Just Commentary December 2014

December 2014

Vol 14, No.12

230 MILLION CHILDREN AFFECTED BY ARMED CONFLICTS

By Countercurrents Globally, an estimated 230 million children now live in countries and areas affected by armed conflicts, said the UNICEF.

them exposed to extreme violence and its consequences, forcibly recruited and deliberately targeted by warring groups.

As many as 15 million children are caught up in violent conflicts in the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, the State of Palestine, Syria and Ukraine – including those internally displaced or living as refugees, informed UNICEF. “Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality”, said Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director.

Yet many crises no longer capture the world’s attention, warned the global organization.

A New York/Geneva, December 8, 2014 datelined UNICEF press release said: The year 2014 has been one of horror, fear and despair for millions of children, as worsening conflicts across the world saw

“This has been a devastating year for millions of children,” said Lake. “Children have been killed while studying in the classroom and while sleeping in their beds; they have been orphaned, kidnapped, tortured, recruited, raped and even sold as slaves.”

In 2014, hundreds of children have been kidnapped from their schools or on their way to school. Tens of thousands have been recruited or used by armed forces

and groups. Attacks on education and health facilities and use of schools for military purposes have increased in many places.

Facts A few of the facts provided by the UNICEF include: # In the Central African Republic, 2.3 million children are affected by the conflict, up to 10,000 children are believed to have been recruited by armed groups over the last year, and more than 430 children have been killed and maimed – three times as many as in 2013 # In Gaza, 54,000 children were left Turn to next page

STATEMENTS . M H 17: W HY

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BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR.....................................P3

.FAREED ZAKARIA

AND THE RISE OF CHINA

BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR..................................P4

ARTICLES

. GERMANY DOES SOMETHING THE U.S. HASN’T FOR

OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST: A PERMANENT INFRASTRUCTURE FOR PERMANENT WAR

BY DAVID VINE...............................................P 12

PEACE

BY DAVID SWANSON........................................P 6

. IN MEMORY OF U.S. SOLDIER TOMAS YOUNG

. PROSECUTE THE TORTURERS

BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR..............................P 5

.USTR P ROTEST DEMAMND: STOP THE SECRECY, RELEASE

THE TEXTS

BY MARGARET FLOWERS AND KEVIN ZEESE.......P 8 . THE LESSONS OF LIBYA

BY DAN GLAZEBROOK.......................................P 9

. THE BASES

BY LUDWIG WATZAL......................................P 16 . 4TH GLOBAL INTER-RELIGIOUS CONFERENCE ON ARTICLE 9

BY FINAL STATEMENT................................P 17

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homeless as a result of the 50-day conflict during the summer that also saw 538 children killed, and more than 3,370 injured. # In Syria, with more than 7.3 million children affected by the conflict including 1.7 million child refugees, the UN verified at least 35 attacks on schools in the first nine months of the year, which killed 105 children and injured nearly 300 others. # In Iraq, where an estimated 2.7 million children are affected by conflict, at least 700 children are believed to have been maimed, killed or even executed this year.

Women and girls have suffered physical and sexual assault, sexual slavery, trafficking and forced marriage. Some have been sold in open markets. Children have been tortured

by ISIL and many have been forced to watch and take part in executions and torture.

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school because of the outbreak. Thousands of children have lost one or two parents to the disease

L E A D A R T I C L E in Iraq and Syria.

In South Sudan, more than 70,000 children were treated for severe malnutrition.

Forgotten The UN organization said: The sheer number of crises in 2014 meant that many were quickly forgotten or captured little attention. Protracted crises in countries like Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, continued to claim even more young lives and futures.

This year has also posed significant new threats to children’s health and well-being, most notably the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, which has left thousands of children orphaned and an estimated 5 million out of school.

# In Syria and Iraq, children have been victims of, witnesses to and even perpetrators of increasingly brutal and extreme violence.

Hope

# In South Sudan, an estimated 235,000 children under five are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. An estimated 1.7 million children are internally displaced mainly as a result of conflict and more than 320,000 are living as refugees. According to UN verified data, more than 600 children have been killed and over 200 maimed this year, and around 12,000 children are now being used by armed forces and groups.

According to UN verified data, nearly 100 were subjected to sexual violence and 311 were abducted. # In Ukraine, the number of internally displaced children is estimated at 128,000.

At least 36 children were killed and more than 100 were injured in Donetsk and Luhansk regions between mid-April and end of October.

The UNICEF SAID:

In Central African Republic, a campaign is under way to get 662,000 children back to school as the security situation permits.

Adding further suffering of the children, in countries stricken by Ebola, at least 5 million children aged 3-17 are unable to go back to

Nearly 68 million doses of the oral polio vaccine were delivered to countries in the Middle East to stem a polio outbreak

The world is still struggling to save the children. There is still hope.

Despite the tremendous challenges children have faced in 2014, there has been hope for millions of children affected by conflict and crisis. In the face of access restrictions, insecurity, and funding challenges, humanitarian organizations including UNICEF have worked together to provide life-saving assistance and other critical services like education and emotional support to help children growing up in some of the most dangerous places in the world.

In Ebola-hit countries, work continues to combat the virus in local communities through support for community care centers and Ebola treatment Units; through training of health workers and awarenessraising campaigns to reduce the risks of transmission; and through supporting children orphaned by Ebola.

“It is sadly ironic that in this, the 25th anniversary year of the Convention on the Rights of the Child when we have been able to celebrate so much progress for children globally, the rights of so many millions of other children have been so brutally violated,” said Lake. “Violence and trauma do more than harm individual children – they undermine the strength of societies. The world can and must do more to make 2015 a much better year for every child. For every child who grows up strong, safe, healthy and educated is a child who can go on to contribute to her own, her family’s, her community’s, her nation’s and, indeed, to our common future.”

The New York Times report by Rick Gladstone said: “The report was basically a summation of the well-documented afflictions that affected children in 2014. But taken in their entirety, they presented what UNICEF called a devastating picture.”

Citing the UNICEF report the NYT report added: “The nearly four-year-old war in Syria, which spilled into Iraq this year with the ascendance of the militant group, the Islamic State, was a leading contributor of trauma to children.”

09 December, 2014 Source: Countercurrents.org

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STATEMENTS MH 17: WHY

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MALAYSIA NOT PART OF THE PROBE?

By Chandra Muzaffar

Why is Malaysia not in the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the MH 17 crash of July 17 2014?

Aren’t there guidelines that spell out which parties should constitute the probe team in the event of a disaster of the magnitude of MH 17?As the owner of MH 17, it is logical and sensible that Malaysia is part of the probe. Malaysia has more rights to be in the JIT than some of its present members. One can understand why Ukraine is in the team since that is where the plane was shot from the sky. We can understand the Netherlands’ membership of the JIT since the flight originated from Amsterdam. But why is Belgium in the JIT? Is it because Brussels is the administrative capital of the European Union and the EU may have some aviation responsibilities over commercial flights in the continent? If that is the case, then it is the EU, not Belgium, which should have a place in the team. What about Australia? Is it a member of the probe because a large number ofAustralians were killed in that tragedy? If that is the consideration, then Malaysia should also be in the JIT since 43 of our citizens were killed, the second largest number after the Dutch, 193 of whom perished in the calamity.

Perhaps the Unites States should also be included since Boeing is the manufacturer of the aircraft.

It is alleged that Malaysia has been excluded from the JIT because we have not pointed a finger at Russia as the cause of the MH 17 disaster as the four

members of the JIT have done.

Malaysia refuses to heap blame on Russia or pro-Russia rebels in Eastern Ukraine, or anyone else for that matter, without hard, incontrovertible evidence. Neither the Ukraine government nor the USAdministration has been able to offer such evidence to the public. Comprehensive military data from satellite images of the incident would have convinced a lot of people.

Instead, right from the outset, the Ukraine, the US and a number of their allies have constructed a narrative

about how pro-Russia rebels in Eastern Ukraine shot down MH 17 with a Buk system supplied by Russia — a narrative which has been widely disseminated through a biased global media that has raised no questions about the motives behind such an action or who would have benefitted from it. In the meantime, the anger generated by this mass murder in the skies especially in Europe has enabled certain parties to expand and reinforce their economic sanctions against Russia.

