Showing posts with label Powell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Powell. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

powell2 -- free note


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THE ABSURD TIMES

 

 

 

 


 

 



 


 A little late, but it makes the point.



Well, I guess I have to get this out of my system before I finish what I was about to send out. That fact that Colin Powell was black, or African American, or Jamacian American, in no way excuses his role in supporting the war on Iraq. The sources he claimed to have as "solid" were confessions obtained through torture and some German, somewhere. He probably didn't know this, so we don't know what he would have done if he did. He was also praised for his "service" in Viet Nam. OK, so he is not one of my heros.

 

However, what is being done in his name is pretty disgusting even for the republicans.  Yes, he finally died of covid and had been vaccinated, but he also had a severe disease that affected the immune system, it was terminal in itself, and also was afflicted with Parkinson's, although that has not been expanded on and it doesn't matter if it is. But for our media to just put it out there and leave the impression that vaccination leads to death is, well, an american failing, again.

 

His Chief of Staff Wilkerson has done a good jon of showing how he was used by Cheney, Bush, and others and we refer you to him. Meanwhile, here is a transcript. I'd ask for further distribution, but save that for the next issue (which has been rudely interrupted by this development):

 

We look at the life and legacy of Colin Powell, who is best known for giving false testimony to the U.N. Security Council in 2003 about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, paving the way for the U.S. invasion and occupation that would kill over 1 million Iraqis. Powell, who was the first Black secretary of state, the first Black and youngest chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first Black national security adviser, died on Monday due to blood cancer and Parkinson's disease that left him vulnerable to infection from COVID-19. Tributes poured in from top U.S. leaders in both Republican and Democratic circles on Monday, but in other parts of the world Powell is remembered very differently. We speak with journalist and author Roberto Lovato, and Clarence Lusane, activist, journalist and political science professor at Howard University. Lusane describes Powell as "a complicated political figure who leaves a complicated legacy" whose public image was "in conflict with many of the policies of the party he supported and the administration in which he was involved." Assessing Powell's role in U.S. invasions around the world, from Vietnam to Central America, Lovato says "he's made a career out of being a good soldier and supporting U.S. mass murder around the world, but evading the credit for it."

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GUESTS

Clarence Lusane

author, activist, journalist and professor at Howard University, where he is director of the International Affairs Program and former chair of the Department of Political Science.

Roberto Lovato

award-winning journalist and author.




Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: President Biden ordered flags at the White House to be flown at half-staff in honor of General Colin Powell, who died Monday at the age of 84. Powell was the first Black secretary of state, the first Black and youngest chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first Black national security adviser. On Monday, tributes poured in from both Republican and Democratic leaders. President Biden called Powell a, quote, "patriot of unmatched honor and dignity."

But in other parts of the world, Powell is remembered very differently. In Iraq, the journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who famously threw a shoe at President George W. Bush, tweeted that he was sad Powell had died before being tried for his crimes in Iraq. While serving as secretary of state under Bush, General Powell played a pivotal role in paving the way for the U.S. invasion. It was February 5th, 2003, that Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council and made the case for a first strike on Iraq. Powell's message was clear: Iraq possessed extremely dangerous weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein was systematically trying to deceive U.N. inspectors by hiding the prohibited weapons.

SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL: One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents. Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what we know from eyewitness accounts. We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails. The trucks and train cars are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War.

AMY GOODMAN: All of Colin Powell's main claims about weapons of mass destruction turned out to be false. He later described the speech as a "blot" on his record.

But the 2003 speech was not the first time General Powell had falsely alleged Iraq had WMDs. In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. bombed Iraq's only baby formula factory. At the time, General Powell said, quote, "It is not an infant formula factory. … It was a biological weapons facility, of that we are sure," he said. Well, U.N. investigators later confirmed the bombed factory was in fact making baby formula.

While many in Iraq consider Powell to be a war criminal, just like they consider George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Powell has long been celebrated at home. Colin Powell was born in Harlem in 1937. His parents had both immigrated from Jamaica. He was educated in public schools, including City College of New York, before he joined the military through ROTC. He served two tours in Vietnam. He was later accused of helping to whitewash the My Lai massacre, when U.S. soldiers slaughtered up to 500 villagers, most of them women and children and the elderly. While investigating an account of the massacre filed by a soldier, Powell wrote, quote, "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent," he said.

Powell spent 35 years in the military, rising to chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the 1980s, he helped shape U.S. military policy in Latin America at a time when U.S.-backed forces killed hundreds of thousands of people in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and other countries. Powell also helped oversee the U.S. invasion of Panama and the Persian Gulf War.

From 2001 to 2005, he served as secretary of state under George W. Bush. After working under three Republican presidents, General Powell made headlines in 2008 when he endorsed Barack Obama for president just two weeks before Election Day. Earlier this year, General Powell said he no longer considered himself a Republican, following the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

General Colin Powell died on Monday. His family said he died from COVID-19 complications. He was struggling with both Parkinson's disease and multiple myeloma, which left him severely immunocompromised.

