I agree that it is difficult to explain how this is so. Surely we are not a nation of morons but, instead, the cohabitants of a "massive and polymorphous society," as Robert Putnam expressed it. Even murderous, psychotic criminals like bin Laden understand that America is not at all simple or monolithic.

As for evidence of "extraordinary popular delusions," quite the contrary. The polling work of Benjamin Page and the sociological research of James Surowiecki demonstrate, respectively, that a) US public opinion is very rational and consistent and b) the "masses" are not often-times irrational, sort of like the hive mind phenomenon. Regarding religious fundamentalism, I've heard this elsewhere, that we are perhaps on par with Iran in this respect. Certainly off the charts compared with all the other advanced industrialized countries. Again, as you point out, that's a subset.

Hard to explain, clearly. Truthiness reigns supreme these days. Hopefully the old pendulum will swing back.

Friends:

FYA ("For your archives" -- with special thanks to Pangaea):

  5. In Saudi Arabia, where the oil resources constitute a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history, a concession covering this oil is nominally in American control.  It will undoubtedly be lost to the United States unless this Government is able to demonstrate in a practical way its recognition of this concession as of national interest by acceding to the reasonable requests of King Ibn Saud that he be assisted temporarily in his economic and financial difficulties until the exploitation of the concession, on a practical commercial basis, begins to bring substantial royalties to Saudi Arabia.

("Draft Memorandum to President Truman," in Diplomatic Papers, 1945: The Near East and Africa, p. 45, Vol. VIII, Foreign Relations of the United States, U.S. Department of State, University of Wisconsin Digital Collections (Homepage).) 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Pangeae, use firefox and when your editing windows is open, click on enable rich text format... and you will have all the basic buttons (shown below) here for an advanced

**the U.S. political system is a failed one: It can't even be trusted to apply its own laws to itself. **

 uncle sham often makes his own rules and then immediately proceed to break them himself..

a recent example would be waiving the arms embargo on nk so that its proxy ethiopia could invade somolia at his behest.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6272

 **And since the rest of the world cannot reasonably expect U.S. citizens to act to redress these grave deficiencies, this responsibility falls to the rest of the world to start taking police actions against the U.S. Government**

 i often hear yanks declaring that "i am not responsible for what this government is doing in iraq or elswhere, i certainly didnt vote for bush"

whats your take on this mr Peterson?

[btw, the hk bit in my email address was a slip up during my registration with yahoo, no intention to mislead here] 

 

That is what I'm talking about. We don't need something that advanced though. Just the ability to put in links, bold, italic, underline etc - the most-used text-formatting operations. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

 

Friends:

This ought to make happy that substantial segment of the now something on the order of 70 percent of "anti-war" sentiment in the States and elsewhere whose overriding concern all along has been with casualties on "their" side, rather than what the U.S. military is doing to the "enemy."

"Pilotless Robot Bomber Squadron Heads for Afghanistan, Iraq," Associated Press, July 15, 2007

Robotic warfare: The perfect stage of killing with impunity.  And therefore every reason to go right on killing in this latest installment of the never-ending war.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

kaminer's quote: The same thought could and should be articulated in a simpler and more direct rule. In any local struggle we should be aligned with the forces fighting US domination. If you find yourself, even momentarily lined up in support of US policy, start clarifying things to extricate yourself from the unworthy alliance you have entered and the sooner the better. It is my experience that most genuine liberals and democrats understand this common sense rule while there are too many instances where some “leftist” groups in the region remain aligned with local elements which slip, slide and fade into cooperation with the goals of US policy. This is a a good guideline and a good condemnation of the like of Christopher Hitchens..

Friends:

FYI: Some great counsel herein:

"Guide to the Perplexed for Friends in the International Peace Movement," Reuven Kaminer, July 11, 2007

Some of Kaminer's comments are nothing short of axiomatic for a peace movement (i.e., in contrast to the many we-only-become-upset-when-our-soldiers-can't-kill-with-impunity movements around the States and elsewhere).

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

• pangeae wrote : phpBB3 (or 2) is a free forum software used on many sites. Not sure how well it would work in a blog, but the current system isn't great. Right now we are coding HTML when we write. With phpBB (and many others) you can select text, hit [B] and fatten the text etc - basically like in (Open)Office. Works very well. pangeae what browser are u using ? i use firefox and I have absolutely no problem editing my text.. This site use tinyMCE and editor for rich text, I aint sure but it should be similar if not same to the ones you see on phpBB sites. actually, Znet sustainers forums use phpBB mainframes.
  
• The only thing really that is different with this site relates to permissions.Administrators have revoved a few features as an example the button for uploading pictures ( that is expansive).., the button for creating tables ( that is good for David showing, displaying data,)

phpBB3 (or 2) is a free forum software used on many sites. Not sure how well it would work in a blog, but the current system isn't great. Right now we are coding HTML when we write. With phpBB (and many others) you can select text, hit [B] and fatten the text etc - basically like in (Open)Office. Works very well. The truth about this war is so obvious, one needs to be seriously entrenched in propaganda not to see it. It is just beyond me how people can think the US attacked Iraq to bring it democracy. Wars are never fought for democracy. Wars are fought to get access to new markets, get control of (natural) resources, to protect capitalism, or to expand your territories. I can't think of any exceptions to this rule, off the top of my head (keeping in mind the Nazis started WWII to expand its territory). Just to get a little insight into the mindset of the mainstream media. Today Russia said they would pull out of the CFE Treaty. Naturally the media is all over it. What a disaters, yada, yada, yada. The original CFE Treaty has 30 members. But the extended CFE Treaty from 1999 has only been ratified by four states: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. No UK or US there (as usual). I didn't notice this mentioned anywhere. Another story from today: the North-Korean nuclear programme. Finally North-Korea agrees to halt its programme, allow inspectors and so forth. No mention of the fact that there are no inspections of Western nuclear programmes, and certainly no talk of shutting it down. Time and time again, the "pariah" states are the ones that are the most law-abiding. They allow inspections, close down their facilities and programmes, and even allow provocations without bombing countries back 30 years. On the other hand, the world's rogue and aggressive states do no such things. They keep expanding their programmes, buying new Trident submarines, etc etc. There is no end to the double standards. And finally, that section of the Nuremberg Trial you linked to, could just as well be uttered today, if we swap some names and dates. It is only natural to ask ourselves who really are the "civilized world" and who are the "backward states" and "terrorist states". If we look at evidence, the answer is simple. If we look at media coverage, we get the opposite answer. PS: Good to see Michael Moore back on the screens, severely telling off CNN's Blitzer. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Jonas:

A very good question. -- Aside from the quote-unquote religious beliefs expressed by U.S. citizens in opinion surveys (e.g., "American Religious Identification Survey," City University of New York, 2001; and "God's Numbers," Newsweek, March 31, 2007 -- though this is a huge topic), consider the point raised in Paul Street's blog on the evident lack of "functioning gray cells" in the brains of New York Times personnel.

Recalling something he had written four weeks earlier ("Dominant Media Taboos: Why I've Been Skipping to the Sports," ZNet, June 15), Street noted:

Dominant (“mainstream”) U.S. media coverage and commentary on Iraq continues to be hopelessly crippled by doctrinal observance of taboos against discussing five basic and intimately interrelated aspects of so-called “Operation Iraqi Freedom”:

1. The monumentally criminal nature of the invasion, which involved (in the words of the 2005 Istanbul Declaration) “planning, preparing, and waging the supreme crime of a war of aggression in contravention of the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles.”

Now.  Make a very careful note of Point No. 1 here. -- Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq (as well as Aghanistan) was a Nuremberg-class crime against the peace -- indeed, what the Final Judgment at Nuremberg pronounced all wars of aggression to be: "essentially an evil thing," and "not only an international crime," but "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" ("The Common Plan or Conspiracy and Aggressive War," Sept. 30, 1946) -- how do we account for the fact that there is zero recognition around the U.S. political culture that the political leadership and the country itself rank among the supreme international criminals, having held this ranking for decades, and deservedly so? 

