Thoughts on the American Middle East Catastrophe
There are many parallels between the images we have seen of the disastrous consequences of hurricane Katrina (dubbed Hurricane Global Warning by one pundit) in New Orleans and Gulf coast cities and what has happened in Iraq. There are also some striking contrasts. In New Orleans and gulf coast cities the media has show us images of incredible destruction. Images the disposed, disrupted, dying and the dead that are reminiscent of Hiroshima or the devastation of the recent tsunami. We have seen images of personal suffering and the cataclysmic destruction of lives and property on a truly unimaginable scale. Whole towns wiped off the map. This is visible, covered by the press. It is in contrast to the destruction the Bush administration along with our cowardly congress has wreaked in Iraq but which has remained relatively hidden from the American people.
In Iraq, we saw images of looting, pillaging and lawlessness on the part of a population that had long been repressed. Despite pleas before the war to secure the national museum we saw thousands of years of artifacts documenting the origin of our civilization destroyed and plundered while at the same time the Iraqi ministry of oil was safely and expeditiously secured. That was a statement of the Bush administration’s values and priorities.
In New Orleans we saw images of black people looting and pillaging. There were rumors (untrue) that rescue helicopters were shot at. These are the images the US press loves. Images that fortify the underlying racism of the American people. Clearly the perpetrators of this were a minority of the population bent on destroying their own community in a fit of blind rage. We have seen them during the Watts riots in 1965 and in the summer of 1968. Richard Nixon formulated the war on drugs not for altruistic reasons to diminish the scourge of drugs on inner cities but as a cynical vehicle to guarantee endless images of federal agents arresting black people for drug offenses and to constantly remind citizens the administration was tough on crime (read black people). Never mind that most of these crimes involved mostly crack cocaine, some of which was transported into the country by CIA assets. Thus, the escapades of Freeway Rick Ross in Gary Webb’s book Smoke and Mirrors highlight this connection. This was initially denied, but ultimately confirmed by the CIA itself. At the same time wealthy white men snorting powdered cocaine were either not apprehended or when caught received sentences much less than black men. This drug policy was doomed to fail as it does not address the root causes of drug addition which is a medical problem rooted in poverty, ignorance and despair. Nevertheless, this policy guaranteed the government high visibility of being tough on crime (read apprehending blacks). Bush senior used these images in his Willie Horton add.
Similar distortion by the press occurs when the only images seen by Americans are those of Palestinian suicide bombers. These are branded as terrorist acts – and they are. The idea of killing innocent civilians to achieve political ends is morally bankrupt. Strategic bombing is just another variation aimed a terrorizing a population. The bombing of pubs in Northern Ireland was similarly bankrupt. However, the vast numbers of deaths resulting first from our embargo and then from our bombing are equally heinous. Murder is murder. Camus in the article “Neither Victims nor Executioners” discussed these issues and concluded that in the midst of murderous world we must reflect on murder and make a choice.
But this is an aside. There is a connection between Bush’s waging war in Iraq and his behavior during hurricane Katrina.
Bush and his administration flagrantly lied to the American public about non-existent weapons of mass destruction and Al-Qaeda connections to obscure the real reasons the Bush administration chose to wage the war he and his advisors had been dreaming about doing for a decade.
I.F. Stone once told a group of students to remember two words about governments: “Governments Lie”. And just as George Orwell said, “all pigs are created equal, but some pigs are more equal than others”. Virtually everything the Bush administration has told the American public has been lies. Shameless, bald-face lies. The techniques of advertising have replace truth. Recall the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq when Bush’s principle advisors launched a massive public relations campaign to convince the public that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and was allied with Al Queda that were used as a causis belli. The Downing Street memos make it clear that Bush had plans to invade at least as early as July 2002.
Anyone driving down the California Coast between Los Angeles and San Diego could have predicted this. A pier was constructed off Camp Pendleton and row upon row of military equipment including tanks, Humvees, personnel carriers were lined up along the ocean side of the I-5 freeway. The San Diego Union asserted that this was a part of routine maneuvers. Months before the invasion this equipment was loaded onto the ships, the pier dismantled, and the material and troops sailed off. The base became a ghost town.
Another indication that plans were afoot was that months before the war there was a huge push to vaccinate against smallpox. Bush made a brave show of being vaccinated. Vaccination was presented as an edict to the various state public health departments. Fortunately, the hysteria abated with only a few people being vaccinated as mass vaccination would have resulted in significant complications.
