[ Di seguito il testo della relazione di W. Blum alla Conferenza sul
Diritto Internazionale umanitario, svoltasi a Parigi nei giorni 22-24
settembre 2005; il titolo della relazione può essere
approssimativamente tradotto: "Liberare il mondo fino alla morte".
William Blum è autore tra l'altro dell'opera "Killing Hope : US
military and CIA interventions since World War II (Uccidere la
speranza: l'apparata militare USA e gli interventi della CIA dopo la
II Guerra Mondiale - www.killinghope.org) ]
Bill Blum:
Freeing the world to death: How the United States gets away with it
(talk held at the CONFERENCE ORGANISEE PAR L'ASSOCIATION POUR LA
DEFENSE DU DROIT INTERNATIONAL HUMANITAIRE -ADIF- "Droit International
Humanitaire et impunité des États puissants, le cas des États-Unis" -
Paris 22-24 septembre 2005, Palais Bourbon)
This conference is about impunity, which is the exemption from
punishment or penalty. The impunity of powerful states – the case of
the United States.
It's not just those of us on the left who are concerned about impunity
and it's not just the impunity of powerful states. Here is the
American Secretary of War, Donald Rumsfeld, in 2002, about six months
before the US invasion of Iraq. He was speaking about the American
and British flights over Iraq, which had been going on for 11 years,
often dropping bombs, often killing Iraqi citizens. Iraq had been
firing at these planes for a long time without getting close, but
lately they had been getting closer. And Mr. Rumsfeld was very upset.
He declared: "It bothers the hell out of me that American and British
air crews are getting fired at day after day after day with impunity."
Most Americans would see nothing wrong with that statement. They
would not see the irony or the hypocrisy. Most of them would not even
have known that the United States had been invading Iraqi airspace and
bombing the country since 1991. And most of those who did know about
this were convinced that it was all being done at the request of the
UN Security Council, when in fact it was just something thought up by
Washington and London with no international approval.
This is the main reason that the United States can get away with what
it does all over the world – the lack of awareness of the American
people about US foreign policy. These Americans are not necessarily
stupid, but there are all kinds of intelligence in this world: there's
musical intelligence, scientific, mathematical, artistic, academic,
literary, and so on. Then there's political intelligence, which might
be defined as the ability to see through the bullshit which every
society, past, present and future, feeds its citizens from birth on to
assure the continuance of the prevailing ruling class and its ideology.
Months after the invasion of Iraq, polls showed that significant
portions of Americans believed that Iraq had a direct involvement in
what had happened on 11 September 2001, most of them being certain
that Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers; most believed that Saddam
Hussein had close ties to al Qaeda; more than 40 percent were
convinced that weapons of mass destruction had recently been found in
Iraq or they were not sure if such weapons had been found; one fourth
believed that Iraq had used chemical or biological weapons against
American forces in the war, many others were not sure if Iraq had used
such weapons.
The public was asked: "If Iraq had no significant weapons of mass
destruction and no close link to Al Qaeda, do you think we were misled
by the government?" Only half said yes.
Many Americans, whether consciously or unconsciously, actually pride
themselves on their ignorance. It reflects their break with the
overly complicated intellectual culture of "old Europe". I might also
point out that it's a source of satisfaction for them that they have a
president who's no smarter than they are.
This, then, is a significant segment of the audience the American
anti-war and progressive movements have to reach.
Friedrich Schiller wrote: Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst
vergebens." "With stupidity even the gods struggle in vain."
I believe that the main cause of this ignorance about foreign policy
among Americans has to do with the deeply-held belief that no matter
what the US does abroad, no matter how bad it may look, no matter what
horror may result, the United States means well. American leaders may
make mistakes, they may blunder, they may even on the odd occasion
cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions
are always noble. Of that Americans are certain. They genuinely
wonder why the rest of the world can't see how kind and generous and
self-sacrificing America has been. Even many people who take part in
the anti-war movement have a hard time shaking off some of this idée
fixe; they think that the government just needs to be given a push to
return it to its normal benevolent self.
Here is George W. Bush, speaking a month after the attacks of 11
September: "How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries
there is vitriolic hatred for America? I'll tell you how I respond:
I'm amazed. I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our
country is about that people would hate us. Like most Americans, I
just can't believe it because I know how good we are."
When I speak before American university students I say this to them:
If I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page
one would say: Don't ever look for the moral factor. US foreign
policy has no moral factor built into its DNA. Clear your mind of
that baggage which only gets in the way of seeing beyond the clichés
and the platitudes they feed us.