How is it that normally functioning human minds, qua American minds, close down factually and morally on issues such as this?

As we have right here before us evidence of the phenomenon of mass conformism (or extraordinary popular delusions) running contrary to basic facts about the world, how do we explain it? 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Thanks for the hyperlink to the ElectricPolitics.com interview with Jean Bricmont ("A Belgian Intellectual," July 6, 2007) -- a gem all the way around.

For two others:

"Something about Human Rights Watch," ZNet, February 24, 2007
Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party, ZNet, February 25, 2007  

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Cyrano:

Have been wondering what is the most damning story about Louise Arbour.  I had never heard of her (that I can recall, anyway) before she was awarded the post of Chief Prosecutor at the two tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda back in 1996.  Remember that this post is profoundly political -- not juridical.  It was this way under Richard Goldstone.  And it remains so today under Carla Del Ponte.  (Though the post has since been separated into one chief prosecutor apiece for Yugoslavia and Rwanda.)   In point of fact, these tribunals are political courts.  Period.

Anyway.  Consider these four paragraph from von Sponeck and Halliday's letter (Letter to Mme. Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights):

  We are writing to you out of our great concern that to-date neither the UN Security Council nor the UN Human Rights Council have felt an obligation to accept their responsibilities and carry out an assessment of the human rights conditions as they evolved during 13 years of sanctions. The role the UN has played throughout this period must be shown. Due to the still destroyed civilian infrastructure, which constitutes criminal negligence by the occupying powers, the impact of sanctions is ongoing. We, therefore, are equally concerned that the UNHRC has failed to engage in a debate of the atrocious human rights abuses in Iraq under occupation.
  We consider it an important right of the public to expect both assessment and debate. This would also be significant for the future handling of such crises as we have seen and experienced first hand in Iraq.
  Equally important would seem the need to re-assure the world community that accountability holds for all who have played a role in determining the fate of a people, not only for a failed government.
  We would hope that you, as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a person who has spoken out with courage on Iraq and other human rights issues, will pressure both the UN Human Rights Council as well as the UN Security Council to include human rights in Iraq in the agendas of relevant United Nations bodies. The fact that possibly as many as one million innocent Iraqis have died since the invasion, four million or more Iraqis have become IDPs or refugees, the entire socio-economic infrastructure has collapsed and an entire nation has been traumatized would seem stark reasons for immediate and urgent UN involvement. A statement expressing your position on this reality in Iraq would undoubtedly make a significant political impact and be re-assuring to all those around the world who look to you to uphold the supremacy of human rights for all.

Contrast Mme. Arbour's silence on what the Western powers -- overwhelmingly the U.S. and U.K. -- have done to Iraqis dating back to the imposition of the sanctions regime in August 1990, the years of bombing campaigns against Iraqi territory, and the 2003 war and ongoing occupation, on the one hand, to the many times she's barked on command when the same powers that devastated Iraq needed a quick political pick-me-up elsewhere in this world, and needed somebody to decry the evil of their targets. 

The contrast is staggering.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

Link to an audio interview of Jean Bricmont, author of 'Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War'. According to the interviewer, head of Amnesty International USA earns close to quarter of a million per year. Not a bad gig and you can feel like Mother Teresa on top of that.

 

Friends:

"Harvard's Humanitarian Hawks," Tom Hayden, The Nation (web-exclusive), July 14, 2007

Of course, the deeper, ultimate criticism is that Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy isn't engaged in human rights advocacy.  But rather employs the honorific title to engage in something radically different: Providing a political cover for good-old-fashioned imperialism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Friends:

Here's one worth chewing on:

"Midwest Towns Sour on War as Their Tolls Mount," Peter Slevin, Washington Post, July 14, 2007

As long as the Americans got to kill Iraqis, without the Iraqis fighting back, everything was okay.  But as that whole "Camp Casey" phenomenon showed back in early August 2005, it was only when U.S. casualties ticked upward that the horror entered consciousness.  Not the horror of what the Americans are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, however.  Only the horror of what's happening to Americans. 

This is so sub-civilized that comment ought to be unnecessary.  Violence is objectionable, if and only if somebody else happens to harm us?  

And this is supposed to be the heart and soul of the peace movement in the States? 

I don't think so.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Pangaea:

Don't know what a "phpbb3-like reply window" is -- though it's obvious from the narrowing of the windows that display each response and counter-response that the current system is less than optimal.

However.  Two other points. 

First, so many of the Iraqi National Congress figures are themselves creatures of the U.S. Government.  So I'm leery of stating that they fed the U.S. Government fabricated "intelligence."  More likely, the U.S. Government was fabricating these figures as well as the "intelligence" that, in turn, it fed to itself as a way of making it seem that the "intelligence" came from the outside.  The deniability aspect remains important.  It's the difference between standing accused of having deliberately lied about the reasons for war and having committed honest errors and having been misled into a war.

Second, we always need to evaluate these things in terms of means and ends.  What was the real end that was sought?  Eliminating Iraq's WMDs?  Or militarily seizing Iraqi territory as a proxy for the larger region where most of the world's most readily accessible petroleum resources are located?  There is no doubt that the latter objective was the goal.  So rather than believing that bona fide "intelligence" failed to portray the facts faithfully, we need to recognize that fabricated "intelligence" succeeded in misrepresenting the situation, and in bringing about the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- a point that is so far outside the prison in which Americans think about themselves that we can't afford not to keep repeating it.

One other point.  Had U.S. domination of Iraq generated no resistance on the ground (both inside Iraq and elsewhere), the U.S. crime against Iraq never would have become an issue among the other members of the sub-civilized West, and especially not in the States.  And even to this day, in July 2007, the only issue that has become a theme of "public" discussion in the States remains contained within the pragmatics of state violence -- not that the Americans have committed a Nuremberg-class crime, but that the enemy is still fighting back.  (Oh, my.)  

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript. For an example of how morally debased the Americans are, consider this report: "Midwest Towns Sour on War as Their Tolls Mount" (Peter Slevin, Washington Post, July 14, 2007).  As long as they got to kill Iraqis, without the Iraqis fighting back, everything was okay.  But as that whole "Camp Casey" phenomenon showed back in early August 2005, it is only when U.S. casualties ticked upward that the horror entered consciousness.  Not the horror of what the Americans are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, however.  Only the horror of what's happening to Americans.  This is so sub-civilized that comment ought to be unnecessary.  

One can also ask oneself why so large a chunk of the documents Iraq handed over to the UN (read: USA) about its alleged WMD programmes had to be censored before release... Your last sentence is certainly correct (and the rest too, for that matter). This is exactly as planned in the mentioned important Downing Street memo. "Fix intelligence around the facts" (perhaps not a 100% correct quote, but that's the plan). This is expected. The intelligence services are used for all sorts of things - not all is gathering intelligence, to put it mildly. So it's no surprise they could pull this through. The fact of the matter, however is that there also came out intelligence that Iraq didn't have a WMD programme, and that even if they had any WMDs left, it would have expired and thus be useless. People from the CIA (and probably other agencies as well) also went public with this info. Not surprisingly the media kept this under the lid. After all, they were busy beating the war-drums. Here is one article for example. I also read at the time about senior (IIRC) officials going public about the lies being told, as I used it in at least one paper. Can't seem to find the link now though. Here is another story.

When George Tenet, the director of the CIA, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week about dubious intelligence data on the Iraqi threat that made it into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, he said an ad-hoc committee called the Office of Special Plans, set up [by] Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and other high-profile hawks rewrote the intelligence information on Iraq that the CIA gathered and gave it to White House officials to help Bush build a case for war, according to three Senators on the intelligence committee. Tenet told the Intelligence Committee that his own spies at the CIA determined that much of the intelligence information they collected on Iraq could not prove that the country was an imminent threat nor could they find any concrete evidence that Iraq was stockpiling a cache of chemical and biological weapons. But the Office of Special Plans, using Iraqi defectors from the Iraqi National Congress as their main source, rewrote some of the CIA's intelligence to say, undeniably, that Iraq was hiding some of the world's most lethal weapons. Once the intelligence was rewritten, it was delivered to the office of National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, where it found its way into various public speeches given by Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Bush, the Senators said.

