Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

I have visited this major blot upon the US escutcheon a number of times over the past five years (1-3). (Why there are so many blots one could visit and re-visit is a topic for another time.) One would have thought that it was dead and buried, along with the Cheney-Bush regime. In 2005 Bush himself had actually said that torture would not be included in the US armamentarium for dealing with enemies, perceived and real, (not a policy endorsed by the arch torture-facilitator Cheney), and President Obama had announced the renunciation as official US government policy. But now we are forced to revisit the subject by the new propaganda-shtick, Ooops, sorry, I mean movie, “Zero Dark Thirty.” For what she has done in re-justifying the use of torture, some have even compared Kathryn Bigelow apparently from the technical side a fine film-maker, to Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi-era photographer, who was indeed a fine photographer.

Bigelow also glorified the Iraq War in “The Hurt Locker,” which allowed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to shoulder aside “Avatar,” one of the truly cinematographically-great movies of all time, which also happened to be anti-capitalist and pro-environmental preservation. Actually, I think comparing the two is an insult to the memory of Riefenstahl, who died at the age of 101 in 2003. She may have glorified the infamous Nuremberg rallies and the Nazi regime in general, but she never took any photos glorifying the Gestapo’s torture chambers.

Like Glen Greenwald (4), I am not writing a movie review here (and indeed I have no intention of seeing the movie). I am dealing with the self-proclaimed justification of torture as an instrument of US “intelligence-gathering” policy (which justification Bigelow is now scurrying around to deny. She was only presenting the “facts.” But whether they are indeed “facts” is part of the problem. However, it is only part of the problem, as I will show later in this column.) The movie has suddenly re-opened the debate on whether torture “works” for intelligence gathering, and thus is “justified” as a part of US policy (discarded or not). One would have thought that indeed the argument was settled (despite its effectiveness for Jack Bauer in “24”). Among other journalists, Massimo Calabresi summarized and disposed of the subject very well in two articles in, of all places, Time (5, 6). No, it doesn’t “work,” and at times can be counter-productive. And there is a still-secret Senate committee report that summarized all of the evidence and arguments against its use very well.

But I think that there is a larger picture that must be taken into account here, when considering the use of torture by agents of the US government, whether US or of other governments under contract to the US. For many months, back when Cheney was glorifying “enhanced interrogation techniques” (oh those right-wing wordsmiths, Goebbels would have been proud), the torture debate was focused to a significant extent on the issue of whether it “works” or not for eliciting useful intelligence from captured military operatives, quasi-military operatives, suspected terrorists, or people caught in some “anti-terrorist” dragnet who might well have nothing to do with the activity. To repeat, virtually every expert on gaining useful intelligence from captured operatives “from the other side,” whatever their particular classification might be, said that it didn’t (5, 6). One must note that there were a handful of non-experts in addition to Cheney who thought that torture does “work.” Take for example the prominent Christian-Rightist Gary Bauer. Bauer stood in favor of the use of torture along with a number of other Christian Rightists for whom the fact that Christ himself was tortured to death by the Romans (who used crucifixion to punish their enemies over a period of centuries) seemed not to be of import.

Of course there was never any reason to think that the torture techniques put together by Dick Cheney and his staff and specifically approved for use by President Bush (so Cheney has told us, quite publicly) would “work,” in terms of gaining useful intelligence. After all, the techniques specified for use, as we know in (literally) painful detail from the post hoc memo written by “Judge” Bybee, were, as almost everyone knows, drawn from a torture program used on captured U.S. servicemen by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in North Korea over 50 years ago. It is also well-known that these techniques were specifically designed to elicit false confessions, not useful intelligence, from the U.S. POWs. On that level, it was successful.

Now this is not to say that torture is never useful. In fact it is very broadly useful, as an instrument of repression. Brought to its highest level of use as part of state policy by the Nazi Germans, the Franco and Pinochet regimes, among many others, it is very good for: terrorizing one’s own population to repress dissent; extracting information from politically active civilian regime opponents; carrying out extra-judicial punishment of regime opponents; repressing potential opposition in militarily occupied territories; extracting false confessions from non-military persons, as in the Stalinist show trials of the late 1930s; helping to establish a record of lawlessness, of total disregard for the rule of law, as long as the regime says things such as, “We are doing what we are doing in order to keep our people safe and fight terror.” For this last one, we need look no further than our own doorstep, of course.

As for whether what the Georgite regime did in terms of torture was really “torture,” Judge (sick) Bybee and Professor (sick) Yoo attempted, in very legalistic language, to define what they authorized as “not torture.” This causes one to turn to the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture to see what they say about it. Unfortunately, neither document defines “torture” in any sort of the detail in which Judge (sick) Bybee did. The authors of the Geneva Conventions just assumed that everyone “knows” what it is, and the UN Convention defines it in general terms as “Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession . . .”

