[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] Awareness of U.S. war-making, 2015.39

[Morton K. Brussel]

McCoy proposed a scenario which I could fear if I really gave credence to it. I was surprised to find it recommended by @Tom Dispatch.  I agree largely with Carl’s characterization; "This account will be defended as an 'objective' account in the neorealist tradition of 'international relations,' but - in addition to ethical complacency - it shows a remarkable overestimation of the success of its heroes. Strangely enough, …” 

I especially admired the epithet "ethical complacency”.

It seemed to me more what imperialist realists want to achieve rather than what could be achieved, as if there were no other factors/actors at work in the international arena. It seemed somewhat smug. I didn’t know whether it was intended to be ironic. 

Should I read it again?


> On Sep 27, 2015, at 9:39 AM, 'C. G. Estabrook' carl at newsfromneptune.com [sf-core] <sf-core-noreply at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> 
> AWARENESS of U.S. War-Making, for the 39th week of 2015
> ============================================
> from the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana
> 
> (roughly 300 words/day)
> 
> ~ ALFRED W. MCCOY, a liberal historian (author of the justly acclaimed THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTHEAST ASIA [1972], about the CIA’s drug-dealing around the world) has written a problematic piece entitled “Barack Obama Is a Foreign Policy Grandmaster” that has appeared simultaneously in The Nation (a liberal publication) and The American Conservative, as well as the Huffington Post and elsewhere. McCoy argues that “The president has executed a subtle geopolitical strategy with the potential to extend American empire well into the 21st century.” This account will be defended as an 'objective' account in the neorealist tradition of 'international relations,' but - in addition to ethical complacency - it shows a remarkable overestimation of the success of its heroes. Strangely enough, in addition to Obama, McCoy’s heroes are Zbigniew Brzezinski (who invented modern jihadism) and Elihu Root (a corporation lawyer who as Secretary of War presided over the brutal US war in the Philippines, and - when another lying Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, tricked an antiwar America into World War I - said critics of Wilson’s war should be shot for treason). To call Obama a 'foreign policy grandmaster' is a fulsome way to acknowledge that his foreign policy is a continuation and indeed an intensification of more than a century of imperial crimes by the US executive.
> 
> ~ PERRY ANDERSON has offered a far better account in the first part of a two-part interview with a pompous journalist from Salon, where he assesses Carter and Brzezinski:
> "[President Carter] appointed Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser, on whom he relied throughout his presidency. Brzezinski was in many ways brighter than Kissinger, in later years an overrated showman not particularly interesting as a thinker. Brzezinski’s cold, brittle mind was a good deal sharper. He was also as much, if not more, of a hawk than Kissinger had been. 
> "His masterstroke was funding religious and tribal resistance to the Communist regime in Afghanistan well before any Soviet troops were there, with the clear-cut and entirely successful aim of making the country the Vietnam of the USSR. There followed the Carter Doctrine, which put the U.S. into the military emplacements in the Gulf, where it remains today, while the president was toasting the Shah as a close personal friend and pillar of human rights. 
> "To top it off, with Brzezinski at his elbow again, Carter patronized and protected Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, keeping them at the U.N. as the legitimate government of Cambodia, as part of the deal with China for its attack on Vietnam.
> "In the Middle East, the peace treaty between Sadat and Begin is generally credited to Carter. Its precondition, however, was the double rescue of Israel and of Egypt by Nixon and Kissinger in the 1973 war, which put both countries into the palm of the American hand. What was the regional upshot? Sadat ditched the Palestinians and became a well-funded U.S. client, Begin secured an ally on Israel’s southern flank and the Egyptians got the tyranny of Sadat, Mubarak and now Sisi for the next 40 years. Yet to this day Carter gushes over Sadat, a torturer whose memory is loathed by his people, as a wonderful human being. 
> "What is nevertheless true is that with all his weaknesses—and worse—Carter was a contradictory figure, who, once he was ousted from office, behaved more decently than any other ex-president in recent memory. Today, he’s almost a pariah because of what he says on Israel. One can respect him for that."
> 
