While the death of former Secretary of State and retired Gen. Colin Powell has elicited praise-filled eulogies in the mainstream media and officials in Washington, many Americans still carry bitter feelings over Powell’s support for the illegal, unnecessary and predictably disastrous war in Iraq. In particular, critics cite his February 2003 speech before the UN Security Council in which he put forward a litany of demonstrably false statements in making the case that Iraq had compiled a dangerous arsenal of “weapons of mass destruction” and was actively supporting the al-Qaeda terrorist network. [FULL LINK]
Category: George W Bush
Iraq: Remembering Those Responsible
Truthout Published 1 January 2012: Also at Common Dreams,
Transnational.org, Peace and Justice Post and ZNetwork
The formal withdrawal of US troops from Iraq this month has led to a whole series of retrospectives on the invasion and the eight and a half years of occupation that followed as well as a host of unanswered questions.. of critical importance at this juncture is that we not allow the narratives on the war to understate its tragic consequences or those responsible for the war — both Republicans and Democrats — to escape their responsibility.
African Dictatorships and Double Standards
The Bush administration has justifiably criticized the Zimbabwean regime of liberator-turned-dictator Robert Mugabe. It has joined a unanimous UN Security Council resolution condemning the campaign of violence unleashed upon pro-democracy activists and calling for increased diplomatic sanctions in the face of yet another sham election. In addition, both the House and the Senate have passed strongly worded resolutions of solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe in support of their struggle for freedom and democracy.
However, neither the Republican administration nor the Democratic-controlled Congress is sincerely concerned about human rights and democratic elections as a matter of principle. Rather, they are more likely acting out of political expediency. Despite claims of support for the advancement of democracy, the United States continues to support other African dictatorships that are as bad as or even worse than that of Zimbabwe.
Indeed, the United States currently provides economic aid and security assistance to such repressive African regimes as Swaziland, Congo, Cameroun, Togo, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Gabon, Egypt, and Tunisia. None of these countries holds free elections, and all have severely suppressed their political opposition.
The Worst Abuser
Among the worst of these African tyrannies has been the regime of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. Obiang has been in power even longer than the 28-year reign of Mugabe and, according to a recent article in the British newspaper The Independent, makes the Zimbabwean dictator “seem stable and benign” by comparison. Obiang originally seized power in a 1979 coup by murdering his uncle, who had ruled the country since its independence from Spain in 1968. Under his rule, Equatorial Guinea nominally allowed the existence of opposition parties as a condition of receiving foreign aid in the early 1990s. But the four leading candidates withdrew from the last presidential election in December 2002 in protest of irregularities in the voting process and violence against their supporters. In that election, Obiang officially received more than 97% of the vote (down from 99.5% in the previous election.)
Though the U.S. State Department acknowledged that the election was “marred by extensive fraud and intimidation,” the Congress and the administration devoted none of the vehement condemnation that was so evident after the recent, similarly marred election process in Zimbabwe.
One major reason for the difference in response is oil. The development of vast oil reserves over the past decade has made Equatorial Guinea one of the wealthiest countries in Africa in terms of per capita gross domestic product. Virtually all of the oil revenues, however, goes to Obiang and his cronies. The dictator himself is worth an estimated $1 billion, making him the wealthiest leader in Africa; his real estate holdings include two mansions in Maryland just outside of Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the country’s population lives on only a few dollars a day, and nearly half of all children under five are malnourished. The country’s major towns and cities lack basic sanitation and potable water while conditions in the countryside are even worse.
During his most recent visit to Washington in 2006, Obiang was warmly received by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who praised the dictator as “a good friend” of the United States. Not once during their joint appearance did she mention the words “human rights” or “democracy.” At the same press conference, Obiang praised his regime’s “extremely good relations with the United States” and his expectation that “this relationship will continue to grow in friendship and cooperation.” None of the assembled reporters raised any questions about the regime’s notorious human rights record or its lack of democracy, instead using the opportunity to ask Secretary Rice questions about the alleged threat from Iran.
In 2002, the dictator met with President George W. Bush in New York to discuss military and energy security issues. He followed up in 2004 with meetings with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.
Cozy Relations
Equatorial Guinea receives U.S. government funding and training through the International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). In addition, the private U.S. firm Military Professional Resources Incorporated – founded by former senior Pentagon officials who cite the regime’s friendliness to U.S. strategic and economic interests – plays a key role in the country’s internal security apparatus. Furthermore, as a result of Obiang’s understandable lack of trust in his own people, soldiers from Morocco – one of America’s closest African allies – have served for decades in a number of important security functions, including the role of presidential guards.
Maintaining close ties with such a notorious ruler has led even conservative Republicans like Frank Ruddy, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Equatorial Guinea in the mid-1980s, to denounce the Bush administration for being “big cheerleaders for the government – and it’s an awful government.”
Though the Chinese have also recently begun investing in the country’s oil sector, U.S. companies ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess, Chevron/Texaco, and Marathon Oil have played the most significant role. A report by the International Monetary Fund notes that U.S. oil companies receive “by far the most generous tax and profit-sharing provisions in the region.” Congressional hearings recently revealed how U.S. oil companies paid hundreds of millions of dollars destined to state treasuries directly into the dictator’s private bank accounts. A Senate report faulted U.S. oil companies for making “substantial payments to, or entering into business ventures with,” government officials and their family members.
The irony of the relative silence of Congress and the Bush administration regarding the human rights abuses and the undemocratic nature of Obiang’s regime is that, due to the critical role of U.S. economic investment and security assistance, the United States has far more leverage on the government of Equatorial Guinea than it does on the government of Zimbabwe. As a result, Americans can feel self-righteous in their condemnation of a regime in Zimbabwe with which the United States has little leverage while continuing to support an even more repressive regime over which the United States could successfully exert pressure if it chose to do so.
This does not mean the United States should have waited until it first ends its support of Obiang and other African dictatorships before joining the rest of the international community in condemning the repression in Zimbabwe. However, as long as the United States maintains such blatant double standards, U.S. credibility as a defender of human rights and free elections is seriously compromised and thereby plays right into the hands of autocrats and demagogues like Robert Mugabe.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/african_dictatorships_and_double_standards
Washington’s Hypocrisy Over African Dictatorships
The Bush administration has justifiably criticized the Zimbabwean regime of liberator-turned-dictator Robert Mugabe. It has joined a unanimous UN Security Council resolution condemning the campaign of violence unleashed upon pro-democracy activists and calling for increased diplomatic sanctions in the face of yet another sham election. In addition, both the House and the Senate have passed strongly worded resolutions of solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe in support of their struggle for freedom and democracy.
However, neither the Republican administration nor the Democratic-controlled Congress is sincerely concerned about human rights and democratic elections as a matter of principle. Rather, they are more likely acting out of political expediency. Despite claims of support for the advancement of democracy, the United States continues to support other African dictatorships that are as bad as or even worse than that of Zimbabwe.
Indeed, the United States currently provides economic aid and security assistance to such repressive African regimes as Swaziland, Congo, Cameroun, Togo, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Gabon, Egypt, and Tunisia. None of these countries holds free elections, and all have severely suppressed their political opposition.
The Worst Abuser
Among the worst of these African tyrannies has been the regime of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. Obiang has been in power even longer than the 28-year reign of Mugabe and, according to a recent article in the British newspaper The Independent, makes the Zimbabwean dictator “seem stable and benign” by comparison. Obiang originally seized power in a 1979 coup by murdering his uncle, who had ruled the country since its independence from Spain in 1968. Under his rule, Equatorial Guinea nominally allowed the existence of opposition parties as a condition of receiving foreign aid in the early 1990s. But the four leading candidates withdrew from the last presidential election in December 2002 in protest of irregularities in the voting process and violence against their supporters. In that election, Obiang officially received more than 97% of the vote (down from 99.5% in the previous election.)
Though the U.S. State Department acknowledged that the election was “marred by extensive fraud and intimidation,” the Congress and the administration devoted none of the vehement condemnation that was so evident after the recent, similarly marred election process in Zimbabwe.
One major reason for the difference in response is oil. The development of vast oil reserves over the past decade has made Equatorial Guinea one of the wealthiest countries in Africa in terms of per capita gross domestic product. Virtually all of the oil revenues, however, goes to Obiang and his cronies. The dictator himself is worth an estimated $1 billion, making him the wealthiest leader in Africa; his real estate holdings include two mansions in Maryland just outside of Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the country’s population lives on only a few dollars a day, and nearly half of all children under five are malnourished. The country’s major towns and cities lack basic sanitation and potable water while conditions in the countryside are even worse.
During his most recent visit to Washington in 2006, Obiang was warmly received by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who praised the dictator as “a good friend” of the United States. Not once during their joint appearance did she mention the words “human rights” or “democracy.” At the same press conference, Obiang praised his regime’s “extremely good relations with the United States” and his expectation that “this relationship will continue to grow in friendship and cooperation.” None of the assembled reporters raised any questions about the regime’s notorious human rights record or its lack of democracy, instead using the opportunity to ask Secretary Rice questions about the alleged threat from Iran.
In 2002, the dictator met with President George W. Bush in New York to discuss military and energy security issues. He followed up in 2004 with meetings with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.
Cozy Relations
Equatorial Guinea receives U.S. government funding and training through the International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). In addition, the private U.S. firm Military Professional Resources Incorporated – founded by former senior Pentagon officials who cite the regime’s friendliness to U.S. strategic and economic interests – plays a key role in the country’s internal security apparatus. Furthermore, as a result of Obiang’s understandable lack of trust in his own people, soldiers from Morocco – one of America’s closest African allies – have served for decades in a number of important security functions, including the role of presidential guards.
Maintaining close ties with such a notorious ruler has led even conservative Republicans like Frank Ruddy, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Equatorial Guinea in the mid-1980s, to denounce the Bush administration for being “big cheerleaders for the government – and it’s an awful government.”
Though the Chinese have also recently begun investing in the country’s oil sector, U.S. companies ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess, Chevron/Texaco, and Marathon Oil have played the most significant role. A report by the International Monetary Fund notes that U.S. oil companies receive “by far the most generous tax and profit-sharing provisions in the region.” Congressional hearings recently revealed how U.S. oil companies paid hundreds of millions of dollars destined to state treasuries directly into the dictator’s private bank accounts. A Senate report faulted U.S. oil companies for making “substantial payments to, or entering into business ventures with,” government officials and their family members.
The irony of the relative silence of Congress and the Bush administration regarding the human rights abuses and the undemocratic nature of Obiang’s regime is that, due to the critical role of U.S. economic investment and security assistance, the United States has far more leverage on the government of Equatorial Guinea than it does on the government of Zimbabwe. As a result, Americans can feel self-righteous in their condemnation of a regime in Zimbabwe with which the United States has little leverage while continuing to support an even more repressive regime over which the United States could successfully exert pressure if it chose to do so.
This does not mean the United States should have waited until it first ends its support of Obiang and other African dictatorships before joining the rest of the international community in condemning the repression in Zimbabwe. However, as long as the United States maintains such blatant double-standards, U.S. credibility as a defender of human rights and free elections is seriously compromised and thereby plays right into the hands of autocrats and demagogues like Robert Mugabe.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/washingtons-hypocrisy-ove_b_110179.html
Kosovo and the Politics of Recognition
Even among longstanding supporters of national self-determination for Kosovo, the eagerness with which the Bush administration extended diplomatic recognition immediately upon that country’s declaration of independence on February 17 has raised serious concerns. Indeed, it serves as a reminder of the series of U.S. policy blunders over the years that have compounded the Balkan tragedy.
This is not the first time Kosovo has declared its independence. In 1989, Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic revoked the province’s autonomous status, allowing the 10% Serb minority to essentially impose an apartheid-style system on the country’s ethnic Albanian majority. The majority of ethnic Albanians in the public sector and Serbian-owned enterprises were fired from their jobs and forbidden to use their language in schools or government.
In response, the province’s ethnic Albanians – consisting of over 85% of the population – declared an independent republic in 1990, establishing a parallel government with democratic elections, a parallel school system, and other quasi-national institutions. The movement constituted one of the most widespread, comprehensive and sustained nonviolent campaigns since Gandhi’s struggle for Indian independence. In response, Serbian authorities engaged in severe repression, including widespread arrest, torture, and extra-judicial killings.
For most of the 1990s, the Kosovar Albanians waged their struggle nonviolently, using strikes, boycotts, peaceful demonstrations, and strengthening their parallel institutions. This was the time for Western powers to have engaged in preventative diplomacy. However, the world chose to ignore the Kosovars’ nonviolent movement and resisted the consistent pleas by the moderate Kosovar Albanian leadership to take action. By the end of the decade, the failure of the United States and other Western nations to come to the support of the Kosovars’ nonviolent struggle led to the rise of a shadowy armed group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army, ultra-nationalists with links to terrorism and the drug trade, who convinced an increasing number of the province’s ethnic Albanians that their only hope for national liberation came through armed struggle.
By waiting for the emergence of guerrilla warfare before seeking a solution, the United States and other Western nations gave Milosevic the opportunity to crack down with even greater savagery than before. The delay also allowed the KLA to emerge as the dominant force in the Kosovar nationalist movement. Rejecting nonviolence and moderation, KLA forces murdered Serb officials and ethnic Albanian moderates, destroyed Serbian villages, and attacked other minority communities. Some among its leadership even called for ethnic cleansing of the Serb minority to create an ethnically pure Albanian state.
Tragically, former KLA leaders and their supporters now dominate the newly-declared independent Kosovo Republic.
Western Dithering
The United States and other Western nations squandered a full eight years when preventative diplomacy could have worked. The United States rejected calls for expanding to Kosovo the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) missions set up in Macedonia or to bring Kosovo constituencies together for negotiations. Though many Kosovars and others expected that the U.S.-brokered 1995 Dayton accords would include an end to the Serbian occupation and oppression of Kosovo, the United States and other parties decided it did not merit attention.
When Western powers finally took decisive action toward the long-simmering crisis in the fall of 1998, a ceasefire was arranged where the OSCE sent in unarmed monitors. However, they were given little support. They were largely untrained, they were too few in number, and NATO refused to supply them with helicopters, night vision binoculars, or other basic equipment that could have made them more effective.
As Serb violations of the cease fire, including a number of atrocities, increased, Western diplomatic efforts accelerated, producing the Rambouillet proposal that called for the restoration of Kosovo’s autonomous status within Serbia. While such a political settlement was quite reasonable, and the Serbs appeared willing to seriously consider such an agreement, it was sabotaged by NATO’s insistence that they be allowed to send in a large armed occupation force into Kosovo along with rights to move freely without permission throughout the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Also problematic was that is was presented essentially as a final document without much room for negotiations. One of the fundamental principles of international conflict resolution is that all interested parties are part of the peace process. Some outside pressure may be necessary — particularly against the stronger party — to secure an agreement, but it cannot be presented as a fait accompli. A “sign this or we’ll bomb you” attitude also doomed the diplomatic initiative to failure. Few national leaders would sign an agreement under such terms, which amount to a treaty of surrender: allowing foreign forces free rein of your territory and issuing such a proposal as an ultimatum.
Smarter and earlier diplomacy could have prevented the war. Instead, the U.S.-led NATO allies began bombing Serbia in early 1999, prompting a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign against ethnic Albanians by Serbian forces, resulting in nearly one million refugees. After 11 weeks of bombing, a compromise was reached in which Serbian forces would withdraw and the province would be placed under a UN trusteeship.
Though initially set back by the nationalist reaction to the NATO bombing of their country, pro-democracy Serbs were able to gain enough support to mobilize a popular nonviolent insurrection in October of 2000 that ousted Milosevic. Serbia has been under a democratic center-left coalition ever since. Meanwhile, UN administrators and a multinational peacekeeping force have tried to keep peace in Kosovo, even as KLA remnants and their supporters have continued to harass the ethnic Serb minority, forcing nearly half of its population to flee.
U.S. Support for Independence
Despite widespread sympathy for Kosovo independence, many in the international community had hoped for a compromise settlement that would grant the province genuine autonomy under nominal Serbian sovereignty. As with Taiwan and Iraqi Kurdistan, most nations have had to balance their support for the right of self-determination with concern over the threat of the violence and regional instability that could result if the country’s de facto independence became official. In this case, however, no such balance was found, and the fallout from Kosovo’s declaration of independence and recognition by the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and other countries could be serious.
Any effort by Kosovo to join the UN will be unsuccessful in the foreseeable future given the certainty of a veto by Russia and China. Both countries have their own “autonomous regions” composed of national minorities – a number of which have dreams of formal independence – and thus fear the precedent such international recognition could establish. Kosovo is the only state recognized by the United States not also recognized by the United Nations.
Ironically, the United States refuses to join the more-than-75 nations that have recognized the independence of Western Sahara, originally declared back in 1976. Indeed, the Bush administration is on record supporting Morocco’s call for international recognition of its unilateral annexation of Western Sahara as an “autonomous region” of that kingdom. This double standard is particularly glaring in light of the fact that Kosovo had been legally recognized as part of Serbia whereas Western Sahara is legally recognized as a non-self-governing territory under belligerent military occupation, a status confirmed by the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice.
The United States has rejected proposals that would allow Serbia to annex a small strip of land in the northern part of Kosovo with a predominantly ethnic Serbian population and several sites that the Serbs consider to have important historical significance. At the same time, however, the United States is on record supporting Israeli proposals to annex strips of Palestinian land on the West Bank populated by Israeli Jews and other areas considered by Israelis to be of important historical significance. Ironically, the Kosovar Serbs have mostly lived on their land for centuries while the Israelis in the West Bank are virtually all colonists occupying illegal settlements built recently and in direct defiance of international law and a series of UN Security Council resolutions.
Such double standards help expose the fallacy of U.S. claims that its recognition of Kosovo is based upon any moral or legal basis.
Potential Problems
Recognition of Kosovo independence by the United States and some Western European nations under these circumstances could lead to a number of potential problems.
In Serbia, radical national chauvinists – in large part due to the incipient threat of Kosovar independence – came very close to defeating the moderate democratic coalition in the recent national elections. Hostility toward the United States and Europe as a result of what most Serbs see as a renegade province could retard the country’s efforts at European integration, worsening its economy and further strengthening reactionary forces. Though the government appears unwilling and unable to try to resolve through force what they see as a secessionist movement and the initial response from most Serbs appears to be more that of resignation than defiance, fears of rekindling Serbian national chauvinism are real. Masked Serb arsonists setting fire to UN and NATO border check posts in recent days is one such sign of looming unrest.
Another potential problem could emerge in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. Here, a restless Albanian minority concentrated along its western border with Kosovo could be inspired to resume an armed secessionist movement in an effort to join with its newly independent Albanian-populated neighbor.
There is potential for fallout in the Caucasus region, with the possibility that the autonomous South Ossetia region in Georgia could declare itself independent and be immediately recognized by its neighbor Russia and its allies. With the Kosovo precedent, the Georgian government could do little diplomatically to garner support and, with Russian troops already in the territory, little militarily either.
The impact of Kosovo’s independence and recognition by the United States and other Western nations could also seriously worsen U.S.-Russian relations, exacerbating differences that hawks on both sides are warning could evolve into a “new Cold War.”
It is also quite possible that there will not be any serious negative long-term impact of these recent events and, with its legacy of nonviolent struggle and democratic self-governance, an independent Kosovo could prove itself worthy of universal recognition. Nevertheless, U.S. policy has contributed a great deal to the tragic political climate in this corner of the Balkans, a climate so poisoned that the international community is greeting Kosovo’s long-awaited independence with more apprehension than joy.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/kosovo_and_the_politics_of_recognition
Teachers and the War
Many Americans would be surprised to learn that among the most important constituencies backing the Bush administration’s disastrous agenda in the Middle East and promoting anti-Arab policies has been the one million-strong American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The AFT leadership has gone so far as to make a series of public statements and push through resolutions with demonstrably inaccurate assertions in its defense of administration policy. A key constituent union of the AFL-CIO, the AFT – which also represents a significant number of health care and other public service workers – gives over $5 million in contributions to congressional candidates each election cycle.
In January 2003, as anti-war activists were scrambling to prevent a U.S. invasion of Iraq war by challenging the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq having reconstituted its chemical and biological weapons capability, offensive delivery system, and nuclear weapons program, the AFT’s executive council decided to weigh in on the debate.
The AFT executive council issued a public statement claiming that Iraq at that time posed “a unique threat to the peace and stability of the Middle East” and “to the national security interests of the United States.” This decision to parrot the Bush administration’s rhetoric regarding Iraq’s alleged military capabilities flew in the face of substantial evidence gathered from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN Special Commission on Iraq, and the UN Monitoring and Verification Commission. In addition, testimony by former UN arms inspectors, articles in scholarly journals by arms control experts, reports by investigative journalists, and analyses by independent research institutes available at that time cast serious doubts on such allegations.
The vote for this resolution was not unanimous. A number of members of the executive council – such as Barbara Bowen, president of AFT’s large local at City University of New York (CUNY) – raised concerns over the credibility of the claims made by war supporters in the administration and on Capitol Hill regarding the alleged Iraqi threat. These dissenters were overwhelmed, however, by those on the council who fell in line with the Bush administration. Instead, the majority of the AFT executive council relied exclusively on the opinions of current and former government officials.
At the subsequent biannual convention in 2004, members passed a resolution strongly condemning the Bush administration for misleading the American public on Iraq. However, AFT officials have quietly acknowledged that it was actually the testimony of Senator Hillary Clinton before a meeting of labor leaders in 2002 that played a major role in convincing them that there was still an ongoing Iraqi threat. Her misleading claims notwithstanding, however, the AFT has gone on to actively support her presidential campaign.
Despite admitting they were wrong about Iraq’s supposed military threat, the AFT leadership has refused to apologize for making such false and reckless statements and, despite demands from the rank-and-file, have refused to make public any change of procedure so to minimize the risk of issuing such false statements on important national security issues in the future. Indeed, the union leadership’s eagerness to back the Bush administration’s phony claims of an “Iraqi threat” was only the beginning of its support for the Bush Middle East agenda.
Continued Support for the War
Once U.S. forces invaded and occupied Iraq and the Bush administration admitted that Iraq had not failed to disarm, it became apparent that the AFT leadership’s expressed concern about Iraqi WMDs was not the only motivation for supporting a U.S. conquest and occupation of that oil-rich country.
In a 2004 resolution at the AFT’s biannual convention, the AFT rebuked anti-war elements of the union by passing a resolution declaring, in part, that “we urge the Bush administration, the Congress and the American people to reject calls for the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces.” They did not define what “precipitous” meant and the resolution listed no criteria for when or under what conditions they believed U.S. forces should come back home, a choice of words widely interpreted to mean support for an indefinite U.S. military occupation. The majority of AFT’s political contributions (funded from the union dues of its members) in 2004 went to candidates who supported the Iraq war. This hawkish stance was in sharp contrast to the AFL-CIO as a whole and most of its other member unions, which had gone on record in opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq and in support of the withdrawal of American troops from that country.
The AFT rank and file opponents of the resolution raised questions about the impact of the occupation on the people of Iraq, including Iraqi trade unionists. They also wanted to know why a union supposedly backing public education would support spending hundreds of billions of dollars worth of taxpayers’ money to fight such a war in the face of huge cutbacks in federal aid to education. A number of statewide affiliates, such as Wisconsin and California, went on record opposing the war even as the national union continued to support it.
Eventually, a rank-and-file effort to pass a resolution at the AFT’s national convention in 2006 calling for a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq was successful, though the leadership successfully beat back an amendment to ban union endorsement of war supporters.
A Politically Inspired Deception?
In the 1980s – when Iraq actually did have WMDs, advanced WMD programs and sophisticated delivery systems and really did pose a unique threat to the region and to U.S. national security interests – the AFT did not pass a single resolution raising such concerns. Only after the country had completely disarmed did the AFT pass a resolution claiming Iraq was a threat. If the union had really been interested in going on record reflecting the actual situation, it would have passed a resolution warning of Iraq’s danger and its need to disarm back in the 1980s and would not have passed such a resolution in early 2003.
