in Disgrace, a Policy
in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
Robert
Fisk
"Good Guys" Who Can Do No
Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders,
Useless Spies, Angry World
Heather
Williams
Gringo, We're Going Home: Latin
American Troops Flee Iraq
Diane
Rejman
An Army Vet on Torture in Iraq:
Abu Ghraib as My Lai?
Diane
Christian
Blood Spilling: Osama, Bush and
Sharon Speak the Same Language
Patrick
Cockburn
Seems Like Old Times in Fallujah
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torturous Logic: Shocked,
Shocked, Shocked
Chris
Floyd
Suicide Bomber: Neocons, Nihilists
and Annihilation
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome
Death of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the
Banality of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the
Ultimate Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
May
14, 2004
Watch the Left
Line Up Behind Bush/Kerry Agenda
Building Democracy
in Iraq and Other Absurdities
By STEPHEN GOWANS
Who believes the following?
Foreign troops should leave
Iraq immediately.
The US occupation authority,
and the Iraqi Governing Council, should be disbanded just as
quickly.
An interim government should
be appointed, not by the UN, not by the US, not by the occupation
authority, and not by the Iraqi Governing Council, but by Iraqis
themselves.
Elections should follow, to
be organized, run and supervised by Iraqis, not the UN, and definitely
not the US.
The rebellion led by Moqtada
Sadr against occupation forces is justifiable and worthy of support.
Answer: A majority of Iraqis,
according to a recent poll conducted for the US occupation authority
[1].
What's the chance Washington
will listen?
Answer: Absolutely none.
Why not?
Answer: Because quitting the
country, and leaving Iraqis to run the place themselves, would
interfere with the US project of...building democracy in Iraq.
Absurd? So what else is new?
According to the poll:
Over 80 percent of Iraqis want
foreign militaries out of their country.
Eight of 10 have no confidence
in the Coalition Provisional Authority.
More than four of five say
that Iraqis alone should supervise the 2005 elections.
Two-thirds in Basra support
the insurgency.
And less than one-tenth of
one percent say the Iraqi Governing Council should appoint the
interim government -- a whole lot higher than the number who
think the US should, which is none.
To make matters worse, the
poll was taken before photos of cocky US guards striking thumbs
up poses as they humiliated Iraqi prisoners dribbled out of the
notorious Abu Ghraib prison. One can only imagine how much more
dead set Iraqis are now against a continued US presence.
To say the US occupation has
no legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqis is to say too little. Think
of the Nazis occupying France.
Too harsh?
Most Americans will say so.
Oh sure, some will admit that
under the Bush administration the US has hardly followed Dale
Carnegie's advice on winning friends and influencing people,
but this is an anomaly, surely.
Well, yes and no. The Democrats
foreign policy would stick closely to Carnegie's text, while
still screwing over other people with as much zeal as the Bush
administration has. The difference would be skin deep, which,
in the run-up to Election '04, has become all the difference
in the world, according to those who loathe Bush with a fury
and are looking for a peg to hang a vote for Kerry on.
Not that Bush isn't loathsome.
When he settled into Washington I had a good deal of fun ridiculing
his pack of velociraptors as they set out to "shape the
international security situation in line with US interests and
objectives." It was cathartic.
But I soon realized that calling
the Bush cabinet a pack of velociraptors, as vicious as its members
are, was a mistake. It made it seem that it was the attributes
of the people in power that made US foreign policy warlike and
expansionist.
If you believed this, the solution
was clear: Get rid of the velociraptors, and you get rid of a
bloody, vicious, imperialist foreign policy.
But US foreign policy has always
been this way, no matter who was in charge, velociraptors or
pacific apatosauruses. And it has never been particularly concerned
with the opinions -- or fate -- of the foreign. ers who've been
its victims. Iraqis are simply the last in a long line.
Starting from the Revolutionary
War, the US has engaged in warlike activity somewhere in the
world in three of every four years of its existence [2]. And
the prizes, for that part of the population that owns and controls
the economy, have been rich indeed: land, mines, plantations,
oil and energy rights, export markets, low-wage labor, and military
bases -- hundreds of them in scores of countries, outposts to
guarantee that more and more of the world is open to US exports
and investment, whether the indigenous population likes it or
not.
And how many aggressions has
the US been involved in since 1999, a mere half-decade? Kosovo,
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq again.
US militarism hardly looks
like a policy of a group of people in power. It looks more like
something that is built in -- systemic and hoary and bound to
carry on in the usual fashion no matter whose name plate sits
on the desk in the Oval Office.
Which says that getting rid
of the group now in power, and replacing it with another group
-- as has been done time and time again in US history -- isn't
going to change what makes the US go to war, or outrage the sovereignty
of others.
That's all the more true, given
that the presumptive Democrat contender to the White House, John
Kerry, looks more like Bush on steroids than Bush-lite when it
comes to foreign policy questions.
Kerry says his military will
be bigger than Bush's [3], and that he too will use force preventively
and unilaterally [4].
And recently he pledged that,
unlike Bush, he'd get the job done in Cuba [5]. Castro, and all
his intolerable baggage -- full-employment, free health care,
and free education -- would be swept away, to be replaced by
the phony freedom and democracy Iraqis are so grateful the US
is ramming down their throats.
Sadly, the Left will line up
behind this right-wing, pro-imperialist anyway -- stupidly, desperately,
unsure what do to, but to toss the dice once again, in a fixed
game.
And if that's not as absurd
as the US staying in Iraq over the objections of a vast majority
of Iraqis, for democracy, what is?
Stephen Gowans is a writer and political activist
who lives in Ottawa, Canada. He can be reached at: sr.gowans@sympatico.ca
1. "80% in Iraq Distrust
Occupation Authority," The Washington Post, May 13, 2004.
2. Harry Magdoff, "Imperialism
Without Colonies," Monthly Review Press, New York, 2003.
p. 115.
3. "On foreign policy,
Kerry is not far from Bush," The Globe and Mail, March 3,
2004.
4. "Kerry Condemns Bush
for Failing to Back Aristide," The New York Times, March
7, 2004; John Laughland, "If it's war you want, vote Kerry,"
The Spectator, April 10, 2004.
5. "Bush's Failed Policies
on Cuba," www.johnkerry.com, May 7, 2004
Weekend
Edition Features for May 8 / 9, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Torture: as American as Apple Pie
Adam
Jones
America's Srebrenica: What About the Hundreds of POWs Suffocated
and Shot at Kunduz?
Douglas
Valentine
Who Let the Dogs Out?: Torture, the CIA and the Press
Kurt
Nimmo
Rush Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib
Brian
Cloughley
Humpty Dumpty is Falling
Lucia
Dailey
Forbidden Games
Joanne
Mariner
* * * *: Redacting Moussaoui
Mickey
Z.
Please Forgive U.S.? (There Are No Innocent Bystanders)
John
Chuckman
The Thing with No Brain
Doug
Giebel
Someone Knew: There Were No WMDs
Norm
Dixon
How the Bush Gang Exploited 9/11
Sam
Bahour
A Guiding Light Falls on Ramallah
Susan
Davis
Disorderly Conduct as Fine Art
Dave
Marsh
In a Pig's Eye: Alan Lomax, Dead But Still Stealing
Laura
Flanders
Life with Dick and Lynne
Dave
Zirin
Fans Push Spiderman Off Base
Carolyn
Baker
Why I Won't Vote in 2004
Prince
"Ain't No Sense in Voting"
Dr.
Susan Block
Onan for Two: Liberating Masturbation
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Sleeth, Ford, Albert and Saska
|