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Category: Iraq

  • Biden Acts with Impunity

    Recall the broad context.

    In March 2003, in the worst crime of the 21st century, a war-based-on-lies led by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the U.S. invaded and destroyed the modern country of Iraq, generating mass flight and civil war. Half a million people were killed and the suffering continues.

    Too soon do we forget the magnitude of the atrocity, including the cheerful murderous bombing sprees revealed by Wikileaks, the Abu Ghraib torture, the ignorant mishandling of Sunni-Shiite issues, the civil war and terror engendered by the criminal occupation. During the Trump years our attention’s been focused on one evil man, who happens to have actually pursued a policy of withdrawal from the Middle East. We forget how the man now president supported this war enthusiastically and praised his son Beau for his “service” in Iraq in 2008-9 when the oppressive, imperialist nature of the (de facto ongoing) occupation was perfectly clear.

    By October 2003 it was clear that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no appreciable al-Qaeda links. The secular regime had been replaced by an unpopular occupation provoking an insurgency. In October 2004 as the civil war between Sunnis and Shiites intensified (produced by the occupiers’ decision to eliminate the traditional Sunni vehicles of power including the national army and the Baath Party) the Jordanian Abu Musad Zarqawi established a militant group in Anbar Province that called itself Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. This group took root in Iraq, but was largely driven out into Syria, where it eventually established itself in the north as ISIL (aka the Islamic State, Daesh, ISIS). (So–flourishing first in Iraq due to U.S. destabilization, ISIL then flourished in Syria, again due largely to U.S. destabilization the the neighboring country.)

    In 2011 U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq in accordance with the agreement signed between the U.S.-recognized government and Bush. (Obama dearly wanted to retain forces in Iraq but balked at the Iraqi demand than any small force remaining be subject to Iraqi law. This demand was in response to popular revulsion against rampant U.S. war crimes. It is normal in U.S. military relations with other countries for Washington to insist on judicial extraterritoriality for U.S. forces. This is the case in Japan, Germany, Italy, and South Korea. That the Iraqi regime refused to concede on this point was an indication that the troops’ presence was truly despised and unwanted even by by the Iraqi regime it had brought to power, to say nothing of the Iraqi people.)

    In destabilized Syria, where U.S. forces invading the country were working with Kurdish separatists (not to promote their national cause but to undermine Bashar Assad), ISIL was able in January 2014 capture the regional capital of Raqqa. It then rapidly fanned out of Syria into northern Iraq, overwhelming Mosul, Ramallah, and Fajullah.  Alarmed at the prospect of Baghdad’s collapse (how embarrassing for the U.S. to have toppled the Saddam regime–having falsely accusing it of terrorist ties–only to watch the puppet regime and its panic-stricken U.S.-trained troops buckle before REAL terrorists: the al-Qaeda spinoff ISIL!). The U.S had to offer to return to assist in defending the Iraq state against the demonic Caliphate. The Iraqis were obliged to accept the offer, and to meanwhile create militia that could perform better than the U.S.-trained troops that had fled the battlefield. In 2014 the Popular Mobilization Forces (including Kitaib Hizbollah and Kitaib Sayyal al Shuhada) were officially established as part of Iraqi state forces, to fight ISIL terror.

    They are not all “Shiite militias,” by the way. The PMF include Sunni Arab militia, and there are many groups that include Christians and Yezidis. Their members’ morale may be higher than that of the regular (U.S.-trained) army soldiers, and there may be religious aspects to that. But to suggest these are more religious (“Shiite”) than other nationalist militants would be misleading.

    It is very likely that most members of most Iraqi militias oppose the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil. They may acknowledge U.S assistance against ISIL (especially by the bombing of Mosul in 2017, something the U.S. is good at) but note that much of the heavy fighting was done by the militias, with some Iranian support. It should not surprise anyone that Iranians would want to unite with Iraqi coreligionists against the viciously intolerant Sunni forces of ISIL. But the U.S. has consistently depicted any Iranian involvement in the next-door country since 2003 as improper “interference” in its own state-building project 6000 miles from the U.S. West Coast.

    The head of Kitaib Hizbollah–which the Pentagon accuses of the attacks that prompted the 2/25 strike on Iraqis in Syria, to send Iran a message–was, until 3 January 2020, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes. You might recall that he was assassinated by a U.S. missile strike in a car on the road outside of Baghdad Airport with visiting Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. The general was on a diplomatic mission at Baghdad’s invitation when Trump killed them both, to the deep embarrassment of the Iraqi government which protested the egregious violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

    Two days later the Iraq parliament voted to expel all foreign forces from the country. Trump laughed at the demand, as usual threatening punishment should the Iraqis kick out U.S. forces–cruel punishment worse than any sanctions ever applied to Iraq! It would not be surprising if Iraqi militias lob missiles into U.S. bases, if they can. It is often unclear who is responsible for an attack; the attack in Erbil that killed a U.S. contractor last month was attributed by the Baghdad government to ISIL, which has much to gain from a U.S. confrontation with Iran.

    After Joe Biden’s election Iran publicly counseled Iraqi militias to refrain from attacking U.S. targets. Obviously Tehran was optimistic about a U.S. return to the Iran Deal and did not want to give the U.S. any pretext to tarry on the matter. Kitaib Hizbollah issued a statement declaring that Iran did not determine its policies and it would respond to the unwelcome U.S presence as it saw fit. But it is not clear that it is responsible for any of the recent attacks.

    On 2/25 the U.S. under new President Biden launched missile strikes on a site in SYRIA (where the U.S. has troops illegally operating, still attempting to effect regime change) to kill IRAQIS to (as Secretary of “Defense” Lloyd Austin explains it) send a “message to IRAN” that it “can’t act with impunity.” That is: the U.S. will interpret the actions of any Shiites in the world against its own (real or imagined) interests as  “Iranian” acts of impunity against itself. It will continue to stupidly conflate Iraqi Shiites, Syrian Alewites, Yemeni Zaidis and Iranian Twelvers swallowing the (Wahhabist Sunni) Saudi propaganda about a threatening “Shiite crescent” from the Mediterranean to central Afghanistan.

    U.S. news anchors and talking heads will continue to carelessly substitute “Iranian militia” for “Iraqi militia” not even noticing nor caring if they err. There is no law in this country of lies, in this season of lies, that prevents someone like CNN’s Richard Engel from constructing a story about Iranian provocation and leaving out all the points made above.

    What, you thought the lies were over with Trump gone? You thought Biden was going to be a straight-shooter, and would–while handling the burning issue of structural racism in this country–also end a century and a half of imperialist aggression based on lies? You thought maybe the critic of racism and police murder would become the critic of imperialism, regime change, and the sort of racist essentializing applied the Iran and Arab Shiites?

    Consider this: Gen. Austin thanked the Iraqi government for its cooperation in planning the attack to send the message to Iran. Never mind that Iran has actually since the U.S. election discouraged any actions against U.S. troops in Iraq. Never mind that the Iraqi government issued a denial of any consultations with the U.S. in the attack. (Pentagon press secretary Kirby had to acknowledge under questioning 2/26 that the Iraqis did not assist the U.S. with targeting.) Never mind that a force the Iraqis want out of their country killed an anti-ISIL Iraqi warrior helping the neighboring country of Syria rid itself of the hated ISIL. This is meant as a message to IRAN—to make it clear that the US. can act with impunity for the near term, anywhere it wants—under Biden just as it did under Trump.

    *****

    It appears Kitaib Hizbollah (which again is a leading force within the PMF, integrated into the Iraqi defense structure) has responded to the murder of their member in Syria by an attack on the al-Assad Air Field in central Iraq. A reminder that the Iraqi people have asked the U.S. to leave.

    Questions for Pentagon spokesperson Kirby:

    Have the Iranians poisoned the minds of Iraqis, with anti-U.S. propaganda? Did Iraqis need to learn from Iranians to hate people who (again) attacked them in a war killing half a million, based on lies? Following a decade of vicious sanctions that killed half a million kids?

    Does one have to imagine a specifically SHIITE linkage, between the various movements in the region that refuse to submit to U.S. imperialism? Do the mullahs in Tehran set the policies of Lebanon’s Hizbollah? Or Syria’s secular government?

    Observations:

    There is a good deal of racist essentialism here, ignorance combined with malice. It is as though the U.S. imperialists expect the Iraqis to say thank you for the destroying our country, installing a new government, training a failed army, and blocking our efforts to strengthen neighborly relations with Iran! Thank you for saving us from ISIL after you virtually created it by your cruelty and idiocy during the first year of your occupation! Thank you for standing by us even as you continue to insult the Iraqi people an state!

    But that’s not the message of the strike on al-Assad base. The message Biden needs to hear remains “Get out!” not double-down. Iraqis have ample reason to hate the presence of U.S. troops, who are NOT the “heroes” Biden paints them as routinely as he invokes God’s blessing on them (with all the sincerity with which a mullah blesses jihadis). They are unwelcome remnants of the crime of the century: the U.S. war to destroy Iraq as a powerful independent Arab country.

    On 2/25 Biden attacked three countries simultaneously to remind them that the U.S. “does not distinguish” between its Muslim foes but conflates Persians with Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites, terrorists and anti-terrorist militia. Primarily the attack was to intimate Iran, to signal to it that the U.S. is in no rush to revive the Iran Deal and wants more concessions before rejoining. But it was also a warning to all people of the region–that if they expected major changes in U.S. capitalist- imperialist impunity with a change of faces in the White House, they were optimistic.

    The post Biden Acts with Impunity first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “Is This Who We Are?”: Gitmo is America’s Enduring Shame

    “That’s certainly our goal and our intention.” This was the non-committal answer given by White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, when, on February 12, she was asked by a reporter whether the new Joe Biden Administration intends to shut down the notorious Guantánamo Bay Prison by the end of the president’s first term in office.

    Psaki’s answer may have seemed reassuring, that the untold suffering experienced by hundreds of men in this American gulag – many of whom were surely innocent – would be finally coming to an end. However, considering the history of Guantánamo and the trail of broken promises by the Barack Obama Administration, the new administration’s pledge is hardly encouraging.

    Compare the new language with that of Obama’s impassioned diatribes about humanity, justice and American values, which he utilized whenever he spoke of Guantánamo. “Gitmo has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law,” Obama said at a speech at the National Defense University in May 2013.

    Enamored with his every word, Obama’s audience clapped with enthusiasm. When he delivered that particular speech, Obama was then serving his second term in office. He already had ample opportunity to shut down the prison which operated with no international monitoring and entirely outside the realms of international and US laws.

    Obama is likely to be remembered for his words, not his actions. Not only did he fail to shut down the prison which was erected by his predecessor, George W. Bush, in 2002, but the Guantánamo industry continued to thrive during his terms. For example, in his speech, Obama made  reference to the high cost of “a hundred and fifty million dollars each year to imprison 166 people.” According to the New Yorker, reporting in 2016, Guantánamo’s budget had morphed to “$445 million last year,” when Obama was still in office.

    Yet, as the budget grew by leaps and bounds, the number of Guantánamo prisoners dwindled. Currently, there are only 40 prisoners still residing in that massive edifice of metal, concrete and barbed wire located at the eastern tip of Cuba, built atop a piece of land ‘leased’ by the US in 1903.

    It is easy to conclude that the US government keeps the prison open only to avoid international accountability and, arguably, to extract information by torture, an act that is inconsistent with American laws. But this cannot be it. On the one hand, the entire wars against Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal under international law. Such a fact hardly stopped the US and its allies from savagely invading, humiliating and torturing entire populations with no regard whatsoever to legal or moral arguments.

    On the other hand, Guantánamo is merely one of many American-run prisons and detention centers throughout the world that operate with no manual of rules and according to the most ruthless tactics. The tragedy of Abu Ghraib, a US military detention center in Baghdad, only became famous when direct evidence of the degrading, and incredibly violent conduct that was taking place within its walls was produced and publicized.

    In fact, many American officials and members of Congress at the time used the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004 as an opportunity to whitewash and rebrand American crimes elsewhere and to present the misconduct in this Iraqi prison as if an isolated incident involving “a few bad apples”.

    The ‘few bad apples’ argument, made by G. W. Bush was, more or less, the same logic utilized by Obama when he championed the closure of Guantánamo. Indeed, both Presidents insisted that neither Abu Ghraib nor Guantánamo should be made out to represent what America is really all about.

    “Is this who we are?” Obama animatedly and passionately asked, as he made a case in favor of the closure of Guantánamo, speaking as if a human rights advocate, not a Commander-in-Chief who had direct authority to shut down the entire facility. The truth is that the Abu Ghraib tortures were not ‘a few bad apples’ and Guantánamo is, indeed, a microcosm of exactly what the US is, or has become.

    From Bagram, Afghanistan, to Abu Ghraib, Iraq, to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to the many ‘floating prisons’ –  news of which was leaked by US media in 2014 – the US government continues to make a mockery of international and humanitarian laws. Many American officials, who genuinely advocate the closure of Guantánamo, refuse to acknowledge that the prison is a symbol of their country’s intransigence and refuse to accept that, like any other country in the world, it is accountable to international law.

    This lack of accountability has exceeded the US government’s insistence to ‘act alone’, as in to launch wars without international mandates. One US Administration after another has also made it clear that, under no circumstances, would they allow accused war criminals to be investigated, let alone stand trial, before the International Criminal Court (ICC). The message here is that even America’s ‘bad apples’ can potentially walk free, regardless of the heinousness of their crimes.

    Just months after the Trump Administration imposed sanctions on ICC judges to punish them for the potential investigations of US crimes in Afghanistan, it freed the convicted criminals who carried out horrific crimes in Iraq. On December 22, Trump pardoned four American mercenaries who belonged to the private military firm, Blackwater. These convicted murderers were involved in the killing of 14 civilians, including two children, in Baghdad in 2007.

    What became known as the ‘Nisour Square massacre’ was another example of whitewashing, as government officials and mainstream media, though expressing outrage at the unlawful killing, insisted that the massacre was an isolated episode. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly civilians, were killed as a result of the American invasion seems irrelevant in the country’s skewed logic in its never-ending ‘war on terror’.

    Whether Biden fulfills his promise of shutting down Guantánamo or not, little will change if the US remains committed to its condescending attitude towards international law and to its undeserved view of itself as a country that exists above the universal rights of everyone else.

    That said, Guantánamo, on its own, is a crime against humanity and there can never be any justification to rationalize why hundreds of people are held indefinitely, without trial, without due process, without international observers and without ever seeing their families and loved ones. The explanation often offered by the pro-Guantánamo pundits is that the prison inmates are dangerous men. If that was, indeed, the case, why were these supposed criminals not allowed to see their day in court?

