From Iraq Veterans Against the War: Wikileaks documents reveal "the everyday squalor and carnage of war"

Debate continues about the massive number of Wikileaks documents released last week providing detailed field reports from the front lines in Afghanistan. While much of the public discussion is focused on the source of the leak and whether it was a justifiable act, we here at IVAW feel that the media should be focusing on something else.

What stands out to us at IVAW is the regular, seemingly commonplace occurance of civilian death depicted in the body of Wikileaks documents.

These documents reveal the truth about the bloody battle for Afghanistan, characterized by lengthy and repeated deployments by our troops and exposure to human trauma by both soldiers and Afghan people on a mass scale. With all the talk of timetables for withdrawal, we know that the human trauma of these wars has no end in sight. Yet, this trauma is too often sanitized by the time it reaches the public view.

That is why IVAW is partnering with the Institute for Public Accuracy to expose the details of incidents depicted in the leaked field reports by Wikileaks.

In a recent interview on Democracy Now, Wikileaks' founder, Julian Assange put out a call: "We really need the public, other journalists and especially former soldiers to go through this material and say, 'Look, this connects to that,' or 'I was there. Let me tell you what really happened. Let me tell you the rest of the detail.' And over the next few days, we'll be putting up easier- and easier-to-use search interfaces, the same ones that our journalistic teams use to extract this data."

These search tools will allow any soldier or veteran to look through the trove of documents on Wikileaks and find reports of incidents they were involved in to check for their accuracy and provide more details.

IVAW members are answering the call to humanize these 'war incidents.' Right now, we are mobilizing our membership to look through the relevant Wikileaks materials, and provide additional information for the public. Four members have already come forward with their stories and are speaking to members of the media.

On Monday, the Netherlands became the first NATO ally to remove all of its troops from Afghanistan. At a time when the global public is increasingly turning against the war, your donation today will help us continue this important work.

The White House and the Pentagon are decrying this latest leak as potentially endangering the lives of those presently on the ground in Afghanistan. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated recently that Wikileaks and its leak source "might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family." Yet, he does not question the blood on the hands of our government from the thousands of civilians killed in Afghanistan.

When Wikileaks released its "Collateral Murder" video in April that depicted the killing of Reuters journalists and other civilians, IVAW members Josh Stieber and Ethan McCord who served in that unit spoke out. And before that, IVAW members told their stories through our Winter Soldier testimonies. As veterans who have to live with what we were part of in Afghanistan and Iraq on a daily basis, speaking out about it is our solemn duty. By doing so, we hope that other soldiers will come forward and do the same.

Your help today will allow more soldiers and veterans to continue changing the Afghanistan war from an abstraction to a reality for the American and global public.

Thank you for your support.

In Solidarity,

Iraq Veterans Against the War

So please tell me again: What's the war about?

The Anti-Empire Report

August 4th, 2010
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

So please tell me again: What's the war about?

When facts are inconvenient, when international law, human rights and history get in the way, when war crimes can't easily be justified or explained away, when logic doesn't help much, the current crop of American political leaders turns to what is now the old reliable: 9/11. We have to fight in Afghanistan because ... somehow ... it's tied into what happened on September 11, 2001. Here's Vice-President Joe Biden: "We know that it was from the space that joins Afghanistan and Pakistan that the attacks of 9/11 occurred." ¹

Here's Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC): "This is the place [Afghanistan] we were attacked from 9/11." ²

Rep. Mike Pence, the third-ranking House Republican, asserted that the revelations in the Wikileaks documents do not change his view of the Afghan conflict, nor does he expect a shift in public opinion. "Back home in Indiana, people still remember where the attacks on 9/11 came from." ³

Here's President Obama a year ago: "But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans." ⁴

And here is the president, two days after the release of the Wikileaks documents, referring to Afghanistan and Pakistan as "the region from which the 9/11 attacks were waged and other attacks against the United States and our friends and allies have been planned". ⁵

Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.

Never mind that the "plot to kill Americans" in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn't Washington bombed those countries?

Indeed, what actually is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does "an even larger safe haven" mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.

There are many people in Afghanistan and Pakistan — the ones still living — who deeply resent the US presence there and the drones that fly overhead and drop bombs on their houses, their wedding parties, their funerals, their life. As in Iraq, the American "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan regularly, routinely, and conspicuously creates numerous new anti-American terrorists.

The only "war of necessity" that draws the United States to Afghanistan is the need for protected oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea area, the establishment of military bases in this country that is surrounded by the oil-rich Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf regions, and making it easier to watch and pressure next-door Iran. What more could any respectable imperialist nation desire? Oh, did I mention that the military-industrial-security-intelligence complex and its shareholders will be further enriched?

But the war against the Taliban can't be won. Except perhaps by killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States should negotiate the pipelines with the Taliban, as the Clinton administration tried to do, without success, then get out, and declare "victory". Barack Obama can surely deliver an eloquent victory speech.

USrael and Iran

If and when the United States and Israel bomb Iran (marking the sixth country so blessed by Barack Obama) and this sad old world has a new daily horror show to look at on their TV sets, and we then discover that Iran was not actually building nuclear weapons after all, the American mainstream media and the benighted American mind will ask: "Why didn't they tell us that? Did they want us to bomb them?"

The same questions were asked about Iraq following the discovery that Saddam Hussein didn't in fact have any weapons of mass destruction. However, in actuality, before the US invasion Iraqi officials had stated clearly on repeated occasions that they had no such weapons. I'm reminded of this by the recent news report about Hans Blix, former chief United Nations weapons inspector, who led a doomed hunt for WMD in Iraq. Last week he told the British inquiry into the March 2003 invasion that those who were "100 percent certain there were weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq turned out to have "less than zero percent knowledge" of where the purported hidden caches might be. He testified that he had warned British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a February 2003 meeting — as well as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in separate talks — that Hussein might have no weapons of mass destruction. ⁶

In August 2002, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told American newscaster Dan Rather on CBS: "We do not possess any nuclear or biological or chemical weapons." ⁷

In December, Aziz stated to Ted Koppel on ABC: "The fact is that we don't have weapons of mass destruction. We don't have chemical, biological, or nuclear weaponry." ⁸

Hussein himself told Rather in February 2003: "These missiles have been destroyed. There are no missiles that are contrary to the prescription of the United Nations [as to range] in Iraq. They are no longer there." ⁹

Moreover, Gen. Hussein Kamel, former head of Iraq's secret weapons program, and a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, told the UN in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed its banned missiles and chemical and biological weapons soon after the Persian Gulf War. ¹⁰

There are yet other examples of Iraqi officials telling the world that the WMD were non-existent.

If you don't already have serious doubts about the mainstream media's devotion to questioning the premises and rationales underlying American foreign policy, consider this: Despite the two revelations on Dan Rather's CBS programs, and the other revelations noted above, in January 2008 we find CBS reporter Scott Pelley interviewing FBI agent George Piro, who had interviewed Saddam Hussein before he was executed:

PELLEY: And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?

PIRO: He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s, and those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.

PELLEY: He had ordered them destroyed?

PIRO: Yes.

PELLEY: So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk? Why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade? ¹¹

Would it have mattered if the Bush administration had fully believed Iraq when it said it had no WMD? Probably not. There is ample evidence that Bush knew this to be the case, as did Tony Blair. Saddam Hussein did not sufficiently appreciate just how psychopathic his two adversaries were. Bush was determined to vanquish Iraq, for the sake of Israel, for control of oil, and for expanding the empire, though it hasn't all worked out as the empire expected; for some odd reason, it seems that the Iraqi people resented being bombed, invaded, occupied, and tortured.