It's not easy for most Americans to take what I say at face value.
It's not easy for them to swallow my message. They see their leaders
on TV and their photos in the press, they see them smiling or
laughing, telling jokes; they see them with their families, they hear
them speak of God and love, of peace and law, of democracy and
freedom, of human rights and justice and even baseball ... How can
such people be moral monsters?
They have names like George and Dick and Donald, not a single Mohammed
or Abdullah in the bunch. And they all speak English. Well, George
almost does. People named Mohammed or Abdullah sometimes cut off an
arm or a leg as punishment for theft. We know that that's horrible.
Americans are too civilized for that. But people named George and
Dick and Donald go around the world dropping cluster bombs on cities
and villages, and the many unexploded ones become land mines, and
before very long a child comes by, picks one up or steps on one of
them, and loses an arm or a leg, or both arms or both legs, and
sometimes his eyesight.
What makes this low level of awareness about foreign policy even worse
is that there's no real opposition party in the United States. There
are some small differences between the Republicans and the Democrats
on domestic issues, but when it comes to foreign policy the two
parties are absolutely indistinguishable. They both strongly support
American imperialism, at least in practice and are proud of their
country's immense military power. The Democrats argue that they would
be tougher on terrorism than the Republicans.
And all this is the way it was during the Cold War as well. So you
should not make the mistake of thinking that George Bush and his
neo-conservatives are unique in the manner in which they relate to the
world. Don't think for a moment that no previous American government
has ever exhibited such arrogance and deceit; such murderous
devastation, violation of international law, and disregard of world
opinion.
No, we've seen all this wickedness before, many times. If not packed
quite as densely in one regime as it is under Bush, then certainly
abundant enough to earn the animosity of millions at home and abroad.
A short sample would include Truman's atom bomb and manipulation of
the UN that led to bloody American warfare in Korea; Eisenhower's
overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala and
the Congo and his unprincipled policies which led to the disaster
known as Vietnam; Kennedy's attempts to crush the Cuban revolution and
his abandonment of democracy in the Dominican Republic; Ford's giving
the okay to Indonesia's genocide against East Timor and his
instigation of the horrific Angola civil war; Reagan's tragic
Afghanistan venture and unprovoked invasion of Grenada; Clinton's war
crimes in Yugoslavia and vicious assault upon the people of Somalia.
When the United Nations overwhelmingly voted its disapproval of the
Grenada invasion, President Reagan responded: "One hundred nations in
the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come
before them where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at
all." George W. could not have said it better.
For those who think the United States has been shockingly brutal to
detainees in Iraq, here's how the US handled them in Vietnam. This is
from the New York Herald Tribune: "Two Vietcong prisoners were
interrogated on an airplane flying toward Saigon. The first refused
to answer questions and was thrown out of the airplane at 3,000 feet.
The second immediately answered all the questions. But he, too, was
thrown out."
It would be difficult to find a remark made today by an American
official about Iraq, no matter how illogical, arrogant, lying, or
Orwellian, which doesn't have any number of precedents during the
Vietnam War period, that constantly had those opposed to that war
shaking their heads or rolling their eyes, as we all do now with Bush.
Here is President Lyndon Johnson in 1966: "The exercise of power in
this century has meant for all of us in the United States not
arrogance but agony. We have used our power not willingly and
recklessly ever, but always reluctantly and with restraint."
And here is Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1967: "I believe that
Vietnam will be marked as the place where the family of man has gained
the time it needed to finally break through to a new era of hope and
human development and justice. This is the chance we have. This is
our great adventure -- and a wonderful one it is."
Former US Senator William Fulbright, a critic of the Vietnam War,
later observed:
The causes of the malady are not entirely clear but its recurrence is
one of the uniformities of history: power tends to confuse itself with
virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that
its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special
responsibility for other nations -- to make them richer and happier
and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image.
Fulbright wrote those words about the Johnson regime in the 1960s, not
the Bush regime in the 21st century.
Does anything done by Bush and his neo-conservatives compare to
Operation Gladio? From 1947 until 1990, when it was publicly exposed,
Gladio was essentially a CIA/NATO/MI6 operation in conjunction with
other intelligence agencies and an assortment of the vilest of
right-wing thugs and terrorists. It ran wild in virtually every
country of Western Europe, kidnaping and/or assassinating political
leaders, exploding bombs in trains and public squares with many
hundreds of dead and wounded, shooting up supermarkets with many
casualties, trying to overthrow governments ... all with impunity,
protected by the most powerful military and political forces in the
world. Even today, the beast may still be breathing somewhere in
Europe. Since the inception of the Freedom of Information Act in the
United States in the 1970s, the CIA has repeatedly refused requests
for information concerning Gladio, refusing not only individual
researchers, but some of the governments involved, including Italy and
Austria. Gladio is one of the CIA's family jewels, to be guarded
fervently.
