Sohel Ajani From the day, the Ottoman Empire collapsed after the World War I, things are not so good in the Middle East region. Creation of countries based on tribes & families was general rule for British.
Things never stopped over here. Immediately after the end of World War II, creation of Zionist state (Israel) on the Arab soil of Palestine was the biggest crime the west has ever done. As a result, millions migrated from their mother land, scores killed including kids, women & elders.
This was followed by the era of Cold war for the supremacy over the world. Soviet Russia’s invasion on most of the Muslim region and American plan to defeat its archrival through various evil strategies includes creation of Taliban & several terrorist organizations across the globe. Although, things were seems to be haphazard, but the situation was in control of The USA.
Coincidently, President Jimmy Carter visited Iran in 1978 and called Iran as “an island of stability” in his speech. It seems that the title was not liked much by the masses of Iran. Late in the year and early 1979 the deposed Shah of Iran flew into exile on his private jet, while the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from expatriation to lead the country. Suddenly, the Island of Stability changed to ‘Axis of Evil‘ for The USA.
After this, series of incidents followed in the Middle East region which aimed to destabilize the newly created government of Islamic Republic by Ayatollah Khomeini. The imposition of 8 years Iran ? Iraq war in which super powers of the world openly supported the Saddam Hussein Regime followed by extreme round of sanctions on Islamic Republic purely aims at weakening of the Islamic regime.
The war is on between The US & The Islamic Republic from the day one of the Islamic Revolution and US is making every effort to dismantle the regime through any means, legal or illegal. Hence they supported the terrorist organization, Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) (Although its black listed in US, but they supported it), invaded Iraq & Afghanistan to surround Islamic Republic, played the game of regime change in Pakistan from civilian to military and again back to civilian leaded by American puppets.
Currently, they are making scenario of Nuclear weapons to attack Iran. The question over here now is; will US attack Iran?
Let us analyze the scenario in Middle East in case The US attacks Iran. We first have to find the friends and foes of Iran in that region. The first and foremost open enemy of Iran is the Zionist regime of Israel while on the other hand open friends are the Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah, Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas and regime of Bashar Al-Assad of Syria. The friendship of Assad and Iran is majorly based on invasion of Israel on Golan Heights. In any case of attack on Iran, any of these three groups will attack Israel which is close ally of The US in Middle East.
Hence the first step of The US administration right now is to overthrow all these groups / governments and impose puppet regimes in these places. For Syria, there is full-fledge movement against Assad. The recent sanction from the Arab League against Syria is clear indication of pro-American stand. After Assad, US might plan to impose extremist regime which is Anti-Iran / Anti-Shia in nature in Syria. The current inclination of protestors shows the sign of Anti-Shia move. Similarly, Israel might attack Gaza to remove Hamas through any excuse. They have to design some other strategy to wipe out existence of Hezbollah, which is not in view currently.
Before elimination of these three forces surrounding Israel, US will not be in a position to plan regime change in Iran.
Sohel Ajani It all started in 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini returned from Paris to Tehran after the exile of US backed Reza Shah and declared Iran as Islamic Republic after the huge public referendum. The then puppet ruler of Iran, Reza Shah, was an open puppet of US and has allowed the US embassy to perform without any restrictions in the nation. After the exile of Shah, revolutionary youths of the country invaded the US embassy, also known as ‘Den of Spies‘.
The tense ties between the Islamic Republic and The US are still bitter and constantly kept world on toes. After the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the US & its allies are constantly trying to topple the Iranian regime through any means. Initially they exerted the physical pressure in the form of attach from Saddam Hussein Regime from Iraq. They support the evil regime of Saddam Hussein openly and provided it with sophisticated weapons to harm the newly formed independent republic.
Eight years war crumpled the Iranian economy where debts were on rise and falling value of currency. With all this, the economic sanction imposed by the US government played spoil sport for the already crunching economy. However, the nation resisted and shown its real strength behind its leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.
Soon after the end of 8 years Iran — Iraq war; in 1989 nation lost its founder strong man, Ayatollah Khomeini. This served as major setback to the Iranian nation and the west started believing that the end of regime is close. These calamities turned as blessings for the striving nation in the form of leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Iranian Revolution 1979 Fall of a Shah 1 of 10 — BBC Documentary
The stunned West is constantly trying to downgrade the development cycle of Islamic Republic through economic sanctions, media war, spreading Iranophobia, etc. However it seems the psychological warfare is giving no positive results to west.
In recent developments, Israel is constantly warning Iran about its peaceful nuclear activities which Tehran says are meant for generating electricity and treatment of cancer patients; however Israel and West claims that it’s intended towards generation of nuclear war heads.
The latest report from IAEA (Nuclear watchdog of UN) says that there is something fishy going on in Iran in regards to nuclear development. Iran slammed this report saying its influenced by west. However, following this report, west has imposed another round of sanctions followed by other European and Asian countries like Japan.