    According to a report by Amnesty International published in May 2020, of the 779 men who were taken to that facility, “only seven have been convicted.” Worse, five of them were convicted “as a result of pre-trial agreements under which they pleaded guilty, in return for the possibility of release from the base.” According to the rights group, such a trial by ‘military commission’ “did not meet fair trial standards”.

    In other words, Guantánamo is – and has always been – a fraudulent operation with no real inclination to holding criminals and terrorists accountable and to preventing further crimes. Instead, Guantánamo is an industry, and a lucrative one. In many ways, it is similar to the American prison military complex, ironically dubbed the ‘criminal justice system.’  Referring to the unjust ‘justice system’, Human Rights Watch derided the US for having “the largest reported prison population in the world”.

    “The (US) criminal justice system – from policing and prosecution, through to punishment – is plagued with injustices like racial disparities, excessively harsh sentencing and drug and immigration policies that improperly emphasize criminalization,” HRW stated on its website.

    The above, too, can be considered an answer to Obama’s rhetorical question, “Is this who we are?”. Yes, Mr. Obama, in fact, this is precisely who you are.

    While offering the world’s most miserable detention conditions to hundreds of potentially innocent men, Guantánamo also offers career opportunities, high military perks and honors, and a seemingly endless budget for a small army to guard only a few shackled, gaunt-looking men in a far-away land.

    So, even if Biden is able to overcome pressure from the military, from the CIA and from Congress to shut Guantánamo down, justice will still be absent, not only because of the numerous lives that are forever shattered but because America still refuses to learn from its mistakes.

    The post “Is This Who We Are?”: Gitmo is America’s Enduring Shame first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iraqi Resistance Groups Announce Confrontation With US Occupiers Until Liberation

    “The resistance sees confrontation as the only option that guarantees the freedom, dignity of this country after exhausting all the means that others have bet on with the occupation,” the coordinating body for the Iraqi resistance factions said in a statement on Thursday, according to the Iraqi media.

    “We are facing a new page from the pages of the resistance, in which the weapons of the resistance will reach all the occupation forces and its bases in any part of the homeland,” they said.

    Hailing the recent attacks against the “occupation forces”, the statement added that “the resistance has the legal and national right and popular support for all of that, but will not target diplomatic missions.”

    “The Iraqi resistance is an Iraqi decision, and its choice is the choice of the Iraqi people, and it will continue circumstances and sacrifices until Iraq is liberated from the filth of the occupation,” it said.

    The post Iraqi Resistance Groups Announce Confrontation With US Occupiers Until Liberation appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Trump and Biden’s Secret Bombing Wars

    Credit: The Intercept: U.S.-led coalition airstrike – Mosul, Iraq on November 7, 2016

    On February 25th, President Biden ordered U.S. air forces to drop seven 500-pound bombs on Iraqi forces in Syria, reportedly killing 22 people. The U.S. airstrike has predictably failed to halt rocket attacks on deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution to close over a year ago.

    The Western media reported the U.S. airstrike as an isolated and exceptional incident, and there has been significant blowback from the U.S. public, Congress and the world community, condemning the strikes as illegal and a dangerous escalation of yet another Middle East conflict.

    But unbeknownst to many Americans, the US. military and its allies are engaged in bombing and killing people in other countries on a daily basis. The U.S. and its allies have dropped more than 326,000 bombs and missiles on people in other countries since 2001 (see table below), including over 152,000 in Iraq and Syria.

    That’s an average of 46 bombs and missiles per day, day in day out, year in year out, for nearly 20 years. In 2019, the last year for which we have fairly complete records, the average was 42 bombs and missiles per day, including 20 per day in Afghanistan alone.

    So, if those seven 500-pound bombs were the only bombs the U.S. and its allies dropped on February 25th, it would have been an unusually quiet day for U.S. and allied air forces, and for their enemies and victims on the ground, compared to an average day in 2019 or most of the past 20 years. On the other hand, if the unrelenting U.S. air assault on countries across the Greater Middle East finally began to diminish over the past year, this bombing may have been an unusual spike in violence. But which of these was it, and how would we know?

    We don’t know, because our government doesn’t want us to. From January 2004 until February 2020, the U.S. military kept track of how many bombs and missiles it dropped on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and published those figures in regular, monthly Airpower Summaries, which were readily available to journalists and the public. But in March 2020, the Trump administration abruptly stopped publishing U.S. Airpower Summaries, and the Biden administration has so far not published any either.

    As with the human casualties and mass destruction that these hundreds of thousands of airstrikes cause, the U.S. and international media only report on a tiny fraction of them. Without regular U.S. Airpower Summaries, comprehensive databases of airstrikes in other war-zones and serious mortality studies in the countries involved, the American public and the world are left almost completely in the dark about the death and destruction our country’s leaders keep wreaking in our name. The disappearance of Airpower Summaries has made it impossible to get a clear picture of the current scale of U.S. airstrikes.

    Here are up-to-date figures on U.S. and allied airstrikes, from 2001 to the present, highlighting the secrecy in which they have abruptly been shrouded for the past year:

    These figures are based on U.S. Airpower Summaries for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s count of drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen; the Yemen Data Project‘s count of Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen; the New America Foundation’s database of foreign airstrikes in Libya; and other published statistics. Figures for 2021 are only through January.

    There are several categories of airstrikes that are not included in this table, meaning that the true numbers of airstrikes are certainly higher. These include:

    –    Helicopter strikes: Military Times published an article in February 2017 titled, “The U.S. military’s stats on deadly airstrikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported.” The largest pool of airstrikes not included in U.S. Airpower Summaries are strikes by attack helicopters. The U.S. Army told the authors its helicopters had conducted 456 otherwise unreported airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2016. The authors explained that the non-reporting of helicopter strikes has been consistent throughout the post-9/11 wars, and they still did not know how many actual missiles were fired in those 456 attacks in Afghanistan in the one year they investigated.

    –    AC-130 gunships: The airstrike that destroyed the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan in 2015 was not conducted with bombs or missiles, but by a Lockheed-Boeing AC-130 gunship. These machines of mass destruction, usually manned by U.S. Air Force special operations forces, are designed to circle a target on the ground, pouring howitzer shells and cannon fire into it, often until it is completely destroyed. The U.S. has used AC-130s in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria.

    –    Strafing runs: U.S. Airpower Summaries for 2004-2007 included a note that their tally of “strikes with munitions dropped… does not include 20mm and 30mm cannon or rockets.” But the 30mm cannons on A-10 Warthogs and other ground attack planes are powerful weapons, originally designed to destroy Soviet tanks. A-10s fire 65 depleted uranium shells per second to blanket an area with deadly and indiscriminate fire, but that does not count as a “weapons release” in U.S. Airpower Summaries.

    –   “Counter-insurgency” and “counter-terrorism” operations in other parts of the world. The United States formed a military coalition with 11 West African countries in 2005, and now has a drone base in Niger, but we have not found a database of U.S. and allied air strikes in that region, or in the Philippines, Latin America or elsewhere.

    It was clearly no coincidence that Trump stopped publishing Airpower Summaries right after the February 2020 U.S. withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, reinforcing the false impression that the war in Afghanistan was over. In fact, U.S. bombing resumed after only an 11-day pause.

    As our table shows, 2018 and 2019 were back-to-back record years for U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan. But how about 2020? Without the official records, we don’t know whether the withdrawal agreement led to a serious reduction in airstrikes or not.

    President Biden has foolishly tried to use airstrikes in Syria as “leverage” with Iran, instead of simply rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement as he promised during the election campaign. Biden is likewise trailing along in Trump’s footsteps by shrouding U.S. airstrikes in the secrecy that Trump used to obscure his failure to “end the endless wars.”

    It is entirely possible that the highly publicized February 25th airstrikes, like Trump’s April 2017 missile strikes on Syria, were a diversion from much heavier, but largely unreported, U.S. bombing already under way elsewhere, in that case the frightful destruction of Mosul, Iraq’s former second city.

    The only way that Biden can reassure the American public that he is not using Trump’s wall of secrecy to continue America’s devastating airwars, notably in Afghanistan, is to end this secrecy now, and resume the publication of complete and accurate U.S. Airpower Summaries.

    President Biden cannot restore the world’s respect for American leadership, or the American public’s support for our foreign policy, by piling more lies, secrets and atrocities on top of those he has inherited. If he keeps trying to do so, he might well find himself following in Trump’s footsteps in yet another way: as the failed, one-term president of a destructive and declining empire.

    The post Trump and Biden’s Secret Bombing Wars first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Biden’s Plan To ‘Carve Up’ Iraq Into Three Statelets Has Proven Disastrous

    Sami Ramadani is an Iraqi-born lecturer in sociology and writes on Middle East current affairs. A political exile from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Ramadani nonetheless campaigned against US-led sanctions as well as the invasion and occupation of the country. He is a member of the steering committee of Stop the War Coalition.

    Ramadani spoke at length with Mohamed Elmaazi about the consequences of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq and challenged some misconceptions regarding the nature of the resistance to the foreign military presence there. He also explained that an improvement of America’s foreign policy towards Iraq will be shaped by whether US President Joe Biden ditches his original plan to carve the country up into three separate ethno-religious statelets, with a weak central government.

    The post Biden’s Plan To ‘Carve Up’ Iraq Into Three Statelets Has Proven Disastrous appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • One More US Logistics Convoy Reportedly Hit By Roadside Bomb In Iraq

    The blast is the latest in a series of explosions that have targeted US-led coalition logistical convoys in Iraq over the past several months.

    A possible roadside bomb blast has ripped through a US military logistics convoy’s route in the central Iraqi province of Babil, Iran’s MEHR news agency cited unnamed sources as saying on Tuesday.

    There was no immediate word on casualties due the explosion. The latter is the most recent in a spate of such attacks staged in Iraq in the past few months. No group has claimed responsibility for the blast.  

    In early February, a logistical convoy carrying supplies for the US-led coalition in Iraq was hit in an improvised explosive device (IED) attack about 80 kilometres south of the capital Baghdad.

    The bomb was reportedly detonated on a road in the area of al-Musayyib, a Shia-majority town that witnessed heavy fighting between US forces and local militias in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

    The post One More US Logistics Convoy Reportedly Hit By Roadside Bomb In Iraq appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Delusions of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria

    Every power worth its portion of salt in the Levant these days seems to be doing it.  On February 25, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes against Syria.  The premise for the attacks was implausible.  “These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq,” claimed Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “and to ongoing threats to those personnel.”

    More specifically, the strikes were in retaliation for rocket attacks in northern Iraq on the airport of Erbil that left a Filipino contractor working for the US military dead and six others injured, including a Louisiana National Guard soldier.  The targets in Syria were facilities used by Iranian-backed militia groups, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada.  According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attack left up to 22 people dead.

    The Biden administration has resorted to tactics long embraced by US presidents.  To be noticed, you need to bomb a country.  The measure, more a sign of raging impotence than stark virility, is always larded with jargon and bureaucratic platitudes.  “We said a number of times that we will respond on our timeline,” explained Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to reporters keeping him company on a flight from California to Washington.  “We wanted to be sure of the connectivity and we wanted to be sure about the right targets.”  He was convinced “that the target was being used by the same Shia militants that conducted the [February 15] strikes.”

    Seven 500-pound bombs were used in the operation, though Stars and Stripes initially reported that “the type of weaponry used” was not disclosed.  The Pentagon had been keen to push a larger range of targets, but Biden was being presidential in restraint, approving, as the New York Times puts it, “a less aggressive option”.

    Kirby insisted the operation had been the sensible outcome of discussions with coalition partners.  “The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel.”  Defying credulity, the spokesman suggested that the US had “acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”

    Congress, the people’s chamber, was left out in the cold, though not for the first time by this administration.  Press outlets such as the Associated Press had ingested the fable that this was “the first military action undertaken by the Biden administration”.  But on January 27, the New York Times reported that the US Air Force had killed 10 ISIS members near Kirkuk in Iraq, including Abu Yasser al-Issawi.  A spokesman for the US-led coalition against Islamic State, Colonel Wayne Marotto, was satisfied with the bloody result.  “Yasser’s death is another significant blow to Daesh resurgence efforts in Iraq.”

    Such casual non-reporting, even during the incipient stages of a presidential administration, should have received a tongue-lashing.  Instead, there were a good number in the press stable who could only see the figure of the previous White House occupant, and feel relief that Biden was being so sensible.

    The Daily Beast suggested, with little substance, that the airstrike lacked the recklessness of the Trump administration.  Bobby Ghosh for Bloomberg, also falling into error in claiming this as Biden’s “first military attack”, was convinced that the actions were sound in letting those naughty Iranians “know” that the president “wasn’t bluffing.”  Iran and its “proxies were caught completely off guard.  They had been lulled into a sense of impunity by the administration’s early reticence in attributing blame for the attacks in Iraq and the White House’s determination not to ‘lash out and risk and escalation’.”

    Ghosh even goes so far as to laud the February 25 military strike as a necessary antidote against paralysing and unproductive diplomacy, ignoring accounts suggesting that Iran has encouraged Shiite militias in Iraq to refrain from excessive violence.  The US, including its allies, Britain, France, and Germany, had initially embraced a posture of “studied calm”.  Thankfully, that period of studiousness was over: “Biden has now demonstrated that he can walk and chew gum at the same time.”  And so, a vigilante act in violation of a State’s sovereignty comes to be praised.

    Not all have sanitised the act as a necessitous one.  Mary Ellen O’Connell of Notre Dame Law School thought that the strike failed to meet the necessary “elements” of a necessary use of force.  “The United Nations Charter makes absolutely clear that the use of military force on the territory of a foreign sovereign state is lawful only in response to an armed attack on the defending state for which the target is responsible.”

    Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was also troubled by the strike, worried that it put “our country on the path of continuing the Forever War instead of ending it.  This is the same path we’ve been on for almost two decades.”  Maine Democrat Senator Tim Kaine turned to the role of Congressional power. “Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional absent extraordinary military circumstances.”

    Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar also pointed out that the current White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had herself criticised President Donald Trump in 2017 for authorising a strike in retaliation of a chemical weapons attack.  “Assad is a brutal dictator,” tweeted Psaki at the time.  “But Syria is a sovereign country.”  Another sentiment forgotten in an increasingly amnesiac administration.

    Unfortunately, war apologists tend to find ongoing justifications in the elastic imperial provisions found in the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).  The 2001 AUMF was focused on perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.  The 2002 AUMF was directed to Iraq.

    Their sheer broadness has irked the sole person to vote against them.  “Nearly 20 years after I cast the sole ‘no’ vote on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF),” stated Californian House Representative Barbara Lee, “both the 2002 and 2002 AUMFs have been employed by three successive Presidents to wage war in ways well beyond the scope that Congress initially intended.”

