Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May
28, 2004
Rafael
Rodriguez Cruz
Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5
Greg
Moses
Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib
Dave
Lindorff
Dissing Independent Contractors:
Those Who Do the Dirty Work
Norman
Solomon
Leaping for Lies at the Times
Rep.
Bill Delahunt
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
Paul
McGeough
Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India and Nehru: 40 Years After
Alexander
Cockburn
NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a
Little"
May
27, 2004
Amy
Goodman / David Goodman
Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times
Douglas
Valentine
Ragging the Dogs of War at the
NYTs
John
L. Hess
The Times Confesses...Kind Of
Stew
Albert
Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist
Dave
Dellinger
a 1993 Interview
Christopher
Brauchli
Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids
Rampton
/ Stauber
Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony
May
26, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a
Friend of Ours
Robert
Fisk
The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech
Zeynep
Toufe
New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation
Conn
Hallinan
Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection
Tom
Stephens
2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons
and War Crimes
Derek
Medley
Protesting Gov. Bigot
CounterPunch
Wire
FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art
Andrew
Cockburn
The Trail to Tehran
May
25, 2004
Joe
Bageant
The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It
is in Texas
Col.
Dan Smith
A Question of Human Dignity
Gary
Handschumacher
Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home
Toni
Solo
A Developing War in the Andes
Marc
Estrin
September Song: Disturbing Questions
About 9/11
Stephen
Banko, III
A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the
Troops"
Website
of the Day
The Wizard of Whimsy
May
24, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Dan Senor is Safe!
Kurt
Nimmo
Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the
Missing Taguba Pages
Sam
Hamod
Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong
Place, Wrong Time"
Mike
Whitney
The Wedding was a Bomb
Stan
Goff
Open Season on MAMs
Image
of the Day
A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the
NYTs
May
22 / 23, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
Colin Powell, a Political Obituary
Jeffrey
St. Clair
When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview
with Sue Niederer
Brian
Cloughley
America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq
Saul
Landau
Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good
for People
Brandy
Baker
Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry
Randall
Robinson
Bushwhacked in the Caribbean
Uri
Avnery
The Rape of Rafah
Ben
Tripp
Assume the Worst
Bruce
Anderson
News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business
Josh
Ruebner
Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
Peter
Wolson, Ph. D.
Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib
Chloe
Cockburn
In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy
Linda
Burnham
Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value
Adrien
Rain Burke
War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse
David
Krieger
Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy
Ron
Jacobs
Turnaround
Poets'
Basement
Ford, Albert & LaMorticella
May 21, 2004
Ray
Close
The Canards of the Apologists
Christopher
Brauchli
"The Object of Torture is Torture"
Amira
Hass
Darkness at Noon
Jack
McCarthy
Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from
the US Army?
Bill
Kauffman
Nader v. Bush
Omar
Barghouti
No More Tears for America
Ghali
Hassan
Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza
Christopher
Reed
How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to
Torture
Website
of the Day
Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much
May
20, 2004
Andrew
Cockburn
The Truth About Chalabi
Kathy
Kelly
A Visit from the FBI
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Brown and Bored of Education in India
Tom
Stephens & John Philo
The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co.
Sam
Bahour / Michael Dahan
Genocide by Public Policy
Robert
Ovetz
Ending the Race for the Last Turtle
Billy
Wilson
The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year
Website
of the Day
Rafah Today
May
19, 2004
Elizabeth
W. Corrie
Caterpillar Should Do the Right Thing,
Now
Bill
and Kathleen Christison
The US Can't Win
Vijay
Prashad
For Whom the Polls Toll: the Indian Elections of 2004
Ray
Hanania
Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, AIPAC or Amnesty Intl.?
Greg
Moses
Man President Kisses Up at AIPAC
Michael
Gillespie
Who is Kenneth deGraffenried?
Josh
Frank
Homes Destroyed; Death Toll Mounts: But Where's John Kerry?