This doesn’t make any sense until one considers that the Reagan administration supported Iraq in the 1980s while the Bush administration in 2003 wanted an excuse to invade that country. When the Reagan administration wanted the AFT to keep mum about Iraq back when it really was a threat, the union dutifully kept mum. But when the Bush administration wanted the AFT to claim Iraq was still a threat when that country no longer was, the union dutifully passed a resolution.
It appears, then, that the AFT leadership – despite its criticism of these two Republican administrations’ domestic policy agenda – was more interested in doing what these Republican administrations wanted it to say than it was in providing its members with an honest assessment of Iraq’s military capabilities.
Backing Bush on Lebanon
Even as a rank-and-file effort to rescind AFT support for the Iraq war succeeded at the 2006 convention, the leadership was able to push through a resolution defending another aspect of the Bush administration’s agenda in the Middle East. The convention passed a resolution supporting Israel’s war that summer in Lebanon – which took the lives of hundreds of Lebanese civilians, destroyed billions of dollars worth of that country’s infrastructure and caused widespread environmental damage – as well as Israel’s assault on heavily populated areas of the besieged Gaza Strip.
As with the decision by the AFT leadership in 2003 to repeat the Bush administration’s false claims about Iraq, the 2006 resolution repeated a series of false claims by the Bush administration regarding the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and the Palestinian Hamas movement.
For example, the resolution claimed that Hezbollah “proudly takes credit for the 1983 bombing of the Beirut barracks” that killed 258 U.S. Marines. In reality, Hezbollah has denied their involvement in the attack (though some individuals who later became part of Hezbollah may have indeed been involved.) Requests from AFT to provide evidence to back their claim that Hezbollah “proudly took credit” have remained unanswered.
The resolution also claims that Hezbollah and Hamas were “holding the people of Lebanon and the Palestinian in Gaza hostage” by putting civilian in harm’s way, backing the Bush administration’s insistence that these Palestinian and Lebanese militias were ultimately responsible for the deaths of their fellow countrymen, not the indiscriminate bombardments by U.S.-supplied Israeli forces into civilian areas. However, a detailed study published at the end of the fighting in August by Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that it had found “no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack.” Similarly, Amnesty International, in a well-documented report published in November observed, “While the presence of Hizbullah’s fighters and short-range weapons within civilian areas is not contested” it was “not apparent that civilians were present and used as ‘human shields.’” The resolution went on to claim that the aims of Hezbollah and Hamas in that summer’s fighting were to “carry out the agendas of Iran and Syria.” But the provocative actions of these indigenous Islamic groups were based on their own issues, and neither the Iranian nor Syrian governments – despite some financial and military support – had any operational control over these militias. Passing a resolution claiming that these Lebanese and Palestinian militias were somehow being directed by foreign governments – governments that happened to be targeted by the Bush administration for sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and possible military action – appears to have been part of an effort by the AFT leadership to give credence to the administration’s efforts to further its broader Middle East agenda.
Similarly, in an apparent effort to undermine Syrian efforts to re-open negotiations with Israel and the United States, the AFT resolution claimed that “both Hezbollah and Hamas” were attacking “Israeli cities and civilians with rockets, mortars, and other heavy weapons supplied to them by… Syria.” In reality, the Hezbollah rockets fired into Israel were exclusively of Iranian origin and the smaller, less-sophisticated Hamas rockets fired into Israel were largely homemade, with components smuggled in from Egypt. In any case, the resolution made no mention of the U.S.-supplied ordnance to Israel, which killed more than 900 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians during that period. The resolution also charges that Hamas “initiated” the crisis that summer by attacking an Israeli border post and kidnapping an Israeli corporal. A strong case could also be made, however, that that the attack and kidnapping were actually in response to weeks of Israeli bombardment of populated areas of the Gaza Strip that had killed over a dozen Palestinian civilians.
A History of Militarism
In many respects, the AFT’s right-wing foreign policy agenda is nothing new. The union’s long-time and influential founding president Albert Shankar was an outspoken supporter of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and of U.S. military intervention in Central America 1980s, as well as of President Reagan’s dangerous escalation of the nuclear arms race and dramatically increased military spending.
Shankar was also virtually the only prominent trade unionist to join the Committee on the Present Danger during the late 1970s and 1980s, the influential right-wing group that included a number of neo-conservatives who would later serve in the current administration. Shankar and his colleagues claimed that Soviet Russia and its allies were somehow getting stronger than the United States and its allies and that the Soviets posed a clear and present danger to America’s national security. Just as with the AFT’s more recent exaggerated claims about an Iraqi threat, however, this charge was nonsense. In reality, the Soviets and their allies were actually falling behind the West in their strategic capabilities, and their decrepit system was actually collapsing.
In short, the AFT is continuing its longstanding role of being the principal shill for U.S. militarism within the labor movement, even to the point of ignoring the facts in order to advance its right-wing foreign policy agenda and demonizing those who challenge assumptions justifying U.S. policy in the Middle East. Indeed, among the AFL-CIO leadership, the AFT was the only union not to oppose on principle the Bush Doctrine of “preventive war.” Support for such policies by the leadership of a major labor union – AFT President Edward McElroy and Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour serve as AFL-CIO vice-presidents – gives important credibility to those advancing the Bush’s administration’s foreign policy agenda.
It is particularly ironic that a union representing educators would base its foreign policy agenda not on empirical evidence, but simply on statements by right-wing political leaders. Indeed, the significance of the AFT’s hawkish foreign policy agenda is not just its influential role in Democratic Party politics and in formulating the national debate on important policy issues, but the fact that it represents the people who educate America’s youth.
Rank-and-File Challenge
The AFT leadership’s positions are being increasingly challenged by the rank-and file, particularly those involved in the AFT Peace and Justice Caucus and the multi-union U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW.) More than two dozen AFT affiliates have formally joined USLAW – more than from any other union. This includes the statewide chapters from California, Oregon, and Wisconsin as well as some of the AFT’s largest locals, including those representing public school teachers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Milwaukee, as well as the New York State United University Professions, the AFT’s largest higher education affiliate. A significant precedent took place when the largest AFT local, the New York City Federation of Teachers, began endorsing demonstrations against the Iraq war, as have the large public school teachers locals in Philadelphia and other cities.
A willingness to challenge the AFT leadership’s right-wing foreign policy agenda has been growing. A resolution at the 2002 AFT convention opposing a U.S. invasion of Iraq was soundly defeated. At the next convention in 2004, a resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces lost only narrowly. By 2006, the resolution calling for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq was adopted overwhelmingly.
The AFT is no longer monolithic. There is a strong and growing tendency within the AFT to change directions. And, given the AFT’s important role politically, this could not come too soon.
Bush’s Last State of the Union
On January 28, President George W. Bush gave the last State of the Union address of his two-term tenure. Many of his remarks centered on foreign policy. FPIF’s Stephen Zunes annotates the president’s claims and statements.
“On trade, we must trust American workers to compete with anyone in the world and empower them by opening up new markets overseas. Today, our economic growth increasingly depends on our ability to sell American goods and crops and services all over the world. So we’re working to break down barriers to trade and investment wherever we can.”
The record at this point is quite clear that free trade has hurt American workers. The resulting lower tariffs has made it easier for transnational corporations to shut down manufacturing facilities in the United States and take advantage of cheap labor, lower taxes, and weaker worker safety and environmental standards in foreign countries. This has contributed directly to the decline in economic growth in the United States and the real income of American workers in recent years. Meanwhile, through U.S.-backed structural adjustment programs imposed by international financial institutions and other measures, wages and government spending in most countries of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are kept low. As a result, there is not enough money left for foreign consumers to spend on U.S.-manufactured goods that could make up for U.S. losses in wages and tax revenues from the runaway shops.
“These [free trade] agreements also promote America’s strategic interests. The first agreement that will come before you is with Colombia, a friend of America that is confronting violence and terror, and fighting drug traffickers. If we fail to pass this agreement, we will embolden the purveyors of false populism in our hemisphere. So we must come together, pass this agreement, and show our neighbors in the region that democracy leads to a better life.”
Though Colombia holds competitive elections, it hardly provides its Latin American neighbors a very good model for “democracy” or “a better life.” There is indeed a lot of violence and terror directed at the Colombian government and its supporters, but the U.S.-armed Colombian government is itself guilty of violence and terror as well. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported a “steep rise in reports of extrajudicial executions by the Colombian military” in recent years and months, making this a particularly inauspicious time for Congress to approve a free trade agreement with that repressive government. Amnesty also reports how Columbia has become “one of the most dangerous places in the world for trade unionists,” who are routinely murdered by government forces and government-backed death squads, raising questions as to why Congress should support “free trade” with such an unfree country in which labor rights are so severely repressed.
“The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change. And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more energy-efficient technology.”
If the United States were really concerned about climate change, the Bush administration would sign and support binding agreements to reduce greenhouse emissions. Currently the United States is the only advanced industrialized country that has failed to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol. The United States would also dramatically scale back its military operations and basing throughout the globe, which contribute enormously to carbon emissions. In addition, U.S. foreign aid would primarily support the development of appropriate technology and sustainable agriculture that stresses self-sufficiency rather than help facilitate the massive carbon-emitting international trade of commodities that can be produced locally. Furthermore, rather than subsidize giant corporations for dubious capital-intensive oil-substitution projects, the Bush administration needs to get serious about dramatically increasing federal support for public transportation, encouraging conservation efforts, and backing the development of renewable sources of energy.
“In the long run, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny. And that is why the terrorists are fighting to deny this choice to the people in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Territories. And that is why, for the security of America and the peace of the world, we are spreading the hope of freedom.”
The Bush administration has been doing more than the terrorists to set back the hope of freedom and deny people the right to determine their own destinies. Bush has been an outspoken supporter of Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf – who has brutally suppressed pro-democracy demonstrators, censored the press, fired independent judges, rigged elections, and jailed human rights activists – subsidizing his tyranny with billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. They have denied these countries’ democratically elected governments their sovereign rights to determine the nature and scope of U.S. military operations inside their borders, to prosecute criminal activity by those working under U.S. contracts, or to pursue economic development and trade policies of their choosing. The United States is the principal military, financial, and diplomatic supporter of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory seized in the 1967 war and has refused to pressure Israel to allow for the establishment of a viable independent Palestinian state. The United States was the world’s key supporter of Israel’s 2006 assault on Lebanon, which resulted in the deaths of more then 800 civilians and billions of dollars in damage to the country’s infrastructure, and is currently applying heavy pressure on the country’s more conservative parties to block efforts to compromise with opposition groups to form a sustainable representative coalition government.
“While the enemy is still dangerous and more work remains, the American and Iraqi surges have achieved results few of us could have imagined just one year ago. When we met last year, many said that containing the violence was impossible. A year later, high profile terrorist attacks are down, civilian deaths are down, sectarian killings are down.”
Terrorist attacks and sectarian killings are down, but they are still alarmingly high. Such terrorist attacks and sectarian killings were not happening at all prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. So it is odd that – to the sound of bipartisan applause – President Bush is taking credit for the recent, and likely temporary, drop in such violence. It is also unclear as to whether the “surge” or any Bush administration policies during the past year have contributed to the lessening slaughter. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was responsible for much of the sectarian killings and terrorist attacks, has seen its operational capabilities eroded primarily by Sunni tribal leaders who have focused their militias for an indefinite period on defeating the transnational organization, a decision that took place six months prior to the launch of the surge. Furthermore, another reason for the decline in sectarian violence – which had been the leading cause of civilian deaths in the past couple of years – has been a consequence of the ethnic cleansing and displacement of millions of Iraqis from mixed neighborhoods, many of whom are now in walled-off communities behind fortified gates, which can hardly be considered a positive development.
“When we met last year, militia extremists — some armed and trained by Iran — were wreaking havoc in large areas of Iraq. A year later, coalition and Iraqi forces have killed or captured hundreds of militia fighters. And Iraqis of all backgrounds increasingly realize that defeating these militia fighters is critical to the future of their country.”
The decline of militia violence cannot necessarily be attributed to U.S. policy. Rather, the reduction has come about as a result of decisions made independently by the leading Shiite groups, which had been largely fighting each other, to observe a ceasefire and settle their differences by other means. Sunni militias – which have never been armed and trained by Iran and which are responsible for the vast majority of attacks on U.S. forces – are still active.
“Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among the terrorists there is no doubt. Al-Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated.”
Not only have al-Qaeda’s setbacks been a result, not of the surge, but of Iraqis themselves turning against them, al-Qaeda has always represented well under 10% of the insurgents fighting U.S. forces. Polls show that a majority of Iraqis – both Sunni and Shiite – see the United States as an occupier rather than a liberator and approve of attacks against U.S. forces. Such popular resistance to the U.S. military presence in their country raises serious questions about having that kind of confidence in a military victory.
“When we met last year, our troop levels in Iraq were on the rise. Today, because of the progress just described, we are implementing a policy of “return on success,” and the surge forces we sent to Iraq are beginning to come home.”
U.S. military commanders have made it clear for some time that American forces simply can not sustain the current level of combat troops in Iraq and that there would need to be a withdrawal to pre-surge levels at this point regardless of the situation on the ground. The current drawdown had been planned many months ago as there are insufficient fresh forces available to sustain the escalated troop levels.
“… a failed Iraq would embolden the extremists, strengthen Iran, and give terrorists a base from which to launch new attacks on our friends, our allies, and our homeland. The enemy has made its intentions clear. At a time when the momentum seemed to favor them, al Qaida’s top commander in Iraq declared that they will not rest until they have attacked us here in Washington.”
It was the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq that emboldened extremists, strengthened Iran, and provided terrorists a base of operations in that country. There was no radical Islamist insurgency in until after the United States invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003. Similarly, there was no “al-Qaeda in Iraq.” That group was formed only after the U.S. invasion. And, except for a tiny enclave in the Kurdish region outside of Baghdad’s control, there were no base for Islamist extremists prior to five years ago. A recent National Intelligence Estimate, based on analysis of all 16 of America’s intelligence agencies, revealed that the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation and counter-insurgency campaign had actually increased the threat to the United States from Islamic terrorism and had become the primary recruiting vehicle for a new generation of extremists from the Arab world and beyond. The longer the United States stays in Iraq, then, the greater this threat will grow.
Despite similar claims during the Vietnam War that “if we don’t fight them over there we’ll have to fight them here,” the Vietnamese fighting U.S. forces did not move the battlefield to America once U.S. troops got out of their country. The Afghans fighting Soviet forces did not move the battlefield to Russia when the Soviets got out of their country. Similarly, the Iraqis fighting U.S. forces will not move the battlefield to America once we get out of their country. It is the ongoing occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces, the bombing and shelling of Iraqi cities, the torture of Iraqi detainees, and the chaos and destruction inflicted on that ancient land as a result of the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation that is prompting the insurgency. The U.S. war in Iraq is creating terrorists faster than we can kill them.
“Tehran is also developing ballistic missiles of increasing range, and continues to develop its capability to enrich uranium, which could be used to create a nuclear weapon.”
Bush makes it sound like Iran is the only country in the region to pose this kind of threat. Yet Iran’s neighbors Israel, Pakistan, and India already have nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, with no objections from the Bush administration, which provides these countries with billions of dollars worth of weapons to increase their offensive military capabilities. While Iran’s nuclear capabilities and missile development are subjects of legitimate concern, they can only be realistically addressed in the context of regional disarmament efforts, not demands by the United States for Iran to halt their programs unilaterally.
“Our message to the people of Iran is clear: We have no quarrel with you. We respect your traditions and your history. We look forward to the day when you have your freedom.”
If this is really true, why hasn’t the Bush administration apologized for the 1953 U.S. overthrow of Iran’s last democratic government and the critical role of U.S. security assistance and training for the repressive and autocratic regime of the Shah for the quarter century that followed? The United States has historically demonstrated little regard for Iranian traditions, history, or freedom.
“Our message to the leaders of Iran is also clear: Verifiably suspend your nuclear enrichment, so negotiations can begin.”
Why must Iran unilaterally suspend its enrichment program before negotiations can begin? Virtually every successful negotiations to end a country’s potential for developing nuclear weapons – including the one ending Libya’s nuclear program in 2003 – involved some kind of quid pro quo and were not subjected to such unilateral pre-conditions. Iran offered to end its enrichment program more than four years ago in return for an end of U.S. threats against its regime and normal relations, similar to the deal worked out with the Libyans. But the Bush administration refused.
“But above all, know this: America will confront those who threaten our troops. We will stand by our allies, and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf.”
This is a clear threat of war against Iran, made all the more chillingly real by the bipartisan cheers that followed this statement. This comes despite the fact that virtually every claim and reported incident by the Bush administration regarding alleged Iranian threats to U.S. forces in Iraq and the Persian Gulf have later been shown to have been false or grossly exaggerated.
“Protecting our nation from the dangers of a new century requires more than good intelligence and a strong military. It also requires changing the conditions that breed resentment and allow extremists to prey on despair. So America is using its influence to build a freer, more hopeful, and more compassionate world. This is a reflection of our national interest; it is the calling of our conscience.”
This noble calling is not supported by the facts. By virtually any measure, there has been an increase in repression, despair, and intolerance in the world since Bush launched the “war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq, as the United States and other countries have diverted their resources towards military spending and away from meeting human needs, as governments around the world have used security rationales to crack down on civil liberties, and as xenophobia and religious extremism has grown as a result.
“We support freedom in countries from Cuba and Zimbabwe to Belarus and Burma.”
The United States should indeed support freedom in those countries, yet Bush has been curiously silent about supporting freedom in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Kazakhstan, Chad, Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, and other countries suffering under repressive regimes kept in power in large part through billions of dollars worth of U.S. arms transfers and security assistance. As long as the U.S. government only goes on record supporting “freedom” in countries whose repressive governments oppose U.S. hegemony while propping up other repressive governments that support U.S. hegemony, this double-standard makes it easier for the regimes of these targeted countries to depict the genuine freedom movements challenging their rule as agents of the United States.
“This month in Ramallah and Jerusalem, I assured leaders from both sides that America will do, and I will do, everything we can to help them achieve a peace agreement that defines a Palestinian state by the end of this year.”
Rather than doing “everything we can,” the Bush administration rejects taking the necessary steps to make peace possible. It has refused to insist on a full Israeli withdrawal (with possible minor and reciprocal border adjustments), an end to Israeli colonization in the occupied territories, and the acceptance of a shared co-capital of Jerusalem. Nor has Bush even demanded that Israel engage in confidence-building measures, such as a putting a freeze on the expansion of settlements, ending its siege of Palestinian cities and the construction of its illegal separation barrier deep inside the occupied West Bank, and releasing Palestinian prisoners not involved in terrorism.
President Bush was asked at a press conference during his recent Ramallah visit why the United States refused to insist that Israel abide by a series of UN Security Council resolutions addressing the outstanding issues in the peace process. He responded by proclaiming that “the choice was whether to remain stuck in the past, or to move on.” This was necessary, according to the president, because “the UN deal didn’t work in the past,” ignoring the fact that these earlier UN efforts failed as a direct result of the United States blocking the Security Council from enforcing its resolutions regarding Israel’s international legal obligations.
Bush has rejected calls by the international community that the conflict must be settled on the basis of international law, which forbids the expansion of any country’s territory by force. The United States has ignored the kind of settlement called for in the longstanding UN Security Council resolution 242 and recognized by previous presidents as the basis for Arab-Israeli peace. Instead, the Bush administration has opted to use as its starting point the status quo based on Israel’s 40-year occupation. This underscores the longstanding and inherent contradiction between the United States simultaneously playing the role of chief mediator in the conflict and being the chief military, financial, and diplomatic supporter of the more powerful of the two parties. As a result, Israel, the occupying power, has little incentive to compromise, and the relatively powerless Palestinians under occupation have little leverage to advance their struggle for an independent viable state.
Arming the Middle East
President George W Bush announced during his recent Middle East trip that he is formally serving notice to Congress of his administration’s decision to approve the sale of bomb-guidance kits to Saudi Arabia. This announcement follows notification on five other arms deals to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait that are part of a $20 billion package of additional armaments over the next decade to the family dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf emirates announced by President George W. Bush last summer.
At that time, the Bush administration also announced taxpayer-funded military assistance totaling an additional $13 billion over this same period to the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt. Also part of this package is an additional $30 billion worth of sophisticated weaponry bound for Israel.
Altogether, these arms deals represent a major setback for those struggling to promote peace and democracy in that volatile region.
The Democratic-controlled Congress has the authority to block any or all of these proposed sales. It could also refuse to approve the military assistance packages, which altogether total $63 billion. Congress has until February 13 to block the latest portion of the arms package, consisting of 900 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMs, valued at $123 million. In addition to these highly advanced satellite-guided bombs, the Bush administration’s proposed arms sales to the Gulf monarchies include sophisticated guided missiles, new naval ships, and upgrades to fighter aircraft for Saudi Arabia and the five other Gulf monarchies.
However, no one among the top House or Senate leadership in either party has yet to come out in opposition to any aspect of the administration’s plans to dangerously escalate the regional arms race.
Still More Arms
Arms control analysts have consistently argued that the Middle East is too militarized already and the recipient governments already possess military capabilities well in excess of their legitimate security needs. Yet President Bush is effectively insisting that this volatile region does not yet have enough armaments, and the United States must send even more.
As disturbing as this is – depending on the time frame for the arms sales – it does not necessarily represent a dramatic increase in the rate of arms transfers. For example, since 1998, the United States has sent over $15 billion of American weaponry to Saudi Arabia alone. By contrast, even though Israel’s strategic superiority vis-à-vis all its potential regional adversaries is stronger than ever and Israel is already by far the highest recipient of U.S. military assistance, the proposed arms package to Israel marks a dramatic 25% increase over current levels.
The administration has claimed in recent years that it has disavowed the policies of its predecessors that propped up undemocratic regimes in the name of regional stability and was now dedicated to promoting freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Nevertheless, all seven of the Arab countries included in the proposed arms packages are led by autocratic governments that have engaged in consistent patterns of gross and persistent human rights abuses. In addition, Israel – while having the only democratically elected government among the recipients – remains in belligerent occupation of much of Palestine’s West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights and has a longstanding history of using American weapons against civilians and related violations of international humanitarian law.
Though supporters of the recently announced arms sales to the Gulf argue that if the United States did not sell weapons to these oil-rich nations someone else would, neither the Bush administration nor its predecessors have ever expressed interest in pursuing any kind of arms control agreement with other arms exporting countries. A number of other arms exporters, such as Germany, are now expressing their opposition to further arms transfers to the region due to the risks of exacerbating tensions and promoting a regional arms race.
The United States is by far the largest arms exporter in the world, surpassing Russia – the second largest arms exporter – by nearly two to one.
The Iranian rationalization
The ostensible reason for the proposed arms packages is to counter Iran’s growing military procurement in recent years, though Iranian military spending is actually substantially less than it was 20 years ago. Furthermore, Iran’s current military buildup is based primarily on the perceived need to respond to the threatened U.S. attack against that country, a concern made all the more real by the U.S. invasion and occupation of two countries bordering Iran on both its east and west in recent years.
This U.S. insistence on countering Iran through further militarizing this already overly militarized region is particularly provocative. Not only has the United States refused to engage in serious negotiations with Iran regarding mutual security concerns but it has discouraged its regional allies from pursuing arms control talks or other negotiations that could ease tensions between the Arab monarchies and the Islamic Republic. If the Bush administration were really interested in addressing its purported concerns regarding Iranian militarization, it would be willing to at least give diplomacy a chance first.
In addition to alleged worries about Iran as a military threat to the region, U.S. officials have also tried to justify the arms package as a means to respond to Iran’s growing political influence. However, most of Iran’s enhanced role in the region in recent years is a direct consequence of the U.S. decision to overthrow the anti-Iranian regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and its replacement by a new government dominated by pro-Iranian Shiite parties. Another key element of Iran’s growing influence is the earlier U.S. decision to oust the anti-Iranian Taliban of Afghanistan and replace it with a regime dominated by tribal war lords, a number of whom have close Iranian ties. Similarly, Iranian influence has also increased in the Levant as a direct consequence of U.S.-backed Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, which have strengthened popular political support for Hamas and Hezbollah and their ties to Iran.