    Biden does not even go so far as to cite such authorities, instead stating that the strikes were “consistent with my responsibility to protect United States citizens both home and abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct United States foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.”

    Overly stretching his argument, Biden opined that his action was also consistent with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, acknowledging a state’s right to self-defense.  Not even Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama or Trump had bothered to push the international law line for such thuggish intervention, confining themselves to domestic sources of power.  But such virtue signalling did evoke some praise, notably from former legal adviser to the State Department, John B. Bellinger III.  The President’s inaugural war powers report was “a model of war powers practice and transparency.”

    Congress has made a few efforts in recent years to restrain the Commander-in-Chief for overzealous commitments.  The War Powers Resolution sought to end US participation in the Yemen conflict.  In 2020, members of Congress resolved to modestly shackle Trump from commencing a full blown war with Iran.  But the February 25 attacks show that the misuse and abuse of US military might by the imperial executive remains a dangerous orthodoxy, and one that continues to have its defenders.

    The post Delusions of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Blood for Oil

    Amid the ongoing horror, it’s important to find ways to atone for war crimes —including reparations.

    Thirty years ago, when the United States launched Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, I was a member of the Gulf Peace Team. We were 73 people from fifteen different countries, aged 22 to 76, living in a tent camp close to Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia, along the road to Mecca.

    We aimed to nonviolently interpose ourselves between the warring parties. Soldiers are called upon to risk their lives for a cause they may not know much about. Why not ask peace activists to take risks on behalf of preventing and opposing wars?

    So we witnessed the dismal onset of the air war at 3:00 a.m. on January 17, 1991, huddled under blankets, hearing distant explosions and watching anxiously as war planes flew overhead. With so many fighter jets crossing the skies, we wondered if there would be anything left of Baghdad.

    Ten days later, Iraqi authorities told us we must pack up, readying for a morning departure to Baghdad. Not all of us could agree on how to respond. Adhering to basic principles, twelve peace team members resolved to sit in a circle, holding signs saying “We choose to stay.”

    Buses arrived the next morning, along with two Iraqi civilians and two soldiers. Tarak, a civilian, was in charge, under orders to follow a timetable for the evacuation. Looking at the circle of twelve, Tarak seemed a bit baffled. He walked over to where I stood. “Excuse me, Ms. Kathy,” he asked, “but what am I to do?”

    “No one in that circle means you any harm,” I assured him. “And no one wishes to disrespect you, but they won’t be able board the bus on their own. It’s a matter of conscience.”

    Tarak nodded and then motioned to the other Iraqis who followed him as he approached Jeremy Hartigan, the tallest person sitting in the circle. Jeremy, an elderly UK lawyer and also a Buddhist, was chanting a prayer as he sat with his sign.

    Tarak bent over Jeremy, kissed him on the forehead, and said, ”Baghdad!” Then he pointed to the bus.

    Next, he, the other civilian and two Iraqi soldiers carefully hoisted  Jeremy, still in his cross-legged position, and carried him to the top step of the bus. Gently placing him down, Tarak then asked,  “Mister, you okay?!” And in this manner they proceeded to evacuate the remaining eleven people in the circle.

    Another evacuation was happening as Iraqi forces, many of them young conscripts, hungry, disheveled and unarmed, poured out of Kuwait along a major highway, later called “the Highway of Death.”

    Boxed in by U.S. forces, many Iraqis abandoned their vehicles and ran away from what had become a huge and very dangerous traffic jam. Iraqis attempting to surrender were stuck in a long line of Iraqi military vehicles. They were systematically slaughtered.

    “It was like shooting fish in a barrel,” said one U.S. pilot of the air attack. Another called it “a turkey shoot.”

    Days earlier, on February 24th, the United States Army forces buried scores of living Iraqi soldiers in trenches. According to The New York Times, Army officials said “the Iraqi soldiers who died remained in their trenches as plow-equipped tanks dumped tons of earth and sand onto them, filling the trenches to ensure that they could not be used as cover from which to fire on allied units that were poised to pour through the gaps.”

    Shortly after viewing photos of gruesome carnage caused by the ground and air attacks, President George H.W. Bush called for a cessation of hostilities on February 27th, 1991. An official cease fire was signed on March 4.

    It’s ironic that in October of 1990, Bush had asserted that the U.S. would never stand by and let a larger country swallow a smaller country. His country had just invaded Grenada and Panama, and as President Bush spoke, the U.S. military pre-positioned at three Saudi ports hundreds of ships, thousands of aircraft, and millions of tons of equipment and fuel in preparation to invade Iraq.

    Noam Chomsky notes that there were diplomatic alternatives to the bloodletting and destruction visited upon Iraq by Operation Desert Storm. Iraqi diplomats had submitted an alternative plan which was suppressed in the mainstream media and flatly rejected by the U.S.

    The U.S. State Department, along with Margaret Thatcher’s government in the United Kingdom, were hell-bent on moving ahead with their war plans. “This was no time to go wobbly,” U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously warned Bush.

    The resolve to attack and punish Iraqis never ceased.

    After the “success” of Operation Desert Storm, the bombing war turned into an economic war, which lasted through 2003. As early as 1995, United Nations documents clarified that the economic war, waged through continued imposition of U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq, was far more brutal than even the worst of the 1991 aerial and ground war attacks.

    In 1995, two Food and Agriculture Organization scientists estimated that more than half a million Iraqi children under age five had likely died due to economic sanctions.

    In February, 1998, while visiting a hospital in Baghdad, I watched two friends from the United Kingdom trying to absorb the horror of seeing children being starved to death because of policy decisions made by governments in the UK and the U.S. Martin Thomas, himself a nurse, looked at mothers sitting cross legged, holding their limp and dying infants, in a ward where helpless doctors and nurses tried to treat many dozens of children.

    “I think I understand,” said Thomas. “It’s a death row for infants.” Milan Rai, now editor of Peace News and then the coordinator of a U.K. campaign to defy the economic sanctions, knelt next to one of the mothers. Rai’s own child was close in age to the toddler the mother cradled. “I’m sorry,” Rai murmured. “I’m so very sorry.”

    Those six words whispered by Milan Rai, are, I believe, incalculably important.

    If only people in the U.S. and the UK could take those words to heart, undertaking to finally pressure their governments to echo these words and themselves say, “We’re sorry. We’re so very sorry.”

    We’re sorry for coldly viewing your land as a “target rich environment” and then systematically destroying your electrical facilities, sewage and sanitation plants, roads, bridges, infrastructure, health care, education, and livelihood. We’re sorry for believing we somehow had a right to the oil in your land, and we’re sorry many of us lived so well because we were consuming your precious and irreplaceable resources at cut rate prices.

    We’re sorry for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of your children through economic sanctions and then expecting you to thank us for liberating you. We’re sorry for wrongfully accusing you of harboring weapons of mass destruction while we looked the other way as Israel acquired thermonuclear weapons.

    We’re sorry for again traumatizing your children through the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing, filling your broken down hospitals with maimed and bereaved survivors of the vicious bombing and then causing enormous wreckage through our inept and criminal occupation of your land.

    We’re sorry. We’re so very sorry. And we want to pay reparations.

    From March 5 – 8, Pope Francis will visit Iraq. Security concerns are high, and I won’t begin to second guess the itinerary that has been developed. But knowing of his eloquent and authentic plea to end wars and stop the pernicious weapons trade, I wish he could kneel and kiss the ground at the Ameriyah shelter in Baghdad.

    There, on February 13, 1991, two 2,000 lb. U.S. laser guided missiles killed 400 civilians, mostly women and children. Another 200 were severely wounded. I wish President Joe Biden could meet the Pope there and ask him to hear his confession.

    I wish people around the world could be represented by the Pope as a symbol of unity expressing collective sorrow for making war after hideous war, in Iraq, against people who meant us no harm.

    Illustration courtesy of Sallie Latch

    • A version of this article first appeared at The Progressive.org 

    The post Blood for Oil first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • On Contact: Realities Of War

    On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the realities of war, its appeal for young men and its destruction of them, with Salar Abdoh, novelist and essayist. Abdoh’s new novel, ‘Out of Mesopotamia’, considered one of a handful of great modern war novels, tells the story of Saleh, a jaded, middle-aged Iranian reporter who accompanies Shia militias, as Abdoh did, in Iraq and Syria during the heavy fighting between 2014 and 2017.

    The post On Contact: Realities Of War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not the Diplomacy He Promised

    Photo: CODEPINK

    The February 25 U.S. bombing of Syria immediately puts the policies of the newly-formed Biden administration into sharp relief. Why is this administration bombing the sovereign nation of Syria? Why is it bombing “Iranian-backed militias” who pose absolutely no threat to the United States and are actually involved in fighting ISIS? If this is about getting more leverage vis-a-vis Iran, why hasn’t the Biden administration just done what it said it would do: rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and de-escalate the Middle East conflicts?

    According to the Pentagon, the U.S. strike was in response to the February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member. Accounts of the number killed in the U.S. attack vary from one to 22.

    The Pentagon made the incredible claim that this action “aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both Eastern Syria and Iraq.” This was countered by the Syrian government, which condemned the illegal attack on its territory and said the strikes “will lead to consequences that will escalate the situation in the region.” The strike was also condemned by the governments of China and Russia. A member of Russia’s Federation Council warned that such escalations in the area could lead to “a massive conflict.”

    Ironically, Jen Psaki, now Biden’s White House spokesperson, questioned the lawfulness of attacking Syria in 2017, when it was the Trump administration doing the bombing. Back then she asked: “What is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country.”

    The airstrikes were supposedly authorized by the 20-year-old, post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), legislation that Rep. Barbara Lee has been trying for years to repeal since it has been misused, according to the congresswoman, “to justify waging war in at least seven different countries, against a continuously expanding list of targetable adversaries.”

    The United States claims that its targeting of the militia in Syria was based on intelligence provided by the Iraqi government. Defense Secretary Austin told reporters: “We’re confident that target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strike [against U.S. and coalition forces].”

    But a report by Middle East Eye (MEE) suggests that Iran has strongly urged the militias it supports in Iraq to refrain from such attacks, or any warlike actions that could derail its sensitive diplomacy to bring the U.S. and Iran back into compliance with the 2015 international nuclear agreement or JCPOA.

    “None of our known factions carried out this attack,” a senior Iraqi militia commander told MEE. “The Iranian orders have not changed regarding attacking the American forces, and the Iranians are still keen to maintain calm with the Americans until they see how the new administration will act.”

    The inflammatory nature of this U.S. attack on Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, who are an integral part of Iraq’s armed forces and have played a critical role in the war with ISIS, was implicitly acknowledged in the U.S. decision to attack them in Syria instead of in Iraq. Did Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, a pro-Western British-Iraqi, who is trying to rein in the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, deny permission for a U.S. attack on Iraqi soil?

    At Kadhimi’s request, NATO is increasing its presence from 500 troops to 4,000 (from Denmark, the U.K. and Turkey, not the U.S.) to train the Iraqi military and reduce its dependence on the Iranian-backed militias. But Kadhimi risks losing his job in an election this October if he alienates Iraq’s Shiite majority. Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein is heading to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials over the weekend, and the world will be watching to see how Iraq and Iran will respond to the U.S. attack.

    Some analysts say the bombing may have been intended to strengthen the U.S. hand in its negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal (JCPOA). “The strike, the way I see it, was meant to set the tone with Tehran and dent its inflated confidence ahead of negotiations,” said Bilal Saab, a former Pentagon official who is currently a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute.

    But this attack will make it more difficult to resume negotiations with Iran. It comes at a delicate moment when the Europeans are trying to orchestrate a “compliance for compliance” maneuver to revive the JCPOA. This strike will make the diplomatic process more difficult, as it gives more power to the Iranian factions who oppose the deal and any negotiations with the United States.

    Showing bipartisan support for attacking sovereign nations, key Republicans on the foreign affairs committees such as Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Michael McCaul immediately welcomed the attacks. So did some Biden supporters, who crassly displayed their partiality to bombing by a Democratic president.

    Party organizer Amy Siskind tweeted: “So different having military action under Biden. No middle school level threats on Twitter. Trust Biden and his team’s competence.” Biden supporter Suzanne Lamminen tweeted: “Such a quiet attack. No drama, no TV coverage of bombs hitting targets, no comments on how presidential Biden is. What a difference.”

    Thankfully, though, some Members of Congress are speaking out against the strikes. “We cannot stand up for Congressional authorization before military strikes only when there is a Republican President,” Congressman Ro Khanna tweeted, “The Administration should have sought Congressional authorization here. We need to work to extricate from the Middle East, not escalate.” Peace groups around the country are echoing that call. Rep. Barbara Lee and Senators Bernie Sanders, Tim Kaine and Chris Murphy also released statements either questioning or condemning the strikes.

    Americans should remind President Biden that he promised to prioritize diplomacy over military action as the primary instrument of his foreign policy. Biden should recognize that the best way to protect U.S. personnel is to take them out of the Middle East. He should recall that the Iraqi Parliament voted a year ago for U.S. troops to leave their country. He should also recognize that U.S. troops have no right to be in Syria, still “protecting the oil,” on the orders of Donald Trump.

    After failing to prioritize diplomacy and rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement, Biden has now, barely a month into his presidency, reverted to the use of military force in a region already shattered by two decades of U.S. war-making. This is not what he promised in his campaign and it is not what the American people voted for.

    The post Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not the Diplomacy He Promised first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Biden’s Reckless Syria Bombing Is Not the Diplomacy He Promised

    by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies / February 27th, 2021

    Photo: CODEPINK

    The February 25 U.S. bombing of Syria immediately puts the policies of the newly-formed Biden administration into sharp relief. Why is this administration bombing the sovereign nation of Syria? Why is it bombing “Iranian-backed militias” who pose absolutely no threat to the United States and are actually involved in fighting ISIS? If this is about getting more leverage vis-a-vis Iran, why hasn’t the Biden administration just done what it said it would do: rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and de-escalate the Middle East conflicts?

    According to the Pentagon, the U.S. strike was in response to the February 15 rocket attack in northern Iraq that killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member. Accounts of the number killed in the U.S. attack vary from one to 22.

    The Pentagon made the incredible claim that this action “aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both Eastern Syria and Iraq.” This was countered by the Syrian government, which condemned the illegal attack on its territory and said the strikes “will lead to consequences that will escalate the situation in the region.” The strike was also condemned by the governments of China and Russia. A member of Russia’s Federation Council warned that such escalations in the area could lead to “a massive conflict.”

    Ironically, Jen Psaki, now Biden’s White House spokesperson, questioned the lawfulness of attacking Syria in 2017, when it was the Trump administration doing the bombing. Back then she asked: “What is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country.”