The rationale behind it was your standard cold-war paranoia and
propaganda: There was a good chance the Russians would launch an
unprovoked invasion of Western Europe. And if they defeated the
Western armies and forced them to flee, certain people had to remain
behind to harass the Russians with guerrilla warfare and sabotage, and
act as liaisons with those abroad. The "stay-behinds", as they were
called, would be provided with funds, weapons, communication equipment
and training exercises.
As matters turned out, in the complete absence of any Russian invasion
(surprise, surprise), the operation was used almost exclusively to
inflict political and lethal damage upon the European Left, be it
individuals, movements or governments, and heighten the public's fear
of "communism". To that end, violent actions like those I just
mentioned were made to appear to be the work of the Left.
It may be that President Bush is held in such low esteem as much for
his character defects as for his policies, for the man comes off as
woefully crass, uninformed, insufferably religious, dishonest, and
remarkably insensitive.
Bill Clinton, by contrast, could be rather charming and very
articulate. This may have helped him get away with bombing the people
of Yugoslavia for 78 consecutive days and nights without mercy, and
that's still regarded by most people, including many on the left, as
an act of humanitarianism. And the United States was able to set up
the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The
Hague.
All participants in the war were supposedly subject to this court, but
only former Yugoslavians, mainly Serbs, have been indicted. A group of
international-law professionals from Canada, the United Kingdom,
Greece, and the United States filed complaints with the Hague Court,
charging leaders of NATO countries and officials of NATO itself with
crimes similar to those for which the court had issued indictments
against Serbian leaders. These lawsuits names 68 leaders, including
Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen, and Tony Blair.
Their complaints were ignored for a long time, but they kept the
pressure up on the chief prosecutor of the court, Carla Del Ponte.
Eventually, in an interview with The Observer of London, Del Ponte was
asked if she was prepared to press charges against NATO personnel.
She replied: "If I am not willing to do that, I am not in the right
place. I must give up my mission."
The court then announced that it had completed a study of possible
NATO crimes as a response to public concerns about NATO's tactics.
The court declared: "It is very important for this tribunal to assert
its authority over any and all authorities to the armed conflict
within the former Yugoslavia."
This was in late December 1999, and one could wonder if this was a
sign from heaven that the new millennium was going to be one of more
equal justice. Could this really be?
No, it couldn't. From official quarters, military and civilian, of
the United States and Canada, came disbelief, shock, anger, denials
... "appalling", they said ... "unjustified". Carla Del Ponte got the
message. Four days after her Observer interview appeared, her office
issued a statement: "NATO is not under investigation by the Office of
the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia. There is no formal inquiry into the actions of NATO
during the conflict in Kosovo." And there wouldn't be, it was
unnecessary to add.
I think what has distinguished the Bush foreign policy from that of
its predecessors has been its unabashed and conspicuously overt
expressions of its imperial ambitions. They flaunt it, publicly and
proudly declaring their intention -- nay, their God-inspired right and
obligation -- to remake the world and dominate outer space as well;
"full-spectrum dominance", a term coined by the military, well
captures the Bush neo-conservatives style and ambition. And they have
not hesitated to put their dominance master plans into print on a
regular basis, beginning with their now-famous 1992 Defense Planning
Guidance, which stated: "We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring
potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or
global role," and in the White House National Security plan of 2002
which read: "To forestall or prevent ... hostile acts by our
adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."
"Preemptive" military action is an example of what the post-World War
II International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called "a war of
aggression"; the invasion of Poland was a case in point. US Supreme
Court Justice Robert Jackson, the Chief US Prosecutor at the Tribunal,
said:
We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their
fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that
they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a
trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances
or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly
renounced and condemned as an implement of policy.
The Tribunal's final judgment stated: "To initiate a war of
aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the
supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in
that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
The bombing and invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by the US government
are wars of aggression and international crimes, but legally and
morally no worse than many other US bombings and invasions, such as
against Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Grenada, Panama, and
Yugoslavia. Nobody has ever suggested that Serbia was preparing to
attack a member of NATO, and that is the only event which justifies a
reaction under the NATO constitution.