This is one side of the scenario, however the conditions on the side of Iran is very happening. The Arab uprisings in Middle East have toppled many of the western puppet regimes like Tunisia, Egypt & Libya. And some other puppet regimes are still trying to control the uprisings in their countries; such as Bahrain & Yemen. In such scenario, other Arab monarchies can’t go directly in favor of west inviting the public uproar.
With all this, the ongoing financial crisis in Europe is acting like a trend breaker in the Western policy. The “Occupy Movement” in the US, which is actually a people’s movement, is unexpected by anyone and is a major shock for the US administration. We have seen it in the recent media pictures & videos, how the police and state are trying to control the ongoing high profile people’s uprising in western countries.
This is not the end. The actual dent in US & European economy is very visible. The natural awareness spread through the tools which the west has developed has made people much aware about the actual crises at the core of Capitalist system. Today, everyone knows the intentions of US & UK behind the attack of Iraq & Libya. This has also hampered the position of west and turned the sentiments of common people away from them.
Israel, the western puppet in the region, is constantly raising the voice over attack on Iran with the help of US. However, after the capture of drone in eastern Iranian province, Israel has to change its stand. Now we can see this kind of news in media:
Not to miss, the capture of drone by Iranian military holds a major importance in this psychological warfare. Till today, US drone technology considered as very sophisticated & holds very important position in the military field. Iranians not only captured the drone unaffected but also proved their superiority by capturing the most sophisticated US weapon till now. Best thing in this operation was the use of electronic waves to make the drone land.
President Obama asked the Iranians to return the captured drone and that also without any apology; this has created uproar in the social media where the Iranian supporters utilized this opportunity to make fun of the US administration.
West also knows that the war with Iran is not a war with any arrogant regime or war with a dictator like Saddam or Gaddafi, however, it’s a war of Ideology. The US can kill people, invade country and install the puppet regime, however they can’t replace the powerful stronger with the weaker one.
The US & the West is trying its level best to shake the foundations of Islamic Republic by economic sanctions, psychological pressure of attack from Israel, installing missile shield in Turkey, by removing Iranian supporters like regime of Assad from Syria, attacking Hamas & Hezbollah, etc. However Iranians are replying by their simple actions.
They can change the puppet regime, however changing the concept and deep rooted ideology of martyrdom & sacrifice is not possible for west.
History of U.S. Intervention in Iran — 1953 Until Present
Twenty years ago, it was much easier to describe the economic organization of Latin American countries. The debt crisis, which spawned the so-called “lost decade” of the 1980s, had given the final blow to the import substituting industrialization (ISI) project. characterized by both the dirigiste dogma, in words of Deepak Lal’s (in)famous book-title, and an inward-looking development strategy. The economic chaos was so profound that something had to be done, and quickly. Sooner or later, all countries would swallow the “bitter pill” of pro-market reforms, better known as the Washington Consensus, to a greater or lesser extent. Even Cuba had to give in, although it hardly became Latin America’s China, neither in terms of economic success, nor in terms of the breadth and width of its pro-market reforms.
At first, everything seemed to go well. After decades of suffocation, market forces were finally released, under the auspicious and watchful eyes of the IMF and the World Bank, unleashing a very promising economic future. The 1994 Tequila crisis was a major complication (and scare) for the region’s economies, but it was effectively contained by the jumping in of various actors of international financial institutions. The Asian crisis, however, was a whole different story. The damage it caused to the Latin American economies was considerable. For instance, in Argentina, it triggered a chain reaction of events which eventually would lead to the collapse of its economic organization, accompanied by public rejection, and a dramatic rise in the poverty levels. In other countries, like Chile, the damages were much better contained. Nevertheless, a new spirit invaded the region, in line with its well-known bipolar social psychology: the Washington Consensus had to be replaced, because it was the root of all social problems. True, it wasn’t (and isn’t) a recipe for guaranteed success, higher earnings come with higher risks, and many social issues demanded, in times of low or negative economic growth, urgent attention. But Latin America’s social problems did under no circumstance begin with the implementation of the Washington Consensus reforms. The fact that populist Presidents promised that these reforms would end poverty altogether, is quite a different story. And so is the fact that many pro-market reforms were accompanied by outright corruption. In sum, for many Latin American citizens, pro-market reforms became tainted words.
At the turn of the century, not many (centre) right-winged governments had survived, which prompted many observers to talk of Latin America’s “left turn”. These newly elected government can be divided in three large groups. First, we have the “renovated” left of a more pragmatist calibre, comparable to the doctrines of the European Third Way. This means that the market is accepted as an essentially benign and useful force, but which must be kept on a relatively short leash. The nagging question is to determine where the State ends and where the market begins, and how to make them work together in stead of against each other. Examples would include the administrations of Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva in Brazil.
Second, we have the (often but not always left-wing) populist governments, in the sense of economic populism coined by Dornbusch and Edwards, which promise to solve the people’s “real” problems, listen to them, and acknowledge the same common enemy, the uncontrolled market, and sometimes bluntly “the” market. State interventionism is a necessity, the problem is that they are more often than not riddled with corruption and technical inconsistencies. Examples would include Nestor Kirchner, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina, and Alan Garc(í)a in Peru.