    The airstrikes were supposedly authorized by the 20-year-old, post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), legislation that Rep. Barbara Lee has been trying for years to repeal since it has been misused, according to the congresswoman, “to justify waging war in at least seven different countries, against a continuously expanding list of targetable adversaries.”

    The United States claims that its targeting of the militia in Syria was based on intelligence provided by the Iraqi government. Defense Secretary Austin told reporters: “We’re confident that target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strike [against U.S. and coalition forces].”

    But a report by Middle East Eye (MEE) suggests that Iran has strongly urged the militias it supports in Iraq to refrain from such attacks, or any warlike actions that could derail its sensitive diplomacy to bring the U.S. and Iran back into compliance with the 2015 international nuclear agreement or JCPOA.

    “None of our known factions carried out this attack,” a senior Iraqi militia commander told MEE. “The Iranian orders have not changed regarding attacking the American forces, and the Iranians are still keen to maintain calm with the Americans until they see how the new administration will act.”

    The inflammatory nature of this U.S. attack on Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, who are an integral part of Iraq’s armed forces and have played a critical role in the war with ISIS, was implicitly acknowledged in the U.S. decision to attack them in Syria instead of in Iraq. Did Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, a pro-Western British-Iraqi, who is trying to rein in the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, deny permission for a U.S. attack on Iraqi soil?

    At Kadhimi’s request, NATO is increasing its presence from 500 troops to 4,000 (from Denmark, the U.K. and Turkey, not the U.S.) to train the Iraqi military and reduce its dependence on the Iranian-backed militias. But Kadhimi risks losing his job in an election this October if he alienates Iraq’s Shiite majority. Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein is heading to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials over the weekend, and the world will be watching to see how Iraq and Iran will respond to the U.S. attack.

    Some analysts say the bombing may have been intended to strengthen the U.S. hand in its negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal (JCPOA). “The strike, the way I see it, was meant to set the tone with Tehran and dent its inflated confidence ahead of negotiations,” said Bilal Saab, a former Pentagon official who is currently a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute.

    But this attack will make it more difficult to resume negotiations with Iran. It comes at a delicate moment when the Europeans are trying to orchestrate a “compliance for compliance” maneuver to revive the JCPOA. This strike will make the diplomatic process more difficult, as it gives more power to the Iranian factions who oppose the deal and any negotiations with the United States.

    Showing bipartisan support for attacking sovereign nations, key Republicans on the foreign affairs committees such as Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Michael McCaul immediately welcomed the attacks. So did some Biden supporters, who crassly displayed their partiality to bombing by a Democratic president.

    Party organizer Amy Siskind tweeted: “So different having military action under Biden. No middle school level threats on Twitter. Trust Biden and his team’s competence.” Biden supporter Suzanne Lamminen tweeted: “Such a quiet attack. No drama, no TV coverage of bombs hitting targets, no comments on how presidential Biden is. What a difference.”

    Thankfully, though, some Members of Congress are speaking out against the strikes. “We cannot stand up for Congressional authorization before military strikes only when there is a Republican President,” Congressman Ro Khanna tweeted, “The Administration should have sought Congressional authorization here. We need to work to extricate from the Middle East, not escalate.” Peace groups around the country are echoing that call. Rep. Barbara Lee and Senators Bernie Sanders, Tim Kaine and Chris Murphy also released statements either questioning or condemning the strikes.

    Americans should remind President Biden that he promised to prioritize diplomacy over military action as the primary instrument of his foreign policy. Biden should recognize that the best way to protect U.S. personnel is to take them out of the Middle East. He should recall that the Iraqi Parliament voted a year ago for U.S. troops to leave their country. He should also recognize that U.S. troops have no right to be in Syria, still “protecting the oil,” on the orders of Donald Trump.

    After failing to prioritize diplomacy and rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement, Biden has now, barely a month into his presidency, reverted to the use of military force in a region already shattered by two decades of U.S. war-making. This is not what he promised in his campaign and it is not what the American people voted for.

    This article was posted on Saturday, February 27th, 2021 at 9:05am and is filed under Bombs, Democrats, Iran, Iraq, Joe Biden, Militarism, Syria, US War Crimes.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden Says U.S. Air Strike In Syria A Warning To Tehran

    U.S. President Joe Biden says the air strike against an Iran-backed militia in eastern Syria should be seen by Tehran as a warning against any further aggressive actions.

    “You can’t act with impunity,” he told reporters on February 26 when asked what the message was from the air strikes announced a day earlier.

    “Be careful,” he added during a stop in Houston as part of a tour to inspect relief efforts in the storm-ravaged state of Texas.

    The U.S. Defense Department on February 25 announced the air strikes in response to rocket attacks earlier this month on an Iraqi base housing U.S. and coalition troops, saying they sent “an unambiguous message [that] President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel.”

    The Pentagon said two F-15E warplanes dropped seven precision-guided munitions on sites in eastern Syria used by the militias believed to be behind the rocket attacks on U.S. and other troops.

    The Pentagon said the strikes, the first military action undertaken by Biden’s administration since he was sworn into office last month, hit “multiple facilities” at a control point on the Syria-Iraq border used by several Iran-backed militias, including the Iraqi Shi’ite groups Kaitib Hizballah and Kaitib Sayyid al-Shuhada.

    “This location is known to facilitate Iranian-aligned militia group activity,” spokesman John Kirby said, describing the site as a “compound” that previously had been used by the Islamic State (IS) terror group when it controlled the area.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said 17 members of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) were killed after the strike hit three trucks loaded with munitions coming from Iraq.

    The PMU is an umbrella paramilitary force composed of a number of mostly Shi’ite Iraqi militia groups.

    Tehran condemned the attack, saying it would further destabilize the region. The Foreign Ministry called the action “illegal attacks” in “clear violation of human rights and international law.”

    Damascus labeled it “cowardly American aggression.”

    “It is a bad sign regarding the policies of the new US administration which should adhere to international [norms],” the Syrian Foreign Ministry said.

    Russia, a key Syrian ally, also condemned the attack, saying its troops stationed in Syria were given little advanced warning.

    Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the action called into question the U.S. administration’s plans in Syria.

    “It is very important for us to understand the United States’ strategic line on the ground,” Lavrov said.

    Pentagon spokesman John Kirby responded to Lavrov’s criticism that Moscow had been notified just a few minutes before the U.S. attack.

    “We did what we believe was the proper amount of notification for this,” he said. “It shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody that we’re going to do what we have to do to notify, but we’re also going to do what we have to do to protect our forces.”

    Along with Russia, Iran has provided crucial military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s civil war, which began with a crackdown on anti-government protesters in March 2011. More than 400,000 people have since been killed and millions displaced.

    The U.S. military has also been active in Syria in support of a coalition of Syrian Arab and Kurdish opponents of Assad.

    The strikes came after three recent rocket attacks. A February 15 rocket salvo on a military base at Irbil International Airport in the capital in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops.

    Another rocket attack on a base hosting U.S. forces north of Baghdad days later hurt at least one contractor. Yet another rocket barrage targeted the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week.

    A little-known Shiite militant group calling itself the Guardians of Blood Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack in Irbil. Some experts say Kaitib Hizballah has used separate militant cells as a cover to absolve itself of responsibility for attacks on U.S. forces.

    With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden Says U.S. Air Strike In Syria A Warning To Tehran

    U.S. President Joe Biden says the air strike against an Iran-backed militia in eastern Syria should be seen by Tehran as a warning against any further aggressive actions.

    “You can’t act with impunity,” he told reporters on February 26 when asked what the message was from the air strikes announced a day earlier.

    “Be careful,” he added during a stop in Houston as part of a tour to inspect relief efforts in the storm-ravaged state of Texas.

    The U.S. Defense Department on February 25 announced the air strikes in response to rocket attacks earlier this month on an Iraqi base housing U.S. and coalition troops, saying they sent “an unambiguous message [that] President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel.”

    The Pentagon said two F-15E warplanes dropped seven precision-guided munitions on sites in eastern Syria used by the militias believed to be behind the rocket attacks on U.S. and other troops.

    The Pentagon said the strikes, the first military action undertaken by Biden’s administration since he was sworn into office last month, hit “multiple facilities” at a control point on the Syria-Iraq border used by several Iran-backed militias, including the Iraqi Shi’ite groups Kaitib Hizballah and Kaitib Sayyid al-Shuhada.

    “This location is known to facilitate Iranian-aligned militia group activity,” spokesman John Kirby said, describing the site as a “compound” that previously had been used by the Islamic State (IS) terror group when it controlled the area.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said 17 members of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) were killed after the strike hit three trucks loaded with munitions coming from Iraq.

    The PMU is an umbrella paramilitary force composed of a number of mostly Shi’ite Iraqi militia groups.

    Tehran condemned the attack, saying it would further destabilize the region. The Foreign Ministry called the action “illegal attacks” in “clear violation of human rights and international law.”

    Damascus labeled it “cowardly American aggression.”

    “It is a bad sign regarding the policies of the new U.S. administration which should adhere to international [norms],” the Syrian Foreign Ministry said.

    Russia, a key Syrian ally, also condemned the attack, saying its troops stationed in Syria were given little advanced warning.

    Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the action called into question the U.S. administration’s plans in Syria.

    “It is very important for us to understand the United States’ strategic line on the ground,” Lavrov said.

    Pentagon spokesman John Kirby responded to Lavrov’s criticism that Moscow had been notified just a few minutes before the U.S. attack.

    “We did what we believe was the proper amount of notification for this,” he said. “It shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody that we’re going to do what we have to do to notify, but we’re also going to do what we have to do to protect our forces.”

    Along with Russia, Iran has provided crucial military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s civil war, which began with a crackdown on anti-government protesters in March 2011. More than 400,000 people have since been killed and millions displaced.

    The U.S. military has also been active in Syria in support of a coalition of Syrian Arab and Kurdish opponents of Assad.

    The strikes came after three recent rocket attacks. A February 15 rocket salvo on a military base at Irbil International Airport in the capital in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops.

    Another rocket attack on a base hosting U.S. forces north of Baghdad days later hurt at least one contractor. Yet another rocket barrage targeted the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week.

    A little-known Shi’ite militant group calling itself the Guardians of Blood Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack in Irbil. Some experts say Kaitib Hizballah has used separate militant cells as a cover to absolve itself of responsibility for attacks on U.S. forces.

    With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US Bombs Syria And Ridiculously Claims Self Defense

    On orders of President Biden, the United States has launched an airstrike on a facility in Syria. As of this writing the exact number of killed and injured is unknown, with early reports claiming “a handful” of people were killed.

    Rather than doing anything remotely resembling journalism, the western mass media have opted instead to uncritically repeat what they’ve been told about the airstrike by US officials, which is the same as just publishing Pentagon press releases.

    Here’s this from The Washington Post:

    The Biden administration conducted an airstrike against alleged Iranian-linked fighters in Syria on Thursday, signaling its intent to push back against violence believed to be sponsored by Tehran.

     

    Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the attack, the first action ordered by the Biden administration to push back against alleged Iranian-linked violence in Iraq and Syria, on a border control point in eastern Syria was “authorized in response to recent attacks against American and coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats.”

     

    He said the facilities were used by Iranian-linked militias including Kaitib Hezbollah and Kaitib Sayyid al-Shuhada.

     

    The operation follows the latest serious attack on U.S. locations in Iraq that American officials have attributed to Iranian-linked groups operating in Iraq and Syria. Earlier this month, a rocket attack in northern Iraq killed a contractor working with the U.S. military and injured a U.S. service member there.

    So we are being told that the United States launched an airstrike on Syria, a nation it invaded and is illegally occupying, because of attacks on “US locations” in Iraq, another nation the US invaded and is illegally occupying. This attack is justified on the basis that the Iraqi fighters were “Iranian-linked”, a claim that is both entirely without evidence and irrelevant to the justification of deadly military force. And this is somehow being framed in mainstream news publications as a defensive operation.

    This is Defense Department stenography. The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor. It’s the people trying to eject them who are acting defensively. The deaths of US troops and contractors in those countries can only be blamed on the powerful people who sent them there.

    The US is just taking it as a given that it has de facto jurisdiction over the nations of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and that any attempt to interfere in its authority in the region is an unprovoked attack which must be defended against. This is completely backwards and illegitimate. Only through the most perversely warped American supremacist reality tunnels can it look valid to dictate the affairs of sovereign nations on the other side of the planet and respond with violence if anyone in those nations tries to eject them.

    It’s illegitimate for the US to be in the Middle East at all. It’s illegitimate for the US to claim to be acting defensively in nations it invaded. It’s illegitimate for the US to act like Iranian-backed fighters aren’t allowed to be in Syria, where they are fighting alongside the Syrian government against ISIS and other extremist militias with the permission of Damascus. It is illegitimate for the US to claim the fighters attacking US personnel in Iraq are controlled by Iran when Iraqis have every reason to want the US out of their country themselves.

    Even the official narrative reveals itself as illegitimate from within its own worldview. CNN reports that the site of the airstrike “was not specifically tied to the rocket attacks” in Iraq, and a Reuters/AP report says “Biden administration officials condemned the February 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out.”

    This is all so very typical of the American supremacist worldview that is being aggressively shoved down our throats by all western mainstream news media. The US can bomb who it likes, whenever it likes, and when it does it is only ever doing so in self defense, because the entire planet is the property of Washington, DC. It can seize control of entire clusters of nations, and if any of those nations resist in any way they are invading America’s sovereignty.

    It’s like if you broke into your neighbor’s house to rob him, killed him when he tried to stop you, and then claimed self defense because you consider his home your property. Only in the American exceptionalist alternate universe is this considered normal and acceptable.

    This sort of nonsense is why it’s so important to prioritize opposition to western imperialism. World warmongering and domination is the front upon which all the most egregious evils inflicted by the powerful take place, and it plays such a crucial role in upholding the power structures we are up against. Without endless war, the oligarchic empire which is the cause of so much of our suffering cannot function, and must give way to something else. If you’re looking to throw sand in the gears of the machine, anti-imperialism is your most efficacious path toward that end, and should therefore be your priority.

    In America especially it is important to oppose war and imperialism, because an entire empire depends on keeping the locals too poor and propagandized to force their nation’s resources to go to their own wellbeing. As long as the United States functions as the hub of a globe-spanning power structure, all the progressive agendas that are being sought by what passes for the US left these days will be denied them. Opposing warmongering must come first.

    Standing against imperialism and American supremacism cuts directly to the heart of our difficulties in this world, which is why so much energy goes into keeping us focused on identity politics and vapid energy sucks which inconvenience the powerful in no way whatsoever. If you want to out-wrestle a crocodile, you must bind shut its mouth. If you want to take down a globe-spanning empire, you must take out its weapons. Opposing warmongering and killing public trust in the propaganda used to justify it is the best way to do this.