Gary
Corseri
Out of Iraq and Plato's Cave
Kevin
Alexander Gray
If Malcolm Were Alive
May
18, 2004
Neve
Gordon
The Gaza Debacle
Doug
Stokes
Imperial Policing: Why Abu Ghraib
Shouldn't Surprise Us
Bob
Wing
The Color of Abu Ghraib
Vanessa
Jones
Man on a Leash
Thomas
P. Healy
Chemical Trespass: the Body Burden
Zeynep
Toufe
Torture and Moral Agency: the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Kenneth
Roth
Mistreatment of Detainees in US Custody: a Letter to Bush
Elaine
Cassel
Pre-empting the Bill of Rights: The Other War, One Year Later
Website
of the Day
Truth Against Truth
May
17, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The John-John Ticket: Kerry Woos McCain
Laura
Santina
Military Conditioning and Abu Ghraib
Mickey
Z.
With Friends Like These: More Election 2004 Madness
Frederick
B. Hudson
Police Terror: Three Mothers Search for Justice
Shakirah
Esmail-Hudani
Inside Abu Ghraib: the Violence of the Camera
Boris
Leonardo Caro
The Revelations of Mr. W.
Alex
Dawoody
Iraq: From Saddam to Occupation
Victor
Kattan
On Watching the Execution of Nick Berg
Ron
Jacobs
Rumsfeld's Sovereignty Shell Game
May
15 / 16, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Green Lights for Torture
Douglas
Valentine
ABCs of American Interrogation: Phoenix Program, Revisited
John
Stanton
Kings of Pain: UK, US and Israel
Ben
Tripp
Torture: a Fond Reminiscence
Brian
Cloughley
Where are You Heading, America? Taking a Closer Look at the Patriot
Act
Justin
E. H. Smith
Islam and Democracy: the Lesson from Turkey
Brandy
Baker
Equal Opportunity Torture: Lynddie England, the Right and Feminism
John
Chuckman
Peep Show on Capitol Hill: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: Goon Squad
John
Holt
Fencing the Sky
Ron
Jacobs
The Power of Patti Smith
Brian
J. Foley
Why the Outrage Over Abu Ghraib?
Robin
Philpot
Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide
Eric
Leser
The Carlyle Empire
Ray
Hanania
From Abu Ghraib to Nick Berg: There's No Such Thing as a Good
War Crime
Jeff
Halper
Dozers of Mass Destruction
Joe
Surkiewicz
Inside the Baltimore Detention Center
John
Whitlow
Iraq Goddamn
Michael
Leon
Invitation to a Beheading: Why Bush Should Watch the Berg Video
Poets'
Basement
Krieger, Ford, LaMorticella, Smith and Albert
May
14, 2004
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's POW Porn
Ron
Jacobs
Secret History of the War on Drugs
William
Blum
God, Country and Torture
Michael
Donnelly
The People v. Corporate Greed: A Victory on the North Coast
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
India Shines
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
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.
|
Weekend
Edition
May 29 / 31, 2004
Wars
of Conquest and Capital
Bad
Apples in a Bad Barrel
By
STEPHEN GOWANS
When Washington set out to pave the
way for a full-scale invasion of Iraq, it did so by pointing
to Baghdad's failure to fully comply with UN Resolutions. The
Baghdad regime, declared US President George W. Bush, was defying
the UN. You would think the US had never scorned the world body
itself, had never dismissed it as irrelevant. In the end, Washington,
its faithful British lapdog in tow, would attack Iraq without
a UN imprimatur, as it had attacked Afghanistan without UN approval,
and as a preceding administration had attacked Yugoslavia without
a UN blessing (though, being Democratic, that administration,
according to the mythology of the US Left, was less enamored
of the use of force, more committed to international bodies,
and less zealous in pursuing imperialist goals.) Some called
it hypocrisy, the US insisting other countries follow the rules,
while it exempted itself and its strategic allies, principally
Israel. And so it was. But it was also more than that. It was
Washington setting itself up as the world's de facto government,
and since only a small part of the world got to vote for the
government, it was effectively a global dictatorship. And when
what drove the global dictatorship was taken into account, it
was clear it was a global dictatorship of US capital.