Third, we have the “romantic” or dogmatic left, which returns to the Marxist discourse, vehemently anti-capitalist, of the 1960s. Words like “imperialism”, “subjugation”, and “exploitation” are back on the agenda, which is now called “Bolivarian”. The market should not only be subdued, but, according to some, even wholly replaced by central planning, allocation and distribution. In sum, it ultimately seeks the replacement of capitalism. Examples of these policies include Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Evo Morales in Bolivia.
This “left turn” is not circumscribed to the ideological left, since the right-wing parties have picked up, at least in their discourse, many of their issues. For example, no self-loving candidate, with any hope to win the elections, would dare to defend the market as blindly as in the nineties. No candidate would consider disregarding the social dimensions of economic policy. This heightened social sensibility, across the political spectrum, is a result of a certain social learrning-process which arguably began in the 1980s with the debt crisis.
The Latin American Way
But are these differences a problem? Beyond any personal appreciation one could have in favour or against one position or another, differences are normally considered an opportunity for learning. Common sense dictates that social phenomenons are so complex that in this post-modern world not many would dare to claim to possess the “final” truth in terms of public policy and development strategies. Alas, this is precisely what defines and summarizes the Latin American (economic) way.
Since Independence, the pendulum has moved continuously between two extremes: suffocating State intervention versus uncontrolled market deregulation, and exaggerated optimism versus exaggerated pessimism in market forces and world markets. Means are confounded with ends, and enjoy an unreasonably long, and unaltered, lifespan because of a vehement and unchanging belief in its truth. This is true for the belle epoque of economic liberalism in 1870-1929, for the ISI period of 1930-1980, for the “pure” Washington Consensus period 1980-2000, and is probably true for the current period, too.
The problem of this dogmatic approach is that the opportunity for learning is not seized. It is impossible to predict the future or outcomes with exact precision. Plans, i.e. the means employed to obtain certain goals, should be corrected according to its performance. As long as the goals are being obtained, there is nothing wrong with changing the means. On the contrary, by continuously monitoring and adjusting the means, the grasp on the existing causal relationships is improved, not matter how little. In the end, at least that is what we hope, convergence is obtained between the goals and the obtained results.
If means are unreasonably defended, crisis (which are inevitable) will have disproportionately disruptive effects, since small adjustments are delayed until small adjustments don’t longer suffice. At that moment, all hope is lost, and major, often hastily devised, profound reforms are put in place, and back goes the pendulum. And our experience with the causal relationships will be reduced to nil, and all our economic, social and sometimes even political advances and improvements will have melted away. Back to square one.
Peru’s uncertain economic future
Without a doubt, Peru has taken yet another left turn with elected President Ollanta Humala. To what extent is far from clear. His political record suggests one thing, his recent campaign another. Judging by his ideological affinities, one would be tempted to include him with Chavez, Correa and Morales. The difference is that Peru’s economy has faired more than well during the last years. Economic growth is fairly stable, exports are growing steadily, and its competitiveness is improving rapidly. “Never change a winning team,” the saying goes. But this team has lost few matches, or at least had to put up with some counter goals. These lie in the social realm, since the social indicators show less colourful results, and this is probably what contributed to Humala’s victory.
The question is therefore: to what extent is the newly elected President willing to change Peru’s economic model? If history teaches us anything, odds are that he will be tempted to follow the sadly known Latin American way of radical change, disregarding the lessons learned and the accumulated knowledge. The Peruvian markets share this fear: when the election results were announced, Lima’s stock market plummeted various points. On the other hand, his recent travels through the region emphasized moderation, political and economical, more than anything. This means that the jury is still out.
Our only hope is that Humala will break with the Latin American (economic) way and will introduce ajdustments rather than radical change in an effort to continue to build upon the successes and improving the failures, rather than impose a new, all-explaining world vision which would force all actors to begin from scratch.
Two weeks have elapsed since the first demonstrations in Benghazi and Tripoli. The disinformation campaign about Libya has sown confusion in the world.
First a certainty: the analogies with events in Tunisia and Egypt are misplaced. These rebellions contributed obviously to depoliticize street protests in both neighboring countries, but the peculiar Libyan process has characteristics inseparable from the conspiring strategy of imperialism and what can be defined as the metamorphosis of a leader.
Muammar Gaddafi, unlike Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, took an anti-imperialist position when he seized power in 1969. A puppet monarchy was abolished, and for decades he has practised a policy of independence, beginning with the nationalisation of oil. He has practised a strategy that promoted economic development and reduced egregious social inequality.
Libya joined with countries and movements that fought against imperialism and Zionism. Gaddafi founded universities and industries, a flourishing agriculture emerged from the desert sands, hundreds of thousands of citizens for the first time had a right to decent housing.
The bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in l986 by the U.S. Air Force showed that the Reagan White House identified the Libyan leader as an enemy to beat. Heavy sanctions were applied to the country.
