NEW DIPLOMACY: BOMBS, FOOD AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES

The admission by the Bush administration that it speeded up the transport of laser-guided bombs to Israel and was sending $30 million in humanitarian aid to Lebanon spoke to a new kind of diplomacy. Cynics might say it enables the Israelis to kill more civilians in Lebanon while the US provides medical help and food to those fortunate to survive the relentless Israeli bombardment of the country.
That bombardment has been aimed at destroying the whole infrastructure of Lebanon in order to send it back to the Stone Age. In the process there has been a substantial loss of civilian lives with children representing over 30% of all killed and injured. Meanwhile, efforts by Israel to compare the damage and loss of life in Lebanon to that caused by Hizbullah rockers in the Israeli city of Haifa have failed to persuade the UN, the international Red Cross and many European nations that Israel’s use of force is proportionate to the hurt it has suffered.
In the past week Israel began to face severe public relations setbacks in its strategy to justify the killing of civilians in Lebanon and Gaza, claiming they occurred because Hizbullah and Hamas hid among civilians. One of those setbacks was the publication across the world wide web of Israeli children signing missiles that were ready to be dropped on Lebanon. The signing took place near the northern border with Lebanon on July 17 when parents took their children to an artillery site where rows upon rows of 155mm artillery shells were lined up for use. Photographers from Associated Press and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz were there when young girls wrote messages such as “from Israel with love” or drew a Star of David on the tips of many of the shells. When the photos hit the Internet online bloggers were outraged and Israeli Defence Forces’ officials were left grasping for explanations. One IDF spokesman said soldiers were at the scene but did not sanction the event.
The bigger setback for Israel began with evidence that its F-16s were deliberately targeting ambulances carrying wounded civilians, a crime in international law and a matter the UN will be forces to investigate before the conflict ends. In one Israeli attack, covered by BBC World television news, Red Cross ambulance crews described how missiles were fired at two of their minibuses, killing some of their staff and civilians they were transporting. Television footage showed damage to both vehicles from missile strikes and how a missile slammed through the roof of one of them. Each vehicle had flashing lights and a large red cross painted on the roof, as well as red crosses on the sides. That was to alert F-16 pilots and those who operated pilot-less drones of the type devised by the CIA. The Red Crescent, the Middle East alternative to the Red Cross, has complained that its vehicles too have been attacked by Israeli fighters, claiming lives.
In another incident, close to the village of Taire near the border with Israel a USA-made Hellfire missile from an Israeli helicopter slammed in a minibus carrying civilians fleeing an Israeli onslaught. The whole village was ordered to flee and the minibus that was struck was the last vehicle in a large convoy carrying families away from the scene. The minibus in question was a bit slow leaving the village and was trying to catch up with the main convoy of vehicles when it was attacked. Three members of one family died instantly and 13 others were injured, many of them seriously as the minibus plummeted of the road into a ditch.
Meanwhile in Tyre, an historical seaside town, Israeli warplanes pounded the center as well as roads leading into and out of it. The Red Cross said that ten vehicles making their way to the town were attacked from the air with missiles and three or four hit. Red Cross officials said ambulances, normally not targeted in war, were not safe from Israeli strikes. And to further highlight the public relations disasters facing Tel Aviv the British Foreign Minister, Kim Howells, visited Beirut and openly condemned Israel’s policy of destroying the country’s infrastructure and the growing casualty toll in Lebanon, especially the exceptionally high death toll among children. His visit coincided with warnings from the UN that in the future people up the Israeli chain of command could face international war crimes.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, said indiscriminating shelling of cities constituted a “foreseeable and unacceptable targeting of civilians.” She warned about what she called the bombarding of sites with “alleged military significance” that resulted in civilian deaths. That was understood at a reference to Israel’s heavy bombardment of factories, gas stations, banks, railways, roads, bridges, television stations and apartment blocks. She hinted that those engaged in deliberately causing civilians casualties should “closely examine their personal exposure.”
In tandem with her comments, there was an international clamor for Israeli to stop its use of excessive force. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, called for an immediate ceasefire and openly condemned Israeli tactics. The White House appeared unperturbed by the growing criticism l and even played down the Iraqi PM’s condemnation with the absurd response that his outburst proved democracy was working in Iraq. At the same time Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice arrived in the region with a curious diplomatic strategy. She made it clear the White House was not in favor of an immediate cessation of hostilities, thus creating the impression that she supported Israel’s desire to continue to destroy Lebanon. As expected, she had no plans to talk to three of the main players, Iran, Syria and Hizbullah but announced a humanitarian aid package. Most of that will have to be ferried by sea into the shattered remains of Beirut while America permits Israel to continue to bomb that city and most other centers in the country.
