The skepticism expressed by some leading Democrats and the mainstream media regarding the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani has been refreshing, after decades of bipartisan support for disastrous U.S. policies in the region… [Full Article]
Category: Middle East
Middle East Overview
Today’s US-Iran Crisis Is Rooted in the Decision to Invade Iraq
The ramifications of the illegal, unnecessary and predictably tragic U.S. decision to invade Iraq are still with us. This includes the ongoing crisis with Iran, which brought us perilously close to all-out war in early January, resulted in the tragic downing of a civilian airliner and remains in a hair-trigger situation.
INTERVIEW: Proof that Soleimani killed hundreds of Americans is “groundless” says Middle East expert
According to our next guest– the claim that Soleimani and the Iranian government are somehow responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of Americans” in Iraq—which has been repeated by Republicans, some Democrats and the mainstream media—appears to be groundless.
Our guest today is STEPHEN ZUNES, a professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco.
He’s written a new piece for The Progressive Magazine saying there is zero evidence that Soleimani killed hundreds of Americans….
There Is Zero Actual Evidence Iran Is Responsible for Killing Hundreds of Americans
The assertions being repeated today seem based on apparently groundless claims from twelve years ago by the same people who said Iraq possessed weapons, weapons programs, and weapons systems that were such a grave threat that they ignited the U.S.-Iraq war… [Full Article]
Trump’s Recognition of Israeli Settlements Is Rooted in Bipartisan Support
Three previous U.S. administrations all ignored the gross power asymmetry between the Palestinians under occupation and the Israeli occupiers—an imbalance compounded by the fact that as the chief mediator in negotiations, the U.S. is also the primary military, economic, and diplomatic supporter of the occupying power.
House of Representatives Finally Recognizes Armenian Genocide
It is shocking that it has taken this long for even one house of the U.S. Congress to recognize this historic tragedy. Somehow it is always a “bad time” to upset the government of Turkey.
Biden’s Support of Iraq War Shows How He Would Run the White House
Supporters of presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden are probably hoping that Democratic voters will see his key role in pushing through the Iraq War authorization as simply a “mistake” which should not be a factor in the 2020 presidential race. Indeed, Biden now claims that, “From the moment [the invasion] started … I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress” despite his statements at the time and subsequently that he supported Bush’s decision to invade even after inspectors returned and no “weapons of mass destruction” were found.
Not only was Biden one of the most important Democratic supporters of the Iraq War, but that support says much about the kind of president he would be.
Biden Has Defended US Allies’ Use of Lethal Force Against Civilians
On an October evening in 2002, while quietly embroidering on the porch of her home in Nablus in the West Bank, 60-year-old Shaden Abu Hijleh was shot and killed by Israeli occupation forces. A grandmother and community activist involved in promoting the arts, women’s and children’s advocacy, serving the needy and nonviolent resistance to the occupation, she had no links to any violent or extremist organizations. No protests or other violent disturbances were taking place nearby, and her killing is widely believed to have been a targeted assassination.
This Isn’t the First Time the US Has Abandoned the Kurds
President Trump’s decision to give a green light for a Turkish invasion of Kurdish-populated regions of northern Syria has been faced with swift bipartisan opposition. Apparently, no one in the diplomatic, military or intelligence community — much less the leadership of the self-governing Kurdish enclave the U.S. has armed and supported and is now under siege — was consulted beforehand. U.S. troops should indeed be withdrawn from Syria, but the U.S. soldiers removed from the border area where Turkish forces are now attacking are not being sent home, and instead are simply being redeployed elsewhere in northeastern Syria. Trump’s sudden and apparently impulsive move following a conversation with authoritarian Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an (one of a number of autocratic leaders with whom Trump has developed a close relationship) is dangerous and irresponsible.
What many of the commentators are ignoring is that this is hardly the first time the United States has goaded Kurds to fight and then abandoned them to slaughter.
The Kurds are a nation of more than 30 million people divided among six countries, primarily in what is now northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey, with smaller numbers in northeastern Syria, northwestern Iran and the Caucasus. They are the world’s largest nation without a state of their own. Their struggle for self-determination has been hampered by the sometimes-bitter rivalry between competing nationalist groups, some of which have been used as pawns by regional powers as well as by the United States.
At the 1919 Versailles Conference, in which the victorious allies of World War I were carving up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, President Woodrow Wilson unsuccessfully pushed for the establishment of an independent Kurdistan. Since that time, however, U.S. policy toward the Kurds has been far less supportive and often cynically opportunistic.
For example, in the mid-1970s, in conjunction with the dictatorial Shah of Iran, the United States goaded Iraqi Kurds into launching an armed uprising against the then left-leaning Iraqi government with the promise of continued military support. However, the United States abandoned them precipitously as part of an agreement with the Baghdad regime for a territorial compromise favorable to Iran regarding the Shatt al-Arab waterway. Suddenly without supply lines to obtain the necessary equipment to defend themselves, the Iraqi army marched into Kurdish areas and thousands were slaughtered. Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger dismissed concerns about the humanitarian consequences of this betrayal by saying, “Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”
The uprising by Iraqi Kurds against the central government in Baghdad resumed in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, led by guerrillas of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Strong Iranian support for the PUK made virtually all Kurds potential traitors in the eyes of Saddam Hussein’s regime, which responded with brutal repression. In the latter part of the decade, in what became known as the Anfal campaign, as many as 4,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed, more than 100,000 Kurdish civilians were killed and more than 1 million Iraqi Kurds — nearly one-quarter of the Iraqi Kurdish population — were displaced.
Despite this, the United States increased its support for Hussein’s regime during this period, providing agricultural subsidies and other economic aid as well as limited military assistance. U.S. officials looked the other way as much of these funds were laundered by purchasing military equipment despite widespread knowledge that it was being deployed as part of Baghdad’s genocidal war against the Kurds. The United States also sent an untold amount of indirect aid — largely through Kuwait and other Arab countries — which enabled Iraq to receive weapons and technology to increase its war-making capacity.
