Iraq crisis threatens to ignite regional war
Washington is inevitably being drawn back into a catastrophe of its own making.
![iraqOilfields-SectarianMap](https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/iraqOilfields-SectarianMap-462x400.jpg)
The final irony is that the can of worms opened by the arrogant criminality of the West has now created the conditions to deny the Americans and their accomplices easy access to the coveted oil.—Eds
By Bill Van Auken, Senior Analyst, wsws.org
After overrunning Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city with a population of roughly 2 million, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a Sunni militia that is an offshoot of Al Qaeda, has continued its offensive, taking Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and a number of other towns in the Tigris River valley on the road to Baghdad.
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has thrown Iraqi special forces units along with volunteers raised from the Shia population into a defensive line north of the capital in hopes of breaking the ISIS advance.
The US is reportedly beginning to evacuate some of the thousands of military and intelligence contractors deployed in the country, and there are discussions over what will be the fate of the giant US embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world. What is unfolding is a monumental debacle engendered by the entire policy pursued by both the Bush and the Obama administrations over the course of more than a decade.
This immense mayhem and destructiveness for all sides—millions of Arab victims, thousands of American soldiers wounded and killed, while engaged in a criminal enterprise, and trillions out the window and down the rabbit hole in taxpayers’ money—is the price paid by policies implemented by the US ruling class and its accomplices in all continents solely in pursuit of financial gain. When are the American sheeple going to rise and say, “
The Fundamental Lie of the Afghan War
The Bergdahl Swap and Beyond
It needs to be repeated again and again: the Taliban is not al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is not the Taliban.
As a general rule, U.S. wars are based on lies.
Some of these are soon exposed; the lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda links used to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq were exposed (to anyone paying attention) within a few months, or at least by the end of 2003. The lie that Spaniards mined the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898, used to justify U.S. war and the colonization of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii and the Philippines, was exposed much later. The lies about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of 1964, used to justify the escalation of the Vietnam War, were only exposed in the 80s and 90s. The Big Lie surrounding the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has not yet been adequately exposed and discussed.
The lie was hinted at, rather than expressed outright. The lie was there that was no distinction between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. “We make no distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them,” declared George W. Bush. This is the heart of the Bush Doctrine. The point was to justify the overthrow of a regime by actively confusing distinctions, encouraging people to see the Taliban as actively in cahoots with al-Qaeda plots, hence enemies of America and “terrorists” by definition.
Most people in the U.S. initially bought Barack Obama’s differentiation between the second Iraq War as “war of choice” and “strategic blunder” and the Afghan War as a “necessary war” to punish and crush al-Qaeda.. (That’s what the polls suggested; they never, unfortunately, allowed those polled to describe either conflict as neither a necessary war nor a war of choice but as a “criminal war.”)
But now (or as of February, according to a Gallop poll) 49% of people in this country consider the war beginning in 2001 as a “mistake,” while 48% disagree. If there was once a consensus that Iraq was a mistake, but Afghanistan a good cause, there is a growing realization that there is no “good war,” or at least little likelihood that U.S. troops will enter one on the right side anytime soon. Look at the splendid results of the U.S./NATO assault on Libya, and the ongoing agony of an Iraq wrecked by its encounter with would-be “liberators.”
Sen. John McCain, who is not one to apologize for any war or acknowledge the lies behind them, recently called the five Taliban leaders released from Guantanamo “hard-core military jihadists who are responsible for 9/11.” This is patently false; there is no evidence that any of these men even knew what bin Laden was up to, or had any stake in or desire for attacks on the U.S. Only if you believe that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are one, the distinctions between them unworthy of your attention, can you blithely assign responsibility for the attacks on the released men.
It needs to be repeated again and again: the Taliban is not al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is not the Taliban.