Afterwards, as we know, the CIA was fingered for poor intelligence, and the administration walked. This has become a regular routine. Break the law and constitution, find somebody to blame it on, and walk away. This time the CIA had to take the blame. As they seemed to know the full story (and they damn well should!), it's no wonder the CIA got pissed off for having to take the blame. PS: It would be great with a phpbb3-like reply window where we could format the text properly. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Mr. Peterson, on what basis do you claim that the United States is a "fundamentalist republic"?

FYI, a fascinating historical montage on "Mobutu's Rise and Fall" (very interesting portraits between 1:53 and 2:00).

David on Top Louise Arbour is Canadian, I am ashamed.

When you think that this woman used publicly funded canadian schools and universities to attain the level of expertises she has gained and considering how much it costed to tax payers for her education just to witness her turn her back on the justice she is charged to administrate and abandon the poor and innocent people of Iraq; Its outrageous, she could at the very least have the decency to denounce The US and acknowledge that the UN was instrumental with contributing on a disgusting number of deaths and contributed to the now poor conditions of Iraqis ..

And then she could step down in protest.. I don't oppose payin taxes, I oppose my taxes to be an assistance to murders and wars.

Friends:

Letter to Mme. Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Hans C. von Sponeck and Denis J. Halliday, June 20, 2007

Talk about barking-up the wrong tree! The Madame High Commissioner is an unscrupulous servant of American Power. A real tool.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Friends:

FYI: Outstanding commentary here:

"We're All Gonna Die," William Rivers Pitt, Truthout, July 13, 2007

To literally see the point, take a look at the "National Threat Advisory System" at the quintessentially American Department of Homeland Security. 

What honest anthropologist could miss the correlation between the heightened threat that one regime in particular poses to international peace and security, and the frequency with which this same regime instructs its captive population that they, and not the other peoples, are living under threats?

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Cyrano:

At least insofar as the sub-civilized tribes of the fabled Western powers are concerned, you've stated the elements of the international order quite succinctly.

Perhaps even that of the human world.

We must keep your second sentence out in front of everything we do.  The powers in the States and elsewhere that scream the loudest about the threats to peace and security that lie in some far-off distant land truly are the ones which pose the greatest threat to the world.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

what happened with Iraq is the typical scenario you can read in V for Vendetta.. The one screaming and making people scared were the ones who were the threat..

Pangaea 

Inspired comments. --

One other point.  When Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, defected to Jordan and therefore to the West in August 1995, he had been the No. One man in charge of Iraq's WMD programs for several years, and transported with him boxes of documents about the programs.  Despite all of the contemporaneous hype surrounding this event, and despite its repeat performance seven years later (incidentally, Kamel was executed upon his return to Iraq in February 1996), what Kamel showed the West was that the WMD programs had been destroyed by UNSCOM.  So that by the time the UNMOVIC inspectors were reintroduced into Iraq in late November 2002, there hadn't been anything worth turning up for close to ten years.

All the rest was sheer fabrication.  In point of fact, a case of fabricating "intelligence" about WMD Iraqi state-sponsored terrorism so as to advance the real objective of militarily seizing Iraqi territory, as Iraq couldn't mount any kind of defense, after 13 years of debilitating sanctions.  

One question always to keep in mind is: Did the fabricated "intelligence" constitute a failure (as it is typically portrayed -- even among its sharpest critics) or a success? 

In my opinion it was the latter: The fabricated "intelligence" helped the Americans seize Iraq.  Exactly as it was designed to do.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

How nice. I murder a man in front of a huge crowd. The police arrests me, and charge me for murder. I say the police don't have jurisdiction over the case. I'm released. Case closed. Really nice system we have put in place. In my opinion the Downing Street Memo is a very important document. It's a huge shame the media hasn't jumped all over it. Here we have clear evidence that both Blair and Bush lied both countries into war, that they knew Saddam most likely did not have WMDs, and that intelligence said he was no threat and yet they kept claiming he was. This is the smoking gun. Every time any of them claim there was faulty intelligence or any such nonsense, we can shove this document in their face. Powell may not be as big a crook as Bush and Cheney, but he's still a crook. I saw his lies to the SC live, and didn't believe a word. It was designed to scare, not to shed light on an important issue with facts. I often hear that "ooh, he was so persuasive with his show to the SC, and we believed him. Now we know otherwise." Bullshit! When I knew right away he was spreading lies, so did the media and important decision makers. They're not idiots. Everything about this war is so bad, there are no words to describe it. The Anglo-American establishment are drenched in blood, and they know it. If they're not punished for the most serious crimes you can commit, I guarantee it will happen again in the future. Sometimes living in this world feels like being the only one in a huge crowd with the ability to see and hear. The truth is right in front of our eyes, and yet the world goes on as if it doesn't exist. We are uncomfortably close to 1984. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Pangaea:

Check out the Statute of the International Court of Justice, specifically Articles 34 - 38, "Competence of the Court."  Also see the 1978 Rules of the Court, in particular, Article 38(5).  To summarize: No case can be heard by the ICJ without the consent of the parties to the Statute.  This means that "until the State against which such application is made consents to the Court's jurisdiction for the purposes of the case," the ICJ can't hear the case.

My absolute favorite is 1999's Legality of Use of Force case (i.e., Yugoslavia v. United States et al.), wherein the ICJ ruled that, even while NATO was attacking Yugoslavia, in violation of the UN Charter, no less, the ICJ "manifestly lacks jurisdiction to entertain Yugoslavia's Application" and the ICJ "cannot therefore indicate any provisional measure whatsoever."    

About Colin Powell's line -- "We have the highest standards of accountability of any nation on the face of the earth" -- the only possible response is: Sure thing, pal.  Just like he had the goods on Iraq's WMD program.  And Angelina Jolie is "absolutely serious, absolutely informed."   

And just like he tried so very hard to persuade his Commander-in-Chief not to invade Iraq.  Resigned from the office of Secretary of State in protest of the invasion.  And came clean with everything he knew about the fixing of the pre-war "intelligence" around the policy.  And that helped to "remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD."  ("The Secret Downing Street Memo," July 23, 2002.)

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

Friends:

FYI: For an oldie-but-goodie by Comrade Flip-Flop, see:

"Iraq Flexes Arab Muscles," Comrade Hitchens, New Statesman, April 2, 1976 (as posted to the New Statesman website)

Then take a look at: "Christopher Hitchens, 1976: Saddam a 'visionary'," Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, July 10, 2007.

Maybe somebody can clue-me-in on something?  I understand Raimondo's point (qua Orwell) about the "kind of intellectual [who] worships power," and who therefore "will ally himself with the strongest brute out of 'idealistic' idolatry, and a sense of invincible power."

This is the very definition of the power intellectual, after all. 

But why identify the worship of this-worldly power with Leon Trotsky, i.e., the "Trotskyite gleam in [Comrade Flip-Flop's] eyes as he exclaims: 'Iraq is dedicated to the idea of a single socialist Arab nation from Gibraltar to the Indian ocean; the original Ba'athist dream'"?

This I don't get.  Take the Church of Rome.  Certainly those robed-rascals worship this-worldly power right up there with the most devout members of our species. --

But: Trotskyism? 

Quite the contrary.  What Comrade Flip-Flop worships is his career and landing upon his feet, no matter which way History's winds blow.

This, I think, is something categorically -- and radically -- different.