> ~ MAX BLUMENTHAL has published THE 51 DAY WAR; RUIN AND RESISTANCE IN GAZA. Author of the important 2013 account, GOLIATH: LIFE AND LOATHING IN GREATER ISRAEL, Blumenthal now reports on Israel’s assault on Gaza in July 2014. His book can be compared to Norman Finkelstein’s METHOD AND MADNESS: THE HIDDEN STORY OF ISRAEL'S ASSAULTS ON GAZA. They make untenable any notion that it was a war and not a massacre - aided by the US.
> 
> ~ “WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT ISIS?” How about following international law? The UN Charter (to which of course the US is a signatory) sets out in chapter 7 the UN Security Council's powers to maintain peace. It allows the Council to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" and to take military and nonmilitary action to "restore international peace and security.” The UN Charter's prohibition of member states of the UN attacking other UN member states is central to the purpose for which the UN was founded in the wake of the destruction of World War II. ISIS, whatever the responsibility of the Obama administration for its existence, should not become an excuse for further US killing in the pursuit of imperial goals. Withdraw US troops, mercs, and bases from the Mideast and follow the Charter’s requirements (which the US has flouted notably since Clinton’s attack on Serbia). 
> 
> ~ CHARLIE ROSE: As you know, some of the coalition partners [sic] want to see President Assad go first before they will support.
> RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PUTIN: I'd like to recommend to them the following: They should send this message to the Syrian people. It's only the Syrian people who are entitled to decide who should govern their country and how.
> 
> ~ RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER LAVROV comments appositively as follows:
> “Nowadays, you know, our Western partners [the leading EU states], primarily under the influence, perhaps, of American mentality, are losing in general the culture of a dialogue and the culture of achieving diplomatic solutions. The Iranian nuclear program was a bright – and even very bright – exception. In most other cases – in conflicts that continue to flare up in the Middle East, in North Africa – they try to resort to measures of military intervention, as was the case in Iraq and Libya, in violation of UN Security Council decisions, or to resort to sanctions.”
> 
> ~ DONALD TRUMP MADE A SURPRISE APPEAL TO REASON FRIDAY, after months of all the Republican presidential candidates trying to out hawk one another. He said he didn’t support “starting World War III over Syria” and that if Russia wants to fight ISIS in that country, the US should let them do it ... the fact that anyone in the Republican field is willing to entertain something short of random, heedless escalation is certainly novel, given the state of the last few months, and that it is a front-runner like Trump suggests that polls showing growing war-weariness among American voters is finally starting to attract some political attention. [Jason Ditz]
> 
> ~ TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT is the Greatest Spectacle on Earth—or at least on Fox News. Who else has shredded Roger Ailes on his own network? What other Republican has defended single-payer health care? Derided Citizens’ United? Inveighed against global trade pacts? Denounced the Iraq War as an act of unparalleled stupidity? Aggressively pushed a progressive taxation model? It’s as if Trump has stepped right off the pages of Ralph Nader’s Dickensian romp of a novel, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us Now.
> But is the Donald really a class traitor? Hardly. Trump is a post-modern Nero, without the facility for poetry. He is the new master of wrecking ball politics, the rich boy with an ego as big as the Ritz, who delights in busting things up to clear space for pleasure domes for the global elite. The broken lives left behind are just the cost of the deal. In this high stake game there’s only one rule for survival: Find a scapegoat and move on. [Jeffrey St Clair]
> 
> ~ BERNIE SANDERS supported Clinton’s illegal bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, a stance which caused one of his staffers to resign in protest. He supports continued drone strikes, with which Obama has already killed more than 6,000 people, with no end in sight. He supports Israel’s continued violence against the Palestinian people.
> Nevertheless Noam Chomsky has said, it seems to me correctly, “I’m glad that Sanders is running. A good way to bring important ideas and facts to people. His candidacy might also press the Dems a little in a progressive direction. In our system of bought elections he has scarcely a chance of getting beyond the primaries, and even if by some miracle he were elected he wouldn’t be able to do anything, lacking any congressional representatives, governors, etc. As far as I can see he’s a thorn in the side of the Clinton machine, which is not a bad thing.”
> 
