Category: News

If you’re up for reading a dutifully deceptive article on foreign aid, check what the Washington Post has to say about it. Recognition for the biggest lie in the article goes to this lovely little number:

At least since the end of World War II, foreign aid’s explicit rationale has been to spread democratic ideals and otherwise protect the United States.

Compare that to what I’ve reported here, which I’ll excerpt for precision (also listen here):

-In a June 2010 report for the Congressional Research Service, Jeremy Sharp writes that, in addition counterterrorism, aid to Middle East regimes is an attempt to “encourage peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors,” and serves for “the protection of vital petroleum supplies.” This latter justification was, of course, understood by early post-war national security planners. As a Top Secret National Security Council briefing put it in 1954, “the Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance,” as it “contains the greatest petroleum resources in the world” as well as “essential locations for strategic military bases in any world conflict.”

-Continued and in some cases increased foreign assistance after the September 11^th attacks had the benefit of giving “the United States leverage on key foreign policy issues, since it can make assistance contingent on cooperation,” says the RAND report. But these assistance programs “can have a negative effect on democratic development by strengthening a state’s capacity for repression” and, as one study concluded “the more foreign police aid given [to repressive states], the more brutal and less democratic the police institutions and their governments become.”

Nay, by and large post-WWII foreign aid has had the aim of keeping corrupt yet controllable despots in power, so that we can be the primary influence of policy in the region without nettlesome objections from the population. As far as “protecting” the United States, well that’s true. Except “protect” here has a technical meaning: it means “benefitting the entrenched interests while endangering ordinary Americans.”

The Post article also laments recent cuts to foreign aid. Admittedly, the cuts are primarily in the realm of needy countries, but the article of course fails to mention the realm of security interests, which has not been touched (for example).

Antiwar.com’s Angela Keaton was on Gadfly Radio last night with Martha Montelongo talking about the antiwar movement, ComeHomeAmerica.us, and the campaign for a left-right-radical coalition united against war and American interventionism.

Listen to her segment here or download the podcast here.

Just like the debt ceiling “debate” was a melodrama worthy of a daytime Emmy, so too is the “debate” over whether or not to keep American troops in Iraq. Keen observers of both American politics and foreign policy knew the inevitable outcomes of both from the start: the debt ceiling would be raised and American troops will continue to “train and assist” in Iraq. In order to remind the American people of their dependence on government, the circus in Washington debated the debt ceiling up until the 11th hour. Deal after deal after deal ad infinitum was discussed and rejected while the Pravda pundits and arrogant academics warned of the dangers of America living within its means. Once the whole thing came to an end, America breathed a collective sigh of relief.

However, many of those who warned of the plethora of problems that would result from Congress being unable or unwilling to pass a debt ceiling resolution were left unhappy. Paul Krugman lamented the “disaster” and America’s eventual journey to “banana republic status.” Congressman Emanuel Cleaver was left with a bad taste in his mouth after eating a “Satan Sandwich” that was the debt deal. From a purely fiscal standpoint, their concerns are overblown. There are only cuts to projected spending, which means that the empire will continue to consume an even larger diet of your tax dollars, although less than previously thought. America’s ledger is uncannily similar to the American people: fat and growing fatter by the day, it will  stave off diabetes by offering diet pop and apples as a healthy alternative to freedom fries. Concerns about the Super Congress are, however, very much appropriate. The Right is worried that the Super Congress will be as ineffective as the Simpson-Bowles commission at downsizing D.C., despite the failings of their own toothless plan. The Left is worried that the Super Congress will be a fast track towards reforming entitlements.

These rehearsed theatrics are being seen in the debate over keeping troops in Iraq as well.

From the infancy of Obama’s candidacy, he vowed to end the Iraq war immediately. Time came and went, and came and went some more, but legions of soldiers remained. The antiwar left relented as soon as their Messiah was in the Oval Office effectively ending years of raucous debate over whether or not the arguably dumbest war in American history ought to continue. This gave the  show writers at the Defense and State Department plenty of time to rewrite the script for continued involvement well past  the Bush deadline.

First, America ended “combat” operations and was merely participating as “advisors” to the Iraqis. Then, some soldiers were killed despite promises otherwise. The State Department, growing increasingly iron fisted under Hillary Clinton, decided that it needed its own pack of soldiers. Then some more soldiers died. Some Iraqi officials, fearful of a renewed insurgency, wanted US troops to stay in order to keep a lid on things. Then even more soldiers died. And now we have the US actively pushing for an extension in order to counter the “Iranian threat,” which, they claim, have been responsible for an upswing in attacks against Americans. However, even this claim was contradicted less than a month later when the “Iranian threat” was said to have subsided.

