Thursday, June 28, 2007

spies on us

Spies on Us





Illustration: It was recently revealed that Gonzales, the Assistant Attorney General in hand, attempted to get Aschcroft, barely recovering in the hospital, to approve clearly illegal and unconsititutional wire-tapping and eaves-dropping for the White House. Even Aschcroft was not right-wing enough to like this move.

To appreciate this, one should know a bit about Aschcroft. He was Attorney General for awhile in his home state of Missouri (or Mizzurah, depending upon you background) and was not expected to accomplish much. He lived up to expectations, although forcing women to carry a fetus to birth was a favorite pastime of his.

At one time, someone charged with possession of alcohol as a minor used as his defense Aschroft’s own decree that life began at conception and, since he was only six months short of being of legal age, he was, in fact, of legal age according to those beliefs. It did not work. I surmised that anyone ever taking a drink needed to be born again.

He then became Governor. He is remembered for two accomplishments. One, at his inauguration he refused to dance with his wife as dancing was sinful and the ceremony could not be held on a Sunday as that was God’s day. The other was insulting the Japanese government by refusing to join in a toast at a state dinner in Japan because there was, heaven forbid, alcohol in the glass. Missouri lost considerable trade as a result. (Apparantly, vomiting in the Prime Minister’s lap as George the First did was not as great an offense. Cultural differences, I suppose.)

He then ran for the senate during Bush the Decider’s first campaign. Wile Mizzourah voted for Bush, Missouri elected a dead man rather than Aschroft to represent it.

So, Bush made him Attorney General and his most notable move was to cover the breast on the Statue of Justice – no pornography or sin in his office.

And he was too liberal for the current administration. The title of his latest book is Never Again.

Meanwhile, as Cheney continues to claim exemption for the Executive Branch as the Congress pays his salary and budget, there is some movement in Congress to evict him from both his office and the VP Mansion and to cut off his salary.

Another ploy is to say that while he is a part of the Executive Branch (alas, the Constitution keeps getting in the way) neither he nor the Decider are “Agencies” and the order to turn over documents applies only to “Agencies.”

Just in case you haven’t heard, the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court are also undermining the Constitution with every case they decide. The next nominations will be for the so-called “leftist” (meaning responsible) judges.

I include two articles. One is about the numbers game in Iraq. Somehow, numbers, quantification, even if blatantly wrong or forged, carry more authority with an unthinking public than reason. This article, however, supplies the sources for all of the numbers – so much so that I gave up linking about half way through so, after that, you are on your own. The second is by Chomsky. So many “Americans” wonder what other people think of them. Perhaps he sheds some light of the subject.

Enough!

Tom Dispatch

posted 2007-06-27 09:52:41

Tomgram: The Numbers Surge in Iraq

Iraq by the Numbers

*Surging Past the Gates of Hell*

By Tom Engelhardt

Sometimes, numbers can strip human beings of just about everything that

makes us what we are. Numbers can silence pain, erase love, obliterate

emotion, and blur individuality. But sometimes numbers can also tell a

necessary story in ways nothing else can.

This January, President Bush announced

<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-7.html> his

"surge" plan for Iraq, which he called his "new way forward." It was,

when you think about it, all about numbers. Since then, 28,500

new American troops have surged into that country, mostly in and around

Baghdad; and, according to the Washington Post

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061502602_pf.html>,

there has also been a hidden surge of private armed contractors -- hired

guns, if you will -- who free up troops by taking over many mundane

military positions from guarding convoys to guarding envoys. In the

meantime, other telltale numbers in Iraq have surged as well.

Now, Americans are theoretically waiting for the commander of U.S.

forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, to "report" to Congress in

September on the "progress" of the President's surge strategy. But there

really is no reason to wait for September. An interim report -- "Iraq by

the numbers" -- can be prepared now (as it could have been prepared last

month, or last year). The trajectory of horror in Iraq has long been

clear; the fact that the U.S. military is a motor driving the Iraqi

cataclysm has been no less clear for years now. So here is my own early

version of the "September Report."

A caveat about numbers: In the bloody chaos that is Iraq, as tens of

thousands die or are wounded, as millions uproot themselves or are

uprooted, and as the influence of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's

national government remains largely confined to the four-square mile

fortified Green Zone in the Iraqi capital, numbers, even as they pour

out of that hemorrhaging land, are eternally up for grabs. There is no

way most of them can be accurate. They are, at best, a set of

approximate notations in a nightmare that is beyond measurement.

Here, nonetheless, is an attempt to tell a little of the Iraqi story by

those numbers:

/Iraq is now widely considered # 1/ -- when it comes to being the ideal

jihadist training ground

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070619/ts_afp/iraqunrestarab> on the

planet. "If Afghanistan was a Pandora's box which when opened created

problems in many countries, Iraq is a much bigger box, and what's inside

much more dangerous," comments Mohammed al-Masri, a researcher at

Amman's Centre for Strategic Studies. CIA analysts predicted

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/22/international/middleeast/22intel.html?ex=1277092800&en=cca56f7374b2b81a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>

just this in a May 2005 report leaked to the press. ("A new classified

assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be

an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than

Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a

real-world laboratory for urban combat.")

/Iraq is # 2:/ It now ranks

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/18/AR2007061800568_pf.html>

as the world's second most unstable country, ahead of war-ravaged or

poverty-stricken nations like Somalia, Zimbabwe, the Congo, and North

Korea, according to the 2007 Failed States Index

<http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=229&Itemid=366>,

issued recently by the Fund for Peace and /Foreign Policy/ magazine.

(Afghanistan, the site of our other little war, ranked 8th.) Last year

<http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=104&Itemid=324>

and the year before

<http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=103&Itemid=325>

Iraq held 4th place on the list. Next year, it could surge to number #1.

/Number of American troops in Iraq, June 2007:/ Approximately 156,000

<http://www.macon.com/272/story/71960.html>.

/Number of American troops in Iraq, May 1, 2003, the day President Bush

declared <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2627-2003May1>

"major combat operations" in that country "ended"/: Approximately

130,000

<http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=17745&prog=zgp&proj=zusr>.

/Number of Sunni insurgents in Iraq, May 2007:/ At least 100,000

<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE05Ak01.html>, according to

/Asia Times/ correspondent Pepe Escobar on his most recent visit to the

country.

/American military dead in the surge months, February 1-June 26, 2007:/

481 <http://icasualties.org/oif/default.aspx/>.

/American military dead, February-June 2006:/ 292.

/Number of contractors killed in the first three months of 2007:/ At

least 146 <http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051907Z.shtml>, a

significant surge over previous years. (Contractor deaths sometimes go

unreported and so these figures are likely to be incomplete.)

/Number of American troops Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz

and other Pentagon civilian strategists were convinced would be

stationed in Iraq in August 2003, four months after Baghdad fell:/):

30,000-40,000, according to /Washington Post/ reporter Tom Ricks in his

bestselling book /Fiasco/.

/Number of armed "private contractors" now in Iraq:/ at least

20,000-30,000, according to the Washington Post

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061502602_pf.html>.

(Jeremy Scahill, author of the bestseller /Blackwater/, puts the figure

for all private contractors in Iraq at 126,000

<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174780/scahill_a_democratic_sell_out_on_bush_s_mercenaries>.)

