[Peace-discuss] Bill Blum's The Anti-Empire Report

[Brussel Morton K.]

Long, as usual, and I apologize for copying it, but I find it   
invariably stimulating, thought provoking.
--mkb



March 4th, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org
Being serious about torture. Or not.

In Cambodia they're once again endeavoring to hold trials to bring  
some former senior Khmer Rouge officials to justice for their 1975-79  
war crimes and crimes against humanity. The current defendant in a  
United Nations-organized trial, Kaing Guek Eav, who was the head of a  
Khmer Rouge torture center, has confessed to atrocities, but insists  
he was acting under orders.1 As we all know, this is the defense that  
the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected for the Nazi defendants. Everyone  
knows that, right? No one places any weight on such a defense any  
longer, right? We make jokes about Nazis declaring: "I was only  
following orders!" ("Ich habe nur den Befehlen gehorcht!") Except that  
both the Bush and Obama administrations have spoken in favor of it.  
Here's the new head of the CIA, Leon Panetta: "What I have expressed  
as a concern, as has the president, is that those who operated under  
the rules that were provided by the Attorney General in the  
interpretation of the law [concerning torture] and followed those  
rules ought not to be penalized. And ... I would not support,  
obviously, an investigation or a prosecution of those individuals. I  
think they did their job."2 Operating under the rules ... doing their  
job ... are of course the same as following orders.

The UN Convention Against Torture (first adopted in 1984), which has  
been ratified by the United States, says quite clearly, "An order from  
a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a  
justification of torture." The Torture Convention enacts a prohibition  
against torture that is a cornerstone of international law and a  
principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery and genocide.

Of course, those giving the orders are no less guilty. On the very day  
of Obama's inauguration, the United Nation's special torture  
rapporteur invoked the Convention in calling on the United States to  
pursue former president George W. Bush and defense secretary Donald  
Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.3

On several occasions, President Obama has indicated his reluctance to  
pursue war crimes charges against Bush officials, by expressing a view  
such as: “I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other  
hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to  
looking backwards.” This is the same excuse Cambodian Prime Minister  
Hun Sen has given for not punishing Khmer Rouge leaders. In December  
1998 he asserted: "We should dig a hole and bury the past and look  
ahead to the 21st century with a clean slate."4 Hun Sen has been in  
power all the years since then, and no Khmer Rouge leader has been  
convicted for their role in the historic mass murder.

And by not investigating Bush officials, Obama is indeed saying that  
they're above the law. Like the Khmer Rouge officials have been.  
Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of  
the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials  
is necessary to set future anti-torture policy. "The only way to  
prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were  
responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don't see  
how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately  
involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead  
lives where they are not held accountable."5

One reason for the non-prosecution may be that serious trials of the  
many Bush officials who contributed to the torture policies might  
reveal the various forms of Democratic Party non-opposition and  
collaboration.

It should also be noted that the United States supported Pol Pot (who  
died in April 1998) and the Khmer Rouge for several years after they  
were ousted from power by the Vietnamese in 1979. This support began  
under Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew  
Brzezinski, and continued under Ronald Reagan.6 A lingering bitterness  
by American cold warriors toward Vietnam, the small nation which  
monumental US power had not been able to defeat, and its perceived  
closeness to the Soviet Union, appears to be the only explanation for  
this policy. Humiliation runs deep when you're a superpower.

Neither should it be forgotten in this complex cautionary tale that  
the Khmer Rouge in all likelihood would never have come to power, nor  
even made a serious attempt to do so, if not for the massive American  
"carpet bombing" of Cambodia in 1969-70 and the US-supported overthrow  
of Prince Sihanouk in 1970 and his replacement by a man closely tied  
to the United States.7 Thank you Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.  
Well done, lads.