Iran’s emergence as a major regional military power also took place as a result of American arms transfers. Over a 25-year period, the United States pushed the autocratic regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi to purchase today’s equivalent of over $100 billion worth of American armaments, weapons systems, and support, creating a formidable military apparatus that ended up in the hands of radically anti-American Shiite clerics following that country’s 1979 Islamic revolution.
Rather than respond to these setbacks by further militarization, the United States should instead seriously re-evaluate its counter-productive propensity to try to resolve Middle Eastern security concerns primarily through military means. Instead of meeting the legitimate defensive needs of America’s allies, the proposed deal is yet another arrogant assertion of American military hegemony. As U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns put it, the arms package “says to the Iranians and Syrians that the United States is the major power in the Middle East and will continue to be and is not going away.”
Little Strategic Merit
The administration’s other rationales for the new arms transfers also have little merit. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for instance, claims that they are necessary to counter the influences of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. In reality, these sophisticated conventional weapons systems would be of little use against Osama bin Laden’s decentralized network of underground terrorist cells or the Lebanese Shiite party’s popular militia.
As exiled Saudi activist Ali Alyami of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia put it, “Appeasing and protecting the autocratic Saudi dynasty and other tyrannical regimes in the Arab world will not bring peace, stability, or an end to extremism and terrorism.”
There is also the possibility that, as with Iran following the 1979 revolution, U.S. arms provided to one or more of these autocratic Arab regimes could end up in the hands of radical anti-American forces should the government be overthrown. Indeed, seeing their countries’ wealth squandered on unnecessary weapons systems pushed on them by the U.S. government and suffering under their despotic rulers kept in power in large part through such military support are major causes of the growing appeal of anti-American extremism among the peoples of Middle East.
The Democratic Response
Despite holding a majority of seats in Congress, the Democratic majority will likely allow the administration to go ahead with these massive arms transfers. Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, apparently has no plans to take up a resolution blocking the proposed sale. Without action by that committee, Congress will not be able to vote on the matter.
For years, calls for the Democratic congressional leadership to eliminate or even scale back this kind of taxpayer subsidy for wealthy and powerful U.S. military contractors – referred to by critics as “merchants of death” – have been summarily rejected. Indeed, since first being elected to Congress in the late 1980s, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has voted in favor of over $50 billion of taxpayer-funded arms transfers to Middle Eastern countries that have engaged in gross and systematic violations of international humanitarian law. In her time in the leadership, she has never seriously challenged any arms transfers to the region.
When the proposal was originally outlined last summer, a group of congressional Democrats did sign a letter expressing opposition. The leading Democratic presidential contenders announced their reservations as well. However, these objections were only in regard to the proposed arms sales for Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies. There were no objections to the much larger tax-payer funded arms package to Israel.
In defending the Israeli part of the proposed package, all three major Democratic presidential candidates have placed themselves in opposition to repeated calls by human rights activists to restrict military assistance to any government that uses American weaponry against civilian targets in violation of international humanitarian law.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards argue that additional military aid is necessary to protect Israel from potentially hostile Arab states. However, given that the arsenals of most of these Arab countries are of U.S. origin, it would make more sense to simply call for an end to the large-scale arms transfers to these regimes. Furthermore, every Arab state is now on record agreeing to security guarantees and normal relations with Israel in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands seized in the June 1967 war. If these presidential hopefuls were really interested in Israel’s security, they would encourage the Bush administration to pressure Israel to enter into serious negotiations based on the longstanding principle of land for peace.
Last summer’s letter by House members opposing the proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia totaled 141 members, less than half of what is needed to block the sales. Ironically, a reading of the letter and accompanying press release appears to indicate that the main objections these Democrats had to sending additional arms to Saudi Arabia was the government’s opposition to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, its efforts to reconcile warring Palestinian parties, and its insistence on Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands conquered in the 1967 war in return for peace.
More Arms, Less Security
U.S. officials insist that the Saudis alone are responsible for their procurement of these sophisticated weapons. Yet underneath this convenient claim of Saudi sovereignty that supposedly absolves the United States of any responsibility in the arms purchases and their deleterious effects lies a practice that can be traced as far back as the 1940s: The U.S Defense Department routinely defines the kingdom’s security needs, often providing a far more pessimistic analysis of the country’s security situation than do more objective strategic analyses. Conveniently, these alleged needs lead directly to purchases of specific U.S. weapons.
As Robert Vitalis, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, observed,
If the billions have not been useful to the Saudis, they were a gold mine for Congresspersons compelled to cast pro-Saudi votes, along with cabinet officials and party leaders worried about the economy of key states and electoral districts. To the extent that the regime faces politically destabilizing cutbacks in social spending, a proximate cause is the strong bipartisan push for arms exports to the Gulf as a means to bolster the sagging fortunes of key constituents and regions – the “gun belt” – that represents the domestic face of internationalism.
These military expenditures place a major toll on the fiscal well-being of Middle Eastern countries. Military expenditures often total half of central government outlays. Many senior observers believe that debt financing in Saudi Arabia that has been used in the past to finance arms purchases has threatened the kingdom’s fragile social pact of distributing oil rents to favored constituents and regions.
A very important factor, often overlooked, is that a number of Middle Eastern states – such as Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and Morocco – are highly dependent on Saudi Arabia for financial assistance. As Saudi Arabia spends more and more on arms acquisitions, it becomes less generous, leading to serious budget shortfalls throughout the Arab world. The result is that these arms sales may be causing more instability and thereby threatening these countries’ security interests more than they are protecting them.
Even Middle Eastern countries that do not have to buy their American weapons suffer the economic consequences. For example, U.S. arms transfers cost the Israelis two to three times their value in maintenance, spare parts, training of personnel, and related expenses. It drains their economy and increases their dependency on the United States.
The implications of these ongoing arms purchases are ominous on several levels. For example, one of the most striking but least talked about for the Middle East is the “food deficit,” the amount of food produced relative to demand. With continued high military spending – combined with rapid population growth and increased urbanization – the resulting low investments in agriculture have made this deficit the fastest growing in the world.
For these and other reasons, ultimately the largest number of civilian casualties, the greatest amount of social disorder, and the strongest anti-American sentiment that results may come as a consequence of U.S.-supplied weapons systems and ordinance that are never actually used in combat.
Interview: U.S. Intelligence Report Challenges Bush Confrontational Iran Policy (audio)
[Between The Lines, Week Ending Dec. 14, 2007] After months of ratcheting up hostile rhetoric against Iran, with the implicit threat of military action, President Bush’s repeated assertion that Tehran was developing nuclear weapons hit a brick wall. On Dec. 3, 16 U.S. intelligence agencies released a National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, that found with high confidence that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003 and the program remains frozen.
While the new intelligence report states the U.S. does not know Iran’s long-term intentions toward the production of nuclear weapons, the declassified paper contradicts a 2005 National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran was determined to develop nuclear arms. Responding to the report that directly challenges his aggressive approach to Iran, President Bush maintained his position that all options are on the table for dealing with Tehran — and added that the Islamic nation continues to be a danger if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley stated that the U.S. will continue to pursue sanctions against Iran. Iran has long maintained that its current effort to enrich uranium is designed solely for its civilian nuclear power program.
Between The Lines Scott Harris spoke with Stephen Zunes, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and author of the book, “Tinder Box: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.” He assesses the political fallout resulting from the new intelligence report and whether the NIE’s conclusions about Iran’s nuclear program will reduce the possibility of a U.S. military strike against Tehran. [Download & Between the Lines]
Hillary Clinton on International Law
Perhaps the most terrible legacy of the administration of President George W. Bush has been its utter disregard for such basic international legal norms as the ban against aggressive war, respect for the UN Charter, and acceptance of international judicial review. Furthermore, under Bush’s leadership, the United States has cultivated a disrespect for basic human rights, a disdain for reputable international human rights monitoring groups, and a lack of concern for international humanitarian law.
Ironically, the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president shares much of President Bush’s dangerous attitudes toward international law and human rights.
For example, Senator Hillary Clinton has opposed restrictions on U.S. arms transfers and police training to governments that engage in gross and systematic human rights abuses. Indeed, she has supported unconditional U.S. arms transfers and police training to such repressive and autocratic governments as Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Kazakhstan, and Chad, just to name a few. She has also refused to join many of her Democratic colleagues in signing a letter endorsing a treaty that would limit arms transfers to countries that engage in a consistent pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations.
Civilian Casualties
Not only is she willing to support military assistance to repressive regimes, she has little concern about controlling weapons that primarily target innocent civilians. Senator Clinton has refused to support the international treaty to ban land mines, which are responsible for killing and maiming thousands of civilians worldwide, a disproportionate percentage of whom have been children.
She was also among a minority of Democratic Senators to side with the Republican majority last year in voting down a Democratic-sponsored resolution restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas. Each of these cluster bomb contains hundreds of bomblets that are scattered over an area the size of up to four football fields and, with a failure rate of up to 30%, become de facto land mines. As many as 98% of the casualties caused by these weapons are civilians.
Senator Clinton also has a record of dismissing reports by human rights monitors that highlight large-scale attacks against civilians by allied governments. For example, in the face of widespread criticism by reputable human rights organizations over Israel’s systematic assaults against civilian targets in its April 2002 offensive in the West Bank, Senator Clinton co-sponsored a resolution defending the Israeli actions that claimed that they were “necessary steps to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas.” She opposed UN efforts to investigate alleged war crimes by Israeli occupation forces and criticized President Bush for calling on Israel to pull back from its violent re-conquest of Palestinian cities in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
Similarly, when Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights groups issued detailed reports regarding Israeli war crimes during that country’s assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Senator Clinton insisted they were wrong and that Israel’s attacks were legal. Furthermore, though these groups had also criticized the radical Lebanese group Hezbollah for committing war crimes by firing rockets into civilian-populated areas in Israel, exhaustive investigations have revealed absolutely no evidence that they had used the civilian population as “human shields” to protect themselves from Israeli assaults. Despite this, Senator Clinton, without providing any credible evidence to the contrary, still insists that they in fact had used human shields and were therefore responsible for the death of more than 800 Lebanese civilians.
Senator Clinton has voted to send tens of billions of dollars unconditionally to Baghdad to prop up that regime, apparently unconcerned about the well-documented reports of death squads being run from the Interior Ministry that have killed many thousands of unarmed Sunni men.
In Senator Clinton’s world view, if a country is considered an important strategic ally of the United States, any charges of human rights abuses – no matter how strong the evidence – must be summarily dismissed. Indeed, despite the Israeli government’s widespread and well-documented violations of international humanitarian law, Senator Clinton has praised Israel for its “values that respect the dignity and rights of human beings.”
Illegal Use of Force
The UN Charter forbids its member states from using military force unless under direct attack or authorized by the UN Security Council. Customary international law allows for pre-emptive war only in cases of an imminent threat, such as troops massing along the border or missiles being loaded onto launchers. Senator Clinton believes that the United States had the legal right to invade Iraq, even though it constituted no threat to the national security of the United States and there had been no authorization by the UN Security Council to use force. Indeed, when the United States launched its invasion of Iraq in March 2003 in defiance of widespread global condemnation of this act of aggression, she voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution categorically declaring that the war was “lawful.”
Senator Clinton has tried to rationalize for her support for this illegal war by claiming that the UN authorized member states to take military action against Iraq in November of 1990. However, that resolution (687) only referred to using such means to enforce resolution 678, which demanded that Iraq withdraw its occupation forces from Kuwait. Once Iraqi forces withdrew – which took place more than a dozen years prior to the 2003 invasion – the resolution was moot.
Similarly, her claim that invading Iraq constituted a legitimate act of self-defense is particularly disturbing. Even if Saddam Hussein had been developing chemical and biological weapons as Senator Clinton falsely alleged, Iraq would have been just one of 40 countries to have developed such arsenals and Iraq had no delivery systems left that were capable of attacking other countries, much less the United States. Her belief that the United States somehow has the right to invade another country simply on the suspicion that it might be developing weapons for future use constitutes a radical departure from international legal norms and is a clear violation of the UN Charter. Hillary Clinton, however, believes the United States should not be bound by such restrictions and that the United States has the right to invade any country that the president believes could even potentially be a threat some time in the future.
A politician who supported preventive war in the past might do so in the future as well. Indeed, Senator Clinton has criticized Bush for allowing the Europeans to lead the diplomatic efforts with Iran over their nuclear program, insisting that the United States should keep “all options on the table,” presumably meaning military force.
Attacks on UN Institutions
Senator Clinton has also been one the Senate’s most outspoken critics of the United Nations, even appearing outside the UN headquarters in New York twice during the past four years at right-wing gatherings to denounce the world body. She has falsely accused the UN of not taking a stand against terrorism, even though terrorism has become – largely at the insistence of the United States – a major UN focus in recent years.
Senator Clinton’s hostility to international law and the UN system is perhaps best illustrated by her opposition to the International Criminal Court. In 2002, Senator Clinton voted in favor of an amendment by right-wing Senator Jesse Helms that prohibits the United States from cooperating in any way with the International Criminal Court, and its prosecution of individuals responsible for serious crimes against humanity, such as those responsible for the genocide in Darfur. In addition, this vindictive law also restricts U.S. foreign aid to countries that support the ICC. Nicknamed the “Hague Invasion Act,” the bill also authorizes the president of the United States “to use all means necessary and appropriate to free members of United States military and certain other allied persons if they are detained or imprisoned by an international criminal court,” including military force.
The International Court of Justice (also known as the World Court, which essentially serves as the judicial arm of the United Nations) has also been a target of Senator Clinton’s hostility toward international law. For example, in 2004, the ICJ ruled by a 14-1 vote (with only the U.S. judge dissenting, largely on a technicality) that Israel, like every country, is obliged to abide by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Laws of War, and that the international community – as in any other case in which ongoing violations are taking place – is obliged to ensure that international humanitarian law is enforced. Affronted that an important U.S. ally would be required to abide by its international legal obligations and that the United States should help ensure such compliance, Senator Clinton strongly condemned the decision.
At issue was the Israeli government’s ongoing construction of a separation barrier deep inside the occupied Palestinian West Bank, which the World Court recognized – as does the broad consensus of international legal scholarship – as a violation of international humanitarian law. The ICJ ruled that Israel, like any country, had the right to build the barrier along its internationally recognized border for self-defense, but did not have the right to build it inside another country as a means of effectively annexing Palestinian land. In an unprecedented congressional action, Senator Clinton immediately introduced a resolution to put the U.S. Senate on record “supporting the construction by Israel of a security fence” and “condemning the decision of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the security fence.” In an effort to render the UN impotent in its enforcement of international law, her resolution (which even the then-Republican-controlled Senate failed to pass) attempted to put the Senate on record “urging no further action by the United Nations to delay or prevent the construction of the security fence.”
Hillary Clinton vs. the World Court
Clinton’s resolution claimed that Israel had built a similar barrier “in Gaza [that] has proved effective at reducing the number of terrorist attacks.” Also, according to the resolution, “The United States, Korea, and India have constructed security fences to separate such countries from territories or other countries for the security of their citizens.” Such comparisons, however, fail to note – as did the World Court – that these other barriers were placed along internationally recognized borders and were therefore not the subject of legal challenge. Clinton’s resolution also claimed that “the International Court of Justice is politicized and critical of Israel,” ignoring that the World Court has actually been quite consistent in its rulings. In the only other two advisory opinions issued by the ICJ involving occupied territories – South African-occupied Namibia in 1971 and Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara in 1975 – the court also decided against the occupying powers.
In what was apparently an effort to misrepresent and discredit the UN, Clinton’s resolution contended that the request by the UN General Assembly for a legal opinion by the ICJ referred to “the security fence being constructed by Israel to prevent Palestinian terrorists from entering Israel.” In reality, the UN request said nothing regarding security measures preventing terrorists from entering Israel. Instead, the document refers only to the legal consequences arising from “the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory…” Moreover, the UN statement referred to the secretary general’s recently released report on the occupation, which reiterated the longstanding international consensus that Occupied Palestinian Territory refers only to the parts of Palestine seized by Israel in the 1967 War, not to any part of Israel itself.
Senator Clinton’s resolution also represented a departure from any previous congressional resolution in that it referred to the West Bank not as an occupied territory but as a “disputed” territory. This distinction is important for two reasons. The word “disputed” implies that the claims of the West Bank’s Israeli conquerors are as legitimate as the claims of Palestinians who have lived on that land for centuries. And disputed territories — unlike occupied territories — are not covered by the Fourth Geneva Convention and many other international legal statutes. As a lawyer, Senator Clinton must have recognized that such wording had the affect of legitimizing the expansion of a country’s territory by force, a clear violation of the UN Charter.
Denying the Humanitarian Impact
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Red Cross, and a number of Israeli human rights groups had documented the devastating impact of the separation barrier on the economic and social lives of the Palestinians, including access to schools, health care, and employment, findings confirmed by the World Court ruling. However, in an effort to discredit these reputable human rights groups along with the World Court, Clinton’s resolution contested their assertions that the route chosen for the wall has had a negative impact on the civilian population under Israeli occupation, declaring that “the Government of Israel takes into account the need to minimize the confiscation of Palestinian land and the imposition of hardship on the Palestinian people.” A longtime supporter of Israel’s colonization and annexation efforts in the West Bank, Senator Clinton took part in a photo opportunity at the illegal Israeli settlement of Gilo last year, in which she claimed – while gazing over the massive wall bisecting what used to be a Palestinian vineyard – “This is not against the Palestinian people. This is against the terrorists.”
The Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the government to re-route a section of the wall bisecting some Palestinian towns, because the “relationship between the injury to the local inhabitants and the security benefit from the contraction of the Separation Fence along the route, as determined by the military officer, is not proportionate.” And yet, Clinton’s resolution also claims that Israel’s barrier is a “proportional response to the campaign of terrorism by Palestinian militants.”
Dangers of a Hillary Clinton Presidency
Indeed, Senator Clinton’s response to the human rights abuses and violations of international law by this key strategic ally of the United States is emblematic of her disregard for international law and human rights overall.
Though an overwhelming majority of Americans, according to public opinion polls, believe that human rights should be a cornerstone of American foreign policy, Senator Clinton has repeatedly prioritized the profits of American arms manufacturers and the extension of Washington’s hegemonic reach in parts of the world. Similarly, a Hillary Clinton presidency would simply be a continuation of the efforts by the Bush administration to undermine the UN Charter and the basic international legal framework in place for much of the past century. Historically, it has been the right wing of the Republican Party that has opposed international legal restrictions on the activities of the United States and its allies to advance America’s hegemonic agenda. Now, however, the front runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination also shares this view, indicating a clear break with the internationalist and law-based principles espoused by such previous Democratic leaders as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. Indeed, Senator Clinton’s notions of what constitutes the legitimate use of force by the United States are so extreme, she would – if elected – likely become the most aggressive-minded Democratic president since James K. Polk.
The coming primaries and caucuses will test whether the Democratic Party can make a firm break with the hegemonic, unilateralist, and militaristic agenda of the Bush administration, or simply pursues an only somewhat nuanced version of the current dismissive attitudes toward human rights and international law that amounts to little better than Bush Lite.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/hillary_clinton_on_international_law
The Failure of Annapolis
Despite the best efforts by the Bush administration of putting a positive spin on the recently-completed summit in Annapolis to restart the “Performance-Based Road Map to Peace,” there is little reason to expect that it will actually move the Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward as long as the United States insists on simultaneously playing the role of chief mediator and chief supporter of the more powerful of the two parties.
Though the Road Map was originally put together in 2002 as an international effort – with the United Nations, Russia and the European Union (which take a more balanced approach to the conflict) on equal footing with the United States – it’s the United States alone that is now in charge of monitoring the process. According to text of the Annapolis agreement, “implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United States” (emphasis added).
President George W. Bush added that “The parties further commit to continue the implementation of the ongoing obligations of the road map until they reach a peace treaty” and “The United States will monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map.”
Alarms Raised
Given that the United States has consistently sided with Israel, the occupying power, throughout the peace process in its disputes with the Palestinians, it gives little hope that Palestinian concerns will be adequately addressed. This has raised alarms among international observers, such as Saudi Foreign minister Saud al-Faisal, who stressed that it was “absolutely necessary to establish an international follow-up mechanism that monitors progress in the negotiations among the parties, as well as the implementation of commitments made” (emphasis added).
Phase I of the original Road Map included 24 points that were required of the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, including an end to Palestinian violence, Palestinian political reform (including free elections), Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian Authority areas re-conquered since 2001, and a freeze on the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Even though the document made clear that these were to be pursued simultaneously and in parallel to each other, the United States has accepted Israel’s interpretation that Israel was not required to address any of its obligations under Phase I until the Palestinians had first completely lived up to all of its obligations under Phase I.
In other words, unless or until the weakened and isolated Palestine Authority could somehow prevent every Palestinian with access to guns, explosives or rockets from attacking any Israelis, the government of Israel was under no obligation to pursue any of its responsibilities under the Road Map.
Furthermore, through a series of presidential statements, exchanges of letters and congressional resolutions, the United States has already gone on record supporting the Israeli position on most of the outstanding issues. Examples include refusing to acknowledge the right of return of Palestinian refugees, accepting Israeli annexation of greater East Jerusalem, not requiring Israel to completely withdraw from territories seized in the 1967 War, and allowing Israel to maintain large settlement blocs on the occupied West Bank.
Limited Leverage
With Israel’s extraordinary military superiority over any combination of Arab forces ruling out a military option and with the United States blocking the United Nations from placing sanctions on Israel, the only leverage the Arab states currently have is to withhold diplomatic and economic relations from Israel until Israel withdraws from the occupied territories. As a result, those wishing to enable Israel to successfully annex the occupied territories have been pushing the Arab states to unilaterally end their economic boycott and recognize Israel without Israel being obliged to end its occupation and colonization of the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
Just prior to the Annapolis conference, a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, drafted by Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, insisted that success of the Annapolis conference would be based not on Israeli willingness to live up to its international legal obligations but “on the cooperation we receive from the larger Arab world.” The letter insisted that Arab states wishing to attend the conference should unilaterally “recognize Israel’s right to exist and not use such recognition and as bargaining chip for future Israel concessions” and “end the Arab League economic boycott of Israel in all its forms.” The letter made no mention of the establishment of a Palestinian state, and end to the Israeli occupation, the withdrawal of illegal Israeli settlements, or any other Israeli obligations. As Jim Zogby of the moderate nonpartisan Arab American Institute put it, “if the goal is for Arab states not to participate in the upcoming conference, this would be the way to go.”
The letter was signed by 79 Senators, including presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd and Joseph Biden.
Special Bond
Fortunately, the Bush administration resisted this effort to sabotage the conference by refusing to establish such pre-conditions, yet once again the United States appears to be putting the onus of responsibility on those under foreign military occupation and their allies rather than the occupiers themselves. Given that the Palestinians have already given up 78% of historic Palestine in the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israeli and U.S. demands that they give up even more of their homeland will indeed be hard for the Palestinians to accept.
This bias toward the occupying power was evident in Bush’s speech in Annapolis, in which he reiterated the U.S. contention that the Palestinian Authority, whose areas of control are confined to series of tiny impoverished cantons surrounded by Israeli occupation forces, must take the lead. Despite these unfavorable conditions, Bush insisted that prior to the final status issues being addressed, the Palestinian Authority must first “accept its responsibility, and have the capability to be a source of stability and peace – for its own citizens, for the people of Israel, and for the whole region.”
By contrast, in the same speech, President Bush simply called on Israel to “remove unauthorized outposts” and “end settlement expansion,” not to withdraw from the much larger and more problematic settlements which have been authorized by the Israeli government despite that all Israelis settlements have been deemed illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention by four UN Security Council resolutions and a ruling by the International Court of Justice. Nor is there any mention of any other Israeli responsibilities under international law as specified by other outstanding UN Security Council resolutions, such as withdrawing from occupied Palestinian territory seized in the 1967 War, rescinding the annexation of greater East Jerusalem, or taking responsibility for a just resolution of the Palestinian refugee situation.