/Number of attacks on U.S. troops and allied Iraqi forces, April 2007/:

4,900 <http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/4914665.html>.

/Percentage of U.S. deaths from roadside bombs (IEDs):/ 70.9%

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/02/AR2007060201294_pf.html>

in May 2007; 35% in February 2007 as the surge was beginning.

/Percentage of registered U.S. supply convoys (guarded by private

contractors) attacked:/ 14.7%

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061502602_pf.html>

in 2007 (through May 10); 9.1% in 2006; 5.4% in 2005.

/Percentage of Baghdad not controlled by U.S. (and Iraqi) security

forces more than four months into the surge:/ 60%

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6715488,00.html>,

according to the U.S. military.

/Number of attacks on the Green Zone, the fortified heart of Baghdad

where the new $600 million American embassy

<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174789/the_mother_ship_lands_in_iraq>

is rising and the Iraqi government largely resides:/ More than 80

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070620/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_green_zone>

between March and the beginning of June, 2007, according to a UN report.

(These attacks, by mortar or rocket, from "pacified" Red-Zone Baghdad,

are on the rise and now occur nearly daily.)

/Size of U.S. embassy staff in Baghdad:/ More than 1,000 Americans

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/18/AR2007061801503_pf.html>

and 4,000 third-country nationals.

/Staff U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker considers appropriate to the

"diplomatic" job:/ The ambassador recently sent "an urgent plea" to

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for more personnel

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/20/AR2007062002294_pf.html>.

"The people here are heroic," he wrote. "I need more people, and that's

the thing, not that the people who are here shouldn't be here or

couldn't do it." According to the /Washington Post/, the Baghdad

embassy, previously assigned 15 political officers, now will get 11

more; the economic staff will go from 9 to 21. This may involve "direct

assignments" to Baghdad in which, against precedent, State Department

officers, some reputedly against the war, will simply be ordered to take

up "unaccompanied posts" (too dangerous for families to go along).

/U.S. air strikes in Iraq during the surge months:/ Air Force planes are

dropping bombs at more than twice the rate

<http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,138201,00.html> of a year

ago, according to the Associated Press. "Close support missions" are up

30-40%. And this surge of air power seems, from recent news reports,

still to be on the rise. In the early stages of the recent surge

operation against the city of Baquba in Diyala province, for instance,

Michael R. Gordon of the /New York Times/ reported

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/20/world/middleeast/20military.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin>

that "American forces.... fired more than 20 satellite-guided rockets

into western Baquba," while Apache helicopters attacked "enemy

fighters." /ABC News/ recently reported that the Air Force has brought

B-1 bombers in for missions on the outskirts of Baghdad.

/Number of years Gen. Petraeus, commander of the surge operation,

predicts that the U.S. will have to be engaged in counterinsurgency

operations in Iraq to have hopes of achieving success:/ 9-10 years

<http://news.bostonherald.com/international/middleEast/view.bg?articleid=1006985>.

("In fact, typically, I think historically, counterinsurgency operations

have gone at least nine or 10 years.")

/Number of years administration officials are now suggesting that

30,000-40,000 American troops might have to remain garrisoned at U.S.

bases in Iraq:/ 54

,

according to the "Korea model"

now being considered for that country. (American troops have garrisoned

South Korea since the Korean War ended in 1953.)

/Number of Iraqi police, trained by Americans, who were not on duty as

of January 2007, just before the surge plan was put into operation/:

Approximately 32,000

out of a force of 188,000, according to the Associated Press. About one

in six Iraqi policemen has been killed, wounded, deserted, or just

disappeared. About 5,000 probably have deserted; and 7,000-8,000 are

simply "unaccounted for." (Recall here the President's old jingle of

2005 :

"As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.")

/Number of years before the Iraqi security forces are capable of taking

charge of their country's security:/ "A couple of years,"

according to U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard, commander of the Iraq

Assistance Group.

/Amount of "reconstruction" money invested in the CIA's key asset in the

new Iraq, the Iraqi National Intelligence Service:/ $3 billion

, according to

/Asia Times/ correspondent Pepe Escobar.

/Number of Iraqi "Kit Carson scouts" being trained in the just-captured

western part of Baquba/: More than 100

.

(There were thousands of "Kit Carsons" in the Vietnam War

-- former enemy

fighters employed by U.S. forces.) In fact, Vietnam-era plans, ranging

from Strategic Hamlets (dubbed, in the Iraqi urban context, "gated

communities") to the "oil spot" counterinsurgency strategy, have been

recycled for use in Iraq, as has an American penchant for applying names

from our Indian Wars

to counterinsurgency situations abroad, including, for instance, dubbing

an embattled supply depot near Abu Ghraib, "Fort Apache."

/Number of Iraqis who have fled their country since 2003:/ Estimated to

be between 2 million

and 2.2 million

,

or nearly one in ten Iraqis. According to independent reporter Dahr

Jamail

,

at least 50,000 more refugees are fleeing the country every month.

/Number of Iraqi refugees who have been accepted by the United States:/

Fewer than 500

,

according to Bob Woodruff of ABC News; 701

,

according to Agence France Presse. (Under international and

congressional pressure, the Bush administration has finally agreed to

admit another 7,000 Iraqis

by year's end.)

/Number of Iraqis who are now internal refugees in Iraq, largely due to

sectarian violence since 2003/: At least 1.9 million

, according to the UN. (A recent Red

Crescent Society report

,

based on a survey taken in Iraq, indicates that internal refugees have

quadrupled since January 2007, and are up eight-fold since June 2006.)

/Percentage of refugees, internal and external, under 12:/ 55%

,

according to the President of the Red Crescent Society.

/Percentage of Baghdadi children, 3 to 10, exposed to a major traumatic

event in the last two years:/ 47%

,

according to a World Health Organization survey of 600 children. 14% of

them showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. In another study

of 1,090 adolescents in Mosul, that figure reached 30%.

/Number of Iraqi doctors who have fled the country since 2003:/ An

estimated 12,000

of the country's 34,000 registered doctors since 2003, according to the

Iraqi Medical Association. The Association reports that another 2,000

doctors have been slain in those years.

/Number of Iraqi refugees created since UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon

declared a "humanitarian crisis" for Iraq in January 2007:/ An estimated

250,000

.

/Percentage of Iraqis now living on less than $1 a day, according to the

UN:/ 54% .

/Iraq's per-capita annual income:/ $3,600 in 1980; $860 in 2001 (after a

decade of UN sanctions); $530 at the end of 2003, according to Asia

Times correspondent

Pepe Escobar,

who estimates that the number may now have falled below $400.

Unemployment in Iraq is at around 60%.

/Percentage of Iraqis who do not have regular access to clean water:/

70%

,

according to the World Health Organization. (80% "lack effective

sanitation.")

/Rate of chronic child malnutrition:/ 21%

,

according to the World Health Organization. (Rates of child malnutrition

had already nearly doubled by 2004

,

only 20 months after the U.S. invasion.) According to UNICEF

,

"about one in 10 children under five in Iraq are underweight."

/Number of Iraqis held in American prisons in their own country:/ 17,000

by March 2007, almost 20,000

by May 2007 and surging.

/Number of Iraqis detained in Baquba alone in one week in June in

Operation Phantom Thunder:/ more than 700

.

/Average number of Iraqis who died violently each day in 2006:/ 100

-- and this is undoubtedly an underestimate, since not all deaths are

reported.