The parallels with the debt ceiling melodrama are striking. Plague, locusts and thunderbolts were all waiting to strike down on America when the “other guy” was in charge. In order to not upset the party hierarchy, these Mosaic predictions were promptly halted. Democrats, all of the sudden, voted for an increase in the debt ceiling while the Republicans, also in a change of heart, voted in opposition. Iraq became a non-issue for the Democrats while Libya became the Republicans’ half-hearted, non-interventionist crusade. Furthermore, the number of withdrawal plans rivaled the number of debt deals in both number and absurdity. Also pervasive were the non-democratic tendencies of the whole debacle: the American voter, focused on the ailing economy, pays no attention to issues of foreign policy and their “representatives” represent only Raytheon, Israel, or very, very rarely America’s interests. Rather than the Simpson-Bowles gang, appointed generals and diplomats decide the fate of American troops and the Iraqi people in
the war room, far removed from the opinons of everyday Americans.

American involvement in Iraq is now guaranteed to extend well beyond 2011. The Iranians will be closely watched, Moqtada al-Sadr will debate unleashing his forces on American troops, and the American people and troops will be fleeced yet again.

Melodrama at its finest.

Back in May I wrote about the secret war on Iran, which has so far manifested in cyber-terrorism, commercial sabotage, and assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. I inferred, critics would charge speculated, cautiously that this last piece of the puzzle (committing international terrorist acts against Iranian scientists) was perpetrated by the U.S., and implicitly Israel. The acts did coincide with public announcements by U.S. officials that it was increasing its covert activity in the country, and individuals involved had laid blame on the CIA.

Such impressions were fleshed out a bit more when Seymour Hersh published his New Yorker piece detailing many of the covert activities the U.S. had been conducting inside Iran (not to mention its conclusion that no evidence had been found of an Iranian nuclear program).

Now Der Spiegel has leaked an admission from an Israeli intelligence official that Israel, through their intelligence agency Mossad, has in fact been involved in the unprovoked assassinations and terrorist acts inside Iran:

“Israel is not responding,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said earlier this week when asked if his country had been involved in the latest slaying of an Iranian nuclear scientist. It didn’t exactly sound like a denial, and the smile on his face suggested Israel isn’t too bothered by suspicions that it is responsible for a series of murders of physicists involved in the controversial Iranian nuclear program.

There is little doubt in the shadowy world of intelligence agencies that Israel is behind the assassination of Darioush Rezaei. “That was the first serious action taken by the new Mossad chief Tamir Pardo,” an Israeli intelligence source told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

On July 23, Rezaei became the latest victim in a mysterious series of attacks over the past 20 months which has seen the virtual decimation of the Islamic republic’s elite physicists. The 35-year-old died after being shot in the throat in front of his daughter’s kindergarten in east Tehran. The Iranian press has reported that the two alleged perpetrators in the attack escaped on a motorcycle.

Anyone doubting whether these acts categorically qualified as acts of international terrorism is probably not being honest. One assassination consisted of a remotely detonated bomb rigged to a motorcycle exploded next to the target’s car. Another two attacks had mysterious motorcycle assailants attaching a bomb directly to the target’s car. And the latest had the target shot in the throat in front of his daughter’s kindergarten. For the most part, I’ll let this speak for itself. But just imagine the repercussions if there was an admission by Iranian agents that they had covertly murdered American scientists, both in and out of government. We would probably be looking at another full scale invasion in the Middle East.

The trial of Hosni Mubarak began today. A small scale repeat of the “clearing” and beating that took place in Tahrir Square on Monday occurred just outside the courthouse where pro and anti-Mubarak protesters clashed a bit. If he is convicted of the charges of killing almost 900 people in the uprising against his rule, he could face the death penalty, but I suspect any such conclusion will be a long way down the road given the antics so far exhibited:

Reuters:

The lawyer, Farid al-Deeb, said he wanted to summon a total of more than 1,600 witnesses — a proposal with the apparent potential to turn the trial into an interminable exercise.

New Yorker:

At one point, a lawyer for the family of one of the people killed when Mubarak’s forces tried, brutally, to break up the protests in Tahrir Square began waving an ink pad and shouting that Mubarak had never been fingerprinted like a common criminal. Another one wanted a DNA test, to make sure that this was Mubarak, and not a caged impostor. He has been allowed to stay in a hospital, rather than a jail. The extent to which the hospital bed was as much a prop as a necessity was one of the many contentious issues in court in Cairo this morning…There was real surprise that he was, indeed, there; other trials of dictators, over the years, have had endless opening gambits dominated by claims of illness—that the strong man is just too weak—which sometimes derail the proceedings entirely. (See Honecker, Pinochet.) And that is also a theme here.

Still, its nice to see a dictatorial murderer face a judge. Although, as Juan Cole has just written, Americans are waiting for a corresponding show where Bush, Obama, and their minions have to feign illness for sympathy in a criminal trial. Not to mention the fact that Mubarak committed the crimes he is accused of with full American support, including donating the weapons used against demonstrators.