Al-Qaeda is an Islamist global terror outfit that wants to provoke and intensify conflict between the Muslim world and the West (and Israel). It had bases in Afghanistan dating back to the 1980s, when Osama bin Laden was cooperating with the CIA to overthrow the pro-Soviet regime. Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, having been expelled at U.S. order from Sudan; he was welcomed by anti-Taliban friends. When the Taliban swept to power later that year, they allowed bin Laden to remain out of appreciation for his role in the mujahedeen efforts in the 1980s, and in accordance with the Pashtunwali code of hospitality. They accepted funds and other assistance from al-Qaeda but neither steered the other. In all likelihood the regime of Mullah Omar knew nothing about an al-Qaeda attack on the U.S. and subsequent U.S. attack.
The Taliban is a xenophobic Pashtun-nationalist movement rising out of the disorder of the period from 1978 to 1996. It is dedicated to the implementation of Sharia law in Afghanistan, which it thinks the only way to maintain peace and order. For better or worse it has a broad social base, rooted in the traditional religiosity of the culture.
(Of course the Taliban is not alone in implementing Sharia law. Saudi Arabia, once one of the Taliban regime’s major supporters—with Pakistan—also cuts off thieves’ hands and stones adulterers. But are administrators of a system of draconian punishment, specified according to the Qur’an or to their interpretation it by God Himself, necessarily “terrorists”? Does the word retain any utility when applied so broadly?)
Afghan-born U.S. State Department official Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as ambassador to both Afghanistan (2003-5) and Iraq (2005-7)—a neocon close to Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle—once welcomed the overthrow of the Northern Alliance regime and the ascension of the Taliban to power. “The Taliban does not practice the anti-US style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in 1996. “It is closer to the Saudi model.” As a UNOCAL executive after temporarily leaving government Khalilzad attempted to negotiate with Taliban members to construct an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. He entertained Taliban with a barbeque at his Texas ranch. Should he be detained for consorting with terrorists?
McCain calls the Taliban Five “the worst of the worst, the hardest of the hardest” and “the hardest and toughest of all.” He wants us to think that Obama has just unleashed five Osama bin Ladens intent on striking America at the earliest opportunity. Who are they really?
There are three considered “first tier”: one Taliban cabinet minister (former Minister of the Interior, Khalrullah Khairkhwa), and two deputy ministers (former Deputy Minister of Intelligence Abdul Haq Wasiq, and Deputy Minister of Defense Mullah Mohammed Fazl). The other two are considered “second tier” in terms of importance, both senior military commanders: Muhammed Nabi Omari and Mullah Horullah Noori.
Guantanamo documents indicate that they all had (or might have had) some connection to al-Qaeda, mostly following the U.S. invasion when the Taliban united with other, including rival, groups to resist. Wasiq, Fazl and Omari are accused of al-Qaeda ties, but also of ties to Hezb-e-Islami, a formerly a bitter foe of al-Qaeda but willing, from October 2001, to join a sort of coalition. One should not imagine that every attack on U.S./NATO forces that occurs in Afghanistan today is staged by the Taliban. Many others oppose occupation as well.
Wasiq as intelligence minister reportedly sought al-Qaeda assistance to train his ministry’s staff in “intelligence methods” at some point. But he was also in contact with Hezb-e-Islami. Khairkhwa is accused in a 2006 “threat assessment” of probable association with the mysterious al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but he is also identified as a member of a delegation that met with Iranian officials to discuss Iranian aid to the Taliban and a possible Tehran-brokered alliance between the Northern Alliance (which Iran had supported) and the Taliban against the U.S. (This came to naught.) He is also accused of narco-trafficking. (A number of warlords governing parts of Afghanistan and some of Karzai’s relatives are accused of this as well.)
In one document Noori is described as “associated with…senior al-Qaeda members and other extremist groups.” He “fought alongside al-Qaeda as a Taliban general” versus the Northern Alliance. This makes it sound like the Taliban played a supporting role to al-Qaeda. But the conflict then was principally between the Northern Alliance (the former rulers, who’d toppled the pro-Soviet regime) and the Taliban, with al-Qaeda playing a supporting role.
The worst of the worst? Kate Clark of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network disagrees. “Fazl,” she declares, “is the only one of the five to face accusations of explicit war crimes… ” But these are crimes (against Shiite Hazzara civilians) that occurred in Afghanistan before the U.S./NATO invasion. They have nothing to do with the U.S. and were not a cause for that invasion. They are simply grounds to declare Fazl some sort of “terrorist” hoping the public paying attention assumes his terror was somehow directed at the U.S. (and thus the justification for his long confinement).