According to Judge (sick) Bybee, techniques from waterboarding to repeated slamming against walls (even flexible ones) don’t come under that definition. Alberto Gonzales (remember him? Yes, he was one of GW Bush’s most memorable Attorney Generals) did the same thing when, at the beginning of the controversy, he advised the President that doing what they wanted to do was OK because the Geneva Conventions were “quaint.” However, if one doesn’t think that what one is doing is torture, why even mention the Geneva Conventions? But here comes the rub, and here comes the central argument against the use of torture by US agents, even if torture did “work” for, say, intelligence gathering.

It just so happens that under article VI of the U.S. Constitution, as treaties signed and ratified by the U.S. government both Conventions are part of “the supreme law of the land and [further] the judges of every state shall be bound by them.” There it is: by the two treaties cited above, signed and ratified by the US government, the use of torture is banned. And so the “yes it does work, no it doesn’t” argument is a VERY dangerous, very WRONG one to get into. Why? Because it plays right into the hands of the pro-torture folks.

For suppose, just suppose, that it did work in terms of intelligence gathering from military operatives? Suppose it did work specifically in the ticking time bomb scenario, a la “24”? Why then, according to that argument, torture by the U.S. would be OK, no? Well, NO. The central issue is not whether torture works for those purposes or not. The central issue is, as above, that the use of torture is prohibited by the Constitution’s Article VI. Indeed, Bush, Cheney, Bybee, Yoo, Addington, and every other Georgite official who took part in the authorization of the use of torture violated the Constitution in general and their oath to uphold it in particular. That is the argument that our side should be using over and over again, as we struggle mightily to re-establish the Rule of Law and Constitutional government in our great nation. And that is the argument we should be using to attack the pro-torture propaganda of “Zero Dark Thirty.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Protean by temperament, Steven Jonas, M.D., MPH, has written more than thirty books and a vast number of essays on various subjects ranging from medicine to politics. He serves as a senior contributing editor for The Greanville Post and a contributing author for BuzzFlash@Truthout, among several other leading venues, and has recently completed a revision of his true fiction novel “The 15% Solution,” currently scheduled for publication in early 2013 by Punto Press.

References:

1. Jonas, S., “Why Torture?” httpp://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/082.

2. Jonas, S. “Tortured Logic, Why ‘It Doesn’t Work’ Doesn’t Work.” http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/156.

3.Jonas, S., “The Torturous Debate: Revisited,” BuzzFlash, 05/26/2011, URL: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12725.

4. Greenwald, G., “ANTICRITIC: Zero Dark Thirty—new torture-glorifying film wins raves,” https://www.greanvillepost.com/2012/12/11/anticritic-zero-dark-thirty-new-torture-glorifying-film-wins-raves/.

5. Calabresi, M., “The Truth About Torture,” TIME Magazine, 16 December 2012, http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/287-124/15061-the-truth-about-torture.

6. Calabresi, M., “The U.S. Committed Torture. Was It Worth It?” TIME Magazine, Aug., 02, 2011, http://swampland.time.com/2011/08/02/at-last-it-is-settled-the-u-s-committed-torture-but-was-it-worth-it/#ixzz2FJ8JK0tN

 

 

 

The   B u l l e t
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 746
December 17, 2012

Hassan N. Gardezi

There is a war raging in our times between a coalition of states led by the United States of America and al-Qaeda which has entered its second decade. One of the parties in this war, the United States, needs no introduction. After the collapse of the Soviet Union it became the sole superpower and is known in all corners of the world as the most powerful nation on all accounts, political, military, economic and socio-cultural. However, al-Qaeda as a global force is not understood so well and needs some introduction and defining.

Al-Qaeda came out of the 1980s jihad (Islamic holy war) against the Soviet backed government of Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) in Kabul. This jihad was mobilized by the United States,[1] in collaboration with the Saudi royalty and Pakistan’s military dictator Gen. Zia. The Saudis lavishly financed the jihad with their oil wealth, but what turned out to be their more fateful contribution was Osama bin Laden whose arrival in Afghanistan was arranged through the chief of the Saudi Secret Service, Prince Faisal al Turki, and the CIA. After the former Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in 1989 Osama, the accomplished holly warrior and some of his Arab comrades founded the organization named al-Qaeda with a view to continue their jihad against the American “infidel,” who they thought was defiling the holy land of Islam by deploying its troops in Saudi Arabia in the wake of the first Gulf War.

Since its inception, however, the organization has undergone changes in its composition, following, and geographical sphere of activity. Today’s al-Qaeda, both as a political construct originating with the U.S. establishment and as an existential reality stands for a loosely affiliated plurality of groups and individuals operating on a trans-national level with a shared mission and common tactics used to attain that mission. The plurality of groups linked to al-Qaeda range from the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban to Ansar al Sharia of Libya and Al Nusra Front of Syria.