The result of Bush's Iraqi policy can be summed up by saying that it would be difficult to cite many other historical examples of one nation destroying another so completely, crushing and perverting virtually every aspect of their society and humanity.

Now Israel presses Washington relentlessly to do the same to Iran — not that the US necessarily needs much prodding — primarily because Israel is determined to remain the only nuclear power in the Middle East; this despite Iran telling the United States and the world many times that it is not building nuclear weapons. But if Iran is in fact building nuclear weapons, we have to ask: Is there some international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not? If the United States had known that the Japanese had deliverable atomic bombs, would Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been destroyed? Does USrael believe that there is not already enough horror and suffering in the news?

In what could be part of the preparation for an attack on Iran, 47 members of the House of Representatives recently put forth a non-binding resolution declaring Iran to be "an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel". To illustrate this threat, the resolution quoted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on several occasions avowing sentiments like: "God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism" ... calling for "this occupying regime [Israel] to be wiped off the map" ... "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation" ... "I must announce that the Zionist regime, with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion, and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene" ... "Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come, and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started".

Pretty damning stuff, isn't it? N'est-ce pas? Nicht wahr? But there's a lot less here than meets the eye. Notice that it doesn't quote Ahmadinejad in a single specific, explicit threat of an Iranian attack upon Israel or the United States. No mention or indication that "I" or "We" or "Iran" is going to do any of this, carry out any act of violence. And I would say that that's because it's not what he meant. In another quote, which the resolution fails to cite, the Iranian president in December 2006 said: "The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom." ¹² Obviously, the man is not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place very peacefully. Furthermore, in June 2006, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated: "We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state.¹³ Why didn't the authors of the congressional resolution quote that one?

I think that one can derive a better understanding of the Iranian president's statements by seeing them as metaphor, as bragging, as wishful thinking, as well as poor translation (for example: "wiped off the map" ¹⁴), coming from a man foolish enough to publicly claim that there are no gays in Iran.

But more significantly, the resolution offers no reason why Iran actually would attack Israel or the United States. What reason would Iran have to use nuclear weapons against either country other than an irresistible desire for mass national suicide? Indeed, the very same question could have — and should have — been asked before the invasion of Iraq. Of the many lies surrounding that invasion, the biggest one of all was that if, in fact, Saddam Hussein had had those weapons of mass destruction the invasion would have been justified.

With all the lies exposed about the American Iraqi misadventure, I and many others had allowed ourselves the luxury, the hidden pleasure, of believing that the United States government and media had learned a lesson which would last for some time. They'd been caught and exposed. But it's the same all over again with the lies about Iran and Ahmadinejad. (No, he's not even a Holocaust denier.)

In any event, Israel probably doesn't believe its own propaganda. In March of last year, the Washington Post reported: "A senior Israeli official in Washington" has asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation." ¹⁵ This was the very last sentence in the article and, according to an extensive Nexis search, did not appear in any other English-language media in the world.

And earlier this year we could read in the Sunday Times of London: "Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, 75, a war hero and pillar of the [Israeli] defence establishment, believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons. The views expressed by the former director-general of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission contradict the assessment of Israel's defence establishment and put him at odds with political leaders." ¹⁶

If any country in this world is a threat to use nuclear weapons with remarkably little regard for the consequences it's Israel. Martin van Creveld, an Israeli professor of military history, and loyal Israeli citizen, remarked in 2002: "We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under." ¹⁷ Think of the closing scene of "Dr. Strangelove". That's Israel sitting astride the speeding nuclear missile waving the cowboy hat.

There's no business like show business

She played Mozart's Piano Concerto in D Minor.

And accompanied the one and only Aretha Franklin.

A gala benefit performance in Philadelphia.

At the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Before 8,000 people.

And they loved it.

How many of them knew that the pianist was a genuine, unindicted war criminal?

Guilty of crimes against humanity.

Defender of torture.

With much blood on her pianist hands.

Whose style in office for years could be characterized as hypocrisy, disinformation, and outright lying.

But what did the audience care?

This is America.

Home of the Good Guys.

She was fighting against the Bad Guys.

And we all know that the show must go on.

So let's hear it, folks ... Let's have a real all-American hand ... Let's hear it for our own darling virtuoso ... Miss Condoleezza Rice!

Notes

1. State Department Documents and Publications, March 10, 2009 ^↩
2. Face the Nation, CBS, July 4, 2010 ^↩
3. Washington Post, July 27, 2010 ^↩
4. Talk given by the president at Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, August 17, 2009 ^↩
5. White House press release of Obama's remarks of July 27, 2010 ^↩
6. Associated Press, July 28, 2010 ^↩
7. CBS Evening News, August 20, 2002 ^↩
8. ABC Nightline, December 4, 2002 ^↩
9. "60 Minutes II", February 26, 2003 ^↩
10. Washington Post, March 1, 2003 ^↩
11. "60 Minutes", January 27, 2008. See also: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] Action Alert, February 1, 2008 ^↩
12. Associated Press, December 12, 2006 ^↩
13. Letter to the Washington Post from M.A. Mohammadi, Press Officer, Iranian Mission to the United Nations, June 12, 2006 ^↩
14. See Anti-Empire Report, October 1, 2008, second part ^↩
15. Washington Post, March 5, 2009 ^↩
16. Sunday Times (London), January 10, 2010 ^↩
17. Originally in the Dutch weekly magazine, Elsevier, April 27, 2002, pages 52-3; picked up in many other international publications ^↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Striking matches in Middle East tinderbox -- Pentagon and Israelis working together to trigger war

In the days before, during, and after Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen revealed the Pentagon has a military strike plan for Iran, part of that plan may have already been launched. WMR's Lebanese sources report that a number of recent provocations in the region are being viewed by regional intelligence agencies in Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt as being launched by the United States Joint Special Operations Command in alliance with the Israelis.

The presence in Beirut last week of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC) Michael Vickers has local intelligence sources believing the visit, timed just before a UN Report is expected to blame Lebanese Hezbollah for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, is part of a wider U.S. and Israeli program to destabilize the Middle East prior to a military attack by one or both nations on Iran.

Intelligence sources point to a series of unexplained incidents in the region that have ratcheted up tensions. On July 28, the Japanese supertanker, M. Star, reported that it was damaged by an explosion in the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman. Local Omani Coast Guard officials reported the ship was damaged by a "freak wave" generated by an earthquake in Iran. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, the owners of the ship, reported that the vessel, which docked in Fujairah, UAE, for repairs, was struck by an explosion from "external sources."

There were local reports that a submarine was responsible for the explosion. However, the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain stated that no U.S. Navy ships were in the area. Israel, on the other hand, is known to have permanently stationed submarines in the Gulf.

On August 2, a series of Grad rockets were fired at the coastal tourist towns of Aqaba, Jordan and Eilat, Israel. A rocket fired into Aqaba landed outside the Intercontinental Hotel killed a Jordanian taxi driver and injured five others. A rocket fired into Eilat, on the other hand, landed harmlessly into a field. Two rockets splashed into the Red Sea and another landed in Jordan. Israel immediately blamed the attack on Hamas and said the rockets were fired from Sinai in Egypt. However, Hamas denied responsibility and Egypt said the rockets were not fired from its territory and that its heavy security presence in the peninsula detected no suspicious activity. Regional intelligence sources believe the rockets may have been a false flag provocation carried out by Israel and the United States with the cooperation of Jordanian intelligence. Suspiciously, Israel claimed the rockets were Iranian-made and were fired by "Global Jihadists."