Rejecting Amnesty’s Calls
The Bush administration also ignored calls by Amnesty International that the conference establish measurable benchmarks requiring both Israelis and Palestinians “to halt and redress the grave human rights abuses and serious violations of international humanitarian law that continue to destroy lives on both sides.” The United States continues to reject calls by Amnesty International and others to allow for the deployment of international human rights monitors and to live up to its responsibilities as a signatory of the Fourth Geneva Conventions and other international human rights treaties to use its influence to enforce international humanitarian law. The Bush administration has strongly backed calls by Amnesty and others that radical Palestinian groups end their attacks on Israeli civilians, but has refused to support similar calls that the Israeli armed forces end their attacks on Palestinian civilians.
Nor has the Bush administration acceded to calls by Amnesty and others to pressure Israel to release the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners not charged with terrorist offenses who are currently jailed, to end its demolitions of Palestinian homes, to end the blockade of humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip, and to honor its prior commitment to remove some of the 560 military checkpoints and blockades which prevent the movement of people and goods within the West Bank.
Despite the belated U.S. support for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the bipartisan U.S. refusal to take seriously human rights and international law in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will make the emergence of a viable Palestinian state impossible and doom the peace process. For the reality is that Israeli security and Palestinian rights are not mutually exclusive, but mutually dependent upon the other. Until the United States recognizes that reality, there is no hope for peace.
Pakistan’s Dictatorships and the United States
In his 2005 inaugural address, President George W. Bush declared that the United States would support democratic movements around the world and work to end tyranny. Furthermore, he pledged to those struggling for freedom that the United States would “not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors.” Despite these promises, the Bush administration—with the apparent acquiescence of the Democratic-controlled Congress—has instead decided to continue U.S. support for the dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president.
On November 3, the U.S.-backed chief of the Pakistani Army, fearing an imminent ruling by the Supreme Court which could have invalidated his hold on power, declared a state of emergency. He immediately suspended the constitution, shut down all television stations not controlled by the government, ordered the arrests of thousands of political opponents and pro-democracy activists, fired judges not supportive of his crackdown, jammed mobile phone networks, and ordered attacks on peaceful demonstrators. Leading Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir reported that the U.S. Embassy had given a green light to the coup in large part due to its opposition to the chief justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court Iftikhar Chaudhry, who had issued key rulings challenging the government’s policies on political prisoners, women’s rights, and the privatization of public enterprises. Musharraf’s efforts to sack the chief justice six months ago resulted in months of protests which led to his reinstatement just a few weeks before this latest crackdown.
No Impact
Within hours of the martial law declaration, a Pentagon spokesman tried to reassure the regime that “the declaration does not impact on our military support.” This reiteration of support comes despite the fact that the U.S.-armed police and military, instead of concentrating on suppressing extremists waging a violent jihad along the Afghan border as promised, are instead suppressing judges, lawyers, journalists, and other members of the educated urban middle class struggling nonviolently for the restoration of democracy. Indeed, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte argued before a recent congressional hearing that continued support for Pakistan’s authoritarian regime is “vital to our interests,” that it is “contributing heavily to the war on terror,” and that it remains “an indispensable ally.”
Musharraf originally seized power in October 1999 following an effort by the democratically elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to dismiss him from his position as army chief. Sharif has been exiled by Musharraf ever since; an attempt by the former prime minister to return in September was aborted at the airport and he was immediately deported.
Despite its unconstitutionality and its repression, the United States has sent over $10 billion in military and police aid to Pakistan over the past six years to prop up Musharraf’s regime. And, in 2005, Pakistan became one of only a handful of states to be formally designated as a “major non-NATO ally” of the United States. During his visit last year to Pakistan, Bush praised Musharraf’s commitment to democracy just hours after Pakistani police beat and arrested scores of opposition leaders and anti-Bush protesters.
Indeed, despite his well-documented human rights abuses, the Pakistani general has been repeatedly praised by America’s political, academic, and media elites. Bush has commended Musharraf’s “courage and vision” while Negroponte told the recent House panel that the dictator was “a committed individual working very hard in the service of his country.” Similarly, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger—who called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “cruel and petty dictator” in his introduction of the Iranian president—introduced Musharraf at an earlier forum by expressing his “great gratitude and excitement” of hosting “a leader of his stature,” praising the Pakistani general’s “remarkable” contributions to his country’s economic development and the “international fight against terror.”
Support for Extremists
The Bush administration and its supporters claim that the United States must continue its backing of the Pakistani dictatorship because of its role in suppressing Islamist extremists. The reality, however, is far different. For its first two years in power, Musharraf was a major supporter of the Taliban regime, making Pakistan one of only three countries in the world that recognized that totalitarian government, despite the Taliban providing refuge for Osama bin Laden and others in the al-Qaida network. As correctly noted by the 9/11 Commission in its final report, “On terrorism, Pakistan helped nurture the Taliban” and that “Many in the government have sympathized with or provided support to the extremists.”
Throughout his eight years in power, Musharraf has suppressed the established secular political parties while allowing for the development of Islamic political groups that show little regard for individual freedom. Despite claims that they had been shut down, madrassas run by Islamist extremists still operate openly. Taliban-allied groups effectively run large swathes of territory in the western provinces and the regions bordering Afghanistan are more controlled by pro-Taliban extremists than ever. In a press conference during a recent visit to Washington by Afghan president Hamid Karzai, in which Bush tried to blame Iran for the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Karzai corrected him by noting that Iran had actually been quite supportive of his government’s efforts and it was actually Pakistan that was backing the Taliban.
Former Kandahar-based NPR correspondent Sarah Chayes noted in her recently-released book The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban that Pakistan has continued its decades-long policy of using religious extremists to exert its influence in Afghanistan. In return for providing limited cooperation against al-Qaida, the United States is willing to ignore Pakistani backing of Taliban and Hizbi-Islami militants as they wreak havoc on the people of that war-ravaged country. Chayes also noted how Pakistani intelligence, through the assassination of moderate Afghan political leaders and other acts of intimidation, has effective veto power over key decisions of the democratically-elected Afghan government, and without any apparent objections from Washington.
Support for Previous Dictators
For decades, the United States has backed the military dictators who have ruled Pakistan. Whether in the name of containing Communism or fighting terrorism, the well-being of the people of the sixth most populated country in the world has been of little concern to Washington policy makers of both parties.
During the Nixon administration, the United States served as the major foreign backer of General Yahya Khan, who declared martial law in 1969. In response to electoral victories by the Bengali-based Awami league in 1971, he began mass arrests of dissidents following a general strike.
As army units began revolting in response to the repression, General Khan cracked down with a brutality that Archer Blood, the U.S. consul in Dhaka, referred to as “genocide.” In one of the strongest-worded dissents ever written by U.S. Foreign Service officers, Blood and 29 others declared “Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the [Pakistani] government and to lessen any deservedly negative international public relations impact against them. Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankrupt.” Despite these protests, the Nixon administration continued its support for the repression, which took hundreds of thousands of lives, before Congress—in response to public outcry—suspended aid.
Khan was forced from power soon thereafter, leading to a democratic opening until Zia-ul-Haq seized power in 1977, declaring martial law and executing the elected prime minister he had overthrown. Imposing a rigid and reactionary version of Islamic law, Zia-ul-Haq systematically dismantled many of the country’s civil society institutions. U.S. aid to his regime increased dramatically after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 and the CIA began collaborating with Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to arm the Afghan resistance, sending the bulk of the aid to the most hard-line Islamist elements, particularly the extremist Hezbi-Islami faction, despite its propensity to fight the more moderate Afghan resistance groups as much as it did the Soviets.
In the summer of 1983, massive and largely nonviolent demonstrations in Sindh and elsewhere in Pakistan by the pro-democracy movement were crushed without apparent objections from Washington. Pro-democracy agitation resumed later that decade to again be met by severe repression. The dictatorship did not end, however, until Zia-ul-Haq—along with U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel, top Pakistani military commanders, and other key supporters of the regime—were killed in a mysterious air crash in August 1988. President Ronald Reagan expressed his “profound grief” at Zia’s death, eulogizing the dictator as “a statesman of world stature” and praising his “dedication to regional peace and reconstruction.”
Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons
Beginning in the late 1970s, as the extent of Pakistan’s nuclear program became known, the international community began expressing concerns over the possibility of politically unstable Pakistan developing nuclear weapons. Throughout the 1980s, however, the Reagan and the George H. W. Bush administrations formally denied that Pakistan was engaging in nuclear weapons development despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In addition, the United States continued supplying Pakistan with F-16 aircraft even as nuclear analysts concluded that Pakistan would likely use these fighter planes as its primary delivery system for its nuclear arsenal. To publicly acknowledge what virtually every authority on nuclear proliferation knew about Pakistan’s nuclear capability would force the United States to cut off aid to Pakistan, as required by U.S. laws designed to enforce the non-proliferation regime. The annual U.S. certification of Pakistan’s supposed non-nuclear status was halted only in 1990, when the Soviet-backed Afghan regime was finally collapsing.
However, George H.W. Bush’s administration insisted that the cut-off of aid did not include military sales, so the transfer of spare parts for the nuclear-capable F-16s aircraft to Pakistan continued. President Bill Clinton finally imposed sanctions against the regime when Pakistan engaged in a series of nuclear weapons tests in 1998, but the sanctions as well as restrictions regarding military aid to new nuclear states were repealed by Congress and the Bush administration three years later.
UN Resolutions
The U.S. government has blocked the United Nations from imposing sanctions or other means to enforce UN Security Council resolution 1172, passed unanimously in 1998, which calls on Pakistan to dismantle its nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. (This contrasts with the Bush administration’s partially successful efforts to impose tough international sanctions against Iran for violating UN Security Council resolution 1696 calling for restrictions on its nuclear program, even though the Islamic Republic is still many years from weapons capability and is therefore much less of a threat to international peace and security than is Pakistan.)
Indeed, the United States has released the previously-suspended sale of sophisticated nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets to that country. A Bush administration official claimed that the U.S. fighter-bombers “are vital to Pakistan’s security as President Musharraf prosecutes the war on terror” despite the fact that these jets were originally ordered 15 years earlier, long before the U.S.-led “war on terror” began. They were suspended by the administration of the president’s father out of concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear program and the Pakistani military’s ties with Islamic terrorist groups, both of which are of even greater concern today.
Rogue States
One of the most disturbing aspects of U.S. support for the Pakistani regime is that Pakistan has been sharing its nuclear materials and know-how with North Korea and other so-called “rogue states.” The Bush administration chose to essentially ignore what journalist Robert Scheer has referred to as “the most extravagantly irresponsible nuclear arms bazaar the world has ever seen” and to instead blame others. For example, even though it was actually Pakistanis who passed on nuclear materials to Libya, the Bush administration instead told U.S. allies that North Korea was responsible, thereby sabotaging negotiations which many had hoped could end North Korea’s nuclear program and resolve that festering crisis. Similarly, though it was Pakistan which provided Iran with nuclear centrifuges, the Bush administration is now citing Iran’s possession of such materials as justification for a possible U.S. military attack against that country.
The Bush administration, despite evidence to the contrary, claims that the Pakistani government was not responsible for exporting such dangerous materials, but that these serious breaches of security were solely the responsibility of a single rogue nuclear scientist named Abdul Qadeer Khan. Unfortunately, the Pakistani military regime has not allowed U.S. intelligence access to Khan, the former head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, whom the 9/11 Commission noted “was leading the most dangerous nuclear smuggling ring ever disclosed.” Recently pardoned by Musharraf, he now lives freely in Pakistan while Pakistani anti-nuclear activists have been exiled or jailed.
Blowback
Despite President Bush’s claim that Islamist extremists attack American because they “hate our freedom,” the reality is that most people in Pakistan and other Islamic countries don’t have anything against our freedom. They do, however, recognize that the United States shares responsibility for their repression through its unconditional support of the dictatorship that denies them their own freedom. And, without the opportunity to press for changes through the political system, some turn to violence and extremism.
The United States has supported repressive regimes in the Islamic world and beyond for years with little concern over the consequences. On September 11, 2001, however, citizens from the U.S.-backed dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Egypt hijacked four airliners, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Americans. A public opinion poll in Pakistan this past August showed that Osama bin Laden has a higher approval rating than either General Musharraf or President Bush. Extremist Islamist parties would not come close to winning a free election in Pakistan today, but in denying Pakistan’s pro-Western democratic opposition a chance to compete and in jailing its leaders, Musharraf and his American supporters may be creating the conditions that could eventually lead to the takeover of this nuclear-armed country by dangerous extremists.
As President John F. Kennedy observed, “Those who make peaceful evolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
The American Public
In 1971, during the height of the massacres of Bengalis by the Pakistani army, a small group of American Quakers organized a flotilla of canoes in Baltimore Harbor to block a Pakistani freighter from docking where it was to be loaded with American arms and munitions while other protesters on shore blocked the train which carried the weaponry. Though most of them were arrested and the weapons were eventually loaded, the publicity from the event alerted the American public of the largely clandestine U.S. military support for the Pakistani regime.
When protestors met another Pakistani freighter attempting to pick up weapons in Philadelphia shortly thereafter, dockworkers refused to load the ship, preferring to not get paid that day rather than to work for what their local union leader referred to as “blood money.” Within weeks, in the face of public outcry against U.S. support for the genocidal Pakistani regime, Congress cut off military aid, a testament to the power of nonviolent direct action.
Given the unwillingness of both the Republican administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress to stop U.S. military support for the current Pakistani dictatorship, it may be time once again for concerned citizens to engage in similar nonviolent actions to end U.S. support for the oppression. For those at risk as a result of U.S. policy are no longer just those currently oppressed by the Pakistani regime. Some day, as a result of a possible blowback from this policy, it could be Americans as well.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/pakistans_dictatorships_and_the_united_states
Five Years Later, We Can’t Forgive or Forget
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the congressional vote granting President George W. Bush unprecedented war-making authority to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing. Had a majority of either the Republican-controlled House or the Democratic-controlled Senate voted against the resolution or had they passed an alternative resolution conditioning such authority on an authorization from the United Nations Security Council, all the tragic events that have unfolded as a consequence of the March 2003 invasion would have never occurred.
The responsibility for the deaths of nearly 4,000 American soldiers, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the waste of over a half trillion dollars of our national treasury, and the rise of terrorism and Islamist extremism that has come as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq rests as much in the hands of the members in Congress who authorized the invasion as it does with the administration that requested the lawmakers’ approval.
Those who express surprise at the refusal of today’s Democratic majority in Congress to stop funding the war should remember this: the October 2002 resolution authorizing the invasion had the support of the majority of Democratic senators as well as the support of the Democratic Party leadership in both the House and the Senate.
Seven Senators
Seven of the 77 senators who voted to authorize the invasion – Fred Thompson (R-TN), John McCain (R-AZ), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Joseph Biden (D-DE), and John Edwards (D-NC) are now running for president. While the Republicans candidates remain unapologetic, the Democratic candidates have sought to distance themselves from their vote, arguing that what is important in choosing a president is not how they voted in the past, but what she or he would do now.
Such efforts to avoid responsibility should be rejected out of hand. While I personally support a full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as logistically feasible, there is considerable debate among knowledgeable, ethical, and intelligent people – including those who also opposed the invasion – as to what to do now. No reasonable person, however, could have supported the resolution authorizing the invasion five years ago.
On this and other web sites – as well as in many scores of policy reports, newspaper articles, academic journals and other sources – the tragic consequences of a U.S. invasion of Iraq and a refutation of falsehoods being put forward by the Bush administration to justify it were made available to every member of the House and Senate (see, for example, The Case Against a War with Iraq). The 2003 vote authorizing the invasion was not like the vote on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution on the use of force against North Vietnam, for which Congress had no time for hearings or debate and for which most of those supporting it (mistakenly) thought they were simply authorizing limited short-term retaliatory strikes in response to a specific series of alleged incidents. By contrast, in regard to the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, Congress had many months to investigate and debate the administration’s claims that Iraq was a threat as well as the likely implications of a U.S. invasion; members of Congress also fully recognized that the resolution authorized a full-scale invasion of a sovereign nation and a subsequent military occupation of an indefinite period.
Violating International Legal Conventions
Those who voted in favor of the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq did so despite the fact that it violated international legal conventions to which the U.S. government is legally bound to uphold. The resolution constituted a clear violation of the United Nations Charter that, like other ratified international treaties, should be treated as supreme law according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. According to articles 41 and 42 of the UN Charter, no member state has the right to enforce any resolution militarily unless the UN Security Council determines that there has been a material breach of its resolution, decides that all nonmilitary means of enforcement have been exhausted, and then specifically authorizes the use of military force.
This is what the Security Council did in November 1990 with Resolution 678 in response to Iraq’s ongoing violations of UN Security Council resolutions demanding its withdrawal from Kuwait, but the Security Council did not do so for any subsequent lesser Iraqi violations. The only other exception for the use of force authorized by the charter is in self-defense against armed attack, which even the Bush administration admitted had not taken place.
This effective renunciation of the UN Charter’s prohibition against such wars of aggression constituted an effective repudiation of the post-WWII international legal order. Alternative resolutions, such as one authorizing force against Iraq if authorized by the UN Security Council, were voted down by a bipartisan majority.
Some of those who voted for the war resolution and their supporters have since tried to rewrite history by claiming the resolution had a stronger legal basis. For example, in a recent interview with The Progressive magazine, Elizabeth Edwards claimed that the resolution supported by her husband, then-Senator John Edwards, involved “forcing Bush to go to the U.N. first.” In reality, not only was no such provision included in the resolution that passed, Edwards voted against the resolution amendment that would have required such a precondition, arguing that “our national security requires” that “we must not tie our own hands by requiring Security Council action.”
Concerned Scholars
Members of Congress were also alerted by large numbers of scholars of the Middle East, Middle Eastern political leaders, former State Department and intelligence officials and others who recognized that a U.S. invasion would likely result in a bloody insurgency, a rise in Islamist extremism and terrorism, increased sectarian and ethnic conflict, and related problems. Few people I know who are familiar with Iraq have been at all surprised that the U.S. invasion has become such a tragedy. Indeed, most of us were in communication with congressional offices and often with individual members of Congress themselves in the months leading up to the vote warning of the likely consequences of an invasion and occupation. Therefore, claims by Senator Clinton and other leading Democratic supporters of the war that they were unaware of the likely consequences of the invasion are completely false.
The resolution also contained accusations that were known or widely assumed to be false at that time, such as claims of Iraqi support for al-Qaeda terrorists responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States. A definitive report by the Department of Defense noted that not only did no such link exist, but that no such link could have even been reasonably suggested based on the evidence available at that time.
The resolution also falsely claimed that Iraq was “actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability.” In reality, Iraq had long eliminated its nuclear program, a fact that was confirmed in a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1998, four years prior to the resolution.
The resolution also falsely claimed that Iraq at that time continued “to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability.” In reality, as the U.S. government now admits, Iraq had rid itself of its chemical and biological weapons nearly a decade earlier and no longer had any active chemical and biological weapons programs. This likelihood that Iraq no longer had operational chemical or biological weapons was brought to the attention of members of Congress by a number of top arms control specialists, as well as Scott Ritter, the American who headed UNSCOM’s efforts to locate Iraq’s possible hidden caches of chemical and biological weapons, hidden supplies or secret production facilities.
No Evidence
Virtually all of Iraq’s known stockpiles of chemical and biological agents had been accounted for and the shelf life of the small amount of materiel that had not been accounted for – which, as it ends up, had also been destroyed – had long since expired and was therefore no longer of weapons grade. There was no evidence that Iraq have any delivery systems for such weapons, either. In addition, the strict embargo, in effect since 1990, against imports of any additional materials needed for the manufacture of WMDs, combined with Iraq’s inability to manufacture such weapons or delivery systems themselves without detection, made any claims that Iraq constituted any “significant chemical and biological weapons capability” transparently false to anyone who cared to investigate the matter at that time. Indeed, even the classified full version of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, while grossly overestimating Iraq’s military capability, was filled with extensive disagreements, doubts, and caveats regarding President Bush’s assertions regarding Iraq’s WMDs, WMD programs, and delivery systems.
The House and Senate members who now claim they were “misled” about Iraq’s alleged military threat fail to explain why they found the administration’s claims so much more convincing than the many other reports made available to them from more objective sources that presumably made a much stronger case that Iraq no longer had offensive WMD capability. Curiously, except for one excerpt from a 2002 National Security Estimate released in July 2003 – widely ridiculed at the time for its transparently manipulated content – not a single member of Congress has agreed to allow me any access to any documents they claim convinced them of the alleged Iraqi threat. In effect, they are using the infamous Nixon defense from the Watergate scandal that claims that, while they have evidence to vindicate themselves, making it public would somehow damage national security. In reality, if such reports actually exist, they are clearly inaccurate and outdated and would therefore be of no threat to national security if made public.
Democrats’ Responsibility
The Democrats who voted to support the war and rationalized for it by making false claims about Iraq’s WMD programs are responsible for allowing the Bush administration to get away with lying about Iraq’s alleged threat. For example, Bush has noted how “more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate – who had access to the same intelligence – voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.” In a speech attacking anti-war activists, Bush noted how “Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: ‘When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security.’”
Indeed, the fact that 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry voted in favor of the resolution likely cost the Democrats the White House and, should Senator Clinton – who claimed, in justification of her vote to authorize the invasion, that Iraq’s possession of such weapons was “not in doubt” and was “undisputed” – get the nomination, it could also threaten the Democrats’ hopes for victory in 2008. Similarly, should Senator Dodd, Senator Biden, or former Senator Edwards – who also made false claims about Iraqi WMDs – get the nomination, it could have a similarly deleterious impact to the Democrats’ chances.
It’s also important to recognize that not everyone in Congress voted to authorize the invasion. There were the 21 Senate Democrats — along with one Republican and one Independent — who voted against the war resolution. And 126 of 207 House Democrats — including presidential contender Dennis Kucinich — voted against the resolution as well. In total, then, a majority of Democrats in Congress defied their leadership by saying no to war. This means that the Democrats who did support the war, despite being over-represented in leadership positions and among presidential contenders, were part of a right-wing minority and did not represent the mainstream of their party.
The resolution also claimed that “the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States . . . or provide them to international terrorists who would do so… combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself.” In other words, those members of the House and Senate who supported this resolution believed, or claimed to believe, that an impoverished country, which had eliminated its stockpiles of banned weapons, destroyed its medium and long-range missiles, and eliminated its WMD programs more than a decade earlier, and had been suffering under the strictest international sanctions in world history for more than a dozen years, somehow threatened the national security of a superpower located more than 6,000 miles away. Furthermore, these members of Congress believed, or claimed to believe, that this supposed threat was so great that the United States had no choice but to launch an invasion of that country, overthrow its government, and place its people under military occupation in the name of “self-defense,” regardless of whether Iraq allowed inspectors back into the county to engage in unfettered inspections to prove that the WMDs, WMD programs and weapons systems no longer existed.
International Opposition
The U.S. invasion of Iraq was opposed by virtually the entire international community, including Iraq’s closest neighbors, who presumably had the most to be concerned about in terms of any possible Iraqi military threat. However, the members of Congress who voted to authorize the invasion were determined to make the case that the United States – with the strongest military the world has ever known and thousands of miles beyond the range of Iraq’s alleged weapons and delivery systems – was so threatened by Iraq that the United States had to launch an invasion, overthrow its government and occupy that country for an indefinite period.
This shows a frighteningly low threshold for effectively declaring war, especially given that in most cases these members of Congress had been informed by knowledgeable sources of the widespread human and material costs which would result from a U.S. invasion. It also indicates that they would likely be just as willing to send American forces off to another disastrous war again, also under false pretenses. Indeed, those who voted for the war demonstrated their belief that:
* the United States need not abide by its international legal obligations, including those prohibiting wars of aggression;
* claims by right-wing U.S. government officials and unreliable foreign exiles regarding a foreign government’s military capabilities are more trustworthy than independent arms control analysts and United Nations inspectors;
* concerns expressed by scholars and others knowledgeable of the likely reaction by the subjected population to a foreign conquest and the likely complications that would result should be ignored; and, faith should instead be placed on the occupation policies forcibly imposed on the population by a corrupt right-wing Republican administration.