The Bush administration has gotten away with this because the media has abrogated it’s responsibility as the guardian of the public’s interests. It has instead has become a propaganda machine for war. With rare exceptions, the media has done nothing to critically evaluate the administration’s claims. A year too late the New York Times on a back page, acknowledged this. This was the paper that published false information fed to it by Achmed Chalabi and vice president Cheney. In what has to be one of the most cynical examples of circular reasoning, false information was channeled to Cheney, fed to the new York Times and then quoted as justification of the administrations’ actions. If the New York Times with all it’s resources can not ferret out the truth, how can the average man on the street?
All the major media companies are subsidiaries of defense contractors who have much to gain with war. Worst of all has been Fox news. With its endless procession of talking head generals it actively propagandized the war. Except for about the last week before the invasion the antiwar movement was virtually ignored or their numbers falsified.
The Bush administration, however, is not totally at fault for allowing this to happen. With few exceptions the opposition party went right along with the administration’s assault on Americans constitution and the war. The administration capitalized on peoples fears and in fact pandered to them. They needed a terrified population to effect the draconian changes in our laws to stifle dissent and silence opposition. These events were similar to what happened after the Reichstag Fire in Nazi Germany when Hitler used a terrorist act to dramatically limit dissent and solidify his power.
The anthrax scare fit right into their plan. This occurred only a few days after the bombing of the World Trade center. Most people do not remember, but it occurred just as the USA Patriot Act was before Congress. The first anthrax attack occurred 9-17-2001 and the last 11-21-2001. The USA Patriot Act was passed 10-26-2001. The Senate vote was 98 to 1 and the House vote was 357-66. Hardly anyone had actually read the bill. That Senators Lahey and Minority leader Tom Daschle, opponents of the patriot bill, received letters poisoned with weapons grade anthrax from the US Bioweapons arsenal may have intimidated some from asking questions and speaking out. Clearly, these attacks were meant to be a warning and to only kill a limited number of people. They were highly effective. Americans were terrified. Sugar spilled on a ward in our hospital trigged calls to law enforcement and to the public health authorities. Barbara Hatch-Rosenberg of the American Society of Microbiology investigated the anthrax epidemic. There are only about 200 persons who had the means, knowledge or opportunity to pull this off she asserted. The FBI with all of its resources to this day has been unable to apprehend the perpetrator or prosecute the perpetrator. Years later a likli suspect conveniently committed suicide. The issue has fallen off the radar.
Almost a year later the Beltway Snipers furthered terrified inhabitants of the East Coast of the US for several weeks. Between October 2, 2002 and October 24,2005 several random killings occurred.
Bush, ET al. are very clever, however, in the choice of their words and are very adept at controlling the words. Naming the bill the USA Patriot act, a tortuous acronym automatically branded anyone voting against it as unpatriotic. As the figures above indicate, most members of congress went right along with it out of fear of being branded “unpatriotic”.
And so, dissent is stifled and labeled unpatriotic. The warmongers are given green light and the invasion proceeded inevitably despite millions of people marching in the streets world wide. And the president says, he does not pay attention to public opinion. Only to his advisors and the voices in his head that says he was put in the position by God to save the American people.
With the invasion the American people were treated to one of the most dazzling displays of pyrotechnics during the initial “shock and awe” bombing campaign. Touted as new and unique by Rumsfeld it was neither. It simply represented the most recent manifestation of the immoral and bankrupted theory initially proposed by Douhet. This theory states the massive bombing of civilian populations will destroy their will to fight. This theory that was initially tested by the British in Waziristan, Pakistan where the British shamelessly fire bombed native huts. In the early days of WWII, Winston Churchill spoke before a joint session of congress urging us to undertake a saturation bombing campaign against Nazi Germany. Congress gave him a standing ovation. We did this. The fire storms created by the bombing of Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo were followed ultimately, logically and inevitably by the total destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atom bomb.
Shock and Awe was a message to the rest of the world: screw with us and this will be your fate!!!!
With clandestine bombing of Laos and Cambodia by saturation bombing we learned how to fight a war without “boots on the ground”
We saw images from Viet Nam where reporters were unembeded and sought to report events as they saw them The introduction of small video technology using portable cameras also was a factor. Daily we saw images of death and destruction. We saw the mayor of Saigon execute someone. We saw images of little children running down the streets their skins on fire from napalm. We saw images of dead GIs. Ultimately, the people including students and adults took to the streets and forced Nixon, Kissinger and McNamara to end another unnecessary and pointless war.