/Number of Iraqis who have died violently (based on the above average)

since Ban Ki-Moon declared a "humanitarian crisis" for Iraq in January

2007:/ 15,000

-- again certainly an undercount.

/Number of Iraqis who died (in what Juan Cole terms Iraq's "everyday

apocalypse"

<http://www.juancole.com/2007/06/everyday-apocolypse-in-iraq-war-of.html>)

during the week of June 17-23, 2007, according to the careful daily

tally from media reports offered at the website Antiwar.com:/ 763 or an

average of 109 media-reported deaths a day. (June 17

: 74; June 18

: 149; June 19

: 169; June 20

: 116; June 21

: 58; June 22

: 122; June 23

: 75.)

/Percentage of seriously wounded who don't survive in emergency rooms

and intensive-care units, due to lack of drugs, equipment, and staff:/

Nearly 70%,

according to the World Health Organization.

/Number of university professors who have been killed since the invasion

of 2003:/ More than 200

,

according to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education.

/The value of an Iraqi life:/ A maximum of $2,500

in "consolation" or "solatia" payments made by the American military to

Iraqi civilians who died "as a result of U.S. and coalition forces'

actions during combat," according to a U.S. Government Accountability

Office (GAO) report. These payments imply no legal responsibility for

the killings. For rare "extraordinary cases" (and let's not even imagine

what these might be), payments of up to $10,000 were approved last year,

with the authorization of a division commander. According to Walter

Pincus of the /Washington Post/, "[W]e are not talking big condolence

payouts thus far. In 2005, the sums distributed in Iraq reached $21.5

million and -- with violence on the upswing -- dropped to $7.3 million

last year, the GAO reported."

/The value of an Iraqi car, destroyed by American forces:/ $2,500 would

not be unusual, and conceivably the full value of the car, according to

the same GAO report. A former Army judge advocate, who served in Iraq,

has commented: "[T]he full market value may be paid for a Toyota run

over by a tank in the course of a non-combat related accident, but only

$2,500 may be paid for the death of a child shot in the crossfire."

/Percentage of Americans who approve of the President's actions in

Iraq:/ 23% , according to the

latest post-surge Newsweek

poll. The

President's overall approval rating stood at 26% in this poll, just

three points above those of only one president, Richard Nixon at his

Watergate worst, and Bush's polling figures are threatening to head into

that territory . In the

latest, now two-week old NBC//Wall Street Journal/ poll, 10% of

Americans think the "surge" has made things better in Iraq, 54% worse.

The question is: What word best describes the situation these Iraqi

numbers hint at? The answer would probably be: No such word exists.

"Genocide" has been beaten into the ground and doesn't apply. "Civil

war," which shifts all blame to the Iraqis (withdrawing Americans from a

country its troops have not yet begun to leave), doesn't faintly cover

the matter.

If anything catches the carnage and mayhem that was once the nation of

Iraq, it might be a comment by the head of the Arab League, Amr Mussa,

in 2004. He warned

<http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0914-01.htm>: "The gates of

hell are open in Iraq." At the very least, the "gates of hell" should

now officially be considered miles behind us on the half-destroyed,

well-mined highway of Iraqi life. Who knows what IEDs lie ahead? We are,

after all, in the underworld.

/Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a

regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the

American Empire Project <http://www.americanempireproject.com/> and,

most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch

Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters

(Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews./

Copyright 2007 Tom Engelhardt

*ZNet | Mideast*

*Imminent Crises: Threats and Opportunities *

*by Noam Chomsky; Monthly Review; June 27, 2007*

Regrettably, there are all too many candidates that qualify as

imminent and very serious crises. Several should be high on

everyone’s agenda of concern, because they pose literal threats

to human survival: the increasing likelihood of a terminal

nuclear war, and environmental disaster, which may not be too

far removed. However, I would like to focus on narrower issues,

those that are of greatest concern in the West right now. I will

be speaking primarily of the United States, which I know best,

and it is the most important case because of its enormous power.

But as far as I can ascertain, Europe is not very different.

The area of greatest concern is the Middle East. There is

nothing novel about that. I often have to arrange talks years in

advance. If I am asked for a title, I suggest “The Current

Crisis in the Middle East.” It has yet to fail. There’s a good

reason: the huge energy resources of the region were recognized

by Washington sixty years ago as a “stupendous source of

strategic power,” the “strategically most important area of the

world,” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world

history.”1 Control over this stupendous prize has been a primary

goal of U.S. policy ever since, and threats to it have naturally

aroused enormous concern.

For years it was pretended that the threat was from the

Russians, the routine pretext for violence and subversion all

over the world. In the case of the Middle East, we do not have

to consider this pretext, since it was officially abandoned.

When the Berlin Wall fell, the first Bush administration

released a new National Security Strategy, explaining that

everything would go as before but within a new rhetorical

framework. The massive military system is still necessary, but

now because of the “technological sophistication of third world

powers”—which at least comes closer to the truth—the primary

threat, worldwide, has been indigenous nationalism. The official

document explained further that the United States would maintain

its intervention forces aimed at the Middle East, where “the

threat to our interests” that required intervention “could not

be laid at the Kremlin’s door,” contrary to decades of

fabrication.2 As is normal, all of this passed without comment.

The most serious current problem in the minds of the population,

by far, is Iraq. And the easy winner in the competition for the

country that is the most feared is Iran, not because Iran really

poses a severe threat, but because of a drumbeat of

government-media propaganda. That is a familiar pattern. The

most recent example is Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was virtually

announced in September 2002. As we now know, the U.S.-British

invasion was already underway in secret. In that month,

Washington initiated a huge propaganda campaign, with lurid

warnings by Condoleezza Rice and others that the next message

from Saddam Hussein would be a mushroom cloud in New York City.

Within a few weeks, the government-media propaganda barrage had

driven Americans completely off the international spectrum.

Saddam may have been despised almost everywhere, but it was only

in the United States that a majority of the population were

terrified of what he might do to them, tomorrow. Not

surprisingly! , support for the war correlated very closely with

such fears. That has been achieved before, in amazing ways

during the Reagan years, and there is a long and illuminating

earlier history. But I will keep to the current monster being

crafted by the doctrinal system, after a few words about Iraq.

There is a flood of commentary about Iraq, but very little

reporting. Journalists are mostly confined to fortified areas in

Baghdad, or embedded within the occupying army. That is not

because they are cowards or lazy, but because it is simply too

dangerous to be anywhere else. That has not been true in earlier

wars. It is an astonishing fact that the United States and

Britain have had more trouble running Iraq than the Nazis had in

occupied Europe, or the Russians in their East European

satellites, where the countries were run by local civilians and

security forces, with the iron fist poised if anything went

wrong but usually in the background. In contrast, the United

States has been unable to establish an obedient client regime in

Iraq, under far easier conditions.

Putting aside doctrinal blinders, what should be done in Iraq?

Before answering, we should be clear about some basic

principles. The major principle is that an invader has no

rights, only responsibilities. The first responsibility is to

pay reparations. The second responsibility is to follow the will

of the victims. There is actually a third responsibility: to

bring criminals to trial, but that obligation is so remote from

the imperial mentality of Western culture that I will put it aside.