Given this situation, Malaysia is absolutely right in adopting a

principled position on MH 17 which refrains from condemning any party until all the investigations have been completed. This is why we are insisting upon total access to the crash site to enable investigators to collect all relevant evidence.

Malaysia is also demanding that it be given a seat in the JIT. It is a demand that undoubtedly has the support of the entire nation. One hopes that the UMNO general assembly — the annual meeting of the party that is the backbone of the government — which will take place from 25 to 29 November 2014, adopts a resolution that endorses this demand. Since the Malaysian Parliament is also in session, it should lend its weight to a demand which is at the heart of our integrity and sovereignty as a nation.

Most of all, ours is a just demand. It is just not only because MH 17 is ours. It is just because we have a fair and balanced approach to the tragedy and its probe. We want the entire truth to be known. Our participation in the investigation will at least help to check any attempt to conceal or camouflage the real story behind one of the most heinous crimes in recent times.

22 November 2014 Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

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S T A T E M E N T S

FAREED ZAKARIA AND THE RISE OF CHINA Fareed Zakaria’s “China’s growing clout” (NST November 15 2014) is a stark attempt to warn readers of the alleged danger of some of China’s current moves in the regional and international arena. He says, “… Xi’s government has been laying down plans for a very different foreign policy — one that seeks to replace theAmericanbuilt post-1945 international system with its own. There is clearly a debate going on in Beijing, but if China continues down this path, it would constitute the most significant and dangerous shift in international politics in 25 years.”

Why would it be a “dangerous shift?”

Dangerous to whom? Fareed gives us a hint of what he means when he suggests that “China has begun a patient, low-key but persistent campaign to propose alternatives to the existing structure of international arrangements in Asia and beyond.”

More precisely, he laments that “This past summer, China spearheaded an agreement with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa (along with China, known as the BRICS countries) to create a financial organisation that would challenge the International Monetary Fund. Last month, Beijing launched a US $50 billion (RM 160 billion)Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, explicitly as an alternative to the World Bank. And last week, Xi declared that China would spend US$40 billion to revive the old “Silk Road” trading route to promote development in the region.”

A lot of people in Asia and elsewhere would welcome an alternative to the IMF. The millions of Indonesians

By Chandra Muzaffar who in the aftermath of the 1998 Asian financial crisis were driven into the clutches of poverty mainly by IMF conditionalities would be among them. An institution which helps to perpetuate a neo-liberal financial order at the expense of ordinary people is a travesty of justice. The World Bank which has been woefully

inadequate in its response to the infrastructure needs of poor nations is also a disappointment. The Infrastructure Bank that China has proposed is much more focused on the development agenda of the Global South.

The Silk Road project and the hundreds of other projects that the Chinese have committed themselves to in Asia and in the other continents will potentially spur a massive socioeconomic transformation which will benefit hundreds of millions of men, women and children on earth. It will of course strengthen China’s position as a major economic actor on the global stage. It could lead to a global power shift which will pique the one nation that in spite of its decline is determined to perpetuate its hegemony.

Bringing this hegemony to an end is in the interest of humanity. Fareed

does not think so. He is of the view that “the current international order... has been a platform on which peace and prosperity have flourished in Asia for decades.” He has forgotten the Korean War (1950-3), the Vietnam Tragedy (1961-1975) which claimed 3 million Vietnamese lives, and the bloodbath in Indonesia (1965) following a coup in which the CIA was deeply implicated. Since Asia includes Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and Syria, what peace and prosperity have the citizens of these countries known when the turmoil engendered partly by the hegemon’s nefarious agenda has resulted in the death of millions of innocent people?

This is why a change is crucial. What is significant is that China is helping to end US helmed hegemony without war or violence. The rise of China — unlike the rise of every Western power in the last 500 hundred years or so — has been remarkably peaceful.

Even the way in which China is bringing about this change — which Fareed alludes to —is unique. China continues to operate within the existing framework of global structures while creating new institutions which will cater for change.

Of course, as change takes place the flaws and foibles of this ascendant power will also become more obvious. We have a duty to critique them. But we must never lose sight of the larger significance of this moment in history.

17 November 2014.

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ARTICLES PROSECUTE THE TORTURERS!

By Chandra Muzaffar Two top United Nations human rights officials have demanded that the United States government prosecute all highlevel government officials involved in the Central IntelligenceAgency’s (CIA) torture programmes.

The UN’s special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights Ben Emmerson stated on December 10 2014 that the systematic torture revealed in the US Senate Report released on December 9th, was a massive violation of the 1994 UN ConventionAgainst Torture. He called upon the US Attorney-General to “bring criminal charges against those responsible.” He further emphasized that the US is legally obliged to do so under international law. Another UN official, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, made a similar call.

An American law professor from the University of California’s Irvine School of Law has pointed out that torture is also a violation of domestic law since it is a federal crime and those “who authorized it and engaged in it must be criminally prosecuted.” Civil society groups from all over the world should endorse these calls wholeheartedly.

They should ask that not only those officials directly responsible for the tortures but also those at the very apex who authorized it should be put on trial.

Since the CIA’S “Rendition, Detention and Interrogation” programme was authorized by President George Bush in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, he should be prosecuted, together with

his Vice-President, Dick Chenney, his Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfield, and the Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, all of whom may have had a bigger role in the planning and execution of this vile plan.

MI 6 have colluded with the CIA in torturing British residents detained in Guantanamo Bay. Civil society groups should campaign for full accountability and transparency on the question of torture from these and other governments.

It follows from this that President Obama’s decision not to prosecute officials from the Bush Administration is wrong and unjust. It is unjust not only because it undermines both US and international law; it is unjust because the forms of torture employed were callous and cruel. Detainees at various centres were subjected to waterboarding, deprivation of sleep for long hours, sexual threats and death threats. It is significant that the Report admits that in spite of all the coercion used, the interrogators did not obtain critical information about imminent terrorist attacks.

Returning to the situation in the US, there is an even more powerful reason why top US leaders should be put in the dock. US leaders have always projected themselves as the greatest champions of democracy and human rights on earth. How can champions of democracy torture — torture in such a debased and depraved manner?

Though the Senate Report was focused upon the US, there is some evidence from other sources that seem to suggest that certain other countries were also involved in the CIA’s programme. In July 2014, the European court of human rights for instance ruled that the government of Poland had facilitated the CIA’s secret prison programme in Europe. Other inquiries have revealed that Sweden, Italy, Macedonia and Rumania have also participated in the CIA’s programme for interrogating and detaining terror suspects. Human rights groups in Britain allege that Britain’s MI 5 and

Of course, even without the recent revelations, or the revelations in the last few years from Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram, many of us have never seen US elites as genuine defenders of human rights. How can you be a defender of human rights when you conquer foreign lands and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, in pursuit of your own hegemonic economic and political agenda? What rights are you protecting when you overthrow democratically elected governments in Iran and Chile? How can you claim to be a paragon of democratic values when you have helped to keep in power some of the most autocratic regimes in Latin America, Africa and Asia?

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upholder of democracy and human rights, given the history of the US as a nation. The barbaric annihilation of the indigenous people of America renders the white settler community in that land a violent suppressor of human rights and human dignity.

Similarly, the enslavement of the African population of the US for many decades by a white elite means that it did not have an iota of respect for the honour and integrity of its victims. Perhaps what happened in Ferguson and New York in recent months serve as grim reminders of a racist past that continues to haunt 21st century peddlers of human rights.

There are apologists for the US who

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argue that whatever its shortcomings, the US leadership was willing to admit through the Senate Report that it had tortured people, that it had done wrong. After all, many other countries also torture detainees and prisoners.

True, the US elite did the right thing by revealing the dark side of its torture programme, unlike most other governments. But we must remember that the US is different from others in two respects. It commands enormous global power, especially global military power. With massive power comes huge responsibilities. It is in the realm of the responsibilities that it shoulders that it has failed miserably. And its torture program is

A R T I C L E S just one of the many examples of its failure to act responsibly. Besides, the US, as we have seen, often claims the high moral ground when it comes to democracy and human rights.