To talk more about Powell's life and legacy, we're joined by two guests. Roberto Lovato is with us, award-winning journalist, author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas. He has closely tracked General Powell's history in Latin America. We're also joined by Clarence Lusane, professor at Howard University. He's author of many books, including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice: Foreign Policy, Race, and the New American Century.

Professor Lusane, let's begin with you. If you can talk about the legacy of Colin Powell?

CLARENCE LUSANE: Thank you, Amy. And thank your other guests.

So, Powell leaves a very — he was a complicated political figure who leaves a complicated legacy. As you outlined in your introduction, Powell has a rise-from-the-bottom story that really captured the imagination of many people. He rose from growing up in poor areas, or at least low-income areas, in New York to become fourth in line to president, when he became the secretary of state.

In the early 1990s, he was championed by both Democrats and Republicans and recruited by both to run for president. He declined in 1995. And when he declined, he announced that he was joining the Republican Party. Now, the Republican Party he joined in 1995 was the Republican Party of Newt Gingrich, and it did not seem to be a fit. Colin was pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-immigration, called for gun control, all of which the Republican Party, under Newt Gingrich and going forward, have been against.

As you point out, he joins the George W. Bush administration, the very first choice, in fact, of George W. Bush for his Cabinet because Powell has the international gravitas and respect that nobody else in and around George W. Bush has. But he never really fit in. And in the first eight or nine months of the George W. Bush administration, Powell lost fight after fight after fight when Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and others, who were what we call the neoconservatives, the neocons, were really running the administration. And there was a pretty good bet that Powell was not going to last until the end of the year. But then September 11 happens. Powell, always the loyal soldier, decides to stay, but he's still very isolated. He says that they basically saw him as a milk carton. They put him in the refrigerator, and when they needed him, they would bring him off the shelf, and then they would put him back. They brought him off the shelf in 2003 to talk at the U.N. because there was no one else in the administration who could get the attention and at least some belated respect. And Colin Powell went and gave that talk, which was, from A to Z, false. But he was the only one in the administration, and then, of course, a year and a half later, he's gone.

But he's complicated because, in many ways, he did not fit in with the Republican Party, even though he did not leave until early this year. But he increasingly, and anyone who was a moderate, and particularly Black moderates, simply had no place in the Republican Party. And so, he endorses Obama, he endorses Biden, he endorses Hillary Clinton — or at least he votes for them. So he really had moved and been moved out of the Republican Party for many years. But he really wasn't a Democrat or seen as a progressive, either, again, because of a long history of aggression internationally, going all the way back to Reagan and the Contras and all of the foreign policy controversies of the 1980s, and then under the Bush administration, which not only included Iraq but also included the Bush policies towards Cuba, towards Venezuela, their policies around Africa, all of which increasingly isolated Colin Powell from the progressive communities.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Professor, I wanted to ask you, in terms of the need for both the Democrats and the Republicans to repeatedly lionize and hold up General Powell especially, but then as Secretary of State Powell, as a key and important American speaker, given the fact that the U.S. military — of all the institutions in American society, none is more racially diverse, it seems to me, than the U.S. military, with about 40% or more than 40% of the troops as people of color. So, could you talk about the importance of Powell as a figure, given the demographics and the changes in the American military?

CLARENCE LUSANE: Thanks, Juan.

So, part of the capital that Colin Powell bills is precisely because he rises up to the top of an institution, one of the few that had not seemed to be tainted by political partisanship, and he rises up and becomes the head, becomes the head of Joint Chiefs of Staff. And Powell's personality is not a belligerent one, one that we have, unfortunately, come to see more and more in military figures and political figures, and Powell's activism relative to addressing issues of race. So, when we think of the conservative African Americans who are in and around the Republican Party — the Clarence Thomases, the Candace Owens — those types tend to come to mind. But there were African American conservatives who took positions that were supportive of issues related to the Black community and were active and supportive of civil rights. So, Powell fits into that, and so that gave him some cachet. He spoke at my graduation at Howard University in 1994 and talked about issues of racism, issues of being socially engaged. You're not going to find that coming from virtually any of the people we think of as Black Republicans these days. So, that gave Colin Powell a different kind of public-facing image, which was in conflict, again, with many of the policies in the party that he supported and in the administration in which he was involved.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I'd like to also bring in Robert Lovato into the discussion. And, Roberto, I'm wondering if you could talk especially about — people forget that back in the invasion of Panama that not only was Colin Powell a key figure, but that the secretary of defense at the time was Dick Cheney.

ROBERTO LOVATO: Yeah. Thank you, Juan and Amy. I'm glad to be back with you.

The story of Colin Powell in Central America and other parts of the world is what I would call a tragic tale of militarism in the service of declining empire. And it also previews what I call the age of intersectional empire, that Clarence laid out a little bit of, in terms of how race is being deployed by the militaristic, bipartisan consensus elites in the United States. And so, Panama comes about, remember, right after the Central America engagements in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and that was preceded by the Vietnam War, when you have a decline in the morale and the sensibilities of the U.S. military, having suffered a defeat, a severe defeat, in Vietnam. And so, Powell was part of a cadre of leaders trying to figure out how to create a post-Vietnam animus for the U.S. military machine.