The latest phase of what has
been over a decade-long war on Iraq, has somehow been deemed
unworthy by the largest part of the US Left of the blessings
given other attacks. The bombing and invasion of Afghanistan
were seen as justifiable, because "the Taliban was harboring
terrorists," or was said by the Left to be justifiable,
because that's what most Americans believed, and the Left wanted
to build bridges to the larger community. An outstanding characteristic
of all progressive movements, observed Paul Sweezy once, is the
gradual bartering away of principles for respectability and votes
[1].
But the war on Afghanistan
had left tens of thousands who had nothing to do with the Taliban
or al-Qaeda dead or homeless. Since the ostensible object of
the attack was to bring bin Laden to book, the implication is
that slaughter is justifiable to capture, or kill, a single man.
Americans who bless the attack on Afghanistan, would think it
unconscionable to wipe out a large part of LA to kill or capture
a drug kingpin, but slaughter, in the service of US foreign policy,
seems to be judged by entirely different standards.
It's not widely known that
the United States itself harbors terrorists, those who've carried
out attacks on Cuba for political reasons [2]. Since US governments
share the terrorists' politics, and abhor Cuba's, this terrorism
is deemed acceptable, even praiseworthy, and, above all else,
is given some other name than "terrorism." It is, instead,
a fight for freedom and democracy, a battle against tyranny.
But if you follow the logic, Cuba is perfectly justified in carrying
out assaults on US territory as part of a war on terrorism. Follow
the logic further, and the US is a "failed" state for
knowingly providing a base from which terrorists can operate.
The designation "failed," a rather transparent pretext
for a take over, works both ways in theory; in practice, never.
The 78-day air war on Yugoslavia
was also blessed by large parts of the Western Left, even though
NATO deliberately bypassed the UN, knowing it would never receive
UN Security Council approval. It could be said that before invading
Iraq at least the Bush administration tried, at the urging of
Tony Blair, to bring the UN on board. Clinton didn't bother.
A civil war had raged in Kosovo
between Serb forces and ethnic Albanian militants who sought
independence, and as later events would suggest, who also sought
an ethnically pure Kosovo, cleansed of Serbs, Jews and Roma.
Atrocities were committed by both sides, resulting, to the point
NATO began its attack, in some 2,000 deaths. But NATO alleged
the atrocities on the Serb side weren't haphazard and unorganized,
but were systematic, deliberate, and ordered by Yugoslavia's
then president, Slobodan Milosevic.
Today, Carla del Ponte, the
lead prosecutor in the blatantly political NATO-backed tribunal
that's trying Milosevic on war crimes and genocide charges, admits
she has failed to produce a smoking gun showing that Milosevic
methodically sought to purge ethnic Albanians from Kosovo [3].
But ever since Serb forces agreed to quit Kosovo, and NATO forces
arrived, thousands have been driven from their homes. This time,
Serbs, Roma and Jews. The West dismisses the pogroms as regrettable,
but understandable. Aggrieved ethnic Albanians, it's said, are
taking revenge for the atrocities of the Milosevic era. But that
doesn't explain why other ethnic groups are being targeted.
And there have been two other
developments of significance. The remnants of Serbia's socialist
economy have been dismantled, with grim consequences for the
lives of Serbs, but happy consequences for Western capital. The
Serbs sink deeper into poverty and economic insecurity, following
in the path of Russians and Eastern Europeans, whose march from
communism to capitalism has been marked by economic decline,
the recrudescence of disease and diminished life spans. And the
US has built a giant military base in Kosovo, in the path of
an important planned pipeline route.
Soon after 9/11, Washington
got down to spreading the fiction of banned weapons in Iraq.