Most other states do not make such claims. Judged by its own moral barometer, the US should hang down its head in shame.

It is a pity that many so-called liberal human rights groups in the Global South who are quick to condemn their own governments for their human rights transgressions are deafeningly silent in the face of the US leadership’s gross violations of human dignity.

15 December 2014.

GERMANY DOES SOMETHING THE U.S. HASN’T FOR PEACE

By David Swanson Imagine a letter co-signed by former presidents, former representatives from both sides of the aisle, House speakers, former governors, attorneys general, cabinet members, ambassadors, CEOs, movie stars and directors, writers, astronauts, religious leaders, mayors, academics, mainstream media correspondents, and more — all united in stating “Nobody wants war.” Imagine the New York Times publishing this letter.

The equivalent happened in Germany just a few days ago.

Union, on one side, and Russia. They appeal to the German federal government, its representatives and the media to assume their responsibility for peace in Europe. The desire for a world without war is one shared far beyond the peace movement choir.

On December 5, the renowned weekly newspaper Die Zeit published the letter “Another War in Europe? Not in our name!” The more than 60 personalities from politics, business, culture and media certainly do not sound like the typical voices for peace, and indeed they are not. Nevertheless they came together to demand de-escalatory politics between the United States and the European

Nobody wants war. But North America, the European Union and Russia are inevitably drifting towards war if they do not finally halt the disastrous spiral of threat and counter-threat. All Europeans, Russia included, jointly hold responsibility for peace and security. Only those who do not lose sight of this goal are avoiding irrational turns.

Such a letter might have been written in the United States in the 1920s or 1930s.

Is it imaginable today? Should we ask ourselves why not? Here is the German letter and the names of its signers:

The Ukraine-conflict shows that the addiction to power and domination has not been overcome. In 1990 at the end of the Cold War, we were all hoping for that. But the successes of the policy of detente and the peaceful revolutions have made us sleepy and careless, in the East and the West alike. For US-Americans, Europeans and Russians the guiding principle to banish war permanently from their relations has been lost. Otherwise, the perceived threatening of Russia with expansion of the West to the East, without simultaneously deepening cooperation with Moscow, as well as the illegal annexation of the Crimea by Putin, cannot be explained.

In this moment of great danger for the continent, Germany has a special responsibility for the maintenance of peace. Without the will for reconciliation from the Russian people, without the continued next page

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foresight of Mikhail Gorbachev, without the support of our Western allies and without the prudent action by the then Federal Government, the division of Europe would not have been overcome.

To allow German unification to peacefully evolve was a great gesture, shaped by reason from the victorious powers. It was a decision of historic proportions.

From overcoming the division in Europe a solid European peace and security order from Vancouver to Vladivostok should have developed, as it had been agreed to by all 35 Heads of State and Government of the CSCE Member States in November 1990 in the “Charter of Paris for a New Europe.” On the basis of agreed established principles and through first concrete measures a “Common European Home” was supposed to be established, in which all the States concerned should have equal security. This post-war policy goal has to this day not been redeemed. The people of Europe have to live again in fear.

We, the undersigned, appeal to the federal government of Germany to assume its responsibility for peace in Europe. We need a new policy of détente in Europe.

This is only possible on the basis of equal security for all with equal and mutually respected partners. The German government is not following a “unique German path”, if they continue to call, in this stalemated situation, for calm and dialogue with Russia. The Russians’ security requirements are as legitimate and just as important as those of the Germans, the Poles, the Baltic States and Ukraine.

We should not look to push Russia out of Europe. That would be unhistorical, unreasonable and dangerous for peace.

Ever since the Congress of Vienna in 1814 Russia has been recognized as one of

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the global players in Europe. All who have tried to violently change that have failed bloodily – the last time it was the megalomaniac Hitler’s Germany that set about a murderous campaign to conquer Russia in 1941.

We call upon the Members of the German Bundestag, delegated by the people to deal appropriately with the seriousness of the situation, to attentively preside over the peace obligation of their government. He who props up a bogeyman ascribing blame to one side alone, exacerbates tensions at a time when the signals should call for deescalation. Inclusion instead of exclusion should be the leitmotif for German politicians.

A R T I C L E S Weizsäcker said: “The Cold War is overcome; freedom and democracy will soon be put in place in all countries …

Now they can conduct their relationships within a compact and secure institutional framework, from which a common life and peace order can arise. For the people of Europe a completely new chapter in their history begins. The goal is a PanEuropean project. This is a huge challenge. We can archive it, but we can also fail. We face the clear alternative to unite Europe, or in line with painful historical examples, to fall back again into nationalist conflicts in Europe.”

Until the Ukraine conflict we thought we here in Europe were on the right track.

Today, a quarter of a century later, Richard von Weizsäcker’s words are more relevant than ever.

Signatories

We appeal to the media to comply with their obligations for nonbiased reporting, more convincingly than they have thus far done. Editorialists and commentators demonize whole nations, without crediting their history. Every able foreign policy journalist will understand the fear of the Russians, since NATO members in 2008 invited Georgia and Ukraine to become members of the alliance. It’s not about Putin. State leaders come and go.

What is at stake is Europe. It’s about taking away the people’s fear of war.

Towards this purpose, a responsible media coverage based on solid research can help a lot.

On October 3, 1990, on the Day to Commemorate German Reunification, German President Richard von

-Mario Adorf, Actor -Robert Antretter (Former Member of German Parliament) -Prof. Dr. Wilfried Bergmann (VicePresident Alma Mater Europaea) -Luitpold Prinz von Bayern (Königliche Holding und Lizenz KG) -Achim von Borries (Regisseur und Drehbuchautor) -Klaus Maria Brandauer (Schauspieler, Regisseur) -Dr. Eckhard Cordes (Chair of Ostusschuss der Deutschen Wirtschaft) -Prof. Dr. Herta Däubler-Gmelin (Former Federal Minister of Justice) -Eberhard Diepgen (Former Mayor of Berlin) -Dr. Klaus von Dohnanyi (First Mayor der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg) -Alexander van Dülmen (Vorstand ACompany Filmed Entertainment AG) -Stefan Du¨rr (Geschäftsfu¨hrender Gesellschafter und CEO Ekosem-Agrar GmbH) -Dr. Erhard Eppler ( Former Federal Minister for Development) -Prof. Dr. Dr. Heino Falcke (Propst i.R.) continued next page

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-Prof.

Hans-Joachim Frey (Vorstandsvorsitzender Semper Opernball Dresden) -Pater Anselm Gru¨n (Pater) -Sibylle Havemann (Berlin) -Dr. Roman Herzog (Former President of Federal Republic Germany) -Christoph Hein (author) -Dr. Dr. h.c. Burkhard Hirsch (Former Vice-President of Federal Parliament) -Volker Hörner (Akademiedirektor i.R.) -Josef Jacobi (Biobauer) -Dr. Sigmund Jähn (Former Astronaut) -Uli Jörges (Journalist) -Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Margot Käßmann (ehemalige EKD Ratsvorsitzende und Bischöfin) -Dr. Andrea von Knoop (Moskau) -Prof. Dr. Gabriele Krone-Schmalz (Former Correspondent ARD in Moskau) -Friedrich Ku¨ppersbusch (Journalist) -Vera Gräfin von Lehndorff (artist) -Irina Liebmann (author) -Dr. h.c. Lothar de Maizière (Former Minister-President) -Stephan Märki (Intendant des Theaters Bern) -Prof. Dr. Klaus Mangold (Chairman Mangold Consulting GmbH)

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-Reinhard und Hella Mey (Liedermacher) -Ruth Misselwitz (evangelische Pfarrerin Pankow) -Klaus Prömpers (Journalist) -Prof. Dr. Konrad Raiser (eh.