But one thing I want to make clear is that the Powell doctrine of overwhelming force, bringing in the public into supporting U.S. war, clearly defined national security objectives and other things that define what they call the Powell-Weinberger doctrine, are still war policies. And so, Colin Powell's political career was one thing, in terms of race and being pro-abortion, but in terms of militarism, it was clear. In El Chorrillo neighborhood, which taxi drivers in Panama still call the "little Hiroshima," you know, hundreds of people were killed. They're still excavating mass grave sites of the invasion of Panama. And so, you know — and prior to that, remember, Powell was an assistant to then-secretary of defense, under the Reagan administration, Caspar Weinberger, who was charged with looking — overseeing military policy in Central America, which, instead of going into what they called asymmetrical warfare, like they did in Vietnam and got beat up, the militarists, like Colin Powell, decided to stray away from those kinds of war and fight them through proxies, and instead focus on building up to get big, you know, state-to-state military wars. And so, the fight against Manuel Noriega, also on false pretenses, was a preview and a preparation for the state-to-state war that followed in Kuwait and Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: And in that U.S. invasion of Panama that he spearheaded, can you talk about who died, Clarence Lusane, in Panama? We're not just talking about abstract, intellectual, you know, policy issues.

CLARENCE LUSANE: No, that's exactly right, as Ron [sic] laid out. I actually went to Panama. I went with another reporter, Stan Woods from out of Chicago. We went down after the invasion, and it was horrific. As was mentioned, there were mass graves. There were the total destruction of neighborhoods. They bombed — these were poor neighborhoods, we should be clear. So, there were wealthy neighborhoods that were surgically missed, while they bombed neighborhoods that had not only been active, but had been — you know, very much embodied people who live there. So, it was a horrific invasion. And Powell said nothing about it. It was similar to other military endeavors by the Bush administration and Reagan administration. Powell was silent on the consequences that thousands and thousands and thousands of people — and hundreds of thousands of people died in Iraq, but certainly thousands of people died in Panama. And there still has not been an accounting for that particularly horrible invasion.

AMY GOODMAN: And these were a heavily Black population of Panama.

CLARENCE LUSANE: And these were Afro-Panamanians. That's exactly right.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Roberto Lovato, go a little before the invasion of Panama to explain the Iran-Contra deal and the role of General Powell at the time. The invasion of Panama was under George H.W. Bush, and the Iran-Contra deal, of course, was when he was vice president, when it was President Ronald Reagan, the ultimately illegal deal to sell weapons to Iran, take that money and illegally support the Contras, which was against, at the time, the Boland Amendment, that said the U.S. could not support the counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua.

ROBERTO LOVATO: So, Powell, we have to remember, was what he himself called the, quote, "chief administration advocate" for the Contras. The U.S. sponsored an insurgency to try to overthrow the Nicaraguan Sandinista government. I mean, Human Rights Watch and other organizations around the world have documented tens of thousands of people killed, nuns raped, children destroyed by the Contras. And Colin Powell would go on to say that "I have no regrets about my role" and that he fought very hard to get support for the Contras. So, Powell, as assistant secretary to Caspar Weinberger, was privy to information about the arms for hostages and giving money to the Contras deal, but managed to evade judgment, unlike Weinberger, who was indicted and condemned, and then, I believe, pardoned, thanks to lobbying by Colin Powell.

And so, Powell has proven skillful not just in terms of kind of helping reengineer the post-Vietnam military, but he's also been skillful at evading political judgment, as we saw with My Lai, as we see in Iran-Contra. And, you know, having this idea that the one, quote-unquote, "blot" on his record is the lies around Iraq is a travesty, because he's made a career out of, you know, being a good soldier and supporting U.S. mass murder around the world, but evading the credit for it. So, this is — yeah, I'll leave it there.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah. And I'm wondering if you could talk, Roberto, a little bit about, for instance, his legacy in terms of arming and training the Salvadoran Army, and including his relation with José Napoleón Duarte, who was the president of El Salvador in the 1980s.

ROBERTO LOVATO: Yeah. Powell was one of the Reagan administration's point people in Central America and, as the point person, helped to tee up and then legitimate, when necessary, the Salvadoran military dictatorships and the Guatemalan and other militaries in the region that were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents — and so, in the case of Guatemala, like 200,000 or more mostly Mayan Indigenous people. And so, like, in 1983, for example, Powell was part of a fact-finding kind of mission, that included Jeane Kirkpatrick and Weinberger, to go and see if the Salvadoran — to go confirm the Salvadoran military and government were doing the right thing under Duarte. And, you know, they found that they were doing the right thing and that the U.S. should continue heavily funding and training these murderous militaries. He never said anything about the fact that just a year before and a couple of years before, the massacre of El Sumpul, where about 600 people were killed, was perpetrated by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government; the massacre of El Mozote, where a thousand people were killed, an entire town wiped out, half of the victims under age 12, and half of those children under age 12 were under age 6. Powell seemed to have amnesia about that, along with Elliott Abrams, another, I would say, war criminal. And El Calabozo and other massacres were completely ignored.

