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Today's
Stories
March 10, 2004
Gary Leupp
On Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the
Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
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.
|
March
10, 2004
On Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
The
Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
By GARY LEUPP
Pandora's Box
Anyone likely to wield political power in the
U.S. in the near future will support a large, ongoing U.S. military
presence in Iraq. Thus have the neocons triumphed, even if President
Bush is voted out of office. Even if the public comes to thoroughly
understand that lies led to war, policy-makers will point
out that a U.S. withdrawal will magnify the risk of fighting
between Shiites and Sunnis, conflict between Kurds and other
Iraqis, Turkish intervention, the establishment of an Iran-aligned
Shiite state, etc. Withdrawal will (it will be argued) allow
terrorism to flourish in Iraq, and insure that the country becomes
or remains a base for anti-U.S. attacks. (So even if the Iraq
invasion, in its criminality and cruel effects, has produced
more anti-U.S. anger than ever, and hence made Americans less
safe, to apologetically leave Iraq now would make the Homeland
even more unsafe You see the logic? Howard Dean saw it, declaring
last September that "Failure in Iraq is not an option,"
urging Bush to "drum up the troops and the moneyto make
Iraq a better place.") However discredited their rationale
for war, those who built the case for war will (in their government
offices, in retirement or in prison cells) be able to smugly
celebrate their fait accompli, confident that their deed
designed to refashion the Middle East is truly undoable, and
will be accepted even by some self-professed "anti-war"
people.
Unless,
of course, the Iraqi resistance makes the occupation just too
costly and too unpopular at home. If the casualty toll remains
at its current level, or mounts; if GIs decline to re-enlist
and military recruitment suffers to the extent that conscription
is re-imposed; if GIs resist and speak out against the war, detailing
traumatic, unheroic experiences; if the economy suffers significantly;
if the effort to tar all Iraqi opposition to occupation as "terrorists"
comes to invite widespread skepticism in the U.S.---the antiwar
movement may swell. Regardless of the consequences for the Middle
East, majority opinion may come to demand (as it did in the later
years of the Vietnam conflict): "Bring the troops home
NOW!"
In the near term, it appears that some
of the phenomena which the U.S. presence is supposedly needed
to prevent may happen anyway, even under the occupation's watch.
Specifically, there could be a civil war pitting Shiites against
Sunnis. The secular rule of Saddam Hussein, iron-handed and
cruel, at least kept the lid on Iraq. In invading, not just criminally
but foolishly, the U.S. lifted the lid, opening a Pandora's
box it may be unable to close.
The Occupiers' Confusion
The Iraqi resistance, taking various
forms, including huge peaceful demonstrations called for by the
Shiite Ayatollah Sistani, has already forced the occupiers to
rethink their policies so often that they seem to be making it
up as they go along. Jay Garner was originally appointed to oversee
the occupation, but the apishly chest-beating retired general's
presence so provoked the Iraqis that he was replaced early on
by the civilian, L. Paul Bremer.
The timetable for restoration of sovereignty
was advanced due to Iraqi as well as foreign pressure. The plan
for caucuses, which would have allowed the U.S. to hand-pick
leaders of the future government, was dropped due in large part
to Sistani's opposition (which was very reasonable, and was even
supported by the editors of the Boston Globe).While the
Bush administration insists it will restore sovereignty to the
Iraqi people by June 1, it remains unclear what sovereignty really
means, and what powers will be given to whom.
Maybe all hell will break lose, and the
occupiers will yet again adopt new tactics, such as working with
the mysterious General Nizar Khazraji
and his network of contacts in the disbanded Iraqi Army to
contain violent dissent, inter-communal strife and separatism.
In any case, having invited disorder by the crime of its invasion,
the U.S. cannot blame itself. (Imperialism means never having
to say "I'm sorry.") It will have to blame someone
else. Who would these others be? Why, foreigners in Iraq
of course. Not the foreign "Coalition" troops from
Poland, Spain, Estonia, Japan, etc. mercenarily assisting in
the hyper-power's occupation, but Arabs or other Muslims who
share, by definition---in their ethnicity or religious beliefs---something
in common with al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda, which attacked the Homeland
and prompted America's righteously unbounded War on Terrorism
in the first place. Any organization or state the Bush administration
modifies by the awkward adjective "al-Qaeda-linked"
can be faulted with trying to provoke Sunni-Shia antagonism,
foment civil war, and worsen the U.S. headache in Iraq.