By the way, if you're not already turned off by many of Obama's  
appointments, listen to how James Jones opened his talk at the Munich  
Conference on Security Policy on February 8: "Thank you for that  
wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As  
the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take  
my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger."8

Lastly, Spain's High Court recently announced it would launch a war  
crimes investigation into an Israeli ex-defense minister and six other  
top security officials for their role in a 2002 attack that killed a  
Hamas commander and 14 civilians in Gaza.9 Spain has for some time  
been the world's leading practitioner of "universal jurisdiction" for  
human-rights violations, such as their indictment of Chilean dictator  
Augusto Pinochet a decade ago. The Israeli case involved the dropping  
of a bomb on the home of the Hamas leader; most of those killed were  
children. The United States does this very same thing every other day  
in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Given the refusal of American presidents  
to invoke even their "national jurisdiction" over American officials- 
cum-war criminals, we can only hope that someone reminds the Spanish  
authorities of a few names, names like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell,  
Rice, Feith, Perle, Yoo, and a few others with a piece missing, a  
piece that's shaped like a conscience. There isn't even a need to rely  
on international law alone, for there's an American law against war  
crimes, passed by a Republican-dominated Congress in 1996.10

The noted Israeli columnist, Uri Avnery, writing about the Israeli  
case, tried to capture the spirit of Israeli society that produces  
such war criminals and war crimes. He observed: "This system  
indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally  
ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history nothing but an  
endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen  
People, indifferent to others, a religion without compassion for  
anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed genocide  
described in the Biblical book of Joshua."11

It would take very little substitution to apply this statement to the  
United States — like "American" for "Jewish" and "American  
exceptionalism" for "a Chosen People".
Hell hath no fury like an imperialist scorned

Hugo Chávez's greatest sin is that he has shown disrespect for the  
American Empire. Or as they would say in America's inner cities —  
He's dissed the Man. Such behavior of course cannot go unpunished lest  
it give other national leaders the wrong idea. Over the years, the  
United States has gotten along just fine with brutal dictators, mass  
murderers, torturers, and leaders who did nothing to relieve the  
poverty of their population — Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, the Greek  
Junta, Ferdinand Marcos, Suharto, Duvalier, Mobutu, the Brazil Junta,  
Somoza, Saddam Hussein, South African apartheid leaders, Portuguese  
fascists, etc., etc., terrible guys all, all seriously supported by  
Washington at one time or another; for none made it a regular habit,  
if ever, to diss the Man.

The latest evidence, we are told, that Hugo Chávez is a dictator and a  
threat to life as we know it is that he pushed for and got a  
constitutional amendment to remove term limits from the presidency.  
The American media and the opposition in Venezuela often make it sound  
as if Chávez is going to be guaranteed office for life, whereas he of  
course will have to be elected each time. Neither are we reminded that  
it's not unusual for a nation to not have a term limit for its highest  
office. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, if not all of Europe  
and much of the rest of the world, do not have such a limit. The  
United States did not have a term limit on the office of the president  
during the nation's first 162 years, until the ratification of the  
22nd Amendment in 1951. Were all American presidents prior to that  
time dictators?

In 2005, when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe succeeded in getting  
term limits lifted, the US mainstream media took scant notice.  
President Bush subsequently honored Uribe with the American  
Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in the period leading up to the  
February 15 referendum in Venezuela, the American media were competing  
with each other over who could paint Chávez and the Venezuelan  
constitutional process in the most critical and ominous terms. Typical  
was an op-ed in the Washington Post the day before the vote, which was  
headlined: "Closing in on Hugo Chávez". Its opening sentence read:  
"The beginning of the end is setting in for Hugo Chávez."12

For several years now, the campaign to malign Chávez has at times  
included issues of Israel and anti-Semitism. An isolated vandalism of  
a Caracas synagogue on January 30th of this year fed into this  
campaign. Synagogues are of course vandalized occasionally in the  
United States and many European countries, but no one ascribes this to  
a government policy driven by anti-semitism. With Chávez they do. In  
the American media, the lead up to the Venezuelan vote was never far  
removed from the alleged "Jewish" issue.