And so, we see Powell playing a role in Central America over the years, from the early '80s all the way 'til the end of the war. And, you know, Powell was very sophisticated and smart in terms of moving with the times, so that when it called for a hard line at the beginning of the Reagan era, he was there. When it called for — remember, in 1989, the FMLN guerrillas, for example, we launched an offensive in the capital of San Salvador to basically demonstrate to the U.S. government and the Salvadoran government, that it was supporting, that they couldn't defeat the FMLN guerrillas. And so, that worked. It was basically — the offensive showed that the guerrillas were able to enter into the capital and fight on their own terms. So, Powell and the Bush administration, you know, seeing this, pivoted and pushed the Salvadoran government to peace. Now, some historians will call Powell a peacenik almost, a liberal, which, I mean, if you're comparing him to like Alexander Haig or some just uber fascist like that, then, yeah, but in the larger scheme of empire and militarism, Colin Powell has been, you know, was always, a loyal cadre to mass-murdering empire.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let's go back to Colin Powell's 2003 speech at the U.N., where he falsely accused Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction.

SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL: Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

AMY GOODMAN: All of General Powell's main claims about weapons of mass destruction turned out to be false. But at the time, most of the media took Powell at his word. The invasion of Iraq began six weeks after he made his speech at the United Nations. He himself recognized it was the final nail in the coffin for so many, because he had called himself a "reluctant warrior." He had dragged his feet on the war, and President Bush wanted his support to be the voice and face of this war. In 2013, Democracy Now! spoke to Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. Wilkerson helped prepare Powell's infamous U.N. speech, which he later renounced. Wilkerson said Powell himself was suspicious of the intelligence and wanted to delete any reference in the speech to ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: The seminal moment, as we were out at Langley and Colin Powell was getting ready to throw everything out of his presentation that had anything to do with terrorism — that is, substantial contacts between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, in particular — as he was getting — he was really angry. He took me in a room by myself and literally attacked me over it. And I said, "Boss, let's throw it out. I have as many doubts about it as you do. Let's throw it out." And so, we made a decision right there to throw it out.

Within 30 minutes of the secretary having made that decision and instructed me to do so, George Tenet showed up with a bombshell. And the bombshell was that a high-level al-Qaeda operative, under interrogation, had revealed substantial contacts between al-Qaeda and Baghdad.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that is the chief of staff of former Secretary of State Colin Powell. He is an Army colonel, Lawrence Wilkerson. In 2009, Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy questioned Colin Powell about the false claims he made during the U.N. speech, that was based in part on false information provided by prisoners who had been tortured.

SAM HUSSEINI: General, can you talk about the al-Libi case and the link between torture and the production of tortured evidence for war?

COLIN POWELL: I don't have any details on the al-Libi case.

SAM HUSSEINI: Can you tell us when you learned that some of the evidence that you used in front of the U.N. was based on torture? When did you learn that?

COLIN POWELL: I don't know that. I don't know what information you're referring to, so I can't answer.

SAM HUSSEINI: Your chief of staff, Wilkerson, has written about this.

COLIN POWELL: So what? [inaudible] Mr. Wilkerson.

SAM HUSSEINI: So, you'd think you'd know about it.

COLIN POWELL: The information I presented to the U.N. was vetted by the CIA. Every word came from the CIA. And they stood behind all that information. I don't know that any of them would believe that torture was involved. I don't know that as a fact. There's a lot of speculation, particularly by people who never attended any of these meetings. But I'm not aware of that.

AMY GOODMAN: Clarence Lusane, we're going to give you the final word. Again, this speech, he would late call a "blot" on his career.

CLARENCE LUSANE: So, the thing to remember about that period is that the entire global community was against the invasion. So, when Colin Powell and the Bush administration says that they were vetting this information, they were not listening not only to their allies, they were not listening to what the United Nations itself was actually doing and had essentially proven that there were no weapons of mass destruction. But the administration was determined to go, and Colin Powell basically acceded to that, as he would do both prior to that speech, as he did with the World Conference Against Racism, when the United States and Israel were the only two countries that pulled out, and as he would do after the invasion of Iraq on other policies by the George W. Bush administration, until he was finally driven out. So, there does have to be an accounting for that record. There's no way to kind of pretty it up. It was atrocious. And again, hundreds of thousands — in some estimates, up to a million — people died as a result of that war.


 








Sunday, July 27, 2014

Our Media v. Reality


THE ABSURD TIMES


 


Illustration: An illustrated comment on US versions of the crash in Ukraine.  Colin Powell claimed to have been lied to or coerced into testifying at the UN that Saddam Hussein has weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.  He didn't, and everyone knew he didn't.  George Jr. wanted to purge his Oedipal conflicts by killing Saddam, and nothing else mattered.  This is so true that, if the 9/11 attacks did not happen through Osama, they would have been manufactured anyway by the administration.  This is what makes conspiracy theories about the attacks so plausible. 


This is our time to discuss the media coverage of both the Gaza conflict and Ukraine.  Having said that, the urge simply Is not that strong anymore.  Surely, anyone who visits the site regularly knows how it operates.  No corporate entity is going to support honest coverage of all issues, and there is not much money to be made in telling the truth about Israel or Russia.  Ukraine has been taken over by a right wing phalanx of ideologues who tell their people that they will henceforth be free.  Its government attacks and bombards town in the East regularly.  No matter what numbers you see about people wanting to keep Ukraine united, even in the East, you can note hundreds of thousands crossing the border to the safety of Russia. 