    _____________________________

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • US-Backed Militants Steal 140,000 Barrels Per Day Of Syrian Oil

    Tehran – Militants of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is supported by Washington, steal 140,000 barrels of crude oil on a daily basis from oil fields in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah, according to a report.

    Ghassan Halim Khalil, governor of Hasakah, announced the grim news in an interview with the Lebanese al-Akhbar newspaper on Saturday, adding that the SDF militants are plundering Syrian oil in various ways, all with the participation and support of American forces deployed to the region.

    He stressed that precise intelligence collected and received show that US-backed militants use tanker trucks from the Taramish area in Tigris and al-Malikiyah to smuggle the Syrian oil to neighboring Iraq.

    The post US-Backed Militants Steal 140,000 Barrels Per Day Of Syrian Oil appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • WaPo Curates the Memory of George Shultz

     

    WaPo: George Shultz will be remembered as one of the most influential secretaries of state in our history

    Condoleezza Rice (Washington Post, 2/7/21) on George Shultz: “His integrity was unquestioned by friend and foe alike.”

    George Shultz, a prominent cabinet member of both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, holding posts at State, Treasury, Labor and the Office of Management and Budget, died over the weekend at age 100. His death prompted no fewer than three fawning tributes in the Washington Post, in addition to the paper’s official obituary.

    Former George W. Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who considered Shultz both a mentor and friend, was given column space at the Post (2/7/21) to wax poetic about how Shultz “never lost sight of the centrality of freedom to the human experience and to human dignity,” and concluded that “we are all so much better for having been a part of the consequential life that he lived.”

    Minutes later, the Post published a tribute from the paper’s former reporter Lou Cannon (2/7/21), who lauded a man who “spoke truth to power” and “lived his life in service to his nation and humanity.”

    The next day, Post columnist David Ignatius (2/8/21) offered yet a third hagiography. Ignatius gushed:

    Watching him over so many years was an education in the fact that the good guys—the smart, decent people who take on the hard job of making the country work—do sometimes win in the end.

    Ignatius noted that Shultz “was Post publisher Katharine Graham’s favorite tennis partner,” and the warm, fuzzy feelings clearly persist at the paper long after Graham’s departure.

    But assessments that judge Shultz to be one of “the good guys,” with a commitment to things like freedom, human dignity and humanity, necessarily gloss over his role in both the Iraq War and the Iran/Contra scandal.

    WaPo: George Shultz was the man who spoke truth to power

    Lou Cannon (Washington Post, 2/7/21) on Shultz: “He spoke truth to power—particularly in the face of presidents who tried to push him around or to act unethically.”

    It was Shultz’s influential assertion in the mid-’80s of a right to pre-emptively strike against “future attacks”—what was dubbed the “Shultz Doctrine“—that helped pave the way for the endless War on Terror, and led the Wall Street Journal (4/29/06) to call Shultz “the father of the Bush Doctrine” of unprovoked attacks on nations deemed threats. Shultz was a mentor to both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as well as Rice, and after 9/11 Shultz chaired the pro-invasion “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.” As FAIR (8/2/10) argued more than 10 years ago, when PBS aired a glowing documentary about Shultz that omitted his role in the Iraq War:

    His advocacy for a new norm of international law that legitimizes “active prevention, pre-emption and retaliation” against terrorism is one of the most abiding, and controversial, legacies of Shultz’s tenure at the State Department, providing the justification for two ongoing wars.

    None of the three Post contributors mentioned Bush, Iraq or the War on Terror. Perhaps even more disturbingly, neither did the paper’s nearly 3,000-word obituary for Shultz (2/7/21).

    The Post also attempted to avoid or rewrite another key piece of Shultz’s history—his role in the Iran/Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran in order to fund, against congressional prohibitions, the right-wing Contra terror squads working to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. As Iran/Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh concluded in his final report (Extra! Update, 4/94):

    The evidence establishes that the central National Security Council operatives kept their superiors—including Reagan, [Vice President George] Bush, Shultz, [Defense Secretary Caspar] Weinberger and other high officials—informed of their efforts generally, if not in detail, and their superiors either condoned or turned a blind eye to them.

    WaPo: George P. Shultz, counsel and Cabinet member for two Republican presidents, dies at 100

    “Mr. Shultz had a reputation for integrity and honesty,” his Washington Post obituary (2/7/21) reported—before relating how as a board member of the Theranos biotech firm, he stuck by the company “in the face of mounting evidence of fraud and tried to pressure his grandson into silence” when the younger Shultz came forward as a whistleblower.

    The Post obituary, written by Michael Abramowitz and David E. Hoffman, tried to spin this, relying on the account of the Reagan administration’s hand-picked investigative board:

    By Mr. Shultz’s account, he argued vigorously in private against the arms sales to Tehran, which were designed to gain Iran’s help in freeing US hostages in Lebanon. But he was criticized afterward for not taking on the matter more directly.

    “Secretary Shultz and Secretary Weinberger in particular distanced themselves from the march of events,” concluded the board chaired by former Sen. John Tower (R.-Texas) that reviewed the Reagan administration’s handling of the matter. “Secretary Shultz specifically requested to be informed only as necessary to perform his job.”

    As if worried that even this apologetic assessment might still put the deceased in an unfavorable light, the paper quickly softened the blow:

    Once the matter became public, however, Mr. Shultz, reflecting the lessons of what he had seen during Watergate, urged others in the administration to come clean. Historian Malcolm Byrne, in his book Iran/Contra, wrote that “Shultz alone proposed to engage the US public rather than keep a tight hold on information.”

    And the Post didn’t even mention Shultz’s position on the Contra half of the scandal—perhaps because he actively participated in discussions regarding how to get around the congressional prohibitions, and almost made a solicitation himself to the Sultan of Brunei (FAIR.org, 8/2/10).

    In Ignatius’s telling, Iran/Contra was an illustration of Shultz’s “good judgment”:

    He could detect bad ideas taking shape in the bureaucracy almost as if by smell. And he tried to stop them, even when that meant challenging Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, whose policy ideas he mistrusted, or President Ronald Reagan, whose National Security Council staff concocted a bizarre plot—to fund the contras in Nicaragua by selling arms to Iran—that Shultz abhorred.

    Rice and Cannon simply omitted Iran/Contra in their columns. Either way, by exclusion or distortion, establishment obituaries rewrite history to make the official heroes fit for adoration (FAIR.org, 6/9/04, 7/9/09, 8/29/18, 12/7/18).

    ACTION ALERT: Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @PostOpinions. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

    Image:  Calvin Shen

    In 2004, journalist Ron Susskind quoted a Bush White House advisor, reportedly Karl Rove, as boasting, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” He dismissed Susskind’s assumption that public policy must be rooted in “the reality-based community.” “We’re history’s actors,” the advisor told him, “…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

    Sixteen years later, the American wars and war crimes launched by the Bush administration have only spread chaos and violence far and wide, and this historic conjunction of criminality and failure has predictably undermined America’s international power and authority. Back in the imperial heartland, the political marketing industry that Rove and his colleagues were part of has had more success dividing and ruling the hearts and minds of Americans than of Iraqis, Russians or Chinese.

    The irony of the Bush administration’s imperial pretensions was that America has been an empire from its very founding, and that a White House staffer’s political use of the term “empire” in 2004 was not emblematic of a new and rising empire as he claimed, but of a decadent, declining empire stumbling blindly into an agonizing death spiral.

    Americans were not always so ignorant of the imperial nature of their country’s ambitions. George Washington described New York as “the seat of an empire,” and his military campaign against British forces there as the “pathway to empire.” New Yorkers eagerly embraced their state’s identity as the Empire State, which is still enshrined in the Empire State Building and on New York State license plates.

    The expansion of America’s territorial sovereignty over Native American lands, the Louisiana Purchase and the annexation of northern Mexico in the Mexican-American War built an empire that far outstripped the one that George Washington built. But that imperial expansion was more controversial than most Americans realize. Fourteen out of fifty-two U.S. senators voted against the 1848 treaty to annex most of Mexico, without which Americans might still be visiting California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, Utah and most of Colorado as exotic Mexican travel spots.

    In the full flowering of the American empire after the Second World War, its leaders understood the skill and subtlety required to exercise imperial power in a post-colonial world. No country fighting for independence from the U.K. or France was going to welcome imperial invaders from America. So America’s leaders developed a system of neocolonialism through which they exercised overarching imperial sovereignty over much of the world, while scrupulously avoiding terms like “empire” or “imperialism” that would undermine their post-colonial credentials.

    It was left to critics like President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana to seriously examine the imperial control that wealthy countries still exercised over nominally independent post-colonial countries like his. In his book, Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism, Nkrumah condemned neocolonialism as “the worst form of imperialism.” “For those who practice it,” he wrote, “it means power without responsibility, and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.”

    So post-World War Two Americans grew up in carefully crafted ignorance of the very fact of American empire, and the myths woven to disguise it provide fertile soil for today’s political divisions and disintegration. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and Biden’s promise to “restore American leadership” are both appeals to nostalgia for the fruits of American empire.

    Past blame games over who lost China or Vietnam or Cuba have come home to roost in an argument over who lost America and who can somehow restore its mythical former greatness or leadership. Even as America leads the world in allowing a pandemic to ravage its people and economy, neither party’s leaders are ready for a more realistic debate over how to redefine and rebuild America as a post-imperial nation in today’s multipolar world.

    Every successful empire has expanded, ruled and exploited its far-flung territories through a combination of economic and military power. Even in the American empire’s neocolonial phase, the role of the U.S. military and the CIA was to kick open doors through which American businessmen could “follow the flag” to set up shop and develop new markets.

    But now U.S. militarism and America’s economic interests have diverged. Apart from a few military contractors, American businesses have not followed the flag into the ruins of Iraq or America’s other current war-zones in any lasting way. Eighteen years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq’s largest trading partner is China, while Afghanistan’s is Pakistan, Somalia’s is the UAE (United Arab Emirates), and Libya’s is the European Union (EU).

    Instead of opening doors for American big business or supporting America’s diplomatic position in the world, the U.S. war machine has become a bull in the global china shop, wielding purely destructive power to destabilize countries and wreck their economies, closing doors to economic opportunity instead of opening them, diverting resources from real needs at home, and damaging America’s international standing instead of enhancing it.

    When President Eisenhower warned against the “unwarranted influence” of America’s military-industrial complex, he was predicting precisely this kind of dangerous dichotomy between the real economic and social needs of the American people and a war machine that costs more than the next ten militaries in the world put together but cannot win a war or vanquish a virus, let alone reconquer a lost empire.

    China and the EU have become the major trading partners of most countries in the world. The United States is still a regional economic power, but even in South America, most countries now trade more with China. America’s militarism has accelerated these trends by squandering our resources on weapons and wars, while China and the EU have invested in peaceful economic development and 21st century infrastructure.

    For example, China has built the largest high-speed rail network in the world in just 10 years (2008-2018), and Europe has been building and expanding its high-speed network since the 1990s, but high-speed rail is still only on the drawing board in America.

    China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty, while America’s poverty rate has barely budged in 50 years and child poverty has increased. America still has the weakest social safety net of any developed country and no universal healthcare system, and the inequalities of wealth and power caused by extreme neoliberalism have left half of Americans with little or no savings to live on in retirement or to weather any disruption in their lives.

    Our leaders’ insistence on siphoning off 66% of U.S. federal discretionary spending to preserve and expand a war machine that has long outlived any useful role in America’s declining economic empire is a debilitating waste of resources that jeopardizes our future.

    Decades ago Martin Luther King Jr. warned us that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

    As our government debates whether we can “afford” COVID relief, a Green New Deal and universal healthcare, we would be wise to recognize that our only hope of transforming this decadent, declining empire into a dynamic and prosperous post-imperial nation is to rapidly and profoundly shift our national priorities from irrelevant, destructive militarism to the programs of social uplift that Dr. King called for.

    The post The Decline and Fall of the American Empire first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

    by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies / February 3rd, 2021

    Image:  Calvin Shen

    In 2004, journalist Ron Susskind quoted a Bush White House advisor, reportedly Karl Rove, as boasting, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” He dismissed Susskind’s assumption that public policy must be rooted in “the reality-based community.” “We’re history’s actors,” the advisor told him, “…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

    Sixteen years later, the American wars and war crimes launched by the Bush administration have only spread chaos and violence far and wide, and this historic conjunction of criminality and failure has predictably undermined America’s international power and authority. Back in the imperial heartland, the political marketing industry that Rove and his colleagues were part of has had more success dividing and ruling the hearts and minds of Americans than of Iraqis, Russians or Chinese.

    The irony of the Bush administration’s imperial pretensions was that America has been an empire from its very founding, and that a White House staffer’s political use of the term “empire” in 2004 was not emblematic of a new and rising empire as he claimed, but of a decadent, declining empire stumbling blindly into an agonizing death spiral.

    Americans were not always so ignorant of the imperial nature of their country’s ambitions. George Washington described New York as “the seat of an empire,” and his military campaign against British forces there as the “pathway to empire.” New Yorkers eagerly embraced their state’s identity as the Empire State, which is still enshrined in the Empire State Building and on New York State license plates.

    The expansion of America’s territorial sovereignty over Native American lands, the Louisiana Purchase and the annexation of northern Mexico in the Mexican-American War built an empire that far outstripped the one that George Washington built. But that imperial expansion was more controversial than most Americans realize. Fourteen out of fifty-two U.S. senators voted against the 1848 treaty to annex most of Mexico, without which Americans might still be visiting California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, Utah and most of Colorado as exotic Mexican travel spots.

    In the full flowering of the American empire after the Second World War, its leaders understood the skill and subtlety required to exercise imperial power in a post-colonial world. No country fighting for independence from the U.K. or France was going to welcome imperial invaders from America. So America’s leaders developed a system of neocolonialism through which they exercised overarching imperial sovereignty over much of the world, while scrupulously avoiding terms like “empire” or “imperialism” that would undermine their post-colonial credentials.

    It was left to critics like President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana to seriously examine the imperial control that wealthy countries still exercised over nominally independent post-colonial countries like his. In his book, Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism, Nkrumah condemned neocolonialism as “the worst form of imperialism.” “For those who practice it,” he wrote, “it means power without responsibility, and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.”

    So post-World War Two Americans grew up in carefully crafted ignorance of the very fact of American empire, and the myths woven to disguise it provide fertile soil for today’s political divisions and disintegration. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and Biden’s promise to “restore American leadership” are both appeals to nostalgia for the fruits of American empire.

    Past blame games over who lost China or Vietnam or Cuba have come home to roost in an argument over who lost America and who can somehow restore its mythical former greatness or leadership. Even as America leads the world in allowing a pandemic to ravage its people and economy, neither party’s leaders are ready for a more realistic debate over how to redefine and rebuild America as a post-imperial nation in today’s multipolar world.