Today, there was an outbreak of fighting between Israeli and Lebanese troops on the border. The shooting began after an Israeli patrol crossed into Lebanese territory and fired at Lebanese troops and civilians after the Lebanese attempted to repel the attack. Israel also reportedly disregarded warnings from UN peacekeepers to halt their movement into Lebanese territory. Three Lebanese troops and a journalist were killed in the Israeli attack.

The motivations for the Israeli border aggression may have been to seek a response from Hezbollah. Israeli bombing raids into Gaza this week are also seen as a move to seek a response from Hamas. The bombing raids were followed by the deadly rocket attack on Aqaba, an attack Israel blamed on Hamas.

The unexplained attacks on the supertanker in the Strait of Hormuz and the rocket attacks on Aqaba at the northernmost end of the Gulf of Aqaba, has increased worries about access to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aqaba through the Straits of Tiran. The U.S. Navy will undoubtedly use the fear to expand its presence in regional waters.

Yesterday also saw the bombing of a train in eastern Turkey's Erzincan province by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas. No one was injured in the attack but eight freight cars derailed. The Turkish Intelligence Organization (MIT) has determined that since the break-down of relations between Turkey and Israel, Israeli commandos have been assisting PKK guerrillas in launching terrorist attacks in Turkey. The PKK attacks come from Iraq's Qandil Mountains, a stronghold of joint PKK-Kurdistan Regional Government-Israeli attacks on Turkey. Overall security for the mountainous region and the anti-Turkish operations conducted in it are overseen by U.S. special operations forces.

What does Obama have planned next for Latin America?

President Obama's Latin American policy resembles more Richard Nixon's Operation Condor and its assassinations and covert operations than President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress and its advancement of economic progress and democracy. Obama's reactionary Latin American policies appear to be aimed more at currying favor with south Florida's emigré right-wing exiles from Cuba, Venezuela, and Central America than in advancing democracy in the region.

Obama's recent decision to deploy thousands of Marines and dozens of Coast Guard vessels to Costa Rica, while opening up more military bases in Colombia and Honduras, where he authorized a coup against democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, is even more threatening to Latin America's progressive governments than the benign neglect bestowed by George W. Bush on the region after the failed 2002 coup attempt against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

In a throwback to the Nixon and Henry Kissinger era, there are increasing reports of political assassinations, as well as the illegal detention of opposition figures and journalists by U.S.-backed regimes in Colombia, Panama, and Honduras. Even more tellilng is the fact that Pinochet supporters who are members of the Chilean Senate recently were charged by Venezuela with gross interference in upcoming elections in Venezuela. Under President Sebastian Pinera, a Chilean billionaire who is obviously more to the liking of Obama than Latin America's populist leaders, Chile has become, along with Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica, a U.S. base to destabilize progressive-led governments in Latin America.

As far as Kissinger, America's oldest living war criminal, is concerned, he serves as Obama's "special envoy" to the Kremlin. Since Obama places so much stock in Kissinger's advice, it is important to take a look back on the CIA doctrine for destabilization of Latin America tht was adopted for the 1954 overthrow of the Jacobo Arbenz government in Guatemala and used in successive U.S.-led coups in Latin America ever since. The doctrine was refined by the CIA and Pentagon during both the Nixon and Reagan administrations.

Much of the CIA's and Pentagon's current doctrine on Latin America destabilization is found in the declassified CIA manuals for "PBSuccess," the operation to overthrow Arbenz, who, himself died mysteriously in a bathtub in 1971, while in exile in Mexico City. Refined by the Nixon and Reagan administrations by both the CIA and Pentagon Special Operations forces, the manual for assassinations and destabilization includes the use of murder of individuals with blows to the head by blunt or sharp instruments; falls on to hard surfaces from buildings from at least 75 feet; falls from bridges on to hard surfaces but not water, elevator shafts, and stair wells; staged automobile accidents -- expanded after 1954 to include airplane crashes; poisoning to induce heart attacks and incurable diseases such as cancer; and, for false flag propaganda purposes, assassinations by rifles, machine guns, handguns, and explosions.

Brazil's leftist President Joao Goulart, overthrown by the Brazilian military in a 1964 coup, died from aan alleged heart attack while living in exile in Argentina in 1976. Goulart's body was never autopsied and there is no official cause of his death documented. In 2000, the former governor of the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro, Leonel Brizola alleged that both Goulart and former Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek were both victims of Kissinger's Operation Condor. Kubitschek died in a suspicious car accident. Later, a member of Uruguay's intelligence service stated that Goulart was poisoned and Kubitschek killed in a staged car accident near Resende, Brazil on the orders of Brazilian dictator Ernesto Geisel, a close ally of Kissinger and Nixon. Kubitschek and Goulart were reportedly assassinated within five months of one another in 1976. Brazil's progressive president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's only progressive leader since Goulart, will see the end of his term on January 1, 2011. Given his popularity in Latin America and around the world, Lula may receive the same treatment as his predecessors given America's new aggressive covert activities in Latin America.

Chile's President before Allende, Eduardo Frei Montalva, an original supporter of Pinochet who later turned against him, is suspected of being poisoned to death by toxins in 1982. His son, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, narrowly lost last year's election to Pinochet loyalist Pinera. Medical experts, including those at the FBI, concluded that tissue samples from Frei Montalva's body contained dedly toxins. Frei Ruiz-Tagle also believes Chile's DINA intelligence service, which cooperated closely with the CIA in Operation Condor, was responsible for his father's assassination.

PBSuccess's "Study of Assassination" contains explanations of the pluses and minuses of several assassination plots, including the stabbing murder of French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub, as well as the gunning down of Abraham Lincoln, Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the ice axe assassination of Leon Trotsky, and the conference room explosion aimed at assassinating Adolf Hitler.

The CIA favored the machine gun method for killing the maximum number of people inside a room. It states: "The sub-machine gun is especially adapted to indoor work when more than one subject is to be assassinated. An effective technique has been devised for the use of a pair of sub-machine gunners, by which a room containing as many as a dozen subjects can be 'purified' in about twenty seconds with little or no risk to the gunners." The machine gun option appears to have been used to kill Chilean President Salvador Allende and his bodyguards in the CIA's 1973 coup that brought Pinochet to power. Afterwards, Kissinger employed Operation Condor to use fascist governments in Latin America to track and hunt down and kill opponents of Allende and other left-wing activists. In Honduras, Panama, Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, a renewed low-key Operation Condor appears to have taken shape under Obama. The machine gun tactic also appears to have been employed by the CIA and India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in the regicide of Nepal's royal family on June 1, 2001.

The 470th Military Intelligence Brigade refined PBSuccess procedures in 1987 in a series of training manuals used at the School of the Americas in Georgia to train Latin American military operatives in destabilization tactics. Among the techniques recommended was the creation of blacklists of "enemy agents," "subversive persons," hostile political leaders, and known or suspected collaborators and sympathizers of enemies of the government. To give the CIA and Army "plausible deniability," covert destabilization operations are carried out by "associate" foreign services in order to minimize U.S. requirements for "committing communications to paper."