While her visit took place stories circulated that the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbullah were not seized in Israel as the Israelis claimed, but in Lebanon, and that they were Special Forces operatives on a covert mission. Should that prove true it will be at odds with the Israeli version of events – the one it has used to justify the invasion of Lebanon – that the soldiers were seized during a Hizbullah raid on Lebanon. If the soldiers were indeed part of a covert Special Forces team that entered Lebanon, such a strategy would not be contrary to ongoing Israeli secret missions in many Arab countries. In the event Special Forces anywhere in the world are captured on enemy soil they have no status and are prized possession, not least because of the information they hold about unlawful operations. If the two Israelis captured by Hizbullah were Special Forces operating in Lebanon it is more than likely they will soon appear in a video, having been forced or tortured to confess to their identities and their role in Lebanon. It could be that Israel has gone to every effort to ensure these men are freed and not taken out of Lebanon because of what they could divulge. In such as conflict as this nothing can be ruled out and what is s aid officially is often designed to deceive.
But the final setback and global humiliation for Israel was not killing unarmed UN observers in a compound in Lebanon but the massacre of 56 civilians, many of them children in the biblical town of Cana, the place where Jesus was said to have performed his first miracle of turning water into wine.
The bombing of a building in which the civilians sheltered highlighted the careless and oft times deliberate targeting of civilian centers. It also exposed the fraudulent thesis that the deaths of civilians in Lebanon or in Gaza are the fault of Hezbollah and Hamas. That spurious argument, used by both the US and Israel, is employed to conceal the true agenda in Gaza and Lebanon. The agenda is to punish both populations and in Lebanon to drive Shias out of territory close to the border with Israel. It supposes if you bomb enough of the infrastructure and kill enough civilians in the process, they will blame radicals like Hezbollah for their plight and relocate, leaving Hezbollah without centers of power. That is an absurd thesis. Anyone who doubts that this strategy has been employed need only look at the use of Israeli military might in built up areas like Gaza and the West Bank and now in towns, cities and villages throughout Lebanon.
Israel will be the eventual loser because it will not lessen but rather increase opposition to its Middle East policies and reap a global backlash. Already there is mounting antipathy towards Israel in a majority of nations across the globe. The problem for the US is that by using Israel as a proxy to carry out a crazy neo-conservative driven policy in the Middle East it has weakened its international stature. Today George Bush is one of the most detested world leaders and that erodes America’s traditional role as a crucial peace maker. It also raises the question of whether states that use terror tactics can be called terrorists. The Israeli tendency to admit a mistake looks hollow when there are hundreds of them in the form of dead Lebanese or Palestinian children. Israel is not satisfied that there is a universal recognition that it is entitled to defend itself but there is a fault line within the Israeli body politic. There is a tendency in Israel for people to build a militaristic society that needs an enemy without for its continued existence. That can lead to a policy of over reaction at the slightest hint of trouble and reinforces a feeling of victimization. Israel’s security can be guaranteed but it must look to ways other than laser-guided bombs to build relationships with its neighbors. It cannot exploit the kidnapping of several soldiers to unleash its massive military might on Palestinians and Lebanese. Its new Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is just the kind of man a militaristic society should fear. His ratings were like George Bush’s before the crisis in Lebanon began and he has exploited the conflict to make himself look strong. He has heightened and fed off the genuine siege mentality within every Israeli to unleash horror on his neighbors. Israelis may well regret they ever elected him just as a majority of Americans are beginning to wonder how they ever elected George Bush

ISRAEL’S COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT AND AMERICA'S FUZZY MATHEMATICS

Not for the first time, Israel with Washington’s approval has used its military might to collectively punish a whole country and its civilians. Presently that is the fate of Lebanon which is familiar with Israeli aggression but it is also the experience of Palestinians in Gaza. In both places Israel F-16s are degrading the whole infrastructure with a total disregard for the lives of civilians.