"The Silver Christopher," ZNet, August 31, 2005

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Thanks for a very well-written reply David. Top-shelf stuff, as usual :thup: This is indeed bad news for the rule of law in international affairs. We're dealing with a state that are coercing others to not cooperate with the ICC in prosecuting US war-criminals (and worse). As was mentioned earlier, this is then just another tool the US can use to punish its enemies while protecting its own criminals. Once again it proves we do not have a rule of law, but rule of men. Truly sad if we ever want to abolish war. The US can, however, not run away from the fact that they have broken the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. This time more brutally than is the norm for them. Powell's line is clearly a lie. Every other country on the face of the Earth has better accountability than the US. The US are the biggest criminals, and yet nobody are convicted. Other countries get convicted. Hence have "high[er] standards of accountability" than the US. But it's not like Powell hasn't told lies before or since... Bellinger (and Bolton?) may be right when he says the US has the proper domestic system in place to punish its own war criminals. But what's the point of having laws in place if they are never used, even when they are severely broken? Does a tree falling in the woods make a sound if there is nobody around to hear it? Pangaea Oslo, Norway

SK:

This is what I figured. -- Of course, you realize, don't you, that your explanation deserves to be expanded into a research project?

Here's to it.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript. What lovely confirmations of the "propaganda model."  And Google helps us to see it: 'Sudan' or 'Darfur' vs. 'Congo'.  Can't help but wonder what UN Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie's position is with respect to the deaths, the refguees, and the IDPs of the current Afghan and Iraqi conflagrations?  (Now.  To see my point, compare Jolie's official position with respect to the same for the Sudan -- "Justice for Darfur," Washington Post, February 27, 2007. -- Wake me when she demands "justice" for Iraq, and for the political leadership in Washington to be brought before the International Criminal Court or a duly constituted ad hoc tribunal.  Goodwill Angelina truly is, in Colin Powell's sense of these words, "absolutely serious, absolutely informed.")  Also how many victims of the U.S. system -- here referring to the ones raised at its teat since birth, not the others --would understand the point we're discussing here? Between one and one-hundred percent, what do you think?  

Friends:

Clearly, the incidents described herein (i.e., "Report: U.S. Sponsoring Kurdish Guerilla Attacks Inside Iran," Democracy NOW!, March 27, 2007) constitute international crimes, and therefore "high crimes" of state within the United States. -- 

Now.  Count how many times the U.S. Government has committed crimes of this kind over the years (i.e., thousands of times, of course), and then count how many times the U.S. political system has prosecuted these crimes (i.e., something in between zero and one percent of the time).

What this illustrates is that although the U.S. Government carries out many of its foreign affairs criminally -- even in violation of U.S. laws -- the world cannot reasonably expect the U.S. Government or U.S. citizens to exercise any responsibility to uphold the law or to police its actions.

Adopting, therefore, the kind of rhetoric currently in vogue among the U.S. establishment and elsewhere (though for anyone wishing to get ahead in this intellectual racket, be sure that you only apply this principle to foreign states, never the United States), the U.S. political system is a failed one: It can't even be trusted to apply its own laws to itself. 

And since the rest of the world cannot reasonably expect U.S. citizens to act to redress these grave deficiencies, this responsibility falls to the rest of the world to start taking police actions against the U.S. Government.

Logical?  Illogical?  Irrelevant?

You tell me.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

I'm referring to the contrast in results, not numbers when one searches for 'Darfur' vs. 'Congo'. With the former you get gory pictures of mutilated children, a who's who of Big Charity/NGO links, top tier media personality advertising (Celebrities Aiding Darfur/See George Clooney's Trip to Sudan/And Chad), etc. With the latter you get the wikipedia entry for Congo as the first unsponsored match and no do-gooders willing to do "advocacy" for a catastrophe that's already claimed more lives than any conflict since WWII. One of the total of four sponsored links asks for donations to 'Save Congo Wildlife'.

SK:

Are you referring to the total "hits" that Googling these search terms will produce?  Or am I missing something? -- Please explain.

Anyway. I just Googled 'Sudan', 'Darfur', and 'Congo'.

As of approx. 12:45 PM July 12 (Eastern U.S. time), the results were: 

1. 'Sudan': 84,900,000
2. 'Darfur': 15,500,000
3. 'Congo': 92,500,000

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Todd:

Four separate but inextricably linked issues: (1) Iran's rights under the NPT; (2) whether or not Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons; (3) what's the situation inside Iran with respect to nuclear-powered electricity; and (4) what does the population of Iran want?

No. 1 is straightforward, and exactly as you've stated it. 

No. 2: Honestly can't answer it.  Although the IAEA's extensive reporting has never turned up anything concrete beyond U.S.-inspired allegations (often using third-parties), I never forget the fact that in an era of nukes, Iran has been threatened by at least two nuclear-weapon states for the past 28 years (the U.S. and Israel), is literally surrounded by hostile powers (including the world's pre-eminent military bloc), and we might as well shuffle-in both Pakistan and India as nuclear wild cards.  As the Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld noted, "Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy."  ("Sharon on the warpath: Is Israel planning to attack Iran?" International Herald Tribune, August 21, 2004.)

No. 3: The Iranian population and economy are greatly underserviced by electrical energy, and Tehran is quite desparate to develop the national capacity.  Take a look at the most current country report for Iran now on file at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (August 2006, pp. 15-17.  Keep in mind that because of the sanctions, this report needs to be updated. Also see Roger Stern's analysis,  "The Iranian petroleum crisis and United States national security," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 104, No. 1, January 2, 2007.)  Just as Iran is forced to import refined petroleum products (gasoline included), it is forced to import kilowatthours. 

No. 4: Answering the fouth question is the most difficult of all.  Presumably, at the top of everyone's list is peace and security and the chance to pursue happiness.  This is not to make lite of the people of Iran.  On the contrary.  It is to respect them. 

For a very fine counter-hegemonic approach to these questions (i.e., my point being that the kind of approaches that are very popular and circulated widely in the fabled West are exactly those that articluate the hegemonic point of view), see:

Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran, Fatemeh Keshavarz (University of North Carolina Press, 2007) 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA          

Pangaea:

Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, nobody can be charged with the Nuremberg-class crime of aggression -- after undermining the cause of universal jurisdiction, aggression was the major crime that Washington succeeded in keeping off the books.  Article 5 leaves open the possibility that, in the future, "The Court shall exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression once a provision is adopted in accordance with articles 121 and 123 defining the crime and setting out the conditions under which the Court shall exercise jurisdiction with respect to this crime."  But either this in fact will never happen.  Or by the time that it does, Washington will have negotiatiated bilateral exemptions with virtually every in the world, thus mooting the new crime. 

Even then, Washington refuses to become a party to the Statute.  And continues to demand that individual states enter into Article 98.2 exemptions with it.  As 98.2 puts it:

The Court may not proceed with a request for surrender which would require the requested State to act inconsistently with its obligations under international agreements pursuant to which the consent of a sending State is required to surrender a person of that State to the Court, unless the Court can first obtain the cooperation of the sending State for the giving of consent for the surrender. 

To date, Washington has reached in excess of 100 of these Article 98 agreements with foreign states.  (I've lost track of the current total.)  The common thread running throughout all of them is the foreign state's agreement never to bring U.S. nationals under ICC jurisdiction -- that is, the foreign state's recognition that the ICC's laws do not apply to the United States. 

What is more, under the so-called American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002, the American President was given the duty to compel the release of any U.S. national who has been detained by any foreign state on behalf of the ICC. 