For Obama, whose Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was a top officer in the armed forces of General Suharto, who carried out the CIA's 1965-66 coup against President Sukarno and the Indonesian Communist Party, which saw almost one million accused Communists, as well as ethnic Chinese, systematically genocided, such re-imposition of covert activities in Latin America presents no moral dilemma to Obama, who first witnessed the CIA's repression as an impressionable young boy of 7- and 8- years old while living in Jakarta. Soetoro was still a senior officer in Suharto's army when Soetoro enrolled Barack Obama in 1967 as Barry Soetoro in Jakarta's Fransiskus Assisi Catholic school. In 1967, the Indonesian army and its CIA handlers were still mopping up Indonesia's left-wing opposition forces. Obama has studiously refrained from mentioning Indonesia's CIA coup and has twice canceled presidential visits to the country.

Given the similarities of the U.S.-led coups against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002, the coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, and the 2009 coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, the CIA and Pentagon appear to have added a less lethal practice to their bag of covert tricks -- kidnapping Latin American presidents at gun point and flying them to other nations against their will.

And Obama's decision not to rescind George W. Bush's re-establishment of the U.S. Navy's Fourth Fleet as part of the US Southern Command, means that the United States can always resort to its old "gunboat diplomacy" to enforce its military might and will in Latin America.

Some thoughts on "patriotism" written on July 4

The Anti-Empire Report

July 5th, 2010
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Some thoughts on "patriotism" written on July 4

Most important thought: I'm sick and tired of this thing called "patriotism".

The Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were being patriotic. The German people who supported Hitler and his conquests were being patriotic, fighting for the Fatherland. All the Latin American military dictators who overthrew democratically-elected governments and routinely tortured people were being patriotic — saving their beloved country from "communism".

General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, mass murderer and torturer: "I would like to be remembered as a man who served his country." ¹

P.W. Botha, former president of apartheid South Africa: "I am not going to repent. I am not going to ask for favours. What I did, I did for my country." ²

Pol Pot, mass murderer of Cambodia: "I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country." ³

Tony Blair, former British prime minister, defending his role in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis: "I did what I thought was right for our country." ⁴

At the end of World War II, the United States gave moral lectures to their German prisoners and to the German people on the inadmissibility of pleading that their participation in the holocaust was in obedience to their legitimate government. To prove to them how legally and morally inadmissable this defense was, the World War II allies hanged the leading examples of such patriotic loyalty.

I was once asked after a talk: "Do you love America?" I answered: "No". After pausing for a few seconds to let that sink in amidst several nervous giggles in the audience, I continued with: "I don't love any country. I'm a citizen of the world. I love certain principles, like human rights, civil liberties, democracy, an economy which puts people before profits."

I don't make much of a distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Some people equate patriotism with allegiance to one's country and government or the noble principles they supposedly stand for, while defining nationalism as sentiments of ethno-national superiority. However defined, in practice the psychological and behavioral manifestations of nationalism and patriotism are not easily distinguishable, indeed feeding upon each other.

Howard Zinn called nationalism "a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands. ... Patriotism is used to create the illusion of a common interest that everybody in the country has." ⁵

Strong feelings of patriotism lie near the surface in the great majority of Americans. They're buried deeper in the more "liberal" and "sophisticated", but are almost always reachable, and ignitable.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the mid-19th century French historian, commented about his long stay in the United States: "It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it." ⁶

George Bush Sr., pardoning former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in connection with the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal, said: "First, the common denominator of their motivation — whether their actions were right or wrong — was patriotism." ⁷

What a primitive underbelly there is to this rational society. The US is the most patriotic, as well as the most religious, country of the so-called developed world. The entire American patriotism thing may be best understood as the biggest case of mass hysteria in history, whereby the crowd adores its own power as troopers of the world's only superpower, a substitute for the lack of power in the rest of their lives. Patriotism, like religion, meets people's need for something greater to which their individual lives can be anchored.

So this July 4, my dear fellow Americans, some of you will raise your fists and yell: "U! S! A! ... U! S! A!". And you'll parade with your flags and your images of the Statue of Liberty. But do you know that the sculptor copied his mother's face for the statue, a domineering and intolerant woman who had forbidden another child to marry a Jew?

"Patriotism," Dr. Samuel Johnson famously said, "is the last refuge of a scoundrel." American writer Ambrose Bierce begged to differ — It is, he said, the first.

"Patriotism is the conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." — George Bernard Shaw

"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side. ... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." — George Orwell ⁸

"Pledges of allegiance are marks of totalitarian states, not democracies," says David Kertzer, a Brown University anthropologist who specializes in political rituals. "I can't think of a single democracy except the United States that has a pledge of allegiance." ⁹ Or, he might have added, that insists that its politicians display their patriotism by wearing a flag pin. Hitler criticized German Jews and Communists for their internationalism and lack of national patriotism, demanding that "true patriots" publicly vow and display their allegiance to the fatherland. In reaction to this, postwar Germany has made a conscious and strong effort to minimize public displays of patriotism.

Oddly enough, the American Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy, a founding member, in 1889, of the Society of Christian Socialists, a group of Protestant ministers who asserted that "the teachings of Jesus Christ lead directly to some form or forms of socialism." Tell that to the next Teaparty ignoramus who angrily accuses President Obama of being a "socialist".

Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, we could read that there's "now a high degree of patriotism in the Soviet Union because Moscow acted with impunity in Afghanistan and thus underscored who the real power in that part of the world is." ¹⁰

"Throughout the nineteenth century, and particularly throughout its latter half, there had been a great working up of this nationalism in the world. ... Nationalism was taught in schools, emphasized by newspapers, preached and mocked and sung into men. It became a monstrous cant which darkened all human affairs. Men were brought to feel that they were as improper without a nationality as without their clothes in a crowded assembly. Oriental peoples, who had never heard of nationality before, took to it as they took to the cigarettes and bowler hats of the West." — H.G. Wells, British writer ¹¹

"The very existence of the state demands that there be some privileged class vitally interested in maintaining that existence. And it is precisely the group interests of that class that are called patriotism." — Mikhail Bakunin, Russian anarchist ¹²

"To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography." — George Santayana, American educator and philosopher

Another thing Americans have to be thankful for on July 4

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a new feature on their website called "Find Insurance Options". You just provide certain information about your family size, your age, your employment situation, your financial situation, whether you have certain disabilities or diseases, whether you now have Medicare or some other health insurance, or how long you have not had health insurance, whether you have been denied insurance, whether you are someone's dependent, a veteran? an American Indian? an Alaskan Native? etc., etc., etc. ... and the site gives you suggestions as to where and how you might find health insurance that might suit your particular needs. The head of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, tells us "This is an incredibly impressive consumer tool," adding that the site is capable of providing tailored responses to about 3 billion [sic] individual scenarios. "This information can give folks choices that they just didn't have any idea they had available to them." ¹³

Isn't that remarkable? Where else but in America could one have such choice? Certainly not in Communist Cuba. There it's only one scenario, one size fits all — you're sick, you go to a doctor or to a hospital, and you get taken care of to the best of their abilities; no charge; doesn't matter what your medical problem is, doesn't matter what your financial situation is, doesn't matter what your employment situation is, there's no charge. No one has health insurance. No one needs health insurance. Isn't that boring? Communist regimentation!

Separation of oil and state?

On May 19, in a congressional hearing, Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) asked BP America President Lamar McKay: "Is there any technology that exists that you know of that could have prevented this from happening?"

"I don't know of a piece of technology that could have prevented it," replied McKay. ¹⁴

Given the extremely grave consequences of a deepwater oil-drilling accident that's a pretty good argument that such operations are too risky and dangerous to be permitted, is it not?