Since the second Gulf War, Gaddafi turned 180 degrees. Libya was subjected to IMF demands, dozens of companies were privatised and the country was opened to major international oil companies.
Washington came to see Gadhafi as a leader to dialogue with. He was received with special honours in Europe; fabulous contracts were signed with the governments of Sarkozy, Berlusconi and Brown. But when price increases in major Libyan cities sparked a wave of discontent, imperialism seized the opportunity. They concluded that it was time to get rid of Gaddafi, an always uncomfortable leader.
The riots in Tunisia and Egypt, protests in Bahrain and Yemen have created very favorable conditions to instigate demonstrations in Libya. It was no accident that Benghazi emerged as the hub of the rebellion. Major transnational oil companies operate in Cyrenaica, the ends of pipelines and gas pipelines are located there.
The National Front for the Salvation of Libya, an organization financed by the CIA, was activated. It is instructive that it was the city to see the rapid emergence in the streets of the old monarchy flag and portraits of the late King Idris, the tribal chief Senussi crowned by England after the expulsion of the Italians. A “prince” Senussi suddenly appeared to give interviews.
The solidarity of the major media in the U.S. and the European Union with the rioting of terrorists in Libya was obviously hypocritical. The Wall Street Journal, a publication for big worldwide finance, did not hesitate to suggest in an editorial (February 23) that “the U.S. and Europe should “help ‘Libyans’ overthrow the regime of Gaddafi.”
Obama, in expectation, was silent on Libya for six days. On the seventh, he condemned the violence and called for sanctions. It followed an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and an expected package of sanctions.
Many progressive Latin American leaders admitted there is an imminent military intervention of NATO. This initiative would be dangerous and stupid, and would produce a negative effect in the Arab world, reinforcing the latent anti-imperialist sentiment in the masses.
The marketing campaign underway of major international media expands the organizers of the rebellion as heroes while they present Gaddafi as a killer and paranoid. The coming days and tomorrow are unpredictable in Libya, the third largest oil producer in Africa, a country whose wealth is now largely falling into the hands of imperialism.
However, the air strikes that western corporate media claim took place on February 22 over Benghazi and Tripoli, which were widely reported by the likes of the BBC and Al Jazeera, with hands wringing and crocodile tears flowing…were not registered by the Russian military chiefs examining the images coming in from satellites.
The satellite pictures show that, “nothing of that sort has been going on on the ground.” states Irina Galushko, adding that there is also no evidence from footage shot by television cameras which suggests that any airborne attacks took place. So there you go, lies from beginning to end.
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Translated from the Portuguese version and appended by: Lisa Karpova of Pravda.Ru
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Youtube Playlist: American Empire — Neo Colonialism & Hypocrisy
Youtube Playlist: Western Colonialism & Neo-Colonialism
[ By: Fred Branfman ] Clinton is to be praised for being the first U.S. president to take personal responsibility for impoverishing an entire nation rather than ignoring his misdeeds or falsely blaming local U.S.-imposed regimes. But his confession also means that his embrace of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and NAFTA “neo-liberalization” destroyed the lives of many more millions well beyond Haiti, as U.S. support for heavily subsidized U.S. agribusiness damaged local agricultural economies throughout Latin America and beyond. This led to mass migration into urban slums and destitution, as well as increased emigration to the U.S.–which then led Clinton to militarize the border in 1994–and thus accelerated the “illegal immigration” issue that so poisons U.S. politics today.
Wrecking a Third World country’s economy and savaging its civilians are such standard U.S. elite behavior that it is barely noticed, let alone criticized in the mass media or halls of Congress. Perhaps the most dramatic example of America’s imperial mentality, however, is the answer to the following question: Which nation’s leaders since 1945 have murdered, maimed, made homeless, tortured, assassinated and impoverished the largest number of civilians who were not its own citizens?
The bodies of Indochinese and Iraqi civilians for which U.S. leaders bear responsibility would, if laid end to end, stretch from New York to California.
Noam Chomsky’s description of the dangers posed by U.S. elites’ “Imperial Mentality” was recently given a boost in credibility by a surprising source–Bill Clinton. As America’s economy, foreign policy and politics continue to unravel, it is clear that this mentality and the system it has created will produce an increasing number of victims in the years to come. Clinton startlingly testified to that effect on March 10 to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
Since 1981 the United States has followed a policy until the last year or so, when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food so thank goodness they can lead directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did, nobody else.
Clinton is to be praised for being the first U.S. president to take personal responsibility for impoverishing an entire nation rather than ignoring his misdeeds or falsely blaming local U.S.-imposed regimes. But his confession also means that his embrace of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and NAFTA “neo-liberalization” destroyed the lives of many more millions well beyond Haiti, as U.S. support for heavily subsidized U.S. agribusiness damaged local agricultural economies throughout Latin America and beyond. This led to mass migration into urban slums and destitution, as well as increased emigration to the U.S.–which then led Clinton to militarize the border in 1994–and thus accelerated the “illegal immigration” issue that so poisons U.S. politics today.