Revealingly, in early June, the State Department announced that Washington is willing to cooperate with the ICC for the prosecution of -- Guess who! -- the political leadership in Khartoum.  Speaking in The Hague, a State Department legal advisor explained ("The United States and International Law," John B. Bellinger III, U.S. Department of State, June 6, 2007):

  Some critics have interpreted our decision not to become a party as an expression of disdain for international law and international institutions. This is wrong. In fact, for many years, the United States sought to create a permanent tribunal to deal with international crimes. Back in 1990 our Congress called for the creation of such a body - but made clear that its support would hinge on the tribunal's guarantees of due process and fair trial, and its respect for national sovereignty.
  In our view, the Rome Statute falls short. We object on principle to the ICC's claim of jurisdiction over persons from non-party states. And we are particularly concerned by the ICC's power to self-judge its jurisdiction, without any institutional check. We hope that the prosecutor and members of the court will honor their jurisdictional limits, and that the ICC will act only when a state with jurisdiction over an international crime is unable or unwilling to do its duty. But we cannot ignore the chance that a prosecutor might someday assert jurisdiction inappropriately, and the Rome Statute offers no recourse in such a situation. Our attempts to address such concerns during the drafting of the Statute failed - leaving us unable to join.
  This decision was in no way, however, a vote for impunity. We share with the parties to the Statute a commitment to ensuring accountability for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity - look, for example, to our unflagging support for the tribunals established to prosecute crimes committed in such disparate places as the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. We also believe that our domestic system is capable of prosecuting and punishing our own citizens for these crimes.
  Moreover, over the past couple of years we have worked hard to demonstrate that we share the main goals and values of the Court. We did not oppose the Security Council's referral of the Darfur situation to the ICC, and have expressed our willingness to consider assisting the ICC Prosecutor's Darfur work should we receive an appropriate request. We supported the use of ICC facilities for the trial of Charles Taylor, which began this week here in The Hague. These steps reflect our desire to find practical ways to work with ICC supporters to advance our shared goals of promoting international criminal justice. We believe it important that ICC supporters take a similarly practical approach in working with us on these issues, one that reflects respect for our decision not to become a party to the Rome Statute. It is in our common interest to find a modus vivendi on the ICC based on mutual respect for the positions of both sides.

Imagine that: The Washington regime is willing to cooperate with the ICC on an ad hoc basis -- primarily when cooperation meets the condition that it serve Washington's political interest, and ratchet-up the pressure on Khartoum.  Sound familiar?  This is nothing other than the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia writ large.

As John Bolton explained the Americans' logic while still serving as Under Secretary of State in the Bush regime ("American Justice and the ICC," John R. Bolton, Washington Post, December 13, 2003): 

  Article 98 agreements help ensure that U.S. citizens will have appropriate protection from politically motivated criminal accusations, investigations and prosecutions. U.S. military forces and civilians are active in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions in nearly 100 countries at any given time. We must ensure that they and private individuals engaged in business, social or religious activities are protected.
  With the Article 98 agreements, other countries agree not to surrender Americans to the ICC, not to retransfer persons extradited to a country for prosecution and not to assist other parties in their efforts to send U.S. citizens to the ICC. Moreover, in each agreement, the United States makes clear its intention to bring to justice under its own laws those who commit genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. As Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has said, "We have the highest standards of accountability of any nation on the face of the earth."

And this from the mouth of the regime which has engaged in the "supreme international crime" on a serial basis for decades on end! 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

The ICC should take jurisdiction and judge them in abstentia.. Once a Court such ICC is created it should enlarge its power, change its own constitution, to make any political leader or any country accountable if any violation and crimes is committed. Court should not have to wait until a country is invaded before passing judgments. sk i see a diffrence between congo and darfur, but i get a similar result when I type congo and sudan.. To put a funny note to this post, the queen refused to take off a crown for a picture.. boy she is lucky to be in England instead of Dr. Guillotin's France..

Thanks for the explanation and link to what seems like an informative and important book. If Blair cannot be prosecuted for aggression (and other crimes) in the UK's attack on Iraq because the aggression was mainly planned in Washington, the whole ICC is almost pointless. And it's absolute madness. But let's assume that is correct, and the world indeed is this mad. Even if Blair cannot be prosecuted for the most severe crime of aggression (under the ICC), it should be possible to prosecute him for the crimes in Iraq after the initial attack. After all we are talking about a 4-year long occupation here. There are plenty of international law broken here - also laws the US are parties to. So what it ultimately comes down to is whether we in the international community have the rule of law, or the rule of (mostly) men. One could argue that the Nuremberg trials was a show-trial. We have a much better framework of international law now than then. If Nazis could get convicted for aggression, so should the UK and US. It's actually hard to argue here, because the case is so obvious I can't find any counter-arguments. It's like saying 2+2=4. If person A slays a man, he should go to jail. If person B slays a man, he too, should go to jail. This is what we are talking about. Justice before the law, and justice for all. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

btw, here's a little experiment that can be done by anyone reading this. At google, type 'Congo' and then 'Darfur'. Notice any difference in the results? What makes this even more interesting is that unlike Darfur, there's enormous Western complicity in reducing Congo to its present state. Belgium, the former colonial master, has even admitted "moral responsibility" for its policies and apologized.

If anyone wants to further explore the tragedy of one of the three largest African countries--and unlike Sudan or Algeria, one that is well endowed with natural resources and fertile land--they can read this book by Michela Wrong who "turns over the mammoth rock that was Mobutu and finds a seething underworld of parasites with names like the CIA, the World Bank and the IMF, the French and Belgian governments, mercenaries, and a host of fat cats who benefited from Mobutu's largesse and even exceeded his rapaciousness."

Pangea, I often dream to see Znet organizing a political party,(parecon?) you put guy like Peterson ( not too many of guys of this stature)as political organizers behind Paul Street for candidate facing toes to nose Obama..and you have political depth hard to oppose.. David writes and explain topic so clearly, its priceless.

Pangaea:

The International Criminal Court opened for business on July 1, 2002 -- after the 60th state ratified its Statute in April of that year. 

The Statute is valid for -- that is to say, the ICC exercises jurisdiction over -- only those states that have become parties to the Statute.  You are right in that United States has not joined the ICC.  Though Britain has.  (See the Assembly of States Parties webpage.)

As Prime Minister of Britiain during the aggression against Iraq, the ICC could have exercised jurisdiction over Tony Blair on this Nuremberg-class charge except for one reason: The crime of aggression was negotiated out of the Rome Statute by Washington, and therefore there is no such crime on the ICC's books.  You should consult the superb treatment of this dirty business in Michael Mandel's How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity (Pluto Press, 2004), pp. 207-219.  Thanks to Washington's subterfuge, it achieved "perpetual impunity for the supreme crime for the world's leading practitioners of it" (209).  Such is the ICC.

Note also that the ICC bills itself as a "court of last resort."  The point (allegedly) is that when all else fails, the ICC will spring into action. 

Yeah.  Right.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Thanks for a good 'article' David. Always nice to be reminded of those important documents. As I'm not certain how the business of accession, ratification etc works, I have a question. The Rome Statute entered into force on April 11, 2002 (note: before the invasion of Iraq) as the 60th state signed it*. Does this mean that the Statute is valid for all states, or only those that have ratified it? I assume it's the latter, but would like to know for sure. As expected the United States have not ratified it. If my assumption above is correct, it means Bush et al cannot be prosecuted under the Rome Statute. The United Kingdom, however, have ratified it, opening up for prosecution of Blair and his co-criminals. Then to the obvious question: if we care about international law (as we claim), why hasn't Blair been charged for aggression and war-crimes? *not updated, but it had the best overview I found. 104 states have now ratified it. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

SK & Cyrano:

I must say that Mukoma Ngugi really comes close to expressing my contempt for my fellow Great White Northerners:

"Africa does not need more Western philantrophy," Mukoma Ngugi, ZNet, April 21, 2007

As does SK's phrase "designer crisis." -- Or is the phrase Stephen Eric Bronner's ("The Sudan and the Crisis in Darfur")?  Either way, I'm going to remember this one.

Consider these two paragraphs:

  In addition to providing raw materials, labor, and markets for finished products, Africa also cleanses the conscience of Africanist scholars, evangelists and missionaries, the rock and roll musicians who want to save Africa through orphan adoption, and philanthropists with Mother-Theresa complexes.
  But at the top of the pack -- Western politicians.  Occupy Iraq and Afghanistan but do not forget to rescue the African from the clutches of war-lords, poverty, corruption, and disease.  Africa has become the continent where the guilt-ridden come to score quick moral points. And we let them. 