The March 1988 Iraqi attacks on the Kurdish town of Halabja — where Iraq government forces massacred upwards of 5,000 civilians by gassing them with chemical weapons — was downplayed by the Ronald Reagan administration, even to the point of leaking phony intelligence claiming that Iran, then the preferred enemy of the U.S., was actually responsible.
The Halabja tragedy was not an isolated incident, as U.S. officials were well aware at the time. UN reports in 1986 and 1987 documented Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, which were confirmed both by investigations from the CIA and from U.S. embassy staff who visited Iraqi Kurdish refugees in Turkey. However, not only was the United States not particularly concerned about the ongoing repression and the use of chemical weapons, the United States actually was supporting the Iraqi government’s procurement efforts of materials necessary for the development of such an arsenal.
When a 1988 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report brought to light Hussein’s policy of widespread killings of Kurdish civilians in northern Iraq, Democratic Sen. Claiborne Pell introduced the “Prevention of Genocide Act” to put pressure on the Iraqi government. However, the Reagan administration — insisting on being able to continue its military and economic support of Hussein’s regime — successfully moved to have the measure killed.
At the end of the Gulf War in 1991, in response to U.S. calls to rise up against Hussein’s regime, the Kurds launched a major popular rebellion. With the Iraqi army already devastated from six weeks of massive assaults by the United States and allied forces, and then forced to fight a simultaneous Shia-led rebellion in southern Iraq, the Kurds initially made major advances, seizing a series of key cities. These gains were soon reversed by a brutal counterattack by Iraqi government forces, however. Despite earlier promises of support, U.S. forces — which at that time temporarily occupied a large strip of southern Iraq — did nothing to support the post-war rebellions and stood by while thousands of Iraqi Kurds, Shias and others were slaughtered.
Ironically, the invasion of Iraq a dozen years later was justified on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “used chemical weapons against his own people,” despite the cover-ups at the time of the massacres and the United States having provided the regime with the fertilizers and insecticides they knew were being diverted to chemical weapons production.
In the ceasefire agreement following the expulsion of Iraqi occupation forces from Kuwait, the United States made a conscious decision to exclude Iraqi helicopter gunships from the ban on Iraqi military air traffic. These were the very weapons that proved so decisive in crushing the rebellion. U.S. officials have claimed that they were tricked into thinking that Iraqi military helicopters would be used only for post-war humanitarian relief. Others suspect, however, that the Bush administration feared a victory by Iraqi Kurds might encourage the ongoing Kurdish uprising in Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally.
The “no-fly zone” unilaterally imposed on northern Iraq ostensibly to protect the Kurds did not actually parallel the demarcation between Arab and Kurdish-populated areas and was used largely as an excuse to continue a low-level bombing campaign of Iraq despite the Baghdad government not breaching the protected airspace. Indeed, during the interwar years, the United States was likely responsible for more Kurdish civilian deaths than was the Iraqi regime.
Similarly, the presence of U.S. forces in northern Syria was never about protecting the Kurds, either, but for fighting ISIS and for countering, as Trump administration officials have acknowledged, Iranian and Russian forces elsewhere in Syria at the invitation of the Damascus regime.
Where the United States bears the greatest responsibility in terms of Kurdish sufferings, however, has been at the hands of the Turkish regime.
The Kurds of Turkey number well over 15 million, the largest of any country. Yet there have been periods in recent history when simply speaking the Kurdish language or celebrating Kurdish festivals has been severely repressed. In addition to being denied basic cultural and political rights, Kurdish civilians for years suffered from the counterinsurgency campaign by Turkish armed forces ostensibly targeting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Marxist-led guerrilla group fighting for greater autonomy. The Turkish regime has called the PKK a terrorist organization as an excuse to crush even nonviolent expressions of Kurdish nationalism. During the height of the repression during the 1990s, the United States — while condemning the PKK — was largely silent regarding the Turkish government’s repression.
The Clinton administration justified its 11-week bombing campaign of Yugoslavia in 1999 on the grounds that atrocities such as the Serbian repression of the Kosovar Albanians must not take place “on NATO’s doorstep.” Ironically, similar ethnic-based repression on an even greater scale had been already taking place for a number of years within a NATO country without U.S. objections.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the United States supplied Turkey with $15 billion worth of armaments as the Turkish military carried out widespread attacks against civilian populations in the largest use of U.S. weapons by non-U.S. forces since Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Most of this took place during President Clinton’s first term. Over 3,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed and over 2 million Kurds became refugees in an operation where more than three-quarters of the weapons were of U.S. origin. Human Rights Watch, which also criticized the PKK rebels for serious human rights violations, documented how the U.S.-supplied Turkish army was “responsible for the majority of forced evacuations and destruction of villages.” The 15-year war cost over 40,000 lives.
In addition, despite justifying air-strikes against Iraq in the name of enforcing the Kurdish “safe haven” and the no-fly zone in the northern part of that country, the Clinton administration defended periodic incursions into the safe haven by thousands of Turkish troops as well as airstrikes by the Turkish military inside Iraqi territory which resulted in the deaths of large numbers of PKK guerrillas and Iraqi Kurdish civilians. These attacks were widely condemned by the international community but defended by the U.S. government, with President Clinton standing out as the only international leader to openly support the Turkish regime’s military interventions in Iraq. According to Clinton State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, “Turkey’s an ally. And we have no reason to question the need for an incursion across the border.”
Given the history of repression by the Turkish armed forces against Kurdish civilians, Trump’s support for further Turkish intervention in Syria could have utterly tragic results. While Trump’s policies certainly deserve to be challenged, they should not be seen as a major departure from decades of cynical and treacherous U.S. policy toward the Kurdish people.
Note: Portions of this piece were drawn from a 2007 policy analysis the author did for the Institute for Policy Studies.
Biden Is Doubling Down on Iraq War Lies
For the second consecutive Democratic debate, Joe Biden has failed to come to terms about his critical role in supporting the illegal, unnecessary, and predictably disastrous U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
There is nothing new about this. Biden has a long history of inaccurate claims regarding that oil-rich country. For example, in the lead-up to the critical Senate vote authorizing the invasion, Biden used his role as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to insist that Iraq somehow reconstituted a vast arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear weapons program and sophisticated delivery systems that had long since been eliminated.
