When War is on the Horizon, Follow the Money

While Americans understand that making money motivates McDonald’s or Wal-Mart, and some are concerned about businesses donating large sums to influence politicians, most are unaware of how the profit motive helps shape U.S. foreign policy.

This is caused in part by our leaders draping decisions, especially wars, in patriotism. Take Iraq; President Bush leads Americans to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, has weapons of mass destruction, and threatens our national security. Once he invades Iraq, any questioning is portrayed as endangering our troops and homeland.

By the time most Americans realize that none of it is true, thousands of young soldiers are killed or maimed and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are flowing to often incompetent, politically connected Pentagon contractors.

For most decent, caring Americans it is almost unthinkable that the profit motive played a significant role in putting our soldiers in harm’s way. It is painful to acknowledge that we have been lied to, and to ask, why? Why was this war started? What role did our president’s, vice president’s, and secretary of state’s close ties to the oil industry play? Which powerful American companies stood to profit?

Bruce Jackson founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in 2002, a few months after retiring from Lockheed Martin. In 2001, he and other members of the neocon Project for a New American Century wrote to President Bush stating that “American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.” A year earlier, Jackson had chaired the subcommittee that produced the Republican Party’s foreign policy plank that George Bush ran on in 2000.

Any chance that the views Jackson promoted had something to do with the billions that Lockheed Martin pockets thanks to the war?

For war profiteers, soldiers returning maimed or in caskets, and a $500 billion Pentagon budget paid for by the taxes of ordinary citizens, are externalities — costs and consequences borne by others.

Gary Ferdman and Myriam Miedzian | Seattle Post-Intelligencer  (read more. . .)

August 24th, 2006 || PermaLink

Where Bush’s Arrogance Has Taken Us

During his gubernatorial days in Texas, George W let slip a one-sentence thought that unintentionally gave us a peek into his political soul. In hindsight, it should’ve been loudly broadcast all across our land so people could’ve absorbed it, contemplated its portent?and roundly rejected the guy’s bid for the presidency. On May 21, 1999, reacting to some satirical criticism of him, Bush snapped: “There ought to be limits to freedom.”

Gosh, so many freedoms to limit, so little time! But in five short years, the BushCheneyRummy regime has made remarkable strides toward dismembering the genius of the Founders, going at our Constitution and Bill of Rights like famished alligators chasing a couple of poodles.

Forget about such niceties as separation of powers, checks and balances (crucial to the practice of democracy), the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and open government-these guys are on an autocratic tear. Whenever they’ve been challenged (all too rarely), they simply shout “war on terror,” “commander-in-chief,” “support our troops,” “executive privilege,” “I’m the decider,” or some other slam-the-door political phrase designed to silence any opposition. Indeed, opponents are branded “enemies” who must be demonized, personally attacked, and, if possible, destroyed. Bush’s find-the-loopholes lawyers assert that a president has the right to lie (even about going to war), to imprison people indefinitely (without charges, lawyers, hearings, courts, or hope), to torture people, to spy on Americans without court or congressional review, to prosecute reporters who dare to report, to rewrite laws on executive whim?and on and on.

Jim Hightower | Hightower Lowdown  (read more. . .)

August 23rd, 2006 || PermaLink

Their Bodies as Weapons

The victim’s name was Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. Abeer means “fragrance of flowers”. She was 14 years old. According to a statement by one of the accused, the soldiers first noticed her at a checkpoint. On March 12, after playing cards while slugging whisky, they changed into civvies and burst into Abeer’s home. They killed her mother, father and five-year-old sister and “took turns” raping Abeer. Finally, according to the statement, they murdered her, drenched the bodies with kerosene, and set them on fire. Then the GIs grilled chicken wings.

The US military is now a mercenary force. In addition to hired militias and “independent contractors”, we have a draft: a poverty draft. That’s why the army is disproportionately comprised of ethnic minorities seeking education, healthcare, housing. But there are other perks. Teenage males, hormones surging, are taught to confuse their bodies with weapons, and relish it.

