Dissident Voice, CA
Nov 25 2006
The Anti-Empire Report
Would Jesus Get Out of Iraq?
by William Blum
November 24, 2006
The good news is that the Republicans lost.
The bad news is that the Democrats won.
The burning issue — US withdrawal from Iraq — remains as far from
resolution as before.
A clear majority of Americans are opposed to the war and almost all
of them would be very happy if the US military began the process of
leaving Iraq tomorrow, if not today. The rest of the world would
breathe a great sigh of relief and their long-running love affair
with the storybook place called "America" could begin to come back to
life.
A State Department poll conducted in Iraq this past summer dealt with
the population’s attitude toward the American occupation. Apart from
the Kurds — who assisted the US military before, during, and after
the invasion and occupation, and don’t think of themselves as Iraqis
— most people favored an immediate withdrawal, ranging from 56% to
80% depending on the area.
The State Department report added that majorities in all regions
except Kurdish areas said that the departure of coalition forces
would make them feel safer and decrease violence. [1]
George W. is on record declaring that if the people of Iraq ask the
United States to leave, the US will leave. He also has declared that
the Iraqis are "not happy they’re occupied. I wouldn’t be happy if I
were occupied either." [2]
Yet, despite all this, and much more, the United States remains, with
predictions from Pentagon officials that American forces will be in
Iraq for years. Large US military bases are being constructed there;
they’re not designed as temporary structures. Remember that 61 years
after the end of World War II the United States still has major bases
in Germany. Fifty-three years after the end of the Korean War the US
has tens of thousands of troops in South Korea.
Washington insists that it can’t leave Iraq until it has completed
training and arming a police force and army which will keep order.
Not only does this inject thousands more armed men — often while in
uniform — into the raging daily atrocities, it implies that the
United States is concerned about the welfare and happiness of the
Iraqi people, a proposition rendered bizarre by almost four years of
inflicting upon those same people a thousand and one varieties of
hell on earth, literally destroying their ancient and modern
civilization. We are being asked to believe that the American
military resists leaving because some terrible thing will befall
their beloved Iraqi brethren. ("We bomb you because we care about
you" … suitable to be inscribed on the side of a cruise missile.)
Even as I write this, on November 14, I read: "An overnight US raid
killed six people in mainly-Shia east Baghdad, sparking angry anti-US
protests. Thirty died in a US raid on the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi,
Iraqi officials said." [3]
At the same time, the American occupation fuels hostility by the
Sunnis toward Shiite "collaborators" with the occupation, and
vice-versa. If the Americans left, both sides could negotiate and
participate in the reconstruction of Iraq without fear of being
branded traitors. The Iraqi government would lose its quisling
stigma. And Iraq’s security forces would no longer have the handicap
of being seen to be working on behalf of foreign infidels against
fellow Iraqis.
So why don’t the Yanquis just go home? Is all this not rather odd?
Three thousand of their own dead, tens of thousands critically
maimed. And still they stay. Why, they absolutely refuse to even
offer a timetable for withdrawal. No exit plan. No nothing.
No, it’s not odd. It’s oil.
Oil was not the only motivation for the American invasion and
occupation, but the other goals have already been achieved —
eliminating Saddam Hussein for Israel’s sake, canceling the Iraqi use
of the euro in place of the dollar for oil transactions, expansion of
the empire in the middle east with new bases.
American oil companies have been busy under the occupation, and even
before the US invasion, preparing for a major exploitation of Iraq’s
huge oil reserves. Chevron, ExxonMobil and others are all set to go.
Four years of preparation are coming to a head now. Iraq’s new
national petroleum law — written in a place called Washington, DC —
is about to be implemented. It will establish agreements with foreign
oil companies, privatizing much of Iraq’s oil reserves under
exceedingly lucrative terms. Security will be the only problem,
protecting the oil companies’ investments in a lawless country. For
that they need the American military close by. [4]
What a mad raving dinosaur am I!