> ~ SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS added a few words to his presidential campaign website about the 96% of humanity he'd been ignoring, [but] the statement does lack some key ingredients. Should the United States be spending a trillion dollars a year and over half of discretionary spending on militarism? Should it cut that by 50%, increase it by 30%, trim it by 3%? We really can't tell from this statement insisting on the need for major military spending while admitting the harm it does ... Drones are not mentioned. Special forces are not mentioned. Foreign bases are not mentioned. The only hint he gives about future action in Iraq or Syria suggests that he would continue to use the military to make things worse ... an American suffering under the delusion that the war [in Afghanistan] had already been ended ... can't tell whether Sanders would choose to take any sort of action to end it in reality ... He supports the Iran agreement while pushing false claims about "Iran developing nuclear weapons." He criticizes "both sides" in Palestine, but says not one word about cutting off free weaponry or international legal protection for Israel -- or for any other governments. The Pope's call to end the arms trade, which the United States leads, goes unmentioned. He mentions nuclear weapons, but only the nonexistent ones belonging to Iran, not those of the United States or Israel or any other nation. Disarmament is not an agenda item here. And how could it be when he declares, in violation of the U.N. Charter, in his first paragraph that "force must always be an option"? ... Sanders claims, absurdly, that he has only supported wars that were a "last resort." He includes among those, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, despite neither having been remotely a last resort. 
> Sanders admits as much, saying, "I supported the use of force to stop the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans." Set aside the fact that it increased the ethnic cleansing and that diplomacy was not really attempted, what he is claiming is a philanthropic mission, not a "last resort." Sanders also says, "And, in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, I supported the use of force in Afghanistan to hunt down the terrorists who attacked us." Set aside the Taliban's offer to transfer Osama bin Laden to a third country to be tried, what Sanders is describing is hunting and murdering people in a distant land, not a "last resort" -- and also not what he voted for, and Rep. Barbara Lee voted against, which was a blank check for endless war at presidential discretion.
> All of this obviously leaves open the possibility of endless global war. [Contrast this with what Green party presidential candidate] Jill Stein would say: “Establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights. End the wars and drone attacks, cut military spending by at least 50% and close the 700+ foreign military bases that are turning our republic into a bankrupt empire. Stop U.S. support and arms sales to human rights abusers, and lead on global nuclear disarmament." [David Swanson]
> 
> ~ DAVID GILL is running for Congress in Illinois’ 13th district in opposition to the incumbent Rodney Davis. He’s running as an independent, but Monday night he met with the local Green party and pledged that if elected he would follow the practice of former Representative Tim Johnson, of not voting for any money for US war in the Mideast, including weapons for Israel, etc. (Johnson, a Republican and originally a supporter of US Mideast wars, came to oppose them, and signed the resolution for George Bush’s impeachment, as well as joining a bipartisan suit against the illegal US attack on Libya; unfortunately his Republican successor lacks his perspicacity.) Party identifications mean little in regard to support for Obama’s wars. Davis, a fervent supporter, is a Republican; the Democrats have yet to name a candidate, but s/he’s unlikely to oppose Obama’s killing. Gill, who has run for this seat as a Democrat, now opposes the world-wide war making that Obama tries to get Americans to ignore. His opponents probably won’t. 
> 
> ~ NOAM CHOMSKY: “Look around the country. This country is falling apart. Even when you come back from Argentina to the United States it looks like a third world country, and when you come back from Europe even more so. The infrastructure is collapsing. Nothing works. The transportation system doesn’t work. The health system is a total scandal–twice the per capita cost of other countries and not very good outcomes. Point by point. The schools are declining...” 
> 
> ~ "TIME, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS, seems to be running out; we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common home. Today, the scientific community realizes what the poor have long told us: harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem. The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called 'the dung of the devil’ - an unfettered pursuit of money rules. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home.” [Francis, bishop of Rome]
> 
> ###
> 
> __._,_.___
> Posted by: "C. G. Estabrook" <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
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