One training song (with lewd gestures) goes: “This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun.” The US air force admits showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids. Feminist scholars have been exposing these phallocentric military connections for decades. When I wrote The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism, I presented evidence on how the terrorist mystique and the hero legend have the same root: the patriarchal pursuit of manhood. How can rape not be central to the propaganda that violence is erotic - a pervasive message affecting everything from US foreign policy to “camouflage chic” and glamorised gangsta styles?

Atrocity fatigue has set in. Wasn’t rape a staple of war long before the Iliad? Weren’t thousands of women and girls raped and killed in death camps in the former Yugoslavia? And weren’t early reports of gang rape attacks from another small troubled country ignored? It was merely about women, and hardly anyone had heard of the place: Rwanda.

Yet the Pentagon is shocked. Have we already forgotten Abu Ghraib? Photographs of sexually tortured men leaked, but those of abused women are still classified for fear of greater outrage. So many military rapes have occurred in Okinawa, Korea, and the Philippines that feminists organised movements in protest. Incidents keep occurring near US bases, including hundreds of reported rapes of female soldiers by their fellow GIs.

In 1998, a landmark United Nations decision recognised rape as a war crime. The international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia issued indictments and convictions on sexual violence grounds.

Sometimes, a few “nice American guys” are found guilty. Then all returns to normal. They are sacrificed to save those who train them to do what they did, and to save the careers of politicians who sermonise obscenely about “moral values” while issuing moral waivers.

Robin Morgan | Guardian/UK  (read more. . .)

August 22nd, 2006 || PermaLink

Amateur Warlords

By turning a routine skirmish into a big war, Israel’s PM Ehud Olmert showed he had no more grasp of military affairs than those other amateur warlords, Bush, Cheney and British PM Tony Blair.

Even Washington hawks are wondering if invading Iran may not be such a cakewalk as they envision. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards helped train and arm Hezbollah’s fighters.

America was the big loser in the Lebanon war. From Morocco to Indonesia, each night some 1.5 billion Muslims watched the carnage in Lebanon on TV and most blamed America. Even the poorest shepherd in Uzbekistan heard that the U.S. was airlifting the precision bombs and deadly cluster munitions to Israel that wound up killing hundreds of Lebanese.

Any hope of damping down the Islamic world’s surging hatred of the U.S., Britain, and Israel (and now Canada, thanks to the federal government’s pro-Israel stance) was killed in Lebanon.

Even the interestingly-timed airport hysteria in London over claims of liquid bomb plots failed to divert attention from the latest egregious U.S.-British Mideast policy disaster.

The “war president” has become the fiasco president. The White House should stop listening to bogus military advice from neocon couch commandos who thirst for Muslim blood, and start listening to experienced Pentagon officers who understand the meaning and cost of war.

Eric Margolis | Toronto Sun (read more. . .)

August 21st, 2006 || PermaLink

How Washington Goaded Israel to Invade Lebanon

One of the more unsettling aspects of the broad support in Washington for the use of Israel as U.S. proxy in the Middle East is how closely it corresponds to historic anti-Semitism. In past centuries, the ruling elite of European countries would, in return for granting limited religious and cultural autonomy, established certain individuals in the Jewish community as the visible agents of the oppressive social order, such as tax collectors and moneylenders. When the population threatened to rise up against the ruling elite, the rulers could then blame the Jews, channeling the wrath of an exploited people against convenient scapegoats. The resulting pogroms and waves of repression took place throughout the Jewish Diaspora.

Zionists hoped to break this cycle by creating a Jewish nation-state where Jews would no longer be dependent on the ruling elite of a given country. The tragic irony is that, by using Israel to wage proxy war to promote U.S. hegemony in the region, this cycle is being perpetuated on a global scale. This latest orgy of American-inspired Israeli violence has led to a dangerous upsurge in anti-Semitism in the Middle East and throughout the world. In the United States, many critics of U.S. policy are blaming “the Zionist lobby” for U.S. support for Israel’s attacks on Lebanon rather than the Bush administration and its bipartisan congressional allies who encouraged Israel to wage war on Lebanon in the first place.