While that may well be a crime in international law it has not deterred Israel or the Bush administration, including John Bolton, its ambassador at the UN, from dismissing the civilian death toll in Lebanon from saying there is no moral equivalence between civilians killed by Hizbullah and those by the Israeli military. Bolton stated that clearly in the past week and found sanctuary in an oft repeated Israeli mantra that the deaths of civilians are unfortunate but a fact of war and the blame should never lie with Israelis. From Bolton’s perspective Israel’s self-defense philosophy justifies actions which will undeniably lead to civilian casualties. When civilians are killed by Israel, that country is not at fault but those Israel claims started the conflict.
What Bolton did not address was that Israel’s excessive use of force was not just aimed at Hizbullah targets in Lebanon but at the whole infrastructure, including factories, gas stations, power plants, apartment buildings and ports facilities. And while Israel insisted to the world that it warned civilians to flee cities like Beirut its planes bombed the roads and bridges on exit routes, making it impossible for large scale evacuations. Even more puzzling was that Israeli officials called for the Lebanese army to replace Hizbullah yet Israeli war planes bombed an army barracks, killing eight soldiers.
After the bombardment of Beirut began, Israeli officials and members of the Bush administration criticized the democratically elected government of Lebanon for ignoring the September 2004 UN resolution 1559 that called for the disarming of Hizbullah. Those same officials conveniently sidestepped the fact that Israel has been dismissive of the UN for decades and has shown little appetite for international law. It has been condemned by the International Court in The Hague and has been fortunate that the US has vetoed scores of UN resolutions condemning its actions in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. For example, in March 1978 The UN Security Council demanded the unconditional withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon. Israel dismissed the resolution and remained in the country for over two decades. During its time there it was guilty of assassinations and the use of overwhelming force. It also facilitated the hideous massacres of several thousands Palestinians, many of them women, children and elderly in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Israeli troops surrounded the camps and allowed Lebanese militiamen a free hand over several days to slaughter at will and to later hide bodies in mass graves. The Israeli Defense Minister at the time was Ariel Sharon.
Israel’s right to defend itself is rarely compared with its willingness to invade the territory of others, to abduct its enemies and to dismiss international criticism of its actions. Recent statistics show that since it occupied Palestinian territories in 1967 over 650,000 Palestinians have been arrested and imprisoned and at present 9,000 are being held in Israeli jails. Eric Illsey who serves on the British parliament’s foreign affairs committee argues that Israel, always supported by Britain ad America, responds with a disproportionate use of force and it should now be told to stand down its forces and implement a ceasefire.
But in the midst of what is loosely called the fog of war, meaning there is a great deal of confusion about what is happening, many commentators have failed to grasp how this began and to ask if Washington neocons and Israel share the same agenda to redraw the map of the Middle East.
For a start, much has been made about the abduction of three Israeli soldiers, two of them by Hizbullah, as though that sparked Israel’s massive response. That is a fiction. There was nothing new in the abductions by Hizbullah. It happened before and Israel more than any other nation has an ongoing policy of abducting people from various Middle East countries, especially Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. It has been such a common practice that in 2004 there was a major prisoner exchange struck between Israel and Hizbullah. Since then, Israel has seized Hizbullah and Hamas figures and it was inevitable both groups would seek to grab Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips in another rounds of exchanges.
In the background, there were other factors raising tensions between Hizbullah, the Lebanese people as a whole, and Israel. Contrary to a UN resolution, Israel has continued to hold a strip of land in Lebanon known as the Shebba Farms, claiming it belongs to Syria but Syria denies that and has made it clear the land belongs to the Lebanese. For Israel it has been convenient to try to confuse Lebanon’s right to the land because there are Israelis living there under a strong Israeli military presence. Tension between Hizbullah and the Israeli military over the land issue and Israel’s holding of Hizbullah prisoners was so high in the past year that some observers predicted something would occur to spark a renewed conflict. Israel, always aware of what is happening in the region, could well have been waiting for Hizbullah to act in order to move aggressively against it. That reality of events has been conveniently ignored by Washington and Tel Aviv in all official pronouncements from those centers of power. Leading US and Israeli figures have cleverly focused on Hizbullah’s links to Iran and Syria and have claimed, without providing any proof, that those two nations told Hizbullah to abduct Israeli soldiers. That strategy of inserting Hizbullah into the now familiar “axis-of evil” rhetoric permits Tel Aviv and its neocon backers in Washington to serve a wider agenda. They are convinced, mostly on the say so of Israeli tacticians, that the destruction of Hizbullah and Lebanon’s whole economy, as well as the deaths of countless civilians in that country, will force the Lebanese people to rise up and throw out Hizbullah and any Iranian and Syrian influences in their midst. Such a naïve and dangerous political thesis had guided many US policy makers who have wrapped themselves in Israel’s Middle East agenda in the past four decades.
