They're Leaving as Heroes?
by William Blum
Things which don't go away. Things the American government and media don't let go of. And neither do I.
"They're leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their
hearts," declared Col. John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade in
Iraq.
1
It's enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him choke up.
Enough to make him forget.
But no American
should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of
Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans,
beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then
invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly,
tortured ... the people of that unhappy land have lost everything —
their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their
environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology,
their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run
enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health
care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious
tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents,
their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half
the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally
displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood and genes
drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ...
unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up ... an
army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders;
they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across
the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia ... a river of blood runs
alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never
be put back together again.
"It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003," reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.
No matter ... drum roll, please ... Stand tall American GI hero! And don't even think
of ever apologizing. Iraq is forced by the United States to continue
paying reparations for its own invasion of Kuwait in 1990. How much will
the American heroes pay the people of Iraq?
"Unhappy the land that has no heroes ...
No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes."
– Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo
"What we need to
discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war; something
heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will
be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved to be
incompatible."
– William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Perhaps the
groundwork for that heroism already exists ... February 15, 2003, a
month before the US invasion of Iraq, probably the largest protest in
human history, between six and ten million protesters took to the
streets of some 800 cities in nearly sixty countries across the globe.
Iraq. Love it or leave it.
PanAm 103
The British
government recently warned Libya against celebrating the one-year
anniversary of Scotland's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Libyan
who's the only person ever convicted of the 1988 blowing up of PanAm
flight 103 over Scotland, which took the lives of 270 largely Americans
and British. Britain's Foreign Office has declared: "On this anniversary
we understand the continuing anguish that al-Megrahi's release has
caused his victims both in the U.K. and the U.S. He was convicted for
the worst act of terrorism in British history. Any celebration of
al-Megrahi's release would be tasteless, offensive and deeply
insensitive to the victims' families."
John Brennan,
President Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, stated that the United
States has "expressed our strong conviction" to Scottish officials that
Megrahi should not remain free. Brennan criticized what he termed the
"unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision" to allow Megrahi's
return to Libya on compassionate grounds on Aug. 20, 2009 because he had
cancer and was not expected to live more than about three months.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement saying that the
United States "continues to categorically disagree" with Scotland's
decision to release Megrahi a year ago. "As we have expressed repeatedly
to Scottish authorities, we maintain that Megrahi should serve out the
entirety of his sentence in prison in Scotland." 2
The US Senate has called for an investigation and family members of the
crash victims have demanded that Megrahi's medical records be released.
The Libyan's failure to die as promised has upset many people.
But how many of
our wonderful leaders are upset that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi spent eight
years in prison despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence
that he had anything to do with the bombing of flight 103? The Scottish
court that convicted him knew he was innocent. To understand that just
read their 2001 "Opinion of the Court", or read my analysis of it at
killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm.
As to the British
government being so upset about Libya celebrating Megrahi's release —
keeping in mind that it strongly appears that UK oil deals with Libya
played more of a role in his release than his medical condition did — we
should remember that in July 1988 an American Navy ship in the Persian
Gulf, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane, taking the
lives of 290 people; i.e., more than died from flight 103. And while the
Iranian people mourned their lost loved ones, the United States
celebrated by handing out medals and ribbons to the captain and crew of
the Vincennes. 3
The shootdown had another consequence: It inspired Iran to take
revenge, which it did in December of that year, financing the operation
to blow up PanAm 103 (carried out by the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine –- General Command).
Why do they hate us?
Passions are
flying all over the place concerning the proposed building of an Islamic
cultural center and mosque two blocks from 9/11 Ground Zero in New
York. Even people who are not particularly anti-Muslim think it would be
in bad taste, offensive. But implicit in all the hostility is the idea
that what happened on that fateful day in 2001 was a religious act,
fanatic Muslims acting as Muslims attacking infidels. However —
even if one accepts the official government version of 19 Muslims
hijacking four airliners — the question remains: Why did they choose the
targets they chose? If they wanted to kill lots of American infidels
why not fly the planes into the stands of packed football or baseball
stadiums in the midwest or the south? Certainly a lot less protected
than the Pentagon or the financial center of downtown Manhattan. Why did
they choose symbols of US military might and imperialism? Because it
was not a religious act, it was a political act. It was revenge for
decades of American political and military abuse in the Middle East. 4
It works the same all over the world. In the period of the 1950s to the
1980s in Latin America, in response to continuous hateful policies of
Washington, there were countless acts of terrorism against American
diplomatic and military targets as well as the offices of US
corporations; nothing to do with religion.
Somehow, American leaders have to learn that their country is not exempt from history, that their actions have consequences.
Afghanistan
In their need to
defend the US occupation of Afghanistan, many Americans have cited the
severe oppression of women in that desperate land and would have you
believe that the United States is the last great hope of those poor
ladies. However, in the 1980s the United States played an indispensable
role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan
government, one which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than
they'll ever have under the current government, more perhaps than ever
again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual on Afghanistan
discussing the policies of this government concerning women: "provisions
of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the
minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men"; "abolished
forced marriages"; "bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social
programs"; "extensive literacy programs, especially for women"; "putting
girls and boys in the same classroom"; "concerned with changing gender
roles and giving women a more active role in politics". 5
The overthrow of
this government paved the way for the coming to power of an Islamic
fundamentalist regime, followed by the awful Taliban. And why did the
United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Mainly
because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and
Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire
— "We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its
Vietnam War", said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National
Security Adviser. 6
The women of
Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to the status
of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some might argue,
is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.