There was no doubt, we were assured, that Baghdad was harboring
them. Were vials of nasty bio-weapons hidden in empty shoe boxes
secreted in Saddam's closet, ready to be deployed in 45 minutes?
No claim was too far-fetched, too comical, too ridiculous. Saddam's
arsenal, the story went, was vast and frightening, a Pandora's
box of mayhem and destruction that whispered alluringly to Islamic
terrorists bent on destroying the United States for its freedoms
and democracy. Al Qaeda, suggested Washington, hadn't declared
war on the United States for abetting Israel's brutalities against
the Palestinians, for being as much as Tel Aviv a part of the
project of ethnically cleansing Palestine to enlarge a Jewish
homeland, already built on the wreck of Palestinian lives and
homes. Nor was the siege of Iraq by US forces, a decade-long
strangulation that left over a million dead, at issue. No, it
was America's freedoms and democracy, the President declared,
that drove a band of aggrieved Arabs, mostly Saudis, to pilot
commercial aircraft into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. No
claim was too far-fetched, too comical, too ridiculous.
What is this freedom that Islamic
militants detest so much? Is it freedom of Americans to travel
to Cuba? Is it freedom from fear of being ruined by illness because
health insurance is unaffordable? Is it freedom to march, and
demonstrate, and be ignored (or in US-occupied Iraq to march
and demonstrate and be gunned down)? Is it freedom to make a
choice in an election, between two parties committed to the same
goals and values?
The US media doesn't like to
dwell too long on the reasons other people are hostile to the
US. Hostility is to be understood to spring from irrationality
and misunderstanding, not legitimate grievances. North Korea's
arming itself with nuclear weapons is attributed to the country's
leader, Kim Jong Il's alleged insanity, not to the US escalating
military pressure, sanctions, and psychological warfare against
the country. Palestinian militants are said to be animated by
irrational anti-Semitism, not by resentment over their brutal,
inhumane and exploitative treatment at the hands of Israelis,
or their being denied basic rights, or of being asked uniquely
to relinquish rights guaranteed to others. And bin Laden is to
be understood as the incarnation of pure evil, his behavior inspired
by a malice that has sprung fully formed, and inexplicably, from
religious fanaticism. These stories, like so much else about
political discourse in the US, are childish and arrant nonsense.
That Saddam had banned weapons
was never believable from the start, and it's astonishing that
so many, including those who present themselves as astute critics
of the media, and of the lies governments tell to justify wars
of conquest, were gulled. Iraq had been effectively disarmed
before the Clinton administration withdrew UN weapons inspectors,
who, it turned out, were the US spies Baghdad complained they
were. Crippled by sanctions, bedeviled by almost daily bombing
attacks, it would have been impossible for Baghdad to reconstitute
its weapons program. Small wonder the weapons were never found.
So what is to justify the invasion,
and now, the occupation -- freedom and democracy? Since Iraqis
aren't free, and the US isn't too keen on elections - not yet,
anyway, until Washington can be pretty sure of the outcome -
some other justification must be found.
Human rights? Saddam Hussein's
regime was a notorious human rights abuser. But the United States
- despite regularly denying foreigners the right to existence,
despite running a concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, despite
conducting a human rights horror show at the Abu Ghraib prison,
despite dismissing the Geneva Conventions as quaint [4] - styles
itself a champion of human rights, helped along in its ridiculous
claim by Human Rights Watch, whose advocacy director says the
biggest victim of the prisoner abuse scandal is the US itself,
whose status as a champion of human rights will be cynically
impugned by human rights abusers everywhere [5].