The responsibility to pay reparations to Iraqis goes far beyond

the crime of aggression and its terrible aftermath. The United

States and Britain have been torturing the population of Iraq

for a long time. In recent history, both governments strongly

supported Saddam Hussein’s terrorist regime through the period

of his worst crimes, and long after the end of the war with

Iran. Iran finally capitulated, recognizing that it could not

fight the United States, which was, by then, openly

participating in Saddam’s aggression—something that Iranians

have surely not forgotten, even if Westerners have. Dismissing

history is always a convenient stance for those who hold the

clubs, but their victims usually prefer to pay attention to the

real world. After the Iran-Iraq war, Washington and London

continued to provide military equipment to their friend Saddam,

including means to develop weapons of mass destruction and

delivery systems. Iraqi nuclear engineers were even being

brought to t! he United States for instruction in developing

nuclear weapons in 1989, long after Saddam’s worst atrocities

and Iran’s capitulation.

Immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, the United States and the

United Kingdom returned to their support for Saddam when they

effectively authorized him to use heavy military equipment to

suppress a Shi’ite uprising that might well have overthrown the

tyrant. The reasons were publicly explained. The New York Times

reported that there was a “strikingly unanimous view” among the

United States and its allies, Britain and Saudi Arabia, that

“whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and

the region a better hope for his country’s stability than did

those who have suffered his repression”; the term “stability” is

a code word for “following orders.”3 New York Times chief

diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman explained that “the

best of all worlds” for Washington would be an “iron-fisted

military junta” ruling Iraq just the way Saddam did. But lacking

that option, Washington had to settle for second-best: Saddam

himself. An unthinkable option—then and now—is that ! Iraqis

should rule Iraq independently of the United States.

Then followed the murderous sanctions regime imposed by the

United States and Britain, which killed hundreds of thousands of

people, devastated Iraqi civilian society, strengthened the

tyrant, and forced the population to rely on him for survival.

The sanctions probably saved Saddam from the fate of other

vicious tyrants, some quite comparable to him, who were

overthrown from within despite strong support from the United

States and United Kingdom to the end of their bloody rule:

Ceausescu, Suharto, and quite a rogues gallery of others, to

which new names are being added regularly. Again, all of this is

boring ancient history for those who hold the clubs, but not for

their victims, or for people who prefer to understand the world.

All of those actions, and much more, call for reparations, on a

massive scale, and the responsibility extends to others as well.

But the deep moral-intellectual crisis of imperial culture

prevents any thought of such topics as these.

The second responsibility is to obey the will of the population.

British and U.S. polls provide sufficient evidence about that.

The most recent polls find that 87 percent of Iraqis want a

“concrete timeline for US withdrawal,” up from 76 percent in

2005.4 If the reports really mean Iraqis, as they say, that

would imply that virtually the entire population of Arab Iraq,

where the U.S. and British armies are deployed, wants a firm

timetable for withdrawal. I doubt that one would have found

comparable figures in occupied Europe under the Nazis, or

Eastern Europe under Russian rule.

Bush-Blair and associates declare, however, that there can be no

timetable for withdrawal. That stand in part reflects the

natural hatred for democracy among the powerful, often

accompanied by eloquent calls for democracy. The calls for

democracy moved to center stage after the failure to find

weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so a new motive had to be

invented for the invasion. The president announced the doctrine

to great acclaim in November 2003, at the National Endowment for

Democracy in Washington. He proclaimed that the real reason for

the invasion was not Saddam’s weapons programs, as Washington

and London had insistently claimed, but rather Bush’s messianic

mission to promote democracy in Iraq, the Middle East, and

elsewhere. The media and prominent scholars were deeply

impressed, relieved to discover that the “liberation of Iraq” is

perhaps the “most noble” war in history, as leading liberal

commentators announced—a sentiment echoed even by critics, who

objected ! that the “noble goal” may be beyond our means, and

those to whom we are offering this wonderful gift may be too

backward to accept it. That conclusion was confirmed a few days

later by U.S. polls in Baghdad. Asked why the United States

invaded Iraq, some agreed with the new doctrine hailed by

Western intellectuals: 1 percent agreed that the goal was to

promote democracy. Another 5 percent said that the goal was to

help Iraqis.5 Most of the rest took for granted that the goals

were the obvious ones that are unmentionable in polite

society—the strategic-economic goals we readily attribute to

enemies, as when Russia invaded Afghanistan or Saddam invaded

Kuwait, but are unmentionable when we turn to ourselves.

But rejection of the popular will in Iraq goes far beyond the

natural fear of democracy on the part of the powerful. Simply

consider the policies that are likely to be pursued by an

independent and more or less democratic Iraq. Iraqis may have no

love for Iran, but they would doubtlessly prefer friendly

relations with their powerful neighbor. The Shi’ite majority

already has ties to Iran and has been moving to strengthen them.

Furthermore, even limited sovereignty in Iraq has encouraged

efforts by the harshly repressed Shi’ite population across the

border in Saudi Arabia to gain basic rights and perhaps

autonomy. That is where most of Saudi Arabia’s oil happens to be.

Such developments might lead to a loose Shi’ite alliance

controlling the world’s major energy resources and independent

of Washington, the ultimate nightmare in Washington—except that

it might get worse: the alliance might strengthen its economic

and possibly even military ties with China. The United States

can intimidate Europe: when Washington shakes its fist, leading

European business enterprises pull out of Iran. But China has a

three-thousand-year history of contempt for the barbarians: they

refuse to be intimidated.

That is the basic reason for Washington’s strategic concerns

with regard to China: not that it is a military threat, but that

it poses the threat of independence. If that threat is

unacceptable for small countries like Cuba or Vietnam, it is

certainly so for the heartland of the most dynamic economic

region in the world, the country that has just surpassed Japan

in possession of the world’s major financial reserves and is the

world’s fastest growing major economy. China’s economy is

already about two-thirds the size of that of the United States,

by the correct measures, and if current growth rates persist, it

is likely to close that gap in about a decade—in absolute terms,

not per capita of course.

China is also the center of the Asian Energy Security Grid and

the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes the

Central Asian countries, and just a few weeks ago, was joined by

India, Iran, and Pakistan as observers, soon probably members.

India is undertaking significant joint energy projects with

China, and it might join the Energy Security Grid. Iran may as

well, if it comes to the conclusion that Europe is so

intimidated by the United States that it cannot act

independently. If Iran turns to the East, it will find willing

partners. A major conference on energy last September in Teheran

brought together government officials and scholars from Iran,

China, Pakistan, India, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, Georgia,

Venezuela, and Germany, planning an extensive pipeline system

for the entire region and also more intensive development of

energy resources. Bush’s recent trip to India, and his

authorization of India’s nuclear weapons program, is part of the

jockeying over how ! these major global forces will crystallize.