Cuba
Why does the
mainstream media routinely refer to Cuba as a dictatorship? Why is it
not uncommon even for people on the left to do the same? I think that
many of the latter do so in the belief that to say otherwise runs the
risk of not being taken seriously, largely a vestige of the Cold War
when Communists all over the world were ridiculed for following Moscow's
party line. But what does Cuba do or lack that makes it a dictatorship?
No "free press"? Apart from the question of how free Western media is,
if that's to be the standard, what would happen if Cuba announced that
from now on anyone in the country could own any kind of media? How long
would it be before CIA money — secret and unlimited CIA money financing
all kinds of fronts in Cuba — would own or control most of the media
worth owning or controlling?
Is it "free
elections" that Cuba lacks? They regularly have elections at municipal,
regional and national levels. Money plays virtually no role in these
elections; neither does party politics, including the Communist Party,
since candidates run as individuals.7
Again, what is the standard by which Cuban elections are to be judged?
Most Americans, if they gave it any thought, might find it difficult to
even imagine what a free and democratic election, without great
concentrations of corporate money, would look like, or how it would
operate. Would Ralph Nader finally be able to get on all 50 state
ballots, take part in national television debates, and be able to match
the two monopoly parties in media advertising? If that were the case, I
think he'd probably win; and that's why it's not the case. Or perhaps
what Cuba lacks is our marvelous "electoral college" system, where the
presidential candidate with the most votes is not necessarily the
winner. If we really think this system is a good example of democracy
why don't we use it for local and state elections as well?
Is Cuba a
dictatorship because it arrests dissidents? Thousands of anti-war and
other protesters have been arrested in the United States in recent
years, as in every period in American history. Many have been beaten by
police and mistreated while incarcerated. And remember: The United
States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only
much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the
United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon
Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New
York and Washington on September 11, 2001. (This is documented by Cuba
in a 1999 suit against the United States detailing $181.1 billion in
compensation for victims: the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding or
disabling of 2,099 others. The Cuban suit has been in the hands of the
Counter-Terrorism Committee of the United Nations since 2001, a
committee made up of all 15 members of the Security Council, which of
course includes the United States, and which may account for the
inaction on the matter.)
Cuban dissidents
typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial
connections to American government agents. Would the US government
ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and engaging
in repeated meetings with known members of that organization? In recent
years the United States has arrested a great many people in the US and
abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot less
evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents' ties to the
United States. Virtually all of Cuba's "political prisoners" are such
dissidents. While others may call Cuba's security policies dictatorship,
I call it self-defense.8
The terrorist list
As casually and as
routinely as calling Cuba a dictatorship, the mainstream media drops
the line into news stories that "Hezbollah [or Hamas, or FARC, etc.] is
considered a terrorist group by the United States", stated as
matter-of-factly as saying that Hezbollah is located in Lebanon.
Inclusion on the list limits an organization in various ways, such as
its ability to raise funds and travel internationally. And inclusion is
scarcely more than a political decision made by the US government. Who
is put on or left off the State Department's terrorist list bears a
strong relation to how supportive of US or Israeli policies the group
is. The list, for example, never includes any of the anti-Castro Cuban
groups or individuals in Florida although those people have carried out
literally hundreds of terrorist acts over the past few decades, in Latin
America, in the US, and in Europe. As you read this, the two men
responsible for blowing up a Cuban airline in 1976, taking 73 lives,
Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada, are walking around free in the Florida
sunshine. Imagine that Osama bin Laden was walking freely around the
Streets of an Afghan or Pakistan city taking part in political
demonstrations as Posada does in Florida. Venezuela asked the United
States to extradite Posada five years ago and is still waiting.
Bosch and Posada
are but two of hundreds of Latin-American terrorists who've been given
haven in the United States over the years. 9
Various administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have also
provided close support of terrorists in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq,
Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, including those with
known connections to al Qaeda. Yet, in the grand offices of the State
Department sit learned men who list Cuba as a "state sponsor of
terrorism", along with Syria, Sudan and Iran. 10 That's the complete list.
Meanwhile, the
five Cubans sent to Miami to monitor the anti-Castro terrorists are in
their 12th year in US prisons. The Cuban government made the very
foolish error of turning over to the FBI the evidence of terrorist
activities gathered by the five Cubans. Instead of arresting the
terrorists, the FBI arrested the five Cubans (sic).
Steroids
"Hall of Shamer:
Clemens Indicted" — page one headline in large type about fabled
baseball pitcher Roger Clemens charged with lying to Congress about his
use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.
11
Of all the things that athletes put into their bodies to improve their
health, fitness and performance, why are steroids singled out? Doesn't
taking vitamin and mineral supplements give an athlete an advantage over
athletes who don't take them? Should these supplements be banned from
sport competition? Vitamin and mineral supplements are not necessarily
any more "natural" than steroids, which in fact are very important in
our body chemistry; among the steroids are the male and female sex
hormones. Moreover, why not punish those who follow a "healthy diet"
because of the advantage this may give them?
Notes
- Washington Post, August 19, 2010
- Associated Press, August 21, 2010
- Newsweek, July 13, 1992
- See chapter one of Blum's book Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
- US Department of the Army, Afghanistan, A Country Study (1986), pp.121, 128, 130, 223, 232
- See Brzezinski's Wikipedia entry
- See Anti-Empire Report of September 25, 2006, 3rd item, for more information about the Cuban election process
- For a detailed discussion of Cuba's alleged political prisoners see article 'Cuba and the Number of "Political Prisoners"', Huffington Post, August 24th 2010
- Rogue State, Chapter 9
- See State Department: www.state.gov/s/ct/c14151.htm
- The Examiner (Washington, DC), August 20, 2010
William Blum is the author of:
- Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
- Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
- West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
- Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org