In recent years, one of the most stunning examples of the United
States acting with impunity is the CIA and other American agents
carrying out what they call "rendition". These agents have given
themselves the right to go anywhere in the world, kidnap anyone they
want, while the person is walking to work or on his way home; it could
be anywhere, any time, anyone; all laws, domestic or international, be
damned. They grab the man, throw him into a car, tie him up,
blindfold him, and drive right to an airport to fly him to a country
where he will be tortured.
And no one dares to stop them. They've done this more than a hundred
times, in dozens of countries, and so far the only country to complain
angrily about it is Italy, which in June issued arrest warrants
against 13 American agents involved in a rendition and asked
Washington for "judicial assistance".
One of the most remarkable examples of rendition occurred in Bosnia.
In 2001, the United States informed the Bosnian government of an
alleged plot by a group of five Algerians and a Yemeni living in
Bosnia to blow up the American and British embassies in Sarajevo. The
Bosnians held the men for three months, during which time an
investigation failed to substantiate any criminal charges against
them. In January 2002, the Bosnian Supreme Court ruled that they
should be released. As the men left prison, they were grabbed and
thrown into waiting unmarked cars by masked men. They wound up at the
US prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Guantánamo is where, a few months ago, one of the American military
judges said: "I don't care about international law. I don't want to
hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with
international law."
Robert Baer, a former CIA officer who was active in the war on terror,
has described the renditions as such: "They are picking up people
really with nothing against them, hoping to catch someone because they
have no information about these terrorist networks."
It's very good news that Italy is complaining about the rendition in
their country, but this is a rare exception to the norm. Apart from
China, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, and to a much lesser extent,
Russia, who dares to challenge American imperialism? Who dares to
call it by its right name? Who else loudly and strongly and
undiplomatically condemns the empire's flagrant abuses of human rights
and international law and its plan for world domination? Most
Americans are convinced that France is an implacable enemy of US
foreign policy. I'm sure you've heard about "french fries" being
changed to "freedom fries". But in actuality, in recent years, the
French government has given in to Washington on crucial issues more
often than not, for example agreeing to compromises in the language of
Security Council resolutions which have enabled the United States to
pretend that it's gotten approval for its military adventures. In
France, Germany and Canada, government officials who said something
insulting about George Bush have all been forced to resign. It's hard
to imagine an American official being fired because of saying
something insulting about Jacques Chirac.
Do you know that the White House arranged for several Republican Party
loyalists who are enthusiastic supporters of US foreign policy to be
officials at the United Nations? And they have been promoting Bush's
political agenda at the UN. Here is one of them speaking to the
Washington Post: "I came here at the request of the White House. It's
my duty to make the UN more effective. My primary loyalty is to the
United States of America." He said this despite having taken an oath
of loyalty to the United Nations. And of course, making the UN "more
effective" means simply making it cooperate more with the aims of US
foreign policy.
Has France or any other country complained about this subversion of
the UN? Did France or any other country vehemently condemn the US and
the UK for its 12 years of flying over and bombing Iraq? The United
States can act with impunity because the opposition from other
governments and from the UN is as weak as from the Democratic Party in
the US. And I would urge all of you who live here in France to put
more pressure on your government to take a strong moral stand against
Washington's continuing crimes against humanity. Such statements by
foreign governments are actually reported in the American media, and
when that happens even arrogant neo-conservative government leaders
can be put on the defensive.
Although in general, the American media is not much help in
challenging their government's impunity.
For example, I do not think there was a single American daily
newspaper that unequivocally opposed the US bombing of Iraq in 1991.
Nor a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the
US bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
Nor a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the
US bombing of Afghanistan in 2001.
Nor a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the
US bombing of Iraq in 2003.
In a supposedly free society, with a supposedly free press, with about
1500 daily newspapers, it should be very unlikely that this is the
case. But that's the way it is.
Much of what I've discussed here this evening is the result of the
so-called War on Terrorism. I say "so-called" because the War on
Terrorism is primarily a means for expanding the American empire.
If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against
American targets in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize
-- very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and the
orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions
of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce that
America's global interventions -- including the awful bombings -- have
come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the
51st state of the union but -– oddly enough -– a foreign country. I
would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the
savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from
the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than
enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is
equal to? One year. It's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for
every hour since Jesus Christ was born.
That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the
fourth day, I'd be assassinated.