Polls at the time showed that the only reason Americans would support going to war would be if Iraq constituted a threat, so it was to the advantage of war proponents to make people think that Iraq — which, according to former U.N. inspectors and others, had reached at least qualitative disarmament — had somehow obtained such potentially dangerous military capabilities.
In the recent second Democratic debate, however, Biden took his lies about Iraq to new heights by claiming, “From the moment ‘shock and awe’ started, from that moment, I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress.” He claimed that his strong support for the Authorization of the Use of Military Force that made George W. Bush’s invasion possible was somehow not really an endorsement of the use military force, but a means to pressure Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to allow United Nations inspectors to return to Iraq.
That was patently untrue. More than three months after U.N. inspectors returned, Biden defended the imminent launch of the invasion by saying, “I support the president. Diplomacy over avoiding war is dead. … I do not see any alternative. It is not as if we can back away now.” He added, “Let loose the dogs of war. I’m confident we will win.”
He then co-sponsored a resolution supporting Bush and the invasion.
Despite the fact that three months of unfettered inspections had revealed none of the chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear programs, or sophisticated delivery systems Bush and Biden claimed Iraq possessed, Biden insisted in May 2003 that, “There was sufficient evidence to go into Iraq.”
The following month, after the Bush administration conceded that there were no “weapons of mass destruction” to be found, Biden told CNN “I, for one, thought we should have gone in Iraq,” adding his disappointment that other Democrats weren’t as supportive. A couple of weeks later, on “Fox News Sunday,” even while acknowledging that Iraq didn’t actually have the weapons, weapons systems and weapons programs he claimed, Biden insisted, “I do think it was a just war.”
At a hearing in July 2003, he categorically stated, “I voted to go into Iraq, and I’d vote to do it again.” Days later, in the face of growing outrage by fellow Democrats about being misled into what was already becoming a bloody counterinsurgency struggle, Biden insisted, “In my view, anyone who can’t acknowledge that the world is better off without [Saddam Hussein] is out of touch…. Contrary to what some in my party might think, Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with sooner rather than later.” Despite Bush’s case for the war now unarguably based on falsehoods, Biden insisted that Bush had made a good case for invading and “I commend the president.”
More than a year later, as the death toll mounted, Biden insisted, in regard to his support for the invasion, “I still believe my vote was just.” Indeed, throughout the remainder of his Senate career, he was a steadfast supporter of Bush’s bloody counterinsurgency war, rejecting calls for even a timetable for withdrawal.
Despite all this evidence contradicting Biden’s claim in the latest Democratic presidential debate, pundits largely applauded the former vice president’s performance and few of the fact-checkers noted his lie.
This is particularly inexcusable in light of the fact that Biden also misled the public about Iraq during the first round of Democratic debates in June. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pointed out his support for the Iraq War and asked, “Why should voters trust your judgment when it comes to making a decision about taking the country to war the next time?” He refused to answer. Instead, he made the bizarre claim: “I was responsible for getting 150,000 combat troops out of Iraq.” While it is true that President Barack Obama asked him to oversee negotiations and other meetings regarding implementing the Status of Forces Agreement signed by President Bush, the U.S. was required to withdraw those troops by the end of 2011 regardless.
In fact, Obama and Biden tried to convince the Iraqi government to allow U.S. troops to stay longer, but the Iraqis refused. (Ironically, both Republicans and Democratic hawks have tried to blame Obama for the subsequent rise of ISIS because he didn’t keep troops in Iraq. However, if he had done so, it would have turned into an illegal occupation and American forces would have likely faced armed resistance from the Iraqis they were supposedly there to protect.)
In a previous article, I wrote in some detail about how Biden had been calling for a U.S. invasion of Iraq since 1998, pushed the war authorization through the Democratic-controlled Senate, and abused his role as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to suppress testimony by scholars, former U.N. inspectors, and other knowledgeable authorities opposed to the war. However, it is his support for the invasion long after it became evident that Iraq was not actually a threat to its neighbors — much less the United States — which raises the question as to whether his motivation was not in fact about national security as he claimed, but about oil and empire.
Indeed, after the U.S. conquest, he began pushing the dangerous and destabilizing divide-and-rule strategy of splitting Iraq into three countries along ethnic and sectarian lines.
There are those who insist that, despite his unwillingness to formally apologize for his support for the invasion and his false claims in the lead-up to the war about Iraq’s military procurement, he is a changed man and he would not abuse the office of president to invade another oil-rich country on false pretenses. His failure to even acknowledge his support for the invasion and the war that followed, however, gives a strong impression that he cannot be trusted to not do something like that again.
Trump’s Threats towards Iran Aren’t Working. Here’s Why.
The Trump Administration has imposed sanctions against more than 1,000 Iranian entities, including Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, targeting almost every significant sector of that nation’s economy. But recently it reversed course, backing off its threat to sanction a top Iranian diplomat, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in response to concerns that it would foreclose any diplomatic recourse… [Full Article]
The Threat of War with Iran
The White House has ordered an aircraft carrier strike group off the coast of Iran and a fleet of bombers have flown to U.S. air bases near that country, while preliminary plans are apparently underway to send 120,000 U.S. troops to the region… [Full Article]
How Sudan’s Pro-Democracy Uprising Challenges Prevailing Myths about Civil Resistance
A powerful pro-democracy civil insurrection in Sudan which has ousted a longstanding dictator and his successor is still in progress, but Sudanese are hopeful for a full democratic transition.
Demonstrations began in December of last year, initially focusing on the deteriorating economic situation, but soon escalated to demand that the authoritarian President Omar al-Bashir—who had ruled the country for nearly three decades—step down and that democracy be restored. By January, the protests had spread to the capital of Khartoum, gaining support from youth and women’s movements as well as a number of opposition parties. During the third week in February, the government declared a state of emergency, increasing their arrests of oppositionists and censorship of media coverage of the movement. Despite the growing repression, as well as a cabinet shakeup and other measures to appease the opposition, protests continued.