The al-Qaeda Mission and the War on Terror

The overriding mission of al-Qaeda is to dominate the world, the Muslim world in particular, by imposing its own brand of socio-political order based on the Sunni-Salafi sharia laws of Saudi Arabia. This places al-Qaeda in conflict with the United States which also wants to dominate the world, but for different reasons that have to do with imperialist possession and control. While al-Qaeda has no interest in the imperial phenomena, it is convinced that it cannot achieve its goal of dominating the world without overpowering the “enemies of Islam,” defined primarily as infidels (unbelievers). The United States of America being the leading global power is at the top of al-Qaeda’s list of infidel enemies. It was in retaliation to al-Qaeda’s alleged targeting of this “enemy of Islam” that led to the formal declaration of war on terror by President George W. Bush in 2001.

The “war on terror” despite the ambiguity of the phrase, is essentially a war of domination like the previous two world wars, albeit with some uniquely anomalous features. The first and foremost anomaly of this war lies in the fact that one of the combatants is a non-state, trans-national entity called al-Qaeda. As President Obama likes to reiterate, the goal of the war on terror is to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda.” Although under his “AfPak” policy Obama has extended the theatre of the war to include Pakistan with Afghanistan, the operations of al-Qaeda are not confined to these two countries. No continent or country seems to be free from actual or potential deadly attacks by the floating holy warriors of al-Qaeda. The problem is further complicated enormously when the United States itself finds it necessary to collude with the so called al-Qaeda enemy when it suits its purpose, as being witnessed in the case of Libya and Syria.

The Libyan Nightmare

On 15 February 2011 a peaceful anti-government demonstration was staged in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi, long associated with opposition to the Muammar Gaddafi regime. As the regime moved to quell the demonstration, the Security Council of the United Nations went into action with amazing haste and on February 26 passed the first of its resolutions calling for a freeze of the assets of Gaddafi and a number of his regime’s designated officials and a ban on their travel abroad, charging that the government had used excessive force against the demonstrators of Benghazi. This was soon followed by a second resolution passed on March 17 declaring a No Fly Zone over Libya which gave the U.S.-led NATO powers the pretext to intervene with air attacks on the country. The global news channels including the Qatar based Al Jazeera, once the emerging face of an alternative to imperialist propaganda, kept telling the listeners that all this was being done out of “humanitarian concern”  for the safety of Libyan people.

On March 28 President Obama addressed the nation to say, in part, that:

“Confronted by this brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis, I ordered warships into the Mediterranean. European allies declared their willingness to commit resources to stop the killing. The Libyan opposition and the Arab League appealed to the world to save lives in Libya. And so at my direction, America led an effort with our allies at the United Nations Security Council to pass a historic resolution that authorized a no-fly zone to stop the regime’s attacks from the air, and further authorized all necessary measures to protect the Libyan people.”[2]

This is a remarkably revealing quote from the address of the president of United States. It makes quite clear that it was the United States that had the Security Council meetings convened, and resolutions passed to intervene militarily in Libya soon after the first peaceful demonstration took place in Benghazi. Furthermore Obama’s story of Gaddafi’s “killing” of his people and the “necessary measures to protect Libyan people” sounds more like a replay of Bush’s story of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction.” And, while Obama could very well be correct regarding the messages he says he was getting from the European allies and the Arab League, his reference to “Libyan opposition” does need some scrutiny.

From the beginning of armed confrontations Libya’s state media continued to insist that the Gaddafi opposition was being led by ruthless al-Qaeda operatives. The U.S. and NATO sources, however, either denied these claims or simply remained silent. Their warplanes continued the air attacks to cripple the Libyan defence forces and pin Gaddafi down to his hideouts as heavily armed opposition militias marched on to Tripoli, leaving blood and destruction in their trail. Finally on October 20, 2011 grisly images of a bloodied Muammar Gaddafi being lynched to death amidst shouts of allah-o-akbar (God is great) were flashed on the global television networks. Reportedly he was trying to escape to safety from his hometown of Sirte when his convoy was attacked by NATO war planes providing the ground militias the opportunity to grab and kill him.

The reaction of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, caught on a widely circulated video, perhaps correctly reflected the mood of the entire U.S. establishment at the news of Gaddafi’s murder. The good lady was about to sit down for an American TV interview in Kabul when she was told about the killing. After a moment’s pause she burst into a cackle of laughter uttering the words, “We came, we saw, he is dead,” waving her arms in the air.

Gaddafi’s horrible death may have served as a warning to dictators, especially those prone to get on the wrong side of the only superpower on earth, but it has certainly not brought Libya any closer to peace and democracy. After the fall of the regime some renegade ministers of Gaddafi’s erstwhile cabinets who had earlier joined together to form the National Transition Council (NTC) in Benghazi took over the rule of Libya, but not for long. On August 9, 2012 the governance of Libya, now fragmented into many tribal and regional factions and overrun by killing and torturing militias, was transferred to yet another interim body, the 200 member General National Congress (GNC). This Congress chose the pro-Muslim Brotherhood politician Mohammed Magariaf as its president who had been a long time opponent of the Gaddafi regime and had been living in the United States for many years. Magariaf is the current titular president of Libya rendered lawless.