Russia has a long history of being surrounded by enemies and we are doing our best, breaking our word on solemn promises and assurances, to recreate that state of affairs today.  The Warsaw Pact was dissolved, but NATO, for which there is no excuse, is expanding to surround Russia again.  Ukraine was the point where Putin called a halt to the expansion.   The only surprise today is that he did not invade and annex the territory east of Kiev and make it part of the Russian Federation.   He saved Obama from making the mistake of invading Syria and there will be absolutely no substantial support against Russia from Europe, no matter who our President was. 

He was, however, unable to save us from other mistakes such as Libya.  If certain implausible members of congress really want to investigate Benghazi, the focus should be on why we invaded in the first place.  If you look at Libya today, you will notice that we shut down our embassy in Tripoli -- the country is in chaos since Gaddafi is no longer there to run it.   Obama did manage to assassinate Bin Laden and we can see what a better world we live in now as a result. 

 
THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2014

Katrina vanden Heuvel: With 100,000+ Displaced, Why Is U.S. Ignoring Ukraine’s Civil War?

A high-level rebel commander has confirmed for the first time that pro-Russian separatists had an anti-aircraft missile of the kind the United States says was used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing all 298 on board. He blamed Ukrainian authorities for provoking the strike, saying they deliberately launched airstrikes in the area, even though they knew the missile system was in place and rebels would fight back. Meanwhile, the area near the Russian border continues to see heavy fighting between government forces and Russian-backed separatists. On Wednesday, two Ukrainian fighter jets were shot down not far from where the Malaysian airliner was hit. "The tragedy of the downing of the plane occurred in the context of this virtually unreported civil war," says Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, who has reported on Russia for decades. "Americans have been done a disservice by one-sided media coverage [of the conflict]." Vanden Heuvel notes more than 110,000 refugees from eastern Ukraine have fled to Russia, and 56,000 are internally displaced in Ukraine.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to Ukraine, where on Wednesday a rebel leader confirmed for the first time pro-Russian separatists had an anti-aircraft missile of the kind the United States [says] was used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. The high-level commander blamed Ukrainian authorities for provoking the strike that killed all 298 on board. He said Kiev had deliberately launched airstrikes in the area even though it knew the BUK missile system was in place and rebels would fight back.
ALEXANDER KHODAKOVSKY: [translated] They provoked the usage of the BUK missile system, for example, by starting to attack the object that they don’t need at all, Saur Mogila, that hadn’t been attacked by planes for a week before that. And on that day, they pushed so hard. And at the moment of attack, at the moment of the civilian plane flying, they were attacking Saur Mogila. So even if there was aBUK missile system, and even if it has been used, Ukraine did everything for the civilian plane to be shot down.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as two Ukrainian fighter jets were shot down in eastern Ukraine Wednesday, not far from where the Malaysian airliner was hit. The area near the Russian border continues to see heavy fighting between government forces and Russian-backed separatists. Also on Wednesday, lawmakers in Ukraine’s Parliament broke into a fistfight after a decree passed that would enlist male citizens under 50 to combat Russian forces on the border.
And coffins carrying 40 of the 193 Dutch victims on the downed flight arrived in the Netherlands, as the government declared a day of national mourning. Crowds gathered on bridges along the 65-mile route to throw flowers onto the convoy of hearses.
For more, we’re joined by Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation. She has reported on Russia for decades and blogs at TheNation.com, is also a columnist for the WashingtonPost.com. Her latest column is headlined "Downing of Flight 17 Should Trigger Talks, Not More Violence."
Talk about the latest, what people understand about Ukraine, what you feel is being missed.
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: I think the big story that has gone unreported in the kind of one-sided media narrative that Americans have been given in these last months is the unreported war in the southeast of Ukraine. The Nation published astory a few weeks ago called "The Silence of [American] Hawks [About] Kiev’s Atrocities," and we’re seeing in the downing of the plane—the tragedy of the downing of the plane occurred in the context of this virtually unreported civil war. Today, there are stories that Kiev has used four Grad rockets—these are missile launcher rockets—in Luhansk. The OSCE, the Organization [for] Security and Co-operation in Europe, is alleging civilian deaths in these parts. So I think, Amy, it’s the context that is needed. My column—
AMY GOODMAN: How many people have died in this war?
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: You know, they’re reporting—I have figures here. They’re reporting 250 people have been killed in Luhansk, one of the major cities in the eastern part of Ukraine, 800 injured since the war began; 432, including 36 women, six children, died in Donetsk since April; 110,000 refugees from southeastern Ukraine have fled to Russia. There are 56,000 displaced people in Ukraine.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you call this a civil war?
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: I would call this a civil war. And the tragedy, Amy, is that Ukraine has been a deeply divided country through time—language, religion, part of the country pro-Russian, ethnically Russian. This did not need to become a military civil war. There was the possibility—and this is what I tried to address in the column—in the wake of this tragedy of the downing of the plane. There should be a renewed effort, not to trigger more violence, but to trigger ceasefire, to trigger talks that could end the humanitarian catastrophe I’m describing in the southeast of Ukraine.
And another unreported story, Amy, is that there were ceasefire talks in June with Russia, France, Germany, Ukraine, the United States and Kiev. Poroshenko, the president, pulled out after two days. The United States acceded, if not supported or egged on, that decision, and the military offensive began anew. There must be an end to the violence.
And think just commonsense common sense. Ukraine, if it is to recover, if it is to emerge as a financially stable country with some elements of democracy, needs to be a bridge between East and West, between Russia and the West. The IMF, just months after agreeing to a $17 billion loan program, just yesterday acknowledged what is known, which is that there is a terribly sharp economic downturn in Ukraine. The costs of rebuilding this country are going to be enormous. And the oligarchs, Amy, the oligarchical control of this country, I think remains unreported, as well. You know, the protesters, the good protesters in Maidan, in the square, in last year, so much of their protest was about oligarchical kleptocracy. And that grip on the country remains.