(comments may be sent to: BBlum6[at]aol.com)
Diritto Internazionale umanitario, svoltasi a Parigi nei giorni 22-24
settembre 2005; il titolo della relazione può essere
approssimativamente tradotto: "Liberare il mondo fino alla morte".
William Blum è autore tra l'altro dell'opera "Killing Hope : US
military and CIA interventions since World War II (Uccidere la
speranza: l'apparata militare USA e gli interventi della CIA dopo la
II Guerra Mondiale - www.killinghope.org) ]
Bill Blum:
Freeing the world to death: How the United States gets away with it
(talk held at the CONFERENCE ORGANISEE PAR L'ASSOCIATION POUR LA
DEFENSE DU DROIT INTERNATIONAL HUMANITAIRE -ADIF- "Droit International
Humanitaire et impunité des États puissants, le cas des États-Unis" -
Paris 22-24 septembre 2005, Palais Bourbon)
This conference is about impunity, which is the exemption from
punishment or penalty. The impunity of powerful states – the case of
the United States.
It's not just those of us on the left who are concerned about impunity
and it's not just the impunity of powerful states. Here is the
American Secretary of War, Donald Rumsfeld, in 2002, about six months
before the US invasion of Iraq. He was speaking about the American
and British flights over Iraq, which had been going on for 11 years,
often dropping bombs, often killing Iraqi citizens. Iraq had been
firing at these planes for a long time without getting close, but
lately they had been getting closer. And Mr. Rumsfeld was very upset.
He declared: "It bothers the hell out of me that American and British
air crews are getting fired at day after day after day with impunity."
Most Americans would see nothing wrong with that statement. They
would not see the irony or the hypocrisy. Most of them would not even
have known that the United States had been invading Iraqi airspace and
bombing the country since 1991. And most of those who did know about
this were convinced that it was all being done at the request of the
UN Security Council, when in fact it was just something thought up by
Washington and London with no international approval.
This is the main reason that the United States can get away with what
it does all over the world – the lack of awareness of the American
people about US foreign policy. These Americans are not necessarily
stupid, but there are all kinds of intelligence in this world: there's
musical intelligence, scientific, mathematical, artistic, academic,
literary, and so on. Then there's political intelligence, which might
be defined as the ability to see through the bullshit which every
society, past, present and future, feeds its citizens from birth on to
assure the continuance of the prevailing ruling class and its ideology.
Months after the invasion of Iraq, polls showed that significant
portions of Americans believed that Iraq had a direct involvement in
what had happened on 11 September 2001, most of them being certain
that Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers; most believed that Saddam
Hussein had close ties to al Qaeda; more than 40 percent were
convinced that weapons of mass destruction had recently been found in
Iraq or they were not sure if such weapons had been found; one fourth
believed that Iraq had used chemical or biological weapons against
American forces in the war, many others were not sure if Iraq had used
such weapons.
The public was asked: "If Iraq had no significant weapons of mass
destruction and no close link to Al Qaeda, do you think we were misled
by the government?" Only half said yes.
Many Americans, whether consciously or unconsciously, actually pride
themselves on their ignorance. It reflects their break with the
overly complicated intellectual culture of "old Europe". I might also
point out that it's a source of satisfaction for them that they have a
president who's no smarter than they are.
This, then, is a significant segment of the audience the American
anti-war and progressive movements have to reach.
Friedrich Schiller wrote: Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst
vergebens." "With stupidity even the gods struggle in vain."
I believe that the main cause of this ignorance about foreign policy
among Americans has to do with the deeply-held belief that no matter
what the US does abroad, no matter how bad it may look, no matter what
horror may result, the United States means well. American leaders may
make mistakes, they may blunder, they may even on the odd occasion
cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions
are always noble. Of that Americans are certain. They genuinely
wonder why the rest of the world can't see how kind and generous and
self-sacrificing America has been. Even many people who take part in
the anti-war movement have a hard time shaking off some of this idée
fixe; they think that the government just needs to be given a push to
return it to its normal benevolent self.
Here is George W. Bush, speaking a month after the attacks of 11
September: "How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries
there is vitriolic hatred for America? I'll tell you how I respond:
I'm amazed. I'm amazed that there's such misunderstanding of what our
country is about that people would hate us. Like most Americans, I
just can't believe it because I know how good we are."
When I speak before American university students I say this to them:
If I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page
one would say: Don't ever look for the moral factor. US foreign
policy has no moral factor built into its DNA. Clear your mind of
that baggage which only gets in the way of seeing beyond the clichés
and the platitudes they feed us.