A sovereign and partially democratic Iraq could be another

contribution to developments that seriously threaten U.S. global

hegemony, so it is not at all surprising that Washington has

sought in every way to prevent such an outcome, joined by “the

spear carrier for the pax americana,” as Blair’s Britain is

described by Michael MccGwire in Britain’s leading journal of

international affairs.6

If the United States were compelled to grant some degree of

sovereignty to Iraq, and any of these consequences would ensue,

Washington planners would be facing the collapse of one of their

highest foreign policy objectives since the Second World War,

when the United States replaced Britain as the world-dominant

power: the need to control “the strategically most important

area of the world.” What has been central to planning is

control, not access, an important distinction. The United States

followed the same policies long before it relied on a drop of

Middle East oil, and would continue to do so if it relied on

solar energy. Such control gives the United States “veto power”

over its industrial rivals, as explained in the early postwar

period by influential planners, and reiterated recently with

regard to Iraq: a successful conquest of Iraq would give the

United States “critical leverage” over its industrial rivals,

Europe and Asia, as pointed out by Zbigniew Brzezinski, an i!

mportant figure in the planning community. Vice President Dick

Cheney made the same point, describing control over petroleum

supplies as “tools of intimidation and blackmail”—when used by

others.7 He went on to urge the dictatorships of Central Asia,

Washington’s models of democracy, to agree to pipeline

construction that ensures that the tools remain in Washington’s

hands.

The thought is by no means original. At the dawn of the oil age

almost ninety years ago, Britain’s first lord of the admiralty

Walter Hume Long explained that “if we secure the supplies of

oil now available in the world we can do what we like.”8 Woodrow

Wilson also understood this crucial point. Wilson expelled the

British from Venezuela, which by 1928 had become the world’s

leading oil exporter, with U.S. companies then placed in charge.

To achieve this goal, Wilson and his successors supported the

vicious and corrupt dictator of Venezuela and ensured that he

would bar British concessions. Meanwhile the United States

continued to demand—and secure—U.S. oil rights in the Middle

East, where the British and French were in the lead.

We might note that these events illustrate the actual meaning of

the “Wilsonian idealism” admired by Western intellectual

culture, and also provide the real meaning of “free trade” and

the “open door.” Sometimes that is even officially acknowledged.

When the post-Second World War global order was being shaped in

Washington, a State Department memorandum on U.S. petroleum

policy called for preserving absolute U.S. control of Western

hemisphere resources “coupled with insistence upon the Open Door

principle of equal opportunity for United States companies in

new areas.”9 That is a useful illustration of “really existing

free market doctrine”: What we have, we keep, closing the door

to others; what we do not yet have, we take, under the principle

of the Open Door. All of this illustrates the one really

significant theory of international relations, the maxim of

Thucydides: the strong do as they can, and the weak suffer as

they must.

With regard to Iraq today, talk about exit strategies means very

little unless these realities are confronted. How Washington

planners will deal with these problems is far from clear. And

they face similar problems elsewhere. Intelligence projections

for the new millennium were that the United States would control

Middle East oil as a matter of course, but would itself rely on

more stable Atlantic Basin reserves: West African dictatorships’

and the Western hemisphere’s. But Washington’s postwar control

of South America, from Venezuela to Argentina, is seriously

eroding. The two major instruments of control have been violence

and economic strangulation, but each weapon is losing its

efficacy. The latest attempt to sponsor a military coup was in

2002, in Venezuela, but the United States had to back down when

the government it helped install was quickly overthrown by

popular resistance, and there was turmoil in Latin America,

where democracy is taken much more seriously than in! the West

and overthrow of a democratically elected government is no

longer accepted quietly. Economic controls are also eroding.

South American countries are paying off their debts to the

IMF—basically an offshoot of the U.S. Treasury department. More

frightening yet to Washington, these countries are being aided

by Venezuela. The president of Argentina announced that the

country would “rid itself of the IMF.” Rigorous adherence to IMF

rules had led to economic disaster, from which the country

recovered by radically violating the rules. Brazil too had rid

itself of the IMF, and Bolivia probably will as well, again

aided by Venezuela. U.S. economic controls are seriously weakening.

Washington’s main concern is Venezuela, the leading oil producer

in the Western hemisphere. The U.S. Department of Energy

estimates that its reserves might be greater than Saudi Arabia’s

if the price of oil stays high enough for exploitation of its

expensive extra-heavy oil to become profitable. Extreme U.S.

hostility and subversion has accelerated Venezuela’s interest in

diversifying exports and investment, and China is more than

willing to accept the opportunity, as it is with other

resource-rich Latin American exporters. The largest gas reserves

in South America are in Bolivia, which is now following much the

same path as Venezuela. Both countries pose a problem for

Washington in other respects. They have popularly elected

governments. Venezuela leads Latin America in support for the

elected government, increasing sharply in the past few years

under Chávez. He is bitterly hated in the United States because

of his independence and enormous popular support. Bolivia just

had! a democratic election of a kind next to inconceivable in

the West. There were serious issues that the population

understood very well, and there was active participation of the

general population, who elected someone from their own ranks,

from the indigenous majority. Democracy is always frightening to

power centers, particularly when it goes too far beyond mere

form and involves actual substance.

Commentary on what is happening reveals the nature of the fears.

London’s Financial Times warned that President Evo Morales of

Bolivia is becoming increasingly “authoritarian” and

“undemocratic.” This is a serious concern to Western powers, who

are dedicated to freedom and democracy everywhere. The proof of

his authoritarian stance and departure from democratic

principles is that he followed the will of 95 percent of the

population and nationalized Bolivia’s gas resources, and is also

gaining popularity by cutting public salaries and eliminating

corruption. Morales’s policies have come to resemble the

frightening leader of Venezuela. As if the popularity of

Chávez’s elected government was not proof enough that he is an

anti-democratic dictator, he is attempting to extend to Bolivia

the same programs he is instituting in Venezuela: helping

“Bolivia’s drive to stamp out illiteracy and pay[ing] the wages

of hundreds of Cuban doctors who have been sent to work there”

among the p! oor, to quote the Financial Times’ lament.10

The latest Bush administration’s National Security Strategy,

released March 2006, describes China as the greatest long-term

threat to U.S. global dominance. The threat is not military, but

economic. The document warns that Chinese leaders are not only

“expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow ‘lock up’

energy supplies around the world or seek to direct markets

rather than opening them up.”11 In the U.S.-China meetings in

Washington a few weeks ago, President Bush warned President Hu

Jintao against trying to “lock up” global supplies. Bush

condemned China’s reliance on oil from Sudan, Burma, and Iran,

accusing China of opposition to free trade and human

rights—unlike Washington, which imports only from pure

democracies that worship human rights, like Equatorial Guinea,

one of the most vicious African dictatorships; Colombia, which

has by far the worst human rights record in Latin America;

Central Asian states; and other paragons of virtue. No

respectable person woul! d accuse Washington of “locking up”

global supplies when it pursues its traditional “open door

policy” and outright aggression to ensure that it dominates

global energy supplies, firmly holding “the tools of

intimidation and blackmail.” It is interesting, perhaps, that

none of this elicits ridicule in the West, or even notice.

The lead story in the New York Times on the Bush-Hu meeting

reported that “China’s appetite for oil also affects its stance

on Iran....The issue [of China’s effort to ‘lock up’ global

supplies] is likely to come to a particular head over Iran,”

where China’s state-owned oil giant signed a $70 billion deal to

develop Iran’s huge Yadavaran oil field.12 That’s a serious

matter, compounded by Chinese interference even in Saudi Arabia,

a U.S. client state since the British were expelled during the

Second World War. This relationship now threatened by growing

economic and even military ties between China and the Kingdom of

Saudi Arabia, now China’s largest trading partner in West Asia

and North Africa—perhaps further proof of China’s lack of

concern for democracy and human rights. When President Hu

visited Washington, he was denied a state dinner, in a

calculated insult. He cheerfully reciprocated by going directly

to Saudi Arabia, a serious slap in the face to Washington that

was! surely not misunderstood.