Defending the Bergdahl-Taliban Five trade, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf explains that “being, you know, mid-to-high-level officials in a regime that’s grotesque and horrific also doesn’t mean they themselves directly pose a threat to the United States.” (She is perhaps thinking of the grotesque and horrific regimes that are dear friends of Washington.)
The former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo, Air Force Col. Morris Davis from 2005 to 2007, says, “I wasn’t familiar with any of these [Taliban Five] names … we had more than 12 years. If we could have proven that they had done something wrong that we could prosecute them for, I’m confident we would have done it, and we didn’t.” The unprosecutable detainees languished as hostages until they were exchanged for Bergdahl. I doubt they were sent off with apologies for years of detention and torture, during which they were not found guilty of any crimes in any court.
For years U.S. military commanders have acknowledged that the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily. There will have to be a negotiated settlement. Current Afghan president Hamid Karzai, while wary of U.S.-Taliban talks that sideline his weak government, favors negotiations with the Taliban (and even occasionally, when piqued by the U.S., threatens to join the group again, as he had in 1996 as their first foreign minister). As negotiations take place, likely in Qatar, U.S. representatives will have to treat the Taliban with some modicum of respect. (A Taliban report on the handover of Bowe Bergdahl expresses contempt for one of the three U.S. Special Forces involved for refusing to shake hands.)
Respect for reality requires that we clearly distinguish forces and resist such simplistic thinking as that represented by Sen. McCain’s remarks. You cannot tell yourself, “Well, the Taliban and al-Qaeda were aligned at the time of 9/11, so it’s true enough to say these freed men were responsible for 9/11. Or if not, there’s no harm done by saying it—since they’re all evil. You’re either for us or against us.” Such is the culture of lies that continues to churn out wars.
GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, (AK Press). He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
American PR War Against Russia and China Accelerating in Asia
A VOICE OF RUSSIA (VOR) Interview with André Vltchek,
TGP Special Correspondent
us edition
Hong Kong. Photo credit: © Commons
By David Kerans
As heavily anti-Russian as U.S. mass media have been so far this year, observers in Asia are noticing even more lopsided treatment of Russia, and also of China, bordering on demonization of those countries. For discussion and explanation of the PR war against Russia and China across the eastern Pacific and Southeast Asian regions, Radio VR’s David Kerans spoke at length with intellectual, novelist, and propaganda filmmaker Andre Vltchek, currently in Indonesia. Vltchek has just published an article on the theme.
AUDIO FILE BELOW
https://www.greanvillepost.com/AUDIOS/David_Vletchek_Propaganda_090614.mp3
Vltchek detailed how virulently anti-Russian and anti-Chinese the Asian media have become, and traced the attitude to a combination of the Asian elites’ close ties to the U.S. and to pressure from the U.S. to pursue a PR offensive against Russia and China. The context of the PR war is at least partly military in nature, says Vltchek. Thus, the Phillipines just signed an EDCA (Economic Defense Cooperation Agreement) with the U.S. that gives America open access to all of its military bases, in violation of the Phillipines’ Constitution.
Further, Vltchek described the success with which the U.S. has managed to whitewash the brutality of its colonial and imperial past in the Philippines and Vietnam, to the point that both of those countries are much more anti-Chinese than anti-American.
Vltchek sees elites in the region (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Phillipines, etc.) as irrevocably committed to alliance with the U.S., and he fears that their subservience to U.S. interests increases the threat of U.S. military adventurism against China. He is, however, thankful that Russia and China are cooperating more fruitfully now than ever before, and hopes that multilateral initiatives like the Eurasian Economic Union will eventually help to pull the region out of the U.S. orbit.
