The Riddle of the Israel Lobby

Peace and Watermelons

by URI AVNERY

One of the most interesting and prolonged private debates I have had in my life was with the brilliant Dr. Nahum Goldmann (left). The subject: American peace initiatives.

It was an unequal debate, of course. Goldmann was my elder by 28 years. While I was a mere editor of an Israeli news magazine, he was an international figure, President of the World Zionist Organization and the World Jewish Congress.

In the mid ’50s, when I was looking for a personality who could possibly contest David Ben-Gurion’s stranglehold on the prime minister’s office, I thought of Goldmann. He had the necessary stature and was liked by moderate Zionists. No less important, he had a clear set of opinions. From the first day of the State of Israel, he had proposed that Israel become a “Middle Eastern Switzerland”, neutral between the US and the Soviet Union. For him, peace with the Arabs was absolutely essential for the future of Israel.

I visited him in a luxury suite in Jerusalem’s classy Kind David hotel. He was wearing a silken dressing gown, and when I made my offer, he responded: “Look, Uri, I like the good life. Luxury hotels, good food and beautiful women. If I challenged Ben-Gurion, all these would disappear. His people would vilify me as they do you. Why would I risk all that?”

We also started a discussion that ended only with his death, some 27 years later. He was convinced that the US wanted peace between us and the Arabs, and that a major American peace effort was just around the corner. This was not simply an abstract hope. He assured me that he had just met with the highest policy-makers and had it from the highest authority. Straight from the American horse’s mouth, so to say.

Goldman was also an inveterate name-dropper. He regularly met with most major American, Soviet and other political personalities, and never failed to mention this in his conversation. So, being assured by the incumbent US presidents, ministers and ambassadors that the US was just about to impose peace on Israelis and Arabs, he told me just you wait. You’ll see.

This belief in an American Imposed Peace has haunted the Israeli peace movement for decades. In advance of the coming visit of President Obama to Israel next month, it is raising its weary head once more.

Now, finally, it is going to happen. At the beginning of his second term, Barak Obama will shed the hesitations, fears and incompetence that marked his first. AIPAC will not be able to terrorize him anymore. A new, strong and resolute Obama will emerge and knock all the heads together. The leaders will be strongarmed into peace.

This is a very typical and very convenient conviction. It relieves us of the duty to do anything unpopular or daring ourselves. It is also very comforting. The Zionist Left is feeble and lifeless? Maybe, but we have an ally who will do the job. Like the little kid who threatens the bully with his powerful big brother.

This hope has been shattered again and again and again. US presidents came and went, each with his entourage of Jewish advisors, White House and State Department officials and ambassadors. And nothing happened.

Of course, there have been American peace initiatives galore. From Nixon’s “Rogers plan”, through Carter’s Camp David agreement about Palestinian self-government to Clinton’s Parameters and Bush’s Road Map there were plenty of them, each one more convincing than the last. And then came the Obama, the new man, energetic and resolute, and imposed on Binyamin Netanyahu a stop of the settlement enterprise for several months, and…well, nothing.

No peace initiative and no watermelons, as we say in Hebrew (borrowed from the Arabs). Watermelons have a short season.

Slowly but surely, even Goldmann began to despair of the mirage of US intervention.

In our conversations we tried to crack the code of this enigma. Why, for God’s sake, did the Americans not do what logic dictated? Why didn’t they put pressure on our government? Why didn’t they make an offer that our leaders couldn’t refuse? In short, why no effective peace initiative?

It could not be in the American national interest to follow a policy that made it a hate-object of the masses throughout the entire Arab and most of the Muslim world. Didn’t the Americans understand that they were undermining their clients in every Arab country – as these rulers never tired of telling them at every meeting?

The most obvious reason was the growing power of the pro-Israel lobby, from the early 50s on. AIPAC alone has now more than 200 employees in seven offices throughout the US. Almost everyone in Washington DC lives in deadly fear of it. The Lobby can dethrone any senator or congressman who arouses its anger. Look at what is happening right now to Chuck Hagel, who dared to say the unthinkable: “I am an American senator, not an Israeli senator!”

The two professors, Mearsheimer and Walt, dared to say it: the pro-Israeli lobby controls American policy.