It's not easy for most Americans to take what I say at face value.
It's not easy for them to swallow my message. They see their leaders
on TV and their photos in the press, they see them smiling or
laughing, telling jokes; they see them with their families, they hear
them speak of God and love, of peace and law, of democracy and
freedom, of human rights and justice and even baseball ... How can
such people be moral monsters?
They have names like George and Dick and Donald, not a single Mohammed
or Abdullah in the bunch. And they all speak English. Well, George
almost does. People named Mohammed or Abdullah sometimes cut off an
arm or a leg as punishment for theft. We know that that's horrible.
Americans are too civilized for that. But people named George and
Dick and Donald go around the world dropping cluster bombs on cities
and villages, and the many unexploded ones become land mines, and
before very long a child comes by, picks one up or steps on one of
them, and loses an arm or a leg, or both arms or both legs, and
sometimes his eyesight.
What makes this low level of awareness about foreign policy even worse
is that there's no real opposition party in the United States. There
are some small differences between the Republicans and the Democrats
on domestic issues, but when it comes to foreign policy the two
parties are absolutely indistinguishable. They both strongly support
American imperialism, at least in practice and are proud of their
country's immense military power. The Democrats argue that they would
be tougher on terrorism than the Republicans.
And all this is the way it was during the Cold War as well. So you
should not make the mistake of thinking that George Bush and his
neo-conservatives are unique in the manner in which they relate to the
world. Don't think for a moment that no previous American government
has ever exhibited such arrogance and deceit; such murderous
devastation, violation of international law, and disregard of world
opinion.
No, we've seen all this wickedness before, many times. If not packed
quite as densely in one regime as it is under Bush, then certainly
abundant enough to earn the animosity of millions at home and abroad.
A short sample would include Truman's atom bomb and manipulation of
the UN that led to bloody American warfare in Korea; Eisenhower's
overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala and
the Congo and his unprincipled policies which led to the disaster
known as Vietnam; Kennedy's attempts to crush the Cuban revolution and
his abandonment of democracy in the Dominican Republic; Ford's giving
the okay to Indonesia's genocide against East Timor and his
instigation of the horrific Angola civil war; Reagan's tragic
Afghanistan venture and unprovoked invasion of Grenada; Clinton's war
crimes in Yugoslavia and vicious assault upon the people of Somalia.
When the United Nations overwhelmingly voted its disapproval of the
Grenada invasion, President Reagan responded: "One hundred nations in
the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come
before them where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at
all." George W. could not have said it better.
For those who think the United States has been shockingly brutal to
detainees in Iraq, here's how the US handled them in Vietnam. This is
from the New York Herald Tribune: "Two Vietcong prisoners were
interrogated on an airplane flying toward Saigon. The first refused
to answer questions and was thrown out of the airplane at 3,000 feet.
The second immediately answered all the questions. But he, too, was
thrown out."
It would be difficult to find a remark made today by an American
official about Iraq, no matter how illogical, arrogant, lying, or
Orwellian, which doesn't have any number of precedents during the
Vietnam War period, that constantly had those opposed to that war
shaking their heads or rolling their eyes, as we all do now with Bush.
Here is President Lyndon Johnson in 1966: "The exercise of power in
this century has meant for all of us in the United States not
arrogance but agony. We have used our power not willingly and
recklessly ever, but always reluctantly and with restraint."
And here is Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1967: "I believe that
Vietnam will be marked as the place where the family of man has gained
the time it needed to finally break through to a new era of hope and
human development and justice. This is the chance we have. This is
our great adventure -- and a wonderful one it is."
Former US Senator William Fulbright, a critic of the Vietnam War,
later observed:
The causes of the malady are not entirely clear but its recurrence is
one of the uniformities of history: power tends to confuse itself with
virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that
its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special
responsibility for other nations -- to make them richer and happier
and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image.
Fulbright wrote those words about the Johnson regime in the 1960s, not
the Bush regime in the 21st century.
Does anything done by Bush and his neo-conservatives compare to
Operation Gladio? From 1947 until 1990, when it was publicly exposed,
Gladio was essentially a CIA/NATO/MI6 operation in conjunction with
other intelligence agencies and an assortment of the vilest of
right-wing thugs and terrorists. It ran wild in virtually every
country of Western Europe, kidnaping and/or assassinating political
leaders, exploding bombs in trains and public squares with many
hundreds of dead and wounded, shooting up supermarkets with many
casualties, trying to overthrow governments ... all with impunity,
protected by the most powerful military and political forces in the
world. Even today, the beast may still be breathing somewhere in
Europe. Since the inception of the Freedom of Information Act in the
United States in the 1970s, the CIA has repeatedly refused requests
for information concerning Gladio, refusing not only individual
researchers, but some of the governments involved, including Italy and
Austria. Gladio is one of the CIA's family jewels, to be guarded
fervently.