    Every successful empire has expanded, ruled and exploited its far-flung territories through a combination of economic and military power. Even in the American empire’s neocolonial phase, the role of the U.S. military and the CIA was to kick open doors through which American businessmen could “follow the flag” to set up shop and develop new markets.

    But now U.S. militarism and America’s economic interests have diverged. Apart from a few military contractors, American businesses have not followed the flag into the ruins of Iraq or America’s other current war-zones in any lasting way. Eighteen years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq’s largest trading partner is China, while Afghanistan’s is Pakistan, Somalia’s is the UAE (United Arab Emirates), and Libya’s is the European Union (EU).

    Instead of opening doors for American big business or supporting America’s diplomatic position in the world, the U.S. war machine has become a bull in the global china shop, wielding purely destructive power to destabilize countries and wreck their economies, closing doors to economic opportunity instead of opening them, diverting resources from real needs at home, and damaging America’s international standing instead of enhancing it.

    When President Eisenhower warned against the “unwarranted influence” of America’s military-industrial complex, he was predicting precisely this kind of dangerous dichotomy between the real economic and social needs of the American people and a war machine that costs more than the next ten militaries in the world put together but cannot win a war or vanquish a virus, let alone reconquer a lost empire.

    China and the EU have become the major trading partners of most countries in the world. The United States is still a regional economic power, but even in South America, most countries now trade more with China. America’s militarism has accelerated these trends by squandering our resources on weapons and wars, while China and the EU have invested in peaceful economic development and 21st century infrastructure.

    For example, China has built the largest high-speed rail network in the world in just 10 years (2008-2018), and Europe has been building and expanding its high-speed network since the 1990s, but high-speed rail is still only on the drawing board in America.

    China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty, while America’s poverty rate has barely budged in 50 years and child poverty has increased. America still has the weakest social safety net of any developed country and no universal healthcare system, and the inequalities of wealth and power caused by extreme neoliberalism have left half of Americans with little or no savings to live on in retirement or to weather any disruption in their lives.

    Our leaders’ insistence on siphoning off 66% of U.S. federal discretionary spending to preserve and expand a war machine that has long outlived any useful role in America’s declining economic empire is a debilitating waste of resources that jeopardizes our future.

    Decades ago Martin Luther King Jr. warned us that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

    As our government debates whether we can “afford” COVID relief, a Green New Deal and universal healthcare, we would be wise to recognize that our only hope of transforming this decadent, declining empire into a dynamic and prosperous post-imperial nation is to rapidly and profoundly shift our national priorities from irrelevant, destructive militarism to the programs of social uplift that Dr. King called for.

    This article was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021 at 6:05pm and is filed under Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China, Cuba, Empire, EU, Iraq, Libya, Mexico, Neoliberalism, Somalia, Trade, United Arab Emirates, US Defence Department, US Foreign Policy, US Military, US War Crimes, War.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The “humanitarian” left still ignores the lessons of Iraq, Libya and Syria to cheer on more war

    The instinct among parts of the left to cheer lead the right’s war crimes, so long as they are dressed up as liberal “humanitarianism”, is alive and kicking, as Owen Jones reveals in a column today on the plight of the Uighurs at China’s hands.

    The “humanitarian war” instinct persists even after two decades of the horror shows that followed the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US and UK; the western-sponsored butchering of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi that unleashed a new regional trade in slaves and arms; and the west’s covert backing of Islamic jihadists who proceeded to tear Syria apart.

    In fact, those weren’t really separate horror shows: they were instalments of one long horror show.

    The vacuum left in Iraq by the west – the execution of Saddam Hussein and the destruction of his armed forces – sucked in Islamic extremists from every corner of the Middle East. The US and UK occupations of Iraq served both as fuel to rationalise new, more nihilistic Islamic doctrines that culminated in the emergence of Islamic State, and as a training ground for jihadists to develop better methods of militarised resistance.

    That process accelerated in post-Gaddafi Libya, where Islamic extremists were handed an even more lawless country than post-invasion Iraq in which to recruit followers and train them, and trade arms. All of that know-how and weaponry ended up flooding into Syria where the same Islamic extremists hoped to establish the seat of their new caliphate.

    Many millions of Arabs across the region were either slaughtered or forced to flee their homes, becoming permanent refugees, because of the supposedly “humanitarian” impulse unleashed by George W Bush and Tony Blair.

    No lesson learnt

    One might imagine that by this stage liberal humanitarianism was entirely discredited, at least on the left. But you would be wrong. There are still those who have learnt no lessons at all – like the Guardian’s Owen Jones. In his column today he picks up and runs with the latest pretext for global warmongering by the right: the Uighurs, a Muslim minority that has long been oppressed by China.

    After acknowledging the bad faith arguments and general unreliability of the right, Jones sallies forth to argue – as if Iraq, Libya and Syria never happened – that the left must not avoid good causes just because bad people support them. We must not, he writes:

    sacrifice oppressed Muslims on the altar of geopolitics: and indeed, it is possible to walk and to chew gum; to oppose western militarism and to stand with victims of state violence. It would be perverse to cede a defence of China’s Muslims – however disingenuous – to reactionaries and warmongers.

    But this is to entirely miss the point of the anti-war and anti-imperialist politics that are the bedrock of any progressive left wing movement.

    Jones does at least note, even if very cursorily, the bad-faith reasoning of the right when it accuses the left of being all too ready to protest outside a US or Israeli embassy but not a Chinese or Russian one:

    Citizens [in the west] have at least some potential leverage over their own governments: whether it be to stop participation in foreign action, or encourage them to confront human rights abusing allies.

    But he then ignores this important observation about power and responsibility and repurposes it as a stick to beat the left with:

    But that doesn’t mean abandoning a commitment to defending the oppressed, whoever their oppressor might be. To speak out against Islamophobia in western societies but to remain silent about the Uighurs is to declare that the security of Muslims only matters in some countries. We need genuine universalists.

    That is not only a facile argument, it’s a deeply dangerous one. There are two important additional reasons why the left needs to avoid cheerleading the right’s favoured warmongering causes, based on both its anti-imperialist and anti-war priorities.

    Virtue-signalling

    Jones misunderstands the goal of the left’s anti-imperialist politics. It is not, as the right so often claims, about left wing “virtue-signalling”. It is the very opposite of that. It is about carefully selecting our political priorities – priorities necessarily antithetical to the dominant narratives promoted by the west’s warmongering political and media establishments. Our primary goal is to undermine imperialist causes that have led to such great violence and suffering around the world.

    Jones forgets that the purpose of the anti-war left is not to back the west’s warmongering establishment for picking a ‘humanitarian’ cause for its wars. It is to discredit the establishment, expose its warmongering and stop its wars.

    The best measure – practical and ethical – for the western left to use to determine which causes to expend its limited resources and energies on are those that can help others to wake up to the continuing destructive behaviours of the west’s political establishment, even when that warmongering establishment presents itself in two guises: whether the Republicans and the Democrats in the United States, or the Conservatives and the (non-Corbyn) Labour party in the UK.

    We on the left cannot influence China or Russia. But we can try to influence debates in our own societies that discredit the western elite headquartered in the US – the world’s sole military superpower.

    Our job is not just to weigh the scales of injustice – in any case, the thumb of the west’s power-elite is far heavier than any of its rivals. It is to highlight the bad faith nature of western foreign policy, and underscore to the wider public that the real aim of the west’s foreign policy elite is either to attack or to intimidate those who refuse to submit to its power or hand over their resources.

    Do no harm

    That is what modern imperialism looks like. To ignore the bad faith of a Pompeo, a Blair, an Obama, a Bush or a Trump simply because they briefly adopt a good cause for ignoble reasons is to betray anti-imperialist politics. To use a medical analogy, it is to fixate on one symptom of global injustice while refusing to diagnose the actual disease so that it can be treated.

    Requiring, as Jones does, that we prioritise the Uighurs – especially when they are the momentary pet project of the west’s warmongering, anti-China right – does not advance our anti-imperialist goals, it actively harms them. Because the left offers its own credibility, its own stamp of approval, to the right’s warmongering.

    When the left is weak – when, unlike the right, it has no corporate media to dominate the airwaves with its political concerns and priorities, when it has almost no politicians articulating its worldview – it cannot control how its support for humanitarian causes is presented to the general public. Instead it always finds itself coopted into the drumbeat for war.

    That is a lesson Jones should have learnt personally – in fact, a lesson he promised he had learnt – after his cooption by the corporate Guardian to damage the political fortunes of Jeremy Corbyn, the only anti-war, anti-imperialist politician Britain has ever had who was in sight of power.

    Anti-imperialist politics is not about good intentions; it’s about beneficial outcomes. To employ another medical analogy, our credo must to be to do no harm – or, if that is not possible, at least to minimise harm.

    The ‘defence’ industry

    Which is why the flaw in Jones’ argument runs deeper still.

    The anti-war left is not just against acts of wars, though of course it is against those too. It is against the global war economy: the weapons manufacturers that fund our politicians; the arms trade lobbies that now sit in our governments; our leaders, of the right and so-called left, who divide the world into a Manichean struggle between the good guys and bad guys to justify their warmongering and weapons purchases; the arms traders that profit from human violence and suffering; the stock-piling of nuclear weapons that threaten our future as a species.

    The anti-war left is against the globe’s dominant, western war economy, one that deceives us into believing it is really a “defence industry”. That “defence industry” needs villains, like China and Russia, that it must extravagantly arm itself against. And that means fixating on the crimes of China and Russia, while largely ignoring our own crimes, so that those “defence industries” can prosper.

    Yes, Russia and China have armies too. But no one in the west can credibly believe Moscow or Beijing are going to disarm when the far superior military might of the west – of NATO – flexes its muscles daily in their faces, when it surrounds them with military bases that encroach ever nearer their territory, when it points its missiles menacingly in their direction.

    Rhetoric of war

    Jones and George Monbiot, the other token leftist at the Guardian with no understanding of how global politics works, can always be relied on to cheerlead the western establishment’s humanitarian claims – and demand that we do too. That is also doubtless the reason they are allowed their solitary slots in the liberal corporate media.

    When called out, the pair argue that, even though they loudly trumpet their detestation of Saddam Hussein or Bashar al-Assad, that does not implicate them in the wars that are subsequently waged against Iraq or Syria.

    This is obviously infantile logic, which assumes that the left can echo the rhetoric of the west’s warmongering power-elite without taking any responsibility for the wars that result from that warmongering.

    But Jones’ logic is even more grossly flawed than that. It pretends that the left can echo the rhetoric of the warmongers and not take responsibility for the war industries that constantly thrive and expand, whether or not actual wars are being waged at any one time.

    The western foreign policy elite is concerned about the Uighurs not because it wishes to save them from Chinese persecution or even because it necessarily intends to use them as a pretext to attack China. Rather, its professed concerns serve to underpin claims that are essential to the success of its war industries: that the west is the global good guy; that China is a potential nemesis, the Joker to our Batman; and that the west therefore needs an even bigger arsenal, paid by us as taxpayers, to protect itself.

    The Uighurs’ cause is being instrumentalised by the west’s foreign policy establishment to further enhance its power and make the world even less safe for us all, the Uighurs included. Whatever Jones claims, there should be no obligation on the left to give succour to the west’s war industries.

    Vilifying “official enemies” while safely ensconced inside the “defence” umbrella of the global superpower and hegemony is a crime against peace, against justice, against survival. Jones is free to flaunt his humanitarian credentials, but so are we to reject political demands dictated to us by the west’s war machine.

    The anti-war left has its own struggles, its own priorities. It does not need to be gaslit by Mike Pompeo or Tony Blair – or, for that matter, by Owen Jones.

    This article was posted on Saturday, January 23rd, 2021 at 5:32pm and is filed under China, Colonel Moammar Gaddafi, Hypocrisy, Imperialism, Iraq, Libya, Media Bias, Media Criticism, President Bashar al-Assad, Propaganda, Russia, Syria, The “Left”, The “Right”, The “West”, UK Media, UK Military, United Kingdom, US Foreign Policy, US Hegemony, US Military, War Crimes.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Republic of Korea Army Builds River Crossing Capabilities

    The end of the year award of a $458 million contract to Hanwha Defense to supply as many as up to 110 M3 Amphibious Bridge and Ferry Systems for the Republic of Korea (ROK) Army will significantly enhance its abilities to rapidly span even the country’s largest rivers.  The challenge of such river crossings was […]

    The post Republic of Korea Army Builds River Crossing Capabilities appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Fatima Al-Bahadly 2020 Front Line laureate MENA

    It has now been made public that Fatima Al-Bahadly, a human rights defender from the city of Basra, has received the 2020 Frontline Defenders Award.

    The award was granted to Al-Bahadly for her role in founding Al-Firdaws Society, an organisation that focuses on protecting women affected by war and strengthening their role in peace building.

    https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/fatima-al-bahadly

    https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/iraqi-female-rights-activist-receives-frontline-defenders-award-0

    https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/front-line-defenders-award

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders.

  • By “Force and Fraud”: Is This the End of the US Democracy Doctrine?   

    In an interview with the British newspaper, The Times, in 2015, former US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, vehemently denied that exporting democracy to Iraq was the main motive behind the US invasion of that Arab country 12 years earlier.

    Rumsfeld further alleged that “the idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic.” But the US’ top military chief was being dishonest. Writing in Mother Jones, Miles E. Johnson responded to Rumsfeld’s claim by quoting some of his previous statements where he, repeatedly, cited democracy as the main reason behind the US invasion, a war that was one of the most destructive since Vietnam.

    Certainly, it was not Rumsfeld alone who brazenly promoted the democracy pretense. Indeed, ‘democracy’ was the buzzword, parroted by thousands of Americans: in government, the military, mainstream media, and the numerous think-tanks that dotted the intellectual and political landscape of Washington.

    One could not help but reflect on the subject when, on January 6, thousands of Americans stormed the Washington Plaza, climbing the walls of Capitol Hill and taking over the US Congress. A country that has assigned itself the role of the defender of democracy worldwide, now stands unable to defend its own democracy at home.

    In the case of Iraq, as soon as US soldiers stormed into Baghdad, they hurriedly occupied all government buildings and every symbol of Iraqi sovereignty. Triumphant soldiers were filmed rampaging through the offices of former Iraqi ministers, smoking their cigars, while placing their dirty boots on top of their desks. Bizarrely, similar scenes were repeated in Washington 17 years later, this time in the offices of top US legislators, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

    In Iraq, from March 2003, ministers were hunted down, as their photos and names were circulated through what the US military referred to as Iraq’s ‘most wanted deck of cards’. In the American scenario, US Congressmen and women were forced to cower under their desks or to run for their lives.