But this theory is not completely satisfying. What about the spying affair around Jonathan Pollard, who stays in prison for life in spite of immense Israeli pressure to release him?

Can a world power really be induced by a small foreign country and a powerful domestic lobby to act for decades against its basic national interest?

Another factor often mentioned is the power of the arms industry.

When I was young, no one was more despised than the Merchants of Death. These days are long past. Countries – including Israel – pride themselves on selling arms to the most despicable regimes.

The US supplies us with huge quantities of the most sophisticated weapons. True, a lot of these come to us as a gift – but that doesn’t change the picture. The arms producers are paid by the US government as a kind of New Deal public works project supported enthusiastically even (and especially) by the Republicans. After the arms are supplied to Israel, some Arab countries see themselves compelled to order huge quantities for themselves, for which they pay through the nose. See: Saudi Arabia.

This theory, which was once very popular, does not really satisfy either. No single industry is powerful enough to compel a nation to act against its own general interests for half a century.

Then there is the “Common History” thing. The US and Israel are so much alike, aren’t they? They have both displaced another people, and live on denial. Is there much difference between the Native-American naqba and the Palestinian one? Between the American and Zionist pioneers who struck roots in the wilderness and built a new nation? Do they not both base themselves on the same Old Testament and believe that God has given them their land (whether they believe in God or not)?

Do our settlers, who are creating a new Wild East in the occupied territories, not imitate the Wild West of American movies? A few days ago, Israel TV showed one Avri Ran, who declares himself “sovereign” of the West Bank, terrorizing both Palestinians and settlers, grabbing land irrespective of to whom it belongs, telling the army where to go and what to do, openly despising the Israeli and all other governments, and becoming a multi-millionaire in the process. Hollywood at its best.

But all this applies also to Australia (with whom we are quarreling at the moment), Canada, New Zealand and South American nations. Yet we don’t have this kind of relationship with them.

Noam Chomsky, the brilliant linguistician, has another answer: Israel is just a lackey of American imperialism, serving its interest in this region. A kind of unsinkable aircraft-carrier. I don’t quite see it that way. Israeli was not involved in the US action in Iraq, for example. If the American dog is wagging the Israeli tail, just as surely, the tail is wagging the dog.

Neither Goldmann nor I found a satisfactory answer to this riddle.

Eight months before his death, I received from him, quite unexpectedly, a surprising letter. Written in German (which we never spoke) on his stationery, it was a kind of apology: I had been right all along, no American peace initiative was to be expected, the rationale remained inexplicable.

The letter bears the date of January 30, 1982, five months before Ariel Sharon’s bloody invasion of Lebanon, which was approved in advance by Alexander Haig, the then Secretary of State, and presumably by President Reagan too.

The letter was a response to an article I had written some days before in the magazine I edited, Haolam Hazeh, in which I asked: “Do the Americans really want peace?”

Goldmann wrote: “I, too, have already sometimes asked myself this question. Though one should not underestimate the lack of statesmanlike wisdom of American foreign policy makers … I could write a whole book proving that America seriously wants peace, and another book showing that they do not want peace.”

He mentioned America’s fear of Soviet penetration of the Middle East, and their belief that peace is impossible without Russian participation. He also disclosed that a Russian diplomat had told him that there had been an American-Russian agreement to convene a peace conference in Geneva, but that Moshe Dayan had called upon the American Jews to sabotage it. The Russians were very angry.

Sprinkling names along the way, he summed up: “Without being quite sure, I would say at the moment that there is a combination of American diplomatic incompetence on one hand, a fear of Russian involvement in a peace on the other hand, added to the domestic fear of the pro-Israeli lobby, (which includes) not only the Jews but also (non-Jews) like Senator (Henry “Scoop”) Jackson and others. (All these) seem to be the reasons for the complete lack of understanding and results of the American Middle East policy, for which Israel will pay heavily in the future.”

Except for the decline of Russian influence, every word is valid today, 31 years later, on the eve of the Obama visit.

Again many Israelis and Palestinians hope for an American peace initiative, which will put pressure on both sides. Again the President denies any such intent. Again the results of the visit will probably be disappointment and despair.

Just now, there are no watermelons on the market. Nor a real US peace initiative.

