COMMENTARY
On Torture
The Payoffs of War
Geopolitics
Kickbacks
On Iran
Say it plainly: Bush has allowed for torture; he has encouraged it; he has abandoned all pretense to principles that place America at the forefront of nations that seek equity, respect and justice for all the world's peoples. He has done this knowing the consequences: America seen throughout the world as a rapacious and racist state and, more frighteningly for our own people, he has granted license to anyone, anywhere to treat Americans in like manner. thus undoing what this nation has fought for since the inauguration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention against Torture.
--William A. Cook
The power of the executive to cast a man in prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist
--Winston Churchill
If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us....We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well
--Justice Robert Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States, at the Nuremberg Nazi war criminal trials.
Power is not a means, it is an end....The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
--George Orwell ("1984"), 1948
The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And I'm a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don't do it. It's an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument. ... The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers
--Eric Haney, Command Sgt. Major, U.S. Army (ret.); founding member, Delta Force
I've been speaking about torture since I returned from Iraq, and people always bring up the ticking time bomb scenario, and they always bring up [the TV show] 24 as a reason why we need to legalize torture. The professionals -- professional interrogators don't want to torture, the military doesn't want to torture, the FBI doesn't want to torture. The CIA did studies, and they said that torture doesn't work and it produces false intelligence. Where is this idea coming from that we need to torture to combat terrorism? It's coming from the media, in my opinion--Tony Lagouranis, ex-Army Interrogator, 2007
To cure a vice, one must first avow its benefits. A vice is best defined as a good--a short-term or local good with long-term or wide-ranging ill effects.
THE publicly expressed motive for war with Iraq functions mainly as a tool to gain the necessary public support for an operation the real goals of which are far wider. The indifference of the US public to serious discussion of foreign or security affairs, and the negligence and ideological rigidity of the US media and policy community make searching debate on such issues extremely difficult, and allow such manipulation to succeed....To understand the Administration's motivation, it is necessary to appreciate the breathtaking scope of the domestic and global ambitions which the dominant neo-conservative nationalists hope to further by means of war, and which go way beyond their publicly stated goals
--Anatol Lieven, 2002
WHILE the Clinton-Gore administration emphasized multilateral cooperation, its push for corporate globalization - which ruthlessly transferred wealth from poor nations to rich ones - was essentially an extension of Reagan-Bush policies
--Richard Heinberg, 2003
WE have 50 per cent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 per cent of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality . . . we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization
--George Kennan, 1948 US State Department Policy Planning Study
THE principal method by which Rome established her political supremacy in her world,” wrote historian Arnold Toynbee in his America and the World Revolution (1962), “was by taking her weaker neighbors under her wing and protecting them against her and their stronger neighbors." The United States emerged from the Second World War with the most extensive system of military bases that the world had ever seen
--Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1997
WARS are typically fought over resources - land, forests, waterways, minerals, and (during the past century) oil. People do occasionally fight over ideologies and religions. But even then resource rivalries are seldom far from the surface. Thus attempts to explain geopolitics without reference to resources (a recent example is Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations) are either misguided or deliberately misleading ....The industrial world is now overwhelmingly dependent on oil for agriculture and transportation. Modern global geopolitics, because it implies worldwide transportation and communication systems rooted in fossil energy resources, is therefore a phenomenon unique to the industrial era
--Richard Heinberg, 2003
[N]O one denies that the dependence of the Western world on Arab oil is absolute; if their analysis were correct, it would mean that we are living at the mercy of the Arabs....That, however, is not the end of the story....[W]hile all members of OPEC are extortionists, some (the Arabs), are also blackmailers. Sooner or later, their demands on Israel will become excessive....The only feasible countervailing power to OPEC's control of oil is power itself—military power...The question is where. The goal is not just to seize some oil...but to break OPEC. Thus force must be used selectively to occupy large and concentrated oil reserves, which can be produced rapidly in order to end the artificial scarcity of oil and thus cut the price
--"Miles Ignotus" (attributed to Kissinger), 1974
POWELL and his staff believed that a weakened Soviet Union would result in shifting alliances and regional conflict. The United States....would have to remain the preeminent military power in order to ensure the peace and shape the emerging order in accordance with American interests....To do this, the United States would have to project a military "forward presence" around the world....Powell started promoting a Zen-like new rationale for his Base Force approach. With the Soviets rapidly becoming irrelevant, Powell argued, the United States could no longer assess its military needs on the basis of known threats. Instead, the Pentagon should focus on maintaining the ability to address a wide variety of new and unknown challenges. This shift from a "threat based" assessment of military requirements to a "capability based" assessment would become a key theme of the Plan. The United States would move from countering Soviet attempts at dominance to ensuring its own dominance
--David Armstrong, 2002 (on Powell, circa 1990)
OUR first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia
--Paul Wolfowitz, draft Defense Planning Guidance, 1992
THE more reliably foreseeable long-term trends are not favorable. Resource depletion and population pressure have always been predictors of war. China, with a population of 1.2 billion, will soon be the world's largest consumer of resources. In times of plenty, this nation can be viewed as immense opening market...But as oil - the basis for the entire industrial system - grows scarcer and its reserves more hotly disputed, China cannot be expected to remain docile....Even in the best case, petroleum resources are limited and, as they gradually run out over the next few decades, will be unable to support the further industrialization of China or the maintenance of industrial infrastructure in Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea, or the US.