Generalsekretär des Ökumenischen Weltrates der Kirchen) -Jim Rakete (Fotograf) -Gerhard Rein (Journalist) -Michael Röskau (Ministerialdirigent a.D.) -Eugen Ruge (Schriftsteller) -Dr. h.c. Otto Schily (Former Federal Minister of the Interior) -Dr. h.c. Friedrich Schorlemmer -Georg Schramm (Kabarettist) -Gerhard Schröder (Former Head of Government, Bundeskanzler a.D.) -Philipp von Schulthess (Schauspieler) -Ingo Schulze (author) -Hanna Schygulla (actor, singer) -Dr. Dieter Spöri (Former Federal Minister of Economy) -Prof. Dr. Fulbert Steffensky (kath.

Theologe) -Dr. Wolf-D. Stelzner (geschäftsfu¨hrender Gesellschafter: WDS-Institut fu¨r Analysen in Kulturen mbH) -Dr. Manfred Stolpe (Former MinisterPresident)

-Dr. Ernst-Jörg von Studnitz (Former Ambassador) -Prof. Dr. Walther Stu¨tzle (Staatssekretär der Verteidigung a.D.) -Prof. Dr. Christian R. Supthut (Vorstandsmitglied a.D. ) -Prof. Dr. h.c. Horst Teltschik (Former Chancellor advisor for Security and Foreign Policy) -Andres Veiel (Regisseur) -Dr. Hans-Jochen Vogel (Former Federal Minister of Justice) -Dr. Antje Vollmer (Former Vice President of the Bunderstag) -Bärbel Wartenberg-Potter (Bischöfin Lu¨beck a.D.) -Dr. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker (scientist) -Wim Wenders (Regisseur) -Hans-Eckardt Wenzel (songwriter) -Gerhard Wolf (Schriftsteller, Verleger) 10 December 2014 David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org .

Source: Worldbeyondwar.org

USTR PROTEST DEMAND: STOP THE SECRECY, RELEASE THE TEXTS

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been negotiated in secret throughout the Obama administration. They continue to keep the text secret and classified. This week TPP trade negotiators are in Washington, DC. The 12 countries have been unable to reach agreement as the United States demands extreme corporate power undermining the sovereignty of nations.

The Obama administration has also been stalled on trade on the homefront as Congress has refused to give the administration fast track trade promotion authority. Fast track would allow the President to sign the agreement before it

went to Congress and would restrict Congress’ power to review it. It would ensure Congress plays virtually no role in regulating trade as is its constitutional mandate under the Commerce Clause.

meetings this week, demonstrators demanded that they stop hiding the text of the trade agreement and instead make it available to the public telling them “secret negotiations are anti-democratic.”

On Sunday night Popular Resistance began the week of negotiations with a Light Brigade putting messages on the US Trade Representative’s office in Washington, DC.

Several activists tried twice to deliver an open letter signed by more than 1,000 people to the trade ambassador but were met with an aggressive removal from the lobby by security personnel. Richard Ochs, a 76 year old former steelworker from Baltimore, was pulled down the stairs and ejected from the building. Ochs exclaimed “I thought that as citizens we had the right continued next page

On Monday morning members of Popular Resistance held a ‘Sit-in to End the Secrecy’ on the front steps of the USTR office . As Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators and USTR staff arrived for their first day of

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to petition the government. This shows how afraid they are of transparency.”

Cassidy Regan, trade organizer for Popular Resistance, remarked that after public pressure the European Union recently agreed to release its negotiating proposals for the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to the public. The EU wanted to release the full text of the agreement but was blocked by the United States. “The trade agreements being drafted in secret threaten everything from worker rights and wages to public health and access to medicines. The negotiators keep texts hidden because these agreements aren’t made with the public in mind — instead, they serve to give transnational corporations further power to exploit people and the planet for the sake of profit. The unprecedented lack of transparency denies communities’ right to know policies that could impact so many aspects of our lives, for generations to come.”

After several hours of blocking the front

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entrance and disrupting business by chanting, singing and banging on a cow bell, pots and blowing whistles, the protesters were joined by close to 200 more people from Public Citizen, Citizens Trade Campaign, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, National Family Farm Coalition, Friends Committee on National Legislation and labor unions such as the Teamsters, Communication Workers of America, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and United Students Against Sweatshops.

The crowd sang and chanted. They had a spirited march around the block carrying banners, signs and big red balloons that said “There will be no fast track.” They let the negotiators know that the American people were united in their opposition to fast track and predicted Congress would not pass fast track legislation. .

This is the first of several days of negotiations. More actions are expected throughout the week. Online actions are

THE LESSONS

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A R T I C L E S being organized ReleasetheText.com.

through

The movement of movements bringing together people concerned about the environment, labor, food and water, Internet freedom, energy policy, banking regulation and so many other issues has been able to stop the rigged corporate trade agreement being pushed by the Obama administration. A critical test will come in the coming months when the new Congress is put in place. We are confident that we continue to work in unity to stop these corporate trade agreements, that we can stop fast track and prevent these treaties from becoming law.

10 December 2014 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese are organizers with Popular Resistance , which provides daily movement news and resources.

Source: PopularResistance.org

LIBYA

By Dan Glazebrook Three years ago, in late October 2011, the world witnessed the final defeat of the Libyan Jamahiriya - the name by which the Libyan state was known until overthrown in 2011, meaning literally the ‘state of the masses’ - in the face of a massive onslaught from NATO, its regional allies and local collaborators.

It took seven months for the world’s most powerful military alliance - with a combined military spending of just under $1 trillion per year - to fully destroy the Jamahiriya (a state with a population the size of Wales) and it took a joint British-French-Qatari special forces operation to finally win control of the capital. In total, 10,000 strike sorties were rained down on Libya, tens of thousands killed and injured, and the country left a battleground for hundreds of warring

factions, armed to the teeth with weapons either looted from state armouries or provided directly by NATO and its allies.

Britain, France and the US had led a war which had effectively transformed a peaceful, prosperous African country into a textbook example of a ‘failed state’.

Yet the common image of Libya in the months and years leading up to the invasion was that of a state that had ‘come in from the cold’ and was now enjoying friendly relations with the West. Tony Blair’s famous embrace of Gaddafi in his tent in 2004 was said to have ushered in a new period of ‘rapprochement’, with Western companies rushing to do business in the oil-rich African state, and Gaddafi’s abandonment of a nuclear deterrent apparently indicative of the new spirit of trust and co-operation between

Libya and the West.

Yet this image was largely a myth. Yes, sanctions were lifted and diplomatic relations restored; but this did not represent any newfound trust and friendship. Gaddafi himself never changed his opinion that the forces of old and new colonialism remained bitter enemies of African unity and independence, and for their part, the US, Britain and France continued to resent the assertiveness and independence of Libyan foreign policy under Gaddafi’s leadership.

The African Oil Policy Initiative Group (AOPIG) – an elite US think tank comprising congressmen, military officers and energy industry lobbyists – warned in 2002 that the influence of “adversaries such as Libya” would only grow unless the US continued next page

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significantly increased its military presence on the continent. Yet, despite ‘rapprochement’, Gaddafi remained a staunch opponent of such a presence, as noted with anxiety in frequent diplomatic cables from the US Embassy. One, for example, from 2009, noted that “the presence of non-African military elements in Libya or elsewhere on the continent” was almost a “neuralgic issue” for Gaddafi.

Another cable from 2008 quoted a proWestern Libyan government official as saying that “there will be no real economic or political reform in Libya until al-Gaddafi passes from the political scene” which would “not happen while Gaddafi is alive”; hardly the image of a man bending to the will of the West. Gaddafi had clearly not been moved by the flattery towards Libya (or “appropriate deference” as another US Embassy cable put it) that was much in evidence during the period of ‘rapprochement’. Indeed, at the Arab League summit in March 2008, he warned the assembled heads of state that, following the execution of Saddam Hussein, a former “close friend” of the US, “in the future, it’s going to be your turn too...Even you, the friends of America – no, I will say we, we the friends of America - America may approve of our hanging one day”. So much for a new period of trust and co-operation.

Whilst business deals were being signed, Gaddafi remained implacably opposed to the US and European military presence on the continent (as well as leading the fight to reduce their economic presence) and understood well that this might cost him his life. The US too understood this, and despite their outward flattery, behind the scenes were worried and resentful.

Given what we know now about what has taken place in Libya – both during the socalled ‘rapprochement’ between 2004 and 2011, and from 2011 onwards – it is appropriate to take stock of this experience in order to see what lessons can be learned about the West’s approach to its relations with other countries of the Global South.