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/us/news/2014_06_10/American-PR-War-Against-Russia-and-China-Accelerating-in-Asia-4962/
Water War? Turkey Cuts Water Supply to Syria – Euphrates Shut Down
SUGGESTED BY Rick Staggenborg |
Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan doesn’t seem to know when to quit. With his hopes of destroying Syria fading, he has doubled down with yet another means of promoting chaos and suffering in Syria (and Iraq) by cutting off their vital water supply from the Euphrates in violation of accepted international principles of law and decency. Is there anything he can do that will cause Turks to reject him and the AKP
••••••
By Michael Collins
Suhaib Anjarini, Al Akahbar, May 30 The water cutoff by the Turkish government caused Lake Assad to drop six feet threatening two million people in and around Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city. The Euphrates originates in Turkey and also provides a critical water source for Iraq. Turkey, a NATO member, strongly opposes to the current government of Syria. The Turkish border to Syria is a major supply route for weapons and foreign fighters against the Syrian government. Along with China and Brunei, Turkey refused to sign the United Nation’s agreement on International Watercourses. The agreement calls for the “equitable and reasonable” sharing of rivers, wither they originate or flow into a nation. In addition, the agreement states that nations shall“take all appropriate measures to prevent the causing of significant harm.” Turkey and Iraq have claimed Turkish manipulation of the Euphrates as far back as 1975. Syria and Iraq argue that years of drought conditions are caused or worsened by Turkish water policy. The outright cutoff of the Euphrates by the extremist and unstable government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan represents a Turkish act of aggression against both Syria and Iraq. The Turkish propaganda machine is gearing up to blame the water crisis on ISIS, an Al Qaeda affiliated Syrian rebel group. The Al-Akahbar article below notes that this could not be the case. Watch closely how the U.S. State Department handles this crisis. If we’re told that Syrian rebels are to blame, that’s a red light that NATO is creating a false flag to justify the Holy Grail of NATO military action against the Syrian government. Hopefully, the U.S. and other nations call this what it is — a human rights abuse of epic proportions committed by an unstable autocrat, Turkish PM Erdogan, at the head of a major NATO nation. The article from Al-Akahbar English is produced in full below with permission. ———————– AL-AKAHBAR English The Turkish government recently cut off the flow of the Euphrates River, threatening primarily Syria but also Iraq with a major water crisis. Al-Akhbar found out that the water level in Lake Assad has dropped by about six meters, leaving millions of Syrians without drinking water. Two weeks ago, the Turkish government once again intervened in the Syrian crisis. This time was different from anything it had attempted before and the repercussions of which may bring unprecedented catastrophes onto both Iraq and Syria. Violating international norms, the Turkish government recently cut off the water supply of the Euphrates River completely. In fact, Ankara began to gradually reduce pumping Euphrates water about a month and half ago, then cut if off completely two weeks ago, according to information received by Al-Akhbar. The reservoirs are expected to run out of water completely by tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. Meanwhile, water supplies in auxiliary reservoirs in al-Khafsa are close to being depleted and the reservoirs are expected to run out of water completely by tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. This threatens to leave seven million Syrians without access to water. However, shutting down the dam (if ISIS agrees) will only lead to a human and ecological (zoological and agricultural) catastrophe in Syria and in Iraq. According to information obtained by Al-Akhbar, Aleppo locals (who had already launched many initiatives to reach solutions for a number of local issues) began a race against time to recommend solutions for the problem, including putting the thermal plant at al-Safira back to work, which may convince ISIS to spare the Euphrates Dam turbines, and in turn preserve current water levels in the lake. In any case, it is worth mentioning that the water in the lake would take about a month, after resuming pumping, to return to its normal levels. A historical conflict END Creative Commons 3.0