Clinton might also have added that he and other U.S. leaders imposed such policies by force, installing military dictators and vicious police and paramilitary forces. Chomsky reports in “Hopes and Prospects” that in Haiti, semiofficial thugs empowered by a U.S.-supported coup murdered 8,000 people and raped 35,000 women in 2004 and 2005 alone, while a tiny local elite reaps most of the benefits from U.S. policies.
Clinton’s testimony reminded me of one of my visits with Chomsky, back in 1988, when, after talking for an hour or so, he smiled and said he had to stop to get back to writing about the children of Haiti.
I was struck both by his concern for forgotten Haitians and because his comment so recalled my experience with him in 1970 as he spent a week researching U.S. war-making in Laos. I had taken dozens of journalists, peace activists, diplomats, experts and others out to camps of refugees who had fled U.S. saturation bombing. Chomsky was one of only two who wept openly upon learning how these innocent villagers had seen their beloved grandmothers burned alive, their children slowly suffocated, their spouses cut to ribbons, during five years of merciless, pitiless and illegal U.S. bombing for which U.S. leaders would have been executed had international law protecting civilians in wartime been applied to their actions. It was obvious that he was above all driven by a deep feeling for the world’s victims, those he calls the “unpeople” in his new book. No U.S. policymakers I knew in Laos, nor the many I have met since, have shared such concerns.
Bill Clinton’s testimony also reminded me of the accuracy of Chomsky writings on Haiti–before, during and after Clinton’s reign–as summed up in “Hopes and Prospects”:
The Clinton doctrine, presented to Congress, was that the US is entitled to resort to “unilateral use of military power” to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources.” In Haiti, Clinton [imposed] harsh neoliberal rules that were guaranteed to crush what remained of the economy, as they did.
Clinton would have a cleaner conscience today had he listened to Chomsky then. Many more Americans may also benefit by heeding Chomsky today, as U.S. elites’ callousness toward unpeople abroad is now affecting increasing numbers of their fellow citizens back home. Nothing symbolizes this more than investment bankers tricking countless Americans out of their life savings by luring them into buying homes they could not afford that were then foreclosed on.
In doing so, Wall Streeters exhibited what Chomsky describes as a Western elite imperial mentality, dating back to 1491 (his first chapter is entitled “Year 514: Globalization for Whom?”). Only this time instead of impoverishing Haitians or Chileans, it was Americans who were afflicted by a “system” of “fuck the poor” (in the words of successful Wall Street trader Steve Eisman). [See Branfman's review of "The Big Short" in Truthdig.]
The many Americans whose lives have been damaged by financiers’ single-minded focus on short-term profits at the expense of everyone else are only a harbinger of what is to come. Financial elites remain in charge, as evidenced by recent “financial reform” legislation that does not even reinstate the Glass-Steagall law separating investment and commercial banking. New York magazine has described how Obama officials blocked even inadequate reforms, let alone the stronger proposals from Nouriel Roubini, one of the few major economists to foresee the economic crash. Former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson tells us “our banking structure remains–and the incentive and belief system that lies behind reckless risk-taking has only become more dangerous,” thus setting the stage for an even worse crash than that of 2008. And, as U.S. competitiveness continues to decline and it cannot afford its endless wars without drastically cutting social spending, countless more Americans will find themselves paying the price for U.S. elites’ imperial mentality.
This mentality described by Chomsky includes the following elements: (1) a single-minded focus on maximizing short-term elite economic and military interests; (2) a refusal to let other societies follow their own paths if perceived to conflict with these interests; (3) continual and massive violations of international law; (4) indifference to human life, particularly in the Third World; (5) massive violation of the U.S. Constitution, especially through the executive branch’s seizure of the power to wage unilateral and unaccountable war in every corner of the globe; (6) indifference to U.S. and international public opinion, which is often more progressive and humane than that of the elites; (7) a remarkable ability to “manufacture consent,” aided by the mass media and intellectuals, that has blinded most Americans to the truth of what their leaders actually do in their names.
To pick but one example of the dozens Chomsky provides: U.S. elite opinion unanimously celebrated the 1990 Nicaraguan election defeating the Sandinistas as a “victory for fair play,” to quote a March 10 New York Times Op-Ed article. But Chomsky reminds us of Time Magazine’s March 12 report on just what this “fair play” meant:
In Nicaragua, Washington stumbled on an arm’s-length policy: wreck the economy and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives overthrow the unwanted government themselves. The past ten years have savaged the country’s civilians, not its comandantes. The impoverishment of the people of Nicaragua was a harrowing way to give the National Opposition Union (U.N.O.) a winning issue.
Wrecking a Third World country’s economy and savaging its civilians are such standard U.S. elite behavior that it is barely noticed, let alone criticized in the mass media or halls of Congress. Perhaps the most dramatic example of America’s imperial mentality, however, is the answer to the following question: Which nation’s leaders since 1945 have murdered, maimed, made homeless, tortured, assassinated and impoverished the largest number of civilians who were not its own citizens?