On April 6, the Association of Sudanese Professionals led a march of hundreds of thousands onto the Army headquarters in Khartoum and began a sit-in, demanding the resignation of al-Bashir and the return of democratic civilian governance. Despite scores of protesters being killed over the previous months, the movement was clearly growing. Less than a week later, on April 11, the military removed al-Bashir from office and subsequently placed him under arrest. General Awad Ibn Auf, who had served as al-Bashir’s Defense Minister and now headed the transitional military council in Sudan, declared himself interim president, announced the release of some political prisoners, declared a state of emergency (including a dusk to dawn curfew), and promised elections in two years.
The protesters, rejecting continued military rule and such a long delay in democratic elections, defied the curfew and demanded an immediate transition to civilian rule and early elections. Less than 30 hours later, Ibn Auf resigned and was succeeded by Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan, who—unlike Ibn Auf—was neither implicated in war crimes nor was as closely associated with al-Bashir’s repressive rule. The curfew was lifted, additional political prisoners were freed, and some of the more notorious military, police, and intelligence leaders, as well as leading prosecutors, were dismissed. A half-hearted attempt by the army on April 15 to disperse the ongoing sit-in failed. Talks between pro-democracy leaders and the interim government are continuing, with a number of important concessions regarding banning members of al-Bashir’s party and the inclusion of pro-democracy leaders in the interim government, though many of the details as of this writing are still being negotiated and demands for a civilian-led transitional government remain.
A Brief History of Civil Resistance in Sudan
This is not the first time that the people of Sudan have risen up in a largely nonviolent pro-democracy insurrection against a dictatorial regime. In 1964, when the country was ruled by military dictator Ibrahim Abboud, large protests coalesced into a crippling general strike that forced him from power. A series of unstable civilian coalitions governed the country until a military coup in 1969 led by Jafaar Nimeiry, but his repressive rule was ended during the spring of 1985, when two weeks of largely nonviolent demonstrations and a general strike led to his ouster by the military. Protests continued until the military agreed to hand power over to an interim civilian government and allow for democratic elections.
Divisions within Sudan’s broad-based coalition government made it vulnerable to pressures from the military leaders and right-wing Islamists who, led by al-Bashir, seized power in 1989. In subsequent years, the regime decimated Sudanese civil society, including the country’s once-vibrant trade union movement, and imposed an ultra-conservative Islamist system backed by a brutal police state. Despite the severity of the repression, a series of aborted uprisings and mass protests swept the country, most significantly in 1998, 2011, 2012, and 2016. A pro-democracy coalition known as Girifna (Arabic for “We are fed up”) persisted despite many of their leaders being arrested or killed.
Striking Takeaways about Sudan’s Current Uprising
The Sudan uprising challenges a number of prevailing myths many people have in the West regarding unarmed civil insurrections.
Myth #1: Nonviolent tactics can’t work against highly repressive regimes
Sudan has generally been ranked among the most bloody, violent, totalitarian regimes in the world. Al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on multiple counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and other war crimes, and other top military leaders have been implicated as well. Pro-democracy activists have been repeatedly gunned down in the streets of Khartoum and other cities, yet the protests continued. In addition, unlike the 2011 uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in which the largely nonviolent movements also included rioting, arson, and violent confrontations with security forces, protesters in the Sudanese capital have made a conscious choice to remain nonviolent.
Myth #2: Civil resistance can’t work in impoverished countries with high illiteracy, little Internet access, and poor infrastructure
Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world, exacerbated by ongoing armed conflicts, rampant corruption, drought, and—despite being the largest country in Africa—a lack of adequate transport and other basic infrastructure. Both literacy and Internet access are among the lowest in the Arab world, with barely half the adult population being able to read and write. The country ranks near the bottom of the Human Development Index. Despite this, hundreds of thousands of people have been mobilized across the country.
Myth #3: Successful nonviolent struggle is unrealistic in countries with serious ethnic divisions or ongoing violent conflicts
Sudan has suffered from violent internal conflict and civil war for most of the period since its independence in 1956. War waged by separatists in the south led to that region’s independence in 2011, but fighting continues on both sides of the new border. The war in the Darfur region in the west, which has included acts of genocide against the Fur population, continues. The Arab-led military government has discriminated against other minorities as well, including the Beja, Nuba, and Fallata. Yet all major ethnic groups have been participating in the uprising. In addition to the protests in the capital of Khartoum, massive demonstrations have taken place in such northeastern cities as Atbara (where the uprising began) and Port Sudan, to the southeastern city of El-Gadarif, to the western city of Al-Fashir, the capital of Darfur.
This underscores that both the desire for political freedom and the strategy of nonviolent civil resistance to obtain it are not restricted to a nation’s level of development, political stability, structure of governance, or its particular ethnic, religious, and cultural traditions. The Sudanese demonstrators’ willingness to maintain a strict nonviolent discipline, far greater than in many pro-democracy struggles in more “developed” countries, is also an important reminder that the appreciation of the strategic importance of nonviolent action is far from being primarily a Western construct.
Unlike many in the pro-democracy struggle in Egypt earlier this decade who naively trusted the military to be an ally, the Sudanese are remaining steadfast in demanding civilian leadership and a minimal political role for the country’s armed forces. Refusing to be placated by significant concessions that the transitional government is offering, and demanding they also step down is a high-risk/high-reward strategy. The leadership of the Sudanese army has shown its willingness to order large-scale massacres in the past. However, pro-democracy forces are hoping that—even if such orders are given—ordinary soldiers and an emerging younger generation of more moderate middle-level officers would refuse to carry them out.
With thousands of Sudanese still on the streets as of this writing, the pro-democracy movement appears to believe they have the winning hand.