Providing Clarity
through Bogus Links
(Digression. "Link" is among
the vaguest and most dangerously useful of words. The War on
Terror deploys it constantly. The first group, other than al-Qaeda
and the Taliban, targeted by U.S. military forces after 9-11
was the "al-Qaeda-linked" Abu Sayyaf bandit group in
the Philippines. Never mind that the Philippines president herself
declared that there had been no ties between al-Qaeda
and Abu Sayyaf in five or six years. The linkage however
facilitated the U.S. military's reentrance into the Philippines,
so positing some link, which needn't be close or substantial
or even explained at all, served a policy goal. Similarly, the
link posited between Chechen rebels in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge
and al-Qaeda---never really substantiated---facilitated a U.S.
military presence in the former Soviet republic, where the U.S.
vies for influence with neighboring Russia. Unidentified "western
intelligence sources" told the Independent in May
2002 that al-Qaeda has supplied weapons to Nepali Maoists, a
classic piece of disinformation if I've ever seen one. That link
preceded the provision of $ 20 million in U.S. military equipment
to the Nepali regime.)
Syria has been linked to al-Qaeda; so
has Iran, and of course, Iraq under Saddam. This can mean simply
that an al-Qaeda operative has visited one of these countries,
or that there have been low-level, inconclusive contacts between
security officials and al-Qaeda. The neocons have excelled in
linking 9-11 to a broad array of projects; the establishment
of these links is for them a kind of Straussian game in which
the Noble Lie is argued through the most creatively effective
stringing of links. (Assignment to Defense Department staff:
how can we use 9-11 to win popular support for our plans to topple
Assad? The Iranian mullahs? Castro? Kim Jong-il? Let us link,
link, link, lie nobly and conquer.)
If Iraq becomes increasingly unstable,
it will be more and more necessary (and useful) to link its instability
to some of these other targets. Opposition to occupation, potentially
a setback for the ambitious neocon world-transforming plan, can
be placed in the latter's service if it can, for example, be
linked to Syrian "interference" and complicity in the
passage of foreign jihadis into Iraq, and provide some
justification for regime change in Damascus (an obsessive neocon
goal).
The Currently Crucial
Zarqawi Link
At present, the occupation blames some
of the disorder (especially attacks on Shiite shrines) on foreigners
led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Recall that in his address to the
United Nations in February 2003, Colin Powell, having detailed
evidence for Iraq's huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction,
proceeded to argue for an attack on Iraq using the additional
allegation of long-standing ties between Baghdad and al-Qaeda.
The cornerstone of his case was that "Iraq today harbors
a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi an
associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda
lieutenants."
"Zarqawi," Powell continued, a "Palestinian born
in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago."
(Note 1: Powell had just accused Saddam of supporting
Palestinian terrorism. Some sources, including Jane's Intelligence
Digest and the Christian Science Monitor, call Zarqawi
a Jordanian Bedouin. The discrepancy in identification/linkage
may be important. Note 2: Powell might have expanded the
sentence: "fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago,
a war against a Soviet-backed regime, in which he was fighting
on the same side as the U.S., along with thousands of other foreign
jihadis recruited by the CIA and Pakistan's ISI.")
Powell continued: "Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he
oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties, and
one of the specialties of this camp, is poisons. When our coalition
ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another
poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located
in northeastern Iraq."
Powell went on to describe a camp producing
ricin and other poisons, operated by the "radical organization
Ansar al-Islam that controls this corner of Iraq." He was
apparently relying on the New Yorker journalism of Jeffrey
Goldberg, which has been effectively picked apart by CounterPunch
writers Alexander Cockburn,
Kenneth Rapoza, and even
questioned by my humble self. The nature of the "camp"
(obliterated in the opening stage of the war, leaving no evidence
of anything) and of the Ansar organization itself remain unclear.
Ansar has been variously described as a Kurdish organization,
and as a group of mostly Arab al-Qaeda exiles living among Kurds.
Goldberg alleged that Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda jointly sponsored
the group, a charge heatedly denied by Baghdad (and not specifically
echoed in Powell's speech).