So I think it’s a very—I think Americans have been done a disservice by the one-sided media coverage. I will say, and I hope in this case that The Nation's coverage, others' coverage—Robert Parry has been doing interesting coverage—has pushed The New York Times and The Washington Post, for example, in these last days to cover the civilian casualties and the assaults on cities like Donetsk, which has become a virtual ghost town.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the U.S. role?
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: The U.S. role—I don’t understand the U.S. role, to be honest. I mean, it is not in the national security interest of the United States to make Ukraine a Cold War proxy, but it is becoming that. This is a regional civil war that has been internationalized. John Kerry often sounds like he’s the secretary of war, not the secretary of state. We have allied ourselves, tethered ourselves to the Kiev government in a way that may make it very difficult to find a way beyond a new Cold War, if not a hot war. And, Amy, a Cold War will warp both countries’ politics and international relations. I’m thinking of Russia and the United States. And think of what this has done in terms of diverting our attention and resources from the real security, the real threats, the real possibilities of providing and building a new world.
So I think America—it’s also unreported, underreported, you know, America sent advisers to Ukraine to embed with its military. America has put forward a package of night goggles and other military equipment. John Brennan, the head of the CIA—finally reported—headed off to Kiev. So, but I don’t—it is not in the U.S.'s interest. It is not in the world's interest. It is not in Ukraine’s interest. Yet, there is not a peep out of Congress. There is not a peep. And the media is so one-sided that we are not having a debate that is also deserving of America’s people. The wisdom, though, of America’s people, the disconnect we see between the Beltway establishment, the elite and the media elite, is very telling. America’s people are not interested in sending weapons. They weren’t interested in sending weapons to Syria. They’re not interested in sending weapons to Ukraine. They’re not interested in a war.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] We are being called on to use our influence with the separatists in southeastern Ukraine. Of course we will do everything in our power, but that is not nearly enough. Ultimately, there is a need to call on the authorities in Kiev to respect basic norms of decency and, at least for a short time, implement a ceasefire for the investigation.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Vladimir Putin. Can you talk about Putin’s role and then how the U.S. actions compare to Europe—I mean, and the Dutch, in particular?
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: That’s, I think, very important. I think the Dutch—and I have family in Holland. And I think the Dutch, in the way they have grieved in this tragic moment, are a model of dignity and a model of saying, "We’re not going to rush to judgment or use this as a political game, that is a disservice that did not honor those we have lost," as opposed to the United States, I have to say, where John Kerry, Secretary of State Kerry, rushed quickly, as did Samantha Power, someone whose work I admire but who’s supremely unsuited to be our ambassador to the United Nations at this moment. They rushed to judgment and said Russia played a role. And now the intelligence community is saying, "We don’t know. This was a mistake. We don’t know who actually played a role."
On sanctions, the United States, again, has led the way. The European Community, much of it, the key member being Germany here and France, have resisted. There is a tendency in this country to say it’s because of their trading ties. I think that’s true, but I think it underestimates the fact that they have in their DNA a history that understands that to have a sullen, angry Russia on their border is not in anyone’s interest.
On Putin, where do I begin? Putin is an authoritarian leader. On the other hand—he has done repressive things in his country, things I abhor, in terms of gay rights, in terms of women’s rights. It will become more repressive if this goes on in the way it is. The hawks of both sides always become more powerful when this happens. But Putin has a politics in his country, just as we have in ours. He has a right wing, a nationalist right wing, which has been pushing him to be far more assertive. I have friends, journalists who report on the right in Russia, and the right has been in a fury in these last weeks. "Our people," and again, that’s very complicated because Russia should not say "our people," but pro-Russian, ethnic Russians in Ukraine being bombarded and pounded, and where is Putin?
I do think Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov—again, not reported—have been calling for a ceasefire since April. The other day, Tuesday, in his speech, Putin said that he would do what he could to restrain the rebels. I think there are no question there are ties, but there is no question that what we’ve seen emerge in southeastern Ukraine, whenever you have a war like this, a civil war, the good guys don’t often emerge. I’m not talking, obviously, about the civilians who have been under assault, but you have the Rambos of Russia, those who fought in Chechnya or in Afghanistan. But Putin cannot do everything, but he can restrain these forces, some of them, but in the context of a real ceasefire, real negotiations, and in the context of the United States not playing games, as it has since the end of the first Cold War in expanding its economic, political and other influence to the doors of Russia, and the whole NATOquestion, Amy, again unreported.
Last November, when this whole EU offer triggered, in many ways, this conflict, what was unreported was there was a clause in that which was a kind of secret entry door for Ukraine to enter NATO. This is a Russian red line. There’s no reason, first of all, that we should have NATO in these times. It’s a military alliance. It’s not a tea party—that used to have more, different resonance. But anyway, so I think Putin is as—listen, the media in this country has so demonized Putin. As I said, he is an authoritarian. But I hate to quote—I will quote someone I know we have very mixed feelings about: Henry Kissinger. Putin—he has said, "Demonizing Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for not having a policy." And I think we need a policy, America needs a policy, not an attitude, as it engages Russia.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Katrina vanden Heuvel, I want to thank you for being with us, editor and publisher of The Nation. We will link to her column, "Downing of Flight 17 Should Trigger Talks, Not More Violence."