Democratic Party leaders think that the election validates their
pursuing a centrist path. Arnold Schwarzenegger credits his
re-election as California governor to his moving to the center (or at
least pretending to do so). They and their colleagues would have us
all believe that the American people have resolutely moved to the
center, abandoning the "extremes". But is that really so? I maintain
that most Americans are liberal, and many even further left. I think
that this would be revealed if the public was asked questions along
the following lines?
Would you like to have a government-run health care system, which put
an end to the for-profit health care corporations and hospitals, and
which covered all residents for all ailments at very affordable
premiums?
Do you think that when corporations are faced with a choice between
optimizing their revenue and doing what’s best for the environment
and public health, that they should always choose in favor of the
environment?
Do you think that abortion is a question best left up to a woman and
her doctor?
Do you think that the United States should officially be a totally
secular nation or one based on religious beliefs?
Do you think that big corporations and their political action
committees exercise too much political power?
Do you think that corporate executive salaries are highly excessive?
Do you think that the tax cuts for the super rich instituted by the
Bush administration should be cancelled and their taxes then
increased?
Do you think that the minimum wage should be increased to what is
called a "living wage", which would be at least $10 per hour?
Do you think that all education, including medical school and law
school, should be free, subsidized by the government?
Do you think that the government should take all measures necessary
to guarantee that corporations have retirement plans for all workers
and that the retirement funds are safeguarded?
Do you think that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a mistake?
Do you think that United States support of Israel is excessive?
Do you approve of the treatment of people captured by the United
States as part of its so-called War on Terror — the complete loss of
legal and human rights, and subjected to torture?
For those readers who think that I’m presuming too much about
Americans’ disenchantment with their economic system, I suggest they
have a look at my essay: "The United States invades, bombs, and kills
for it, but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?" [5]
And for those readers who wonder where all the money would come from
to pay for the education, medical care, etc., keep in mind that one
year of the US military budget — that’s one year — is equal to more
than $30,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.
The Great Decider
Earlier this month the US State Department dropped Vietnam from its
blacklist of nations that it judges to be serious violators of
religious freedom. This occurred just days before a visit to Vietnam
by President Bush. The Department denied any connection between the
two events. However, to quote George Bernard Shaw: "Not bloody
likely."
In removing Vietnam from the list, the State Department was ignoring
the US government’s own Commission on International Religious
Freedom, a congressionally mandated advisory body, which had called
for Vietnam to be kept on the list. The Commission also called for
Pakistan and Turkmenistan to be added. This, too, was ignored by the
White House. [6]
Foreign policy considerations routinely play a decisive role in
determining who’s included and who’s not on various State Department
lists. This is no small matter, for inclusion on one of the lists can
lead to economic and other sanctions. It’s thus another weapon
Washington has available to bend the world to its will.
In addition to the report on religious freedom, the State Department
self-righteously issues annual reports which rate the countries of
the world on human rights, the war on drugs, trafficking in persons,
and the war on terrorism, as well as maintaining a list of
"terrorist" groups. The Department has placed Venezuela in the worst
category on the trafficking-in-persons list, stating that "Venezuela
is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children
trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor"
and that "The Government of Venezuela does not fully comply with the
minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not
making significant efforts to do so." [7]
It’s all rather arbitrary and most of what the State Department
report says about Venezuela could be said as well about the United
States and other developed countries. In Washington, DC, for many
years, there have regularly been cases of foreign diplomats
"enslaving" and sexually abusing young women whom they brought with
them from abroad to work in their home. This keeps happening again
and again and there does not appear to be a clear and tough policy of
the State Department to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The
stories are reported each time a young woman, after years of
"slavery" in a Washington suburb, escapes. "Slavery" is indeed the
term used by the legal authorities.
Categorizing Venezuelan thusly is as arbitrary as including Cuba on
the list of state supporters of terrorism because a few American
Black Panthers hijacked planes to Cuba 25 or 30 years ago, and a
Basque activist lives in Cuba, which Spain has no problem with, but
which the US wants to make political capital of.