After the raw materials (and since the old slave trade subsided), "Africa" (a term of art that I place within quotation marks to distinguish what it denotes from anything that is real) provides the richer, whiter North with an age-old dark continent, whose

inhabitants live in barbarism and savagery.  Indeed.  Life there consists of a succession of contingent happenings and surprises.  No aim or state exists whose development could be followed; and there is no subjectivity, but merely a series of subjects who destroy one another....The characteristic feature of the African is that their consciousness has not yet reached an awareness of any substantial objectivity -- for example, of God or the law -- in which the will of man could participate and in which he could become aware of his own being....Humanity as he we find it in Africa has not progressed beyond its immediate existence.... All our observations of the African show him living in a state of savagery and barbarism, and the African remains in this state to the present day.  An example of our species in all its savagery and lawlessness....

"The Politics of Naming," Mahmood Mamdani, London Review of Books, March 8, 2007
"The Sudan and the Crisis in Darfur," Stephen Eric Bronner, Logos, Fall, 2006
"Africa does not need more Western philanthropy," Mukoma Ngugi, ZNet, April 21, 2007 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Denk:

Yes.  A worthwhile commentary:

"Leave Iraq Alone!" Harry Browne, World Net Daily, May 9, 2002

Thanks. -- But the World New Daily website is loaded with some really creepy fare.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

We could try to bring her (jolie) to comments and position here.. is it possible to find her email addy?

Perhaps one of Angelina Jolie's managers who doesn't suffer quite as profoundly on behalf of Africans (and thus retains some semblance of critical thinking) will pass on to her this article about Darfur. An excerpt follows:

“Global Darfur Day” took place on 17 September 2006. Tens of thousands worldwide marched against the prospect of further loss of life in the Sudan. It is easy to be cynical. Little concern had previously been expended by the West over the roughly 4 million who had died over the last few years in the Congo, the 1.6 million dead and displaced in Uganda, or the 1 in 3 Malawians living below subsistence. These events overshadow what has transpired in Darfur. Having allowed the perpetration of certain humanitarian injustices in prior instances, of course, does not invalidate the attempt to prevent yet another disaster. World opinion did ultimately help pressure Khartoum into seeking a compromise. But this does not justify what so many of the protesters proposed as a policy. There is, indeed, something disheartening about the way in which Darfur was turned into a designer crisis, a media event, sentimentally over-simplified by celebrities and decent people trying to do the right thing like George Clooney, Mia Farrow and Elie Wiesel.

Mr. Clooney warned that Darfur is the new millennium's first genocide; Ms. Farrow claimed that she saw “the need for help in the refugees' eyes;” and Elie Wiesel made the Sudan yet another object of his insufferably self-righteous and selective moralizing. None of them had anything concrete to suggest other than that sanctions should be introduced or, alternatively, that UN troops should be deployed against the Sudan. Nothing much was said about finding a compromise or forging a new approach to the crisis. Already the influential neo-conservative foreign policy analyst, Robert Kagan, has demanded an invasion of Sudan by the United States while American State Department officials have suggested the need for an oil embargo and that France might be prevailed upon to attack Sudanese military air transports. Our celebrities and mainstream liberal activists could thus be left in a terribly difficult situation. Should the UN have proved unable to impose sanctions or intervene, because of a veto introduced by China or Russia in the Security Council, the choice for Mr. Clooney and his friends would be between “doing nothing” – and perhaps watching the existing peace agreements collapse (http://sudan.net/news/posted/13228.html) or supporting the United States in undertaking yet another high-handed gesture if not, more ominously, another ill-advised military adventure with imperialist overtones.[7]

Let's go for the big game

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27558

SK:

Under various disguises -- including Nazi Germany's intervention on behalf of the Sudeten Germans, and, of course, the US.-led NATO bloc's on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians -- you and I both know that the answer is implicit in your question. 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript. Speaking of our responsibilities, how many of us experience the suffering of humanity as profoundly as UN Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie does?

What about the heavy burden of the 'responsibility to protect'--so selflessly being shouldered by do-gooders of all persuasions (or should that be opportunisms) in the global North?

Pangaea and Everyone:

To reiterate: Whether or not the allegations of Iranian assistance to a State which has been subjected to aggression are true, not only Iran, but Russia, China, the U.K., France, Germany, Syria, the Sudan, Venezuela, Cuba, and so on, every one of these states has the right assist the Iraqi peoples against whom the United States committed the crime of aggression -- unless, of course, (a) they participated in this aggression (and in this instance, the Americans managed to drag even the Security Council along with them as accomplices after the fact (S/RES/1546)), and (b) "until [such time as] the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security," in Article 51's words.

But the international order is so distorted by great power that aggression on the most monumental of scales remains the unspoken crime.  The U.S. representatives at the 1998 Rome Conference that drafted the statute of the International Criminal Court (which was turned into yet another instrument of Great Power policymaking, and cannot be otherwise, given the ways of the flesh) worked tirelessly to prevent this Nuremberg-class crime from falling within the jurisdiction of the ICC.  As one of the Clinton regime's chief saboteurs of the conference, David Scheffer, who then enjoyed the preposterous title of U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes, went on to explain: The threat of universal jurisdiction for the crime of aggression 

will be to limit severely those lawful, but highly controversial and inherently risky, interventions that the advocates of human rights and world peace do desperately seek from the United States and other military powers.  There will be significant new legal and political risks in such interventions, which up to this point have been most shielded from politically motivated charges.  

Unless, that is, a particular enemy state commits the crime.  Iraq on August 2, 1990, being the best recent example.  But not the United States on March 24, 1999; October 7, 2001; or March 18, 2003. Or any destabilization campaign before or since.

A whole category of crimes is brought to the foreground (the so-called violations of "international humanitarian law," which any devout human rights advocate knows by heart), and the much larger and indeed total category of crimes against the peace is disappeared from the contemporary historical record (in effect, any serious crime for which the U.S. Government bears responsibility). 

So a truly great power such as the United States gets to lead the world in the exercise of international criminality. And not only does so with impunity.  (Unless and until something else like 9/11 happens.)  But its agents (including professors of international law, commentators, and those Culture Industry-types that gain traction for causes by associating their celebritihood with them) get to strut about very public stages and decry the criminality of official enemies. (Whether real or fabricated.)

For a testament to this charade (though but one among countless many), see: The United States and the International Criminal Court: National Security and International Law, Sarah B. Sewall and Cary Kaysen, Eds. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).   

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Sk, I signed your posted petition and I emailed your links along others (David and Paul) to my wife..( I have yet to see her reaction).. I always maintained that Saddam Hussein could have been deposed without firing a shot, but I guess this result wasn't sufficient enough for the oil companies. Theres a question I would love to ask Todd, who are the powerbrokers In Tehran, who makes money from oil in Iran?

Yet another non-news from the US establishment, this time Lieberman, in painting a devil's face on Iran. As David correctly mentions above, there is nothing wrong about what Iran does here (assuming it is true, as the source is the US military, I'm less than certain, to put it mildly). USA attacks Iraq in an outright act of aggression. Iraq tries to defend itself. Their army is shattered/broken up. A resistance movement appears, incorporating elements of the old Iraqi army. Iran helps the resistance in trying to throw out the aggressor. How is this different from what the US and UK did during WWII? That's right - there is no difference. I don't have to go through the details. We know that part of history very well. People have been nagging about this for months already, and I fail to see their point. They are accusing Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs. Hell-fucking-o???? I can think of a few other outside states that are slightly meddling in Iraqi affairs............... To paraphrase Chomsky, it takes real dedication from the media to overlook these very obvious facts. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

SK:

Living, as I do, in the belly of the beast, I couldn't agree more.  And Paul Potter's remarks (Students for a Democratic Society, April 17, 1965) are as breathtakingy faithful to the problematic today as they were 42 years ago. 

Let me repeat something you've hyperlinked elsewhere, a little excerpt from Robert H. Jackson's Report to the International Conference on Military Trials (i.e., what became the Nuremberg Tribunal, London, 1945).

Then take a close look at "Iran's Proxy War," by the honorable U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2007).