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Lesson one: Beware rapprochement As I have shown, the so-called rapprochement period was anything but.

The US continued to remain hostile to the independent spirit of Libya – as evidenced most obviously by Gaddafi’s opposition to the presence of US and European military forces in Africa – and it now seems that they and the British used this period to prepare the ground for the war that eventually took place in 2011.

The US, for example, used their newfound access to Libyan officials to cultivate relations with those who would become their key local allies during the war. Leaked diplomatic cables show that pro-Western Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdul-Jalil arranged covert meetings between US and

Libyan government officials that bypassed the usual official channels and were therefore ‘under the radar’ of the foreign ministry and central government. He was also able to speed up the prisoner release programme that led to the release of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group insurgents who ultimately acted as NATO’s shock troops during the 2011 war. The head of the LIFG – Al Qaeda’s franchise in Libya – eventually became head of Tripoli’s military council whilst Abdul-Jalil himself became head of the ‘Transitional National Council’ that was installed by NATO following the fall of the Jamahiriya.

Another key figure groomed by the US in the years preceding the invasion was Mahmoud Jibril, Head of the National Economic Development Board from 2007, who arranged six US training programmes

A R T I C L E S for Libyan diplomats, many of whom subsequently resigned and sided with the US and Britain once the rebellion and invasion got underway.

Finally, the security and intelligence cooperation that was an element of the ‘rapprochement’ period was used to provide the CIA and MI6 with an unprecedented level of information about both Libyan security forces and opposition elements they could cultivate that would prove invaluable for the conduct of the war.

Lesson one therefore is – rapprochement, whilst appearing to be an improvement in relations, may actually be a ‘long game’ to lay the groundwork for naked aggression, by building up intelligence and sounding out possible collaborators, effectively building up a fifth column within the state itself. This does not mean it should not be done; it merely means it should be approached with extreme caution and scepticism on the part of states of the Global South. It should be understood that, for the West, it is almost certainly a means of waging ‘war by other means’, to paraphrase Clausewitz. This is particularly pertinent to the case of Iran, a current recipient of the poisoned chalice that is ‘warmer relations’ with the West (although this ‘thaw’ may yet be scuppered by a Zionist Congress with no patience for the long game).

Lesson two: For the West, regime change has become a euphemism for total societal destruction I try to avoid the term ‘regime change’, as it implies a change of one ‘regime’ (usually understood as relatively functional and stable state, albeit a potentially ruthless one) to another. In the recent history of so-called ‘regime changes’by the West, this has never happened. In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, ‘regimes’ have not been replaced by other ‘regimes’, but have rather been destroyed and replaced instead by ‘failed states’, where security is largely non-existent, and no single armed force is strong enough to constitute continued next page

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itself as a ‘state’ in the traditional sense of establishing a monopoly of legitimate violence. This in turn leads to further societal and sectarian divisions emerging, as no group feels protected by the state, and each look instead to a militia who will defend their specific locality, tribe or sect – and thus the problem perpetuates itself, with the insecurity generated by the presence of some powerful militias leading to the creation of others. The result, therefore, is the total breakdown of national society, with not only security, but all government functions becoming increasingly difficult to carry out.

In Libya, not only were various sectarian militia such as LIFG armed and empowered by the US, Britain and France during the war against the Jamahiriya, but their power was then boosted by the new NATO-backed government that followed. In May 2012, Law 38 effectively granted impunity to the militias, making them immune for prosecution not only for crimes committed during the war against the Jamahiriya (such as the well documented slaughter of immigrants and black skinned Libyans), but also for ongoing crimes deemed “essential to the revolution”. This law effectively gave a free pass to the militias to murder their real or imagined opponents, building on the boost to the authority that they had already gained two months earlier. In March 2012, many of the militias had been incorporated into a new police force (the Supreme Security Committee) and a new army (the Libya Shield) – not only legitimising them, but providing them with further material resources with which to continue their violence and their ability to impose their will on the country’s legal – but largely powerless – authorities. Since then, the new militia-run police force has led violent campaigns against the country’s Sufi minority, destroying several shrines in 2013.

The same year, they also besieged several government ministries, in a (successful) attempt to force the government to pass a law criminalising supporters of the former government (a move which will jeopardise

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security yet further by barring hundreds of thousands of experienced officials from government work). The Libyan Shield, meanwhile, carried out a massacre of 47 peaceful protesters in Tripoli in November last year, and later kidnapped the Prime Minister Ali Zeidan. They are currently involved in a war to oust the newly elected government that has likely cost the lives of thousands since it started this June. This is not ‘regime change’ – what NATO has created is not a new regime, but conditions of permanent civil war.

Many in both Libya and Syria now regret having acted as NATO’s foot soldiers in sowing the seeds of destruction in their own countries. Anyone expecting future ‘regime change’ operations conducted by the West to result in stable democracies – or even stable sharia theocracies for that matter – need look no further than Libya for their answer. Western military power cannot

change regimes – it can only destroy societies.

Lesson three – Once Western military powers get their foot in the door, they won’t leave voluntarily until the state has been destroyed Although the war on Libya was begun under the authorisation of UN Security Council resolution (1973), it is important to note that this resolution only authorised the establishment of a no-fly zone and the prevention of Libyan state forces entering Benghazi. This was achieved within days.

Everything that NATO did subsequently was beyond the terms of the resolution and therefore illegal; a point that was made

A R T I C L E S vehemently by many who had supported (or at least not opposed) the resolution, including Russia, China, South Africa and even elements within the Arab League.

Regardless of the pretext, once the US and UK are militarily involved in a country on their hit list, they should not be expected to stick to that pretext. For them, UNSC 1973 allowed them to bomb Libya. The precise legal goals became immaterial – once they had been given the green light to bomb, they were not going to stop until the Jamahiriya was destroyed and Gaddafi dead, whatever the original legal reasoning that allowed them to go in.

A useful analogy here is that of a robber going to an old lady’s house posing as a gas man. Once he is inside, he is not going to stick to reading the gas meter - he is going to rob her house.

Obviously, this lesson is most pertinent in Syria, where the US, likely to be soon joined by the UK, are conducting airstrikes ostensibly ‘to destroy ISIS’. Given their avowed long term aim to topple the Syrian state, and their only recent (and arguably half hearted at best), conversion to seeing ISIS fighters as enemies rather than valiant freedom fighting allies, this is to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

Lesson four - State destruction cannot be achieved without ground forces A little noted aspect of the Libyan war (which has, however, been covered in detail by Horace Campbell) is the fact that the capital, Tripoli, was taken largely by Qatari ground forces co-ordinated by French and British special forces (in direct contravention of UNSC 1973). Indeed, no part of Libya was held by the rebels alone for any significant length of time without massive NATO bombardment of Libyan state forces; after the first three weeks, once the Libyan army got on top of the insurgency, not a single battle was won by the rebels until NATO started bombing. Even then, rebels could continued next page

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generally only take towns if NATO forces had completely destroyed the resistance first – and would still often be chased out again by the Libyan army a few days later. This is despite the fact that many of the Misrata militias were under the direct command of British special forces.

This state of affairs meant the taking of the capital was always going to be deeply problematic. The solution was Operation Mermaid Dawn – an invasion of Tripoli in late August by Qatari ground forces, French intelligence and the British SAS, preceded by several days of intensified airstrikes.

Whilst it is true that local collaborators joined in once the invasion was on the way, and indeed some rebel units had prior knowledge, the reality is that the fall of Tripoli was overwhelmingly a foreign planned and executed operation.

This is all highly relevant to the situation in

Syria right now. For most of this year, momentum in the Syrian war had been on the side of the government, most obviously in its retaking of the former rebel stronghold of Homs in May. Whilst this momentum was to some extent reversed by ISIS following its gains in Iraq, nevertheless it remains clear that hopes of a rebel victory without a Western air campaign seem unlikely. What Libya shows, however, is that even WITH air support, rebel militias are unlikely to achieve victory without an accompanying ground occupation. In Syria’s case, this may be even more necessary, as switching airstrikes from ISIS to Syrian government forces will be far more difficult than in Libya given the sophisticated S-3000 anti-aircraft missiles provided by Russia last year. This may make ground occupation the more viable option.