Unfortunately, most anti-war protests in major U.S. cities have targeted the Israeli consulate rather than U.S. government buildings. By contrast, during the 1980s, protests against the U.S.-backed violence in El Salvador rarely targeted Salvadoran consulates, but instead more appropriately took place outside federal offices and arms depots, recognizing that the violence would not be taking place without U.S. weapons and support.

Israel is no banana republic. Even those like Hersh who recognize the key role of the Bush administration in goading Israel to attack Lebanon emphasize that rightist elements within Israel had their own reasons, independent of Washington, to pursue the conflict.

Still, given Israel’s enormous military, economic, and political dependence on the United States, this latest war on Lebanon could not have taken place without a green light from Washington. President Jimmy Carter, for example, was able to put a halt to Israel’s 1978 invasion of Lebanon within days and force the Israeli army to withdraw from the south bank of the Litani River to a narrow strip just north of the Israeli border. By contrast, the Bush administration and an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress clearly believed it was in the U.S. interest for Israel to pursue Washington’s “dirty work” for an indefinite period, regardless of its negative implications for Israel’s legitimate security interests.

Stephen Zunes | CommonDreams  (read more. . .)

August 20th, 2006 || PermaLink

Groundhog Day

Twenty-four suspects have been arrested, according to some reports. Nineteen have been named. Happily, the detainees were taken alive. Unlike the man arrested in Pakistan, we may presume (I trust) that they are not being tortured. Therefore, they will have a chance to make an uncoerced statement of their intentions in open court. By then the authorities will have found the labs, testing grounds, airline tickets and passports. Credible witnesses too will have emerged. By then the young zealots will have no expectation of acquittal or mercy, and nothing to lose. We may therefore confidently expect them to face the judges and declare exactly what their motives and intentions were. If they do that, I’ll eat my hat.

In short: Could this case blow up? Could it turn out to have been an overreaction, a mistake–or even a hoax? Yes, it could, and it wouldn’t be the first one, either. I’m not saying it will, necessarily. I’m not accusing the British authorities of bad faith. I’m not suggesting the plot was faked–at least, not by them. But dodgy informants and jumpy politicians are an explosive mixture, easily detonated under pressure. Everyone knows that.

James K. Galbraith | The Nation  (read more. . .)

August 19th, 2006 || PermaLink

Bush — “Take Your Time”

The widespread destruction of a defenseless Lebanon-its civilians, its life-sustaining public services, its environment-is a grim and indelible testament to your consummate cruelty and ignorance. Nearly two weeks ago when your tardy Secretary of State met with the Israeli Prime Minister, the message she carried was summarized in a large headline across page one of an Israeli newspaper, “TAKE YOUR TIME.”

Yes, take your time, says George W. Bush, pulverizing fleeing refugees in cars full of families, bombing apartment buildings, hospitals and the poor huddled in large south Beirut slums.

Take your time, says George W. Bush, in destroying bridges, roads, gasoline stations, airports, seaports, wheat silos, vehicles with medical supplies, clearly marked ambulances taking the wounded to clinics, even a milk factory .

Take your time, says George W. Bush, while shelters are demolished with bodies of little children together with their mothers and fathers buried in the rubble.

Take your time, says George W. Bush, while the number of fleeing refugees nears one million Lebanese, many exposed to hunger, disease, lack of potable water and medicines. All this in a country friendly to the United States, which played by your rules, protested the Syrian army back into Syria and was trying democratically to put itself together.

Take your time, says George W. Bush, while he speeds more supplies of precision missiles containing deadly anti-personnel cluster bombs which will claim the lives of innocent children for years into the future. The phosphorous bombs laying waste to fields growing crops and horribly burning innocents come from the U.S.A. under your direction.

Do you think the taxpayers of America would approve of such shipped weapons were they ever asked?

Are there words in the English language suitable for the impeachable serial war crimes you are intimately involved in committing not only in Iraq but also now through your encouragement and supplying of the once again invading Israeli government?

Ralph Nader | CommonDreams  (read more. . .)

August 18th, 2006 || PermaLink