Zarqawi, Powell continued, "traveled
to Baghdad in May of 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the
capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight
another day." (The story widely circulated is that he had
his leg amputated, but Newsweek currently reports, "The
stark fact is that we don't even know for sure how many legs
Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi has") "During his stay, nearly
two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base
of operations there. These al-Qaida affiliates based in Baghdad
now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into
and throughout Iraq for his network, and they have now been operating
freely in the capital for more than eight months. Iraqi officials
deny accusations of ties with al-Qaida. These denials are simply
not credible. W know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi
because they remain, even today, in regular contact with his
direct subordinates, include the poison cell plotters. And they
are involved in moving more than money and materiel."
All of this now appears about as credible
as the highly detailed, straight-faced charges about WMD. Anyway,
having linked Zarqawi to al-Qaeda and to Iraq (specifically,
to "his terrorist network in Iraq" responsible for
the killing of Agency for International Development operative
Laurence Foley in Amman in 2002, a network plotting "terrorist
actions against countries including France, Britain, Spain, Italy,
Germany and Russia," and linked to terror in Georgia and
Chechnya), Powell sought to persuade the world and his fellow
Americans that Iraq was part of the general Evil requiring aggressive
U.S. attention in the post-9-11 world. Some of his omissions
(including lack of reference to the alleged "terrorist training
camp" at Salman Pak, south of Baghdad, where some reports
have Zarqawi visit in 1998) are interesting; Powell, to the consternation
of the disinformation enthusiasts at the Weekly Standard,
sometimes draws a line with an eye to his historical reputation.
There seems to be much unclarity about
this Zarqawi fellow. Is he a close al-Qaeda associate? German
intelligence suggests that he is rather a rival of bin Laden,
with ideological differences. His organization, al-Tawhid, is
separate from al-Qaeda. Asia Times reported March 2 that
"according to official US sources, Zarqawi's relationship
to bin Laden is 'uncertain,' anda recent report by the intelligence
branch of the US Department of State stressed that al-Qaeda and
Ansar appear quite unrelated and independent of each other".
According to some reports, Zarqawi is
presently under arrest in Iran; Jordan has requested his extradition
to face trial but the Iranians say he carries a Syrian passport.
An AP report states that a leaflet circulated in Iraq by a coalition
of resistance groups says he was killed by an American bombing
attack in the Sulaimaniya Mountains in Iraq. Since the real story's
so unclear, those accustomed to making things up can do so unrestrained
by a lot of cumbersome facts.
That Amazingly Useful
"Zarqawi Letter"
According to the New York Times (which
has a long distinguished history breaking these kinds of stories),
on January 23 U.S. forces raided an "al-Qaeda safe house"
in Baghdad, netting a CD-Rom with a letter addressed to the inner
circle of al-Qaeda. The author is not indicated, but reportedly
someone captured in the house said it was written by Zarqawi
to al-Qaeda. Note that this new story wasn't announced in a press
conference by Paul Bremer or military officials but by the NYT;
nevertheless, it was immediately considered valid by the mainstream
press and used by the latter to affirm al-Qaeda-linked Zarqawi's
nefarious role in Iraq.
(It kind of reminds me of the hand-written
memo attributed to the Iraqi intelligence boss Tahir Jalil Habbush
al-Takriti, revealed by the Richard Perle-linked Telegraph
last December, which linked Saddam to Mohammed Atta, Libya,
Syria and a "Niger shipment" and touted by the neocon-friendly
press as truly validating the war. Too good to be true, it's
been pretty much exposed as another
piece of disinformation.But I think there will be more bogus
letters, most likely linking Syria to something or other offering
a pretext for regime change there.)
The text, translated from Arabic by the Coalition Provisional
Authority, immediately appeared in abbreviated form on the National
Review and Project for a New American Century and other such
websites, just as you'd expect. They leave out much of the preamble,
which comprises half the text of the 17-page missive, which recounts
Iraq's religious and ethnic history in detail that you'd think
wouldn't be at all necessary in a communication between a longtime
al-Qaeda intimate and bin Laden's inner circle. The writer denounces
Shiites as snakes and vermin, does not recognize them as Muslims,
and accuses them of working with the infidels. It notes that
(1) the Americans have been "befriended" by the majority
Shiites, (2) the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty by June 1 will
effectively end Iraqi resistance, and so (3) the al-Qaeda-linked
resistance forces should do their best to provoke a civil war
between Shiites and Sunnis so that the Coalition forces will
have to remain and thus remain targets of the jihad.