The al-Qaeda Connection

It is no longer a secret that the main militia on the ground in Libya leading the opposition to bring about a violent regime change was the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, LIFG. This group has been well-known to the U.S. establishment since its formation by the Libyan mujahideen, holy warriors, who had gone to Afghanistan in order to fight in the CIA sponsored jihad of the 1980s. Having returned from that holy war they decided to overthrow the secular regime of Muammar Gaddafi and replace it with an Islamic state. At the same time LIFG alienated its U.S. facilitators by linking up with al-Qaeda. In 2004 the United States formally designated LIFG a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and after 9/11 had it banned by the Security Council of the United Nations. The CIA also began to keep a closer watch on the activists of the group. Those detained for suspected links to al-Qaeda’s terrorist activities were handed over to Libya under the notorious “rendition” policy.

One of them arrested in Malaysia and rendered to Libya, after being kept in a CIA secret prison for some time, was Abdel Hakim Belhadj. He too had fought in the 1980s CIA sponsored Afghanistan Jihad and later joined al-Qaeda. After his rendition Libya kept him jailed, but released him under some kind of a reconciliation deal in late 2010. He resumed his political activities when the February 15 anti-Gaddafi demonstration took place in Benghazi followed by the U.S.-led NATO intervention. Commanding a heavily armed LIFG militia band Belhadj marched on to Tripoli under cover of NATO air attacks and occupied the city on 23 August, 2011. That for all practical purposes was the end of Gaddafi’s long rule over Libya. Belhadj installed himself the military commander of Tripoli. With the regime change completed over the next two months by the murder of Gaddafi, Belhadj was off to Syria planning the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad government with the Free Syrian Army.

But al-Qaeda’s business in Libya was not over yet. On the 2012 anniversary of 9/11 another al-Qaeda linked militia calling itself Ansar al Sharia along with some prominent LIFG members attacked the Benghazi consulate of the United States and killed U.S. ambassador, Chris Stevens along with three of his staff present there. The Obama administration first tried to portray the killing of the ambassador as the spontaneous act of a Muslim mob enraged over the recent showing of an anti-Islam film made in the United States, but under the election year scrutiny, had to admit at least this much that the killing of the ambassador was a planned act of a terrorist group.

The Syrian Nightmare

Rallies in opposition to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Asaad began to appear in mid-March 2011. Several reasons can be cited to account for these protests, including the contagion effect of the so-called Arab Spring and the long rule of the Ba’ath Party led by the Assad family belonging to the minority Alawi sect. But an important factor that cannot be ignored is that of neoliberal economic reforms that created much hardship for the lower income working-class population. In this context it must be remembered that before the reforms were undertaken in the mid 1990s and pursued at an accelerated pace by Bashar al-Assad when he took over in 2000, the Syrian state had a sizable public sector and supported a significant range of basic social programmes. The neoliberal reforms led to rapid privatization of the state sector enterprises and the dismantling of social programmes such as food and fuel subsidies, creating serious economic difficulties for the people.

While economic problems were clearly a major underlying factor in precipitating the protests, external powers and vested interests moved in quickly to transform the public unrest into a deadly melee for geopolitical domination. The same combinations of NATO Europeans and Arab league petro-monarchies led by the United States that were at work to bring down the Gaddafi regime began to sabotage the Bashar ruled Syria. They heavily financed and armed al-Qaeda inspired Syrian and external Islamists to kill and destroy presumably to save the country for democracy or Islamic caliphate depending on who was interpreting the bloodshed in progress.

“

As one member of a UN mission said, “The ghost of Libya is haunting the debate” on Syria. ”

The Obama administration once again “led the effort,” this time behind the scenes, to summon the United Nations Security Council meetings to get a suitable resolution passed against the Bashar al-Assad regime so that the Libyan ambush could be repeated in Syria. Starting in June 2011 a string of resolutions were moved in the Security Council meetings to condemn the Syrian regime or subject the country to international sanctions but all failed, not only because Russia and China cast their vetoes, but also because important states with long records of democratic rule such as India, Brazil and South Africa were also invariably opposed to the moves. Those opposed to anti-regime resolutions were all very concerned about something the U.S. and Western mainstream media have tried to push under the rug – the manipulation of the Security Council’s No Fly Zone Resolution by the United States and its allies to bring about violent regime change in Libya leading to the murder of Gaddafi. As one member of a UN mission said, “The ghost of Libya is haunting the debate” on Syria.[3]

However, the repeated rebuffs by the Security Council have not deterred the United States and its allies from clinging on to the objective of removing Bashar al-Assad from power, no matter how much more the people of Syria have to suffer. Through its Arab allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular, the United States has managed to supply enough petro-dollars and heavy arms, including shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to the Syrian militias to keep the proxy war going and people dying.[4]

As a matter of fact the centre of the anti-Syrian activity led by the United States has been shifted out of the chambers of United Nations in New York to Doha in the oil-rich sheikhdom of Qatar. Here in the comfort of luxury hotels a conference was held in early November 2012 to plan strategy to achieve a violent regime change and to cover up the al-Qaeda face of hard core Islamist militias in Syria. At the end of the conference, publicized extensively by the mainstream global media, the formation of a unified body to drive Assad out of power was announced under the rather pretentious name of “National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary Opposition Forces.” In the meantime, ordinary Syrians keep dying and driven out of their homes by the explosions of suicide and car bombs of Al-Nusra Front with al-Qaeda fingerprints.