As a result, support for the 2002 Iraq War resolution is not something that can simply be forgiven and forgotten.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/five_years_later_we_cant_forgive_or_forget
My Meeting with Ahmadinejad
[Foreign Policy In Focus, September 28, 2007] This past Wednesday, I was among a group of American religious leaders and scholars who met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York. In what was billed as an inter-faith dialogue, we frankly shared our strong opposition to certain Iranian government policies and provocative statements made by the Iranian president. At the same time, we avoided the insulting language employed by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger before a public audience two days earlier. The Iranian president was quite unimpressive. Indeed, with his ramblings and the superficiality of his analysis, he came across as more pathetic than evil. [Full Link]
Annotate This… President Bush’s Sept 13 Speech to the Nation on Iraq
Instead of charting a new direction for U.S. policy in Iraq, President Bush’s speech to the nation last evening was an impassioned plea to the American public to stay the course. But much of Bush’s argument for staying the course was based on spin instead of reality. In this edition of Annotate This… Stephen Zunes and Erik Leaver analyze Bush’s statements and offer an alternative interpretation of the situation on the ground.
“Terrorists and extremists who are at war with us around the world are seeking to topple Iraq’s government, dominate the region, and attack us here at home…”
While the al-Qaeda still is indeed operating world wide, President Bush failed to acknowledge findings of his own intelligence agencies that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has dramatically increased terrorism and extremism in the Middle East and beyond. Furthermore, the vast majority of those fighting U.S. and Iraqi government forces are not affiliated with al-Qaeda, which represents only a small minority of the insurgency, the majority of which are Iraqi Arab nationalists. Many of the insurgents do embrace a hard-line interpretation of Islam, but have no desire to dominate the region or attack Americans in the United States. A comprehensive nationwide poll of Iraqis by ABC/BBC/NHK earlier this month found that while Al-Qaeda had virtually no support, a full 60% see attacks on U.S.-led forces as justified.
“Anbar province is a good example of how our strategy is working. Last year, an intelligence report concluded that Anbar had been lost to al-Qaeda. Some cited this report as evidence that we had failed in Iraq and should cut our losses and pull out. Instead, we kept the pressure on the terrorists. The local people were suffering under the Taliban-like rule of al-Qaeda, and they were sick of it. So they asked us for help. To take advantage of this opportunity, I sent an additional 4,000 Marines to Anbar as part of the surge. Together, local sheiks, Iraqi forces, and Coalition troops drove the terrorists from the capital of Ramadi and other population centers. Today, a city where al-Qaeda once planted its flag is beginning to return to normal.”
As General Petreaus acknowledged, the Anbar Salvation Council – the coalition of local sheiks and Sunni militias which came together to fight al-Qaeda forces – was formed last September, four months before the “surge” in U.S. forces into the province began. These local forces had been fighting alongside al-Qaeda against U.S. and Iraqi government troops previously, but al-Qaeda’s extremist Islamist ideology and its massacres of civilians so alienated the populace that the local leaders have been willing to make a temporary alliance with U.S. forces to drive out the extremists, many of whom come from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries. The hostility of those in the Anbar Salvation Council to the Iraqi government (which they see as dominated by pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalists) as well as to the United States (which they see as a foreign occupier) raises the likelihood that once the al-Qaeda forces are marginalized, they will turn their guns once again on U.S. and Iraqi government forces. Unlike the extremists, those in the Anbar Salvation Council have widespread popular support and — thanks to American arms and training provided in recent months — could end up being a bigger threat to the Iraqi government and U.S. forces than al-Qaeda, a possibility acknowledged in a recent National Intelligence Estimate. And they are unlikely to be placated, as Prime Minister Malaki has explicitly ruled out working with some of the Sunni groups temporarily allied with U.S. forces in Anbar.
Even in the short term, this western part of Iraq does not constitute as much of a success as President Bush claims. Some of the sheiks have taken advantage of this alliance to settle old scores with other tribes unaffiliated with the extremists. And many of the al-Qaeda-related extremists have moved on to the neighboring province of Ninevah, which has seen a dramatic increase in violence this year. Even in Anbar itself, there has been an increase in factional fighting. A recent poll indicated that 62% of the population of that province rate local security negatively overall. In addition, there has been an increase in complaints regarding alleged human rights abuses by American and Iraqi government forces.
“One year ago, much of Baghdad was under siege. Schools were closed, markets were shuttered, and sectarian violence was spiraling out of control. Today, most of Baghdad’s neighborhoods are being patrolled by Coalition and Iraqi forces who live among the people they protect. Many schools and markets are reopening. Citizens are coming forward with vital intelligence. Sectarian killings are down. And ordinary life is beginning to return.”
Baghdad is still under siege. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office noted how “The average number of daily attacks against civilians remained about the same over the last six months; 25 in February versus 26 in July.” The Iraqi Interior ministry confirmed that there has been no drop in civilian deaths. Figures released by the Bush administration purporting to cite a decline in sectarian killings appear to be based on some rather arbitrary calculations, including a determination that being shot in the back of the head is a sectarian attack whereas being shot in the front of the head is a criminal act, even in cases where eyewitnesses indicated the frontal killing was indeed sectarian in motivation. All car bombings, even those apparently sectarian in motivation, are also excluded from Bush administration calculations.
If indeed there actually has been a slight decline in sectarian killings in Baghdad over the past six months, it could be attributed to the hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Shiites who have fled mixed neighborhoods — at a rate of over 50,000 per month — into segregated enclaves, many with concrete walls erected around them to keep out militants from the other side.
Meanwhile, in a city where, prior to the U.S. invasion, kidnapping and power blackouts were rare, an average of forty people are kidnapped in Baghdad every day and electrical power is available only two to six hours.
This is what President Bush considers to be “ordinary life is beginning to return.”
“Iraq’s national leaders are getting some things done…”
Given that the stated purpose of the escalation in U.S. forces this year was to provide the political space for the Iraqi government to address the pressing political issues that would make peace possible, this is faint praise indeed. There is no major legislation pending on any of the most crucial issues, such as a plan to disarm the militias, and the legislature has barely managed a quorum since it returned form its extended summer vacation.
A recent report from the Government Accountability Office indicated that the Iraqi government had failed to meet eleven of the eighteen legislative, security and economic benchmarks set put forward by Congress and made only limited progress on four others, noting that “Key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds.” Ambassador Crocker and General Petreaus admitted there was little serious progress on the political front. The Iraqi cabinet has almost as many vacancies as sitting members.
The Associated Press reported on September 12 that the fundamentalist Shiite parties that dominate the Iraqi government feels no pressure for reform since they are confident that the United States will keep funding and troop levels high as long as Bush is president, so they are instead focusing their energies on shoring up their positions.
“And local reconciliation is taking place. The key now is to link this progress in the provinces to progress in Baghdad. As local politics change, so will national politics.”
Claims by President Bush of reconciliation around the provinces have little relation to reality. This may be in part because the Administration’s figures purporting to show a decline in sectarian violence exclude such tragic mass killings as the slaughter of 322 Yazidi Kurds in northern Iraq in August or the growing violence in Basra, Karbala and elsewhere in southern Iraq between rival Shiite factions. Estimates based on records from Iraqi morgues, hospitals and police headquarters around the country reveal that the numbers of civilians killed daily is almost twice as high as last year’s level. Six out of ten Iraqis in the recent poll indicate that their security situation has worsened since the surge began and only one out of ten say that it has improved. Seven out of ten believe that the surge has “hampered conditions for political dialogue, reconstruction and economic development.”
And, no matter what happens on the local level, there is no indication that the ruling Shiite political parties have any intention to sharing political power with the Sunni minority in any meaningful way.
“Our troops in Iraq are performing brilliantly. Along with Iraqi forces, they have captured or killed an average of more than 1,500 enemy fighters per month since January.”
Even while the U.S. military is capturing and killing fighters, new recruits are joining the insurgency at equal levels. The number of foreign fighters, estimated at between 700 and 2,000, does not appear to have decreased since 2005. The estimated size of Iraqi insurgents — somewhere between 16,000 and 30,000 — has also remained relatively constant. And, even as the prison population escalates, the levels of violence have not decreased. Instead of illustrating the capabilities of the U.S. armed forces, his statement about the number of killed and captured shows the futility of such operations in reducing the insurgencies. Like the infamously misleading “body counts” of the Vietnam War, they are not an adequate reflection of the how the war is going for U.S. forces.
“Because of this success, Gen. Petraeus believes we have now reached the point where we can maintain our security gains with fewer American forces. He has recommended that we not replace about 2,200 Marines scheduled to leave Anbar province later this month. In addition, he says it will soon be possible to bring home an Army combat brigade, for a total force reduction of 5,700 troops by Christmas. And he expects that by July, we will be able to reduce our troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15.”
In reality, there will be virtually no reduction of troops by December nor will there be a reduction of forces beyond the numbers prior to the pre-surge levels by next July. The Pentagon currently has plans to add an additional 4,000 Army troops by the end of the month, more than making up for the 2,200 Marines ending their tour of duty in Anbar and nearly making up for the 4,500 additional forces he plans to pull out by Christmas. Furthermore, the larger reduction of five combat brigades expected by next July will place the total number of combat troops at levels no less than there were prior to the start of the surge, when the Baker Commission — representing the consensus of the foreign policy establishment — called for the complete withdrawal of regular combat forces by that same month.
“The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is ‘return on success.’ The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home. And in all we do, I will ensure that our commanders on the ground have the troops and flexibility they need to defeat the enemy. . . . Americans want our country to be safe and our troops to begin coming home from Iraq. Yet those of us who believe success in Iraq is essential to our security, and those who believe we should bring our troops home, have been at odds. Now, because of the measure of success we are seeing in Iraq, we can begin seeing troops come home.
“The way forward I have described tonight makes it possible, for the first time in years, for people who have been on opposite sides of this difficult debate to come together.”
U.S. military commanders have made it clear that American forces simply cannot sustain the current level of combat troops in Iraq and there would need to be a withdrawal to pre-surge levels regardless of the situation on the ground. The drawdown recommended by General Petreaus and announced by President Bush had already been planned months ago as there will be insufficient fresh forces available to sustain the escalation. As a result, this is unlikely to appease those who want to bring the troops home.
“Return on success” is simply another version of the President’s strategy he outlined in June 2005, “Our strategy can be summed up this way: As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” It is the same promise and policy that has not worked for the last two years.
“Over time, our troops will shift from leading operations, to partnering with Iraqi forces, and eventually to overwatching those forces. As this transition in our mission takes place, our troops will focus on a more limited set of tasks, including counterterrorism operations and training, equipping, and supporting Iraqi forces”
This promise has been made repeatedly over the past four years but is yet to be fulfilled. When President Bush announced the escalation in U.S. forces in January, he claimed that Iraqi forces would be responsible for security in most of the country by this November. In reality, Iraqi forces appear to be even less capable of taking part in military operations without U.S. leadership than they were at the time the surge began. In July, the White House admitted that there had been a “slight” reduction in the number of capable Iraqi units capable of operating independently while the GAO report noted that the number of capable Iraqi army units had declined from ten in March to just six in August. Over the past year, Americans have trained an additional 60,000 Iraqi forces, yet the U.S. forces are no closer to shifting their mode of operations from leading virtually all combat operations themselves.
Meanwhile, despite American efforts to arm and train the Iraqi police, U.S. Army General James Jones reported earlier this summer that Iraq’s police forces are completely dysfunctional and there is no realistic path of reforming them.
And let us not forget how General Petraeus, in a op-ed in the Washington Post just six weeks before Bush’s narrow re-election victory, wrote confidently about the “tangible progress” in building up “Iraqi security elements” so “to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” Three years and $450 billion later, Iraqis are no more able to take charge of their own security than they were when General Petreaus made his earlier optimistic prediction, raising questions as to what makes him and President Bush so confident now.
Finally, it is noteworthy that President Bush declared that the eventual goal for U.S. troops is “overwatching” — a term we could not locate in any dictionary — Iraqi forces. This suggests that allowing Iraqi forces to act independently is not even considered a long-range prospect anymore and that the Bush administration intends for American armed forces to ultimately be in charge of security in Iraq indefinitely.
“This vision for a reduced American presence also has the support of Iraqi leaders from all communities. At the same time, they understand that their success will require U.S. political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my presidency. These Iraqi leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America. And we are ready to begin building that relationship — in a way that protects our interests in the region and requires many fewer American troops.”
This is totally false. Polls show that 79% percent of Iraqis oppose the presence of U.S. forces in their country and just 18% believe American troops are improving the security situation. Polls also indicate that a large majority oppose the neo-liberal economic model imposed by the United States on their country and the establishment of permanent military bases or any political alliance. Excluding the Kurdish minority in their autonomous enclave in the north, where the majority is still pro-American, these figures would show and even more dramatic opposition to any enduring political, economic and security engagement with the United States.
“If we were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened. Al Qaeda could gain new recruits and new sanctuaries.”
It cannot be stressed enough that there was no radical Islamist insurgency in Iraq until after the United States invaded and occupied that country in 2003. There was no “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia” — that group was formed only after the U.S. invasion. And, except for a tiny enclave in the Kurdish region outside of Baghdad’s control, there were no sanctuaries for Islamist extremists prior to four and half years ago.
Consisting of no more than that 10% of the overall insurgency, al-Qaeda is in no position to carve out new sanctuaries in the event of an American withdrawal, particularly since its closest allies have turned on them.
“If we were to be driven out of Iraq, … Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region.”
First of all, it is highly debatable as to whether Iraq would suffer from any more chaos than it does now under U.S. military occupation.
Secondly, Iran had very little influence in Iraq under its arch-enemy Saddam Hussein — a secular Sunni Baathist — but has come to exert considerable political influence following the U.S. invasion and occupation of that country and the subsequent decision by the Bush administration to support the rise of Shiite fundamentalist parties to ally against the Sunni-dominated insurgency. It is doubtful that Iran could have any more influence than it has today.
Finally, it is hard to see how a withdrawal of U.S. forces would further encourage Iran to pursue nuclear weapons. If anything, there are reasons to believe that Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been accelerated as a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of its neighbors and subsequent threats by the United States to attack them as well.
“If we were to be driven out of Iraq…Extremists could control a key part of the global energy supply.”
Sunni extremists — in the form of the Wahhabi-dominated kingdom of Saudi Arabia — already control a key part of the global energy supply with little objections from the Bush administration, which sells billions of dollars of armaments and security assistance annually to that misogynist family dictatorship. And, in case less-acceptable extremists should end up in control of Iraq, the international community could simply refuse to buy the oil, as was done during part of Saddam Hussein’s reign, without a serious negative impact on global markets.
“If we were to be driven out of Iraq…Iraq could face a humanitarian nightmare.”
Iraq is already a humanitarian nightmare. Since the U.S. invasion, as many as 750,000 civilians have died as a result of the violence and disruption of basic services that have resulted. An estimated 2.6 million Iraqis have fled country and an addition 2.2 million Iraqis within that country have been displaced. There is no longer safe and reliable drinking water from any water works and only 30% of Iraqis have access to clean water of any kind, only half as many as there were at the time of the U.S. invasion.
“If we were to be driven out of Iraq… Democracy movements would be violently reversed.”
Unfortunately, there has been little progress toward democracy in the Middle East and there is a fair amount of evidence that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the resulting chaos has actually set back pro-democracy movements in the region.
Furthermore, President Bush was unable to provide any evidence as to why a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would lead to the violent reversal in the few areas where pro-democracy movements in the region actually have made some progress in recent years, such as in Lebanon and Kuwait, which came as a result of indigenous movements based upon national issues irrespective of what was happening in Iraq.
“If we were to be driven out of Iraq… We would leave our children to face a far more dangerous world. And as we saw on September 11, 2001, those dangers can reach our cities and kill our people.”
The Iraqis who are fighting American forces in Iraq have nothing to do with those responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Indeed, none of the hijackers, none of the al-Qaeda leadership and none of the money trail came from Iraq. There is also serious question as to whether the insurgent group calling itself “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia” has any formal affiliation with Osama bin Laden’s group or whether they just appropriated the name.
If the escalation in American troop strength in Iraq was really resulting in the finding and elimination of terrorists who could attack the United States, nobody would want to withdraw any troops. But this simply is not the case. Indeed, in response to a question by Republican Senator John Warner as to whether the administration’s policies in Iraq was really making the United States safer, General Petraeus replied, “Sir, I don’t know, actually.”
A National Intelligence Estimate prepared one year ago, based on analysis of all sixteen of America’s intelligence agencies, revealed that the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation and counter-insurgency campaign had actually increased the threat to the United States from Islamic terrorism and had become the primary recruiting vehicle for a new generation of extremists from the Arab world and beyond. The longer the United States stays in Iraq, then, the greater this threat will grow.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/annotate_this_president_bushs_sept_13_speech_to_the_nation_on_iraq
Why the Dems Have Failed Lebanon
The Bush administration’s unconditional support for Israel’s attacks on Lebanon is emblematic of the profound tragedy of U.S. policy in the region over the past five years. The administration has relied largely on force rather than diplomacy. It has shown a willingness to violate international legal norms, a callousness regarding massive civilian casualties, a dismissive attitude toward our closest allies whose security interests we share, and blatant double standards on UN Security Council resolutions, non-proliferation issues, and human rights. A broad consensus of moderate Arabs, Middle East scholars, independent security analysts, European leaders, and others have recognized how?even putting important moral and legal issues aside?such policies have been a disaster for the national security interests of the United States and other Western nations. These policies have only further radicalized the region and increased support for Hezbollah and other extremists and supporters of terrorism.
The Democratic Party could seize upon these tragic miscalculations by the Bush administration to enhance its political standing and help steer America’s foreign policy in a more rational and ethical direction. Instead, the Democrats have once again overwhelmingly thrown their support behind the president and his right-wing counterpart, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Supporting the Israeli Offensive
Soon after Israel began its offensive on July 12, House Republican leader John Boehner, along with House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, introduced a resolution unconditionally supporting Israel’s military actions and commending President Bush for fully supporting the Israeli assault. Despite reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that Israel (and, to a lesser extent, Hezbollah) were committing war crimes in attacking civilians, the resolution praised Israel for its ?longstanding commitment to minimize civilian loss? and even welcomed ?Israel’s continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties.? The resolution also claimed that Israel’s actions were ?in accordance with international law,? though they flew in the face of longstanding, universally recognized legal standards regarding the use of force and the treatment of non-combatants in wartime.
Despite such a brazen attack against the credibility of reputable human rights groups and the UN Charter that limits military action to legitimate self defense, Rep. Tom Lantos signed on as a full co-sponsor. Lantos is the ranking Democrat on the International Relations Committee and likely to chair the committee should the Democrats win back the majority in November. Even more alarmingly, all but fifteen of the 201 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted in favor or the resolution.
In supporting the Republican-authored resolution, Pennsylvania Democrat Allyson Schwartz invoked the September 11 tragedy and insisted that the United States had a ?moral obligation? to ?stand by? Israel ?on the side of democracy and freedom versus terror and radicalism? since to do otherwise would ?undermine our national security.? Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida praised Israel’s efforts ?to eradicate this global threat? and insisted that Syria and Iran should be held responsible for the violence. Even though the Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel began only after Israel started bombing civilian areas of Lebanon, Democratic Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey insisted that the killings of these Israeli civilians took place ?despite every attempt? by the Israeli government ?to demonstrate their genuine commitment to peace.?
One reason for such broad Democratic support for the resolution may stem from the fact that the Arms Control Export Act forbids arms transfers to countries that use American weapons for non-defensive purposes, such as attacking civilians. Thus, in order to protect the profits of politically influential American arms merchants, the Democrats joined with Republicans in supporting language in the resolution claiming that Israel’s actions were ?legitimate self-defense.?
The Senate endorsed by a voice vote a similar resolution unconditionally supporting Israel’s military offensive. Introduced by Republican Senate leader Bill Frist, the resolution was co-sponsored by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and the majority of Senate Democrats, including Barack Obama and Dick Durbin of Illinois, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts, Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, and Barbara Mikulski and Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, among others.
The Democrats’ support for the Bush administration’s defiance of the international community was most clearly articulated by Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York, another co-sponsor of the resolution, who claimed that the European community and others who called on Israel to ?show restraint? believed that ?Israel should not be given the ability to defend herself? and that those who advocated ?any other course? than that pursued by the Bush administration and Israeli government would constitute an ?appeasement of Hezbollah.?
Hillary Takes the Lead
Yet another Democratic co-sponsor of the Senate resolution was Hillary Rodham Clinton, a front-runner for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2008. Speaking at a rally in New York City in support of the Israeli attacks against Lebanon, she praised Israel’s efforts to ?send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians [and] to the Iranians,? because, in her words, they oppose the United States and Israel’s commitment to ?life and freedom.?
Clinton’s statements were challenged by her opponent in the Democratic primary for Senate, union activist Jonathan Tasini, who pointed out that ?Israel has committed acts that violate international standards and the Geneva Conventions,? citing reports by a number of reputable human rights organizations, including the Israeli group B’Tselem. Clinton’s spokesperson dismissed Tasini’s concerns about Israeli violations of international humanitarian law as ?beyond the pale.?
Tasini, a former Israeli citizen who has lost close relatives in the Arab-Israeli wars and Palestinian terrorism and whose father fought and was wounded in the Israeli war of independence, correctly observed that ?Hezbollah’s actions violate international law? as well. He argued that his criticism of Israel’s policy of collective punishment and attacks on civilians comes from the perspective of being a ?friend of Israel,? citing the Jewish tradition of Tikkun Olam, or ?repairing the world.? Facing vicious attacks from Clinton supporters for his liberal views, Tasini has called for a debate with his opponent to demonstrate how her unconditional U.S. support for Israeli militarism actually threatens Israel’s security interests. The Anglo-Saxon Protestant Clinton, who?like the vast majority of the overwhelmingly WASP Democratic Party leadership?has never lost a relative to the region’s violence, has thus far refused the challenge.
Democrats Attack Maliki
The perversity of the Democrats’ Middle East policies can be illustrated in their reaction to the visit to Washington in July by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki’s government, primarily through its Interior ministry, has been responsible for the ethnic cleansing of thousands of Sunni Arabs in Baghdad and elsewhere and the massacre of hundreds more. Amnesty International and other reputable human rights groups have documented gross and systematic human rights violations by Maliki’s government, including torture and ill treatment, arbitrary detention without charge or trial, and the excessive use of force resulting in countless civilian deaths.
With so much blood on Maliki’s hands, one would think that at least some Democrats would have chosen to protest or even boycott his speech before a joint session of Congress on July 26. Yet few concerns were aired. However, once the Iraqi prime minister criticized Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, only then did the Democratic leadership decide to speak out against the Iraqi prime minister.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi stated that unless the Iraqi Prime Minister ?disavows his critical comments of Israel ? it is inappropriate to honor him with a joint meeting of Congress.? Given that the leaders of America’s most important allies have also made critical comments about Israel’s offensive, very few foreign dignitaries will be given such an honor in the coming years if the minority leader’s recommendations are followed.
The Democrats’ offensive against Maliki may have been part of a broader campaign to oppose discontent within their own ranks regarding criticism of the Israeli offensive. For example, Democratic Congressman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois declared that the Iraqi prime minister’s comments inflicted ?hate upon another democracy,? linking criticism of a particular Israeli policy with hate against Israel (an important warning, given that he heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.) Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky of Pennsylvania claimed that Maliki, in criticizing Israel’s attacks against civilian targets in Lebanon, had ?condemned Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism,? an apparent effort to equate criticisms of Israeli war crimes with denying Israel’s legitimate right to self-defense. Senator Schumer claimed that Maliki’s criticisms of the Israeli destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure and the large-scale killings of Lebanese civilians raised questions as to ?which side is he on in the war on terror,? thereby insinuating that those who oppose Israeli attacks against civilians are supporters of al-Qaida. Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, in a speech on July 26, went so far as to insist that Maliki was an ?anti-Semite,? perhaps as a warning to party liberals that anyone who dared criticize any policy of America’s top Middle Eastern ally would be subjected to similar slander.
Ironically, 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry defended his support for the Iraq war by claiming that sacrificing American lives to defend the Iraqi government was worthwhile in part ?because it’s important for Israel.? In other words, the Democrats want it both ways: condemning the Iraqi government for being ?anti-Israel? while justifying the ongoing U.S. war in Iraq because the Iraqi government is ?pro-Israel.?