It seems, however, that every
pretext Washington presses into service to continue to occupy
Iraq, must eventually dissolve, this time thanks to the shutter
bugs who decided it wasn't good enough to humiliate Iraqi prisoners
-- the humiliation had to be photographed, as well. Poor Donald
Rumsfeld. You'd think the world was out to show that everything
he says is nonsense. First he said there were weapons of mass
destruction. There weren't. Next he said American troops would
be welcome as liberators. Not anymore. Then he promised the whole
situation would take a turn for the better once Saddam Hussein's
sons were killed. It didn't. The capture of Saddam was hailed
as a major triumph. It changed nothing. (Incidentally, Noam Chomsky
claimed the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein
[6]. Not surprisingly, his prediction hasn't been borne out.)
And now the champions of human rights, who would wipe away the
stain of Saddam Hussein's deplorable human rights abuses, turn
out to be human rights abusers themselves (as they were all along.)
Rumsfeld probably wishes he was still at Searle, making Metamucil.
It behooves us to take a step
back every now and then to look at the forest. Why have US governments,
Democrat and Republican, been so fixated on toppling the Baathist
government? This hasn't been a short-term obsession. The Gulf
War inaugurated the effort to smash a secular, advanced Middle
Eastern country, which invested its oil wealth in its own internal
development, rather than shipping it off to the US as the Saudis
do. Was it because Iraq's economy was largely state-owned, and
those parts of it that weren't, were owned by nationals or other
Arabs by fiat of the state; that is, was it because it wasn't
owned by US companies and investors? We can be sure this hardly
accorded with the wishes of US governments. Washington, no matter
who is in power, has always predicated its foreign policy on
the expansion of US export and investment opportunities overseas.
Economies closed to US capital have consistently been targets
for US policy makers, even before Woodrow Wilson declared in
1907 that "the sovereignty of unwilling nations [must] be
outraged" in order that "no useful corner of the world...be
overlooked or left unused" for US business [7]. Significantly,
the presumptive Democrat presidential candidate, John Kerry,
pays obeisance to Wilson's foreign policy, along with that of
Truman (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and Kennedy (Vietnam and the
Bay of Pigs.) Kerry would, as president, as much as Wilson and
every other occupant of the White House, Democrat or Republican,
outrage the sovereignty of foreign countries that close their
doors to ownership by US capital. That this will happen is guaranteed,
not by the predilections or inner urges of members of the cabinet;
it is a law of capitalism, as coercive as gravity. The question
for Left voters in the US is whether they want to back a candidate
who will pursue a foreign policy as unreservedly imperialist,
and firmly committed to outraging the sovereignty of foreign
countries, as that George W. Bush will pursue.
From this perspective, it should
come as no surprise that now that Washington has swept the Baathists
from power, its functionaries are laboring diligently to replace
the legal basis the Baathists put in place for a state-owned
economy and indigenous ownership with one that throws the door
wide open to US capital and to that of countries that supported
the US invasion [8]. It has always happened that the inherent
drive to expand markets for the export of goods, services and
capital has brought the US into conflict with countries that
are rivals for the same foreign markets, and with those that
seek to erect barriers within which to pursue a course of internal
development. For US policy makers, countries that indiginze their
economies are threats; they deny opportunities to US capital,
and threaten to become models for other developing countries.
Left to develop in peace, outside the imperialist orbit, they
become a contagion, threatening to spread. Without opportunities
for foreign expansion, capitalist economies would soon be plunged
into major crises. It is for this reason that the US will go
to great lengths, from buying foreign elections, to imposing
blockades, to war and invasion, to topple regimes that pursue
internal development outside the imperialist logic.
The reason over a million Iraqis
have been killed by US-led wars, bombing campaigns, sanctions,
and occupation, have nothing whatever to do with Saddam Hussein's
failings. It has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction,
that much being obvious now and easily deduced prior to the invasion,
or with a desire to liberate Iraqis from dictatorship, who have
instead been liberated from their electricity, their telephones,
their jobs, their security, their dignity and, for many, from
their lives. It has nothing to do with bringing a free press
to Iraq. The US occupation authority shut down Moqtada al-Sadr's
newspaper, and, in light of the evidence of systematic abuse,
humiliation and torture of prisoners by US soldiers, it would
be preposterous to say the US is in Iraq to safeguard human rights.