URI AVNERY is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch’s book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Straight Talk on US/Israeli Relations

Truman: First endorser of the “special relationship.”

by Stephen Lendman

Harry Truman recognized Israel minutes after its May 14, 1948 independence was declared. He was the first world leader to do so. Weeks earlier on March 25, he met secretly with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. He pledged support. A special bond was established. Strategic interests largely benefit Israel. Washington provides it more aid and benefits than all other nations combined. It’s not because of historic binding ties.

A special relationship does more harm than good. It’s counterproductive and lawless. It’s financially, politically, militarily and diplomatically bankrupt. Ambassador Charles Freeman says it’s “been running on fumes for some time. It is now totally out of gas.”

Freeman is former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He’s one of five Committee for the Republic co-sponsors. It calls itself:

“Ad hoc group with the designated mission of analyzing the role of the United States as an imperial power and the consequences associated with empire in general.”

Its manifesto warns of dangers associated with seeking empire. It’s “a work in progress,” it says. Its goal is clear. It’s about educating Americans about what’s at stake. It says:

“The American Revolution was a nationalist revolt against the British Empire.”

“Our country was born as a defiant rejection of the legitimacy of imperialism.” The “inevitable cost of empire” is too much to bear.

“Domestic liberty is the first casualty of adventurist foreign policy.”

“To justify the high cost of maintaining rule over foreign territories and peoples, leaders are left with no choice but to deceive the people.”

Freeman is very much right-of-center. He was Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Earlier he was Principle Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.

He’s past Middle East Policy Council president. He co-chaired the US China Policy Foundation. He held numerous other public and private positions.

He serves as Atlantic Council lifetime director. In 1961, former Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and Christian Herter established it. It was done to support NATO.

Its past and current members include Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, James Schlesinger, James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Jones, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Holbrooke, Susan Rice, and an array of current and former top military officials.

In mid-January, he addressed the Middle East Policy Council. He and other speakers spoke on “whether the Obama administration can or should formulate a (Middle East) ‘grand strategy,’ and in either case how should policy-making address urgent (regional) problems.”

He discussed the “US Grand Strategy in the Middle East. Is There One,” he asked? His comments touched important nerves. They were hard-hitting and forthright.

Current and former officials rarely make them. They’re seldom heard in Washington. Media scoundrels suppress them. They’re vital and need to be made known.

There’s been “no American-led peace process worthy of the name for nearly two decades,” said Freeman. No prospect of resuming one looms. “No one in the international community now accepts the pretense of a ‘peace process’ as an excuse for American protection of Israel.” US diplomacy is “perceived to be going nowhere.”

Barring “fundamental changes in Israeli politics, policies, and behavior,” America’s longstanding strategic objective “of achieving (Israeli) acceptance (to) stabilize the region (is) now infeasible.”

America abandoned trying. It’s concerned only about “sheltering it from the need to deal with the unpalatable realities its own choices have created.”

Israel wasted over 45 years spurning “land for peace.” It “consistently demonstrated that it craves land more than peace, international reputation, good will, or legitimacy.”

It’s “isolated from its neighbors.” There’s “no prospect of reversing this.” It has itself to blame.

Washington can do nothing to change things. It’s true “despite the adverse consequences (for) American standing in the region and world.”

Israeli politics reflect “blatant racism and Islamophobia.” Occupation “kafkaesque tyranny” institutionalized “cruel and unusual collective punishment….” Doing so “bred hateful resentment of the Jewish state in its region and throughout the Muslim world.”

“One has to look to North Korea to find another polity so detested and distrusted by its neighbors and with so few supporters among the world’s great powers.”

No matter. Washington’s commitment remains firm. “Regardless of how Israel behaves, it will allow no political distance between itself and the Jewish state.”

“In the eyes of the world, there is none. Israel’s ill repute corrodes US prestige and credibility not just in the Middle East but in the world at large.” Israel doesn’t care about other nations’ views. It sees itself as a “Hebrew-speaking politico-economic extension of Europe rather than part of the Middle East.”

“Nor does Israel appear concerned about the extent to which its policies have undermined America’s ability to protect it from concerted international punishment for its actions.” Washington and other Israeli supporters “are far less likely to be able to hold back the global movement to ostracize Israel than in the case of apartheid South Africa.”