Moreover, if it could have been prevented if BP had not been so negligent and reckless to save money, can we count on all oil companies in the future to never put profits before safety? I think not. And if an accident happens can we count on the company being able to rectify the damage quickly and efficiently? Apparently not.

So, will those who serve corporate America learn a lesson from the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster? Well, consider the following: Oil companies – even as you read this — are busy making plans for further Gulf drilling; in June the Mineral Management Service of the US Interior Department was continuing to issue waivers to these companies which exempt them from submitting a detailed analysis of the environmental impact of their plans, not at the moment for drilling new wells but to modify their existing projects in the Gulf; one waiver was to a British company called BP. ¹⁵... Here's the District Manager for Louisiana of the Mineral Management Service: "Obviously, we're all oil industry. Almost all of our inspectors have worked for oil companies and on these same [oil drilling] platforms." ¹⁶... A financial analyst at the preeminent bank J.P. Morgan Chase announced some good news for us — the US Gross Domestic Product could gain slightly from all the expenditures for cleaning up the mess, adding that "the magnitude of these setbacks looks dwarfed by the scale of the US macroeconomy". ¹⁷... And three leading congressional Republicans recently referred to the spill as a "natural" disaster. ¹⁸

If I were the president I would in fact prohibit all underwater drilling for oil, permanently. President Obama announced a six-month prohibition and has run into a brick wall of oil companies, politicians, and the courts. He'll cave in, as usual, but I wouldn't. How would I make up for the loss of this oil? Not by importing more oil, but sharply reducing our usage. Here are two suggestions to begin with:

The US Department of Defense is not only the leading consumer of oil in the United States, it is the leading oil consumer in the entire world. A 2007 report by a defense contractor posits that the Pentagon in its foreign wars and worldwide military support operations (such as maintaining thousands of bases at home and abroad) might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (14 million gallons) every day, a quantity greater than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland. ¹⁹ This is taken from an article with the title: "How Wars of the Future May Be Fought Just to Run the Machines That Fight Them". If the American defense industry is added in, the military-industrial complex would be 12th in the world in oil consumption, more than India.

Accordingly, as president, I would take the admittedly controversial step of abolishing the United States military. The total savings, including the mammoth reduction in oil consumption, would be more than a trillion dollars a year.

Class assignment:

1. Try and think of the things that would improve the quality of life in American society, things that money could bring about, that would not be covered by a trillion dollars.
2. If you believe that having no military would open the United States to foreign invasion, state:
   1. who would invade;
   2. why they would do so;
   3. how many soldiers they would need to occupy a nation of more than 300 million people.
3. List the dozen wars the United States has been involved in since the 1980s and specify which of them you are glad and proud of.
4. On October 28, 2002, five men were murdered by a mob in India because they had killed a (sacred) cow. ²⁰ On the very same day the United States was actively engaged in preparing to invade Iraq and kill thousands of people for control of their oil. Discuss which society was more insane.

Second suggestion to reduce oil usage: Public transportation would be nationalized so as to reduce prices to levels very easily affordable for virtually the entire population, resulting in a huge reduction of private automobile and gasoline usage. This public transportation system would not be required to show a profit. Like the military now.

The Cold War is over. Long live the Cold War.

I recently attended a showing of Oliver Stone's new documentary film, "South of the Border", which concerns seven present-day government leaders of Latin America -– in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Paraguay, Cuba and Brazil — who are not in love with US foreign policy. After the film there was a discussion panel in the theatre, consisting of Stone, the two writers of the film (Tariq Ali and Mark Weisbrot) and Cynthia Arnson, Director of the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington; the discussion was moderated by Neal Conan of National Public Radio.

It perhaps was not meant to be a "debate", but it quickly became that, with Arnson leading the "anti-communist" faction, supported somewhat by Conan's questions and more vociferously by a segment of the audience which took sides loudly via applause and cries of approval or displeasure. Twenty years post-Cold War, anti-communism still runs deep in the American soul and psyche. Candid criticism of US foreign policy and/or capitalism is sufficient to consign a foreign government or leader to the "communist" camp whether or not that term is specifically used.

In the late 1980s, as Mikhail Gorbachev was steering the Soviet Union away from its rivalry with the West in a bid for a "new thinking" foreign policy, Georgiy Arbatov, director of the Soviet's Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, declared to the United States: "We will do the most horrible thing to you; we will leave you without an enemy." ²¹

The American military-industrial-intelligence complex understands the need for enemies only too well, even painfully. Here is U.S. Col. Dennis Long, speaking in 1992, shortly after the end of the Cold War, when he was director of "total armor force readiness" at Fort Knox, Kentucky:

For 50 years, we equipped our football team, practiced five days a week and never played a game. We had a clear enemy with demonstrable qualities, and we had scouted them out. [Now] we will have to practice day in and day out without knowing anything about the other team. We won't have his playbook, we won't know where the stadium is, or how many guys he will have on the field. That is very distressing to the military establishment, especially when you are trying to justify the existence of your organization and your systems. ²²

Arbatov was right about the United States fearing a world without an enemy, but wrong about the United States actually being left without one. In addition to all the enemies produced in the Middle East by military interventions and the War on Terror, the US has had a continuous supply of "communists" challenging Washington's militant hegemony – from Yugoslavia, Cuba and Haiti to the present large crop in Latin America. We should realize that the Cold War was essentially not a struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was more a struggle between the United States and the Third World. The US sought to dominate the Third World and intervened in many countries even when the Soviets were not playing any significant role at all in the political tumult in those places, albeit Washington propaganda routinely yelled "communist". There existed a strong push in the United States to stand tall against communism, particularly communism of the invisible variety, since that was the most dangerous kind.

In actuality, Bolshevism and Western liberalism were united in their opposition to popular revolution. Russia was a country with a revolutionary past, not a revolutionary present; and the same could be said about the United States.

In the post-film discussion, Stone replied to a charge of the film being biased by stating that the US media is generally so slanted against the governments in question that his film is an attempt to strike a needed balance. Indeed, it must be asked: How many of the 1400 American daily newspapers or the numerous television stations even occasionally report on Washington's continually ongoing attempts to subvert the governments in question or present the programs and policies of their leaders in a positive light? Particularly Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, the two main focuses of the film; not forgetting of course that American journalists accuse Cuba of violating human rights first thing upon their awakening each morning.

While we no longer hear about the "international communist conspiracy", American foreign policy remains profoundly unchanged. It turns out that whatever Washington officials and diplomats at the time thought they were doing, the Cold War revisionists have been vindicated; it was not about containing something called "communism"; it was about American supremacy, expansion and economic interests.

Choosing a warlord

The media have been rather preoccupied by the replacement of General Stanley McChrystal by General David Petraeus in Afghanistan; it's been like gossip-column material, or a sporting event, or the Oscars; "Petraeus for president" some clamor, lots of letters to the editor, all over the Internet. Some journalists have discussed which general would be better for the war effort. To me, this is tantamount to asking "Which Doctor Strangelove do you prefer to be in charge of our international psychotic mass murdering?" Hmm ... let's see ... hmm ... ah, here's the answer: Who gives a fuck?