The US is in Iraq because US foreign policy is implacably hostile
to state- and indiginously-owned economies, and because it seeks
to secure Iraq as a market for the export of US goods, services
and capital.
Curiously, there's hardly ever
anything said about this on the Left, which, for the most part,
is moralistic and reconciled to capitalism, and hardly recognizes
a systemic dimension to US foreign policy. It is enough these
days for Leftists to simply deplore wars of conquest, and to
speak indignantly of sweatshops and conspicuous exploitation,
but rarely do answers to the question, Why do these things happen?
go beyond human frailties. Wars of conquest are said to be caused
by hawks who want to enlarge their power and the prestige of
their nation. The implication: if you don't want war, vote for
someone who doesn't seem to be warlike (or as warlike as the
other major candidate.) Sweatshops are said to spring up because
some people are greedy. The implication: if you deplore sweatshops,
pressure corporations to be less greedy. This gives rise to the
absurd spectacle of filmmaker Michael Moore imploring Nike chairman
Phil Knight to be a nice guy and set up an athletic shoe factory
in Flint, Michigan. How long would a plant that doesn't pay sweatshop
wages last? Equally absurd was Moore's backing Wesley Clark,
a war criminal, for president, because Clark seemed to Moore
to be less warlike than George W. Bush. The absurdity is magnified
by the reality that not only would US foreign policy not be guided
by different goals were Clark president, but that Clark, a retired
general who would bang his fist on his desk demanding more violence
from the bombing campaign he oversaw on Yugoslavia in 1999 [9]
is clearly not less warlike than Bush. Even Moore's latest film,
Fahrenheit 9/11 -- which lays blame for the invasion of Iraq
on the greed of the Bush family -- is more of the same. It's
forgotten that regime change became official policy of the US
government in 1998, during the Clinton administration, and that
Washington has been bent to the task of extinguishing Iraq as
a threatening counterexample for some time.
Rarely is it said, and certainly
never in the mainstream Left, that wars of conquest, sweatshops
and exploitation are inevitable outcomes of capitalism. Instead,
all deplorable conditions are attributed to bad apples, the barrel
in which the apples are stored either being assumed to be good,
or irrelevant. Which means the Left is hardly Left in the sense
of seeking to alter conditions that engender deplorable outcomes
like wars of conquest and exploitation, and is simply comprised
of the equivalent of Sunday School teachers who believe that
if only people in power can be pressured to make the right moral
choices the world can be a beautiful place. The evidence of the
failure of this approach is all around us. The biggest stride
the Left can take is to stop talking of bad apples, and to start
talking of a bad barrel, and how to replace it.
Stephen Gowans is a writer and political activist
who lives in Ottawa, Canada. He can be reached at: sr.gowans@sympatico.ca
1. Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory
of Capitalist Development: Principles of Marxian Political Economy,
Monthly Review Press, New York, 1970. p. 352.
2. See for example, "Cuba
1959 to 1980's: The Unforgivable Revolution," in William
Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since
World War II, Common Courage Press, 1995.
3. "At Halfway Point of
Milosevic Trial, Prosecutor Is Confident," New York Times,
March 1, 2004.
4. "U.S. wants quick handover
of its prisons in Iraq," Reuters, May 18, 2004.
5. "U.S. Releases Human
Rights Report Delayed After Abuse Scandal," The Washington
Post, May 18, 2004.
6. "Interview With Noam
Chomsky about US Warplans," August 29, 2002, ZNet."
7. Wilson in Micheal Parenti,
Against Empire, City Light Books, San Francisco, 1995, p.40.
8. "U.S. Companies Put
Little Capital into Iraq," The Washington Post, May 15,
2004.
9. Washington Post, September,
21, 1999 cited in William Blum, "Our
next savior? Grand illusions about Wesley Clark," September
24, 2003, CounterPunch.
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