This is the barest sketch of the relevant global context over

what to do in Iraq. But these critical matters are scarcely

mentioned in the ongoing debate about the problem of greatest

concern to Americans. They are barred by a rigid doctrine. It is

unacceptable to attribute rational strategic-economic thinking

to one’s own state, which must be guided by benign ideals of

freedom, justice, peace, and other wonderful things. That leads

back again to a very severe crisis in Western intellectual

culture, not of course unique in history, but with dangerous

portent.

We can be confident that these matters, though excluded from

public discussion, engage the attention of planners. Governments

typically regard their populations as a major enemy, and keep

them in ignorance of what is happening to them and planned for

them. Nevertheless, we can speculate. One reasonable speculation

is that Washington planners may be seeking to inspire

secessionist movements that the United States can then “defend”

against the home country. In Iran, the main oil resources are in

the Arab areas adjacent to the Gulf, Iran’s Khuzestan—and sure

enough, there is now an Ahwazi liberation movement of unknown

origin, claiming unspecified rights of autonomy. Nearby, Iraq

and the gulf states provide a base for U.S. military intervention.

The U.S. military presence in Latin America is increasing

substantially. In Venezuela, oil resources are concentrated in

Zulia province near Colombia, the one reliable U.S. land base in

the region, a province that is anti-Chávez and already has an

autonomy movement, again of unknown origins. In Bolivia, the gas

resources are in richer eastern areas dominated by elites of

European descent that bitterly oppose the government elected by

the indigenous majority, and have threatened to secede. Nearby

Paraguay is another one of the few remaining reliable land bases

for the U.S. military. Total military and police assistance now

exceeds economic and social aid, a dramatic reversal of the

pattern during Cold War years. The U.S. military now has more

personnel in Latin America than most key civilian federal

agencies combined, again a sharp change from earlier years. The

new mission is to combat “radical populism”—the term that is

regularly used for independent nationalism that does n! ot obey

orders. Military training is being shifted from the State

Department to the Pentagon, freeing it from human rights and

democracy conditionality under congressional supervision—which

was always weak, but had some effects that constrained executive

violence.

The United States is a global power, and its policies should not

be viewed in isolation, any more than those of the British

Empire. Going back half a century, the Eisenhower administration

identified three major global problems: Indonesia, North Africa,

and the Middle East—all oil producers, all Islamic. In all

cases, the concern was independent nationalism. The end of

French rule in Algeria resolved the North African problem. In

Indonesia, the 1965 Suharto coup removed the threat of

independence with a huge massacre, which the CIA compared to the

crimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. The “staggering mass

slaughter,” as the New York Times described it, was greeted in

the West with unconcealed euphoria and relief.13 The military

coup destroyed the only mass-based political party, a party of

the poor, slaughtered huge numbers of landless peasants, and

threw the country open to Western exploitation of its rich

resources, while the large majority tries to survive in misery.

Two yea! rs later, the major problem in the Middle East was

resolved with Israel’s destruction of the Nasser regime, hated

by the United States and Britain, which feared that secular

nationalist forces might seek to direct the vast energy

resources of the region to internal development. A few years

earlier, U.S. intelligence had warned of popular feelings that

oil is a “national patrimony” exploited by the West by unjust

arrangements imposed by force. Israel’s service to the United

States, its Saudi ally, and the energy corporations confirmed

the judgment of U.S. intelligence in 1958 that a “logical

corollary” of opposition to Arab nationalism is reliance on

Israel as “the only strong pro-Western power in the Middle

East,” apart from Turkey, which established a close military

alliance with Israel in 1958, within the U.S. strategic framework.14

The U.S.-Israeli alliance, unique in world affairs, dates from

Israel’s 1967 military conquests, reinforced in 1970 when Israel

barred possible Syrian intervention in Jordan to protect

Palestinians who were being slaughtered during Black September.

Such intervention by Syria was regarded in Washington as a

threat to its ally Jordan and, more important, to the

oil-producers that were Washington’s clients. U.S. aid to Israel

roughly quadrupled. The pattern is fairly consistent since,

extending to secondary Israeli services to U.S. power outside

the Middle East, particularly in Latin America and southern

Africa. The system of domination has worked quite well for the

people who matter. Energy corporation profits are breaking all

records. High-tech (including military) industry has lucrative

ties with Israel, as do the major financial institutions, and

Israel serves virtually as an offshore military base and

provider of equipment and training. One may argue that other

policies wo! uld have been more beneficial to the concentrations

of domestic power that largely determine policy, but they seem

to find these arrangements quite tolerable. If they did not,

they could easily move to terminate them. And in fact, when

there are conflicts between U.S. and Israeli state power, Israel

naturally backs down; exports of military technology to China

are a recent example, when the Bush administration went out of

its way to humiliate Israel after it was initially reluctant to

follow the orders of what Israeli commentator Aluf Benn calls

“the boss-man called ‘partner.’”

Let us turn next to Iran and its nuclear programs. Until 1979,

Washington strongly supported these programs. During those

years, of course, a brutal tyrant installed by the U.S.-U.K.

military coup that overthrew the Iranian parliamentary

government ruled Iran. Today, the standard claim is that Iran

has no need for nuclear power, and therefore must be pursuing a

secret weapons program. Henry Kissinger explained that “For a

major oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful

use of resources.” As secretary of state thirty years ago,

Kissinger held that “introduction of nuclear power will both

provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free

remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to

petrochemicals,” and the United States acted to assist the

Shah’s efforts. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul

Wolfowitz, the leading planners of the second Bush

administration, worked hard to provide the Shah with a “complete

‘nuclear fuel cycle’—reactors powered by an! d regenerating

fissile materials on a self-sustaining basis. That is precisely

the ability the current administration is trying to prevent Iran

from acquiring today.” U.S. universities were arranging to train

Iranian nuclear engineers, doubtless with Washington’s approval,

if not initiative; including my own university, the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, despite

overwhelming student opposition. Kissinger was asked about his

reversal, and he responded with his usual engaging frankness:

“They were an allied country.”15 So therefore they had a genuine

need for nuclear energy, pre-1979, but have no such need today.

The Iranian nuclear programs, as far as is known, fall within

its rights under Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty

(NPT), which grants non-nuclear states the right to produce fuel

for nuclear energy. The Bush administration argues, however,

that Article IV should be strengthened, and I think that makes

sense. When the NPT came into force in 1970, there was a

considerable gap between producing fuel for energy and for

nuclear weapons. But with contemporary technology, the gap has

been narrowed. However, any such revision of Article IV would

have to ensure unimpeded access for nonmilitary use, in accord

with the initial bargain. A reasonable proposal was put forth by

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy

Agency: that all production and processing of weapon-usable

material be under international control, with “assurance that

legitimate would-be users could get their supplies.”16 That

should be the first step, he proposed, towards fully

implementing th! e 1993 UN resolution calling for a Fissile

Material Cutoff Treaty (called FISSBAN, for short), which bans

production of fissile materials by individual states.

ElBaradei’s proposal was dead in the water. The U.S. political

leadership, surely in its current stance, would never agree to

this delegation of sovereignty. To date, ElBaradei’s proposal

has been accepted by only one state, to my knowledge: Iran, last

February. That suggests one way to resolve the current crisis—in

fact, a far more serious crisis: continued production of fissile

materials by individual states is likely to doom humanity to

destruction.