Note to subscribers

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Notes

1. Sunday Telegraph (London), July 18, 1999 ^↩
2. The Independent (London), November 22, 1995 ^↩
3. Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong), October 30, 1997, article by Nate Thayer, pages 15 and 20 ^↩
4. Washington Post, May 11, 2007, p.14 ^↩
5. "Passionate Declarations" (2003), p.40; ... Z Magazine, May 2006, interview by David Barsamian ^↩
6. "Democracy in America" (1840), chapter 16 ^↩
7. New York Times, December 25, 1992 ^↩
8. "Notes on Nationalism", p.83, 84, in "Such, Such Were the Joys" (1945) ^↩
9. Alan Colmes, "Red, White and Liberal" (2003), p.30 ^↩
10. San Francisco Examiner, January 20, 1980, quoting a "top Soviet diplomat" ^↩
11. "The Outline of History" (1920), vol. II, chapter XXXVII, p.782 ^↩
12. "Letters on Patriotism", 1869 ^↩
13. Washington Post, July 1, 2010 ^↩
14. Washington Post, June 17, 2010 ^↩
15. McClatchy-Tribune News Service, June 20, 2010 ^↩
16. Washington Post, May 27, 2010 ^↩
17. Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2010 ^↩
18. Washington Post, June 18, 2010 ^↩
19. Michael Klare, "The Pentagon v. Peak Oil", Tom Dispatch, June 14, 2007 ^↩
20. Washington Post, October 29, 2002, p.18 ^↩
21. "Russia Now", a supplement to the Washington Post, Oct. 28, 2009, p.H4 ^↩
22. New York Times, February 3, 1992, p.8 ^↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

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Bush’s Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales from the Crypt

America Detached from War
Bush’s Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales from the Crypt
By Tom Engelhardt

Admittedly, before George W. Bush had his fever dream, the U.S. had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drone surveillance planes in the skies over Kosovo in the late 1990s. By November 2001, it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan.

In November 2002, a Predator drone would loose a Hellfire missile on a car in Yemen, a country with which we weren’t at war. Six suspected al-Qaeda members, including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole would be turned into twisted metal and ash -- the first “targeted killings” of the American robotic era.

Just two months earlier, in September 2002, as the Bush administration was “introducing” its campaign to sell an invasion of Iraq to Congress and the American people, CIA Director George Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney “trooped up to Capitol Hill” to brief four top Senate and House leaders on a hair-raising threat to the country. A “smoking gun” had been uncovered.

According to “new intelligence,” Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had in his possession unmanned aerial vehicles advanced enough to be armed with biological and chemical weaponry. Worse yet, these were capable -- so the CIA director and vice president claimed -- of spraying those weapons of mass destruction over cities on the east coast of the United States. It was just the sort of evil plan you might have expected from a man regularly compared to Adolf Hitler in our media, and the news evidently made an impression in Congress.

Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, said that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard."

In a speech in October 2002, President Bush then offered a version of this apocalyptic nightmare to the American public. Of course, like Saddam’s supposed ability to produce “mushroom clouds” over American cities, the Iraqi autocrat’s advanced UAVs (along with the ships needed to position them off the U.S. coast) were a feverish fantasy of the Bush era and would soon enough be forgotten. Instead, in the years to come, it would be American pilotless drones that would repeatedly attack Iraqi urban areas with Hellfire missiles and bombs.

In those years, our drones would also strike repeatedly in Afghanistan, and especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, where in an escalating “secret” or “covert” war, which has been no secret to anyone, multiple drone attacks often occur weekly. They are now considered so much the norm that, with humdrum headlines slapped on (“U.S. missile strike kills 12 in NW Pakistan”), they barely make it out of summary articles about war developments in the American press.

And yet those robotic planes, with their young “pilots” (as well as the camera operators and intelligence analysts who make up a drone “crew”) sitting in front of consoles 7,000 miles away from where their missiles and bombs are landing, have become another kind of American fever dream. The drone is our latest wonder weapon and a bragging point in a set of wars where there has been little enough to brag about.

CIA director Leon Panetta has, for instance, called the Agency’s drones flying over Pakistan “the only game in town” when it comes to destroying al-Qaeda; a typically anonymous U.S. official in a Washington Post report claims of drone missile attacks, “We’re talking about precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare”; or as Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command told author Peter Singer, speaking of the glories of drones: “They don't get hungry. They are not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.”

Seven thousand of them, the vast majority surveillance varieties, are reportedly already being operated by the military, and that’s before swarms of “mini-drones” come on line. Our American world is being redefined accordingly.

In February, Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post caught something of this process when he spent time with Colonel Eric Mathewson, perhaps the most experienced Air Force officer in drone operations and on the verge of retirement. Mathewson, reported Jaffe, was trying to come up with an appropriately new definition of battlefield “valor” -- a necessity for most combat award citations -- to fit our latest corps of pilots at their video consoles. “Valor to me is not risking your life," the colonel told the reporter. "Valor is doing what is right. Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek. It is doing what is right for the right reasons. That to me is valor."

Smoking Drones

These days, CIA and administration officials troop up to Capitol Hill to offer briefings to Congress on the miraculous value of pilotless drones: in disrupting al-Qaeda, destroying its leadership or driving it “deeper into hiding,” and taking out key figures in the Taliban. Indeed, what started as a 24/7 assassination campaign against al-Qaeda’s top leadership has already widened considerably. The “target set” has by now reportedly expanded to take in ever lower-level militants in the tribal borderlands. In other words, a drone assassination campaign is morphing into the first full-scale drone war (and, as in all wars from the air, civilians are dying in unknown numbers).

If the temperature is again rising in Washington when it comes to these weapons, this time it’s a fever of enthusiasm for the spectacular future of drones (which the Air Force has plotted out to the year 2047), of a time when single pilots should be able to handle multiple drones in operations in the skies over some embattled land, and of a far more distant moment when those drones should be able to handle themselves, flying, fighting, and making key decisions about just who to take out without a human being having to intervene.

When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight.

Now it's the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized. It's the U.S. which is developing a 22-ton tail-less drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and (theoretically) land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. It's the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by 700% over the next decade.

Admittedly, there is a modest counter-narrative to all this enthusiasm for our robotic prowess, “precision,” and “valor.” It involves legal types like Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions. He recently issued a 29-page report criticizing Washington’s “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.” Unless limits are put on such claims, and especially on the CIA’s drone war over Pakistan, he suggests, soon enough a plethora of states will follow in America’s footprints, attacking people in other lands “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”

Such mechanized, long-distance warfare, he also suggests, will breach what respect remains for the laws of war. “Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield,” he wrote, “and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.”

Similarly, the ACLU has filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the U.S. government, demanding that it “disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas, as well as the ground rules regarding when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and the number of civilian casualties they have caused.”

But pay no mind to all this. The arguments may be legally compelling, but not in Washington, which has mounted a half-hearted claim of legitimate “self-defense,” but senses that it’s already well past the point where legalities matter. The die is cast, the money committed. The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelming.

It’s a done deal. Drone war is, and will be, us.

A Pilotless Military

If there are zeitgeist moments for products, movie stars, and even politicians, then such moments can exist for weaponry as well. The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment.

It’s a moment that could, of course, be presented as an apocalyptic nightmare in the style of the Terminator movies (with the U.S. as the soul-crushing Skynet), or as a remarkable tale of how “networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to day-to-day warfare” (as Christopher Drew recently put it in the New York Times). It could be described as the arrival of a dystopian fantasy world of one-way slaughter verging on entertainment, or as the coming of a generation of homegrown video warriors who work “in camouflage uniforms, complete with combat boots, on open floors, with four computer monitors on each desk... and coffee and Red Bull help[ing] them get through the 12-hour shifts.” It could be presented as the ultimate in cowardice -- the killing of people in a world you know nothing about from thousands of miles away -- or (as Col. Mathewson would prefer) a new form of valor.