Since the Doha conference global media has been awash with news of the success of militia fighters in having reached the suburbs of the Syrian capital, Damascus. BBC has also been reporting bomb explosions in the suburbs of Damascus with heavy loss of life, blamed invariably on Bashar for not quitting his job. And in case none of these acts of war and terrorism work to bring about regime change in Syria, a new pretext is already being manufactured for U.S.-NATO intervention Libya style…  On December 3, 2012 giants of the corporate media, The New York Times, CNN and others broke the new of “intelligence” reports alleging that Bashar al-Assad is planning to use chemical weapons to kill his opponents, complete with threats of retaliation issued by President Obama and his secretary of state, Hilary Clinton. The BBC News (America) in its December 3 television broadcast even spiced up its story by telling its audience that Hafez al-Assad had in fact used deadly chemicals on his opposition, only to apologize for telling a lie the next day.

Analysis

The United States is the leading power engaged in a very costly and prolonged war with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. In the context of this ongoing war it does appear inconsistent for it to be in collusion with al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria. However, the Afghanistan war has to be seen in the perspective of the overall foreign policy of United States, especially as it has been evolving since mid 1940s. At the end of the Second World War the United States emerged as a superpower that found it expedient to launch a more ambitious imperial project of dominating the world politically and economically, a policy which immediately brought it into intense rivalry with the other superpower, the Soviet Union. That rivalry produced the Cold War and its far-reaching global repercussions that are well known today. What is perhaps not so well known is that in the interstices of the Cold War had also emerged another regional, but nonetheless a major, obstacle to the forces of imperialism. This was the movement, known as pan-Arab nationalism or simply Arab nationalism that flourished in the 1950s and 60s.

The movement was politically dominated by the personality of Gamal Abdel Nasser and was aimed at unifying the vast region of Arabic speaking Middle East and North Africa stretching from the Arabian Sea to Atlantic Ocean on the basis of common language, history and ancestry, rather than religion. Ideologically this movement was secular and anti-imperialist, emphasizing modernity, progress, socialist equality and ownership of the Arab natural assets for the benefit of the Arab people. Other than Nasser of Egypt the heads of state that more or less identified with the movement and its ideology included Ben Bella of Algeria, Houari Boumediene of Tunisia, Gaafar Nimeiry of Sudan, Hafez al-Assad and Basher al-Assad of Syria, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

For all practical purposes the Arab Nationalist movement of the 1950s and 60s collapsed under the relentless opposition of Islamist groups of the time such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and the devastating impact of the 1967 Israel-Arab War. But the vestigial memories of the movement and fears of its resurrection in one form or the other through the initiative and leadership of a younger more educated and cosmopolitan Arab generation continue to haunt both the Islamists under the umbrella of al-Qaeda and the United States’ establishment. That is precisely the reason why the U.S. and al-Qaeda while at war in Afghanistan have found it expedient to gang up in a last ditch battle to eliminate their common enemies in Libya and Syria. •

_____________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hassan Gardezi is Professor Emeritus of sociology, a previous chair of sociology department, Punjab University, Lahore, now living in Canada. He writes regularly on Pakistan and South Asian affairs.

Endnotes:

1. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Interview in Le Nouvel Observateur, January, 15-21, 1998.
2. Quoted in The Atlantic, September 28, 2012.
3. Joshua Hersh, “Syria U.N. Deliberations Haunted By Ghost Of Libya Mission,” The Huffington Post, February 2, 2012.
4. The New York Times, October 14, 2012.

//

Comparing Evils

From the Book

RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War

By William T. Hathaway

Jamal Khan is an Afghan journalist who fled his country because of Taliban persecution and now lives in Germany. We met in the apartment of a mutual friend from the Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft, the German Peace Society. Jamal is mid-forties, thin, with curly brown hair, tan skin, and clear green eyes that take everything in.

 

Hathaway: “Do you miss your country?”

Khan: “Only when I’m drunk, which isn’t very often. Then I get stupidly sentimental.

“Actually I’m not a big fan of any country. They’re all inhuman. They exist mainly as platforms for power. The rulers promote cultural rituals that make people identify with the place they live. Then they manipulate the people’s patriotic emotions to get them to fight wars for them. We cling to the identification because it gives us a sense of security, of belonging to something greater. But the insecurity we feel is actually generated by the power the rulers have over us.

“Nationalism is really a mental illness. Breaking the hold these national identities h ave on us would be an enormous improvement for the world.

