Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
Now Available!
Today's
Stories
May 1 / 3, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Watching Niagra: Stupid Leaders, Useless
Spies, Angry World
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
April
28, 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
Meet Congressman Know-Nothing:
Tom Tancredo
Wendy
Brinker
The Politics of the Numb
Faisal
Kutty
The Dirty Work of Canadian Intelligence
John
Chuckman
Seeking the Evil One
Mike
Whitney
Flag-Draped Coffins and the Seattle Times
Tom
Mountain
Rwanda and the F***** Word
Graeme
Greenback
The Iraqi Alamo: a CNN/CIA Production
Tracy
McLellan
The War Comes Home
M.
Junaid Alam
We are the Barbarians
William
Loren Katz
Iraq, the US and an Old Lesson
April 27, 2004
James
Davis
The Colombia 3 Acquitted
Dave
Lindorff
Chalabi as Prosecutor
Bruce
Schneier
Terrorist Threats and Political
Gain
Cockburn
/ Sengupta
British Generals Resist Calls for
More Troops to Aid Americans in Iraq
Walt
Brasch
Presidential Letters: The Day I
Was Asked to Feed an Elephant
Saul
Landau
The Empire in Denial and the Denial
of Empire
April 26, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Crossing the Shia Line: US Troops
Prepare to Enter Najaf
Wayne
Madsen
Trading Places: Will the US Go the Way of the USSR?
Grover
Furr
Protest, Rebellion, Commitment
Elaine
Cassel
Lies About the Patriot Act
Mickey
Z.
Inspired by Pat Tillman?
Greg
Moses
Bremer's De-De-Ba'athjfication Gambit
Gila
Svirsky
Anarchy in Our Souls
Uri
Avnery
Vanunu and the Terrible Secret
April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean-Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
| Weekend
Edition
May 1 / 3, 2004
Latin American Troops Flee Iraq
Gringo,
We're Going Home
By HEATHER WILLIAMS
Well
first of all, let me say that the El Salvadorian [sic] troops are
doing an absolutely terrific job. Your people should be very proud
of how they have handled themselves. It is not what [you’re]
doing for the United States or doing for the CPA. It is what [you’re]
doing for the Iraqi people, a people who have been oppressed for so
many years. My friends in El Salvador know about oppression. So these
people were oppressed for so many years by Saddam Hussein and he’s
been removed, but now they need help. They need to help to establish
the right conditions for democracy.
Secretary
of State Colin Powell in an interview with La Prensa Grafica’s
Alex Aillan
It
is always a bad sign when impoverished countries with much to lose pack
up and leave their hegemonic masters behind in battle. Last week, El
Salvador’s fellow partners in the Spanish-led Brigada Plus Ultra
began their withdrawal from Iraq. In a surprise move, Honduran president
Ricardo Maduro called home his country’s 368 troops, and the Dominican
Republic announced the pullout of its 302 troops. Citing cost and combat
dangers, leaders in both countries attempted to play up and play down
the withdrawal simultaneously, wanting credit for a modest display of
backbone to domestic constituencies opposed to the war, but also seeking
to avoid the wrath of U.S. overlords.
The
paradox of Honduran, Salvadoran, Nicaraguan and Dominican troops being
sent to support another U.S.-initiated regime change is depressing but
certainly not remarkable. The reasons why the Dominican Republic or
El Salvador or, up until March 2004, Nicaragua sent troops to Iraq had
little to do with officials’ keenness to bring free speech and
elections to the Middle East. After all, some of the military elites
who signed off on the troop order in 2003 are the same people who spent
decades undermining elections and mowing down peasants and trade unionists
who spoke their minds about a lack of democracy at home.
What
presumably was on the minds of right-wing presidents of some of the
hemisphere’s poorest countries was leverage with the metropole.