With Western media attempting to put pressure on Turkey to mount a ground occupation, there may be hopes that

A R T I C L E S Turkish forces will play in Syria the role that Qatari forces played in Libya.

The Libya war opened the eyes of many – or should have. But the overriding lesson – if it needed reiterating - should be the realisation that the US, the UK, France and their allies will stop at nothing, including even the imposition of total societal collapse, in order to attempt to reverse their declining global economic position through military destruction. This is the reality behind all talk of protecting civilians, humanitarianism, and democracy promotion, and all Western military intervention should be seen in this light.

14 December 2014 Dan Glazebrook is author of Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis.

Source: Countercurrents.org

THE BASES OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST: A PERMANENT INFRASTRUCTURE FOR PERMANENT WAR

By David Vine From Carter to the Islamic State, 35 Years of Building Bases and Sowing Disaster With the launch of a new U.S.-led war in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State (IS), the United States has engaged in aggressive military action in at least 13 countries in the Greater Middle East since 1980. In that time, every American president has invaded, occupied, bombed, or gone to war in at least one country in the region. The total number of invasions, occupations, bombing operations, drone assassination campaigns, and cruise missile attacks easily runs into the dozens.

As in prior military operations in the Greater Middle East, U.S. forces fighting IS have been aided by access to and the use of an unprecedented collection of

military bases. They occupy a region sitting atop the world’s largest concentration of oil and natural gas reserves and has long been considered the most geopolitically important place on the planet. Indeed, since 1980, the U.S. military has gradually garrisoned the Greater Middle East in a fashion only rivaled by the Cold War garrisoning of Western Europe or, in terms of concentration, by the bases built to wage past wars in Korea and Vietnam.

In the Persian Gulf alone, the U.S. has major bases in every country save Iran.

There is an increasingly important, increasingly large base in Djibouti, just miles across the Red Sea from the Arabian Peninsula. There are bases in Pakistan on one end of the region and in the Balkans on the other, as well as on

the strategically located Indian Ocean islands of Diego Garcia and the Seychelles. In Afghanistan and Iraq, there were once as many as 800 and 505 bases, respectively. Recently, the Obama administration inked an agreement with new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to maintain around 10,000 troops and at least nine major bases in his country beyond the official end of combat operations later this year. U.S. forces, which never fully departed Iraq after 2011, are now returning to a growing number of bases there in ever larger numbers.

In short, there is almost no way to overemphasize how thoroughly the U.S. military now covers the region with bases and troops. This infrastructure of war continued next page

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has been in place for so long and is so taken for granted that Americans rarely think about it and journalists almost never report on the subject. Members of Congress spend billions of dollars on base construction and maintenance every year in the region, but ask few questions about where the money is going, why there are so many bases, and what role they really serve. By one estimate, the United States has spent $10 trillion protecting Persian Gulf oil supplies over the past four decades.

Approaching its 35th anniversary, the strategy of maintaining such a structure of garrisons, troops, planes, and ships in the Middle East has been one of the great disasters in the history of American foreign policy. The rapid disappearance of debate about our newest, possibly illegal war should remind us of just how easy this huge infrastructure of bases has made it for anyone in the Oval Office to launch a war that seems guaranteed, like its predecessors, to set off new cycles of blowback and yet more war.

On their own, the existence of these bases has helped generate radicalism and anti-American sentiment. As was famously the case with Osama bin Laden and U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, bases have fueled militancy, as well as attacks on the United States and its citizens. They have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, even though they are not, in fact, necessary to ensure the free flow of oil globally. They have diverted tax dollars from the possible development of alternative energy sources and meeting other critical domestic needs. And they have supported dictators and repressive, undemocratic regimes, helping to block the spread of democracy in a region long controlled by colonial rulers and autocrats.

After 35 years of base-building in the region, it’s long past time to look

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carefully at the effects Washington’s garrisoning of the Greater Middle East has had on the region, the U.S., and the world.

“Vast Oil Reserves” While the Middle Eastern base buildup began in earnest in 1980, Washington had long attempted to use military force to control this swath of resource-rich Eurasia and, with it, the global economy.

Since World War II, as the late Chalmers Johnson, an expert on U.S. basing strategy, explained back in 2004, “the United States has been inexorably acquiring permanent military enclaves whose sole purpose appears to be the domination of one of the most

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administration began the first buildup of naval forces in the Indian Ocean just off the Persian Gulf. Within a decade, the Navy had created the foundations for what would become the first major U.S. base in the region — on the Britishcontrolled island of Diego Garcia.

In these early Cold War years, though, Washington generally sought to increase its influence in the Middle East by backing and arming regional powers like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Iran under the Shah, and Israel. However, within months of the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and Iran’s 1979 revolution overthrowing the Shah, this relatively hands-off approach was no more.

Base Buildup

strategically important areas of the world.”

In 1945, after Germany’s defeat, the secretaries of War, State, and the Navy tellingly pushed for the completion of a partially built base in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, despite the military’s determination that it was unnecessary for the war against Japan. “Immediate construction of this [air] field,” they argued, “would be a strong showing of American interest in Saudi Arabia and thus tend to strengthen the political integrity of that country where vast oil reserves now are in American hands.”

By 1949, the Pentagon had established a small, permanent Middle East naval force (MIDEASTFOR) in Bahrain. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy’s

In January 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced a fateful transformation of U.S. policy. It would become known as the Carter Doctrine. In his State of the Union address, he warned of the potential loss of a region “containing more than two-thirds of the world’s exportable oil” and “now threatened by Soviet troops” in Afghanistan who posed “a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil.”

Carter warned that “an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America.” And he added pointedly, “Such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

With these words, Carter launched one of the greatest base construction efforts in history. He and his successor Ronald Reagan presided over the expansion of bases in Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in the region to host a “Rapid Deployment Force,” which was to stand permanent guard over Middle Eastern petroleum supplies. The air and continued next page

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naval base on Diego Garcia, in particular, was expanded at a quicker rate than any base since the war in Vietnam. By 1986, more than $500 million had been invested. Before long, the total ran into the billions.

Soon enough, that Rapid Deployment Force grew into the U.S. Central Command, which has now overseen three wars in Iraq (1991-2003, 20032011, 2014-); the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2001-); intervention in Lebanon (1982-1984); a series of smaller-scale attacks on Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011); Afghanistan (1998) and Sudan (1998); and the “tanker war” with Iran (1987-1988), which led to the accidental downing of an Iranian civilian airliner, killing 290 passengers. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan during the 1980s, the CIA helped fund and orchestrate a major covert war against the Soviet Union by backing Osama Bin Laden and other extremist mujahidin. The command has also played a role in the drone war in Yemen (2002-) and both overt and covert warfare in Somalia (1992-1994, 2001-).

During and after the first Gulf War of 1991, the Pentagon dramatically expanded its presence in the region.

Hundreds of thousands of troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia in preparation for the war against Iraqi autocrat and former ally Saddam Hussein. In that war’s aftermath, thousands of troops and a significantly expanded base infrastructure were left in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Elsewhere in the Gulf, the military expanded its naval presence at a former British base in Bahrain, housing its Fifth Fleet there. Major air power installations were built in Qatar, and U.S. operations were expanded in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman.

The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003, and the subsequent occupations of both countries, led to a more dramatic expansion of bases in the region. By the height of the wars, there

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were well over 1,000 U.S. checkpoints, outposts, and major bases in the two countries alone. The military also built new bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan (since closed), explored the possibility of doing so in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, and, at the very least, continues to use several Central Asian countries as logistical pipelines to supply troops in Afghanistan and orchestrate the current partial withdrawal.

While the Obama administration failed to keep 58 “enduring” bases in Iraq after the 2011 U.S. withdrawal, it has signed an agreement with Afghanistan permitting U.S. troops to stay in the

country until 2024 and maintain access to Bagram Air Base and at least eight more major installations.