"Despite the government’s efforts to put the [synagogue] controversy  
to rest," the New York Times wrote a few days before the referendum  
vote, "a sense of dread still lingers among Venezuela’s 12,000 to  
14,000 Jews."13

A day earlier, a Washington Post editorial was entitled: "Mr. Chávez  
vs. the Jews - With George W. Bush gone, Venezuela's strongman has  
found new enemies."14 Shortly before, a Post headline had informed us:  
"Jews in S. America Increasingly Uneasy - Government and Media Seen  
Fostering Anti-Semitism in Venezuela, Elsewhere"15

So commonplace has the Chávez-Jewish association become that a leading  
US progressive organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) in  
Washington, DC, recently distributed an article that reads more like  
the handiwork of a conservative group than a progressive one. I was  
prompted to write to them as follows:

     Dear People,

     I'm very sorry to say that I found your Venezuelan commentary by  
Larry Birns and David Rosenblum Felson to be remarkably lacking. The  
authors seem unable, or unwilling, to distinguish between being  
against Israeli policies from anti-semitism. It's kind of late in the  
day for them to not have comprehended the difference. They are forced  
to fall back on a State Department statement to make their case. Is  
that not enough said?

     They condemn Chávez likening Israel’s occupation of Gaza to the  
Holocaust. But what if it's an apt comparison? They don't delve into  
this question at all.

     They also condemn the use of the word "Zionism", saying that "in  
9 times out of 10 involving the use of this word in fact smacks of  
anti-Semitism." Really? Can they give a precise explanation of how one  
distinguishes between an anti-Semitic use of the word and a non-anti- 
semitic use of it? That would be interesting.

     The authors write that Venezuela's "anti-Israeli initiative ...  
revealingly transcends the intensity of almost every Arabic nation or  
normal adversary of Israel." Really. Since when are the totally  
gutless, dictator Arab nations the standard bearer for progressives?  
The ideal we should emulate. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are  
almost never seriously and harshly critical of Israeli policies toward  
the Palestinians. Therefore, Venezuela shouldn't be?

     The authors state: "In a Christmas Eve address to the nation,  
Chávez charged that, 'Some minorities, descendants of the same ones  
who crucified Christ ... took all the world’s wealth for themselves'.  
Here, Chávez was not talking so much about Robin Hood, but rather  
unquestionably dipping into the lore of anti-Semitism." Well, here's  
the full quote: "The world has enough for all, but it turns out that  
some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ,  
descendants of the same ones who threw Bolivar out of here and also  
crucified him in their own way at Santa Marta there in Colombia ..."  
Hmm, were the Jews so active in South America?

The ellipsis after the word "Christ" indicates that the authors  
consciously and purposely omitted the words that would have given the  
lie to their premise. Truly astonishing.

After Chávez won the term-limits referendum with about 55% of the  
vote, a State Department spokesperson stated: "For the most part this  
was a process that was fully consistent with democratic process."  
Various individuals and websites on the left have responded to this as  
an encouraging sign that the Obama administration is embarking on a  
new Venezuelan policy. At the risk of sounding like a knee-reflex  
cynic, I think this attitude is at best premature, at worst rather  
naive. It's easy for a State Department a level-or-so above the  
Bushies, i.e., semi-civilized, to make such a statement. A little more  
difficult would be accepting as normal and unthreatening Venezuela  
having good relations with countries like Cuba, Iran and Russia and  
not blocking Venezuela from the UN Security Council. Even more  
significant would be the United States ending its funding of groups in  
Venezuela determined to subvert and/or overthrow Chávez.
You've got to be carefully taught

I've been playing around with a new book for awhile. I don't know if  
I'll find the time to actually complete it, but if I do it'll be  
called something like "Myths of U.S. foreign policy: How Americans  
keep getting fooled into support". The leading myth of all, the one  
which entraps more Americans than any other, is the belief that the  
United States, in its foreign policy, means well. American leaders may  
make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the  
odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their  
intentions are honorable, if not divinely inspired. Of that most  
Americans are certain. And as long as a person clings to that belief,  
it's rather unlikely that s/he will become seriously doubtful and  
critical of the official stories.

It takes a lot of repetition while an American is growing up to  
inculcate this message into their young consciousness, and lots more  
repetition later on. Think of some of the lines from the song about  
racism from the Broadway classic show, "South Pacific" — "You've got  
to be taught" ...