“America may ‘have Israel’s back,’ but – on this – no one now has America’s back.”

At the same time, Washington’s support gives Israel a “qualitative edge to sustain its military hegemony over others in the region.” What can’t go on forever won’t.

Supremacy “inevitably” is “ephemeral.” It’s especially true when dependent on external support. Nations living by the sword seal their own fate. They doom themselves to perish by it. Palestinian liberating struggles won’t end. Growing numbers of Jews of conscience are alienated. “Jews outside contemporary Israel are coming to see (Israel) less as a sanctuary or guarantor of Jewish security and well-being than as a menace to both.”

America committed much to Israel’s success. “Yet it has no strategy to cope with the tragic existential challenges Zionist hubris and overweening territorial ambition have now forged for Israel.”

“The hammerlock the Israeli right has on American discourse about the Middle East assures that, despite the huge US political and economic investment in Israel, Washington will not discuss or develop effective policy options for sustaining the Jewish state over the long term.”

“The outlook is therefore for continuing deterioration in Israel’s international moral standing and the concomitant isolation of the United States in the region and around the globe.”

“The bottom line is this. US policies of unconditional support for Israel, opposition to Islamism, and the use of drones to slaughter suspected Islamist militants and their families and friends have created an atmosphere that precludes broad strategic partnerships with major Arab and Muslim countries, though it does not yet preclude limited cooperation for limited purposes.”

“The acceptance of Israel as a legitimate presence in the Middle East cannot now be achieved without basic changes in Israeli attitudes and behavior that are not in the offing.”

“US policies designed, respectively, to pursue strategic partnerships with Arab and Muslim powers and to secure the state of Israel have each separately failed.”

“The Middle East itself is in flux. America’s interests in the region now demand fundamental rethinking, not just of US policies, but of the strategic objectives those policies should be designed to achieve.”

America’s longstanding special relationship was ill conceived from conception. On many issues mattering most, the Israeli tail wags the US dog. It’s true whether or not Washington’s interests are served. Both countries threaten world peace. Together they endanger humanity. Freeman stopped short saying so. At the same time, he knows binding ties do more harm than good.

Reconsidering bad policy is long overdue. Israel is more liability than asset. It’s true no matter who’s prime minister.

Israel’s government is its most belligerent and hardline in history. It menaces its neighbors. It threatens world peace. Washington prioritizes advancing its own imperium.

An alliance based on militarism, belligerence, racism, and human rights abuses is crucial to end, not support. Nothing in sight suggests it’s likely.

Freeman is rightly concerned. He understands impending perils. It’s crucial to address them before it’s too late. Few in Washington are frank enough to say so.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/straight-talk-on-usisraeli-relations/

Freedom Rider: Sniper Gets Sniped

by Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Kyle: Long overdue Karmic justice.

America, born in genocide and constantly renewed by bloodbaths, treats mass murder as a virtue. Chris Kyle answered the “clarion call of white supremacy, manifest destiny and imperial delusion.” Now that he’s dead, the world is a better place.

“Kyle declared that Iraqis were not really human beings and thus had lost any right to stay alive.”

One of the ways in which humans wrestle with the existence of evil is by hoping that the evil doer gets his or her just desserts. This hope is expressed with expressions such as “what goes around comes around” or “you reap what you sow.”

Despite all of this wishful thinking, it is rare for cosmic justice [5] to be served as completely as it was in the case of the late Chris Kyle. Kyle was a Navy SEAL sniper in Iraq who served five tours of duty and by his own estimate killed 150 people. This week Kyle was himself shot to death and by another veteran no less.

Kyle should have lived in ignominy for taking so many lives, but instead he was decorated with medals and became a celebrity as a result of what should have been prosecuted crimes. Kyle wrote a best selling book, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in American History. He had a starring role in a NBC reality show, Stars Earn Stripes, a disgraceful ode to militarism and empire. He and another veteran met their end in an ill-advised effort to treat a former marine suffering from PTSD. Kyle was good at killing but he wasn’t much of a mental health professional. He used a shooting range as a venue to treat other vets having difficulty adjusting to civilian life. Let’s just say it didn’t work out very well.

“Kyle was good at killing but he wasn’t much of a mental health professional.”