Behind the Democrats’ Hawkish Stance
The decision by Democratic members of Congress to take such hard-line positions against international law and human rights does not stem from the fear that it would jeopardize their re-election. Public opinion polls show that a sizable majority of Americans believe U.S. foreign policy should support these principles. More specifically, only a minority of Americans, according to a recent New York Times poll, support President Bush’s handling of the situation or agree that the United States should give unconditional support to Israel in its war on Lebanon.
Nor is it a matter of Democratic lawmakers somehow being forced against their will to back Bush’s policy by Jewish voters and campaign contributors. In reality, Jewish public opinion is divided over the wisdom and morality of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon. More significantly, the vast majority of Democrats who supported the resolution came from very safe districts where a reduction in campaign contributions would not have had a negative impact on their re-election in any case.
Perhaps more important than pressure from right-wing political action committees allied with the Israeli government to support the Bush administration’s backing of the Israeli attacks has been the absence of pressure from the liberal groups who oppose such policies.
For example, MoveOn not only continues to work for the re-election of many prominent Democratic hawks who backed Boehmer’s resolution, but has not even sent out an alert to its supporters to contact their representatives and senators to protest their defense of Israeli attacks or to support proposed House resolutions calling for a cease-fire. And while Peace Action, the country’s largest peace group, has called on its supporters to encourage their elected officials to back a cease-fire, its political action committee turned back efforts to rescind endorsements of incumbents who supported the House resolution.
This reticence contrasts with other foreign policy issues related to international law and human rights from U.S. intervention in Central America during the 1980s to Iraq today. In these other cases, liberal groups made it a priority to hold their elected representatives in Washington accountable for backing administration policy. However, it appears that if the victims of such policies are Lebanese or Palestinian civilians, there are?with some notable exceptions?few organized protests heard on Capitol Hill. With so little pressure from progressive groups, elected representatives have little inclination to withdraw support for administration policy toward Israel and its neighbors.
In reality, the Democrats’ support for Israeli attacks against Lebanon is quite consistent with their support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In both cases, Democrats rushed to the defense of right-wing governments that have run roughshod over international legal norms, that have gone well beyond their legitimate right to self-defense, and that have taken an incredible toll in innocent civilian lives.
For example, when President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in violation of the UN Charter, only eleven House Democrats voted against a resolution that ?reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone? could not ?adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.? If such an overwhelming majority of Democrats believe that the United States invading a country disarmed of its offensive military capabilities, overthrowing its government, and indefinitely occupying its territory is an act of self-defense, it would be quite easy for them to believe the same about Israel’s assault against its northern neighbor. Indeed, to this day, despite not finding any ?weapons of mass destruction,? an overwhelming majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress continue to support funding the war despite polls that show a growing majority of Americans now oppose it.
In other words, the Democratic Party’s support for Israel’s attacks on Lebanon is quite consistent with its disdain for international law and human rights elsewhere and its defiance of public opinion on other foreign policy issues. It is not, therefore, something that can simply be blamed on ?the Zionist lobby.? Rather, it indicates that the Democrats’ worldview is essentially the same as that of the Republicans.
This ideological congruence calls into question whether the increasingly likely prospect of the Democrats regaining a majority in Congress in November will make any real difference on the foreign policy front. Many supporters of human rights and international law are debating whether to continue to support the Democratic Party or instead support the Green Party or other minor parties that embrace such principles.
The tragic misdirection in U.S. foreign policy in recent years cannot be blamed on the Bush administration alone.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/why_the_dems_have_failed_lebanon
Congressional Legislation Aimed at Isolating Hamas is Likely to Backfire
Since the Palestinian Legislative Council elections earlier this year, in which the Islamist group Hamas captured a majority of seats, the Bush administration has suspended U.S. economic assistance to the Palestine Authority (PA) and has led an international effort to impose sanctions against the Palestinians. This has meant enormous hardship for ordinary Palestinians, with reports that hospitals in Gaza have difficulty providing immunizations for children or dialysis machines for kidney patients. The World Health Organization warns of a “rapid decline of the public health system … toward a possible collapse.”
Even Jimmy Carter, who as president opposed Palestinian statehood and sent billions of dollars worth of arms and aid to support the Israeli occupation, remarked, “It is unconscionable for Israel, the United States, and others under their influence to continue punishing the innocent and already-persecuted people of Palestine.” Rather than challenge Bush’s dubious policy, however, Congress has taken steps to make it even stricter. On May 22, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4681, the “Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006,” by an overwhelming 361-37 majority.
Hamas’ armed wing—the Al-Qassim Brigade—has not only waged armed struggle against Israeli occupation forces but has also been responsible for a series of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. U.S. policy has been to denote the entire party as a “terrorist organization.”
There is a widespread consensus in the United States that U.S. policy should not reinforce Hamas politically and that direct assistance to Hamas-controlled segments of the PA should be suspended as long as Hamas remains in office and fails to alter its extremist positions denying Israel’s right to exist and encouraging the use of violence against civilian targets. However, the recently passed House bill goes well beyond isolating Hamas and appears designed to suppress even moderate Palestinian nationalists. It also places extraordinary limits on the ability of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to provide assistance to a population already suffering from nearly 50 years of foreign military occupation.
Representative Jim McDermott observed, “It doesn’t make sense to put restrictions on funding the NGOs that provide the Palestinian people with hospitals and schools.” The Washington Democrat, a physician by training, said he was “gravely concerned about the fate of millions of innocent Palestinians who rely on international aid for food, health care, and for developing their economy and businesses.” In McDermott’s estimation, “This bill will only make the already dire situation even worse … Allowing innocent Palestinians to go hungry while denying them medical treatment cannot possibly correct injustice or lead to peace.”
The bill largely eliminates the president’s authority to waive sanctions in the interests of U.S. national security, a longstanding provision of virtually all other U.S. sanctions legislation. It would prevent, for example, a president from providing emergency assistance in the event that subsequent Palestinian elections bring more moderate forces to office or in the wake of a natural disaster.
House Resolution 4681 also appears to be designed to make it impossible for the Palestinians to meet all the demands required to lift sanctions. It thus provides little incentive for Palestinians to challenge the policies of Hamas. Indeed, the bill sets conditions that no Palestinian government could realistically achieve as long as Israel maintains its policies of occupation, repression, land expropriation, and colonization. H.R. 4681 requires squelching “anti-Israel incitement” (such as calls to resist foreign military occupation), prescribes “confiscating unauthorized weapons” (presumably necessitating house-to-house searches to enforce gun control regulations far stricter than those in the United States), and mandates “fully cooperating with Israeli security services” (which have killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians in recent years).
And it appears that the sanctions contained in the House bill are meant to be permanent. There is a provision that sanctions would remain in place until the PA “publicly acknowledged Israel ‘s right to exist as a Jewish state.” Though the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), President Mammoud Abbas, and other Palestinian leaders have long recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace and security as an independent nation-state, opposition to the second-class status of Palestinian Israeli citizens has precluded most Palestinians from explicitly recognizing Israel as a “Jewish” state per se, a condition that even the Israeli government has never demanded of the PA.
The legislation also bans any aid until the president determines that the Palestinian leadership has made demonstrable progress toward “ensuring democracy, the rule of law, and an independent judiciary, and adopting other reforms such as ensuring transparent and accountable governance.” These are conditions that Congress has categorically rejected regarding other recipients of U.S. aid in the region, such as Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq. In short, the bill codifies the principle that Palestinians are to be held to much higher standards than are other potential recipients of U.S. foreign aid, even though the PA’s governing sovereignty is hobbled by a restrictive foreign military occupation. Is the lack of responsible governance by the Palestine Authority really of concern for the supporters of this legislation, or is misrule being used as an excuse to further subjugate the Palestinian people?
The liberal Zionist group Americans for Peace Now, which helped lead the fight against this legislation, sent out a press release noting that “H.R. 4681 is an exercise in overreaching that will undercut American national security needs, Israeli interests, and hope for the Palestinian people … undermining those Palestinian officials and activists who recognize Israel, reject terror, and support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Other groups opposing the measure include Jewish Voice of Peace, the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek, Churches for Middle East Peace, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Even the Bush administration opposed H.R. 4681 as too rigid and draconian. Presidential spokesman Tony Snow complained that the bill “unnecessarily constrains” the flow of essential humanitarian aid such as food, fresh water, and medicine. The State Department sent a report to Congress arguing, “The bill is unnecessary as the Executive branch already has ample authority to impose all its restrictions and it constrains the Executive’s flexibility to use sanctions, if appropriate, as tools to address rapidly changing circumstances.” Senate Republican leaders reportedly saw the House measure as “insanely irresponsible” and have vowed to challenge several provisions in conference committee. Despite all this, the legislation received the enthusiastic support of the House Republican leadership backed by such right-wing groups as Christians United for Israel, the Center for Moral Clarity, and the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
In a move that shocked many observers, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and assistant leader Steny Hoyer signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation and convinced more than three-quarters of their fellow Democrats to vote in favor of the measure, placing the Democratic Party to the right of the Bush administration on this key foreign policy issue. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders apparently felt that if sanctions against the Palestinians remained a prerogative of the executive branch alone, Bush might fail to punish the Palestinians sufficiently.
House liberals were clearly angered at the betrayal by Pelosi and other Democratic leaders. Rep. Earl Blumenauer charged that the bill “does little to prioritize on the basis of our strategic interests and provides no prospect for Palestinian reform coming through the process of negotiations.” The Oregon Democrat went on to note, “In so doing, it weakens the hands of those who advocate for peace negotiations and supports those extremists who believe in violence.”
Similarly, Rep. Betty McCollom complained that the measure went well “beyond the State Department’s current policies toward Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and potentially undermines the U.S. position vis-à-vis the coordinated international pressure on Hamas.” (As a result of her opposition to the bill, a representative from AIPAC informed the Wisconsin Democrat that her “ support for terrorists will not be tolerated.” McCollom banned AIPAC representatives from her office pending a written apology for the slander, though Pelosi and Hoyer continue to praise the right-wing Zionist group’s mission and leadership.)
Though Pelosi, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and other co-sponsors claim that H.R. 4681 targets Hamas and other terrorists, the legislation also bans the PLO—a broad secular coalition that has formally recognized Israel, renounced terrorism, and includes most of the opposition to Hamas in the Palestinian legislature—from maintaining an office in the United States (outside of its UN Mission) and places strict limits on travel by PLO officials. Although current Bush administration policy denies visas to members of Hamas, the House bill mandates that the ban be extended to anyone “affiliated with” the Palestine Authority, including civil servants and opposition legislators who are not part of Hamas and who support peace with Israel. This would make it virtually impossible, for example, for such pro-peace Palestinian legislators as Hanan Ashrawi, Nabil Sha’ath, and Saeb Erakatto or moderate PLO leaders like Yasser Abd Rabbo to come to the United States to speak at forums or engage in unofficial diplomacy with their Israeli counterparts, an increasingly common practice since the Israeli government suspended substantive talks with the Palestinians in 2001.
Even the State Department objected to the bill’s provisions blocking “support to non-Hamas controlled elements of the PA” — such as judiciary, local municipalities, executive agencies, the president’s office, and the Palestinian Monetary Authority—and targeting individual legislators who are not part of Hamas. The State Department also asked for an exception to the ban on financial assistance to “democracy and governance activities, activities which Israel may wish us to support,” but Ros-Lehtinen, Pelosi, and other co-sponsors rejected the proposed changes.
The House of Representatives apparently has no interest in legislation banning any Israelis from entering the United States, even government and military officials responsible for ordering military strikes against civilian areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which have resulted in far more civilian deaths than all the terrorist attacks committed by Hamas combined. Nor does H.R. 4681 deny visas to Israelis who defend terrorist attacks by extremist Jewish settlers or to leaders of Israeli parties that call for the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories.
The provision preventing the U.S. government from issuing visas to Palestinian leaders, then, was not about preventing apologists for terrorism from gaining a forum in the United States; individuals affiliated with Hamas and other terrorist-related Palestinian groups are already banned from entering the country, and Israelis with violent and extremist affiliations are still allowed in. The purpose, apparently, is simply to silence the most articulate Palestinians opposing the Israeli occupation of their country.
The House legislation also requires the United States to work to eliminate several UN agencies and projects addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to withhold a portion of U.S. dues to the world body if the UN does not accede to U.S. demands. Among the groups cited are the UN special committee created to monitor the human rights situation in the Israeli-occupied territories; the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process; the UN office overseeing the work of church groups, human rights organizations, and other NGOs concerned with conflict resolution; and the committee supporting the efforts of the diplomatic quartet (consisting of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations) to pursue a performance-based road map to a permanent two-state solution to the conflict.
In the words of Democratic Congresswoman Lois Capps of California, H.R. 4681 “places nearly insurmountable efforts to future U.S. efforts to engage Palestinians and Israel in peacemaking … and unbelievably, it would limit United States diplomatic contact with moderate, non-Hamas Palestinian officials. Why is this? These are the very leaders who recognize Israel and who support peace, and it makes absolutely no sense for us to undercut them at this critical time.”
The language of the bill also severely restricts support for private nonprofit Palestinian groups working for peace and conflict resolution. Rep. Sam Farr asserts that the legislation “would make it nearly impossible to fund nongovernmental organization reconciliation programs that work to build peace.” The California Democrat noted with irony that since such groups operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are pivotal in undermining the appeal of the extremist ideology perpetrated by Hamas and other radical groups, House leaders were wrong in their decision to omit language—contained in the Senate version of the bill—that “specifically includes an exception that allows for funding for coexistence and reconciliation activities.” Similarly, Rep. David Price contends that such projects “are critical to our interests, to Israel, and to the prospects for peace. They help prevent humanitarian crises and diminish popular discontent.” The North Carolina Democrat also declared, “They train peacemakers; they improve America ‘s standing in the Middle East. Why would we want to eliminate programs like these? Are they not needed now more than ever?”
In short, rather than being designed to fight terrorism, could the bill’s real purpose be to undercut efforts at peace and reconciliation? Israeli-Palestinian peace could threaten the billions of dollars worth of military contracts provided to U.S. weapons manufacturers annually to arm Israel and could make Israel far more reluctant to act as a surrogate for U.S. strategic designs in the greater Middle East.
Ironically, liberal groups like Peace Action, Democracy for America, and MoveOn.org have endorsed for re-election House members who were co-sponsors of H.R. 4681 and backers of other anti-Palestinian legislation that undermines the efforts of Israeli and U.S. peace activists. The failure of progressive political action committees to challenge congressional Democrats for co-sponsoring such legislation sends a message that they have little to lose by endorsing right-wing efforts to undermine the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace. The overwhelming Democratic approval for the “Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act” strengthens the contention by Green Party activists and other progressives that the Democratic leadership’s support for the invasion of Iraq and hawkish position on Iran are not isolated positions and that there is very little difference in the foreign policy objectives of the two major parties.
Iraq Three Years after “Liberation”
Three years after U.S. forces captured Baghdad, Iraqis are suffering from unprecedented violence and misery. Although Saddam Hussein was indeed one of the world’s most brutal tyrants, the no-fly zones and arms embargo in place for more than a dozen years prior to his ouster had severely weakened his capacity to do violence against his own people. Today, the level of violent deaths is not only far higher than during his final years in power, but the sheer randomness of the violence has left millions of Iraqis in a state of perpetual terror. At least 30,000 Iraqi civilians have died, most of them at the hands of U.S. forces but increasingly from terrorist groups and Iraqi government death squads. Thousands more soldiers and police have also been killed. Violent crime, including kidnapping, rape, and armed robbery, is at record levels. There is a proliferation of small arms, and private militias are growing rapidly. A Lebanon-type multifaceted civil war, only on a much wider and deadlier scale, grows more likely with time.
Over 50,000 Iraqis have been imprisoned by U.S. forces since the invasion, but only 1.5% of them have been convicted of any crime. Currently, U.S. forces hold 15,000 to 18,000 Iraqi prisoners, more than were imprisoned under Saddam Hussein. Amnesty International and other human rights groups have cited U.S. forces with widespread violations of international humanitarian law, including torture and other abuses of prisoners.
It is not just the fear of arrest and torture that have worsened since the U.S. conquest of Iraq three years ago. Although the destruction of the civilian infrastructure during the heavy U.S.-led bombing campaign in 1991 combined with the subsequent economic sanctions led to enormous suffering among ordinary Iraqis, the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food program, despite the abuses, did substantially improve the quality of life in the years preceding the U.S. invasion. Now, deaths from malnutrition and preventable diseases, particularly among children, are again on the increase. The supply of drinking water, reliability of electricity, and effectiveness of sewage disposal are all worse than before the invasion.
As much as half of the labor force is unemployed, and the cost of living has skyrocketed. The median income of Iraqis has declined by more than half. The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) reports that the Iraqi people suffer from “significant countrywide shortages of rice, sugar, milk, and infant formula,” and the WFP documents approximately 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from “dangerous deficiencies of protein.” Oil production, the country’s chief source of revenue, is less than half of what it was before the invasion. And despite Bush administration promises to infuse billions of dollars worth of foreign aid to rebuild the country’s civilian infrastructure, only a small fraction of these ventures have been completed, and most projects have been cancelled. Close to one million Iraqis, most of them from the vital, educated middle class, have left the country to avoid the violence and hardship brought on as a result of the U.S. invasion.
Despite all this, a Harris poll at the end of December showed that a majority of Americans believe the Bush administration’s claims that Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam Hussein. Most Iraqis polled say just the opposite.
President Bush and his supporters still insist that Iraq is supposed to be a model for democracy that other countries in the region should try to emulate. In reality, the U.S. conquest and occupation of Iraq have, in the eyes of many Muslims worldwide, given democracy a bad name in the same way that the Soviets gave socialism a bad name through their conquest and occupation of Afghanistan. Democracy has become synonymous with war, chaos, domination by a foreign power, and massive human suffering. As a result, anti-American sentiment in Iraq is growing.
Amazingly, supporters of Bush policy cannot quite understand why this is the case. For example, Bush administration adviser Daniel Pipes, a leading proponent of the invasion, expressed his disappointment at “the ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them” by invading and occupying their country.
The Costs to the United States
One of the major sources of growing anti-American sentiment has been the Pentagon’s counter-insurgency offensives, which have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. Though small-unit operations have been curtailed, air strikes have been increasing. From the use of heavy weaponry and phosphorous bombs against population centers in Fallujah to massive sweeps rounding up thousands of innocent men, many of which have been subjected to torture at the hands of U.S. forces, the United States is increasingly seen as an occupier, not a liberator. In Iraq’s tribal society, where the ethic of vengeance is still widespread, every civilian casualty at the hands of U.S. soldiers potentially adds to the recruitment pool of the insurgency, whose highly mobile cadres can easily slip away and resume operations in another locale or after American troops move on.
That the war has led to a growth of anti-American extremism throughout the Arab and Islamic world is no longer seriously questioned, as reports by U.S. intelligence agencies and the State Department have confirmed. Resentment also seethes from the disruption of Iraq’s economy, primarily through policies that have resulted in record unemployment, leaving nearly half the population without jobs. This economic devastation is a result not only of the commercial chaos stemming from the invasion but also of Washington’s decisions to eliminate tens of thousands of Iraqi government jobs, privatize public enterprises, give preference to foreign nationals for reconstruction efforts, and open Iraq to foreign multinationals against which local enterprises cannot compete.
The Iraq War has already cost the United States $500 billion, which is more in current dollars than the entire Vietnam War. Ongoing costs are close to $10 billion per month. With the vast majority of this money going to support the war, little is left to nurture civil society institutions, to train legislators, or to help build democracy. Despite this, there is still a clear bipartisan consensus to keep robbing the treasury to support President Bush’s desperate effort to control that oil-rich country. Not a single senator voted against the president’s most recent request to keep funding the war, and there were only 71 negative votes in the 435-member House of Representatives. Democrats, like Republicans, appear determined to force American taxpayers to keep paying for the death and destruction being wrought upon Iraq.
The Nature of the Iraqi Government
In recent months, Washington has begun to realize that several ruling officials retrieved from exile by U.S. forces—including Iraq’s prime minister—are incompetent religious fanatics closely allied with hard-line Iranian clerics. The Iraqi government is isolated within the U.S.-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and is so weak and divided that it can barely be considered functional. Corruption is rampant.
Three years after the invasion, the Pentagon acknowledges that Iraqi forces are still “largely dependent” on American combat troops for logistics, supplies, and support. Indeed, not a single Iraqi unit is yet capable of fully independent operations.
Washington’s goal may be reasonable, but U.S. pressure on Iraqi leaders to form a more inclusive government and to replace Ibrahim al-Jaafari has created enormous resentment and is widely viewed as arrogant neocolonial interference. Furthermore, there is little to suggest that any of Jaafari’s likely replacements would be any better.
Human rights abuses are increasing, as hundreds of civilians, mostly Sunni Arab males, are killed every month by government death squads. Murders from these death squads rival even the violence perpetrated by terrorist insurgents, who have primarily targeted Shiite Arab civilians. Last month, Amnesty International reported that “not only has the Iraqi government failed to provide minimal protection for its citizens, it has pursued a policy of rounding up and torturing innocent men and women. Its failure to punish those who have committed torture has added to the breakdown of the rule of law.”
In the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, the ruling U.S.-backed coalition of two nationalist parties with sizable armed militias is not much better. Corruption is widespread, and opposition activists are routinely beaten, tortured, and killed. Kurdish-born Austrian lawyer and professor Kamal Sayid Qadir has reported that “Kurdish parties transformed Iraqi Kurdistan into a fortress for oppression, theft of public funds, and serious abuses of human rights like murder, torture, amputation of ears and noses, and rape.” These “privileges and gains achieved since 1991 by the Kurdish parties were impossible without direct American backing and support,” he added. For his efforts to alert the international community about abuses by the U.S.-backed Kurdish government, he was sentence to a year and a half in prison.
Given the dismal post-Saddam record of human rights abuses, it is questionable whether Americans should be dying to prop up either the central government in Baghdad or the Kurdish government in the North. Continued U.S. training and funding of Iraqi police and military forces will likely encourage even more anti-Americanism both in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats seem bothered by the death squads and torture. For example, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has further sullied her previous reputation as a defender of human rights by supporting billions of dollars in additional funding for Iraqi and U.S. forces, enabling them to continue engaging in human rights abuses.
Growing Questions at Home
Large segments of the American public still embrace many of the justifications for the invasion of Iraq that have long since been proven false. For example, according to a Harris Poll at the end of December 2005, 41% of adult Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had “strong links to Al-Qaida;” 22% believe that Saddam Hussein “helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the United States on September 11;” 26% believe that Iraq “had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded;” and 24% believe that “several of the hijackers who attacked the United States on September 11 were Iraqis.” Furthermore, a plurality of Americans still accept the contention that despite a dozen years of debilitating sanctions, a barely functional military, and the complete absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) or offensive delivery systems, “Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a serious threat to the United States.”
Notwithstanding these misconceptions, criticism of the Bush administration has been growing, forcing the president to finally acknowledge the widespread citizen opposition to the Iraq War. Bush says that he is willing to “listen to honest criticism” and that he has heard those who disagree with his policies, but he continues to dismiss such critics as “defeatists” who advocate policies that threaten the “security of our people” and who would “give up on this fight for freedom.”
Though acknowledging that restoring order to Iraq has been “more difficult than we expected” and that “reconstruction efforts and the training of Iraqi security forces started more slowly than we hoped,” President Bush has blamed these failures solely on the insurgency, which he describes as “Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists.” In reality, the majority of the insurgency consists not of supporters of the former Iraqi dictator nor of foreign terrorists but of Iraq nationalists and Islamists resentful of an invasion and occupation by what they see as a Western imperialist power intent on controlling their country’s rich natural resources.
Having provoked this resentment, the Bush administration now uses the insurgency to justify the continued U.S. military occupation of Iraq. Though the original rationale for the Iraq War was Saddam’s alleged WMD program, by redefining the U.S. incursion as a war on terrorism, Washington rationalizes an indefinite U.S. military presence and condones the ongoing American dominance of Iraq’s economy.
Combating terrorism cannot be done by a single nation, no matter how strong a military it maintains. For a counterterrorism strategy to be effective, a multilateral approach is essential, but the Bush administration continues to reject this reality and insists on acting alone. Moreover, combating terrorism must employ a variety of tactics, not just military action. But once again, President Bush has failed to examine the root causes behind the violence.