Trump’s Controversial Decision on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
There is little question that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is bad news. Some of its units have engaged in severe repression of nonviolent dissidents, supported Assad’s brutal counter-insurgency operations in Syria, backed hardline Islamist militia in several foreign countries, and more… [Full Article]
The Other Reason Biden Shouldn’t Run
Anyone wondering about former Vice-President Joe Biden’s fitness for the presidency ought to be concerned about the recent allegations of inappropriate touching. But there is another issue that deserves consideration: his key role in making possible an inappropriate and utterly disastrous war.
As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002, Biden stated that Saddam Hussein had a sizable arsenal of chemical weapons as well as biological weapons, including anthrax, and that “he may have a strain” of smallpox, despite UN inspectors reporting that Iraq no longer appeared to have any weaponized chemical or biological agents. And even though the International Atomic Energy Agency had reported as far back as 1997 that there was no evidence whatsoever that Iraq had any ongoing nuclear program, Biden insisted that Saddam was “seeking nuclear weapons.”
At the start of hearings before his committee on July 31, 2002, Biden stated, “One thing is clear: These weapons must be dislodged from Saddam, or Saddam must be dislodged from power. If we wait for the danger from Saddam to become clear, it could be too late.”
“I do not believe this is a rush to war. I believe it is a march to peace and security.”
In an Orwellian twist of language designed to justify the war resolution, Biden claimed in Senate session in October 2002, “I do not believe this is a rush to war. I believe it is a march to peace and security.” This gave President Bush the unprecedented authority to invade a country on the far side of the world that was no threat to the United States.
During the summer of 2002, as the Bush Administration was pushing for war, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, under Biden, had the opportunity to hear from any number of academics, former foreign service officials, United Nations personnel, and others specializing in Iraq. Public statements and leaks from the administration in the preceding months had been filled with false claims regarding Iraq’s military capabilities and links to terrorist groups while insisting a U.S. invasion and occupation of that country would go smoothly, with minimal casualties or other negative consequences.
When the hearings commenced on July 31, eighteen witnesses were called, none of whom challenged the administration’s claims that Iraq was in possession of chemical and biological weapons and a nuclear weapons program. All three witnesses who addressed the question of Al-Qaeda claimed that Iraq directly supported the Islamist terrorist group.
Despite overwhelming opposition among academics and foreign service officers familiar with the region, among the twelve witnesses who addressed whether the United States should invade, six were supportive, four were ambivalent, and only two opposed it. Among the witnesses was former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, whom Biden insisted was credible despite multiple perjury indictments for lying before Congress and his history of grossly exaggerating the military capabilities of Nicaragua, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and other designated enemies of the United States.
Throughout the hearings, Biden insisted that Iraq was a threat to U.S. national security and that “regime change” was a legitimate U.S. policy. And he expressed skepticism that renewed inspections would work.
Scott Ritter, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, noted just prior to the hearings, “For Senator Biden’s Iraq hearings to be anything more than a political sham used to invoke a modern-day Gulf of Tonkin resolution-equivalent for Iraq, his committee will need to ask hard questions—and demand hard facts—concerning the real nature of the weapons threat posed by Iraq.”
Biden insisted that Iraq was a threat to U.S. national security and that “regime change” was a legitimate U.S. policy.
But Biden had no intention of doing so, refusing to even allow Ritter—who knew more about Iraq’s WMD capabilities than anyone and would have testified that Iraq had achieved at least qualitative disarmament—to testify. (Ironically, on Meet the Press in 2007, Biden defended his false claims about Iraqi WMDs by insisting that “everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them.”)
Biden also refused to honor requests by some of his Democratic colleagues to include in the hearings some of the leading anti-war scholars familiar with Iraq and Middle East. Nor did Biden call some of the dissenting officials in the Pentagon or State Department who were willing to challenge the alarmist claims.
Ritter accused Biden of having “preordained a conclusion that seeks to remove Saddam Hussein from power regardless of the facts and . . . using these hearings to provide political cover for a massive military attack on Iraq.”
Had Biden allowed for additional hearings with a witness list more representative of the widespread opposition by those actually familiar with Iraq, it is possible the vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate authorizing the war could have turned out differently, and tragedy would have been averted.
Biden has claimed that his support for the war resolution was largely an effort to pressure Iraq to allow for the return of United Nations inspectors. Ironically, Biden supported President Bill Clinton’s decision to remove the inspectors in 1998 in order to launch a four-day bombing campaign that December despite being warned that it would likely end Saddam’s cooperation, and then subsequently insisted that “Saddam kicked them out.”
More significantly, even after the U.N. weapons inspectors had been engaged in months of unfettered inspections in early 2003, Biden expressed no objections when Bush decided to invade anyway. And a full year after it became apparent that Iraq didn’t actually have these weapons or weapons systems, Biden insisted that he still didn’t regret voting “to give the President the authority to use force in Iraq. I still believe my vote was just.”
Indeed, Biden supported the subsequent bloody counter-insurgency war for the rest of his Senate career, speaking out against bringing the troops home or even setting a timetable for withdrawal. He even became a major advocate of splitting Iraq along ethnic and sectarian lines, seen by most people familiar with the region as very dangerous and irresponsible.
Despite arms control analysts and former U.N. inspectors informing Biden that Iraq had achieved at least qualitative disarmament, and articles in newspapers, arms-control journals, and online think tanks challenging the Bush Administration’s claims regarding Iraqi possession of “weapons of mass destruction,” Biden continued to falsely claim “everyone in the world thought he had them.”
Was Biden’s support for the war simply a “mistake” as he claims, or is it indicative of a broader disdain for the United Nations Charter and Nuremberg Principles’ prohibition against such invasions by one country of another? Indeed, as far back as 1998, Biden was openly questioning the efficacy of the then-ongoing UN inspections and calling for an invasion to remove Saddam.
Despite Biden’s role in making possible the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it is not necessarily a reflection of what his foreign policy would be like if he became President. Along with many hawkish positions, Biden has taken relatively moderate ones as well. For example, he opposed U.S. intervention in Central America in the 1980s, opposed the 1991 Gulf War and, as vice-president, supported negotiations with Iran, opposed the troop surge in Afghanistan and questioned U.S. intervention in Libya.
Along with many hawkish positions, Biden has taken relatively moderate ones as well.