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FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2014

Stephen Cohen: Downed Malaysian Plane Raises Risk of War Between Russia and the West

A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 298 people has exploded and crashed in eastern Ukraine, killing everyone on board. U.S. and Ukrainian officials say the Boeing 777 was shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile, but it is unclear who fired the missile. The plane was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with passengers from at least 10 countries on board, including 173 Dutch nationals, 44 Malaysians and 27 Australians. As many as 100 of the world’s leading AIDSresearchers and advocates were reportedly on the plane en route to a conference in Australia, including the pioneering researcher and former president of the International AIDS Society, Joep Lange. Both sides in Ukraine’s conflict are blaming each other for downing the plane. We speak with Professor Stephen Cohen on what this incident could mean for the region. His most article for The Nation magazine is "The Silence of American Hawks About Kiev’s Atrocities."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 298 people has exploded and crashed in eastern Ukraine, killing everyone on board. U.S. and Ukrainian officials say the Boeing 777 was shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile, but it’s unclear who fired the missile. The plane was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with passengers from at least 10 countries on board, including 173 Dutch nationals, 44 Malaysians and 27 Australians. As many as 100 of the world’s leading AIDS researchers and advocates were reportedly on the plane en route to a conference in Australia, including the pioneering researcher and former president of the International AIDS Society, Joep Lange. Both sides in Ukraine’s conflict are blaming each other for downing the plane. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak vowed to launch a full investigation into what happened.
PRIME MINISTER NAJIB RAZAK: We must, and we will, find out precisely what happened to this flight. No stone will be left unturned. If it transpires that the plane was indeed shot down, we insist that the perpetrators must swiftly be brought to justice.
AMY GOODMAN: After the plane crashed, Russian media quoted witnesses saying they saw the plane being hit by what looked like a rocket. There have been several other recent disputes over planes being attacked over eastern Ukraine. On Thursday, Ukrainian officials blamed the Russian air force for shooting down one of its ground attack jets and a transport plane earlier in the week.
Over the past few days, Western governments have expressed growing concern that Russia is amping up its military support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. The United States strengthened its economic sanctions against Russia this week, but the European Union has so far declined to follow suit.
For more, we’re joined by Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. His most recent piece forThe Nation is headlined, "The Silence of American Hawks About Kiev’s Atrocities." His book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, is out in paperback.
Professor Cohen, welcome to Democracy Now! What do you think we should understand about what has taken place?
STEPHEN COHEN: The horror of it all, to quote Conrad, watching your reports on Gaza, knowing what I know but what’s not being reported in the mainstream media about what’s been going on in eastern Ukraine cities—these cities have been pounded by Kiev—and now this. "Emeritus," as you call me, means old. I’ve seen this before. One function of cold war is innocent victims. The people who died, nearly 300, from many countries, are the first victims, nonresidential victims, of the new Cold War. This crash, this shootdown, will make everything worse, no matter who did it.
There are several theoretical possibilities. I am not a conspiracy buff, but we know in the history of the Cold War, there are provocations, people who want to make things worse. So, in Moscow, and not only in Moscow, there are theories that somebody wanted this to happen. I just can’t believe anybody would do it, but you can’t rule anything out.
The other possibility is, because the Ukrainian government itself has a capability to shoot down planes. By the way, the Ukrainian government shot down a Russian passenger jet, I think in 2001. It was flying from Tel Aviv to Siberia. It was an accident. Competence is always a factor when you have these weapons.
Another possibility is that the rebels—we call them separatists, but they weren’t separatists in the beginning, they just wanted home rule in Ukraine—that they had the capability. But there’s a debate, because this plane was flying at commercial levels, normally beyond the reach of what they can carry on their shoulders.
There’s the possibility that the Russians aided and abetted them, possibly from Russian territory, but I rule that out because, in the end, when you don’t know who has committed a crime, the first question a professional investigator asks is, "Did anybody have a motive?" and the Russians certainly had no motive here. This is horrible for Putin and for the Russian position.
That’s what we know so far. Maybe we’ll know more. We may never know who did this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the Obama administration has expanded U.S. sanctions on Russia in the latest round of a standoff over Ukraine. Speaking at the White House, President Obama said Russia has failed to drop military support for pro-Russian separatists.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Given its continued provocations in Ukraine, today I have approved a new set of sanctions on some of Russia’s largest companies and financial institutions. Along with our allies, with whom I have been coordinating closely the last several days and weeks, I have repeatedly made it clear that Russia must halt the flow of weapons and fighters across the border into Ukraine, that Russia must urge separatists to release their hostages and support a ceasefire, that Russia needs to pursue internationally mediated talks and agree to meaningful monitors on the border.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Your response?