“Afghanistan has the same patriotic crap, the fatherland, hierarchies of male power. So I don’t miss it. But every day I miss my family and friends there.”

“What did the Taliban do to you that made you leave?”

“Threatened to kill me. That was enough.”

“Was that because you’re gay?”

“No.” Jamal lit a cigarette and gave me an irritated look. “Not everything about a person revolves around their sexuality, you know. The Taliban didn’t know I was gay. I was discreet about that. They threatened to kill me because I’m a journalist and I ridiculed them in my articles. They actually did kill the newspaper editor. After that I left.

“But yes, it’s much easier to be gay in Europe than in Afghanistan, and that’s another reason I’m glad to be here.”

“How did you get out?”

“The German embassy. They had a refugee program, and I filed a petition there. Then I bought an airline ticket, said tearful good-byes, and flew away. It wasn’t such a police state that you couldn’t get out. The difficult thing was to be accepted by another country. And back then the Germans were very good about that.”

“Not now?”

“Less so.”

“How do you feel about the Taliban compared to the current government?”

“That’s difficult to answer. Both governments are terrible but in different ways. The Taliban were — still are — brutal fanatics. And yes, they did kill gays. They caught two guys making love, dragged them through the streets, and stoned them to death. Really horrible. They’re hysterical homophobes, it totally freaks them out. The whole society is very repressed about this. If you’re queer, you have to stay in the closet, even now. But if you did stay there, the Taliban didn’t break into the closet and kill you. They didn’t want to know about it.

“Women were persecuted too. If they were openly Western, they could get into major trouble, even be killed.

“All that’s despicable, and I’m glad there’s less of it now.

“But there’s another side to this. Western propaganda uses this to whip up war fever. The media in Europe and North America have seared all sorts of atrocity stories — some of them true, some of them not — into people’s minds to justify invading the country and bombing the people.

“The Taliban are bad guys, no doubt about it. I’m not fond of them at all. They killed hundreds of people, including friends of mine. They would’ve killed me if I had stayed.

“But the USA has killed fifty thousand Afghans just in this current war … and more every day. They’re devastating the country. They make the Taliban look like boy scouts.”

“How do you like it here in Germany?”

“I’m glad to be here. I’m glad they let me in. I’m not so glad they’re trying to throw me out now.”

“How’s that? What’s happened?”

“I had refugee status as long as the Taliban were in power because they were the ones who threatened me. But when the USA installed this new government, the Germans said I had to go back because now I wouldn’t be killed. I can understand their position. But it would drive me crazy to see what the USA is doing there, to live in the middle of that. I’d probably join the Taliban!” Jamal gave a tormented laugh and dragged on his cigarette.

“So I went underground. I’m illegal here now. That means I can’t hold a regular job. I have to worry every time I see a cop, hoping he doesn’t ask for my papers. I work as a cook now where they pay me cash, no benefits, no health insurance. I publish articles here and there, but I can’t be employed anywhere. It’s a pain, a real struggle just to live.

“Sometimes the police raid the places where illegals work. They round them up and send them back to whatever country they came from. Last month they raided the restaurant where I worked. They did it before the customers arrived, so as not to upset them.

“Three cops barged from the dining room into the kitchen as we were working prep, shouted to everybody not to move and to show our papers. Three of us ran for the back door, but other police were blocking it. By now they knew we were the ones they wanted, so they closed in from both sides.

“One of us — an Iraqi woman — started crying hysterically. While the cops were trying to calm her down, I saw a chance.

“The wall into the dining room has an opening where we set the finished plates for the waiters to pick up. I dived at the opening, hurt my hip like hell going over it, and landed on the floor of the dining room. Police were shouting at me from the kitchen.

“By the time I got up, a cop who was guarding the front door was running towards me. I knocked over a table to block his way. The cop darted around it to cut me off. He was right behind me going out the door, but I was faster. It meant a lot more to me than it did to him. Plus he had a beer belly.

“I sprinted across the street, almost got hit by cars both ways. When I looked back, he was waiting for a break in the traffic. I didn’t slow down. Sometimes they have a motorcycle backup, but I was lucky.

“I went back a couple of days later to get my pay, but the manager wouldn’t give it to me, said I broke a bunch of dishes when I pushed over the table. The money he owed me was a lot more than the dishes, but what could I do, call the cops? He gave me back my coat, though.

“So I got another job. Lots of places want to hire us because we work so cheap. We’re captive labor.

“I’ve worked picking strawberries and apples. Dug asparagus. Swept out movie theaters after the last show. Swamped out bars. Washed windows. I lugged around dead pigs in a slaughter house — at least that’s better than eating them.

“I’d write a book too, if I didn’t have to work all the time.” Jamal gave me a look of envy with a bit of accusation in it.