By the time of the first Iraq war, the military learned to censor what the American public was allowed to see. CNN was there in Iraq for a while and European Broadcasting. We saw highly filtered images. Radar images of planes and tanks being annihilated. There was no resistance after 48 hours. No opposing air force. Most of the casualties on our side we from accidents. The immediate losses were negligible. Long term, however, we do not know. The country was contaminated with depleted uranium (DPU) and other chemicals. Our losses were minimal. What we Americans were never shown were the results of weapons on the Iraqi population. We do know that the Iraqi soldiers retreating back to Baghdad were slaughtered indiscriminately. We were never told how many Iraqi men, women and children were slaughtered by our smart weapons. George Herbert Walker Bush encouraged the Kurds to rise up. Then stood by permitting Sadam Hussein to slaughter them (see the movie “The Three Kings”.
Then in the inter-bellum period there was the “United Nation” (actually US and British) embargo on Iraq. President Clinton bragged that this was the most effective embargo in history. According to UN figures hundreds of thousands died as a result of the embargo. When Madeline Albright was asked whether the death of six hundred fifty thousand Iraqi children because of the embargo were worth it she uttered one of the most amazing and immoral statements ever pronounced by a politician. Namely, “well it was hard, but yes we thought that it was worth it. The average American has no knowledge of these policies and therefore have no clue as to why the US might not be held in high esteem in Iraq. No, why we are hated by the Iraqi’s who lost over a million people to the embargo and the years of continuous bombing between Gulf War I and Gulf War II.
This precisely, is Chalmers Johnson’s two point definition of Blowback. The CIA’s clandestine operations unknown to the American people elicit a violent attack: The people do not understand since the reasons for their attacking us were unknown by the people.
Americans, particularly the younger generation, spend their time playing video games. They do not read newspapers nor do many of them watch the news. Neither do their parents. Many parents work several jobs just to provide the basics for their families. Being informed requires time they do not have. The result is that Americans are woefully ill informed. Partly this reflects the sorry coverage of difficult events by the media, particularly television which dumbs down the news and condenses it to 60 seconds- sound bites. So, while some Americans are amnestic and have pitifully short memories, others just never have the opportunity to become informed.
So, when George W. Bush turned the public relations and advertising industry loose they did a masterful job. A job that would make Edward Bernays proud. In fact, Herman Goerring, had he not been executed running Hitler’s propaganda ministry, and been alive today, would have applauded the masterful way Bush, Et. Al. utilized the big lie technique and endless repetition to drill into American minds the Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that Hussein had connections with Al Queda that Hussein was involved in 911. Goerring knew that it was possible to get the populace to do anything. All that was necessary to convince them they were under attack (911 accomplished this) and then tell the people what you are going to do to keep them safe. Bush did this. He and his cohorts repeated a simple message repeated ad nauseum. Advertising works. Three quarters of the population came to believe that Saddam Hussein had links with Al Queda, had weapons of mass destruction and was responsible for 911. All of these assertions were totally illogical and untrue. Not one of these assertions was true.
So we launched an illegal and unjustified war against a country that was not immediate threat to us. An aggressive war against all tenets of international laws. A war in all respects similar to the aggressive war launched by Hitler against the rest of Europe and for which we punished his followers at Nuremberg. We have destroyed much of Iraq. We told ourselves we were liberators, but like in Viet Nam, we are destroying the country in order to save it. In one of the greatest scams in history we have stolen a country, destroyed it.
Paul Bremer in one of the most vile historical acts imaginable, disbanded the Iraqi military, fostered sectarian warfare and have issued contracts to many of our largest construction companies to rebuild the country. We plan on forcing the Iraqis to pay reparations to us for the rebuilding the country by expropriating their oil.. We told Americans that we would rebuild the country we are in the process of demolishing and it would not cost us anything since we would use Iraqi oil money to repair the country. Since those nasty French and Germans refused to go along with us Bush has specifically excluded them from applying for any of the lucrative contracts. However, it appears that there is a fly in the ointment. Namely, it turns out the Iraqis view us a occupiers rather than liberators and would just a soon we leave. They would like to rebuild their own country. Frankly, I seen no reason by the US should not be the ones paying reparations to the Iraqis for destroying their country.
Bremer’s action will go down in history as the action that destroyed a civilization. A civilization that is part of our own heritage, and that goes back 7,000 years. The magnitude of this evil is almost beyond imagination.
Brigadier General Smedly Butler was right: War is a racket.