I have asked this question of Americans in every walk of life since I discovered the bombing of Laos in 1969. It’s a simple matter of fact, not involving judgments of right and wrong, and I remain astonished at how most answer “the Russians,” “the Chinese,” or just have no idea that their leaders have killed more noncitizen civilians than the rest of the world’s leaders combined since 1945.
The bodies of Indochinese and Iraqi civilians for which U.S. leaders bear responsibility would, if laid end to end, stretch from New York to California. These would include the huge proportion of civilians among the 3.4 million Vietnamese that Robert McNamara estimated were killed in Vietnam (over 90 percent by U.S. firepower), Laotian and Cambodian civilians felled by the largest per capita and most indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in history, the 1 million to 1.5 million Iraqis estimated by the U.N.’s Denis Halliday to have died from Clinton’s sanctions “designed,” in Halliday’s words, “to kill civilians, particularly children,” and the hundreds of thousands killed as a result of the Bush invasion. The total number of civilians killed, wounded, made homeless and impoverished by U.S. leaders or local regimes owing their power to U.S. guns and aid–in not only Indochina and Iraq but Mexico, El Salvador, Israel/Palestine, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Egypt, Iran, South Africa, Chile, East Timor, Haiti, Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Jamaica, the Philippines and Indonesia–is in the tens of millions.
One can debate whether U.S. military action against Vietnamese communists, Nicaraguan Sandinistas, Saddam Hussein or the Taliban were or are warranted. But there can be no possible justification for waging war that winds up killing and impoverishing much of the civilian population, on whose behalf U.S. leaders claim to fight, in violation of the laws of war and elemental human decency. Nor can anyone who truly believes in democracy support allowing a handful of U.S. leaders to savage civilians abroad without even informing, let alone seeking permission of, Congress and the American people.
The incredible fact that U.S. leaders could inflict such carnage without their citizenry knowing is the single most dramatic example of another of Chomsky’s major themes: “manufactured consent,” produced by (1) constant iterations of U.S leaders’ idealism and desire to promote freedom, supported by the mass media (e.g. when Washington Post columnist David Ignatius called Paul Wolfowitz Bush’s “idealist-in-chief,” even as their invasion was laying waste to Iraq), (2) massive media coverage of the misdeeds of the latest U.S. opponents, and (3) ignoring our own, often far greater, crimes.
Most Americans were fully and appropriately made aware of Taliban assassinations of their opponents, for example. But there was no public discussion of guilt, let alone punishment for those responsible, when Gen. Stanley McChrystal implicitly admitted in the summer of 2009 that the U.S. military had been killing countless Afghan civilians for the previous eight years as a result of air and artillery fire aimed at population centers. Nor are most Americans aware that McChrystal was rewarded with his present post, being in charge of the Afghanistan war, for conducting five years of assassination and torture as head of the top-secret Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq.
Chomsky is especially concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general, and U.S.-Israel treatment of the people of Gaza in particular. He notes that Hamas is regularly attacked in the U.S. press, but there has not been comparable attention given to the U.S./Israeli decision to inflict daily collective punishment on the people of Gaza since they democratically elected Hamas in January 2006. He quotes Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1950, which states that “no protected person may be punished for an offence he or she had not personally committed” and reports how Israel, fully supported by U.S. leaders, continues to inflict precisely such punishment on the people of Gaza by destroying their economy, limiting their access to food and water, denying them health care, restricting their movement, and engaging in kidnapping, assassination and bombing–a program he calls “imposing massive suffering on the animals in the Gaza prison.”
Perhaps the most basic reason Americans should read Chomsky’s work today, therefore, is simply to understand the real world in which they live, that which is obscured by their leaders and the U.S. mass media. The purpose of “Newspeak” in the novel “1984″ was to eliminate whole categories of thought. In our time, one such category is the fact that “U.S. leaders regularly and illegally kill enormous numbers of foreign innocent civilians.” The elimination of this thought-category in our cognitive framework understandably led President George W. Bush to explain 9/11 by saying “they hate our freedom”–a logical conclusion to someone ignorant of the trail of blood left by his predecessors. As Chomsky notes, however, “historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon … because it lays the groundwork for crimes ahead” and, it should be noted, increased dangers of terrorism against Americans.
This increased threat of terrorism, which, Chomsky reports, citing the New American Foundation, has increased sevenfold because of the invasion of Iraq, is a second area in which Americans are today increasingly threatened by their leaders’ imperial mentality. As many experts noted in the wake of the Times Square bombing attempt, Barack Obama’s vast increase in drone strikes in Pakistan–and relaxing targeting rules to include “low-level fighters whose identities may not be known”–has further increased the danger of terrorist attacks in the U.S.
As the elites’ imperial mentality comes home, Americans are also increasingly threatened by climate change–produced by a system that statutorily requires elites to pursue short-term profit for their firms, even at the cost of destroying the biosphere their own children and grandchildren will depend on for life itself.