By William Pfaff, Truthdig White House/Lawrence Jackson The merciful death that has, at last, been administered to Secretary of State John Kerry’s foredoomed Israel-Palestinian settlement talks has been greeted by little beyond silence in the international community. Anyone possessing a modicum of reason knew that the effort was a waste of time so long as Mr. Kerry was incapable of bringing to the talks a changed position on the part of the Obama administration. Without that, and so long as Benjamin Netanyahu remained prime minister of Israel, and the character of the Israeli government remained unchanged, the Jewish state remained, and will remain, locked into self-destruction. The suicide will probably be lengthy and agonized, accompanied at some point in the future by return to armed struggle, as Zionist Israel again tries to destroy whatever entity or community that is the successor to the present Palestinian state, as presently recognized by the UN General Assembly. Palestine’s existence, where it is, as it continues to exist, will increasingly become morally, as well as strategically, insufferable and unbearable to Israel. Barack Obama could spare Israel this terrible outcome, as I will argue, but the insolence of the Netanyahu government towards the American ally which has empowered Israel’s survival, prosperity and progress, and connived in Israel’s oppression of its Palestinian victims, has clearly inspired in President Obama a profound hatred and contempt toward Netanyahu and his fellow-aggressors, who choose the eventual destruction of Israel itself for reasons of their own advantage, and to satisfy the blind and deaf fanaticism of the settlement movement. The best in Israel—the people (so few it seems)—who grasp what their fellow citizens are doing to Israel, are begging the United States and the West Europeans (from among whom came those, who in another century, were responsible for the infamy inflicted upon the Jews of Europe), to save them today. How? I will quote one of the most important and influential Israeli journalists, Gideon Levy, writing in the newspaper Haaretz: “It is unacceptable, in the 21st century, for a state that purports to be a permanent member of the free world to keep another nation deprived of its rights. It is unthinkable, simply unthinkable, for millions of Palestinians to continue to live in these conditions. It is unthinkable for a democratic state to continue to oppress them in this way. It is unthinkable that the world stands by and allows it to happen. “The two-state discussion must now become a discussion of rights: Dear Israelis, you wanted an occupation and the settlements—knock yourselves out! Remain in Yitzhar, dig yourselves into the mountainside and build to your hearts’ desire in Itamar. But you absolutely must grant full rights to the Palestinians living alongside, exactly the same rights that you enjoy. “Equal rights for all; one person, one vote—that should be the message to the international community. After all, what could Israel say to this new message? That there cannot be equal rights because the Jews are the chosen people? That it would endanger security? The excuses would quickly run out, and the naked truth would come to light: that in this land only Jews have rights. Such a message cannot go unchallenged. “At the same time, the entire [foreign] approach to Israel must be changed. As long as it does not pay the price of the occupation and its citizens go unpunished, they will have no reason to end it, or even to deal with it. The occupation is deep inside the Israeli closet. There is no one to out it; the overwhelming majority want it to remain inside. “For this reason only punitive measures will remind us of its existence. Yes, I mean boycotts and sanctions, which are greatly preferable to bloodshed. “This is the truth, even if it’s bitter. America and Europe have kowtowed to Israel enough. Unfortunately, to no effect. From now on, the world must speak a different language and perhaps it will be understood. After all, Israel has proved, more than once, that the language of power and punishment is its main language.” Gideon Levy thus speaks to his compatriots with force and determination—and to us. Israel is what it is today, and the Palestinians are where they are, in part because of the Israeli government’s exploitation of its foreign allies, collaborators and enablers, as well as foreign politicians who have been willing recipients of its bribes, distorting or concealing the truth about a situation that is, to moral man, as Levy says, “unthinkable.” The United States and Western Europe cannot be content with boycotts and sanctions. Washington must stop its non-military aid to Israel, and end its complicity in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and Israel’s continuing illegal seizure and occupation of Palestinian lands. It must cease its unconditional support for Israel at the United Nations. It should instead support full Palestinian membership in the UN and in the International Criminal Court, and such claims as the Palestinians may make in that Court against injustices and crimes committed against them. It should make unmistakably clear to the Israelis that restoration of their country’s alliance with the United States, and of their associations with a European Union that follows Washington’s course of “power and punishment” directed at Israel, awaits the day when justice is restored in that country’s relations with the Palestinian people.
A new Turkish aggression against Syria: Ankara suspends pumping Euphrates’ water
By: Suhaib Anjarini
Published >Friday, May 30, 2014 (Link)
Reproduced with permission (Creative Commons 3.0)
Top: “The decrease in water levels” , Lake Assad (Photo: Al-Akhbar)
Top: “The decrease in water levels” Bottom: “Euphrates Dam” (Photo: Al-Akhbar)Obama Could Spare Israel Terrible Outcome