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The Anti-Empire Report<br>
<a href="http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer104.html" eudora="autourl">
http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer104.html<br><br>
</a>April 6th, 2012<br>
by William Blum<br>
<a href="http://www.killinghope.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.killinghope.org<br>
</a>Putting Syria into some perspective<br><br>
The Holy Triumvirate The United States, NATO, and the European Union
or an approved segment thereof, can usually get what they want. They
wanted Saddam Hussein out, and soon he was swinging from a rope. They
wanted the Taliban ousted from power, and, using overwhelming force, that
was achieved rather quickly. They wanted Moammar Gaddafi's rule to come
to an end, and before very long he suffered a horrible death.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was democratically elected, but this black man who
didn't know his place was sent into distant exile by the United States
and France in 2004. Iraq and Libya were the two most modern, educated and
secular states in the Middle East; now all four of these countries could
qualify as failed states.<br><br>
These are some of the examples from the past decade of how the Holy
Triumvirate recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that they
can do whatever they want in the world, to whomever they want, for as
long as they want, and call it whatever they want, like
"humanitarian intervention". The 19th- and 20th-century
colonialist-imperialist mentality is alive and well in the West.<br><br>
Next on their agenda: the removal of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. As with
Gaddafi, the ground is being laid with continual news reports from CNN
to al Jazeera of Assad's alleged barbarity, presented as both
uncompromising and unprovoked. After months of this media onslaught who
can doubt that what's happening in Syria is yet another of those
cherished Arab Spring "popular uprisings" against a
"brutal dictator" who must be overthrown? And that the Assad
government is overwhelmingly the cause of the violence.<br><br>
Assad actually appears to have a large measure of popularity, not only in
Syria, but elsewhere in the Middle East. This includes not just fellow
Alawites, but Syria's two million Christians and no small number of
Sunnis. Gaddafi had at least as much support in Libya and elsewhere in
Africa. The difference between the two cases, at least so far, is that
the Holy Triumvirate bombed and machine-gunned Libya daily for seven
months, unceasingly, crushing the pro-government forces, as well as
Gaddafi himself, and effecting the Triumvirate's treasured "regime
change". Now, rampant chaos, anarchy, looting and shooting, revenge
murders, tribal war, militia war, religious war, civil war, the most
awful racism against the black population, loss of their cherished
welfare state, and possible dismemberment of the country into several
mini-states are the new daily life for the Libyan people. The capital
city of Tripoli is "wallowing in four months of uncollected
garbage" because the landfill is controlled by a faction that
doesn't want the trash of another faction.1 Just imagine what has
happened to the country's infrastructure. This may be what Syria has to
look forward to if the Triumvirate gets its way, although the Masters of
the Universe undoubtedly believe that the people of Libya should be
grateful to them for their "liberation".<br><br>
As to the current violence in Syria, we must consider the numerous
reports of forces providing military support to the Syrian rebels the
UK, France, the US, Turkey, Israel, Qatar, the Gulf states, and
everyone's favorite champion of freedom and democracy, Saudi Arabia; with
Syria claiming to have captured some 14 French soldiers; plus individual
jihadists and mercenaries from Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, et al,
joining the anti-government forces, their number including al-Qaeda
veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who are likely behind the car bombs in
an attempt to create chaos and destabilize the country. This may mark the
third time the United States has been on the same side as al-Qaeda,
adding to Afghanistan and Libya.<br><br>
Stratfor, the private and conservative American intelligence firm with
high-level connections, reported that "most of the opposition's more
serious claims have turned out to be grossly exaggerated or simply
untrue." Opposition groups including the Syrian National Council,
the Free Syrian Army and the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights began disseminating "claims that regime forces besieged Homs
and imposed a 72-hour deadline for Syrian defectors to surrender
themselves and their weapons or face a potential massacre." That
news made international headlines. Stratfor's investigation, however,
found "no signs of a massacre," and declared that
"opposition forces have an interest in portraying an impending
massacre, hoping to mimic the conditions that propelled a foreign
military intervention in Libya." Stratfor added that any suggestions
of massacres are unlikely because the Syrian "regime has calibrated
its crackdowns to avoid just such a scenario. Regime forces have been
careful to avoid the high casualty numbers that could lead to an
intervention based on humanitarian grounds."2<br><br>
Reva Bhalla, Stratfor's Director of Analysis, reported in a December 2011
email on a meeting she attended at the Pentagon about Syria: "After
a couple hours of talking, they said without saying that SOF [Special
Operation Forces] teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey)
are already on the ground focused on recce [reconnaissance] missions and
training opposition forces." We know of Bhalla's comments thanks to
the 5 million Stratfor emails obtained by the Internet hacker group
Anonymous in December and passed on to Wikileaks.3<br><br>
Human Rights Watch has reported that both Syrian government security
forces and Syria's armed rebels have committed serious human rights
abuses, including kidnapings, torture, and executions. But only the Holy
Triumvirate can get away with the sanctions they love to impose. Assad's
wife is now banned from traveling to EU countries and any assets she may
have there are frozen. Same for Assad's mother, sister and sister-in-law,
as well as eight of his government ministers. Assad himself received the
same treatment last May.4 Because the Triumvirate can.<br><br>
On March 25, the US and Turkish governments announced that they were
discussing sending non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition, implying
quite clearly that until then they had not been engaged in such
activity.5 But according to a US embassy cable, revealed by Wikileaks,
since at least 2006 the United States has been funding political
opposition groups in Syria as well as the London-based satellite TV
channel, Barada TV, run by Syrian exiles, that beams anti-government
programming into the country. The cable further stated that Syrian
authorities "would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal
political groups as tantamount to supporting regime
change."<br><br>
Regime change in Syria has been on the neo-conservative wish list since
at least 2002 when John Bolton, Undersecretary of State under George W.