Greg Weiher raised reasonable doubts
about the authenticity of this
letter. More tardily, Newsweek's Rod Nordland has
raised questions: "The letter so neatly and comprehensively
lays out a blueprint for fomenting strife with the Shia, and
later the Kurds, that it's a little hard to believe in it unreservedly.
It came originally from Kurdish sources who have a long history
of disinformation and dissimulation." (Kurdish sources
who may have a vested interest in fomenting inter-Arab Iraqi
conflict to abet the cause of Kurdish independence.) I won't
repeat Weiher and Nordland's points. I'll just observe that
if things go very badly for the U.S. in Iraq (as I think they
will), and if civil war erupts (as I think it may), then the
PNAC guys and whatever administration's in power will need to
say: "This mess isn't our responsibility, not our fault.
It's Zarqawi, linked to al-Qaeda, linked to Ansar al-Islam, linked
to Iran, linked to Syria, and linked to Saddam. All those evil
people who started this by attacking us on 9-11. All those now
trying to thwart our efforts to achieve main reason now justifying
our war: to bestow democracy and our universally applicable
values on Iraq."
Democracy in this case means, of course,
democracy in any shape and form chosen by the sovereign Iraqi
people---just so long as it allows U.S. control over the flow
of Iraqi oil, guarantees massive profits to U.S. corporations
receiving contracts for reconstruction, permits the establishment
of permanent U.S. military bases, abets Israeli security, and
rules out any prospect of a Sharia-based legal system that might
enhance the strength of anti-American religious fundamentalism
(a phenomenon actually encouraged daily by U.S. policies towards
Muslim peoples). The 60% of Iraqis who are Shiites must make
a choice. Doesn't the Zarqawi letter make it clear? Stand with
the Americans against terror, or by resisting U.S. forces make
common cause with a man who wrote to bin Laden describing Shiites
as "vermin." We're good, they're bad. You're for us
or against us. And if you're against us, you're with Zarqawi.
Make sense?
* * * * *
Many of the attacks on Shiites have been
blamed by the occupation on foreign, al-Qaeda linked forces,
but by the Shiites themselves as well as by the Sunnis on the
occupation itself. The mainstream media implies that the latter
accusation is absurd. Why would the Brits and Americans want
to attack Shiite holy places and clerics? But the Shiites aren't
really accusing "Coalition" troops of attacking them.
They are rather accusing the U.S. and Britain of invading their
country in such a way as to make them very vulnerable to hostile
actions by certain Iraqi foes (who if they are Sunnis, are unrepresentative
of that group). By attributing the attacks to (Arab, Sunni) foreigners
the occupation administration minimizes its responsibility for
creating an environment inevitably conducive to looting, rape,
and the murderous settling of old scores. But on a number of
occasions, commanders in the field have contradicted reports
of foreign involvement in anti-Shiite actions and stated that
Iraqis were responsible.
Thus the officers implicitly support
the Shiite argument that the occupation isn't able to defend
the Shiites, who must therefore maintain militias for self-defense,
even as the occupiers try to dismantle those organizations. If
Shiite patience with the occupation is exhausted, and Shiites
rise against the invaders and their agenda, those truly responsible
for all the disorder will likely finger Zarqawi as a key culprit,
whether he is or not, and insist that al-Qaeda-linked forces
in Iraq require the indefinite presence of American friends.
Real
links? I'd suggest the following. Capital accumulates and concentrates
and assumes the form of empire, requiring for its maintenance
and expansion "full spectrum dominance,"
control of energy supply, establishment of military bases everywhere,
alliances with brutal tyrants, and endlessly proliferating officially-generated
falsehoods. All these can be causally linked to rage, to terror,
and to death. Those understanding these links, can, if they link
up effectively, "pluck the imaginary flowers from the chain
without fantasy," demanding and creating conditions that
reject all the lies.
Gary Leupp
is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor
of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa, Japan;
Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa, Japan;
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
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