Bush with the help of Alberto Gonzales has rewritten legal opinions sanctioning torture in violation of everything the US people stand for. Seymour Hersh in a series of blistering articles has documented and exposed the horrendous abuses at Abu Graib prison. The administration holds these are isolated events. The truth is that they have been sanctioned by Bush and his staff. These activities qualify as war crimes. They continue, but the press has not persevered, and they have slipped below the public’s conscientiousness.
Apparently, 60 % of the town of Falluja was destroyed by US bombing in retaliation for the killing and desecration of the bodies of four Blackwater contractors (mercenaries).
Iraq had become a pot of gold for many American businessmen. Contracting is a goldrush.. Just do a google search on contracting opportunities and you will see. And also for the armed services. Four things have happened in Iraq.
First, American business here to rebuild the country is making windfall profits. They are paid American rates and turn around and subcontract for a fraction of what they are paid. Halliburton, Bechtel and other companies are reaping millions and billions of dollars.
Secondly, Iraq is not being rebuilt. Security problems diverted much of the money to highly paid security firms. The money allocated is being used to build military bases.
Thirdly, we have converted a non-sectarian country with a good education system and no Muslim extremists into a sectarian state, with destroyed health and education system which is a breeding ground for violent extremists. Ironically, the Bush administration, master manipulators that they are, are phasing out the idiotic term “War on Terrorism” in favor of the open ended term “Struggle against violent extremists”. I am certain the British government considered the American patriots “violent extremists”.
Fourthly, we control the oil. Forget about Bagdhad. Forget about withdrawal. In fact, John Kerry completely missed the point when he criticized Bush for not having an exit strategy. The reason was simple: there was never any intention of leaving. Although we are going through base closings in the US, we are building bases right and left all over the world. We now have, I am told 14 bases in Iraq. We have been in South Korea since the end of the Korean War. We have had our bases in Germany since the end of WWII. These bases are the basis for our empire. Bush does not care about rebuilding the country. Bush does not care that the Iraqi people have only intermittent electricity or contaminated water. We systematically destroyed their infrastructure with our smart weapons with the aim or rebuilding them. Regardless of who wins any election in Iraq, the US will control important aspects of the Iraq economy thanks to Article 39 of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Of course, most Americans have not heard of these articles which effectively privatized the Iraq economy and opened it up for American companies to purchase in violation of international law.
Bush has been criticized for dallying and dithering and failing to respond the the suffering imposed upon the people of New Orleans. No, he was in Crawford, Texas on his record setting vacations doing his best to avoid Cynthia Crawford, who herself had served in Afghanistan, and who was camped out in his next door neighbor’s yard and was begging him to talk to her and to explain to her what ideal her son had died for in Iraq. He put on a masterful guitar performance and flew to Southern California to conservative San Bernardino county where he visited an rest home and then proceeded on to give a speech celebrating the end of WWII.
While he did declare the area a disaster area before the hurricane hit, he waited several days to do anything to marshal US assets to bring relief. On the other hand, we learn that New Orleans was tied for the poorest major city in the country. Sixty percent of the population is black, and a high percentage of them live below the poverty level. I would presume that Bush and his his colleagues would have no interest in these people since the would be unlikely to vote for him. Most of their interest would be in setting up obstacles to their voting.
Thus for several days these people were allowed to go without food and water and to subsist under inhuman conditions without relief. Had a tsunami struck the southern California coast and flooded San Diego and Orange counties, you can be assured Bush would have responded instantaneously. In fact he might well have directed operations himself from the carrier Abraham Lincoln.
Just as some of Orwell’s pigs are more equal; government of the people by the people and for the people means something different to Bush and the conservatives. It is mean spirited. It means siphoning of the country’s natural resources for the benefit of the wealthy and private corporations.
Bush cares not a whit that over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians and over 1800 American soldiers have perished. This means nothing. It bought them an entire country and in their calculus this is cheap. The lost lives mean nothing. Bush goes through the motions of grieving for our soldiers, but his insincerity comes through.
Homeland Security is nominally in charge in times like these. But, where have they been? The answer is obvious. They have been skulking around libraries and bookstores trying to find out what you and I are reading. They have been rewriting the constitution to stifle anyone who disagrees with their policies.
It is now May 2105. With advantage of hindsight we can see that the policies of the American war machine from Gulf war I, to Bill Clinton’s embargo to Bush’s disastrous aggressive war has led in the ultimate Blow back situation to ISIS and the destabilization of the middle east. Iraq will never be a complete country again. As Chalmer’s Johnson predicted, additional attacks of American soil are inevitable….
Howard P. Charman, MD 2001 to 2015