Biden has never been consistently allied with neoconservative intellectuals, or the unreconstructed militarists who so heavily influenced the foreign policies of the Bush Administration. Nor was he as hawkish as former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Given the imperative of stopping Trump from being re-elected, it may be necessary to support Biden should be become the 2020 Democratic nominee. Still, an examination of the four presidential elections since the Iraq War resolution is instructive. The anti-Iraq War nominee Barack Obama coasted to two decisive victories while John Kerry and Hillary Clinton—burdened by their support for the Iraq War, which lowered turnout and overall enthusiasm among the party’s anti-war base—ended up losing close elections.
In the meantime, in what will likely be a competitive primary season among a large number of candidates, none of whom supported the war and some of whom will likely contrast his reluctance to support Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal with his support for a war which will likely end up costing American taxpayers two trillion dollars.
Biden’s role in making possible the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the carnage and destabilization that resulted, is something for which he needs to be held accountable. It should be a central issue in the upcoming campaign.
U.S. Recognition of Israel’s Golan Annexation a Threat to World Order
The Trump Administration’s decision to recognize Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights—Syrian territory seized in the June 1967 war—marks a serious violation of fundamental principles of international law. The inadmissibility of any country expanding its territory by force is a longstanding principle of the international legal order, enshrined in the United Nations Charter, U.N. Security Council resolutions, and repeatedly confirmed by the International Court of Justice.
Following its conquest of the Golan region, Israeli forces drove out most of its residents in what has accurately been called ethnic cleansing. The Druze inhabitants of the five remaining villages suffered under years of Israeli military occupation and largely remain loyal to Syria. Protests immediately broke out following Trump’s announcement. When Israel tried to impose its laws on the region in 1981, the Syrian Druze engaged in a successful nonviolent resistance campaign, blocking Israeli efforts to force them to carry Israeli ID cards, conscript them into the Israeli military, and other efforts to incorporate them into Israel.
In response to Israel’s attempted annexation, the U.N. Security Council in 1981 unanimously adopted, with the support of the United States, resolution 497, which declared that “the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction, and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect.”
But the United States blocked any effort to enforce this and related resolutions.
Subsequently, the Israeli government has been building settlements in the fertile highlands and growing Golan’s Jewish population to some 26,000 people, in violation of international law and U.N. Security Council resolutions, which prohibit occupying powers from settling civilians onto territories seized by military force.
Again, however, the United States has blocked enforcement of these resolutions and Israeli colonization has therefore continued unabated.
Due to the ongoing Syrian civil war and war crimes by the Assad regime, few are suggesting an immediate return of the Golan to Syria. However, a number of other options are available, including handing over the territory to United Nations administration, as took place following the Indonesian withdrawal from occupied East Timor in 1999.
The timing of the U.S. decision was widely seen as an effort to boost the chances of Israel’s rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
International reaction to Trump’s decision has been overwhelmingly negative. The French foreign ministry noted how “The recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, occupied territory, would be contrary to international law, in particular the obligation for states not to recognize an illegal situation.” The German government condemned the “unilateral steps” taken by Washington, D.C., observing that, “If national borders should be changed, it must be done through peaceful means between all those involved.”
Former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Tamara Cofman Wittes noted in a tweet that the decision “yanks the rug out from under U.S. policy opposing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, as well as U.S. views on other disputed territories.”
Along with the State Department’s decision to no longer refer to the West Bank as occupied territory, the Golan decision may also serve as precedent to recognize Israeli sovereignty over much of the Palestinian territory seized in the 1967 war. It will no doubt embolden other governments with expansionist agendas, such as Morocco, which has occupied much of Western Sahara since 1975.
“If Washington stops upholding the core international principle opposing the acquisition of territory by force,” warns Wittes, “we should expect more states to seize territory they covet from their neighbors.”
The timing of the U.S. decision was widely seen as an effort to boost the chances of Israel’s rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, currently in a tough re-election fight in the face of an imminent indictment on corruption charges.
But the move also destroys any hope of the United States playing a role in negotiating an end to Syria’s civil war and strengthens the hand of Syria’s brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad, enabling him to play the nationalist card and reinforce his alliance with the Iranian regime and the radical Lebanese Hezbollah.
“It really puts the moderates in an impossible position,” observed Bassma Kodmani, a Syrian opposition leader and member of the negotiating team. “Assad will mobilize with the help of Iran and justify the presence of Iran, and the presence of militias, and the aggressive posture of Iran in the region.”
Despite Trump’s claim that Israeli control of the Golan Heights is vital for Israeli security, there is a growing awareness within Israel that it is far less important in an era when the principal threats to Israel’s security come in the form of suicide bombers and long-range missiles. Israeli army chief Lt. Gen Moshe Yaalon observed in 2004 , that Israel could cede the Golan Heights in return for peace and more successfully defend Israel’s internationally recognized border.
Trump’s dangerous and rash decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan was actually built on policy failures of previous administrations. Israel and Syria came close to a peace agreement in early 2000 when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to withdraw from Syrian territory in return for the Syrian government agreeing to strict security guarantees, normalized relations, the demilitarization of the Golan, and the end of support for radical anti-Israel groups. A dispute regarding the exact demarcation of the border, constituting no more than a few hundred yards, prevented a final settlement.
With the death of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad later that year and the coming to power of the rightwing Likud Bloc in the subsequent Israeli election, talks were indefinitely suspended. Assad’s successor, Bashar al-Assad, called for the resumption of talks where they left off, but both Israel and the United States rejected the proposal. A 2003 resolution supported by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress insisted that Syria enter new talks “unconditionally,” effectively rejecting the position of the more moderate Israeli government of former Prime Minister Barak and instead embraced the rejectionist position of the subsequent right-wing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
In 2006, several prominent members of the Israeli cabinet—including Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Internal Security Minister Avid Dichter—called on their government to resume negotiations with Syria. Although Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appointed a senior aide to prepare for possible talks, such initiatives did not get any support from Washington. According to the Jewish Daily Forward, it appeared that “Israel would be prepared to open a channel with Syria but does not want to upset the Bush administration.”