STEPHEN COHEN: Sanctions are beside the point. Obviously they’ll cause economic pain, possibly equally to Europe, which doesn’t want them, didn’t want them. Major American corporations took out ads in major American newspapers before Obama did this, asking Obama not to do it. When you resort to sanctions, it means you have no policy. You have an attitude. And the anti-Putin attitude in Washington is driving American policy.
Let me mention, because I think it’s relevant to what you’re covering here, your very, very powerful segments before I came on today about what’s going on in Gaza, the pounding of these cities, the defenselessness of ordinary people. The same thing has been happening in East Ukrainian cities—bombing, shelling, mortaring by the Kiev government—whatever we think of that government. But that government is backed 150 percent by the White House. Every day, the White House and the State Department approve of what Kiev’s been doing. We don’t know how many innocent civilians, women and children, have died. We know there’s probably several hundred thousand refugees that have run from these cities. The cities are Donetsk, Luhansk, Kramatorsk, Slovyansk—a whole series of cities whose names are not familiar to Americans. The fact is, Americans know nothing about this. We know something about what’s happening in Gaza, and there’s a division of opinion in the United States: The Israelis should do this, the Israelis should not do this. But we know there are victims: We see them. Sometimes the mainstream media yanks a reporter, as you just showed, who shows it too vividly, because it offends the perception of what’s right or wrong. But we are not shown anything about what’s happened in these Ukrainian cities, these eastern Ukrainian cities.
Why is that important? Because this airliner, this shootdown, took place in that context. The American media says it must have been the bad guys—that is, the rebels—because they’ve shot down other airplanes. This is true, but the airplanes they’ve been shooting down are Ukraine’s military warplanes that have come to bomb the women and children of these cities. We don’t know that.
AMY GOODMAN: There have been several discussions—in the corporate media, it was said that this plane might have had a sort of unusual path, had gone further south, and that they thought it was a Ukrainian military plane.
STEPHEN COHEN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Also, in terms of the black boxes, that Ukrainian officials andNTSB cannot get there because it’s rebel-held territory, and that the rebels might have taken the black boxes.
STEPHEN COHEN: Well, the rebels have said they’re going to turn them over to Moscow, and Moscow will not conceal them. I mean, Moscow is going to play openness, so far as we know. But what’s preposterous, of course, is the prime minister of Malaysia coming out and telling us that Malaysia will uncover this mystery, when it still can’t find its missing airliner. This is just absolutely preposterous. But you’re right, the investigation is going to be politicized. Will we ever know?
Let me make the point again, though, because you hearkened back to it: This is a war zone. It’s a war zone. It’s been a war zone, an air war zone, for at least a month. Americans don’t know that. I hear you’ve shown it. But that’s—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, that’s one of the reasons that—well, what I wanted to ask you is, because of what’s been going on in Syria, in Iraq, and now with the Israeli attacks on Gaza, it’s almost as if what’s going on in Ukraine has receded in the consciousness of the media here in this country, even though it’s conceivably much more dangerous and has more long-term impact on the United States.
STEPHEN COHEN: I don’t want to prioritize death—I mean, whose death is worse or not so worse. But the reality is, if you’re going to ask an historian, that the conflict in the Middle East, including Iraq, is going to affect regional politics, but the conflict in Ukraine is going to affect global politics, because we are now in a new Cold War with Russia. We have been for several months. One aspect of cold war is civilian deaths. We’ve had these shootdowns. We had them in the old Cold War. This is going to get worse. It also brings us closer to war between Russia and the West, NATO and the United States. So, if you’re going to ask which is more important—Russians have a saying that, which is worse? And the answer is, both are worse. They’re all worse. But if you’re going to ask which is going to have impact for our grandchildren, it’s what’s going on in Ukraine now.
AMY GOODMAN: We only have 30 seconds, but Obama announcing stricter sanctions against Russia, how significant is this? It was a day before the downing of the plane.
STEPHEN COHEN: I’ll repeat what I said before: By resorting to sanctions, Obama reminds us he has no policy toward Ukraine or Russia other than to blame Putin. That’s not a policy; that’s an attitude.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics, New York University and Princeton University. We’ll link to his piece in The Nation. His latest book, just out in paperback, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.
That does it for our show. I’ll be speaking at the Mark Twain House & Museum inHartford, Connecticut, Monday, July 21st, at 7:00, and then on July 26th on Martha’s Vineyard. That’s Saturday, 7:00 p.m., Katharine Cornell Auditorium in Vineyard Haven. Check our website at democracynow.org.


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