A striking example of where a reliance on Israel’s reading of events can lead is the war in Iraq where the country is disintegrating before the eyes of the world. Worse still, many neocons continue to insist that by getting rid of a secular regime and installing a majority Shia one the US will have created a friend and ally in the region and democracy will prevail. That is not just naïve but the height of stupidity and it is contradicted by history and the facts on the ground. Iraq’s Shias are loyal to their religious counterparts in Iran and already the signs are that the Iraq of the future will be dominated by the same religious elements that control Iran. In effect, US ham-fisted policy in Iraq has widened Iran’s influence in the region. That began when the US Provisional Authority – that long forgotten body during the heady days after the invasion – punished secularist Sunnis, disbanded the Iraqi army and allowed powerful religious Shia militias like the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades to fill the vacuum. They will eventually be the enforcers of strict Islamic rules like Sharia Law if Shias manage to dominate Iraq and if it does not fall apart in a civil war.
What appears lost in the latest conflict in Lebanon is that the Israeli portrayal of Hizbullah, which is no Boy Scout organization, is not accurate. Until now, Hizbullah confined its targeting to the Israeli military and whether or not the West approved of its anti-Israel stance, it was part of the democratic parliamentary process in Lebanon. And for Israel to suggest the fledgling Lebanese democracy could have forcibly disarmed Hizbullah when Israel could not defeat it after 22 years of occupation in the country defies logic. Nonetheless, Israel is likely to continue to make such an argument to justify its excessive use of force. In other words, it is saying if the Lebanese can’t do it, we will. That is tantamount to saying, “if we don’t like your form of democracy so we are going to wreck it until it fits our agenda and mirrors our values.”
The problems facing the US are multi-layered. Its Middle East policy is in tatters and it lacks credibility. The Bush administration can talk tough and launch effective military strikes but it has never understood diplomacy. That reality is compounded by neocon links to Tel Aviv and reluctance on the part of the White House to criticize Israel or to permit UN Security Council resolutions to do so. The US will point to the Saudis as allies and say they are critical of Hizbullah. The Saudi leaders are Sunnis and have their own agenda, namely a fear of the growing power of Shias throughout Iran and Iraq. That same Saudi regime financed the most extremism form of Islam – Wahabism – that created the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and led to the attacks of 9/11.
On the matter of Israel’s right to defend its territory and citizens there is no dispute at an international level but there is about Israel’s adventurism in parts of the Middle East and its cavalier use of military force. What some US observers fail to understand is that Israel will do what it feels is necessary for its interests and it has supported all sides in the Middle East at different times in the past. When it felt Iraq was a bigger threat than Iran it supplied weapons to the Iranian regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and encouraged the Reagan administration to do so too. That led the US into the disastrous arms-for-hostages era and to funneling money from the sale of weapons to Iranians to the funding of Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
It was also Israel that persuaded neocons within the Bush administration that the replacement of Saddam with Ahmed Chalabi would be a good move and that the US should aggressively push for regime change in Iran and Syria. In order to convince the US public that Iran was a growing threat, Israeli spies based in Washington leaked classified US documents on Iran to journalists to bolster Israel’s case against Iran. Two of those spies were members of the AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby grouping with headquarters in the capitol. They were linked to now jailed Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklyn, a leading neocon. Washington neocons connected to Tel Aviv have always believed that the projection of US power in the Middle East should be tailored to favor Israeli policy. So far that strategy has failed, leaving the US a weak peace broker unable to find an international resolution to the underlying causes of conflict in that region.

A New Moral Equivalence

On “Meet the Press” on July 16, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich used a mathematical equation to justify Israel’s right to strike at its enemies. He said one had to compare the populations of Israel and the United states to fully understand what it meant when an Israeli soldier or civilian was killed by terrorists. By his calculation an Israel death was equivalent to the deaths of 500 Americans. By his reckoning, it could therefore be deduced that if Israel suffered the death toll America suffered on 9/11 that would be equal to the deaths of 1,250,000 Americans.