    The violent events in Washington have been depicted by US mainstream media as if a temporary crisis, instigated by a president who refuses to concede power peacefully and democratically. The truth, however, is far more complex. There is nothing transitory about any of this and, while Donald Trump is largely to blame for the bloody events of this day, the man is a symptom of America’s rooted democracy crisis, which is likely to worsen in the future.

    Famed American linguist and historian, Noam Chomsky, has long argued that the US is not a democracy but a plutocracy, a country that is governed by the interests of the powerful few. He also argued that, while the US does operate based on formal democratic structures, these are largely dysfunctional. In an interview with Global Policy Journal in 2019, Chomsky further asserted that the “US Constitution was framed to thwart the democratic aspirations of most of the public.”

    This has been evident for many years. Long before Trump became President, the dichotomy of American democracy has expressed itself in the way that the American people interact with their supposedly democratic institutions. For example, merely 20% of US adults trust their government, according to a Pew Research Center poll published last September. This number has remained relatively unchanged under previous administrations.

    With the US economy rapidly sinking due to various factors, including the government’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the people’s distrust in government is now manifesting itself in new ways, including mass violence. The fact that 77% of those who voted for Trump in the November elections believe that Joe Biden’s win was due to fraud, suggests that a sizable percentage of Americans have little faith in their country’s democracy. The consequences of this realization will surely be dire.

    America’s constitutional crisis, which is unlikely to be resolved in the current atmosphere of polarization, is compounded by an external political crisis. Historically, the US has defined and redefined its mission in the world based on lofty spiritual, moral and political maxims, starting with ‘Manifest Destiny’, to fighting communism, to eventually serving as the defender of human rights and democracy around the world. The latter was merely a pretense used to provide a moral cover that would allow the US to reorder the world for the sake of expanding its market and ensuring its economic dominance.

    Thomas Paine, whose influence on US ideals of liberty and democracy is arguably unmatched, warned, in “Common Sense” in 1776, against the potential tyranny of those who “attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools.”

    Alas, Paine’s warning went unheeded. Indeed, the democracy ‘fraud’ that Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, et al carried out in Iraq in 2003, was a mere repetition of numerous other fraudulent military campaigns carried out around the world. The ‘protectors of democracy’ became the very men responsible for its undoing.

    Unquestionably, the storming of US Congress will have global repercussions, not least among them the weakening of US hegemonic and self-serving definition of what constitutes a democracy. Is it possible that the US democracy doctrine could soon cease to be relevant in the lexicon of US foreign policy conduct, one that is predicated, per Paine’s logic, on “force and fraud”?

    This article was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2021 at 5:47pm and is filed under Democracy, Donald Trump, Elections, Iraq, Media Bias, Plutocracy, Propaganda, US Congress, US Media, US Military, US War Crimes.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A Changing World, But the West Remains Locked in a Time Warp

    Western politicians in general, and the American and Australian versions are not exempted, are fond of using phrases such as “the rules-based international order.” What they unfailingly really mean is the Western version of a rules-based order. The classic definition was set out in Wikipedia when it said:

    The rules based international order describes the notion that contemporary international relations are organised around principles of international cooperation through multilateral institutions, like WTO, open markets, security cooperation, promotion of liberal democracy and leadership by the United States and its allies.

    The key lies in the last part of that quote, “leadership by the United States and its allies.” For the United States any other concept was simply unthinkable. Not only was the United States self- represented as the personification of the “liberal rules-based order”, it fought almost continuous wars between 1945 and the present to ensure that the rest of the world understood and accepted that principle.

    It was never realistic. As Nick Bisley (AIIA 27/7/18) pointed out, the rules-based international order became a rhetorical centrepiece of Australian international policy. The problem for Australia (and the United States) is that the premises underlying the policy are being progressively more challenged as world power relentlessly shifts away from a United States centred approach.

    Bisley suggests that the apogee of the policy was, in fact, 2016 when the phrase was mentioned no less than 48 times in the Australian defence department White Paper of that year. The notion of an international rules-based order has a number of problems which the western media were remarkably reluctant to face.

    Perhaps the foremost problem lies in the assumption that the rules and the associated principles were built on the clear assumption of United States military supremacy. That was always a dubious proposition. It has become increasingly untenable as power in the world shifts.

    The Western powers had become accustomed to having their own way over the previous 200-300 years. Unfortunately for them, they never questioned the basis of that power, nor conceived that the sun would indeed set upon the Empire. This power was reflected in the United Nations Security Council’s permanent membership.

    Until the early 1970s that permanent membership consisted of three Western powers who had been victorious in World War II, plus the Soviet Union and China. The expulsion of the Nationalist regime from China in 1949 was not reflected in the Security Council, where they clung to power for a further 23 years.

    Nowadays the privileged status of France and the United Kingdom as permanent members of the Security Council looks increasingly anachronistic. 75 years after the war ended, Germany and Japan are still excluded from permanent membership. Some would argue that others, such as India and Brazil, should also be considered for permanent membership.

    The retention of the current permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council represents a world that no longer exists. A major part of the problem is that the Western powers are reluctant to acknowledge that the world has changed since 1945, and with those changes there has been a diminution of their political power.

    They may still think in terms of the rules-based international order, but are reluctant to ask some fundamental questions. For example, whose rules are we really talking about? How valid is a system of Western rules when the vast majority of the membership of the United Nations are neither “Western” nor particularly addicted to the West’s system of rules.

    Those nations see the rules-based order as simply a device designed to maintain Western power. Their disquiet or even rejection of this principle is enhanced when they observe the actual actions of those same Western powers. The United States is but one example, but it is a major one. As noted before, the United States has been almost continuously at war somewhere in the world since 1945. None of these wars could be described as in defence of a truly liberal rules-based order. One has only to look at the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to make the point.

    Afghanistan was invaded based on a lie, and when the object of that lie, Osama bin Laden, was long dead, the invading troops failed to leave. There is currently speculation about whether the new United States president, Biden, will honour even Trump’s manifestly flawed commitment to leave.

    A different set of lies was used to justify the invasion of Iraq and again, 18 years later the Americans and their allies like Australia are still there. In Iraq’s case the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution in January 2020 that all foreign troops should leave the country. One year later they are still there.

    The invasion of Syria was a regime change operation. That has failed, but United States troops are still there. The felony is compounded by the systematic theft of Syrian oil. Israel continues to regularly bomb Syrian targets, a felony that compounds the theft of Syrian territory more than 50 years ago. The Australian government does them the courtesy of not mentioning the theft, and is regularly part of a tiny minority of votes for Israel in United Nations General Assembly resolutions. None of this is fit for publication in the Australian mainstream media.

    Looking at this long history of bad international behaviour it is little wonder that the bulk of the world’s nations look askance at notions of the “rules-based international order”. They see it for the hypocrisy that it manifestly is.

    It is a little surprising therefore that an ever growing number of nations look to China as the leader of a different order. China has a number of features that distinguish it from the western view. One of the most important is the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other nations.

    This article was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2021 at 11:08am and is filed under Afghanistan, Australia, China, Iraq, Israel, Syria, The “West”, US Military, US War Crimes.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. Aircraft Carrier To Remain In Gulf Due To ‘Threats’ By Iran, Pentagon Says

    The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Nimitz will remain in the Persian Gulf due to “recent threats” by Iran, the Pentagon said on January 3.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trump’s Blackwater pardons an affront to justice, say UN experts

    Rights experts say pardon of four contractors over Iraq killings undermine humanitarian law

    Donald Trump’s pardon of four American men convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007 violated US obligations under international law, United Nations human rights experts have said.

    Nicholas Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder and Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted of voluntary and attempted manslaughter over an incident in which US contractors opened fire in busy traffic in a Baghdad square and killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians.

    Related: ‘Our blood is cheaper than water’: anger in Iraq over Trump pardons

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Trump’s Pardons for the Festive Season

    A flurry of them has been expected, and just prior to Christmas, US President Donald Trump waved his wand of pardon with vigour.  On December 22, the president issued fifteen pardons and five commutations.  The choices so far have been, to put it mildly, problematic.

    The power to pardon can be found in Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the US Constitution, a provision which states, in part, that the President “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”  That most eminent of judicial heads Chief Justice Marshall described a pardon as “an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual, on whom it is bestowed, from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed.”

    Those of curious legal mind will detect the residue of the monarchical prerogative in all of this.  The great synthesising authority of English law, William Blackstone, praised the monarchy for having a distinct advantage: “there is a magistrate, who has it in his power to extend mercy, wherever he thinks it is deserved: holding a court of equity in his own breast, to soften the rigour of the general law, in such criminal cases as merit an exemption from punishment.”  Justifying the mirroring of this power in the US Constitution, Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist 74 argues that, “Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate, that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.”

    The Supreme Court has not been blind to the potential abuse of the power, noting in the prohibition case of Ex Parte Grossman that exercising it “to the extent of destroying the deterrent effect of judicial punishment would be to pervert it.”  But Chief Justice William Howard Taft, having himself been a president, thought it unseemly to limit the presidential prerogative.  “Our Constitution confers this discretion on the highest officer in the Nation in confidence that he will not abuse it.”

    The quality of mercy in Trump’s decisions has been peculiar and personal.  Jack Goldsmith and Matt Gluck go so far as to claim that “no president in American history comes close to matching Trump’s systematically self-serving use of the pardon power.”  In doing so, the president has also managed to circumvent the 125-year-old Justice Department office of the Pardon Attorney. The pardon attorney acts as sage and counsel in preparing a recommendation on the particular pardon or commutation, conveyed through the Deputy Attorney General.  By July 2020, Trump had made 29 of his 34 pardons without the tempering involvement of the pardon attorney.

    Consistent to form, his latest round is heavy with the personal.  There is Alex van der Zwaan, who was charged with one count of making false statements in connection with the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller on possible Russian interference in the 2016 election.  There is George Papadopoulos, also of false statement fame in connection to the Mueller investigation.  “Notably,” goes the White House statement, “Mueller stated in his report that he found no evidence of collusion in connection with Russia’s attempts to interfere in the election.  Nonetheless, the Special Counsel’s team still charged Mr Papadopoulos with the process-related crime.”

    Former Republican lawmakers Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter could also count themselves fortunate.  Collins, a firm backer of Trump, pleaded guilty in 2019 to insider trading and was serving a 26-month prison sentence.  Such an offence was never going to trouble Trump too much.  More interesting was his “particular focus on the wellbeing of small businesses, agriculture, and sciences.”  For his part, Hunter was found guilty of one count of misusing campaign funds.  This “could have been handled as a civil case via the Federal Election Commission, according to former FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith.”

    By any moral or ethical stretch of the imagination, the most execrable use of the pardon power would have to be those issued for the four security guards of the private military firm Blackwater, convicted for the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007.  The butchering took place at Baghdad’s Nisour Square, when the contractors deployed sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers at a busy traffic circle.  The justification by Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard was crudely predictable: they opened fire only after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents.  The slain and injured women and children, some with hands in the air as they fled the scene, suggested a different account.

    Rather banally, the White House statement praises their record: they were inspired to serve their country; they did so in various capacities in Iraq.  As security contractors tasked with protecting US personnel, they were merely responsible for “the unfortunate deaths and injuries of Iraqi civilians.”  The reputation of the lead Iraqi investigator is also impugned, as he “may have had ties to insurgent groups himself.”

    The murderous feats of the four did much to point a finger at how the military security complex had been outsourced to private security firms more concerned with pay packages than the enfeebling irritations of international law.   Their convictions were considered by Paul Dickinson, a legal representative for the Nisour Square families “significant” for showing “that paramilitary contractors who commit crimes abroad can be held accountable for their criminal actions.”

    But the lobbyists had been busy bringing out the white wash, making the point that the four were sacrificial lambs for appeasement.  A website dedicated to defending their cause dubbed them “The Biden Four,” who “were sacrificed for politics and convicted by lies.”  Brian Heberlig, lawyer for Slough, was convinced by his brief.  “Paul Slough and his colleagues didn’t deserve to spend one minute in prison.”  Heard’s attorney, David Schertler, babbled on about honour and his client’s “well-deserved freedom.”

    Such softening in the rigour of the general law seemed like a grand reversal in jurisprudence.  Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union was quick off the mark in condemning the pardons.  The actions of these men had  “caused devastation in Iraq, shame and horror in the United States, and a worldwide scandal.”  As if it were possible, the office of the president had been further degraded.

    Marta Hurtado, spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office, was more extensive in her criticism.  “Pardoning them contributes to impunity and has the effect of emboldening others to commit such crimes in the future.”  The victims of such egregious human rights violations and violations of humanitarian law also had “the right to a remedy. This includes the right to see perpetrators serve punishments proportionate to the seriousness of their conduct.”  Taft’s confidence in the probity of executive restraint seems comically quaint.

    Consideration for the victims was conspicuously absent in Trump’s reasoning.  The Blackwater Pardons are yet another effort on his part to look good with gun toting personnel who served the United States and erred.  In the gesture, a faint electoral message could be detected.

    This article was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020 at 10:33pm and is filed under Donald Trump, Iraq, Mercenaries, Presidential Pardons, US War Crimes.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trump Warns Iran Over Rocket Attacks On Embassy In Iraq

    President Donald Trump has warned Iran against any attack on U.S. military or diplomatic personnel in Iraq, days after suspected Iran-backed Iraqi militia launched a barrage of rockets at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.

    The warning, issued on Twitter on December 23, came after top U.S. national security officials met to prepare a range of options to propose to the president in order to deter any attack on U.S. interests in Iraq.

    The so-called principals committee group, including acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and national-security adviser Robert O’Brien met at the White House, Reuters reported, citing an anonymous official.

    For weeks, U.S. officials have suggested Iran or allied Iraqi militia could carry out retaliatory attacks to mark the first anniversary of the U.S. drone strike that killed Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, and Iraqi militia leaders outside Baghdad’s airport on January 3.

    The aim of the White House meeting was “to develop the right set of options that we could present to the president to make sure that we deter the Iranians and Shia militias in Iraq from conducting attacks on our personnel,” a senior administration official told Reuters.

    Following the meeting, Trump took to Twitter to comment on a hail of rockets that targeted Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone on December 20, causing minor damage to the U.S. Embassy compound and residential areas in the international zone.

    “Our embassy in Baghdad got hit Sunday by several rockets. Three rockets failed to launch. Guess where they were from: IRAN,” Trump wrote above a picture claiming to show rockets from Iran.

    “Now we hear chatter of additional attacks against Americans in Iraq. Some friendly health advice to Iran: If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible. Think it over,” Trump wrote, repeating a redline over any American casualties.