Indeed, when Israeli officials asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about pursuing exploratory talks with Syria, her answer, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was, “don’t even think about it.” Similarly, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Israeli government officials “understood from President Bush that the United States would not take kindly to reopening a dialogue between Israel and Syria.”
U.S. pressure succeeded. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly expressed concern that it would be inappropriate to counter President Bush’s “clear position on this issue” and who is “Israel’s most important ally.” Similarly, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres was quoted as saying, “The worse thing we could do is contradict the United States, which opposes negotiating with Syria.” Interior Minister Ronni Baron told a television reporter, “When the question on the agenda is the political legacy of Israel’s greatest friend, President Bush, do we really need now to enter into negotiations with Syria?”
The failure of the United States to help bring peace between Syria and Israel when it was possible has now led us to the point where Trump and Netanyahu believe they can get away with this dangerous defiance of international legal norms and worsen an already difficult situation regarding Israel, Syria, and its neighbors. The decision could play a major role in destabilizing an already-tenuous world order.
‘More AIPAC Than J Street’: Kamala Harris Runs to the Right on Foreign Policy
California’s junior senator Kamala Harris has announced her presidential candidacy, joining what will likely become an unusually large field of Democrats seeking the nomination.
Harris is being embraced by many progressive Democrats, and she’s branding herself as a progressive. Yet in the course of her little more than two years in the U.S. Senate, she’s taken some foreign policy positions that should give pause to supporters of human rights and international law.
An Unpromising Start
In her very first foreign policy vote in January 2017, for instance, Harris sided with President Trump in criticizing the outgoing President Obama’s refusal to veto an otherwise-unanimous, very modest, and largely symbolic UN Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements. Among other things, that resolution reiterated previous Security Council calls for Israel to stop expanding its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, which violate the Fourth Geneva Convention and a landmark ruling by the International Court of Justice.
The Senate resolution, on the other hand — which Harris herself co-sponsored — challenged the right of the United Nations to weigh in on questions of international humanitarian law in territories under foreign belligerent occupation.
The Security Council resolution called on both the Israeli and Palestinian governments to prevent violence against civilians, condemn and combat terrorism, refrain from inciting violence, and comply with their obligations under international law. But Harris’s resolution called the UN version “one-sided,” and effectively equated opposition to the illegal colonization drive by Israel’s right-wing government with opposition to Israel itself.
Harris’s measure also appeared to argue that Obama’s decision to abstain on the UN resolution somehow undermines the Oslo Accords for an eventual two-state solution. Mysteriously, according to Harris, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s expansion of settlements to the point that the establishment of viable contiguous Palestinian states alongside Israel is no longer possible does not.
Harris insists that the United Nations should not have any role regarding Israel and Palestine. Her resolution asserts that the issue of these illegal settlements should be decided only through U.S.-sponsored “direct talks” between the Palestinians under occupation and their Israeli occupiers. Not only has Kamala Harris’s strategy not worked (since this has been U.S. policy for 25 years, during which the settlements have quadrupled), but Trump’s appointees focusing on the negotiations are all strong supporters of Israeli occupation and settlements and oppose Palestinian statehood.
In supporting this resolution, Harris sided with Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell against fellow California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and with Republican House leader Paul Ryan against Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi. This is a troubling indication of who her foreign policy allies will be if she becomes president.
Setting Roadblocks to Peace
On the 50th anniversary of Israel’s 1967 conquest of neighboring Arab territories, Harris supported another Senate resolution celebrating the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. As an apparent effort to discredit reports by human rights groups critical of Israeli treatment of non-Jewish residents in the city, the resolution praised Israel for ensuring that the rights of Muslim and Christian Palestinians were “respected and protected.”
Though professing to support a two-state solution, Harris has repeatedly refused to make any distinction between criticisms of the Israeli occupation and colonization in the West Bank and attacks on Israel itself.
She’s accused campaigns supporting boycotts and divestment targeting the Israeli occupation of anti-Semitism, and she claims that efforts in the United Nations to pressure the Netanyahu government to end its violations of international humanitarian law are actually designed to “delegitimize Israel.” She even signed a letter criticizing the United Nations and its agencies for such efforts which commended Trump’s former UN Ambassador Nicki Haley’s attacks on the world body.
Harris insists that lasting peace can only take place if the Palestinians not only uphold their recognition and security guarantees to Israel, but explicitly recognize Israel as “Jewish state,” a requirement not made of Egypt and Jordan in their peace agreements. Indeed, there appears to have never been a peace treaty in which recognition of a country’s ethnic or religious identity has been a requirement for ending a conflict, particularly by those who are discriminated against by virtue of such an identity.
By adding this condition to the peace process, which even the most moderate Palestinian leader would be unable to support, she appears to be attempting to place the blame for the lack of negotiated settlement on those under Israeli occupation.
“More AIPAC Than J Street”
At some point or another, most Democratic senators have supported pro-Israel resolutions and made statements regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that have left supporters of human rights and international law disappointed.
Harris, however, goes well beyond the perfunctory pro-Israel positions so common in Washington.
For example, The Intercept reports: “Unlike some of her counterparts in the Senate, she has not publicly made any demands of Israel or Netanyahu regarding the human rights of Palestinians.” In another case, she refused to join fellow Democratic senators and presidential aspirants like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in signing a letter to Netanyahu demanding a halt to the impending demolition of a Palestinian village. Nor has she joined Sanders and Warren in criticizing Israel’s excessive use of lethal force against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Despite damning reports on Israeli repression against Arabs in both the West Bank and Israeli proper — reports made by international human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human rights Watch, as well as by Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence — Harris has lionized Israel as being a “beautiful home to democracy and justice.”
While most Democrats today ally more with the moderate pro-Israel group J Street rather than the hardline AIPAC, which has generally backed Republicans in recent years, Harris has been virtually the only Democrat to appear before the right-wing pro-Netanyahu organization each year since being elected to the Senate. Indeed, as the Jewish Telegraph Agency observed, her record demonstrates that “She’s more AIPAC than J Street.”