The United States government committed a terrible crime when it invaded Iraq nearly ten years ago.

Estimates of the number of Iraqis killed range from 150,000 to over 1 million. Like human beings throughout human history, Iraqis didn’t take kindly to being occupied and they fought back as best they could. The media may call them terrorists or insurgents, but Iraqis have as much right to defend themselves and their country as anyone else in the world and Kyle had no right to kill any of them.

Obviously he didn’t see it that way. He felt justified and quite moral in killing so many people and he did it in typical American fashion. In a Fox news interview [6], Kyle declared that Iraqis were not really human beings and thus had lost any right to stay alive.

“I considered the people I was killing to be savages because of the violence they committed against American troops, the beheadings, the rapes of innocent villagers. They lived by putting fear into other people’s hearts and civilized people don’t act that way. I wasn’t so much committed to killing them as I was committed to making sure that every service member over there, whether American or allied, came home – I was killing them to protect my fellow Americans. You have to get into the mentality and you can not think of them as human beings.”

Don’t think of them as human beings. That is the long standing clarion call of white supremacy, manifest destiny and imperial delusion. America has long accepted decidedly uncivilized behavior as being morally superior, even when it obviously isn’t.

“Iraqis have as much right to defend themselves and their country as anyone else in the world and Kyle had no right to kill any of them.”

American troops were guilty of raping their fellow soldiers and Iraqi prisoners and other civilians too. As for beheadings it should be pointed out that humans are decapitated by bombs and bullets. All of the allegations Kyle made against Iraqis can be laid at America’s doorstep too. Civilization is definitely in the eye of the beholder.

The people who plan the wars don’t suffer. George W. Bush and Tony Blair went on to make millions of dollars giving corporate speeches and Blair even has the gall to present himself as a religious leader of sorts. The Iraqi victims and the soldiers maimed or killed or suffering from PTSD pay the real price for the wrongdoing planned from on high.

Kyle is survived by a wife and young children who are no doubt grieving, but the same is surely true of his 150 victims. They left family behind. Children are fatherless or motherless or homeless because of the “civilized” United States. It is tragic for all of these people to have suffered so much but until they can be seen as civilized human beings, there will be no end to American slaughter.

There is another old saying which perfectly describes the death of Chris Kyle. “The chickens come home to roost.”

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. [7] Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.com.
[8]
Department of War PTSD white supremacy
Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-sniper-gets-sniped
Links:
[1] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/department-war-0
[2] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/ptsd
[3] http://blackagendareport.com/category/life-america/white-supremacy
[4] http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/kyle.jpg
[6] http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/01/05/factor-interview-america’s-most-lethal-sniper-chris-kyle-details-his-150-certified-kills-reveals-why-he-punched-jesse-ventura/
[7] http://freedomrider.blogspot.com/

Hillary Clinton: Profile of Imperial Arrogance and Lawlessness

by Stephen Lendman

Clinton’s unabashedly pro-war. She’s a war goddess. Straightaway post-9/11, she urged waging war on terror…She said any nation lending Al Qaeda “aid and comfort will now face the wrath of our country. I’ll stand behind Bush for a long time to come.”

She was Washington’s 67th Secretary of State. She served from January 21, 2009 – February 1, 2013. She’s arguably America’s worst. From 2001 – 2009, she was US Senator from New York. In 2008, she challenged Obama for the Democrat party’s presidential nomination. Supporters urge her to run again in 2016. She’s noncommittal. When asked, she says “I am not thinking about anything like that right now.”

She also said she’ll “do everything (she) can to make sure that women compete at the highest levels, not only in the United States but around the world.”

Husband Bill urges her to run. Some suspect she already made her move.

With or without her support, a “Ready for Hillary” political action committee was formed. It’s raising money for 2016. Campaigning never ends. America’s electoral season is seamless.

Hillary for 2016 T-shirts are on sale. Friends of Hillary Facebook send regular messages. When launching her 2008 campaign, she said “I’m in to win.” Insiders say she hasn’t changed her mind. In 2016, she’ll be 69.

In December, she scored high in public approval. A Washington Post/ABC News poll showed 57% of Americans support her presidential ambitions. Over 80% of Democrats back her candidacy.