Bush, came up with a project to simultaneously break up Libya and Syria.
He called the two states along with Cuba "The Axis Of Evil". On
a FOX News appearance in 2011 Bolton said that the United States should
have overthrown the Syrian government right after they overthrew Saddam
Hussein. Amongst Syria's crimes have been their close relations with
Iran, Hezbollah (in Lebanon), the Palestinian resistance, and Russia, and
their failure to conclude a peace treaty with Israel, unlike Jordan and
Egypt; all this constituting evidence to the Holy Triumvirate of Syria,
like Aristide, being "uppity".<br><br>
The clinical megalomania of the Holy Triumvirate can scarcely be
exaggerated. And never prosecuted.<br><br>
A closing word from Cui Tiankai, Chinese vice foreign minister for United
States affairs:<br><br>
The US has the strongest military in the world and
spends more than any other country. But the US always feels unsafe or
insecure about other countries. ... I suggest the United States spend
more time thinking about how to make other countries feel less worried
about the United States.6<br><br>
President Obama's accomplishments<br><br>
Last month, Alan S. Hoffman, an American professor from Washington
University in St. Louis, was forbidden by the US Treasury Department to
travel to Cuba to give classes in a course on biomaterials.7<br><br>
At the same time, the State Department refused to grant two Cuban
diplomats in Washington, DC permission to travel to New York City to
speak at The Left Forum, the largest annual gathering of the left in the
United States, which this year attracted over 5,000 people.8<br><br>
The State Department has also been occupied recently with preventing Cuba
from being invited to the Summit of the Americas in Colombia in
April.9<br><br>
And that's just the past month.<br><br>
I mention all this to keep in mind the next time President Obama or one
of his supporters lists US relations with Cuba as one of his
accomplishments.<br><br>
And I still cannot go to Cuba legally.<br><br>
Another claim the Obamabots are fond of making to defend their man is
that he's abolished torture. That sounds very nice, but there's no good
reason to accept it at face value. Shortly after Obama's inauguration,
both he and Leon Panetta, the new Director of the CIA, explicitly stated
that "rendition" was not being ended. As the Los Angeles Times
reported: "Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA
still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret
abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with
the United States."10<br><br>
The English translation of "cooperate" is "torture".