Gingrich did not apply his mathematical formula to the deaths of Palestinians but if he did, here is what he might come up with. Given that Israel has a population twice the size of Gaza and the West Bank, the death of one Palestinian civilian would therefore be equivalent to 1,000 Americans and if Palestinians suffered the same death toll as America did on 9/11 that would compared to 2,500,000 Americans dying. If one just went further and applied the Gingrich schematic to recent events when the Israeli military killed 20 Palestinian civlians that would equate to the deaths of 20,000 Americans. And, if his reasoning was applied to Lebanon that has the same size of population as Israel, it would produce scary figures for the opening days of the Israeli bombardment when approximately 250 civilians died. According to the Gingrich mathematical formula that death toll would equate to the killing of 125,000 Americans.

SUPREMES REBUKE PRESIDENT BUT WHAT NEXT FOR DETAINEES?

The latest Supreme Court ruling that the Geneva Conventions should apply to detainees was a severe rebuke to the President for his use of executive power but it did not resolve other important issues surrounding the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
The ruling by a 6 to 3 majority only dealt with detainees held by the US military and made no mention of others held in secret facilities run by the CIA and other clandestine parts of the US intelligence apparatus. Those detainees will not, if the present Supreme Court ruling remains unchallenged, be entitled to the protection of international laws governing detention and interrogation. They will remain in a legal black hole hidden from the International Red Cross. The risk the US government takes in not applying Geneva to the CIA is that at some point in the future US military and intelligence officials could be seized on foreign soil and handed over to the International Court in The Hague to answer to war crimes charges.
The latest ruling by a majority of Supreme Court judges did, however, clarify the legal position of Guantanamo. Until recently, the White House strenuously argued that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees there, specifically Article 3 which outlaws inhumane and degrading treatment and permitted detainees the right to legally question their detention. Therefore, argued the White House and the Justice Department, Federal courts could not hear detainees’ cases. The Supreme Court saw it differently. It ruled that “United States courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantanamo.”
Essentially the justices dealt a blow to the Bush administration’s position that Guantanamo Bay was outside US Federal jurisdiction and therefore legal protections did not apply to the hundreds of prisoners held there. In a majority judicial response, written by Justice Paul Stevens, the Court pointed out that even if sovereignty over Guantanamo lay ultimately with Cuba, the US government’s lease of Guantanamo Bay provided it with “complete jurisdiction and control” of Camp X-ray. Therefore, that effectively allowed for federal oversight and ensured, in the words of the court, that “aliens no less than American citizens are entitled to invoke the Federal courts’ authority.”
Most legal observers agree that detainees at Guantanamo now have a legal status but the mechanisms for using the Federal courts are cumbersome and trials could take years. In the meantime, the ruling has struck down the President’s use of military tribunals and forced the Pentagon to push ahead with plans to try some detainees in three-officer military commissions. Those commissions are likely to be challenged by detainees’ lawyers, both civilian and JAG, on the basis they do not provide a traditional legal framework and that proper charges should be preferred against detainees or they should be freed.
Freeing detainees not guilty of offenses - and many at Guantanamo are believed to have been non-combatants - could provide a more serious political headache for the Bush administration. Their countries of origin may not wish to accept them and the risk they could be tortured in countries that took them in could leave the US facing an international out cry.
The ruling came as the US faced mounting international pressure to close the Guantanamo facility. It was clear, after years of promises that military tribunals would try prisoners at Guantanamo, nothing had been achieved. In fact, lawyers for the detainees argued that the tribunals were a farce and illegal, an argument since accepted by the Supreme Court. How much of a farce can be seen in the case of Abdullah Mujahid, a former Afghan police commander accused of “colluding with anti-government forces” in the Gardez area of the country in the summer of 2002. He was told by a Military tribunal at Guantanamo that it was up to him to prove his innocence and to do so he was entitled to call witnesses. He named four witnesses but the military tribunal at Guantanamo ruled his witnesses could not be located.
The Guardian newspaper in London decided to challenge that ruling and went in search of the witnesses. Reporters located three of his witnesses within three days – a fourth was dead. None of the three live witnesses, one of whom was an adviser to the Afghan president, Hamiz Karzai, had been contacted by American officials. Another was Gul Haider a former ministry of defense official in Kabul. All disputed the case against Mujahid and Haider told Guardian reporters that as police commander Mujahid provided 30 soldiers for an anti-Al-Qaeda operation in March 2002. One witness said he was removed from his police commander post for alleged corruption and bullying. He was never involved in attacking or undermining the Afghan government or the coalition forces. To this day he remains in Guantanamo.