I'm not sure how Jackson's recommendations differed from the eventual charter creating the Nurembrg Tribunal.  (Anybody can check the Nuremberg Trials Collection at Yale's Avalon Project website.)  But it is worth recognizing that the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg wanted to define the crime of aggression and an aggressor as any "Attack by its land, naval or air forces, with or without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels or aircraft of another State," adding that "No political, military, economic or other considerations may serve as an excuse or justification for such actions, but exercise of the right of legitimate self-defense, that is to say, resistance to an act of aggression, or action to assist a State which has been subjected to aggression, shall not constitute a war of aggression."

In other words: Whether Lieberman's charges are true or false (and they very well could be partly true, or true in the main), what the U.S. Senator from Connecticut is decrying in his Wall Street Journal commentary -- alleged Iranian assistance to a State which has been subjected to aggression -- is nothing more than what every state has the right to do in international law as well as under the UN Charter, on behalf of the peoples in the territory against which the United States has committed the crime of aggression -- and "until [such time as] the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security," as Article 51 puts it.  Which, of course, for embarrassingly obvious reasons, the Security Council is never going to do. 

Nor would the legal aspects of this assistance be controversial -- thought their truth and their applicability to the case at hand are obscured by the distortions of Great Power and ideology, and the insidious effects they exercise over the all-too-human gray matter among the sub-civilized tribes of the fabled West.

So as the quote from Paul Potter suggests, if anyone believes that the world is an increasingly ugly and dangerous place, and that murderous tyrants need to be dealt with, rather than ignored, or "appeased," remember that the best place to begin making the world a safer and saner place is not 7,000 miles away.  But right here at home.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

The public has long been against the war, but the business community (and therefore the mainstream media) has been in favour of it. Now the business community is starting to turn around. It is costing too much; the goals seem harder and harder to achieve (control of Iraqi oil for example, at least without massive military presence); the Army is getting "stretched"; they'd rather want the Army available to deal with other issues, for example in Latin America; and with time there may be a "security" risk at home if people start to organize in a better fashion than today (this is the same argumentation as during the Vietnam War) - one may need the Army et al at home for "crowd control". Therefore the business community is starting to turn around, and that is reflected in this editorial by the Times. Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model doesn't say that the media will slavishly follow the government's agendas, but the elites' agenda. If the government does not follow the elites, the media will reflect the opinions of the elites, and not the government. With time this started to happen during Vietnam, and I think this is one of the first signs it's happening in the US about the Iraq war. Almost tempting to go through the whole article and rip it apart, but I won't do that. What seems clear is that the Times isn't concerned about the crime of aggression (and thus the hanging of Anglo-American leaders if we were to follow the advice of Judge Jackson from Nuremberg), but that it is getting too costly (politically and economically). They're not too concerned about the loss of life on any side, it seems, especially the Iraqi side. They therefore argue, as the Democrats do, that we should pull out some troops "over the horizon" (ie, Kuwait, Turkey etc). Close enough to be able to quickly move in again if "needed", but out of harm's way from the resistance. To further back this up, the Times are in favour of keeping bases in Iraq or neighbouring countries. The Times is not always explicit in saying these things, but that's how I interpret it. Neither wing of the Business Party supports full withdrawal from Iraq. When the other elites don't either, neither will the Times. They therefore argue for a partial withdrawal from Iraq, keeping many troops in neighbouring countries and in bases in (Kurdish) Iraq, in addition to a strong presence in the Gulf (this also to keep up the pressure on Iran). This therefore, in my opinion, confirms to the propaganda model. We'll probably see more pieces along this line in the future, as it dawns on the business community that there are other things more important to focus on, and it's just too hard and costly to achieve a complete victory in Iraq. To further back up the latest point, we should keep in mind that the culture in the West and in Arabia is different. They have a strong feeling of Ummah (Community, Collectivism). This means they don't have the 'respect' for individuals as we do in the West. It's more important to keep together long-term. So they have all the time in the world (and a billion Muslims to potentially join the fight). There is absolutely no way whatsoever the West will get Iraq under its boot. There will always be resistance as long as the West is present. The same is true in Afghanistan, which is why NATO will never win there either. This latest paragraph is loosely borrowed from Johan Galtung, perhaps the Norwegian I respect the most. PS: He almost got a rockstar welcome to an overcrowded 1000+ seats auditorium at his last visit to Oslo, discussing the most important issues of our time. No newspaper mentioned it (with only a tiny notice in the student newspaper). Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Zera Myer:

But your original post ("That Murderous Iraqi Tyrant Should Have Been Left Alone") was dishonest.  Unless you'd like to cop a plea of mere provocation.  Nothing wrong with that.

So you were either sincerely provocative or -- as I suspect by your sarcasm to the effect that one tyrant in particular should have been "interfered with," and your closing remark "Tell me when it's time to convert to Islam" -- you very well may object to a previous murderous Iraqi tyrant, but you don't honestly object to tyranny per se.  Particularly Murderous Super Tyrants. 

There is one, and only one, way to determine that a regime is tyrannical, murderous, dangerous, and the like: By what it actually does.

Question: On or about October 7, 2001, or March 18, 2003, which regimes in this world possessed both the intent and the means to conduct their affairs tyrannically, murderously, and to the endangerment of innocents?  And not just internally, either.  But internationally?  Of course, there was more than one regime on this list.  But the list is hierarchical: Some regimes would have ranked higher than others.  Qualitatively as well as quantitatively so.

Another question: On July 10, 2007, which regimes in this world possess both the intent and the means to conduct their affairs tyrannically, murderously, and to the endangerment of innocents?  And in exactly the same manner? 

Presuming that you yourself give an honest hoot about the issues you've raised about murderous tyrants,....

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

FYI, interesting archival material on how the The Spies of Texas (a pun on the 'Eyes of Texas') tracked down the likes of Robert Pardun. 

A candidate name for the the formless entity that New York Times editorialists regularly fail to grapple with is the 'Grand Area' System.

imho, this sentence from Paul Potter's speech is quite relevant:

"...our problems are not in Vietnam, or China or Brazil or outer space or at the bottom of the ocean, but are here in the United States."

Updating for the times, it might read:

"...our problems are not in Iran, or Afghanistan or Darfur or outer space or at the bottom of the ocean, but are here in the United States."

Pangaea:

Do you mean to say that the New York Times's editorial exemplifies what we'd expect, based on the "propaganda model"?  This is how I take your closing sentence anyway.

The Times gave us a 1,700 word editorial calling for withdrawal.  But for what kind of withdrawal?  And why? 

The war is sapping the strength of the nation's alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.
............
This war diverted Pentagon resources from Afghanistan, where the military had a real chance to hunt down Al Qaeda's leaders. It alienated essential allies in the war against terrorism. It drained the strength and readiness of American troops.

And it created a new front where the United States will have to continue to battle terrorist forces and enlist local allies who reject the idea of an Iraq hijacked by international terrorists. The military will need resources and bases to stanch this self- inflicted wound for the foreseeable future.

Then, in para. 26:

[H]owever angry [the allies] were were with President Bush for creating this mess, those nations should see that they cannot walk away from the consequences. To put it baldly, terrorism and oil make it impossible to ignore.

So what kind of position on the U.S. war over Iraq is this, anyway?  Reading The Times's great editorial, does anybody get the feeling that The Times has provided us with moral and intellectual leadership out of the wilderness the Americans have created?  Try as hard as we might, we can't even find a single mention of the basis of this war in an international criminal event -- and more than four years separate us today from the moment the Americans first launched it in full.  (Recall Howard Friel and Richard Falk's study The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports U.S. Foreign Policy (Verso, 2004), wherein they report that they couldn't find a single particle in any pre-war New York Times editorial that so much as mentioned the existence of the UN Charter's prohibition against war or about international law in general.  Let alone called the looming American war a criminal event.)