Washington also strenuously opposes a verifiable FISSBAN treaty,

regarded by specialists as the “most fundamental nuclear arms

control proposal,” according to Princeton arms control

specialist Frank von Hippel.17 Despite U.S. opposition, in

November 2004, the UN Disarmament Committee voted in favor of a

verifiable FISSBAN. The vote was 147 to 1, with 2 abstentions:

Israel, which is reflexive, and Britain, which is more

interesting. British ambassador John Freeman explained that

Britain supported the treaty, but could not vote for this

version, because he said it “divides the international

community”—divided it 147 to 1.18 A later vote in the full

General Assembly was 179 to 2, Israel and Britain again

abstaining. The United States was joined by Palau.

We gain some insight into the ranking of survival of the species

among the priorities of the leadership of the hegemonic power

and its spear carrier.

In 2004, the European Union (EU) and Iran reached an agreement

on nuclear issues: Iran agreed to temporarily suspend its legal

activities of uranium enrichment, and the EU agreed to provide

Iran with “firm commitments on security issues.” As everyone

understands, the phrase “security issues” refers to the very

credible U.S.-Israeli threats and preparations to attack Iran.

These threats, a serious violation of the UN Charter, are no

small matter for a country that has been tortured for fifty

years without a break by the global superpower, which now

occupies the countries on Iran’s borders, not to speak of the

client state that is the regional superpower.

Iran lived up to its side of the bargain, but the EU, under U.S.

pressure, rejected its commitments. Iran finally abandoned the

bargain as well. The preferred version in the West is that Iran

broke the agreement, proving that it is a serious threat to

world order.

In May 2003, Iran had offered to discuss the full range of

security matters with the United States, which refused,

preferring to follow the same course it did with North Korea. On

taking office in January 2001, the Bush administration withdrew

the “no hostile intent” condition of earlier agreements and

proceeded to issue serious threats, while also abandoning

promises to provide fuel oil and a nuclear reactor. In response,

North Korea returned to developing nuclear weapons, the roots of

another current crisis. All predictable, and predicted.

There are ways to mitigate and probably end these crises. The

first is to call off the threats that are virtually urging Iran

(and North Korea) to develop nuclear weapons. One of Israel’s

leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, wrote that if

Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, then they are “crazy,”

immediately after Washington demonstrated that it will attack

anyone it likes as long as they are known to be defenseless.19

So the first step towards ending the crisis would be to call off

the threats that are likely to lead potential targets to develop

a deterrent—where nuclear weapons or terror are the only viable

options.

A second step would be to join with other efforts to reintegrate

Iran into the global economy. A third step would be to join the

rest of the world in accepting a verifiable FISSBAN treaty, and

to join Iran in accepting ElBaradei’s proposal, or something

similar—and I repeat that the issue here extends far beyond

Iran, and reaches the level of human survival. A fourth step

would be to live up to Article VI of the NPT, which obligates

the nuclear states to take “good faith” efforts to eliminate

nuclear weapons, a binding legal obligation, as the World Court

determined. None of the nuclear states have lived up to that

obligation, but the United States is far in the lead in

violating it—again, a very serious threat to human survival.

Even steps in these directions would mitigate the upcoming

crisis with Iran. Above all, it is important to heed the words

of Mohamed ElBaradei: “There is no military solution to this

situation. It is inconceivable. The only durable solution is a

neg! otiated solution.”20 And it is within reach. Similar to the

Iraq war: a war against Iran appears to be opposed by the

military and U.S. intelligence, but might well be undertaken by

the civilian planners of the Bush administration: Cheney,

Rumsfeld, Rice, and a few others, an unusually dangerous collection.

There is wide agreement among prominent strategic analysts that

the threat of nuclear war is severe and increasing, and that the

threat can be eliminated by measures that are known and in fact

legally obligatory. If such measures are not taken, they warn

that “a nuclear exchange is ultimately inevitable,” that we may

be facing “an appreciable risk of ultimate doom,” an “Armageddon

of our own making.”21 The threats are well understood, and they

are being consciously enhanced. The Iraq invasion is only the

most blatant example.

Clinton’s military and intelligence planners had called for

“dominating the space dimension of military operations to

protect U.S. interests and investment,” much in the way armies

and navies did in earlier years, but now with a sole hegemon,

which must develop “space-based strike weapons [enabling] the

application of precision force from, to, and through space.”

Such measures will be needed, they said, because “globalization

of the world economy” will lead to a “widening economic divide”

along with “deepening economic stagnation, political

instability, and cultural alienation,” hence unrest and violence

among the “have-nots,” much of it directed against the United

States. The United States must therefore be ready to plan for a

“precision strike from space [as a] counter to the worldwide

proliferation of WMD” by unruly elements.22 That is a likely

consequence of the recommended military programs, just as a

“widening divide” is the anticipated consequence of the specific

vers! ion of international integration that is misleadingly

called “globalization” and “free trade” in the doctrinal system.

A word should be added about these notions. Both are terms of

propaganda, not description. The term “globalization” is used

for a specific form of international economic integration,

designed—not surprisingly—in the interests of the designers:

multinational corporations and the few powerful states to which

they are closely linked. An opposing form of globalization is

being pursued by groups that are far more representative of the

world’s population, the mass global justice movements, which

originated in the South but now have been joined by northern

popular organizations and meet annually in the World Social

Forum, which has spawned many regional and local social forums,

concentrating on their own issues though within the same

overarching framework. The global justice movements are an

entirely new phenomenon, perhaps the seeds of the kind of

international that has been the hope of the workers movements

and the left since their modern origins. They are called

“antiglobalizati! on” in the reigning doctrinal systems, because

they seek a form of globalization oriented towards the interests

of people, not concentrated economic power—and unfortunately,

they have often adopted this ridiculous terminology.

Official globalization is committed to so-called neoliberalism,

also a highly misleading term: the regime is not new, and it is

not liberal. Neoliberalism is essentially the policy imposed by

force on the colonies since the eighteenth century, while the

currently wealthy countries radically violated these rules, with

extensive reliance on state intervention in the economy and

resort to measures that are now banned in the international

economic order. That was true of England and the countries that

followed its path of protectionism and state intervention,

including Japan, the one country of the South that escaped

colonization and the one country that industrialized. These

facts are widely recognized by economic historians.

A comparison of the United States and Egypt in the early

nineteenth century is one of many enlightening illustrations of

the decisive role of sovereignty and massive state intervention

in economic development. Having freed itself from British rule,

the United States was able to adopt British-style measures of

state intervention, and developed. Meanwhile British power was

able to bar anything of the sort in Egypt, joining with France

to impose Lord Palmerston’s doctrine that “No ideas therefore of

fairness towards Mehemet [Ali] ought to stand in the way of such

great and paramount interests” as barring competition in the

eastern Mediterranean.23 Palmerston expressed his “hate” for the

“ignorant barbarian” who dared to undertake economic

development. Historical memories resonate when, today, Britain

and France, fronting for the United States, demand that Iran

suspend all activities related to nuclear and missile programs,

including research and development, so that nuclear ene! rgy is

barred and the country that is probably under the greatest

threat of any in the world has no deterrent to attack—attack by

the righteous, that is. We might also recall that France and

Britain played the crucial role in development of Israel’s

nuclear arsenal. Imperial sensibilities are delicate indeed.