One of the major effects of the Supreme Court ruling was that it questioned whether President Bush had overstepped his executive authority. For example, Justice Anthony Kennedy remarked that the president’s trial by military commission “raises separation-of-powers concerns of the highest order.” In a clear reference to the dangers of too much power residing with the president, he pointed out that “concentration of power puts personal liberty in peril of arbitrary action by officials, an incursion the constitution’s three-part system is designed to avoid.”
A reading of the ruling appears to indicate there were bitter differences between the justice with dissent coming from Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito. In a move that clearly showed his anger, Justice Thomas took the unusual step of personally reading his dissent from the bench, pointing out the ruling would “sorely hamper the president’s ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy.” Justice Scalia reserved the bulk of his criticism for the fact the ruling would involve the “carefree” Federal courts in the process. He called the ruling “breathtaking,” and “spurious” and warned that it brought the “cumbersome machinery of the domestic courts into our military affairs. “ From his standpoint, it allowed “aliens” seized in a foreign combat zone to petition the Secretary of Defense for the right of habeas corpus. It was, he added, a “wrenching departure from precedent” that extended the range of common law rights to “the four corners of the earth.”

The comments by Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas were savage in their condemnation of the ruling and offered an insight into future legal battles over Guantanamo related matters. Their overall reaction was much more severe than that of the White House and the president. Administration officials chose not to confront the ruling, knowing it was not only a severe rebuke of the President Bush’s disregard for the Geneva Conventions but a clear warning to him not to overstep his executive powers. In that regard it may have opened the door to a wider debate about the president’s use of his executive authority in areas such as wiretapping.

Oil Nationalization A Threat, Says US Generals

Not for the first time the US military is identifying threats in its Southern Command region which it claims could seriously impact the national security of this country.
Recently, Southern Command generals warned Congress that governments of countries like Venezuela, which have moved to the Left, are exercising total control of their energy reserves and could if they wished restrict the flow of oil and gas to the United States. The nationalization process, they argued, would lead to poor oil and gas production that would also impact the US economy.
The Southern Command’s sudden emphasis on an area of responsibility, which includes Latin America and the Caribbean, comes at a time when oil prices are at an all time high and the US imports almost 35% of its oil from the region. And, oil is not the only resource linking the US to what constitutes one sixth of the world’s landmass and 32 countries. More than 40% of US exports are sold there.
Until recently, the Bush administration paid little attention to what has often been called America’s “back door” or “near abroad” because the major focus of US foreign policy was directed at the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some critics have argued that the White House was blindsided by its concentration on the Middle East and failed to pay close attention to growing anti-American sentiment in the western hemisphere and the fact it was contributing to the rise of populist left wing governments.
Any student of history knows that Latin America has always been a volatile part of the world, sometimes due to American interventionist policies. Throughout the Cold War and in recent times the Southern Command defined the western hemisphere as an area where America can intervene at any time to protect its own security. In some instances that led to the funding of campaigns to overthrow regimes not favored by Washington and its business allies. In certain cases, the US was involved in promoting and funding dirty wars under the guise of the promotion of security and democracy. In many Southern Command documents the by-words security and democracy were often been narrowly defined to support strategies dealing with narco-trafficking, illegal immigration and the rise of leftwing guerilla movements. And now terrorism. But missing was a recognition of a growing disapproval of US policy which many people saw as benefiting Washington’s globalization programs, and as a consequence America’s corporate giants, including its lending institutions.
None of the Southern Command staff involved in the latest warning to Congress appeared that some anti-American sentiment has flowed from a Bush White House policy to punish small Latin American and Caribbean nations that signed up to the International Court in The Hague. Funding to those nations was stopped in what many some observers described as a crude strategy which exhibited double standards. It illustrated that the US was happy to promote the prosecution of others for human rights crimes but would never permit the international court to try a US citizen.
A close study of present day Latin America shows that a major dynamic that moved many countries in the region towards an anti-US posture and got the attention of Southern Command and the White House was the rise to power in Venezuela of Hugo Chavez, an admirer and close friend of Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. He wrested control of his country’s massive oil reserves from international oil giants, sending shock waves through Washington and America’s oil industry. It was a stunning move for a small nation that produces a fifth of the world’s oil and supplies 35% of US oil needs. Recently Chavez doubled the taxes on multi-nationals operating many of his nation’s oil fields and refineries.