An Infrastructure for War Even without a large permanent infrastructure of bases in Iraq, the U.S. military has had plenty of options when it comes to waging its new war against IS. In that country alone, a significant U.S. presence remained after the 2011 withdrawal in the form of base-like State Department installations, as well as the largest embassy on the planet in Baghdad, and a large contingent of private military contractors. Since the start of the new war, at least 1,600 troops have returned and are operating from a Joint Operations Center in Baghdad and a base in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Erbil. Last week, the White House announced that it would request $5.6 billion from Congress to send an additional 1,500 advisers and other personnel to at least two new bases in Baghdad and Anbar Province. Special

A R T I C L E S operations and other forces are almost certainly operating from yet more undisclosed locations.

At least as important are major installations like the Combined Air Operations Center at Qatar’s al-Udeid Air Base. Before 2003, the Central Command’s air operations center for the entire Middle East was in Saudi Arabia.

That year, the Pentagon moved the center to Qatar and officially withdrew combat forces from Saudi Arabia. That was in response to the 1996 bombing of the military’s Khobar Towers complex in the kingdom, other al-Qaeda attacks in the region, and mounting anger exploited by al-Qaeda over the presence of nonMuslim troops in the Muslim holy land.

Al-Udeid now hosts a 15,000-foot runway, large munitions stocks, and around 9,000 troops and contractors who are coordinating much of the new war in Iraq and Syria.

Kuwait has been an equally important hub for Washington’s operations since U.S. troops occupied the country during the first Gulf War. Kuwait served as the main staging area and logistical center for ground troops in the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. There are still an estimated 15,000 troops in Kuwait, and the U.S. military is reportedly bombing Islamic State positions using aircraft from Kuwait’s Ali al-Salem Air Base.

As a transparently promotional article in the Washington Post confirmed this week, al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates has launched more attack aircraft in the present bombing campaign than any other base in the region. That country hosts about 3,500 troops at alDhafra alone, as well as the Navy’s busiest overseas port. B-1, B-2, and B52 long-range bombers stationed on Diego Garcia helped launch both Gulf Wars and the war in Afghanistan. That island base is likely playing a role in the continued next page

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continued from page 14 new war as well. Near the Iraqi border, around 1,000 U.S. troops and F-16 fighter jets are operating from at least one Jordanian base. According to the Pentagon’s latest count, the U.S. military has 17 bases in Turkey. While the Turkish government has placed restrictions on their use, at the very least some are being used to launch surveillance drones over Syria and Iraq. Up to seven bases in Oman may also be in use.

Bahrain is now the headquarters for the Navy’s entire Middle Eastern operations, including the Fifth Fleet, generally assigned to ensure the free flow of oil and other resources though the Persian Gulf and surrounding waterways. There is always at least one aircraft carrier strike group — effectively, a massive floating base — in the Persian Gulf. At the moment, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson is stationed there, a critical launch pad for the air campaign against the Islamic State.

Other naval vessels operating in the Gulf and the Red Sea have launched cruise missiles into Iraq and Syria. The Navy even has access to an “afloat forwardstaging base” that serves as a “lilypad” base for helicopters and patrol craft in the region.

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the Indian Ocean; created or gained access to bases in Ethiopia, Kenya, and the Seychelles; and set up new bases in Bulgaria and Romania to go with a Clinton administration-era base in Kosovo along the western edge of the gas-rich Black Sea. Even in Saudi Arabia, despite the public withdrawal, a small U.S. military contingent has remained to train Saudi personnel and keep bases “warm” as potential backups for unexpected conflagrations in the region or, assumedly, in the kingdom itself. In recent years, the military has even established a secret drone base in the country, despite the blowback Washington has experienced from its previous Saudi basing ventures.

Dictators, Death, and Disaster

In Israel, there are as many as six secret U.S. bases that can be used to preposition weaponry and equipment for quick use anywhere in the area. There’s also a “de facto U.S. base” for the Navy’s Mediterranean fleet. And it’s suspected that there are two other secretive sites in use as well. In Egypt, U.S. troops have maintained at least two installations and occupied at least two bases on the Sinai Peninsula since 1982 as part of a Camp David Accords peacekeeping operation.

The ongoing U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, however modest, should remind us of the dangers of maintaining bases in the region. The garrisoning of the Muslim holy land was a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and part of Osama bin Laden’s professed motivation for the 9/ 11 attacks. (He called the presence of U.S. troops, “the greatest of these aggressions incurred by the Muslims since the death of the prophet.”) Indeed, U.S. bases and troops in the Middle East have been a “major catalyst for antiAmericanism and radicalization” since a suicide bombing killed 241 marines in Lebanon in 1983. Other attacks have come in Saudi Arabia in 1996, Yemen in 2000 against the U.S.S. Cole, and during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Research has shown a strong correlation between a U.S. basing presence and alQaeda recruitment.

Elsewhere in the region, the military has established a collection of at least five drone bases in Pakistan; expanded a critical base in Djibouti at the strategic chokepoint between the Suez Canal and

Part of the anti-American anger has stemmed from the support U.S. bases offer to repressive, undemocratic regimes. Few of the countries in the Greater Middle East are fully democratic,

A R T I C L E S and some are among the world’s worst human rights abusers. Most notably, the U.S. government has offered only tepid criticism of the Bahraini government as it has violently cracked down on prodemocracy protestors with the help of the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Beyond Bahrain, U.S. bases are found in a string of what the Economist Democracy Index calls “authoritarian regimes,” including Afghanistan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Yemen. Maintaining bases in such countries props up autocrats and other repressive governments, makes the United States complicit in their crimes, and seriously undermines efforts to spread democracy and improve the wellbeing of people around the world.

Of course, using bases to launch wars and other kinds of interventions does much the same, generating anger, antagonism, and anti-American attacks.

A recent U.N. report suggests that Washington’s air campaign against the Islamic State had led foreign militants to join the movement on “an unprecedented scale.”

And so the cycle of warfare that started in 1980 is likely to continue. “Even if U.S. and allied forces succeed in routing this militant group,” retired Army colonel and political scientist Andrew Bacevich writes of the Islamic State, “there is little reason to expect” a positive outcome in the region. As Bin Laden and the Afghan mujahidin morphed into al-Qaeda and the Taliban and as former Iraqi Baathists and al-Qaeda followers in Iraq morphed into IS, “there is,” as Bacevich says, “always another Islamic State waiting in the wings.”

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can secure oil supplies and solve the region’s problems was, he adds, “flawed from the outset.” Rather than providing security, the infrastructure of bases in the Greater Middle East has made it ever easier to go to war far from home. It has enabled wars of choice and an interventionist foreign policy that has resulted in repeated disasters for the region, the United States, and the world.

Since 2001 alone, U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Yemen have minimally caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and possibly more

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than one million deaths in Iraq alone.

The sad irony is that any legitimate desire to maintain the free flow of regional oil to the global economy could be sustained through other far less expensive and deadly means. Maintaining scores of bases costing billions of dollars a year is unnecessary to protect oil supplies and ensure regional peace — especially in an era in which the United States gets only around 10% of its net oil and natural gas from the region. In addition to the direct damage our military spending has caused,

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A R T I C L E S it has diverted money and attention from developing the kinds of alternative energy sources that could free the United States and the world from a dependence on Middle Eastern oil — and from the cycle of war that our military bases have fed.

13 November 2014 David Vine, a TomDispatch regular, is associate professor of anthropology at The American University in Washington, D.C. Source: TomDispatch.com

U.S. SOLDIER TOMAS YOUNG

By Ludwig Watzal

US President George W. Bush and his Vice president Dick Cheney are responsible for the death of 4 488 American soldiers who were sent into an illegal war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Both politicians belong before a military court and put behind bars forever. Two days after these attacks, Tomas Young joined the army in order to “strike back” against the terrorists. He was led astray like thousands of others of his comrades by Bush and his neoconservative gang in their so-called “war on terror”. On March 18, 2013 , he wrote a letter to both of them and accused them of “egregious war crimes”.

On the eve of Veterans Day 2014, Young died as a result of his injuries he had suffered in Iraq after his fifth day of assignment. He did not join the army to attack Iraq or “liberate” the Iraqi people. Due to his severe ailment, his video message (1) is difficult to understand, that is why, Young’s deeply moving message to these political perpetrators is reprinted.

