[Peace-discuss] Netanyahu insulted Sen. Durbin. What will Durbin do about it?

[C. G. Estabrook]

Support for Durbin and Obama is support for war mongers as John Pilger describes them:

<http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/27/why-the-rise-of-fascism-is-again-the-issue/>

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...Following Nato’s attack [on Libya] under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu, “confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency”.

The “humanitarian war” against Libya drew on a model close to western liberal hearts, especially in the media. In 1999, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sent Nato to bomb Serbia, because, they lied, the Serbs were committing “genocide” against ethnic Albanians in the secessionist province of Kosovo. David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes [sic], claimed that as many as “225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59″ might have been murdered. Both Clinton and Blair evoked the Holocaust and “the spirit of the Second World War”. The West’s heroic allies were the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), whose criminal record was set aside...

Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America’s modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as “sanctions”. The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed.

“Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over.” These were opening words of Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address. In fact, some 10,000 troops and 20,000 military contractors (mercenaries) remain in Afghanistan on indefinite assignment.  “The longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion,” said Obama. In fact, more civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2014 than in any year since the UN took records.  The majority have been killed — civilians and soldiers — during Obama’s time as president.

The tragedy of Afghanistan rivals the epic crime in Indochina.  In his lauded and much quoted book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the godfather of US policies from Afghanistan to the present day, writes that if America is to control Eurasia and dominate the world, it cannot sustain a popular democracy, because “the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion . . . Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilisation.”  He is right. As WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have revealed, a surveillance and police state is usurping democracy. In 1976, Brzezinski, then President Carter’s National Security Advisor, demonstrated his point by dealing a death blow to Afghanistan’s first and only democracy. Who knows this vital history?

In the 1960s, a popular revolution swept Afghanistan, the poorest country on earth, eventually overthrowing the vestiges of the aristocratic regime in 1978. The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) formed a government and declared a reform programme that included the abolition of feudalism, freedom for all religions, equal rights for women and social justice for the ethnic minorities. More than 13,000 political prisoners were freed and police files publicly burned.

The new government introduced free medical care for the poorest; peonage was abolished, a mass literacy programme was launched. For women, the gains were unheard of. By the late 1980s, half the university students were women, and women made up almost half of Afghanistan’s doctors, a third of civil servants and the majority of teachers. “Every girl,” recalled Saira Noorani, a female surgeon, “could go to high school and university. We could go where we wanted and wear what we liked. We used to go to cafes and the cinema to see the latest Indian film on a Friday and listen to the latest music. It all started to go wrong when the mujaheddin started winning. They used to kill teachers and burn schools. We were terrified. It was funny and sad to think these were the people the West supported.”

The PDPA government was backed by the Soviet Union, even though, as former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance later admitted, “there was no evidence of any Soviet complicity [in the revolution]“. Alarmed by the growing confidence of liberation movements throughout the world, Brzezinski decided that if Afghanistan was to succeed under the PDPA, its independence and progress would offer the “threat of a promising example”.

On July 3, 1979, the White House secretly authorized support for tribal “fundamentalist” groups known as the mujaheddin, a program that grew to over $500 million a year in U.S. arms and other assistance. The aim was the overthrow of Afghanistan’s first secular, reformist government. In August 1979, the US embassy in Kabul reported that “the United States’ larger interests … would be served by the demise of [the PDPA government], *despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan*.” The italics are mine...

[Full article at <http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/27/why-the-rise-of-fascism-is-again-the-issue/>.]

--CGE


On Feb 26, 2015, at 10:42 PM, Morton K. Brussel via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> I have neither the time nor energy to intrude much on this ruckus, but I must say that Carl has the upper hand in this argument. Obama is a war president, one responsible for innumerable deaths, equally despicable to Israel/Netanyahu policies.  Moreover, Obama has supported Israeli actions all up and down the line relative to the Palestinians, including the recent massacre of the people of Gaza. He has also pushed this nuclear charade with Iran, although not quite yet ready to attack that country militarily if they don’t surrender. Durbin has backed these criminal policies completely. Now, Durbin  is not quite sure that he wants to hear Netanyahu in Congress. I suppose that is better than welcoming him, and any conflict between the U.S. govt. and Israel is to be welcomed. 
> 
> Yes, it might be worthwhile to boycott N’s speech, but that is really a marginal matter compared to the drift towards hostilities in Ukraine and against Russia, the U.S. support of Israeli actions, and generally U.S. imperial actions around the world.
> 
> —mkb
> 
> 
>> On Feb 26, 2015, at 2:30 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>> 
>> You could write the same ultra-left drivel about Tim Kaine and Jan Schakowsky as you could about Dick Durbin. 
>> 
>> But Tim Kaine did this:
>> 
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/02/25/tim-kaine-the-latest-hill-democrat-to-announce-plans-to-skip-netanyahus-speech/
>> 
>> And Jan Schakowsky did this:
>> 
>> http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/02/25/schakowsky-a-jew-decides-to-skip-netanyahus-speech-to-congress/
>> 
>> Why do you always try to change the subject from activism to your ultra-left drivel, Carl? Why do you hate activism so much?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Robert Naiman
>> Policy Director
>> Just Foreign Policy
>> www.justforeignpolicy.org
>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
>> (202) 448-2898 x1
>> 
>> On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 1:49 PM, C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com> wrote:
>> Durbin, a fervent supporter of Obama's world-wide war plans - including but by no means limited to his drone program, "the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times" - should be insulted more seriously and more often. 
>> 
>> Obama's policy is to mislead the only enemy of his war plans whom he really fears, the US public. Therefore Netanyahu should be encouraged to give his speech: 
>> <http://mondoweiss.net/2015/02/netanyahu-cancel-speech>.
>> 
>> Durbin should be told that Obama's war-making in E. Europe and SW Asia is criminal madness, for which both should be impeached. The Vietnam war resulted in two presidents being driven from office. The US public should repeat the action. Obama at least is afraid of that.
>> 
>> --CGE
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 26, 2015, at 1:12 PM, Robert Naiman <noreply at list.moveon.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> Dear C. G. Estabrook,   
>>> 
>>> Have you heard? In a shocking insult towards our Democratic Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected an invitation from Senator Durbin and California Senator Dianne Feinstein to meet with Senate Democrats when he is in Washington next week. [1].   
>>> 
>>> At this writing, The Hill still lists Durbin as “on the fence” on whether he will participate in Netanyahu’s planned tirade to Congress against President Obama on Tuesday. [2]    
>>> 
>>> Senator Durbin needs to hear more from people in Illinois that we don’t want him to support Netanyahu’s tirade attacking President Obama by attending it. We can still move him to do the right thing. Just yesterday, Democratic Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky [3]  and Democratic Virginia Senator Tim Kaine [4] announced that they will not attend the speech...  
>>> 

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