Had it enjoyed sovereignty, Egypt might have undergone an

industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. It shared many

of the advantages of the United States, except independence,

which allowed the United States to impose very high tariffs to

bar superior British goods (textiles, steel, and others). The

United States in fact became the world’s leader in protectionism

until the Second World War, when its economy so overwhelmed

anyone else’s that “free competition” was tolerable. After the

war, massive reliance on the dynamic state sector became a

central component of the U.S. economy, even more than it had

been before, continuing right to the present. And the United

States remains committed to protectionism, when useful. The most

extreme protectionism was during the Reagan years—accompanied,

as usual, by eloquent odes to liberalism, for others. Reagan

virtually doubled protective barriers, and also turned to the

usual device, the Pentagon, to overcome management failures a!

nd “reindustrialize America,” the slogan of the business press.

Furthermore, high levels of protectionism are built into the

so-called “free trade agreements,” designed to protect the

powerful and privileged, in the traditional manner.

The same was true of Britain’s flirtation with “free trade” a

century earlier, when 150 years of protectionism and state

intervention had made Britain by far the world’s most powerful

economy, free trade seemed an option, given that the playing

field was “tilted” in the right direction, to adapt the familiar

metaphor. But the British still hedged their bets. They

continued to rely on protected markets, state intervention, and

also devices not considered by economic historians. One such

market was the world’s most spectacular narcotrafficking

enterprise, designed to break into the China market, and also

producing profits that financed the Royal Navy, the

administration of conquered India, and the purchase of U.S.

cotton—the fuel of the industrial revolution. U.S. cotton

production was also based on radical state intervention:

slavery, virtual extermination of the native population, and

military conquest—almost half of Mexico, to mention one case

relevant to current news. When! Britain could no longer compete

with Japan, it closed off the empire in 1932, followed by other

imperial powers, a crucial part of the background for the Second

World War. The truth about free trade and economic development

has only a limited resemblance to the doctrines professed.

Throughout modern history, democracy and development have had a

common enemy: the loss of sovereignty. In a world of states, it

is true that decline of sovereignty entails decline of hope for

democracy, and decline in ability to conduct social and economic

policy. That in turn harms development, a conclusion well

confirmed by centuries of economic history. The work of economic

historian M. Shahid Alam is particularly enlightening in this

respect. In current terminology, the imposed regimes are called

neoliberal, so it is fair to say that the common enemy of

democracy and development is neoliberalism. With regard to

development, one can debate causality, because the factors in

economic growth are so poorly understood. But correlations are

reasonably clear. The countries that have most rigorously

observed neoliberal principles, as in Latin America and

elsewhere, have experienced a sharp deterioration of

macroeconomic indicators as compared with earlier years. Those

that have i! gnored the principles, as in East Asia, have

enjoyed rapid growth. That neoliberalism harms democracy is

understandable. Virtually every feature of the neoliberal

package, from privatization to freeing financial flows,

undermines democracy for clear and well-known reasons.

The crises we face are real and imminent, and in each case means

are available to overcome them. The first step is understanding,

then organization and appropriate action. This is the path that

has often been followed in the past, bringing about a much

better world and leaving a legacy of comparative freedom and

privilege, for some at least, which can be the basis for moving

on. Failure to do so is almost certain to lead to grim

consequences, even the end of biology’s only experiment with

higher intelligence.

Notes

1. See Aaron David Miller, Search for Security (Chapel Hill, NC:

University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Irvine Anderson,

Aramco, the United States and Saudi Arabia (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1981); Michael Stoff, Oil, War and

American Security (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980);

Steven Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1985), 51.

2. National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington

DC: The White House, March 1990).

3. Alan Cowell, “Kurds Assert Few Outside Iraq Wanted Them to

Win,” New York Times, April 11, 1991.

4. Nina Kamp and Michael E. O’Hanlon, “The State of Iraq,” New

York Times, March 19, 2006.

5. Walter Pincus, “Skepticism About U.S. Deep, Iraq Poll Shows;

Motive for Invasion Is Focus of Doubts,” Washington Post,

November 12, 2003; Richard Burkholder, “Gallup Poll of Baghdad,”

Government & Public Affairs, October 28, 2003.

6. Michael MccGwire, “The Rise and Fall of the NPT,”

International Affairs 81 (January 2005): 134.

7. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Hegemonic Quicksand,” National Interest

74 (Winter 2003/2004): 5-16; Stefan Wagstyl, “Cheney Rebukes

Putin on Energy ‘Blackmail,’” Financial Times, May 4, 2006.

8. See Ian Rutledge, Addicted to Oil (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005).

9. See Multinational Oil Corporation and U.S. Foreign Policy,

Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate,

January 2, 1975 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1975).

10. Hal Weitzman, “Nationalism Fuels Fears over Morales’ Power,”

Financial Times, May 2, 2006.

11. National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington

DC: The White House, March 2006), 41.

12. David E. Sanger, “China’s Rising Need for Oil Is High on

U.S. Agenda,” New York Times, April 18, 2006.

13. Editorial, New York Times, August 25, 1966

14. Mark Curtis, The Great Deception (London: Pluto Press,

1998), 133.

15. Darna Linzer, “Past Arguments Don’t Square with Current Iran

Policy,” Washington Post, March 27, 2005.

16. Mohamed ElBaradei, “Towards a Safer World,” The Economist,

October 16, 2003.

17. Frank von Hippel, “Coupling a Moratorium To Reductions as a

First Step toward the Fissile-Material Cutoff Treaty,” in Rakesh

Sood, Frank von Hippel, and Morton Halperin, “The Road to

Nuclear Zero,” Center for Advanced Study of India, 1998, 17.

18. See Rebecca Johnson, “2004 UN First Committee,” Disarmament

Diplomacy 79 (April/May 2005), and Jean du Preez, “The Fissban,”

Disarmament Diplomacy 79 (April/May 2005), http://www.acronym.org.

19. Martin van Creveld, “Sharon on the Warpath” International

Herald Tribune, August 21, 2004.

20. Jeffrey Fleishman and Alissa Rubin, “ElBaradei Asks for

Restraint on Iran Sanctions,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 2006.

21. Michael MccGwire, “The Rise and Fall of the NPT,”

International Affairs 81 (January 2005), 127; John Steinbruner

and Nancy Gallagher, “Constructive Transformation,” Daedalus

133, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 99; Sam Nunn, “The Cold War’s Nuclear

Legacy Has Lasted too Long,” Financial Times, December 6, 2004.

22. National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2015

(Washington DC, December 2000); U.S. Space Command, Vision for

2020 (February 1997), 7; Pentagon, Quadrennial Defense Review,

May 1997.

23. See Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of

Muhammad Ali (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 240;

Harold Temperley, England and the Near East (London: Longmans,

Green and Co., 1936).

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics

Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This

article is based on a talk delivered May 12, 2006, in Beirut,

two months before Israel began its military campaign against

Lebanon on July 13, 2006. It appears in Inside Lebanon: Journey

to a Shattered Land with Noam and Carol Chomsky (just published

by Monthly Review Press, order online at www.monthlyreview.org

or call 1-800-670-9499).

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