--Richard Heinberg, 2003
BELIEF in the spread of democracy through American power isn't usually consciously insincere. On the contrary, it is inseparable from American national messianism and the wider 'American creed'. However, this same messianism has also proved immensely useful in destroying or crippling rivals of the United States, the Soviet Union being the outstanding example. The planned war against Iraq is not after all intended only to remove Saddam Hussein, but to destroy the structure of the Sunni-dominated Arab nationalist Iraqi state as it has existed since that country's inception. The 'democracy' which replaces it will presumably resemble that of Afghanistan - a ramshackle coalition of ethnic groups and warlords, utterly dependent on US military power and utterly subservient to US (and Israeli) wishes
--Anatol Lieven, 2002
CURRENTLY, if any country wishes to obtain dollars with which to buy oil, it can do so only by selling its goods or resources to the US, taking out a loan from a US bank (or the World Bank - functionally the same thing), or trading its currency on the open market and thus devaluing it. The US is in effect importing goods and services virtually for free, its massive trade deficit representing a huge interest-free loan from the rest of the world. If the dollar were to cease being the world's reserve currency, all of that would change overnight....
In November 2000, Iraq announced that it would cease to accept dollars for its oil, and would accept instead only euros.....Other oil-exporting nations, including Iran and Venezuela, have stated that they are contemplating a similar move. [Iran's Euro-based bourse begins spring 2006]. If OPEC as a whole were to switch from dollars to euros, the consequences to the US economy would be catastrophic. Investment money would flee the country, real estate values would plummet, and Americans would shortly find themselves living in Third-World conditions
--Richard Heinberg, 2003 [For more on the "petrodollar," "fiat currency" debate, see e.g. William Engdahl, 2006]
IN LIGHT OF the fact that by now almost all of the factions of the ruling circles, including the White House and the neoconservative war-mongerers, acknowledge the failure of the Iraq war, why, then, do they balk at the idea of pulling the troops out of that country?....Perhaps the shortest path to a relatively satisfactory answer would be to follow the money....A time-honored proverb maintains that wars abroad are often continuations of wars at home. Accordingly, recent US wars abroad seem to be largely reflections of domestic fights over national resources, or public finance: opponents of social spending are using the escalating Pentagon budget (in combination with drastic tax cuts for the wealthy) as a cynical and roundabout way of redistributing national income in favor of the wealthy
--Smale Hossein-Zadeh
IF HE THAT shared the danger enjoyed the profit, and, after bleeding in the battle, grew rich by the victory, he might show his gains without envy. But, at the conclusion of a ten years' war, how are we recompensed for the death of multitudes, and the expense of millions, but by contemplating the sudden glories of paymasters and agents, contractors and commissaries, whose equipages shine like meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations! These are the men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich, as their country is impoverished; they rejoice, when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh, from their desks, at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest
--Samuel Johnson
The Role of Ahmadinejad
AHMADINEJAD (pronunciation) is quoted as saying Iran will wipe Israel off the map.
WHAT did Ahmadinejad literally say? To quote his exact words in farsi with a word by word translation: "Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from)."
THE CORRECT English translation thus should be: The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time
--Mohammad Mossadegh.
(Cf. Kruschev's infamous "We will bury you.")
NOTE THAT under the Iranian Constitution, Ahmadinejad is basically the mayor of Tehran. The Iranian Constitution grants the President of Iran little more power than any big-city U.S. mayor. The Revolutionary Guard and its Al Quds Brigade are under the direct command of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who also, under the Iranian Constitution, has sole power to detirminine their deployment and sole power to declare war. Focusing upon Ahmadinejad is thus a major mistake. He has no power. He might rattle about "destroying Israel", but he has no army, and despite the fact that he's a former leader of the Al Quds Brigade, they do not follow his orders, they follow Ayatollah Kahmenei's orders
--Blogger [I'll take a more authoritative source, though I've read this often.]