“So my feelings about Germany are mixed. They saved my life by giving me asylum, but they’re helping to kill thousands of my people. They know their own people are against this war, so they claim to be only a peace-keeping force, but they’re really fighting on the side of the Americans. They have a whole squadron of spy planes that take pictures to show the Americans where to bomb. They’ve been teaching Afghan police and soldiers counter-insurgency tactics, but since that hasn’t worked, now they’ve sent attack troops to kill the Taliban themselves. They’re working with the USA to dominate the country and keep the puppet government in power.

“It’s no wonder that the fanatics are trying to take vengeance here in Germany. They have to. Their friends are being murdered. Retribution is a matter of honor for them. That goes very deep.”

“What do you think the Germans should do?”

“Stop supporting the American invasion. Pull out their troops and spy planes and go home.”

“What should the USA do?”

“That’s complicated. First we have to look at what they’ve done in the past. Throughout the seventies and eighties they did everything they could to overthrow the Afghan government. That government was communist, and to the USA that meant it had to go, no matter how many people had to die.

“The people most willing to die killing communists were the fanatical Muslims, who hated this secular government. The CIA helped them to attack it, starting with raids on outposts and assassinations of local officials. The government asked the Soviet Union for help, and they sent in troops. Then the CIA stepped up its involvement, recruiting thousands of mujahideen, training them, financing them, turning them into an army to attack the Soviets. It escalated into a full-scale war for ten years. Left two million dead, a lot of those children who starved in all the chaos. Brutalized the whole country. All the young people growing up knew was war. Savagery became their norm.

“The people the USA is now trying to kill — the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda — they were all on its payroll then fighting the communists. It was your government that turned them into killers. After they won the war, it was inevitable they’d take over the country. By then they were the strongest force.

“Once the Taliban was in power, the USA wasn’t concerned that they were persecuting women and gays and non-Muslims. The Taliban were just one of the many dictatorships the USA does business with and doesn’t object to.

“But that changed when the Taliban became anti-capitalist, as they shifted away from a corporate-dominated economy and towards Islamic socialism. That made them a danger to Western interests. The final straw was when they refused to allow a US company to build an oil pipeline through the country. Suddenly the Western press was full of stories about how evil the Taliban were. They became these monsters who needed to be destroyed before they took over the world.

“So the USA invaded, chased the Taliban back into the mountains, and put in their figurehead as president. This Karzai, he used to work for the US company that wants to build the pipeline. He’s their guy! And the pipeline is at the top of his agenda … if the war ever stops.

“Western media call this ‘stability’ and ‘nation building,’ but those are just PR slogans for a new kind of imperialism. For decades the USA has manipulated Afghanistan for its own economic and political purposes. So to finally answer your question, what it should do now is stop what’s it’s been doing. It should demilitarize the country as much as possible, take back all the weapons it can, and just leave. Then it should use its power to convince other countries not to send in more arms.

“Yes, there’ll be a war. But without foreign intervention it won’t last so long.

“And yes, the Taliban will probably take over again. We’ll have to learn to live with that for a while. The Taliban won’t last forever. We’ll gradually undermine their power, and they’ll fall.”

“But if everyone else gives up their weapons and the Taliban are the only ones who have them, they could rule for a long time.”

“Could be. But peace with the Taliban would be better than war with the Americans. If other countries stay out of it, we can handle the Taliban. Nonviolently.

“There’s no point in trying to overthrow governments with violence. It just poisons the culture. I’ve seen that first hand. Better to overthrow them with peace, render then irrelevant. In the long run, peace is stronger. If we always react peacefully, that will dissolve the violence … eventually.

“At first things might get worse, because the violence we’ve done to others in the past is coming back on us. But if we stay peaceful, do as my cousin Jesus said and turn the other cheek, don’t fall back into fear and brutality, we can ride out this phase of rebound violence and not make any more enemies. This is the only way I see to defuse the situation and break the cycle. As my neighbor Gandhi said, ‘There is no way to peace, peace is the way.’

“But I know most people don’t agree with that. So many men still want to be macho warriors, want to fight. But I see that as a sign that they really feel very weak and afraid, so they have to go to the opposite extreme. That’s why queers like me are so threatening to them. We show on the outside what they have on the inside. And they can’t bear to face that. But they dream about it.”

“So basically the USA should leave.”

“Of course.”

“Do you think that’ll happen?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?”

“Because the corporations running the USA need that pipeline. It’s not just something they’d like to have. They need it. The only way they can keep their present level of profits and hold on to their economic advantage is if they keep cheap oil flowing in. And that means controlling the pipeline.

“These wars aren’t about whether the USA will get the oil it needs. With a world market, no one can stop the USA from buying oil. The wars are about how much they’re going to have to pay for it and how much they can control it. Dominating oil will give them economic leverage over other countries, and that’s what they’re after.

“They don’t care how many people they kill to do that. They’re not people themselves. They’re corporations. They have to maximize their profits. That’s the basis of their existence.”

“What do you see in the future?”