Countries that until recently spent fifty to seventy percent of federal
budgets paying foreign creditors need to maintain some modest concessions
extended to them under debt relief programs. Then there is bilateral
aid to think about. With so little left in the coffers for the civil
service or for health care, even the most basic infrastructure that
gets built comes from the U.S. State Department. In Central America,
the Central American Free Trade Agreement was in the final stages of
negotiation, and ratification in the U.S. Congress was still uncertain.
Though NAFTA has done Mexico no measurable good in the last ten years,
the idea of an export-powered economy nonetheless fuels high hopes,
at least among those wealthy enough to buy imports in return. Finally,
in countries increasingly dependent on remittances from nationals working
in the U.S., immigration reforms in the U.S. are a matter of high priority
to foreign governments. In Honduras and Nicaragua, for example, forty
percent of the working population has left to work abroad. Fully 24
percent of Nicaragua’s GDP is money sent home to families from
the U.S. in packets of cash averaging about $200. Meanwhile, over half
of the population remains below the poverty line.
Certainly,
leaders speak diplomatically for the soldiers, but one wonders what
might have been said if language barriers and barbed wire had not separated
Iraqis from Central American and Caribbean Coalition fighters. If rank-and-file
soldiers from Central America and the Dominican Republic had had the
opportunity to speak with Iraqis, they undoubtedly would have a great
deal to say to one another. Dominicans and Nicaraguans, for example,
might have advised their Iraqi hosts that American occupation is seldom
a short-term affair. They too have had experience with American occupations
done in the name of restoring order and installing democracy. If their
histories are a guide, they might well have told Iraqis about humanitarian
missions scheduled for a few months that instead took years and installed
dictatorships that carried out campaigns of terror against domestic
opposition. Hondurans and El Salvadorans might well have a word with
the Iraqis about hog-tied electoral democracies where citizens vote
for one of two parties every four or five years, but in which civilian
leaders obey U.S.-controlled militaries or face armed dismissal. They
also would have told them about U.S.-Latin American joint military exercises,
the School of the Americas, and permanent U.S. bases on their soil.
Most importantly, they all would have warned Iraqis that future oil
profits were not likely to stay in Iraq. Halliburton is to Iraq as Chiquita
is to Honduras.
Had
a private conference been arranged between Plus Ultra soldiers and their
coerced hosts, pitched hilarity might have characterized their discussion
of John Negroponte as Paul Bremer’s replacement as administrator
of the U.S. occupation government in Iraq. Negroponte, currently the
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, served as ambassador to Honduras
from 1981 to 1985, a period during which U.S. military aid to Honduras
grew from $4 million to $77.4 million. During that time, Ambassador
Negroponte deep-sixed reports of abductions, disappearances and killings
at the hands of a special intelligence unit called Batallion 316. Negroponte
also supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the
US trained Nicaraguan Contras and where the military secretly detained
and tortured Honduran dissidents, according to eyewitness testimony
cited in a 1993 report by the National Commission for Human Rights in
Honduras. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 28 corpses,
including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried
at the site.
Finally,
if Latin American troops had any further words of caution to say to
Iraqis, they might well show them how little their countries’
cooperation is worth to the U.S. after so many decades of subservience.
Despite now fully compliant governments that have dutifully guarded
U.S. multinational properties, dropped tariffs, extended generous tax
holidays to firms, suppressed wages, headed off union organization,
and reversed land reform, thank you’s seem to be in short supply.
Ironically, the biggest consideration for Latin American coalition governments
in the recent troop pullout was lack of funds. Apparently the U.S. has
asked its coalition members to pony up money as well as the cannon fodder
for its adventures abroad. In pulling out his troops several weeks ago,
Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños stated simply that his government
lacked the $750,000 necessary to maintain their contingent of minesweepers
in Iraq. While this pales in comparison to the $153 million his country
paid in external debt service last year (on a total debt that is equivalent
to 162 percent of its GDP), it is nonetheless money that might have
better uses.
Heather
Williams teaches political science at Pomona College in Claremont,
California. She can be reached at: HLW04747@pomona.edu
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links / |