Of course a lot more needs to be added.  For example, I just checked, and in the no fewer than 14 editorial and bylined-commentaries The Times published during the 72-hour period, March 18-20, 2003, nobody who then enjoyed access to the pages of this prestigious American newspaper bothered raising the issue of the criminality of the aggressor states either -- though one of them did make a point of defending the shining legality and ingenuity of her state's having bypassed the UN Security Council -- and she's the Dean of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.  ("Good reasons for Going Around the U.N.," Anne-Marie Slaughter, March 18, 2003.)  Imagine that.

I'm at a loss for words to capture precisely how debased this whole performance is.

Any suggestions?

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

Friends:

Somewhat off-topic, though one that deeply interests me, as I find traces of it everywhere these days (and it's only gotten worse with the advent of the Internet):

"Native informers and the making of the American empire," Hamid Dabashi, Al-Ahram Weekly,  June 1-7, 2006

Damned powerful stuff herein.  Keep Dabashi's critical famework in mind with respect to efforts to destabilize Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria in particular -- though also think of Venezuela, Cuba, and even the fate of democracy in the States.

Take a look at a map of the Middle East and its larger surroundings.  There are maybe three regions still left over which the U.S.-led NATO bloc states do not currently exercise a strong degree (sometimes near total) of military, political, and cultural influence and even domination: The national territories of Iran and Syria, and the Palestinian Gaza Strip. 

Now take a quick look at these three items:

"Release Haleh Esfandiari," New York Review of Books, June 28, 2007 (141 signatories)
Irshad Manji - "Muslim Refusenik" (Homepage)
Project Ijtihad (money that "will build the world's most inclusive network of reform-minded Muslims and non-Muslim allies")   

Irshad Manji happens to be among the 141 signers to the open letter in the NYRB.  Right now on Manji's website (posted July 1), we read:

With Hamas ruling Gaza and Iran empowering radicals all around Israel and Palestine, the West Bank hangs in the balance.

Can't help but wonder how much money has been and will continue to be invested by States-based (and other Western states) destabilization campaigns against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the rest of the territories still independent or threatening to break free?

"New Iran Regime-Change Think Tank Opens in DC," Spencer Ackerman, TPM Muckraker, July 6, 2007 (as posted to Truthout) 

One helpful task would be to develop a dossier of the destabilizations (the larger, the more important), and to use it to raise consciousness of how well integrated seemingly honest actions and campaigns are into the ever-expanding imperial project.

The basic question ought to be: Does an action or a campaign advance the imperial project or counter it?

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Zera Myer:

The former President of Iraq was the leader of a very tyrannical and dangerous regime.  No doubt about it.

Now tell me something: How is it that you and I know this?  Did his regime kill people?  Did it terrorize them?  Did it invade foreign countries?  Devote an exhorbitant percentage of the national resources to building up the means of state violence, including "weapons of mass destruction"? 

In other words, aren't tyrannical and dangerous regimes those that really do engage in tyrannical acts and endanger innocent people? 

If so, then how would you have the world deal with regimes that do suchandsuch things?   Should the world (i.e., the international community, and coalitions of the willing) stand by and do nothing when there are clear cases of tyrannical and dangerous regimes, remaining merely passive and registering merely self-righteous and intellectually masturbatory moral indignation?  Maybe even take out ads in the New York Times?   

Now tell me something else: What's going on in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq today?

I don't believe that you'll need to convert to Islam to answer these questions.

But you will have to approach them honestly. 

And on this count, I have grave doubts.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

It's about time the NYT are starting to turn on this issue. Too bad they are 5 years too late. They should have had a shred of integrity and honour 5 years ago, when it really mattered, and called the Bush-gang on their lies. They did not. Instead they were in the forefront beating the wardrums and waving the flag, scaring the American people into yet another criminal and unnecessary war. I guess old habits are hard to turn. There are some powerful sentences here and there in the article, but overall it smells of redeployment and not withdrawal. There isn't a word about leaving Iraqi oil to Iraqis. On the one hand they say the US should leave Iraq as fast as the Pentagon can organize and exit. But on the other they say this is unlikely to be done in less than 6 months. I say that is bullshit. If the US wanted out fast, they could get all their men, equipment and corporations out in 30 days, easily. Again, it's a matter of will, not ability. Then the NYT talk about keeping military bases here and there, particularly in northern Iraq, and leaving troops to be able to fight the "terrorists" (otherwise known as the resistance). It smells badly of the policy of the Democrats of pulling some forces out "over the horizon", but being close enough to strike fast and hard if "needed". Despite some nice sentences here and there, this isn't an op-ed for withdrawal, but for redeployment. Also interesting to see that this piece follows Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Cyrano:

Some time in early to mid-October 2002, an event was staged on the public space outside the UN Secretariat Bldg. in New York.  I wasn't present.  But I'm told that a crowd did gather, though it rained a lot, and when the participants then tried to deliver a copy of the Open Letter along with the complete list of signatories to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, they were denied entry, and never permitted an audience with him. 

About the deliberate targeting of Iraq's means of life by the U.S. and other forces in early 1991 -- a fact multiplied one-hundred-fold by the next dozen years of sanctions -- the Washington Post already reported as early as June 1991 that "The worst civilian suffering, senior officers say, has resulted not from the bombs that went astray but from precision-guided weapons that hit exactly where they were aimed -- at electrical plants, oil refineries and transportation networks."  So-called "Strategic bombing," one of the Pentagon's war planners explained, "strikes against 'all those things that allow a nation to sustain itself'."  ("Allied Air War Struck Broadly in Iraq; Officials Acknowledge Strategy Went Beyond Purely Military Targets," Barton Gellman, June 23, 1991.)

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

SK:

Great stuff. -- You are a wealth of invaluable material.

Rebels with a Cause, Helen Garvy, Shire Press and Films

Also got to love the title of Robert Pardun's book, Prairie Radical (Shire Press). 

(Around Chicago, there still is some prairie left.  Believe it or not.  Though in the Central Area of this cattle town, they've built this space called Millennium Park, and another called the Museum Campus, which is about as close to a paririe - ex nihilo as broken down humanity comes these days. -- Prairie reaction.)

Only wish that you had tried to name this system.   (For lack of a better word.)

Where is my print-copy of W.T. Stead's If Christ Came To Chicago when I need it?  (See Part III, Ch. 1, "The Boodlers and the Boodled.")

To this very day King Boodle remains the monarch of all he surveys. 

(Cyrano'll love it.)

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

You do not deserve a dignified answer.. The USc omitted an infanticide and you are an apologist for this crime. The US is not supposed to becomes a worst tyranny than the tyran itself! Countless children died mainly because of US policies.. cutting the water was an attack on civilians.

You may have missed that tyrant, but here's another who could benefit from a dose of your "saccarine self-righteous (and above all, self-serving) moralism":

 

Karimov is one of the most vicious dictators in the world, a man who is responsible for the death of thousands of people. Prisoners are boiled to death in Uzbek jails.

I wonder what was the reply to the UN letter David, did you receive any reply? I am shocked really to learn that Iraqi water supplies had been bombed.. this is truly a disgusting and murderous actions against civilians.

For the New York Times, the "system" remains unnameable, 42 years after Paul Potter asked us to name it (Click here to listen to his speech, here to read it). The system without a name will keep killing millions until nomenclature can come to terms with it:

What kind of system is it that allows good men to make those kinds of decisions? What kind of system is it that justifies the United States or any country seizing the destinies of the Vietnamese people and using them callously for its own purpose? What kind of system is it that disenfranchises people in the South, leaves millions upon millions of people throughout the country impoverished and excluded from the mainstream and promise of American society, that creates faceless and terrible bureaucracies and makes those the place where people spend their lives and do their work, that consistently puts material values before human values?and still persists in calling itself free and still persists in finding itself fit to police the world? What place is there for ordinary men in that system and how are they to control it, make it bend itself to their wills rather than bending them to its?

We must name that system. We must name it, describe it, analyze it, understand it and change it. For it is only when that system is changed and brought under control that there can be any hope for stopping the forces that create a war in Vietnam today or a murder in the South tomorrow or all the incalculable, innumerable more subtle atrocities that are worked on people all over—all the time.