The drones -- their use expanding exponentially, with ever newer generations on the drawing boards, and the planes even heading for “the homeland” -- could certainly be considered a demon spawn of modern warfare, or (as is generally the case in the U.S.) a remarkable example of American technological ingenuity, a problem-solver of the first order at a time when few American problems seem capable of solution. Thanks to our technological prowess, it’s claimed that we can now kill them, wherever they may be lurking, at absolutely no cost to ourselves, other than the odd malfunctioning drone. Not that even all CIA operatives involved in the drone wars agree with that one. Some of them understand perfectly well that there’s a price to be paid.

As it happens, the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002, but it’s also distinctly us. In fact, drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove. With its consoles, chat rooms, and “single shooter” death machines, it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer, Facebook, and video games. That our valorous warriors, their day of battle done, can increasingly leave war behind and head home to the barbecue (or, given American life, the foreclosure) also fits an American mood of the moment.

The Air Force “detachments” that “manage” the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are “detached” from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn’t. If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield (on only one side, of course) and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about, it also catches something important about the American way of war.

After all, while this country garrisons the world, invests its wealth in its military, and fights unending, unwinnable frontier wars and skirmishes, most Americans are remarkably detached from all this. If anything, since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens’ army proved disastrous for Washington’s global aims, such detachment has been the goal of American war-making.

As a start, with no draft and so no citizen’s army, war and the toll it takes is now the professional business of a tiny percentage of Americans (and their families). It occurs thousands of miles away and, in the Bush years, also became a heavily privatized, for-profit activity. As Pratap Chatterjee reported recently, “[E]very US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world.” And a majority of those contractors aren’t even U.S. citizens.

If drones have entered our world as media celebrities, they have done so largely without debate among that detached populace. In a sense, our wars abroad could be thought of as the equivalent of so many drones. We send our troops off and then go home for dinner and put them out of mind. The question is: Have we redefined our detachment as a new version of citizenly valor (and covered it over by a constant drumbeat of “support for our troops”)?

Under these circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that a “pilotless” force should, in turn, develop the sort of contempt for civilians that can be seen in the recent flap over the derogatory comments of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal and his aides about Obama administration officials.

The Globalization of Death

Maybe what we need is the return of George W. Bush’s fever dream from the American oblivion in which it’s now interred. He was beyond wrong, of course, when it came to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi drones, but he wasn’t completely wrong about the dystopian Drone World to come. There are now reportedly more than 40 countries developing versions of those pilot-less planes. Earlier this year, the Iranians announced that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones. Hezbollah used them against Israel in the 2006 summer war, years after Israel began pioneering their use in targeted killings of Palestinians.

Right now, in what still remains largely a post-Cold War arms race of one, the U.S. is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars, with few competitors in sight. In the process, we’re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty, and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances. In the process, we may not just be obliterating enemies, but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike.

We are also creating the (il)legal framework for future war on a frontier where we won’t long be flying solo. And when the first Iranian, or Russian, or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of "terrorists," we won’t like it one bit. When the first “suicide drones” appear, we’ll like it even less. And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene, we’ll be truly unnerved.

In the 1990s, we were said to be in an era of “globalization” which was widely hailed as good news. Now, the U.S. and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries, relies on the self-definitions of whoever owns the nearest drone, and establishes planetary free-fire zones. It’s a nasty combination, this globalization of death.

Easing Gaza's Siege: Bogus and Unacceptable - by Stephen Lendman

On June 17, Haaretz writer Barak Ravid and Reuters headlined, "Israel to ease Gaza land blockade," saying:

"Israel's security cabinet voted Thursday to ease its land blockade of the Gaza Strip, following its deadly raid on a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for the (mischaracterized) Hamas-ruled territory," in fact, its legitimate government.

An official statement said:

"The Security Cabinet conducted an extensive discussion over the last two days regarding adjustments in Israel's Gaza policy.

It was agreed to:

-- Liberalize the system by which civilian goods enter Gaza.

-- Expand the inflow of materials for civilian projects that are under international supervision.

-- Continue existing security procedures to prevent the inflow of weapons and war materiel.

-- the Cabinet will decide in the coming days on additional steps to implement this policy.

-- Israel expects the international community to work toward the immediate release of Gilad Shalit," the captured Israeli soldier on June 25, 2006 near the Kerem Shalom crossing, southeast of Rafah - one soldier compared to thousands of Palestinian civilians, held illegally in Israeli prisons under horrific conditions, including torture and other forms of abuse.

According to Raed Fattouh, Palestinian supplies coordinator for the Territory, the approved list will include all food items, toys, stationery, kitchen utensils, mattresses and towels, excluding most of what Gaza needs, including construction materials to rebuild.

For example, cement will still be banned, Israel saying Hamas could use it to build military infrastructure. Also, Israel's official statement was vague, saying implementation procedures will follow, emphasizing that "existing security procedures" will continue - showing the announcement was a sham PR gesture to diffuse worldwide anger and satisfy world leaders, short of fully opening Gaza's land and sea borders for free in and out movement of people and goods. Nothing less can be accepted.

Yet Israel's ruse may have worked.

AFP quoted EU diplomat, Catherine Ashton, welcoming the decision, saying:

"We're looking with great interest to what the Israeli cabinet has said this morning," adding that she hopes "many more goods" will follow and stands ready to support Israel with a mission on the ground.

Middle East envoy, Tony Blair, called it an "important step....Israel has the clear right to defend itself and protect its security. The best way to do this is to ensure that weapons cannot reach Gaza whilst allowing into Gaza the items of ordinary daily life."

French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner (he, Blair and other EU officials reliably staunch Israeli allies) said: "It is the first major progress since the crisis began. But it is not enough."

The White House called it a "step in the right direction," and State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said the Obama administration supports an "expansion of the scope and types of goods into Gaza....while addressing, obviously, Israel's legitimate security needs" - showing Washington only backs Israel's bogus gesture, and continues, like Tel Aviv, calling Hamas a terrorist organization, when, in fact, it's Palestine's legitimately elected government.

Palestinian Response to the Sham

Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, told Reuters:

"What is needed is a complete lifting of the blockade. Goods and people must be free to enter and leave. Gaza especially needs construction material(s), which must be allowed to come in without restrictions."

Senior Hamas leaders rejected the plan, Ismail Radwan, calling it a thinly veiled attempt to "relieve the pressure. We in Hamas reject the Zionist decision, which is an attempt to obscure the international decision to completely lift the siege."

Fatah chief negotiator, Saeb Erakat, called it a "public relations ploy," saying Mahmoud Abbas "demands the complete lifting of the siege....He believes there are no partial solutions." He also wants it on his terms under his authority as chief Israeli enforcer. Otherwise, he opposes lifting, following orders from Tel Aviv and Washington.

Sari Bashi, director of the Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement said:

"The restrictions on goods into and out of Gaza are instituted not for security reasons, but rather as part of a declared policy to restrict the movement of people and goods as a means of applying pressure on the Hamas regime. The express purpose....is to block all economic activity in Gaza. So the real question is whether Israel will abandon this policy - immediately or in the near future - or whether it will continue to aspire to block economic activity, but simply let in a few more consumer goods."

In a June 17 press release, Gisha headlined, "We don't need more lists, we need to end 'economic warfare,' " saying:

"The time has come for Israel to ask serious questions about how three years of closure (have) affect(ed)....1.5 million people whose right to travel and to engage in productive work have been denied. We don't need cosmetic changes."