Two-thirds of US women do. Two-thirds of Americans give her high marks as America’s top diplomat. She scored higher than any previous Secretary of State in 20 years of polling.

In four years, she visited 112 countries. She traveled nearly a million miles. She self-promoted everywhere. She has larger than life ambitions.

She’s gone from State. She’s very much still involved. The New York Times profiled her. She’s “at the peak of her influence,” it said. She’s “an instant presidential front-runner.”

She’s got lots of time to pursue her goal. “We need a new architecture for this new world,” she says.

Obama exceeded the worst of George Bush. Clinton joined his war cabinet. She’s ideologically hardline. She was a Wellesley College Goldwater Girl. She was president of Wellesley’s Young Republicans.

She’s militantly pro-war. In the 1990s, she was very much part of husband Bill’s foreign policy team. As an aggressive first lady, she had lots of influence.

She was influential in getting Madeleine Albright appointed Secretary of State in 1997. They consulted with each other often.

In her memoirs, Albright described their relationship as an “unprecedented partnership.”

“I was once asked whether it was appropriate for the two of us to work together so closely,” she added. “I agreed that it was a departure from tradition.”

At Secretary of State, Clinton headed foreign policy. She’s complicit in crimes of war and against humanity. She represents the worst of imperial arrogance. She a reliable spear-carrier.

Her outbursts reflect bullying and bluster, not diplomacy. She’s contemptuous of rule of law principles. She scorns democracy. She’s committed to war, not peace.

She’s unabashedly hawkish. As first lady, she urged husband Bill to bomb Belgrade in 1999. She ignored international and constitutional law. She lied about Slobodan Milosevic.

“You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time,” she said. “What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?”

For 78 days, NATO ravaged Yugoslavia. Nearly everything targeted was struck. Massive destruction and disruption followed. An estimated $100 billion in damage was inflicted. A humanitarian disaster resulted. Environmental contamination was extensive.

Large numbers were killed, injured or displaced. Two million people lost their livelihoods. Homes and communities were destroyed.

Nobel laureate Harold Pinter called NATO’s aggression “barbaric (and despicable), another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile (to consolidate) American domination of Europe.”

Lawless aggression became humanitarian intervention. An avenue to Eurasia was opened. A permanent US military presence was established. American imperialism claimed another trophy.

Clinton’s unabashedly pro-war. She’s a war goddess. Straightaway post-9/11, she urged waging war on terror.

She said any nation lending Al Qaeda “aid and comfort will now face the wrath of our country. I’ll stand behind Bush for a long time to come.”

She supported annual defense (aka war) budgets. She voted for the Patriot Act and other police state legislation. She endorsed cluster bomb use in civilian areas and refugee camps.

She’s against banning land mines. She’s dismissive of human suffering. Wealth, power, privilege and dominance alone matter.

In 2005, she was one of only six Democrat senators opposed to blocking deployment of untested missile defense systems. They’re first-strike offensive weapons.

She supported restriction-free nuclear cooperation with Israel and other US allies violating NPT provisions. She endorsed nuclear weapons use in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She calls them deterrents that “keep the peace.”

She was one of the largest recipients of defense contractor cash. She backed war on Afghanistan and Iraq. She opposed a Democrat resolution. It would have required Bush to try diplomacy before launching war in 2003.

Her 2002 Senate speech supported war. She lied. She said “intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein rebuilt his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program.”

“He has given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members….It is clear that if left unchecked, (he’ll) continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”

“Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.”

“Now this much is undisputed.” What’s undisputed were her bald-faced lies. She repeated them ad nauseam as Secretary of State.

She supports the worst of Israeli lawlessness. At AIPAC’s 2008 convention, she said:

“The United States stands with Israel now and forever.”

We have shared interests….shared ideals….common values. I have a bedrock commitment to Israel’s security.”

(Against Islamic extremists), our two nations are fighting a shared threat.”

“I strongly support Israel’s right to self-defense (and) believe America should aid in that defense.”

“I am committed to making sure that Israel maintains a military edge to meet increasing threats.”

The only threats Israel faces are ones it invents.

“I am deeply concerned about the growing threat in Gaza (and) Hamas’ campaign of terror.”

She lied saying its charter “calls for the destruction of Israel.”

She lied again saying “Iran threatens to destroy Israel.”