Other Latin Americans countries, including Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia Argentina and Ecuador have been impressed with his nationalization policy and that is what now troubles the US military. Overall, Latin America produces 8.4% of the global oil output and the generals at Southern Command think an expanding program of energy nationalization, especially in countries that have become disenchanted if not outright hostile to America, could lead to a poorly run oil industry or even an embargo on exports to America, something Hugo Chavez threatened he would do if US troops were sent to overthrow him.
The Southern Command’s heightened concern about the nationalizing of energy was, they said, predicated on a belief that Chavez may, at some time in the future, follow through with his threats to cut off oil. But that may have been a smokescreen to hide their real fears and ambitions. On the one hand, they may well have been jolted into issuing a warning after the new left wing government in Bolivia, followed quickly by Ecuador, to nationalize oil and gas just as Chavez had done. In Ecuador oil fields in the hands of Occidental Petroleum were seized by troops and returned to government control. But there was something else underpinning the Southern Command’s actions and it was missing from their threat assessment. It was an admission they should have made that this was all about who controlled the oil and their belief, allied to that of politicians in Washington, that it should be in the hands of US oil giants or governments allied to the US. The Southern Command’s concentration on the dangers of nationalizing oil and gas also ignored a deep malaise in relations between Washington and made no attempt to trace its roots.
The new US military emphasis on the region could equally have been motivated by the growing presence of China in our backyard. The Chinese desperately need energy and are prepared to spend outrageously to buy up oil and natural gas resources in Latin America as well as the African continent.
In 2002 the Pentagon was presented with several policy papers about China’s insatiable appetite for energy and how it might eventually target Latin America’s oil wealth. Those papers were ignored but in 2004 senior figures in Southern Command returned to what they called China’s “emerging dynamic that must not be ignored.” Lt. General Bantz J. Craddock pointed to visits by Chinese “national defense” staff to the region. According to him, China’s growing interest in Latin America could not be ignored and would have to be considered within the overall US military context of “objectives, policies and engagement in the region.”
While the Southern Command now sees a real threat in the nationalization of resources in the western hemisphere it fails to grasp a bigger picture and one that is not pretty. A major reason for anti-US feeling is a fear that interventionist US policies are traditionally aimed at expanding US influence in favor of US corporations and are promoted under the guise of furthering democracy and security. Another ingredient in the rift between the US and its neighbors is that the Bush administration since it came into office has paid littler attention t the needs of the region. Instead it has encouraged the Republican Party in Washington to act as a de facto State Department, financing organizations to undermine left wing movements and governments and making public statements denouncing any emerging leader who is critical of US policy. That has made it easier for Hugo Chavez to promote an anti-American agenda that has garnered wide popular support across the western hemisphere.
The Southern Command’s response to the problems of the region is to “contemplate beyond strictly military matters.” What that means is anybody’s guess but it could be interpreted as an indication the generals are not ruling out military intervention. One thing seems certain. They have no solution to offer. They told a Congressional panel they are engaged in a detailed study of the issue, confirming they are convinced oil in America’s backyard is an issue that no longer can be taken for granted or ignored. If all they can do is study the issue that suggests they have come to the problem much too late to device a broad social, political and economic strategy. But in their defense, military leaders are rarely good at anything but offering military solutions in accordance with their training and mindset.

The White House Iraq Is Not Reality

The White House portrayal of events in Iraq ignores the growing power of militias with strict Islamist agendas of a kind once associated with Iran under the late Ayatollah Khomeini.
That was clear in a leaked cable signed by the US Ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad and sent to the State Department on June 6. It offered a bleak portrait of daily life. Its contents conflicted with the rhetoric of President Bush and British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, after their recent, surprise visits to Baghdad. They declared that the situation was steadily improving with the appointment of two key Iraqi government ministers and the death of Al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Days after Zarqawi was killed in a safe house, the Pentagon claimed it had found documents that showed the insurgency was in trouble but there were doubts in some quarters about the authenticity of the documents.
No such doubts were expressed about the leaked cable from US Ambassador Khalilzad. It depicted a different Iraq through the experiences of Iraqis working for the US embassy within the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. Under a heading “Women’s Rights” it pointed out that Iraqi females were being harassed by unknown groups if they refused to conform to strict Islamic dress codes that demanded females wore a head covering and did not use cell phones. The cable added that, one of the Iraqi government departments - the Ministry of Transportation – was forcing females to wear a veil at work. What the memo did not say was that this was the same government President Bush claimed could lead Iraq in a new direction.