“In forty-five minutes I go to the restaurant and start making salads. That’s all.” Jamal stood up and pulled some folded paper out of his jacket. “I brought along something I wrote. If you want, you can put it in your book. It’s sort of a fable. About the damage being done to the most important resource in my country.” He handed me the pages:

Malalai

The laughter of young Malalai delighted the villagers whenever they heard it, which was often. They listened with silent smiles, for to have laughed in response would have broken the charm.

Laughter streamed from the girl in floating spheres of sound that reconnected everyone who heard it to an inner happiness they’d forgotten. The villagers never knew when she might laugh, but they’d learned that two things never caused it: someone’s misfortune or an attempt to make her laugh. They had to wait and be surprised.

Malalai was often in the village, running errands for her mother, playing with friends, following the flight of a moth. She liked to stop by the spice shop with its big glass jars full of roots, leaves, seeds and powders. Although she was barely tall enough to reach them, she could unscrew the lids and peer inside, absorbing the colors and scents. Black salt smelled like matches and looked like dirt. Hing was yellow as a bee and reeked of rotten radishes. Cloves were little black buds with the fragrance of carnations. Curry leaves smelled like her father on a hot day. Breathing cinnamon with her eyes closed was a happy dream, nutmeg a dark, scary one. Coriander woke her up. Chilies made her sneeze. Ginger made her jump.

And all together they made her laugh. And when she did, the shop lady remembered again why she loved spices.

Malalai enjoyed the fabric store with its bolts of cloth: gossamer organdy, modest muslin, coarse burlap, sturdy canvas, busy paisley, comforting flannel, regal cashmere, filigreed lace. Aswirl with the profusion of textures and colors, she would laugh, and the man in store was again glad to be selling cloth.

Malalai spent lots of time in her father’s business, watching as he turned wood into furniture and cabinets. She liked seeing him saw and plane and hammer and polish. She liked the scents of wood shavings, sawdust, linseed oil and varnish, and the stacks of slabs, planks and dowels. She learned the difference between oak for the few wealthy customers and pine for the many poor customers. She hated the shriek of the circular saw but loved how the chips flew. She was fascinated by the twisting drill bit that looked like it was climbing into the air but just went around and ’round.

Fine emery paper felt like her father’s cheek if he hadn’t shaved. Coarse sandpaper felt like stuck sugar but tasted terrible. Glue looked like honey but tasted even worse than sandpaper.

When her father finished a table or chair, he would set Malalai on it and ask her to dance to see if it wobbled. If it stood stable under her prancings and pirouettes, she would laugh and tell him, “Good work!”

And her father would think, I’m a lucky man.

At home Malalai liked to help her mother cook. Sometimes this helping ended up causing more work for her mother, but the mother was happy to see her learning. She taught Malalai how to make fresh cheese, bringing milk to a foaming boil and drizzling in lemon juice. As soon as the acid hit, the milk would separate into watery whey and clumps of curd, and Malalai would laugh.

Her mother would smile and think, Now she’s understanding transformation.

Their country had been invaded by soldiers from faraway, the USUKs. One day the foreigners drove into their village in big trucks. The USUKs were strange people. You couldn’t tell what they really looked like because they wore thick clothes that made them seem swollen, hard hats that hid their hair, and goggles that hid their eyes.

The first time Malalai saw them she thought they had dressed up to look silly, so she laughed. Her father quickly hushed her and told her she must never laugh at these people.

One of the USUKs pointed at them and shouted in a strange language. The soldiers walked towards them with their rifles ready. They made her father and mother turn around and prop themselves against a wall with their hands. Malalai watched as the USUKs ran their hands all over her mother’s and father’s bodies, poking and feeling. Her mother was shuddering and crying. Her father held his mouth tightly shut. The soldiers smiled at Malalai. They talked among themselves while keeping their rifles aimed.

Then the USUKs let them go. As the family walked home, her father couldn’t look at Malalai or her mother. His hands were trembling.

Malalai never laughed again.

#

“Comparing Evils” is a chapter from Radical Peace: People Refusing War, which presents the experiences of peace activists who have moved beyond petitions and demonstrations into direct action: helping soldiers to desert, destroying computer systems, trashing recruiting offices, burning military equipment, and sabotaging defense contractors. Chapters are posted on a page of the publisher’s website at http://media.trineday.com/radicalpeace.William T. Hathaway is a Special Forces combat veteran turned peace activist and is currently an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. His first book, A World of Hurt, won a Rinehart Foundation Award for its portrayal of the psychological roots of war: the emotional blockage and need for patriarchal approval that draw men to the military. He is also the author of Summer Snow, the story of an American warrior in Central Asia who falls in love with a Sufi Muslim and learns from her that higher consciousness is more effective than violence. Chapters are available at www.peacewriter.org.

A new series by radical director Scott Noble. Exceptional. Highly recommended.
Parts 2 and 3 to be posted soon. We apologize for the annoying, randomly inserted commercials at the beginning of these presentations. Neither the authors nor we can control such pestilence. But bear with it as the documentary is damn worth the trouble.

//