Caution: extremist statement ahead (You may never see this in print
again, so clip and save)
France is on the verge of approving legislation which makes it a
crime to deny the Turkish genocide of Armenians at the time of the
First World War.
Denying the German Holocaust of Jews is a crime in Germany, Belgium,
the Czech Republic, France, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland,
Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and Israel.
In the United States it’s not a crime to deny the American holocaust,
although this particular historical phenomenon encompasses Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada,
Indonesia, Iraq, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Greece, East Timor, Angola,
Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Colombia, and several
other countries upon whom Washington has bestowed its precious gifts
of freedom and democracy.
But how long before the neo-Cons and the neo-Dems of America put
their heads together and make it a crime to affirm the American
holocaust? Politicians and media people carry around ten-foot poles
to not touch this with.
The case that is still not closed
I have closely followed and often written about the case of Pan Am
Flight 103, blown out of the sky by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie,
Scotland in 1988, taking the lives of 270 people. For well over a
year afterward, the US and the UK insisted that Iran, Syria, and a
Palestinian group had been behind the bombing, until the buildup to
the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria was
desired for the operation. Suddenly, in October 1990, the US declared
that it was Libya — the Arab state least supportive of the US
build-up to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against Iraq —
that was behind the bombing after all.
Eventually, in 2001, a Libyan, Abdelbaset al Megrahi, was sentenced
to life in prison for the crime, although his Libyan co-defendant,
charged with the same crime and with the same evidence, was
acquitted. The trial was the proverbial travesty of justice, which
I’ve discussed in detail elsewhere. ("I am absolutely astounded,
astonished," said the Scottish law professor who was the architect of
the trial. "I was extremely reluctant to believe that any Scottish
judge would convict anyone, even a Libyan, on the basis of such
evidence.") [8] The prosecution’s star witness, Libyan defector Abdul
Majid Giaka, groomed and presented by the CIA, was a thoroughly
dubious character who didn’t know much or have access to much, and
who pretended to be otherwise just to get more CIA payments. And the
CIA knew it. The Agency refused to fully declassify documents about
him, using their standard excuse — that it would reveal confidential
sources and methods. It turned out they were reluctant because the
documents showed that the CIA thought him unreliable.
Then, in 2005, we learned that a key piece of evidence linking Libya
to the crime had been planted by the CIA. [9] Just like in movie
thrillers. Just like in conspiracy theories.
For anyone still in doubt about the farcical nature of the trial, now
comes along Michael Scharf, an attorney who worked on the 103 case at
the State Department and was the counsel to the counter-terrorism
bureau when the two Libyans were indicted for the bombing. In the
past year he trained judges and prosecutors in Iraq in the case that
led to the conviction and death sentence of Saddam Hussein. Scharf
recently stated that the Panam case "was largely based on this inside
guy [Giaka]. It wasn’t until the trial that I learned this guy was a
nut-job and that the CIA had absolutely no confidence in him and that
they knew he was a liar. It was a case that was so full of holes it
was like Swiss cheese." He says that the case had a "diplomatic
rather than a purely legal goal." [10]
Victor Ostrovsky, formerly with the Israeli intelligence service,
Mossad, has written of Mossad what one could just as correctly say of
the CIA: "This feeling that you can do anything you want to whomever
you want for as long as you want because you have the power." [11]
So, let’s hope that Abdelbaset al Megrahi is really guilty. It would
be a terrible shame if he spends the rest of his life in prison
simply because back in 1990 Washington’s hegemonic plans for the
Middle East needed a convenient scapegoat, which just happened to be
his country. However, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission
is to report in the coming months on whether it believes there was a
miscarriage of justice in the case.
And by the way, my usual reminder, Libya has never confessed to
having carried out the act. They’ve only taken "responsibility", in
the hope of getting various sanctions against them lifted.
William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War 2, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s
Only Superpower, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American
Empire, and West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir. Visit his
website: He can be reached at: bblum6@aol.com.