Iraqi male staff said it was now dangerous to wear shorts in public or to allow children to play outdoors in shorts and that people who wore jeans were attacked. Most Iraqi staffers were scared to travel to work or to let people know they worked for the embassy. They feared being kidnapped on their way to the Green Zone because there were “spotters” who travelled neighborhoods trying to identify strangers.
In one part of the cable there was a particularly disturbing section in which it was revealed that Iraqi employees no longer trusted Iraqi guards on duty at the Green Zone. Some of the guards appeared to be militiamen and taunted them when they passed through a checkpoint. One employee begged the Embassy to get her Press credentials because guards held up her work card and announced that she was a US embassy employee. It was the kind of display she said could get her killed.
Some Iraqi employees were too frightened to even tell family members they worked for the US because loose talk about their jobs might reach militias. In most areas of Baghdad it was risky moving around because Sunnis and Shia districts were in the hands of the militias. They barricaded streets and provided security and were also in charge of water, electricity and gas supplies. At gas stations it was not unusual for someone to wait 12 hours to fill a car and the power supply was erratic at best. That had created a thriving black market with ever rising costs for fuel and basic necessities.
The US ambassador’s cable stressed that Iraqi personnel had complained of a policy of ethnic cleansing in the areas where they lived and that Shias, as well as Sunnis, often blamed the US occupation for their plight. The embassy was so concerned about the safety of its Iraqi staffers it shredded documents related to their identities. Presumably, that was to avoid information about them falling into the hands of members of the Iraqi security forces guarding the Green Zone which houses the largest CIA station in the world. It also has centers that deal with intelligence and Special Forces operations. If, as the cable claims, there is serious concern about concealing the identities of US employees within the heavily fortified Green Zone, there is every reason to believe security at the Green Zone is unreliable. In that case why are Iraqis guarding a part of Baghdad where the US does much of its secret counter-insurgency planning?
In March this year, some Iraqi staff asked if the embassy had made provisions to look after them in the event of a US pull-out. While it would seem natural that Iraqi personnel would be worried about their future, the fact they sought assurances in March could imply they saw pull-out plans at that time. If so, that would further indicate the ambassador’s cable was intended to convey a deteriorating situation to Washington in which the US might have to evacuate its staff from the Green Zone.
If all this was not a depressing enough picture of Iraq, the US death toll that reached 2,504 with the torture and murder of two young soldiers captured by insurgents and the charging of three US soldiers with the murder of three Iraqis. And, in the weeks ahead Marines may well face charges over the deaths of more than two dozen Iraqi men, women and children at Haditha.
In the midst of the chaos and the bleak projections for the Iraq occupation, the trial of Saddam Hussein faded from the headlines until June 19 when trial prosecutor, Jaafar al-Moussawi, demanded the death penalty for the former Iraqi dictator and two of his co-accused, one of them his former intelligence chief and half brother, Barzan Ibrahim. The prosecutor’s comments came as the trial wound down after eight months of legal chaos in which the first judge resigned because he could not control the trial, three defense lawyers were murdered and Saddam and his co-defendants boycotted parts of the proceedings. Saddam’s third defense lawyer was killed days after the prosecutor made his comments. The lawyer lived in Baghdad and his killers drove his body in a pick-up truck round Sadr City, the part of Baghdad controlled by militias loyal to the firebrand Shia cleric, Moqtada el-Sadr.
Saddam and his co-defendants are charged with direct involved in the arrest of hundreds of Shias, some of them women and children, in Dujali township in 1982, following an attempt on Saddam’s life. Many were tortured and 148 men and boys were slaughtered and buried in a mass grave. The prosecutor in an outburst that brought the trial back into the headlines said Saddam and his co-accused were spreading corruption on earth. He claimed Saddam not only authorized the arrests but kept himself informed of everything that subsequently transpired. His brother-in-law, Ibrahim, who was in charge of the secret police, personally supervised the round up of victims and participated in torture in which electric shocks were used.
Saddam’s lawyers and Saddam himself argued that the regime was entitled to react to the attempt on his life and the stories of torture and mass killing were fabrications. If Saddam is sentenced to death before the end of the summer Shias will rejoice but Sunnis will see it as a blow against them. For Sunnis, Saddam was one of their own who ensured them power and privilege and brought terror to the Shia majority. Hid death could energize the Sunni insurgency, creating even more problems for the US occupation.