     You've got to be taught
     from year to year.
     It's got to be drummed
     in your dear little ear.
     You've got to be taught
     before it's too late.
     Before you are 6 or 7 or 8.
     To hate all the people
     your relatives hate.
     You've got to be carefully taught.

The education of an American true-believer is ongoing, continuous. All  
forms of media, all the time. Here is Michael Mullen, chairman of the  
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military officer in the United  
States, writing in the Washington Post recently:

     "We in the U.S. military are likewise held to a high standard.  
Like the early Romans, we are expected to do the right thing, and when  
we don't, to make it right again. We have learned, after seven years  
of war, that trust is the coin of the realm — that building it takes  
time, losing it takes mere seconds, and maintaining it may be our most  
important and most difficult objective. That's why images of prisoner  
maltreatment at Abu Ghraib still serve as recruiting tools for al- 
Qaeda. And it's why each civilian casualty for which we are even  
remotely responsible sets back our efforts to gain the confidence of  
the Afghan people months, if not years. It doesn't matter how hard we  
try to avoid hurting the innocent, and we do try very hard. It doesn't  
matter how proportional the force we deploy, how precisely we strike.  
It doesn't even matter if the enemy hides behind civilians. What  
matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation  
that we could have avoided it. In the end, all that matters is that,  
despite our best efforts, sometimes we take the very lives we are  
trying to protect. ... Lose the people's trust, and we lose the  
war. ... I see this sort of trust being fostered by our troops all  
over the world. They are building schools, roads, wells, hospitals and  
power stations. They work every day to build the sort of  
infrastructure that enables local governments to stand on their own.  
But mostly, even when they are going after the enemy, they are  
building friendships. They are building trust. And they are doing it  
in superb fashion."16

How many young servicemembers have heard such a talk from Mullen or  
other officers? How many of them have not been impressed, even choked  
up? How many Americans reading or hearing such stirring words have not  
had a lifetime of reinforcement reinforced once again? How many could  
even imagine that Admiral Mullen is spouting a bunch of crap? The  
great majority of Americans will swallow it. When Mullen declares:  
"What matters are the death and destruction that result and the  
expectation that we could have avoided it", he's implying that there  
was no way to avoid it. But of course it could have been easily  
avoided by not dropping bombs on the Afghan people.

You tell the true-believers that the truth is virtually the exact  
opposite of what Mullen has said and they look at you like you just  
got off the Number 36 bus from Mars. Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia  
for 78 days and nights in a row. His military and political policies  
destroyed one of the most progressive countries in Europe. And he  
called it "humanitarian intervention". It's still regarded by almost  
all Americans, including many, if not most, "progressives", as just  
that.

Now why is that? Are all these people just ignorant? I think a better  
answer is that they have certain preconceptions; consciously or  
unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States  
and its foreign policy, most prominent amongst which is the belief  
that the US means well. And if you don't deal with this basic belief  
you'll be talking to a stone wall.
Notes

    1. Associated Press, August 1, 2007 ↩
    2. Press conference, February 25, 2009, transcript by Federal News  
Service ↩
    3. Agence France Presse (AFP), January 20, 2009 ↩
    4. New York Times, December 29, 1998 ↩
    5. Associated Press, November 17, 2008 ↩
    6. See William Blum, "Rogue State", chapter 10 ("Supporting Pol  
Pot") ↩
    7. See William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 20 ("Cambodia,  
1955-1973") ↩
    8. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/jones_munich_conference.html 
  ↩
    9. Reuters news agency, January 30, 2009 ↩
   10. The War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441) ↩
   11. Haaretz, leading Israeli newspaper, January 30, 2009 ↩
   12. Washington Post, February 14, 2009, column by Edward Schumacher- 
Matos ↩
   13. New York Times, February 13, 2009 ↩
   14. Washington Post, February 12, 2009 ↩
   15. Washington Post, February 8, 2009 ↩
   16. Washington Post, February 15, 2009, p. B7 ↩

–

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