The rationale behind it was your standard cold-war paranoia and
propaganda: There was a good chance the Russians would launch an
unprovoked invasion of Western Europe. And if they defeated the
Western armies and forced them to flee, certain people had to remain
behind to harass the Russians with guerrilla warfare and sabotage, and
act as liaisons with those abroad. The "stay-behinds", as they were
called, would be provided with funds, weapons, communication equipment
and training exercises.
As matters turned out, in the complete absence of any Russian invasion
(surprise, surprise), the operation was used almost exclusively to
inflict political and lethal damage upon the European Left, be it
individuals, movements or governments, and heighten the public's fear
of "communism". To that end, violent actions like those I just
mentioned were made to appear to be the work of the Left.
It may be that President Bush is held in such low esteem as much for
his character defects as for his policies, for the man comes off as
woefully crass, uninformed, insufferably religious, dishonest, and
remarkably insensitive.
Bill Clinton, by contrast, could be rather charming and very
articulate. This may have helped him get away with bombing the people
of Yugoslavia for 78 consecutive days and nights without mercy, and
that's still regarded by most people, including many on the left, as
an act of humanitarianism. And the United States was able to set up
the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The
Hague.
All participants in the war were supposedly subject to this court, but
only former Yugoslavians, mainly Serbs, have been indicted. A group of
international-law professionals from Canada, the United Kingdom,
Greece, and the United States filed complaints with the Hague Court,
charging leaders of NATO countries and officials of NATO itself with
crimes similar to those for which the court had issued indictments
against Serbian leaders. These lawsuits names 68 leaders, including
Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen, and Tony Blair.
Their complaints were ignored for a long time, but they kept the
pressure up on the chief prosecutor of the court, Carla Del Ponte.
Eventually, in an interview with The Observer of London, Del Ponte was
asked if she was prepared to press charges against NATO personnel.
She replied: "If I am not willing to do that, I am not in the right
place. I must give up my mission."
The court then announced that it had completed a study of possible
NATO crimes as a response to public concerns about NATO's tactics.
The court declared: "It is very important for this tribunal to assert
its authority over any and all authorities to the armed conflict
within the former Yugoslavia."
This was in late December 1999, and one could wonder if this was a
sign from heaven that the new millennium was going to be one of more
equal justice. Could this really be?
No, it couldn't. From official quarters, military and civilian, of
the United States and Canada, came disbelief, shock, anger, denials
... "appalling", they said ... "unjustified". Carla Del Ponte got the
message. Four days after her Observer interview appeared, her office
issued a statement: "NATO is not under investigation by the Office of
the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia. There is no formal inquiry into the actions of NATO
during the conflict in Kosovo." And there wouldn't be, it was
unnecessary to add.
I think what has distinguished the Bush foreign policy from that of
its predecessors has been its unabashed and conspicuously overt
expressions of its imperial ambitions. They flaunt it, publicly and
proudly declaring their intention -- nay, their God-inspired right and
obligation -- to remake the world and dominate outer space as well;
"full-spectrum dominance", a term coined by the military, well
captures the Bush neo-conservatives style and ambition. And they have
not hesitated to put their dominance master plans into print on a
regular basis, beginning with their now-famous 1992 Defense Planning
Guidance, which stated: "We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring
potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or
global role," and in the White House National Security plan of 2002
which read: "To forestall or prevent ... hostile acts by our
adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."
"Preemptive" military action is an example of what the post-World War
II International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called "a war of
aggression"; the invasion of Poland was a case in point. US Supreme
Court Justice Robert Jackson, the Chief US Prosecutor at the Tribunal,
said:
We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their
fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that
they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a
trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances
or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly
renounced and condemned as an implement of policy.
The Tribunal's final judgment stated: "To initiate a war of
aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the
supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in
that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
The bombing and invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by the US government
are wars of aggression and international crimes, but legally and
morally no worse than many other US bombings and invasions, such as
against Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Grenada, Panama, and
Yugoslavia. Nobody has ever suggested that Serbia was preparing to
attack a member of NATO, and that is the only event which justifies a
reaction under the NATO constitution.