She lied a third time, saying “I support calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard what it is: a terrorist organization. It is imperative that we get both tough and smart about dealing with Iran before it is too late.”

She backs “massive retaliation” if Iran attacks Israel. In 2008, presidential aspirant Clinton said:

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

In other words, she threatened to murder 75 million people. Today it’s nearly 80 million. She’s extremist on all foreign policy issues. She favors police state harshness domestically.

She endorses outsized military budgets. She’s done nothing to contain nuclear proliferation. She supported Bush’s unilateral nuclear first-strike option, including against non-nuclear states.

She represents the worst of America’s dark side. She’s a war criminal multiple times over. She’s arguably America’s most shameless ever secretary of state.

She’s clearly the most brazen. Her language and attitude exceed the worst Cold War rhetoric.

Her take-no-prisoners thinking, character, and demagoguery tell all. She’s addicted to self-aggrandizement and diktat authority.

She relishes death, destruction, and war spoils.

She’s indifferent to human suffering. She’s a monument to wrong over right. She’s a disgrace and embarrassment to her country, position and humanity.

She may become America’s 45th president. Perhaps she won’t get a chance to try. Humanity may not survives its 44th. The fullness of time will tell.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/hillary-clinton-profile-of-imperial-arrogance-and-lawlessness/

BRITISH VALUES: The UK’s (carefully) hidden history of brutality

By Nicholas Mercer
MATERIAL SUGGESTED BY SENIOR EDITOR PAUL CARLINE
CROSSPOSTED WITH BELLA CALEDONIA

DUBIOUS HONOR, BUT ALSO A SLAP ON THE WRIST. Following a court martial, only Corporal Donald Payne, of The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment (now renamed Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment), was convicted of inhumane treatment of a prisoner. However, The Observer has learnt that Payne has now been released from prison and is living with his family in the north of England after setting up his own business. Legal sources said he is furious with his treatment by the army and feels he was made a ‘scapegoat’.

In 2006, Corporal Donald Payne was the first British soldier to be convicted of a war crime in this country under the International Criminal Court Act 2001. His crime was the inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners held by British Forces in Southern Iraq in September 2003. He received a year in jail and was dismissed from the British Army for his crime. However, whereas a foot soldier who is complicit in torture is sent to jail – as the book reveals, for those higher up the social spectrum a CBE, knighthood or peerage await. Such is the hypocrisy in the British history of torture.

If that sounds like an unlikely or extreme thing to say, I can only respond by saying read Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain.

His book is a remarkable narrative and will come as something of a shock to most readers who are taken in by Britain’s image of fair play and decency abroad. This is a myth, as Cobain explosively demonstrates. When the publishers sent me the manuscript I wrote to them that it was like hand grenade rolled into the heart of the British Establishment. Here is why.

Firstly, the book is explosive because it reveals direct participation by the United Kingdom in torture since 1944. This probably will come as a great surprise to many readers but the official line that “the British do not participate in torture”, is revealed as just part of a deliberate and well-practised line of deceit. The book charts the use of torture from “the Cage” in London used to interrogate leading Nazi’s at the end of the Second World War, through the colonial campaigns of Kenya, Cyprus and Aden and then makes the link to Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan with the repeated and wilful use of “the five techniques”. It exposes the exceptional brutality of the British in the treatment of the Mau Mau in Kenya – as is just beginning to emerge in the case of Nzili, Nyingi and Mara, currently being heard in the High Court.

Evidence reveals that one British policeman at the time described the conditions in the camps as “far worse than anything I experienced in my four and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese”. To hear the British described as being more brutal than the Japanese will come as a great shock but, should there be any doubt as to the depravity of British Forces, the description in the book is unequivocal:

Men were whipped, clubbed, subjected to electric shocks, mauled by dogs and chained to vehicles before being dragged around. Some were castrated. The same instruments used to crush testicles were used to remove fingers. It was far from un-common for men to be beaten to death.

If this still does not convince any reader then, if they can get to London, I suggest they go to the High Court to hear it for themselves.