“I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq . I write this letter on behalf of the

hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City .

My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of

plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East , know fully who you are and what you have done.

You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged continued next page

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the draft in Vietnam , and you, Mr. Bush, wentAWOL from your National Guard unit.

Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East . I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq , which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq ‘s oil revenues.

Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Preemptive war is illegal under international law.

And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East . It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad , one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every

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level—moral, strategic, military and economic— Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

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interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned.

You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial.

But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.”

Even this last wish of Tomas Young will not come true, because politicians have no character. For a European, the US justice system seems to be lousy. Colored people are incarcerated by the thousands, while the white criminals walk away freely and send the minorities into their wars. Young’s death and the death of the other 4 488 American soldiers should not be in vain.

Justice must be done 13 November 2014

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no

Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany. He runs the bilingual blog “between the lines.

Source: Countercurrents.org

FINAL STATEMENT OF THE 4TH GLOBAL INTER-RELIGIOUS CONFERENCE ON ARTICLE 9 FROM SEOUL AND OKINAWA TO TOKYO Article 9 of Japan’s Peace Constitution.

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war

as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the

preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.

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will not be recognized.

All religions are universal, transcending races and nations. Today, however, there are cases where religions are used to instigate and justify violence.

Religions should be purified to their original inspiration, and their followers should faithfully translate these truths and realities about life in word and deed in their respective contexts. Each religion should be an expression of the universal truths like peace, and lead to collectively proclaim and live these rather than insist on differences that may lead to disunity or even hostility.1 The 4th Global Inter-religious Conference on Article 9 of the Japanese Peace Constitution gathered 120 participants from Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong/PRC, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Australia, Congo, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Canada and the USA. The conference was held at the YMCA Asia Youth Center and its participants hereby issue this Statement.

This Conference follows upon the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Asia Inter-religious Conference on Article 9, which were held in 2007 (Tokyo), 2009 (Seoul) and 2011 (Okinawa), but the name was changed to the Global Interreligious Conference on Article 9, to reflect the broadened base of participation from abroad.

1) We reaffirm our commitment and call the followers of all religions to be accountable to the values of justice, peace and care for all life, nationally, regionally and globally.

2) In the statements issued on the occasions of the 2nd and the

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3rd Asia Inter-religious Conference on Article 9 of the Japanese Peace Constitution, we affirmed that Article 9 is more than ever relevant, not only for Japan, but for regional and international relations, and that it is forward-looking. It can be seen as an essential step toward preventing and ending all war, and as a unique expression of the core value of a just, peaceful, and sustainable future for all communities around the world.

3) Together with our Japanese hosts and partners, we are deeply concerned that the Abe/Liberal Democratic Party administration has reinterpreted and further intends to revise and amend Article 9, which is Japan’s pledge for peace and to desist from war.

Revising the peace constitution of Japan will bring about serious instability in the region of Asia and beyond. Japan should never be a threat to neighboring countries, nor become a destabilizing factor.

This constitutional reinterpretation and proposed revision by the Abe administration is contrary to the wishes and desires of the people in this region, and a threat to constitutional democracy.

4) The Abe administration should squarely reflect upon Japan’s modern history of invasion and colonialism, and express this reflection clearly before the world. Not only should the government of Japan protect the Constitution, which is also the Japanese people’s promise of nonbelligerence, but it should uphold previously-made official Government statements that reflect upon Japan’s past invasions and colonialism, such as the (Chief Cabinet Secretary) Kôno Statement 2 , the (Prime Minister) Murayama Statement 3 and the (Prime Minister) Kan Statement4.

Members of the administration should also not pay official homage visits to

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the Yasukuni Shrine, which can be perceived as a provocative act of endorsing war crimes. Genuine acknowledgement and apology for Japan’s invasions, atrocities and colonial rule by the Japanese government forms a foundation for peace in the Asia region.

5) We demand that the government of Japan strive to resolve regional territorial disputes in accordance with the letter and spirit of Article 9, through dialogue and diplomatic negotiations.

We call upon each country to refrain from the use, or threatened use, of armed force as a means of settling such disputes.

6) The government of Japan should take action, without delay, to mitigate the crushing burden of U.S military bases placed upon the people of Okinawa and other Japanese communities. We are witnessing the pain of the people and ecological destruction around the military bases.

We demand of the Japanese and US governments the immediate closing of Camp Futenma and the immediate halt of construction of the new base in Henoko. We demand that the United States government recall its military forces to the U.S., not only from Japan but from other countries in the region.

7) Remilitarization brings not more security, but more vulnerability, to a nation and a region. The cynical manipulation of the idea of collective self-defense through the Abe regime’s reinterpretation of Art 9 will, we fear, lead to a dangerous arms race that will destabilize the entire region.

It is obvious that this remilitarization of Japan is linked to and supported by a US desire to strengthen its hegemony in Asia. We call upon all continued next page

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nations to abstain from and reject military solutions to political conflicts and diplomatic challenges.

We encourage the Japanese government to show leadership that is true to the letter and spirit of Article-9, and to resist pressure from other states to accept a remilitarization of their country. We are grateful to the efforts of people in peace movements in the US and other countries, and encourage them to continue their work for true peace.

8) We are hopeful that all people around the world will overcome narrow nationalism and, following the spirit of Article 9, will construct relationships based on the principles of no-war, reconciliation, equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit.

As consequence of the commitment to non-violence as expressed in Article 9, and as persons of faith committed to life, we plead to respect the human right of conscientious objection to military service.

9) In addition to the points raised in the text above, we petition the government of Japan in the spirit of Article 9 to address the growing problem of hate speech, which is being directed against Korean and other minority groups, as well as peace advocates, in communities across Japan. We urge the government of Japan to institute laws that would protect residents from fear-inducing taunts and threats, and to end the practice of lending police protection to those who deliver hate speeches under the cynical guise of “protecting freedom of expression.”

10) We believe that ultimate security can be guaranteed only by no weapons and no military forces.

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Acting on this belief, Conference participants pledge to communicate to their communities the importance of Article 9, and to support the reaffirmation of Article 9 by correspondingly addressing their governments. Our prayer is that Article 9 will inspire people of all nations.

A R T I C L E S •We call upon our Muslim friends in

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peace across Asia to consider the possibility of hosting an interfaith Article 9 conference in a majority Muslim country in Asia.

• We call upon the Christian Conference of Asia to help organize a solidarity visit by article 9 leaders to North and South Korea, to promote peace, reunification and Article 9.

•We call upon the Asia Pacific Forum of North America to organize an Article 9 solidarity visit to the United States.

• We call upon faith communities

Civil Society

Recommendations for Action

in Japan, Korea and other Asian nations to form country working groups in East Asia, to implement Article 9 activities.

• We call upon faith communities to engage youth in the promotion of the

cause of Article 9, by use of creative media and by the creation of education materials.

•We call upon faith communities to include a prayer for the spread of the spirit of Article 9 on September 21st, the International Day for Peace.

•We call upon faith communities and advocates of peace in other lands to remember Japan and Article 9 on May 3, Constitution Day, when the people of Japan commemorate the promulgation of the Constitution.

•We call upon the World Council of Churches to consider the possibility of hosting an international interfaith Article 9 conference, as part of its Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.

•In order to actualize the spirit of peace in article 9, we will make efforts to strengthen our solidarity with those who advocate for peace in civil society.

• We will work with those who advocate for peace in civil society to make Article 9 and the commitments arising from it a subject of instruction in school.

•We will support the ongoing efforts of peace advocates to seek nomination and award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese people who conserve Article 9.

1 Excerpt from Our Mission: InterReligious Conference on Article 9 and Peace in Asia. Seoul, 2009.

2 Statement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yôhei Kôno, on the result of the study on the issue of “comfort women.” 1993.08.04 3 Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war’s end.

1995.08.15 4 Statement by Prime Minister Naoto Kan, on the occasion of 100 years since the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty. 2010.08.10 5 December 2014 Participants of the 4th Global Conference in Article 9.

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