Rendition is equal to torture. There was no other reason to take
prisoners to Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia,
Kosovo, or the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, to name some of the
known torture centers frequented by the home of the brave. Kosovo and
Diego Garcia both of which house very large and secretive American
military bases if not some of the other locations, may well still be
open for torture business. The same for Guantαnamo. Moreover, the
executive order concerning torture, issued January 22, 2009
"Executive Order 13491 Ensuring Lawful Interrogations"
leaves loopholes, such as being applicable only "in any armed
conflict". Thus, torture by Americans outside environments of
"armed conflict", which is where much torture in the world
happens anyway, is not prohibited. And what about torture in a
"counter-terrorism" environment?<br><br>
One of Mr. Obama's orders required the CIA to use only the interrogation
methods outlined in a revised Army Field Manual. However, using the Army
Field Manual as a guide to prisoner treatment and interrogation still
allows solitary confinement, perceptual or sensory deprivation, sleep
deprivation, the induction of fear and hopelessness, mind-altering drugs,
environmental manipulation such as temperature and perhaps noise, and
possibly stress positions and sensory overload.<br><br>
After Panetta was questioned by a Senate panel, the New York Times wrote
that he had "left open the possibility that the agency could seek
permission to use interrogation methods more aggressive than the limited
menu that President Obama authorized under new rules ... Mr. Panetta also
said the agency would continue the Bush administration practice of
'rendition' picking terrorism suspects off the street and sending them
to a third country. But he said the agency would refuse to deliver a
suspect into the hands of a country known for torture or other actions
"that violate our human values."11<br><br>
Just as no one in the Bush and Obama administrations has been punished in
any way for war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and the other countries they
waged illegal war against, no one has been punished for torture. And, it
could be added, no American bankster has been punished for their
indispensable role in the world-wide financial torture. What a
marvelously forgiving land is America. This, however, does not apply to
Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.<br><br>
In the last days of the Bush White House, Michael Ratner, professor at
Columbia Law School and former president of the Center for Constitutional
Rights, pointed out:<br><br>
The only way to prevent this from happening again is
to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay
the price for it. I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing
those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk
off the stage and lead lives where they are not held
accountable.12<br><br>
I'd like at this point to remind my dear readers of the words of the
"Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment", which was drafted by the United Nations in
1984, came into force in 1987, and ratified by the United States in 1994.
Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: "No exceptional
circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war,
internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be
invoked as a justification of torture."<br><br>
Such marvelously clear, unequivocal, and principled language, to set a
single standard for a world that makes it increasingly difficult for one
to feel proud of humanity. We cannot slide back.<br>
Joseph Biden<br><br>
From a document found at Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan after
his assassination last May: A call to kill President Obama because
"Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will
make Biden take over the presidency. ... Biden is totally unprepared for
that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis.13<br><br>
So ... it would appear that the man America loved to hate and fear was no
more knowledgeable of how United States foreign policy works than is the
average American. What difference in the War on Terror for better or
for worse against the likes of bin Laden and his al Qaeda followers
could there have been over the past three years if Joe Biden had been the
president? Biden was an outspoken supporter of the war against Iraq and
is every bit the pro-Israel fanatic that Obama is. In his 35 years in the
US Senate Biden avidly supported every American war of aggression
including the attacks on Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, Iraq in 1991,
Yugoslavia in 1999 and Afghanistan in 2001. Whatever was Osama bin Laden
thinking?<br><br>
And whatever was Joe Biden thinking when he recently said the following
after hosting China's presumptive next leader Xi Jinping in a visit to
the United States?<br><br>
America holds at least one key economic advantage over China. Because
China's authoritarian government represses its own citizens, they don't
think freely or innovate. "Why have they not become [one of] the
most innovative countries in the world? Why is there a need to steal our
intellectual property? Why is there a need to have a business hand over
its trade secrets to have access to a market of a billion, three hundred
million people? Because they're not innovating." Noting that China
and similar countries produce many engineers and scientists but few
innovators, Biden said, "It's impossible to think different in a
country where you can't speak freely. It's impossible to think different
when you have to worry what you put on the Internet will either be
confiscated or you will be arrested. It's impossible to think different
where orthodoxy reigns. That's why we remain the most innovative country
in the world."14<br><br>
Holy Cold War, Batman! This is exactly the kind of stuff we were told
about the Soviet Union. For years and years. For decades. Then came
Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to be put into Earth's orbit. It
was launched into an Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957.
The unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1's success precipitated the
Sputnik crisis in the United States and ignited the Space Race. The
USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced
Research Projects Agency to regain a technological lead. Not only did the
launch of Sputnik spur America to action in the space race, it also led
directly to the creation of NASA. 15<br>
Notes<br><br>
Washington Post, April 1, 2012 ?<br>
Huffington Post, December 19, 2011?<br>
See the document on WikiLeaks ?<br>
Washington Post, March 24, 2012?<br>
Ibid., March 26, 2012 ?<br>
Ibid., January 10, 2012 ?<br>
Prensa Latina (Cuba), March 18, 2012 ?<br>
See the video description on Cuba's UN Ambassador at
Left Forum '12?<br>
BBC News, "Ecuador to boycott Americas summit
over Cuba exclusion", April 3, 2012?<br>
Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2009 ?<br>
New York Times, February 6, 2009 ?<br>
Associated Press, November 17, 2008 ?<br>
Washington Post, March 16, 2012 ?<br>
Ibid., March 1, 2012 ?<br>
Wikipedia entry for Sputnik 1 ?<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
William Blum is the author of:<br><br>
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since
World War 2<br>
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only
Superpower<br>
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir<br>
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American
Empire<br><br>
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at
<a href="http://www.killinghope.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.killinghope.org<br><br>
</a>Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.<br><br>
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