The Right of Conquest
It is not unusual for otherwise progressive members of Congress to have a blind spot when it comes to Israel and Palestine. However, Harris views are not only particularly extreme and dangerous, but may be indicative of a wider contempt for human rights and international law in her foreign policy views overall.
It’s important to note that Harris’s views aren’t necessarily worse than some other Democratic contenders for the nomination, including Cory Booker and Kristen Gillibrand. However, those senators are already seen as suspect by progressive party activists as a result of their centrist policies on a number of issues, whereas Harris appears to have created more of a buzz on the party’s left, most of whom are unaware of her foreign policy views.
Harris claims to support a two-state solution, yet in practice she has given no indication that she would be willing to take any steps to make that possible. Indeed, she has supported policies that would make such a settlement impossible.
By rejecting any role for the United Nations or the relevance of international humanitarian law in occupied territories, and by insisting that such questions should only be resolved through voluntary agreement of the occupying power, Harris is effectively giving license to aggressors worldwide to conquer and occupy their neighbors with impunity. She appears to embrace a neoconservative worldview which supports the right of conquest and rejects international law, including the inadmissibility of countries expanding their territory by force and colonizing these conquered territories with their citizens.
If Harris’s position on Israel and Palestine is indeed reflective of her overall world view, she is therefore essentially endorsing the right of conquest over the right of self-determination. It raises the questions as to whether, had she been in office in the 1950s, she would have defended the right of the French to colonize Algeria and the British to colonize Kenya and Rhodesia, and opposed any efforts by the United Nations in decolonization.
Given the broader implications of Harris’s hardline positions regarding Israel and Palestine, they should not go unchallenged. Given how she has only begun to address foreign policy issues since coming to the U.S. Senate two years ago, perhaps her views are somewhat malleable. Progressive activists are pushing the Democratic Party left on a range of issues this year, and foreign policy should be no exception.
Rescinding a Human Rights Award to Angela Davis Was Cowardly and Unfair
This past October, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute announced that activist, author, and scholar Angela Davis would be presented with the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award at the group’s annual gala event next month. The announcement described Davis as “one of the most globally recognized champions of human rights, giving voice to those who are powerless to speak.”
Davis—professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz—has long been known for her outspoken advocacy and solidarity work on behalf of oppressed peoples, particularly political prisoners, throughout the world. Her long history of solidarity work has included support for national liberation struggles in Vietnam, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere.
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute is a museum and research center in Alabama, documenting the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. That it would choose to honor Davis is fitting. Davis is a Birmingham native, and her mother, who worked with the institute in the 1990s, was a personal acquaintance of Shuttlesworth, the prominent clergyman and civil rights activist for which the award is named.
However, on January 4, the institute announced it was rescinding the award and canceling the event. “Upon closer examination of Ms. Davis’ statements and public record,” the statement reads, “we concluded that she unfortunately does not meet all of the criteria on which the award is based.” The institute said it acted after “supporters and other concerned individuals and organizations, both inside and outside of our local community, began to make requests that we reconsider our decision.”
The cancellation of Davis’s award appears to have been prompted by her support for the Palestinians.
The cancellation of Davis’s award appears to have been prompted by her support for the Palestinians, particularly her endorsement of the international campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli occupation.
It has been more than seven decades since the founding of the United Nations and the codification of international legal standards regarding the inadmissibility of countries expanding their borders by military force. One would think, then, that opposing Israel control of Palestinian territories seized in the 1967 war, which the international community recognizes as a foreign belligerent occupation, would not be particularly controversial. Unfortunately, it appears that that the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute believes otherwise.
Undeniably, some BDS advocates do unfairly single out Israel, and may indeed be motivated by anti-Semitism. But this is certainly not the case with Davis, a graduate of the predominantly Jewish Brandeis University, where she noted, “I learned to be as passionate about opposition to anti-Semitism as to racism.”
In a statement released Monday evening, she stated, “I am proud to have worked closely with Jewish organizations and individuals on issues of concern to all of our communities throughout my life. In many ways, this work has been integral to my growing consciousness regarding the importance of protesting the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
It would be particularly ironic for Davis’s award to be denied over her BDS advocacy, given the importance of the tactic of boycotts during the U.S. civil rights struggle. It is also indicative of a deep anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia, even among those who profess to support civil rights.
Unfortunately, rather than acknowledge the apparent bigotry and repudiation of international law by the institute some people are blaming Jews. Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin, who serves as an ex officio member of the institute’s board, claims the decision came “after protests from our local Jewish community and some of its allies.”
But it was not the co-called “Jewish community” that made the decision, but the overwhelmingly non-Jewish institute’s board. Furthermore, American Jews have never been more divided regarding Israel and the occupation. As one Southern Jewish activist tweeted, “Xtian zionists had the power to blackball Angela Davis and now the Jews are becoming the scapegoat here and face of that decision, shielding the evangelicals from blame.”
Pressure to rescind the invitation came from non-Jewish sources as well, including former Birmingham-Southern College president Gen. Charles Krulak (retired), who served as deputy director of the White House Military Office during the Reagan Administration and later Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. He cited Davis’s former membership in the Communist Party and support for the Black Panthers.
Not only is the decision to cancel the award an injustice, it feeds into the divide-and-rule tactics of the right by sowing division between the African-American and Jewish communities. As Davis herself noted, “The rescinding of this invitation was thus not primarily an attack against me but rather against the spirit of the indivisibility of justice.”
Politicians Are Not Going to Hold Saudi Arabia Accountable
DESPITE THE manifold horrors inflicted by the Saudi regime over the years, it was not until the grisly murder of a well-connected exiled journalist in early October that public attention has finally been given to the monarchy’s savagery.
Despite Everything, U.S. Troops Should Leave Syria
Donald Trump’s sudden decision to remove U.S. forces from Syria appears to have been impetuous and ill-considered — apparently a result of a conversation with Turkey’s autocratic president Recep Erdo?an. That doesn’t mean, however, that the United States should remain in that country.