    Following the December 20 attack, an Iraqi military statement said “an outlawed group” launched eight rockets at the Green Zone, the location of embassies and government buildings.

    Most of the rockets landed near an empty residential complex and checkpoint, injuring one Iraqi security person.

    Although no Americans were killed or injured by the rockets, the attack and Trump’s threat underscore a highly combustible situation in Iraq that could quickly spiral out of control.

    A rocket attack blamed on Iran-backed militia in December 2019 killed a U.S. defense contractor and wounded several U.S. and Iraqi soldiers at a military base in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, touching off a cycle of escalation that led to Soleimani’s killing and Iran launching retaliatory ballistic missiles at Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops, bringing the two rivals to the brink of full-fledged war.

    In a new show of force directed at Iran around the anniversary of Soleimani’s killing, a U.S. nuclear submarine carrying 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles crossed the Strait of Hormuz on December 21.

    The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz has been patrolling Gulf waters since late November, and two American B-52 bombers recently overflew the region in a demonstration of strength aimed at Iran.

    “My assessment is we are in a very good position and we’ll be prepared for anything the Iranians or their proxies acting for them might choose to do,” General Kenneth McKenzie, the U.S. commander for the Middle East, told journalists on December 20.

    U.S. officials have blamed Iran-backed Iraqi militia for carrying out a string of attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq this year, prompting Washington to threaten a diplomatic and military withdrawal from the country.

    The Trump administration in November ordered a reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq from 3,000 to 2,500 by mid-January.

    Several Iraq militia groups in October announced a brief suspension of attacks on U.S. interests on condition that a timetable would be presented for U.S. forces to leave Iraq. That truce came to an end on November 18 with a rocket strike on the U.S. Embassy.

    Meanwhile, the United States said in early December it was partially withdrawing some staff from its embassy in response to rising tensions.

    U.S. officials say the temporary staff reduction was in response to possible threats around the anniversary of Soleimani’s killing and that of leading Iraqi paramilitary figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

    Aggravating the situation, tensions spiked again across the region following assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran in late November. Iran has blamed Israel and, indirectly, the United States, raising the possibility that Iran or one of its regional proxies will retaliate.

    The developments in Iraq come as Trump ramps up pressure on Iran ahead of a transition to President-elect Joe Biden, who has said he will try to revive diplomacy with Iran upon entering the White House in January.

    Biden is expected to try to rejoin the Iran nuclear accord that Trump quit in 2018 and work with allies to strengthen its terms, if Tehran resumes compliance.

    Western diplomats and media reports have suggested Iran has told allied Iraqi militia groups to avoid provoking the United States in the final weeks of the Trump administration out of concern the situation could escalate before a more dovish Biden administration comes to power.

    But there are also questions about how much direct operational control Iran really maintains over an array Iraqi militia groups and proxies across the region, raising the prospect of accidents and miscalculations.

    “I do believe we remain in a period of heightened risk,” McKenzie, U.S Central Command head, told ABC News on December 22. “I would just emphasize this key point: We’re not looking to escalate ourselves. We’re not looking for war with Iran, I really want to emphasize that.”

    “It is my belief that Iran doesn’t want a war with the United States right now,” he added.

    With reporting by AFP and Reuters.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Rockets Target U.S. Embassy In Baghdad

    A barrage of rockets has targeted Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, causing minor damage to the U.S. Embassy compound and residential areas in the international zone.

    An Iraqi military statement said “an outlawed group” launched eight rockets on December 20 targeting the Green Zone, the location of embassies and government buildings. Most of the rockets landed near an empty residential complex and checkpoint, injuring one Iraqi security person.

    The U.S. Embassy said its defense systems engaged the rockets and called on the Iraqi government to take action to prevent such attacks by militia groups.

    “These sorts of attacks on diplomatic facilities are a violation of international law and are a direct assault on the sovereignty of the Iraqi government,” the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

    U.S. officials have blamed Iran-backed Iraqi militia for carrying out a string of attacks on U.S. interests in the country, prompting Washington to threaten a diplomatic and military withdrawal from the country.

    Several militia groups in October announced a brief suspension of attacks on U.S. interests on condition that a timetable would be presented for U.S. forces to leave Iraq. That truce came to an end on November 18 with a rocket strike on the U.S. Embassy.

    The United States confirmed in early December it was partially withdrawing some staff from its embassy in response to rising tensions with Iran and Iraqi militia groups.

    U.S. officials say the temporarily staff reduction came ahead of the first anniversary of the U.S. strike that killed Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, and Iraqi militia leaders outside Baghdad’s airport on January 3.

    Soleimani’s killing and that of leading Iraqi paramilitary figure Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis led Iraq’s parliament to pass a non-binding resolution calling for the exit of all foreign troops from Iraq.

    U.S. officials say Iran or allied militia could carry out a possible retaliatory strike around the anniversary.

    Tension spiked again across the region following assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran in late November. Iran has blamed Israel and, indirectly, the United States, raising the possibility that Iran or one of its regional proxies will retaliate.

    The developments in Iraq come as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Iran ahead of a transition to President-elect Joe Biden, who has said he will try to revive diplomacy with Iran upon entering the White House in January.

    Biden is expected to try to rejoin the Iran nuclear accord that Trump quit in 2018 and work with allies to strengthen its terms, if Tehran first resumes compliance.

    Western diplomats and media reports have suggested Iran has told Iraqi militia groups to avoid provoking the United States in the final weeks of the Trump administration out of concern the situation could escalate before a more dovish Biden administration comes to power.

    The Trump administration in November ordered a reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq from 3,000 to 2,500 by mid-January.

    With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Will Biden’s America Stop Creating Terrorists?

    (Photo Credit:  CODEPINK)

    Joe Biden will take command of the White House at a time when the American public is more concerned about battling coronavirus than fighting overseas wars. But America’s wars rage on regardless, and the militarized counterterrorism policy Biden has supported in the past—based on airstrikes, special operations and the use of proxy forces—is precisely what keeps these conflicts raging.

    In Afghanistan, Biden opposed Obama’s 2009 troop surge, and after the surge failed, Obama reverted to the policy that Biden favored to begin with, which became the hallmark of their war policy in other countries as well. In insider circles, this was referred to as “counterterrorism,” as opposed to “counterinsurgency.”

    In Afghanistan, that meant abandoning the large-scale deployment of U.S. forces, and relying instead on air strikes, drone strikes and special operations “kill or capture” raids, while recruiting and training Afghan forces to do nearly all the ground fighting and holding of territory.

    In the 2011 Libya intervention, the NATO-Arab monarchist coalition embedded hundreds of Qatari special operations forces and Western mercenaries with the Libyan rebels to call in NATO airstrikes and train local militias, including Islamist groups with links to Al Qaeda. The forces they unleashed are still fighting over the spoils nine years later.

    While Joe Biden now takes credit for opposing the disastrous intervention in Libya, at the time he was quick to hail its deceptive short-term success and Colonel Gaddafi’s gruesome assassination. “NATO got it right,” Biden said in a speech at Plymouth State College in October 2011 on the very day President Obama announced Gaddafi’s death. “In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn’t lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past.”

    While Biden has since washed his hands of the debacle in Libya, that operation was, in fact, emblematic of the doctrine of covert and proxy war backed by airstrikes that he supported, and which he has yet to disavow. Biden still says he supports “counterterrorism” operations, but he was elected president without ever publicly answering a direct question about his support for the massive use of airstrikes and drone strikes that are an integral part of that doctrine.

    In the campaign against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, U.S.-led forces dropped over 118,000 bombs and missiles, reducing major cities like Mosul and Raqqa to rubble and killing tens of thousands of civilians. When Biden said America “didn’t lose a single life” in Libya, he clearly meant “American life.” If “life” simply means life, the war in Libya obviously cost countless lives, and made a mockery of a UN Security Council resolution that approved the use of military force only to protect civilians.

    As Rob Hewson, the editor of the arms trade journal Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, told the AP as the U.S. unleashed its “Shock and Awe” bombardment on Iraq in 2003, “In a war that’s being fought for the benefit of the Iraqi people, you can’t afford to kill any of them. But you can’t drop bombs and not kill people. There’s a real dichotomy in all of this.” The same obviously applies to people in Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Palestine and wherever American bombs have been falling for 20 years.

    As Obama and Trump both tried to pivot from the failed “global war on terrorism” to what the Trump administration has branded “great power competition,” or a reversion to the Cold War, the war on terror has stubbornly refused to exit on cue. Al Qaeda and Islamic State have been driven from places the U.S. has bombed or invaded, but keep reappearing in new countries and regions. Islamic State now occupies a swath of northern Mozambique, and has also taken root in Afghanistan. Other Al Qaeda affiliates are active across Africa, from Somalia and Kenya in East Africa to eleven countries in West Africa.

    After nearly 20 years of “war on terror,” there is now a large body of research into what drives people to join Islamist armed groups fighting local government forces or Western invaders. While American politicians still wring their hands over what twisted motives can possibly account for such incomprehensible behavior, it turns out that it’s really not that complicated. Most fighters are not motivated by Islamist ideology as much as by the desire to protect themselves, their families or their communities from militarized “counterterrorism” forces, as documented in this report by the Center for Civilians in Conflict.

    Another study, titled The Journey to Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment, found that the tipping point or “final straw” that drives over 70% of fighters to join armed groups is the killing or detention of a family member by “counterterrorism” or “security” forces. The study exposes the U.S. brand of militarized counterterrorism as a self-fulfilling policy that fuels an intractable cycle of violence by generating and replenishing an ever-expanding pool of “terrorists” as it destroys families, communities and countries.

    For example, the U.S. formed the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership with 11 West African countries in 2005 and has so far sunk a billion dollars into it. In a recent report from Burkina Faso, Nick Turse cited U.S. government reports that confirm how 15 years of U.S.-led “counterterrorism” have only fueled an explosion of terrorism across West Africa.

    The Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies reports that the 1,000 violent incidents involving militant Islamist groups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in the past year amount to a seven-fold increase since 2017, while the confirmed minimum number of people killed has increased from 1,538 in 2017 to 4,404 in 2020

    Heni Nsaibia, a senior researcher at ACLED (Armed Conflict Location Event Data), told Turse that, “Focusing on Western concepts of counterterrorism and embracing a strictly military model has been a major mistake. Ignoring drivers of militancy, such as poverty and lack of social mobility, and failing to alleviate the conditions that foster insurgencies, like widespread human rights abuses by security forces, have caused irreparable harm.”

    Indeed, even the New York Times has confirmed that “counterterrorism” forces in Burkina Faso are killing as many civilians as the “terrorists” they are supposed to be fighting. A 2019 U.S. State Department Country Report on Burkina Faso documented allegations of “hundreds of extrajudicial killings of civilians as part of its counterterrorism strategy,” mainly killing members of the Fulani ethnic group.

    Souaibou Diallo, the president of a regional association of Muslim scholars, told Turse that these abuses are the main factor driving the Fulani to join militant groups. “Eighty percent of those who join terrorist groups told us that it isn’t because they support jihadism, it is because their father or mother or brother was killed by the armed forces,” said Diallo. “So many people have been killed—assassinated—but there has been no justice.”

    Since the inception of the Global War on Terror, both sides have used the violence of their enemies to justify their own violence, fueling a seemingly endless spiral of chaos spreading from country to country and region to region across the world.

    But the U.S. roots of all this violence and chaos run even deeper than this. Both Al Qaeda and Islamic State evolved from groups originally recruited, trained, armed and supported by the CIA to overthrow foreign governments: Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the Nusra Front and Islamic State in Syria since 2011.

    If the Biden administration really wants to stop fueling chaos and terrorism in the world, it must radically transform the CIA, whose role in destabilizing countries, supporting terrorism, spreading chaos and creating false pretexts for war and hostility has been well documented since the 1970s by Colonel Fletcher Prouty, William Blum, Gareth Porter and others.

    The United States will never have an objective, depoliticized national intelligence system, or therefore a reality-based, coherent foreign policy, until it exorcises this ghost in the machine. Biden has chosen Avril Haines, who crafted the secret quasi-legal basis for Obama’s drone program and protected CIA torturers, to be his Director of National Intelligence. Is Haines up to the job of transforming these agencies of violence and chaos into a legitimate, working intelligence system? That seems unlikely, and yet it is vital.

    The new Biden administration needs to take a truly fresh look at the whole range of destructive policies the United States has pursued around the world for decades, and the insidious role the CIA has played in so many of them.

    We hope Biden will finally renounce hare-brained, militarized policies that destroy societies and ruin people’s lives for the sake of unattainable geopolitical ambitions, and that he will instead invest in humanitarian and economic aid that really helps people to live more peaceful and prosperous lives.

    We also hope that Biden will reverse Trump’s pivot back to the Cold War and prevent the diversion of more of our country’s resources to a futile and dangerous arms race with China and Russia.

    We have real problems to deal with in this century – existential problems that can only be solved by genuine international cooperation. We can no longer afford to sacrifice our future on the altar of the Global War on Terror, a New Cold War, Pax Americana or other imperialist fantasies.

    The post Will Biden’s America Stop Creating Terrorists? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • U.S. Withdraws Some Staff From Embassy In Iraq Amid Tensions With Iran

    The United States is partially withdrawing some staff from its embassy in Baghdad as tensions with Iran and Iraqi militia groups spike.

    U.S. Ambassador Mathew Tueller confirmed on December 3 a “temporary reduction” in staff at the mission following recent media reports of the change.

    In a video posted on the U.S. Embassy’s Facebook page, Tueller said he and a core team of diplomats and military advisers would continue to carry out duties for the “foreseeable future.”

    It was unclear how many of the several hundred diplomats at the largest U.S. Embassy had been pulled out.

    The drawdown comes as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Iran ahead of a transition to President-elect Joe Biden, who has said he will try to revive diplomacy with Tehran upon entering the White House in January.

    Biden is expected to try to rejoin the Iran nuclear accord that Trump quit in 2018 and work with allies to strengthen its terms, if Tehran first resumes compliance.

    Tension have spiked across the region following last week’s assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran. Iran has blamed Israel and, indirectly, the United States, raising the possibility that Iran or one of its regional proxies will retaliate.

    U.S. officials have also voiced concern that Iran or allied Iraqi militia may carry out retaliatory action on the first anniversary of a U.S. drone strike that killed a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani, and senior Iraqi militia leaders near Baghdad’s airport on January 3.

    The partial withdrawal from the embassy is taking place against the backdrop of the Trump administration last month ordering a reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq from 3,000 to 2,500 by mid-January.

    In September, the Trump administration warned Iraq that it would close its embassy in Baghdad in response to repeated rocket and other attacks by Iranian-backed militias on American and allied interests in the country.

    With reporting by AP and AFP

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.