In the face of growing criticism over its Iraq policies, the current administration has acknowledged mistakes such as inaccurate prewar claims of Saddam’s military capability and inadequate policies to address post-invasion stabilization. However, these statements appear calculated to defend the ongoing U.S.-led war rather than to admit fault. Though Bush’s acceptance of ultimate responsibility for the failures of U.S. policy is a positive step, no one has yet been held accountable for these errors.
For example, the president says he was “responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.” Yet he defends that decision, even though the invasion was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter and was based upon false claims that Iraq—already disarmed of offensive military capabilities by the United Nations—constituted a threat to U.S. national security.
Regarding his prewar contention that Iraq still had chemical and biological weapons, an active nuclear program, and offensive weapons delivery capabilities, President Bush admits inaccuracy but attributes it to mistakes in intelligence gathering. He excuses his misjudgment by arguing that members of Congress and the intelligence branches of allied governments reviewed the same information and came to similar conclusions.
In reality, prior to the U.S. invasion, foreign governments noted that Iraq had failed to properly account for all proscribed weapons programs, and some countries suspected that Saddam had residual weapons or components banned under UN Security Council mandates, but most nations were dubious of U.S. and British claims that Iraq still constituted a military threat. Similarly, most members of Congress simply believed the intelligence presented to them by the administration rather than studies in scholarly journals and United Nations reports. It now appears that errors did not come from problems within the CIA but that administration officials deliberately manipulated intelligence data in order to frighten Congress and the American people into supporting an invasion.
Acknowledging obvious problems is a positive step for a president often considered arrogant and unaware of the havoc resulting from his decision to invade and occupy Iraq. However, until there is a serious re-evaluation of administration policies, there is little hope that such acknowledgements will improve America’s standing in the world or ease the suffering of the Iraqi people. What neither the administration nor Congress has acknowledged is that the invasion of Iraq would have been wrong even if Saddam Hussein still had WMDs and even if the post-invasion situation had been handled more responsibly.
Recently, leading figures in the Democratic Party who had largely supported President Bush’s Iraq policies are finally starting to voice their opposition in response to pressure from their constituents. However, the Democrats have yet to present much of an alternative. Their recently released defense plan entitled “Real Security” fails to renounce Bush’s preventive war doctrine and simply urges Iraqis to assume “primary responsibility for securing and governing their country with the responsible redeployment of U.S. forces.” Democrats and their apologists claim that a more forceful statement for withdrawal would risk their being portrayed as weak, but even their moderate plan was branded “a strategic retreat” by Vice President Dick Cheney. Republican Senator Christopher Bond was more honest. He noted essentially no difference between the Democratic position and that of the administration, observing, “It’s taken them all this time to figure out what we’ve been doing for a long time.”
Dealing with the Insurgency
There are dozens of armed groups in Iraq battling U.S. occupation forces and the U.S.-backed government. This resistance includes supporters of Saddam Hussein, well-armed remnants of his armed forces, other Baathists, independent nationalists, various Shiite wings, tribal-based groupings, and several Sunni Arab offshoots. The al-Qaida-inspired jihadists and the foreign fighters upon whom the Bush administration focuses represent a minority of the insurgency. Opposition is growing and, despite many differences ideologically and tactically, the various factions have demonstrated an increasing ability to coordinate their operations.
Beyond the many similarities between the war in Iraq and the one in Vietnam years ago, one key difference is in the nature of the opposition. Although some anti-Vietnam War activists naively downplayed the autocratic tendencies of the communist-led National Liberation Front (NLF), these rebels and the North Vietnamese government eventually brought relative peace and stability to the country. Despite current repression and misguided economic policies, the South Vietnamese have arguably suffered less in a reunified country under the communists than during the U.S.-led war under the corrupt and brutal Thieu regime in Saigon. Belying dire warnings from Washington prior to the war’s end, the NLF/North Vietnamese victory has not harmed the national security of the United States, and—other than its misadventure in Cambodia to root out the genocidal Khmer Rouge and a brief border war with China—Vietnam has coexisted relatively well with its neighbors and is now a full member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The same cannot be said of the armed opposition to the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad. Unlike in Vietnam, the Iraqi resistance is not unified. As a result, toppling the current leaders will not likely bring peace but rather continued violence and disorder. The insurgents also include some decidedly nasty elements that are genuinely fascistic in orientation. In the power struggle that would follow a hypothetical overthrow of Iraq’s central government, it is quite possible that the new rulers would include militant jihadists, Saddam’s wing of the Ba’ath party, or other elements far worse than those currently in power or likely to be elected next month. There is also a real risk of the instability spilling over into adjacent countries.
There are many scary scenarios that could result from the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. The country could plunge into full-scale civil war, it might split into three parts (accompanied by ethnic cleansing), fundamentalist Islamic rule may emerge, Iranian extremists could exert undue influence, or this war-torn nation could become a training and logistical base for international terrorism. All of these possibilities should be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, these scenarios may even more likely occur if U.S. forces remain than if they withdraw. Bush’s war in Iraq is creating insurgents, including terrorists, faster than the Pentagon can kill them. The U.S. and British military presence is exacerbating ethnic and sectarian divisions, not lessening them. The overwhelming U.S. domination of the Baghdad government is undermining its sovereignty, weakening its standing with the Iraqi people, and compromising its ability to govern.
Many observers, even among those who opposed the U.S. invasion, concede that—although the principle of self-determination must be respected and although Iraqis are more than capable of governing themselves once stability and basic services are restored—current circumstances in Iraq may require active leadership from the outside. The United States, however, simply does not have the credibility to fill that role. There are sound proposals for an international peacekeeping force led by other Arab or Islamic states that should be considered, but these options will not be possible as long as the United States insists on orchestrating military operations.
All but the most extreme jihadists in the opposition would likely be open to a negotiated settlement to the conflict, but only if there was a clear timetable or specific achievable benchmarks for a complete U.S. withdrawal. With the bulk of the insurgents then allied with the Baghdad government, Iraqis could likely deal with the jihadists and other radical elements themselves, since the jihadists’ extreme ideology and terrorist tactics have little popular following in the country.
The Bush administration has thus far refused to discuss withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq. The new bases under construction (under no-bid contracts with Vice President Dick Cheney’s firm Halliburton) are elaborate, self-contained towns that appear to be intended for permanence. One being built outside Baghdad is more than 15 square miles. The new U.S. embassy under construction in Iraq is designed to include 21 buildings comprising residences for 1,000 American officials, a school, a warehouse, and its own utilities. As long as such an overbearing, neocolonial lightning-rod presence remains, there will be armed resistance.
There have also been reasonable proposals for the United States to maintain an over-the-horizon military presence or to conduct more modest military operations. Such a plan, however, would require putting trust in the very same people who have proven themselves profoundly ignorant about Iraq and totally inept at managing the postwar situation. Perhaps U.S. forces could provide tactical air support to Iraqi soldiers if Jihadists seize Ramadi and start marching on the Green Zone. But absent such a crisis, the only responsible option is a withdrawal of U.S. forces as soon as possible.
Americans from across the political spectrum have a kind of optimism and “can do” attitude that has served us well on many occasions. There are some situations, however, where a series of tragic mistakes and unfortunate circumstances preclude a positive outcome. Iraq may be just such a case.
The War at Home
This is my third annual article analyzing the U.S. war in Iraq and its impact. Unless the American people more fully mobilize to change U.S. policy, I will have to write these articles for many years to come.
This year’s Democratic primaries and the general election will be key tests of whether the U.S. citizenry will be willing to challenge the bipartisan support for the Iraq War, the doctrine of preventive war, and the exaggerated claims of foreign strategic threats brandished to frighten the populace into supporting war. Scores of U.S. representatives and senators who voted in October 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq are up for re-election this year, and most of them still support funding the war. If the majority of these pro-war Republican and Democratic lawmakers are re-elected, it will signal Washington politicians that the growing grassroots opposition to the war will not threaten their political careers. Despite the message it would send, some leaders in the peace movement are insisting that progressives work to re-elect pro-war members of Congress, including those who lied about Iraq still having WMDs, simply because they are Democrats. Such a strategy will virtually guarantee many more years of death and destruction in Iraq, and—as the 2004 presidential election showed us—such Democrats will probably end up losing anyway.
But a determined citizenry is the decisive factor. The anti-Vietnam War movement, the anti-apartheid struggle, the nuclear freeze campaign, and Central America solidarity efforts demonstrated that the particular individuals or party that the American people elect are less important than the choices we give them. As the old adage goes, “If the people lead, the leaders will follow.”
The United States will eventually have to leave Iraq. The question is, how many Americans and Iraqis will have to die in the meantime? For the United States to pull out, Bush and his bipartisan group of supporters would have to recognize that they cannot Americanize Iraq, establish U.S. hegemony in the Persian Gulf region, control Iraq’s vast oil reserves, or intimidate other nations by subduing an intractable insurgency. In short, the leadership of the greatest military superpower the world has ever known would be forced to accept a humiliating retreat.
It may be unrealistic to believe that the Bush administration would simply pull out of Iraq even in the face of growing popular opposition. The Nixon administration was unwilling to simply pull out of Vietnam. However, the anti-war movement forced Washington to negotiate with the South Vietnamese resistance and their North Vietnamese allies, which eventually led to the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Demanding negotiations that include a timetable for a total U.S. withdrawal may be the most realistic strategy that today’s anti-war movement could advocate.
Otherwise, President Bush will likely hold firm and leave the painful decisions to a Democratic successor, who would then take the blame for not “finishing the job.” This is why it is so important for Democrats to stop funding the war and to insist that President Bush negotiate a settlement to withdraw U.S. forces before he leaves office, thereby accepting full responsibility for the consequences.
Another question is, what will the United States learn from all this? Will it be just a tactical, stylistic precept that—in the words of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry—the war against Iraq was not a mistake but rather that “the way the president went to war is a mistake”? The next time the United States invades and occupies another country, should it be done the “right way” by a Democratic administration?
Will our lesson be merely a strategic realization that, even if Washington had not made what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called “thousands” of errors in Iraq, invading and occupying a large Arab Muslim state with a strong history of nationalism is fraught with disaster?
Or will Americans finally embrace what we thought had been learned at the end of World War II—with the ratification of the United Nations Charter—that invading another country is just plain wrong?
http://www.fpif.org/articles/iraq_three_years_after_liberation
The Democrats and Iraqi WMDs: Bush is Right, Sort of…
Now that some Democrats are finally speaking out against the administration’s phony claims about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” conservative talk show hosts, columnists and bloggers have been dredging up scores of pre-invasion quotes by Democratic leaders citing non-existent Iraqi WMDs.
These defenders of the administration keep asking the question, “If President Bush lied, does that mean that the Democrats lied too?” The answer, unfortunately, is a qualified “yes.” Based on my conversations with Democratic members of Congress and their staffs in the weeks and months leading up to the invasion, there is reason to believe that at least some in the leadership of the Democratic Party is also guilty of having misled the American public regarding the supposed threat emanating from Iraq. At minimum, it could be considered criminal negligence.
As a result, though the Republicans have undoubtedly been hurt by their false statements on the subject, the Democrats are not likely to reap much benefit.
It did not have to be that way. Indeed, given the number of academics, former arms inspectors, strategic analysts, and others (me included) who had warned these Capitol Hill Democrats well prior to the October 2002 vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq that the Bush administration’s WMD claims were not to be taken seriously, they have no one to blame but themselves. As a result of the Democrats choosing to disingenuously repeat these false claims of a supposed Iraqi threat in order to justify their vote to give President George W. Bush unprecedented war powers, Republicans are now able to portray the administration’s lies simply as honest mistakes.
It is certainly true that the Bush administration pressured members of the intelligence community to come up with data that would support their claims that Iraq was somehow a military threat to the United States and that they presented highly-selective and exaggerated “evidence” to Democratic lawmakers. It is also true that Republicans in Congress have blocked demands by some Democrats that a serious investigation be undertaken regarding the manipulation of intelligence regarding Iraq’s military capability.
However, there was enough counter-evidence published in reputable journals, United Nations reports, policy briefs from independent think tanks, and even from within the State Department and CIA that should have made it possible for the Democrats to have seen through the Bush administration’s lies if they wanted to. And there is some evidence to suggest that they didn’t want to: for example, Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate International Relations Committee, teamed up with his Republican counterparts to prevent those challenging Bush administration WMD claims prior to the invasion from testifying.
It should also be remembered that it was the Clinton administration, not the current administration, which first insisted-despite the lack of evidence-that Iraq had successfully concealed or re-launched its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. Clinton’s fear-mongering around Iraqi WMDs began in 1997, several years after they had been successfully destroyed or rendered inoperable. Based upon the alleged Iraqi threat, Clinton ordered a massive four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998, forcing the evacuation of inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) and the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA.) As many of us had warned just prior to the bombing, this gave Saddam Hussein the opportunity to refuse to allow the inspectors to return. It also provided a “lesson” that unilateral military action, not nonviolent law-based processes through inter-governmental organizations, was the means to respond to the threat of WMD proliferation.
Clinton was egged on to take such unilateral military action by leading Senate Democratic leaders — including then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Carl Levin, and others who signed a letter in October 1998 — urging the president “to take necessary actions, including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspected Iraqi sites, to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” Meanwhile, Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was repeatedly making false statements regarding Iraq’s supposed possession of WMDs, even justifying the enormous humanitarian toll from the U.S.-led economic sanctions on Iraq on the grounds that “Saddam Hussein has . . . chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction.”
Congressional Democrats continued their efforts to scare the American people into believing the Iraq was a threat to U.S. national security after President Bush came to office. Connecticut senator Joseph Leiberman sent a letter to President Bush in December 2001 declaring that “There is no doubt that … Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs” and that Iraq’s “biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status.” Eight months later, in order to frighten the American people into supporting a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich land, the 2000 Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee even claimed “Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States.”
Even after the International Atomic Energy Agency declared, after more than one thousand unannounced inspections throughout Iraq during the 1990s, that Iraq no longer had a nuclear program and despite the 2001 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that confirmed there was no evidence that such work had resumed, Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller declared “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons.” President Bush has since used the irresponsible rhetoric of the junior senator from West Virginia — now the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee — to discredit Congressional opponents of the war, citing this quote in his recent speech at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska.
During the fall of 2002, in an effort to counter the efforts of those of us questioning the Bush administration’s WMD claims, congressional Democrats redoubled their efforts to depict Saddam Hussein as a threat to America’s national security. Democrats controlled the Senate at that point and could have blocked President Bush’s request for the authority to invade Iraq. However, in October, the majority of Democratic senators, led by Majority Leader Daschle and assistant Majority leader Harry Reid, voted to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing on the grounds that Iraq “poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States by among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, [and] actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability.”
In a Senate speech defending his vote to authorize Bush to launch an invasion, Senator Kerry categorically declared, despite the lack of any credible evidence, that “Iraq has chemical and biological weapons” and even alleged that most elements of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programs were “larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War.” Furthermore, Kerry asserted that Iraq was “attempting to develop nuclear weapons,” backing up this accusation by falsely claiming that “all U.S. intelligence experts agree” with that assessment. The Massachusetts junior senator also alleged that “Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents [that] could threaten Iraq’s neighbors as well as American forces in the Persian Gulf.” Though it soon became evident that none of Kerry’s allegations were true, the Democratic Party still decided to reward him in 2004 with its nomination for president.
Kerry supporters claim he was not being dishonest in making these false claims but that he had been fooled by “bad intelligence” passed on by the Bush administration. However, well before Kerry’s vote to authorize the invasion, former UN inspector Scott Ritter personally told the senator and his senior staff that claims about Iraq still having WMDs or WMD programs were not based on valid intelligence. According to Ritter, “Kerry knew that there was a verifiable case to be made to debunk the president’s statements regarding the threat posed by Iraq’s WMDs, but he chose not to act on it.”
Joining Kerry in voting to authorize the invasion was North Carolina Senator John Edwards, who-in the face of growing public skepticism of the Bush administration’s WMD claims-rushed to the president’s defense in an op-ed article published in the Washington Post. In his commentary, Edwards claimed that Iraq was “a grave and growing threat” and that Congress should therefore “endorse the use of all necessary means to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.” The Bush administration was so impressed with Edwards’ arguments that they posted the article on the State Department website. Again, despite the fact that Edwards’ claims were completely groundless, the Democratic Party rewarded him less than two years later with its nomination for vice president.
By 2004, it was recognized that the administration’s WMD claims were bogus and the war was not going well. The incumbent president and vice president, who had misled the nation into a disastrous war through phony claims of an Iraqi military threat, were therefore quite vulnerable to losing the November election. But instead of nominating candidates who opposed the war and challenged these false WMD claims, the Democrats chose two men who had also misled the nation into war by frightening the American public into believing that a war-ravaged Third World country on the far side of the planet threatened our nation’s security and advocated continued prosecution of the bloody counter-insurgency campaign resulting from the U.S. invasion and occupation. Though enormous sums of money and volunteer hours which could have gone into anti-war organizing instead went into the campaigns of these pro-invasion senators, many anti-war activists refused on principle to support them. Not surprisingly, the Democrats lost.
Kerry’s failure to tell the truth continues to hurt the anti-war movement, as President Bush to this day quotes Kerry’s false statements about Iraq’s pre-invasion military capability as a means of covering up for the lies of his administration. For example, in his recent Veteran’s Day speech in Pennsylvania in which he attacked the anti-war movement, President Bush was able to say, “Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: ‘When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security’.”
Despite the consequences of putting forth nominees who failed to tell the truth about Iraq’s WMD capabilities, current polls show that New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also made false claims about the alleged Iraqi threat, is the front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2008. In defending her vote authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq, Ms. Clinton claimed that “if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”
In his Veteran’s Day speech, Bush was able to deny any wrongdoing by his administration by noting how “more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senatewho had access to the same intelligencevoted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.” If the Democrats had instead decided to be honest and take a critical look at the phony intelligence being put forward by the administration, they would have said what so many of us were saying at the time: it was highly unlikely that Iraq still had such weapons. Instead, by also making false claims about Iraqi WMD capability, it not only resulted in their failure to re-take the House and Senate in the 2004 elections, but they have effectively shielded the Bush administration from the consequences of its actions.
Even some prominent congressional Democrats who did not vote to authorize the invasion were willing to defend the Bush administration’s WMD claims. When House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press in December 2002, she claimed: “Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There is no question about that.” Despite repeated requests for information, made by me and other San Francisco constituents, her staff has been unwilling to reveal what led the Democratic leader to make such a groundless claim with such certitude.
The consequence of these Democrats’ actions go well beyond their losses in the 2004 election. If the Democrats had been honest and acknowledged that there was no proof to support Bush administration claims of a reconstituted Iraqi WMD program, the Republicans would have been exposed as deliberately misleading the country into war, thereby making it far more difficult for them to get away with the kind of fear-mongering which threaten further U.S. military interventions in the region and increased waste of our nation’s resources into paying for bloated military budgets at the expense of pressing human needs at home. Instead, the prospects of a less militaristic foreign policy and the promises of a post-Cold War “peace dividend” may have been lost for the foreseeable future.
Some Democrats have defended their pre-invasion claims by citing the public summary of the 2002 NIE which appeared to confirm some of the Bush administration’s claims. However, there were a number of reasons to have been skeptical: this NIE was compiled in a much shorter time frame than is normally provided for such documents and the report expressed far more certainty regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities than all reports from the previous five years despite the lack of additional data to justify such a shift. When the report was released, there was much stronger dissent within the intelligence community than about any other NIE in history and the longer classified version, which was available to every member of Congress, included these dissenting voices from within the intelligence community
Others have defended the Democrats by saying that if they had insisted on hard evidence to support the administration’s WMD claims they would have been accused of being weak on national defense. This excuse has little merit, however, since Republicans accuse Democrats of being weak on defense whatever they do. For example, even though congressional Democrats voted nearly unanimously to grant President Bush extraordinary war powers immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks and strongly supported the bombing of Afghanistan, this did not prevent the White House from falsely accusing Democrats of calling for “moderation and restraint” towards the Al-Qaeda terrorists and offering “therapy and understanding for our attackers.” Similarly, even though 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Kerry defended America’s right to unilaterally invade foreign countries in violation of the United Nations Charter and basic international legal standards, President Bush still accused him of believing that “in order to defend ourselves, we’d have to get international approval.”
In reality, it appears that the Democrats were as enthusiastic about the United States invading and occupying Iraq as were the Republicans and that the WMD claims were largely a means of scaring the American public into accepting the right of the United States to effectively renounce 20th century international legal norms in favor of the right of conquest. Indeed, Senators Kerry, Edwards, and Clinton all subsequently stated that they would have voted to authorize the invasion even if they knew Iraq did not have WMDs (though, in response to popular pressure, they have begun to express some doubts in recent weeks.) Given their apparent eagerness for an excuse to go to war in order to take over that oil-rich nation, they seem to have been willing to believe virtually anything the Bush administration said and dismiss the concerns of independent strategic analysts who saw through the falsehoods.
This may help explain why congressional Democrats had been so reluctant, until faced with enormous pressure from their constituents following the Libby indictments, to push for a serious inquiry regarding the Bush administration misleading the American public on Iraqi WMDs: the Democrats are guilty as well. It may also explain why pro-Democratic newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post were so unwilling to publicize the Downing Street memos and so belittled efforts by the handful of conscientious Democrats, such as Michigan Representative John Conyers, to uncover WMD deceptions. Such failures have led both newspapers’ ombudsmen to issue rare rebukes.
Even after it has become apparent that the Bush administration had been dishonest regarding Iraq’s alleged threat, Democrats still seem unwilling to take a more skeptical view of administration claims regarding alleged WMD threats from overseas. For example, congressional Democrats have overwhelmingly voted in favor of legislation targeting Syria and Iran based primarily on dubious claims by the Bush administration of these countries’ military capabilities and alleged threats to American security interests. Given that the vast majority of Democrats who hyped false WMD claims regarding Iraq were re-elected in 2004 anyway, they apparently believe that they have little to lose by again reinforcing the administration’s alarmist claims of threats to U.S. national security.
Perhaps we need to prove them wrong. The United States will almost certainly find itself in another war based on phony claims that the targeted country possesses WMDs unless members of Congress know there will be political consequences to their actions. As a result, in order to advance the cause of peace and a responsible foreign policy, it may be necessary to target all members of Congress up for re-election next year who made false statements regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities – both Republican and Democrat – for defeat.
Libby Indictment May Open Door to Broader Iraq War Deceptions
The details revealed thus far from the investigation that led to the five-count indictment against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby seem to indicate that the efforts to expose the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson went far beyond the chief assistant to the assistant chief. Though no other White House officials were formally indicted, the investigation appears to implicate Vice President Richard Cheney and Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, in the conspiracy. More importantly, the probe underscores the extent of administration efforts to silence those who questioned its argument that Iraq constituted a serious threat to the national security of the United States. Even if no other White House officials ever have to face justice as a result of this investigation, it opens one of the best opportunities the American public may have to press the issue of how the Bush administration led us into war.
Spurred by the Libby indictment, the Downing Street memo, and related British documents leaked earlier this year, some mainstream pundits and Democratic Party lawmakers are finally raising the possibility that the Bush administration was determined to go to war regardless of any strategic or legal justification and that White House officials deliberately exaggerated the threats posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in order to gain congressional and popular support to invade that oil-rich country. Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid stated for the first time on October 28, the day of the indictment, that the charges raise questions about “misconduct at the White House? in the period leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq that must be addressed by President Bush, including â??how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president. 1
Indeed, even prior to the return of United Nations inspectors in December 2002 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq four months later, it is hard to understand how anyone could have taken seriously the administration’s claims that Iraq was somehow a grave national security threat to the United States. And, despite assertions by administration apologists that â??everybodyâ? thought Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and an advanced nuclear program immediately prior to the March 2003 invasion, the record shows that such claims were strongly contested, even within the U.S. government.