This savagery by the British continues throughout the colonial period and Cobain details the campaigns in Cyprus against EOKA and in the Aden Emergency where yet more torture was perpetrated on those we captured. The book then makes interesting references to the refinement of torture techniques which were developed in between 1950-1970 known as an “assault on the mind” whereby far subtler techniques capable of causing “irreparable psychological damage” were developed. The scientists found that a combination of five things: sensory deprivation through hooding, together with enforced stress positions, white noise, sleep prevention and very little food together produced “stress that was almost unbearable for most subjects”.

This resulted in what became known as the “five techniques” which were subsequently employed against the IRA during interment in 1971 and later banned in the case of Ireland v UK in the European Court of Human Rights in 1978. Yet, despite the assurances of the British Government that such practices would never again be repeated in any circumstances, Cobain makes the very alarming claim that the five techniques were in fact retained by the UK which is, perhaps, why they re-emerged in Iraq in 2003 and why the doctrine cited by the Intelligence Branch during the second Iraq War miraculously went missing when it came to the Baha Mousa trial in 2006 and the Inquiry two years later.

The second reason why the book is explosive is because it exposes the institutional cover up that has been perpetrated throughout the post war years. At the time of writing this article there is a sense of national outrage at what appears to be an institutional cover up over Hillsborough and connivance by numerous institutions in the Savile affair. Indeed, it seems to be a national trait that there are so many institutions and individuals who are prepared to participate, passively or actively, in a cover up of scandals for something as prosaic as enhancing their own career prospects or reward from the State.

The ‘Establishment’ is shown to be remarkably adept at not establishing the truth using methods every bit as subtle as those developed by the interrogators in the 1950’s – 70. At the same time, the book reveals the courage of a few men and women who stand against torture. Men such as Colonel Arthur Young who repeatedly complained to Sir Evelyn Baring about the “unjustified or abhorrent crimes by British Forces” in Kenya but who resigned when he realised that Baring and others were not interested in his complaints. Or Lord Gardiner, who spelt out the legal position that the five techniques were a flagrant breach of International and domestic law but who was similarly ignored lest it get in the way of an interrogator’s war. At the same time, the few good men who do speak out know what fate will befall them. Craig Murray was drummed out of the Foreign Office for revealing Foreign Office connivance with torture evidence and Ben Griffin, the former SAS Trooper who spoke out against the UK treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan, is now living under a Government injunction which prevents him from speaking any further. If he breaks the terms of the injunction he will go to jail. In Cruel Britannia you can lose your job or go to jail for revealing UK complicity in torture and rendition. Those who are complicit meanwhile remain untouched and untroubled. The only tap on the shoulder is the sword used to knight them.

Finally, the most explosive part of the book is the fact that complicity in torture and rendition are potentially war crimes and are required to be outlawed in our domestic criminal law. The UN Convention against torture (UNCAT) states:

Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.

If such acts are committed during armed conflict then they constitute a war crime or, in the case of rendition, a crime against humanity. However, to date despite increasingly weighty evidence no one has been prosecuted. As the Tory MP David Davis recently stated in the case of R v Ahmed and others:

Although the combined circumstantial evidence of complicity in all these cases is overwhelming, it has not so far been possible — because of the government’s improper use of state secrecy to cover up the evidence — to establish absolutely clear sequences of cause and effect.

And here lies the rub. As the weight of evidence mounts up, so the State becomes increasingly desperate to cover up. Miliband (David) pirouettes in the High Court, Straws denies any involvement in rendition before his assurances are contradicted by the discovery of documents in Tripoli. Then up pops the so called “Justice and Security Bill” – currently making its way through Parliament – in a desperate, blanket attempt to cover up all UK complicity in torture and rendition. However, the more attempts there are to cover it up the more the issue is exposed and it must be the supreme irony that as details of torture are finally being exposed from Kenya, the Government is embarking on yet another cover up.

This is why Cobain’s allegations in Cruel Britannia are like a hand grenade in the heart of the establishment. The truth has had the pin pulled out of it by this book and is likely to go off at any moment. When it does, it will not only be the foot soldiers who end up being caught in the explosive consequences.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Reverend Nicholas Mercer (formerly Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Mercer) was the Liberty Human Rights Lawyer of the Year 2011-2012 for integrity and courage in the face of dissembling and denial of human rights abuses by British forces in Iraq. This article was first published by Open Democracy under a Creative Commons licence.