What's needed is unconditional free in and out movement, and world community censure of Israeli policy, economic warfare, and its ploy about fearing weapons imports and other security concerns. Under international law, Israel, as an occupying power, is responsible for the population's welfare, including the free passage of food, medical supplies, clothing, and other essential items.

Even after rejecting Gaza's occupation status, Israel's High Court ruled that its government bears responsibility for the welfare of its people - because of continuing conflict, its military control of border crossings, and the Strip's dependence on Israeli goods and services like fuel and electricity. No longer are half measures acceptable or Israel's bogus justifications.

In addition, an independent investigation of Israel's premeditated Freedom Flotilla attack is essential. No longer can its international law violations be tolerated, including repeated crimes against peace, the most serious of all.

Israel must be held accountable, the view Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) President, Mevlut Cavusoglu, expressed in a June 13 Today's Zaman interview, explaining that Israel had violated core human rights principles embraced by the organization, saying they'd be consequences at the end of June summer session, adding:

"The Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly value the rule of law, human rights and democracy. Israel was committed to these values (as seen) by signing up to be an observing member. But, with this raid in open waters, it violated a number of values espoused by this body."

"This crisis with Israel will hamper our efforts in our Partnership for Democracy project and curtail efforts at dialogue in the Subcommittee on the Middle East. (The) attack came as a shock to us. We had to respond. Both the term president, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and I issued statements condemning this attack in international waters."

In its June 21 - 25 session, PACE will address the attack, its Political Affairs Committee already planning an emergency summer meeting, a report to follow, Cavusoglu adding that:

"This is not a problem between Israel and Turkey. There were citizens in the aid flotilla from over 30 countries and ships flying the flags of many countries. It also happened in open waters, and civilians got killed. This was an act of piracy and violated international law."

Update on New Flotillas

On June 17, the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) headlined, "Aid Ship Sets Sail From Iran Bound for Gaza," saying:

An International Red Crescent Society organized Iranian Flotilla, funded by private donors, "departed from Iran bound for Gaza, with another ship planning to join it by the weekend."

Last year during Cast Lead, another Iranian ship tried to enter Gaza, "but was turned back (not attacked) by the Israeli military while still in international waters." The IDF, however, "threatened to engage (this) ship" while still in international waters, yet an attack seems unlikely given the world outrage over the May 31 one.

Washington's response was unsurprising, State Department spokesman, PJ Crowley, saying America is very concerned about Iranian ships as Israel earlier "intercepted (some) that were carrying, you know, weapons and armaments that have been used to threaten the Israeli people," even though no evidence supports the accusation.

The "Israeli government has (never) presented a case in which it captured ships with weapons bound for Gaza," these accusations, like others, exposed as lies.

On June 8, Law Professor Jonathan Turley revealed fake Israeli video showing a cash of heavy weapons on the Mavi Marmara as justifiable evidence for the attack. Supposedly found were mortars, artillery shells, bazookas, and a million euros intended for Hamas. It was bogus, Israeli propaganda, but was "widely distributed as (proof) of why the IDF Naval commandos were dispatched to intercept the six vessels including the M/S Mavi Marmara."

The Flotilla carried no weapons, not even light arms, the entire cargo comprised of food, medicines, toys, educational materials, and other essential items. Turley referred to "a conscious misinformation campaign," those circulating the video knowing it was fake.

Like past aid vessels, the Iranian ones are carrying humanitarian aid, no weapons of any kind, verified by inspections before departure. "Passengers and crew say that any attempts by the Israeli government to claim (otherwise) would be a complete fabrication."

On June 17, Sifynews.com headlined, "More international flotillas headed for Gaza Strip," saying:

"Ships from several countries, including Iran and Lebanon, have reportedly left or are planning to leave (for) Gaza in defiance of an Israeli maritime blockade on that territory" - a land one as well not mentioned.

Sifynews reported several Iranian ships are involved and two Lebanese ones:

-- the Naj Al Ali, sponsored by Journalists without Borders and Free Palestine "with at least 50 journalists and 25 European volunteers on board, including European parliament members;" and

-- "an all-women's ship, the Mariam."

In addition, many others are planned from a number of countries, including more from the Turkish based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Aid (IHH), bogusly called an extremist Islamic terrorist organization, when, in fact, it provides humanitarian aid "to spread justice and good....fight(s) violation(s) of anyone's basic liberties and human rights (and) perpetuat(es) good anytime and anywhere."

According to the IrishTimes.com on June 16, IHH "told members of the European Parliament it had assembled (another) six ships for the next flotilla and put out an appeal for others to join." It plans to sail the second half of July, and invited the international media to inspect all goods to "demonstrate their commitment to total transparency."

Richard Howlitt, a British European Parliament MP, organized the group's Strasbourg press conference, saying the EU is obligated to ensure safe passage and respect for humanitarian law next time, then adding:

"If this terrible tragedy tips the balance so that the international community finally insists on full and unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza, then some good can still come of it," he said, referring to the Mavi Marmara massacre.

These and other flotillas will maintain pressure until the siege is entirely lifted, partial measures no longer will be tolerated, nor should they ever be.

A Final Comment

On June 17, Ma'an News Agency headlined "Fatah: Israel plans to separate West Bank from Gaza," saying:

"Fatah said Israel aims at cutting off the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and 'end the Palestinian national project," according to party spokesman Ahmad Assaf. Whether or not Abbas goes along is unclear. What is clear is that he's no friend of beleaguered Palestinians.

Neither is Congress, several prominent members (including Charles Rangel, Anthony Weiner, Carolyn Maloney, Jerry Nadler, Eliot Engel, and Janis Shorenstein), asking the State Department to prohibit all Flotilla members from entering America, wanting them investigated for terrorist ties.

Media Matters' senior foreign policy fellow, MJ Rosenberg, cites Washington officials wanting Turkey kicked out of NATO, saying:

"The government, the (Israeli) lobby, the neocons, and their acolytes in the media, have decided that Turkey needs to be punished for its opposition to the Gaza blockade and its role in the flotilla 'fiasco.' "

"The word is going out. Turkey is no friend of Israel, no friend of Jews, and has become, yes, a Muslim state that cares about its fellow Muslims in Gaza," - again saying "Rep. Anthony Weiner takes the prize" for displaying extreme hostility, then adding:

"Anyone who questions just how far the lobby will go in defense of the Netanyahu government's policies has their answer."

Nor is there any doubt how closely aligned the Obama administration is with Israel, public statements about a rift misguided and out-of-touch, and the same holds for Canada, the point Eves Yngler makes in his book, "Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid."

Since Israel's 1948 creation, Canada, like America, has been a loyal ally, not an "honest broker" on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, then or now, and the reason outspoken professors like University of Ottawa's Denis Rancourt got fired, despite his stature, tenure, and heroic commitment human rights and democratic values, ones neither Canada or America champion, uphold or defend.

No wonder that Prime Minister Stephen Harper called on New Democratic Party (NDP) MP Libby Davies to resign as her party's deputy leader for saying Israel's occupation is the longest in the world, then adding: "People are suffering. I've been to the West Bank and Gaza twice so I've seen for myself what's going on."

In response, Harper said:

"Mr. Speaker, this is a fundamental denial of Israel's right to exist." That and more from others in parliament, the way US politicians defend the most outrageous Israeli crimes, denouncing their victims as terrorists.

It's why champions of human rights can't rest, nor should they ever compromise on right v. wrong issues, especially when it comes to Israel or its Washington paymaster/partner.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.