In today’s system, Chomsky explains, to “stay in the game,” CEOs must maximize their own short-term profits while treating the costs of doing so as “externalities” to be paid by the taxpayer. In the case of climate change, however, “externalities happen to be the fate of the species.” An imperial mentality which has primarily threatened the Third World in the past, in other words, has now become a threat to the survival of not only America but all civilization as we know it.
Chomsky thus argues that human survival requires changing the system, not merely periodically replacing those running it. His “Hopes and Prospects” covers President Obama’s first year in office and the many “hopes” that he has so profoundly disappointed because of a system that virtually requires “doublethink” of its leaders. Obama was undoubtedly as sincere when he spoke of “our fidelity to the rule of law and our Constitution” at West Point on May 22 as he was six months earlier when he secretly approved Gen. David Petraeus’ proposal for a “broad expansion of clandestine military activity” worldwide that “does not require the president’s approval or regular reports to Congress.”
Obama also presumably holds two contradictory opinions when, as Chomsky reports, he continues Bush policies he so recently criticized and promised to change: extending executive power to indefinitely imprison people without trial, torture (though by allied rather than U.S. torturers), indiscriminate killing (particularly by escalating in northern Pakistan, as described in Truthdig, “Unintended Consequences in Nuclear Pakistan“), and supporting Israeli policies precluding a two-state solution. Chomsky also observes that Obama could not have been elected in the first place, given his greater need for campaign funds from above than fidelity to his voters below, had he not been prepared to continue these imperial policies.
Chomsky’s explanation of the American system’s imperial mentality also illuminates a seeming mystery: How could decent people like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama commit so much evil? Our concept of evil is shaped by such paranoid psychotics as Hitler, Stalin and Mao, who all hated their victims and openly lusted for power. We do not yet understand that in today’s American system the problem we face is not so much inhumanity from the mad and evil as “ahumanity” from the sane and decent.
U.S. leaders have nothing against those they regularly kill and impoverish. On the contrary, they often exhibit compassion for them, as when Jimmy Carter supported human rights. But they are products of a system that is indifferent to the fate of the unpeople, whether in the shah’s Iran, Somoza’s Nicaragua, Suharto’s Indonesia or the many other dictatorial regimes that enjoyed President Carter’s support.
Chomsky denies the oft-heard charge that he is “anti-American,” noting his criticism of the crimes of many other nations’ leaders, and saying he focuses on U.S. leaders because, as a U.S. citizen, it is the government he can most affect; because it is the government that has done more harm than any other since 1945; and because the United States’ behavior today poses so much danger to human survival. He might also add that there are so many others eager to catalog the crimes of America’s enemies, yet relatively few Americans willing to document their own leaders’ misdeeds.
At the moment, Chomsky’s proposed solutions are politically unthinkable. As the American economy and polity continues to unravel and suffering mounts at home and abroad, however, a mass movement may arise that is capable of saving America and the world. If so, such a movement is likely to attempt solutions of the sort Chomsky proposes. Here are two out of a far larger number:
State capitalism for the many: The American Enterprise Institute’s chief declared in a May 23 Washington Post Op-Ed that “America faces a new culture war,” between “free enterprise” offering “rewards determined by market forces” and “European-style statism.” “Hopes and Prospects” explains at some length, however, why this formulation is absurd. America’s “free enterprise” system has always been based on massive government aid, from the Army building 19th century railroads, to the Pentagon’s post-World War II role in building the Internet and Silicon Valley, to today’s “rewards” to Wall Street and oil companies determined not by market forces, but those companies’ political clout. America has been practicing “state capitalism” since the founding of the Republic, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future no matter which party is in office.
The real choice, Chomsky makes clear, is not free enterprise versus statism, but state capitalism for (A) the few or (B) the many. The latter would include breaking up the banks, a focus on job creation and safety net expansion where needed, single-payer health insurance, higher taxes on the wealthy, far lower military spending, public members on corporate boards, greater employee workplace control and, above all, a new public-private partnership to see America become a leader in a clean energy economic revolution.
A Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone and Two-State Solution in the Middle East: Chomsky proposes that rather than continuing to engage in senseless fighting and confronting Iran over nuclear weapons, U.S., Israeli, Arab and Iranian interests would be far better served by the U.S. using its enormous military and economic clout to create a Mideast nuclear weapons-free zone that Iran says it is willing to accept, and a comprehensive and fair Israeli-Palestinian settlement including Hamas’ promised recognition of Israel and cessation of rocket attacks. A major benefit to the U.S. would be to reduce the threat of domestic terrorism. For only a comprehensive new policy that addresses the source of anti-U.S. hatred–U.S. war-making on civilians and support of corrupt and vicious local regimes–can reduce it.
Fifty years ago, Americans were told that the North Vietnamese communists were so evil that 55,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese had to die, and much of Vietnam had to be destroyed, in order to keep it “free.” But for 20 years now, despite the triumph of the communists, Vietnam has been a normal trading partner of the United States and poses no threat to its neighbors. Could the Middle East also be normalized were U.S. leaders to use their enormous power to promote peace rather than war? Maybe, maybe not. But it is obvious that the risks of trying to do so are far less than the present dangers of nuclear proliferation, chaos in nuclear-armed Pakistan, Israel-Iran military confrontation and increasing support for anti-American terrorism within the 1.2 billion-strong Muslim world.