In recent years, one of the most stunning examples of the United
States acting with impunity is the CIA and other American agents
carrying out what they call "rendition". These agents have given
themselves the right to go anywhere in the world, kidnap anyone they
want, while the person is walking to work or on his way home; it could
be anywhere, any time, anyone; all laws, domestic or international, be
damned. They grab the man, throw him into a car, tie him up,
blindfold him, and drive right to an airport to fly him to a country
where he will be tortured.
And no one dares to stop them. They've done this more than a hundred
times, in dozens of countries, and so far the only country to complain
angrily about it is Italy, which in June issued arrest warrants
against 13 American agents involved in a rendition and asked
Washington for "judicial assistance".
One of the most remarkable examples of rendition occurred in Bosnia.
In 2001, the United States informed the Bosnian government of an
alleged plot by a group of five Algerians and a Yemeni living in
Bosnia to blow up the American and British embassies in Sarajevo. The
Bosnians held the men for three months, during which time an
investigation failed to substantiate any criminal charges against
them. In January 2002, the Bosnian Supreme Court ruled that they
should be released. As the men left prison, they were grabbed and
thrown into waiting unmarked cars by masked men. They wound up at the
US prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Guantánamo is where, a few months ago, one of the American military
judges said: "I don't care about international law. I don't want to
hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with
international law."
Robert Baer, a former CIA officer who was active in the war on terror,
has described the renditions as such: "They are picking up people
really with nothing against them, hoping to catch someone because they
have no information about these terrorist networks."
It's very good news that Italy is complaining about the rendition in
their country, but this is a rare exception to the norm. Apart from
China, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, and to a much lesser extent,
Russia, who dares to challenge American imperialism? Who dares to
call it by its right name? Who else loudly and strongly and
undiplomatically condemns the empire's flagrant abuses of human rights
and international law and its plan for world domination? Most
Americans are convinced that France is an implacable enemy of US
foreign policy. I'm sure you've heard about "french fries" being
changed to "freedom fries". But in actuality, in recent years, the
French government has given in to Washington on crucial issues more
often than not, for example agreeing to compromises in the language of
Security Council resolutions which have enabled the United States to
pretend that it's gotten approval for its military adventures. In
France, Germany and Canada, government officials who said something
insulting about George Bush have all been forced to resign. It's hard
to imagine an American official being fired because of saying
something insulting about Jacques Chirac.
Do you know that the White House arranged for several Republican Party
loyalists who are enthusiastic supporters of US foreign policy to be
officials at the United Nations? And they have been promoting Bush's
political agenda at the UN. Here is one of them speaking to the
Washington Post: "I came here at the request of the White House. It's
my duty to make the UN more effective. My primary loyalty is to the
United States of America." He said this despite having taken an oath
of loyalty to the United Nations. And of course, making the UN "more
effective" means simply making it cooperate more with the aims of US
foreign policy.
Has France or any other country complained about this subversion of
the UN? Did France or any other country vehemently condemn the US and
the UK for its 12 years of flying over and bombing Iraq? The United
States can act with impunity because the opposition from other
governments and from the UN is as weak as from the Democratic Party in
the US. And I would urge all of you who live here in France to put
more pressure on your government to take a strong moral stand against
Washington's continuing crimes against humanity. Such statements by
foreign governments are actually reported in the American media, and
when that happens even arrogant neo-conservative government leaders
can be put on the defensive.
Although in general, the American media is not much help in
challenging their government's impunity.
For example, I do not think there was a single American daily
newspaper that unequivocally opposed the US bombing of Iraq in 1991.
Nor a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the
US bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
Nor a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the
US bombing of Afghanistan in 2001.
Nor a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the
US bombing of Iraq in 2003.
In a supposedly free society, with a supposedly free press, with about
1500 daily newspapers, it should be very unlikely that this is the
case. But that's the way it is.
Much of what I've discussed here this evening is the result of the
so-called War on Terrorism. I say "so-called" because the War on
Terrorism is primarily a means for expanding the American empire.
If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against
American targets in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize
-- very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and the
orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions
of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce that
America's global interventions -- including the awful bombings -- have
come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the
51st state of the union but -– oddly enough -– a foreign country. I
would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the
savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from
the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than
enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is
equal to? One year. It's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for
every hour since Jesus Christ was born.
That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the
fourth day, I'd be assassinated.
(comments may be sent to: BBlum6[at]aol.com)