ANY WILD statement that [Ahmadinejad] comes out with immediately gets circulated in headlines and mistranslated. They love him. But anybody who knows anything about Iran, presumably the editorial offices, knows that he doesn't have anything to do with foreign policy. Foreign policy is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Khamenei. But they don't report his statements, particularly when his statements are pretty conciliatory. For example, they love when Ahmadinejad says that Israel shouldn't exist, but they don't like it when Khamenei right afterwards says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine. As far as I'm aware, it never got reported. Actually you could find Khamenei's more conciliatory positions in the Financial Times, but not here. And it's repeated by Iranian diplomats but that's no good. The Arab League proposal calls for normalization of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of the two-state settlement which has been blocked by the United States and Israel for thirty years. And that's not a good story, so it's either not mentioned or it's hidden somewhere
--Noam Chomsky, 2007
Access vs. Control of Oil
THE IRANIAN issue I don't think has much to do with nuclear weapons frankly. Nobody is saying Iran should have nuclear weapons nor should anybody else. But the point in the Middle East, as distinct from North Korea, is that this is center of the world's energy resources. Originally the British and secondarily the French had dominated it, but after the Second World War, it's been a U.S. preserve. That's been an axiom of U.S. foreign policy, that it must control Middle East energy resources. It is not a matter of access as people often say. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. In fact if the United States used no Middle East oil, it'd have the same policies. If we went on solar energy tomorrow, it'd keep the same policies. Just look at the internal record, or the logic of it, the issue has always been control. Control is the source of strategic power--Noam Chomsky, 2007
CHINA has been there for 3,000 years, has contempt for the barbarians, is overcoming a century of domination, and simply moves on its own. It does not get intimidated when Uncle Sam shakes his fist. That's scary. In particular, it's dangerous in the case of the Middle East. China is the center of the Asian energy security grid, which includes the Central Asian states and Russia. India is also hovering around the edge, South Korea is involved, and Iran is an associate member of some kind. If the Middle East oil resources around the Gulf, which are the main ones in the world, if they link up to the Asian grid, the United States is really a second-rate power. A lot is at stake in not withdrawing from Iraq--Noam Chomsky, 2007
IF THE UNITED STATES continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large....
A MYTHICAL historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement in World War II.
THIS SIMPLISTIC and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine.
IN CONTRAST, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran -- though gaining in regional influence -- is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy
--
Zbigniew Brzezinski, 2007
"EVERYTHING the advocates of war said would happen hasn't happened," says the president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, an influential conservative who backed the Iraq invasion. "And all the things the critics said would happen have happened. [The president's neoconservative advisers] are effectively saying, 'Invade Iran. Then everyone will see how smart we are.' But after you've lost x number of times at the roulette wheel, do you double-down?"
--
Craig Unger, 2007
MANY Israeli strategists, including Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet, now regard Bush's war in Iraq as a highly destabilizing disaster for the entire region and a major boon to Iran's power, and they regret having endorsed it. A war with Iran would be far more dangerous. Worse yet, efforts to demonize Iran have failed. Only 36 percent of the Jewish population of Israel polled last month thought an Iranian nuclear attack the "biggest threat" to Israel [cf. the "Samson Option"].
SERIOUS Israeli strategists overwhelmingly believe, to cite Reuven Pedatzur in Ha'aretz last November, that "mutual assured deterrence, can be forged, with a high degree of success, between Israel and Iran." Israeli strategic thinking is highly realistic. Early this February a study released at a conference by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University predicted that Iran would behave rationally with nuclear weapons and "that the elimination of Israel is not considered to be an essential national interest" for it. Iran "will act logically, evaluating the price and risks involved." A preemptive attack on Iran nuclear research sites would "be a strategic mistake," Pedatzur warned the conference, and the use of tactical nuclear weapons against them sheer folly. "Our best option is open nuclear deterrence."
--Gabriel Kolko, 2007
Khuzestan (map)
WHEN it comes to Iran, the widespread belief is that the United States cannot possibly occupy the country - it's the size of France, Britain, Italy and Spain combined - and thus exercise the avowed White House goal of regime change.
IN THE overdrive run-up to the attack on Iraq in 2003, the ultimate neo-conservative mantra was "Real men go to Khuzestan."
THE ultimate prize is Khuzestan province, where 90% of Iran's oil is located and which provides the country with 80% of its funds from oil production--Pepe Escobar, 2006
Bush has no intention of occupying Iran. Rather, the goal is to destroy major weapons-sites, destabilize the regime, and occupy a sliver of land on the Iraqi border that contains 90% of Iran's oil wealth....The Bush administration's attention has shifted to a small province in southwestern Iran that is unknown to most Americans.... If the Bush administration can sweep into the region (under the pretext disarming Iran's nuclear weapons programs) and put Iran's prodigious oil wealth under US control, the dream of monopolizing Middle East oil will have been achieved--Mike Whitney, 2006