That Chomsky’s sensible proposals are not seriously discussed is a measure of the ubiquity of U.S. elites’ imperial mentality in mid-2010. Chomsky suggests that John Quincy Adams’ fear of divine retribution to America for its cruelty to Native Americans is unfounded, and that “earthly judgment is nowhere in sight.” Much of his work, however, suggests otherwise. A U.S. elite imperial mentality that once threatened mainly unpeople is today threatening America itself.
The fundamental tension throughout Chomsky’s work is between his belief that organizing and popular movements offer hope of change and the overwhelming evidence he presents of elite power precluding such change. On the one hand, he writes that “Latin America, today, is the scene of some of the most exciting developments in the endless struggle for freedom and justice” as its nations improve their citizens’ lives by extricating themselves from the neoliberal regime and elect leaders responsible to mass movements from below rather than financing from wealthy minorities above.
But on the other hand, his description of the stranglehold elites hold over both domestic and foreign policy offers little near-term hope for the kind of systemic changes he believes are needed to save the species. It is true that postwar America has not before faced the kind of economic and imperial decline that now awaits it, and this may produce possibilities for systemic change. But they are nowhere yet in sight.
I recently sat with Chomsky, an intellectually uncompromising but personally kind, gentle and mild-mannered man, in his kitchen discussing such new U.S. elite horrors as the trend toward “1984″-like automated warfare, when it suddenly hit me.
What is it like, I found myself thinking, to know more than any other human being on Earth about the state-sponsored lies to which Americans are so constantly subjected? What is it like to so feel in your bones, hour after hour, day after day, the pain of millions of “unpeople” suffering hunger, poverty and death caused by U.S. elites who today also threaten both their own nation and all humanity? And what is it like, even though your writings are published, to have their lessons ignored by society at large, as the killing continues and U.S. war-making “on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at” has now become permanent?
“Noam,” I said, “I’ve just realized who you really represent to me. Do you remember how Winston Smith [the "1984" character] realized that his highest obligation to humanity and himself was just to try and remain sane, to somehow commit the truth to paper, and to hope against rational hope that somewhere, some time, future humans might come to understand and act on it? To me, at this point in time, you’re Winston Smith.”
I will never forget his reaction.
He just looked back at me.
And smiled sadly.
About The Author: Fred Branfman — is a US-American anti-war activist and author of a number of books about the Indochina War. Working as the Director of Project Air War in 1969 he wrote about the U.S. bombing in Indochina, purportedly directed at undefended civilians.
Branfman worked as a policy advisor for former California governor Jerry Brown, Gary Hart and Tom Hayden. Branfman was working as an educational advisor for the U.S. government in Laos, when in September 1969 thousands of refugees fled into the Laotian capital of Vientiane. Working as a translator for international media, he began to interpret thousands of villagers stories, telling of planes dropping bombs.
Told by U.S. officials in Laos that Americans had nothing to do with the bombs, Branfman became consumed with the desire to understand what was happening. Gathering details, he journeyed to Washington and spoke at a special session of the U.S. Senate Committee on Refugees, exposing the U.S. government’s covert activities.
Today Branfman works as a writer, living in Santa Barbara. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper’s, Playboy and the New Republic. He contributes to the Glendon Association and works with Robert W. Firestone He also contributed to the traveling exhibition Legacies of War, that was created to raise awareness about the history of the Vietnam War-era bombing in Laos. Fred is the editor of “Voices From the Plain of Jars: Life Under an Air War” (Harper & Row, 1972). Visit his website at: http://www.trulyalive.org/
From the day, the Ottoman Empire collapsed after the World War I, things are not so good in the Middle East region. Creation of countries based on tribes & families was general rule for British.
At the turn of the century, not many (centre) right-winged governments had survived, which prompted many observers to talk of Latin America’s “left turn”. These newly elected government can be divided in three large groups. First, we have the “renovated” left of a more pragmatist calibre, comparable to the doctrines of the European Third Way. This means that the market is accepted as an essentially benign and useful force, but which must be kept on a relatively short leash. The nagging question is to determine where the State ends and where the market begins, and how to make them work together in stead of against each other. Examples would include the administrations of Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva in Brazil.
Clinton is to be praised for being the first U.S. president to take personal responsibility for impoverishing an entire nation rather than ignoring his misdeeds or falsely blaming local U.S.-imposed regimes. But his confession also means that his embrace of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and NAFTA “neo-liberalization” destroyed the lives of many more millions well beyond Haiti, as U.S. support for heavily subsidized U.S. agribusiness damaged local agricultural economies throughout Latin America and beyond. This led to mass migration into urban slums and destitution, as well as increased emigration to the U.S.–which then led Clinton to militarize the border in 1994–and thus accelerated the “illegal immigration” issue that so poisons U.S. politics today.