Pre-invasion Skepticism
In the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were many published reports challenging Bush administration claims regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities. Reputable journals like Arms Control Today, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Middle East Policy, and others published articles systematically debunking accusations that Iraq had somehow been able to preserve or reconstitute its chemical weapons arsenal, had developed deployable biological weapons, or had restarted its nuclear program. Among the disarmament experts challenging the administration was Scott Ritter, an American who had headed the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) division that looked for hidden WMD facilities in Iraq. Through articles, interviews in the broadcast media, and Capitol Hill appearances, Ritter joined scores of disarmament scholars and analysts in making a compelling andâ??in hindsightâ??accurate case that Iraq had been qualitatively disarmed quite a few years earlier. Think tanks such as the Fourth Freedom Foundation and the Institute for Policy Studies also published a series of reports challenging the administration’s claims.
And there were plenty of skeptics from within the U.S. government. For example, the State Department’s intelligence bureau noted how the National Intelligence Estimateâ??so widely cited by war supporters of both partiesâ??did not add up to â??a compelling caseâ? that Iraq had â??an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons.â? 2 Even the pro-war New Republic observed that CIA reports in early 2002 demonstrated that â??U.S. intelligence showed precious little evidence to indicate a resumption of Iraq’s nuclear program.â? 3A story circulated nationally by the Knight-Ridder wire service just before the congressional vote authorizing the invasion noted that â??U.S. intelligence and military experts dispute the administration’s suggestions that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction pose an imminent threat to the United Statesâ? and that intelligence analysts in the CIA were accusing the administration of pressuring the agency to highlight information that would appear to support administration policy and to suppress contrary information. 4
Late in the Clinton administration, the Washington Post reported U.S. officials as saying there was absolutely no evidence that Iraq had resumed its chemical and biological weapons programs 5 and there was no reason to believe that this assessment had changed. Just five weeks before the congressional vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq, another nationally syndicated Knight-Ridder story revealed that there was â??no new intelligence that indicates significant advances in their nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons programs.â? The article went on to note, â??Senior U.S. officials with access to top-secret intelligence on Iraq say they have detected no alarming increase in the threat that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein poses to American security.? 6
In an August 2002 report published for Foreign Policy in Focus, I argued that â??there is no firm proof that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction. 7 In an article in Tikkun just before the outbreak of the war, I discounted claims that pro-Israeli interests were pushing the United States to invade by noting, â??there are reasons to believe that Iraq may not have any more capability to attack Tel Aviv than it does to attack Washington. 8 In the cover story I wrote for the September 30, 2002 issue of The Nation magazine, I reminded readers that the International Atomic Energy Agency had declared in 1998 that, after exhaustive inspections and oversight, it had found nothing to suggest that Iraq still had a nuclear program. I also observed how inspectors from UNSCOM had estimated that at least 95% of Iraq’s chemical weapons program had been similarly accounted for and destroyed. 9 The remaining 5%, I argued, could have already been destroyed, but the Iraqis did not maintain adequate records.
I furthermore noted that the shelf life for the weaponized lethality of any purported Iraqi chemical and biological agents had long since expired. And I pointed out that Saddam Hussein was able to develop his earlier WMD programs only through the import of technology and raw materials from advanced industrialized countries, a scenario no longer possible due to the UN embargo in effect since 1990.
In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War and the subsequent inspections regime, virtually any aggressive military potential by Iraq was destroyed. Before UNSCOM was withdrawn, its agents reportedly oversaw the destruction of 38,000 chemical weapons, 480,000 liters of live chemical-weapons agents, 48 missiles, six missile launchers, 30 missile warheads modified to carry chemical or biological agents, and hundreds of pieces of related equipment capable of producing chemical weapons. In late 1997, UNSCOM head Richard Butler reported that his agency had made â??significant progressâ? in tracking Iraq’s chemical weapons program and that 817 of the 819 Soviet-supplied long-range missiles had been accounted for. There were believed to be a couple of dozen Iraqi-made ballistic missiles unaccounted for, but these were of questionable caliber. There was no evidence that Iraq’s Scud missiles had even survived the Gulf War, nor did Iraq seem to have any more rocket launchers or engines. 10 UNSCOM also reported no evidence that Iraq had been concealing prohibited weapons subsequent to October 1995. 11 Even if Iraq had been able to engage in the mass production and deployment of nuclear or chemical weaponry, these weapons would almost certainly have been detected by satellite and overflight reconnaissance and destroyed in air strikes.
??Though the development of potential biological weapons would have been much easier to conceal, there was no evidence to suggest that Iraq had the ability to disperse their alleged biological agents successfully in a manner that could harm troops or a civilian population, given the rather complicated technology required. For example, a vial of biological weapons on the tip of a missile would almost certainly be destroyed on impact or dispersed harmlessly. Israeli military analyst Meir Stieglitz, writing in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, noted: “??There is no such thing as a long-range Iraqi missile with an effective biological warhead. No one has found an Iraqi biological warhead. The chances of Iraq having succeeded in developing operative warheads without tests are zero.”12
Frightening scenarios regarding mass fatalities from a small amount of anthrax assumed that Baghdad possessed the highly sophisticated means of distributing such toxins by missile or aircraft. To become a lethal weapon, highly concentrated amounts of anthrax spores must be inhaled and then left untreated by antibiotics until the infection is too far advanced. The most realistic means of anthrax dispersal would be from an aircraft. For the attack to be successful, the winds would have to be just right, no rain could fall, the spray nozzles could not clog, the target population could not be vaccinated, and everyone would need to linger around the area chosen for the attack. Given this unlikely scenario, one can understand why in autumn 2001 unknown terrorists chose instead to send spores through the mail to indoor destinations in the eastern United States. This was found to be a relatively efficient means of distribution, even though it resulted in only a handful of deaths.
It is hard to imagine that an Iraqi aircraft, presumably some kind of drone, could somehow penetrate the air space of neighboring countries, much less far-off Israel, without being shot down. Most of Iraq’s neighbors have sophisticated anti-aircraft capability, and Israel has the most sophisticated regional missile defense system in the world. As one British scientist put it: “To say they have found enough weapons to kill the world several times over is equivalent to the statement that a man who produces a million sperm a day can thus produce a million babies a day. The problem in both cases is one of delivery systems.?” 13
In short, in the months and years leading up to the invasion, it should have been apparent that all of Iraq’s nuclear weapons-related material and nearly all of its chemical weapons were accounted for and destroyed; virtually all systems capable of delivering WMDs were also accounted for and destroyed; there were no apparent means by which key components for WMDs could have been produced domestically; and, a strict embargo on military hardware, raw materials, and WMD technology had been in place for more than a dozen years. No truly objective observer, therefore, could have come to any other conclusion than that it was highly unlikely that Iraq still had any offensive WMD capability and that it was quite possible that Iraq may have indeed completely rid itself of its proscribed weaponry, delivery systems, and weapons production facilities.
It also became apparent early on that at least some of the evidence of Iraqi WMDs offered by the Bush administration was highly questionable and was contradicted by independent sources. Furthermore, given that the United States supported Saddam Hussein’s government in the 1980s when it really did have chemical weapons, an advanced biological and nuclear weapons program, and hundreds of long-range missiles and other sophisticated delivery systems, one finds it hard to imagine how Iraq could be a threat after these dangerous weapons had been destroyed or otherwise rendered harmless. Indeed, virtually every U.S. military intervention in the last half century (from the alleged “??unprovoked attacks”? on U.S. vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin to the supposed “endangered American medical students”? in Grenada to the nonexistent “chemical weapons factory controlled by Osama bin Laden”? in Sudan) ??has been based upon purported evidence presented by various administrations that later proved to be false.
As a result, one would have thought that more people in Congress and the media would have approached the question of Iraq’s WMDs as would a public defender of an admittedly disreputable client in the face an overzealous prosecutor with a history of fudging the facts: look skeptically at the government’s case for holes in the evidence and unsubstantiated conclusions. They were not hard to find.
Killing the Messengers
The outing of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA affiliation was apparently a means of punishing Ambassador Joseph Wilson for going public with his charges that the Bush administration had misled the public with its claims regarding Iraq ‘s WMD programs. The leak served as a warning to any who would dare challenge administration efforts to frighten the American public into accepting an illegal and unnecessary war.
As first reported by the Washington Post, Scooter Libby and Vice President Dick Cheney made frequent trips to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to pressure analysts to come up with assessments that would “fit with the Bush administration’s policy objectives.” 14 CIA analysts who resisted such manipulation were “beaten down defending their assessments.”? 15
Indeed, virtually all of us who refused to buy into the bipartisan hysteria regarding the phony “Iraqi threatâ? were subjected to systematic efforts to undermine our credibility. New Republic publisher Martin Peretz accused me of â??supporting Saddam Hussein,” Sean Hannity of Fox News suggested that my research was funded by terrorists, and the National Review Online falsely accused me of anti-Semitic statements that I never made. Scott Ritter, a Marine veteran and registered Republican, was labeled a traitor, and administration supporters started spreading rumors that he was a pedophile. When International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director Mohammed el Baradei reiterated that there was no evidence of Iraq attempting to restart its nuclear program, Cheney insisted that “Mr. El Baradei is frankly wrong.”? The vice president then falsely claimed that the IAEA had “consistently underestimated or missed what it was that Saddam Hussein was doing”? 16 and insisted that there was no validity to the IAEA’s assessments, despite their more than 1000 inspections (mostly without warning) ??in Iraq since the early 1990s. Later, the Bush administration had El Baradei’s phone wiretapped in an unsuccessful effort to find information to discredit him. 17
When administration skeptics weren’t being attacked, we were being ignored. In September 2002, a month before the vote to authorize the invasion, I contacted the chief foreign policy aide to one of my senators, Democrat Barbara Boxer of California, to let him know of my interest in appearing before an upcoming hearing on Capitol Hill regarding the alleged threat that Iraq posed to the United States. He acknowledged that he and other staffers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were familiar with my writing on the topic and that I would be a credible witness. He passed on my request to a staff member of the committee’s ranking Democrat, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware. I was never invited, however. Nor was Scott Ritter, Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, or anyone else who expressed skepticism regarding the administration’s WMD claims. The bipartisan Senate committee only allowed those who were willing to come forward with an exaggerated view of Iraq ‘s military potential to testify.
The basis of the constitutional framework of checks and balances between the three branches of government rests in part upon the belief that Congress does not allow the executive branch to remain unquestioned on issues of national importance. Senator Biden, however, was apparently determined to give the Bush administration a free ride. In the words of Aldous Huxley, â??The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.â? 18 As he prepares for a likely presidential run in 2008, serious questions must be raised regarding Biden’s commitment to democracy.
Public opinion polls at the time showed that the only reason that a majority of Americans would support going to war was if Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the United States. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ruled out other justifications for an invasion, stating, â??The president has not linked authority to go to war to any of those elements.â? 19 It is not surprising, then, that the administration was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to silence those who recognized that Iraq did not have the weapons programs and delivery systems that the administration claimed.
The Complicity of the Democrats
These bogus claims by the Bush administration regarding Iraq’s alleged military threat are now well-known and have been frequently cited. And Republicans in Congress have blocked demands by some Democrats that a serious investigation be undertaken regarding the manipulation of intelligence regarding Iraq’s military capability.
It is important to recognize, however, that the leadership of the Democratic Party was also guilty of misleading the American public regarding the supposed threat emanating from Iraq . It was the Clinton administration, not the current administration, which first insistedâ??despite the lack of evidenceâ??that Iraq had successfully concealed or relaunched its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. Clinton’s fear-mongering around Iraqi WMDs began in 1997, several years after they had been successfully destroyed or rendered inoperable. Based upon the alleged Iraqi threat, Clinton ordered a massive four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998, forcing the evacuation of UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors. As many of us had warned just prior to the bombing, this gave Saddam Hussein the opportunity to refuse to allow the inspectors to return.
Clinton was egged on by leading Senate Democratic leaders, including Minority Leader Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Carl Levin, and others who signed a letter in October 1998 urging the president â??to take necessary actions, including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspected Iraqi sites, to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.â? 20 Meanwhile, Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was repeatedly making false statements regarding Iraq’s supposed possession of WMDs.
During Fall 2002, in an effort to counter and discredit those of us questioning the Bush administration’s WMD claims, congressional Democrats redoubled their efforts to depict Saddam Hussein as a threat to America’s national security. Democrats controlled the Senate at that point and could have blocked President Bush’s request for the authority to invade Iraq. However, in October, the majority of Democratic senators, including Minority Leader Tom Daschle and Assistant Minority Leader Harry Reid, voted to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing on the grounds that Iraq â??poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States â?¦ by â?¦ among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, [and] actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability.â? 21
In a Senate speech defending his vote to authorize Bush to launch an invasion, Senator Kerry categorically declared, despite the lack of any credible evidence, that â??Iraq has chemical and biological weaponsâ? and even alleged that most elements of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programs were â??larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War.â? Furthermore, Kerry asserted that Iraq was â??attempting to develop nuclear weapons,â? backing up this accusation by falsely claiming that â??all U.S. intelligence experts agreeâ? with that assessment. The Massachusetts junior senator also alleged that â??Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents [that] could threaten Iraq’s neighbors as well as American forces in the Persian Gulf.â? Though it soon became evident that none of Kerry’s allegations were true, the Democratic Party rewarded him in 2004 with its nomination for president.
Kerry supporters claim he was not being dishonest in making these false claims but that he had been fooled by â??bad intelligenceâ? passed on by the Bush administration. However, well before Kerry’s vote to authorize the invasion, former UN inspector Scott Ritter personally told the senator and his senior staff that claims about Iraq still having WMDs or WMD programs were not based on valid intelligence. According to Ritter, â??Kerry knew that there was a verifiable case to be made to debunk the president’s statements regarding the threat posed by Iraq’s WMDs, but he chose not to act on it.â? 22
Joining Kerry in voting to authorize the invasion was North Carolina Senator John Edwards, whoâ??in the face of growing public skepticism of the Bush administration’s WMD claimsâ??rushed to the president’s defense in an op-ed article published in the Washington Post . In his commentary, Edwards claimed that Iraq was â??a grave and growing threatâ? and that Congress should therefore â??endorse the use of all necessary means to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.â? 23 The Bush administration was so impressed with Edwards’ arguments that they posted the article on the State Department website. Again, despite the fact that Edwards’ claims were groundless, the Democratic Party rewarded him less than two years later with its nomination for vice president.
By 2004, it was recognized that the administration’s WMD claims were bogus and the war was not going well. The incumbent president and vice president, who had misled the nation into a disastrous war through false claims, were therefore quite vulnerable to losing the November election. But instead of nominating candidates who opposed the war and challenged these false WMD claims, the Democrats chose two men who had also misled the nation into war through the same false claims and who favored the continued prosecution of the war. Not surprisingly, the Democrats lost.
Kerry’s failure to tell the truth continues to hurt the anti-war movement, as President Bush to this day quotes Kerry’s false statements about Iraq’s pre-invasion military capability as a means of covering up for the lies of his administration. For example, in his recent Veteran’s Day speech in Pennsylvania in which he attacked the anti-war movement, President Bush was able to say, â??Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: â??When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security’.â?
Despite the consequences of putting forth nominees who failed to tell the truth about Iraq’s WMD capabilities, current polls show that New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also made false claims about the alleged Iraqi threat, is the front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2008. In defending her vote authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq, Mrs. Clinton said in October 2002, â??It is clear â?¦ that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.â? 24
In his Veteran’s Day speech, Bush was able to deny any wrongdoing by his administration by noting how â??more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senateâ??who had access to the same intelligenceâ??voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.â? If the Democrats had instead decided to be honest and take a critical look at the phony intelligence being put forward by the administration, they would have said what so many of us were saying at the time: it was highly unlikely that Iraq still had such weapons. Instead, by also making false claims about Iraqi WMD capability, it not only resulted in their failure to re-take the House and Senate in the 2004 elections, but they have effectively shielded the Bush administration from the consequences of its actions.
Even some prominent congressional Democrats who did not vote to authorize the invasion were willing to defend the Bush administration’s WMD claims. When House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press in December 2002, she claimed: â??Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There is no question about that.â? 25 Despite repeated requests for information, her staff has been unwilling to reveal what led the Democratic leader to make such a groundless claim with such certitude.
Now that the Democrats are finally speaking out against the administration’s phony WMD claims, conservative talk show hosts, columnists, and bloggers have been dredging up scores of pre-invasion quotes by Democratic leaders citing non-existent Iraqi WMDs. As a result, though the Republicans have undoubtedly been hurt by their false statements on the subject, the Democrats are not likely to reap much benefit. Given the number of us that had warned them beforehand, they have no one to blame but themselves.
Some Democrats have defended their pre-invasion claims by citing the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction from the CIA, which appeared to confirm some of the Bush administration’s claims. However, there were a number of reasons to have been skeptical: For starters, this NIE was compiled in a much shorter time frame than is normally provided for such documents. Oddly, the report expressed far more certitude regarding Iraq’s WMD capabilities than all reports from the previous five years despite the lack of additional data to justify such a shift. When the report was released, there was much stronger dissent within the intelligence community than about any other declassified NIE.
Some have defended the Democrats by saying that if they had insisted on hard evidence to support the administration’s WMD claims, they would have been accused of being weak on national defense. This excuse has little merit, however, since Republicans accuse Democrats of being weak on defense whatever they do. For example, even though congressional Democrats voted nearly unanimously to grant President Bush extraordinary war powers immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks and strongly supported the bombing of Afghanistan, this patriotic exhibit did not prevent the White House from falsely accusing Democrats of calling for â??moderation and restraintâ? and offering â??therapy and understanding for our attackers.â? 26 Similarly, even though 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Kerry defended America’s right to unilaterally invade foreign countries in violation of the United Nations Charter and basic international legal standards, President Bush still accused him of believing that â??in order to defend ourselves, we’d have to get international approval.â? 27
In reality, it appears that the Democrats were as enthusiastic about the United States invading and occupying Iraq as were the Republicans and that the WMD claims were largely a means of scaring the American public into accepting the right of the United States to effectively renounce 20 th century international legal norms in favor of the right of conquest. Indeed, Senators Kerry, Edwards, and Clinton all subsequently stated that they would have voted to authorize the invasion even if they knew Iraq did not have WMDs. Given their apparent eagerness for an excuse to go to war in order to take over that oil-rich nation, they seem to have been willing to believe virtually anything the Bush administration said and dismiss the concerns of independent strategic analysts who saw through the falsehoods.
This may help explain why congressional Democrats had been so reluctant, until faced with enormous pressure from their constituents following the Libby indictments, to push for a serious inquiry regarding the Bush administration’s misleading the American public on Iraqi WMDs: the Democrats were guilty as well. It may also explain why pro-Democratic newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post were so unwilling to publicize the Downing Street memos and so belittled efforts by the handful of conscientious Democrats such as John Conyers to uncover WMD deceptions. Such failures have led both newspapers’ ombudsmen to issue rare rebukes.
Even after it has become apparent that the Bush administration had been dishonest regarding Iraq’s alleged threat, Democrats still seem unwilling to take a more skeptical view of administration claims regarding alleged WMD threats from overseas. For example, congressional Democrats have overwhelmingly voted in favor of legislation targeting Syria and Iran based primarily on dubious claims by the Bush administration of these countries’ military capabilities and alleged threats to American security interests. Given that the vast majority of Democrats who hyped false WMD claims regarding Iraq were re-elected in 2004 anyway, they apparently believe that they have little to lose by again reinforcing the administration’s alarmist claims of threats to U.S. national security.
Current Ramifications
There is growing awareness that the American people were lied to by their government and needlessly drawn into war. How does this deception impact what the United States should do regarding Iraq today?
Three years ago politicians in both parties successfully scared the American people into believing that the national security of the United States would somehow be threatened if we did not invade Iraq. These same politicians now expect us to believe that U.S. national security will be jeopardized unless we continue to prosecute the war.
Some thoughtful activists and intellectuals who opposed the invasion of Iraq have since concluded that because the elected Iraqi government is reasonably representative of the majority of the Iraqi people, because much of the insurgent movement is dominated by fascistic Islamists and Baathists, and because the Iraqi government is too weak to defend itself, U.S. armed forces should remain. These activists argue that even though the premise of the invasion was a lie and the occupation was tragically mishandled, the consequences of a precipitous U.S. military withdrawal would result in a far worse situation than exists now.
Such a case might be worth consideration if the Bush administration and congressional leaders had demonstrated that they had the integrity, knowledge, foresight, and competence to successfully lead a counterinsurgency war in a complex, fractured society on the far side of the planet. To support the continued prosecution of the Iraq War, however, would require trusting the same politicians who hoodwinked the country into that war in the first place. A growing number of Americans, therefore, have come to recognize that any administration dishonest enough to make the ludicrous pre-war claims of an Iraqi military threat and any Congress thatâ??through whatever combination of dishonesty or stupidityâ??chose to reinforce these false assertions simply cannot be trusted to successfully control the insurgency, extricate the United States from further military involvement, and successfully facilitate Iraq’s development as a peaceful, secure, democratic country.
End Notes
1. Senator Harry Reid, remarks before the floor of the U.S. Senate, Oct. 28, 2005.
2. Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Simon & Schuster, 2004.
3. John B. Judis & Spencer Ackerman, â??The First Casualty: The Selling of the Iraq War,â? The New Republic, June 30, 2003.
4. Jonathan Landay, â??CIA Report Reveals Analysts Split over Extent of Iraqi Nuclear Threat,â? Knight-Ridder Newspapers, October 4, 2002.
5. Karen DeYoung, â??Baghdad Weapons Programs Dormant: Iraq’s Inactivity Puzzles U.S. Officials,â? Washington Post, p A 19, July 15, 1999.
6. Jonathan Landay, â??Lack of Hard Evidence of Iraqi Weapons Worries Top U.S. Officials,â? Knight-Ridder Newspapers, September 6, 2002.
7. Stephen Zunes, â??Why Not to Wage War with Iraq,â? Foreign Policy in Focus Talking Points, Aug. 27, 2002.
8. Stephen Zunes, â?? Iraq, the United States, and the Jews,â? Tikkun, March 2003.
9. Stephen Zunes, â??The Case Against War,â? The Nation, September 30, 2002.
10. Institute for Policy Studies, â?? Iraq ‘s Current Military Capability,â? February 1998.
11. Barton Gellman, â??Iraq Cooperating on Inspections: Failure to Find Weapons May Diminish Support for UNSCOM,â? p A27, March 20, 1998.
12. Cited by Rep Cynthia McKinney, on PBS â??Newshour,â? February 10, 1998.
13. Dr. Julian Perry Robinson, The Independent, March 7, 1998.
14. Walter Pincus and Dana Priest, â??Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure from Cheney Visits,â? Washington Post, p A1, June 5, 2003.
15. Seymour Hersch, â??The Stovepipe: How Conflicts Between the Bush Administration and the Intelligence Community Marred the Reporting on 16. 16. Iraq’s Weapons,â? New Yorker, October 27, 2003.
17. NBC, Meet the Press, March 16, 2003.
18. Dafna Linzer, â??IAEA Leader’s Phone Tapped: U.S. Pores Over Transcripts to Try to Oust Nuclear Chief, Washington Post, December 12, 2004, p. A01.
19. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, ch. 6.
20. Cited in Jonathan Schell, â??The Empire Backfires,â? The Nation, March 11, 2004.
21. Letter to President Bill Clinton, Oct. 9, 1998.
22. Senate Joint Resolution 45 authorizing the use of United States armed forces against Iraq, October 11, 2002.
23. Scott Ritter, â??Challenging Kerry on His Iraq Vote,â? Boston Globe, August 5, 2004.
24. John Edwards, â??Congress Must Be Clear,â? Washington Post, Sept. 19, 2002.
25. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), October 10, 2002.
26. NBC, Meet the Press, December 15, 2002.
27. Karl Rove from a July 22, 2005 speech in New York. White House spokesperson Scott McClelland defended his remarks, claiming that President Bush’s chief political adviser was â??simply pointing out the different philosophies and different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism.â? See Jim Abrams, â??Dems Say Rove Should Apologize or Resign,â? Associated Press, June 23, 2005.
Third Bush-Kerry debate, in Tempe, Arizona, October 13, 2004.
http://www.fpif.org/articles/libby_indictment_may_open_door_to_broader_iraq_war_deceptions