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Poland tightens military alliance with Israel

Ewa Jasiewicz, The Electronic Intifada, 17 February 2010

The Polish army’s announcement that it will buy seven Aerostar Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from Israel’s Aeronautics earlier this month was heralded as a step forward for Poland’s “stabilization” mission in Afghanistan. The UAV, or drone, has long been a key tool in the military arsenals of both the United States and Israel. The US leads the export market, followed by Israel, which as of last year was the planet’s third-biggest arms exporter, arming regimes around the world to the tune of $6.75 billion in 2009

The drone is more than simply a flying camera; it is killing machine in itself. American-made “Predator” and “Reaper” drones are currently used above Afghanistan and Pakistan and carry a payload of 200 kilograms — the weight of three adult men. In January 2010 alone, Predators killed 123 innocent civilians in Pakistan. During this period only two missiles hit their intended targets, in the extrajudicial killings of three al-Qaeda leaders.

Israel’s “Hermes 450” drone was used extensively during the invasion of Gaza last winter, dubbed “Operation Cast Lead” by the Israeli military. Like its American counterparts, the Hermes can also fire missiles, including the “Spike” missile which weighs up to 150 kilograms. Despite being defined as a “battlefield reconnaissance” weapon, drone-launched missiles were the biggest single cause of death during the 23-day invasion. According to Palestinian human rights organization Al Mezan, 519 persons — more than a third of the total casualties — were killed by UAVs. The next closest were 473 Palestinians killed by Israeli warplanes, including American-made F-16s.

The majority of Palestinians killed during the invasion were civilians. Palestinian medics reported a preponderance of civilian deaths by drones — families like the Berbakhs in Rafah who lost five members or the Abed Rabbo family’s six members who were killed by UAV-launched missiles. During the fighting it was common to find the mangled bodies of unarmed men cut down in the streets at night — victims of Israel’s UAV-enforced “aerial curfew.”

Poland’s military has embarked on a “Polonization of Israeli technology” drive, coupling Israeli weapons-manufacturing technology with Polish manpower and raw materials. Poland’s Bumar Group has a 10-year offset deal worth $400 million with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to produce Spike missiles for drones and helicopter gunships. Under the deal, Rafael must accept Polish components in its own weapons.

The Spike missiles are currently produced at the ZM Mesko factory in southern Poland. During the Second World War Mesko was occupied by German forces and both Jewish Polish and Polish slave-workers manufactured ammunition for the Third Reich. According to the Israeli Embassy’s Defense Attache here, the venture at Mesko represents the most successful example of the Polonization of Israeli technology. He told this writer, “Now, 60 years after the Holocaust, this company is providing Israeli technologies with Polish manpower for the benefit of the whole world.” The residents of Afghanistan, Palestine and West Papua wouldn’t agree.

The current round of UAVs being sold to Poland are unarmed but will be used to guide F-16 bombing missions in Afghanistan. Poland, with 2,600 troops occupying the country is one of the US’s top ten biggest recipients of Foreign Military funding. Following the completion of a $3.8 billion contract for delivery of 42 F-16s in 2003, the US Air Force has been training Polish pilots how to use the new planes. According to Colonel Timothy Burke, Chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation at the US Embassy in Warsaw, “The pilots should be qualified in the next few years. Once training has been completed, they will be using the F-16s for aerial missions” armed with laser-guided, GPS-enabled “smart-weapons.”

The first Polish S-70i Blackhawk helicopter is also ready to roll this year. It is the product of a trilateral geopolitical military alliance comprised of Israel’s Elbit Systems, the US’s United Technology Corporation and Poland’s PZL Mielec. This alliance is expected to deepen in the coming years.

Israel has also given regular strategic and technical advice to the Polish military command. According to the Polish Ministry of Defense, between 1995 and 2009 there were more than 200 activities including mutual trainings of military units, exchange of expertise, courses, seminars and symposiums organized by the Polish-Israeli Working Group. The working group is comprised of officials from the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs of both countries.

Last autumn, Poland’s Chief of Staff Gen. Franciszek Gagor participated in a training session with Israeli defense specialists on lessons learned from “Cast Lead” and “how to deal with the headlines.” According to the Israeli government, “Information warfare is one of the most developed issues of the past two decades. We have built a structure in the Israeli Defense Forces which includes information warfare. Coping with media challenges is one of our biggest issues.”

The Polish Ministry of Defense’s Vision of the Armed Forces 2030 Plan has a similar structure including “Information Forces” to police enemy media. According to the plan, “The enemy shall use a broad range of mass media in order to support its actions. By diffusing images displaying inhumane aspects of military operations, suffering of the civilian population, including children and persons advanced in years, the enemy shall try to preserve perception of the intervention forces as occupying troops which do not respect human rights. Based on the ideology or religion, it will instill fear, feed hatred and strive for mobilization of the local and international public opinion against military forces and states fulfilling mandate of international organizations.”

By equating the broadcast of the horrific realities of war and particularly its effects on a civilian population with “propaganda” and de facto enemy activity, this policy risks censoring and criminalizing investigative journalism and respect for human rights and international law. We journalists and human rights activists could be the enemy. And if we step out of line, the “Information Forces” could whip us into shape as “The units shall be intended for offensive and defensive actions carried out in order to get information predominance over the enemy and to achieve expected military [political] results of the conducted operation.”

As modern warfare takes on an ever more aerial, alienated and indiscriminate approach to “the enemy,” governments are forcing us to keep our distance. Whether it is soldiers in bunkers guiding UAVs with joysticks or keeping the men, women and children being bombed by our militaries out of our sight through media gagging orders, it is ever more urgent that this distance be closed and those in charge of military policy be held accountable for their devastating results.

Ewa Jasiewicz is a co-Editor of Le Monde Diplomatique Polish Edition where a version of this article was originally published.

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February 17, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

US-Led Invasion ‘Bogged Down’ in Marjah

By Jason Ditz, February 15, 2010

US forces continue to press forward in the Marjah region of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, put are said to be struggling mightily with home-made bombs and sniper fire, and were able to advance only 500 yards yesterday.

Despite the pretense that the battle is going “according to plans,” the promises of a quick victory with overwhelming force in Marjah has turned out to be overly optimistic, with some officials now saying the offensive could take upwards of a month.

Still, the optimism isn’t entirely lost, and some US commanders remain convinced, to quote Colonel Scott Hartsell, that “pretty soon, they are going to run out of gas.”

The US has been pledging the invasion for over a month, aimed at installing a Karzai appointee as governor of Marjah. The troops began the invasion on Friday, with Taliban forces pledging to “wait out” the raid.

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February 16, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | Leave a comment

Civilian Killings by US Cast Pall on NATO’s Marjah Offensive

By Jason Ditz | February 14, 2010

The Battle of Marjah was supposed to be the centerpiece of the Obama escalation, showcasing NATO’s firepower against the farming community while emphasizing strategic changes designed to limit civilian casualties.

This has failed on both fronts, with troops encountering heavy resistance and making slow progress in occupying the town, and even more importantly an embarrassingly high profile mishap involving US forces.

According to NATO, the US was attempting to use its High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HiMARS) to attack some nearby insurgents. The rockets fired from the HiMARS “missed” their targets, and instead hit a crowded home 300 meters away, killing at least 12 Afghan civilians.

Officials were quick to apologize, and the HiMARS has been temporarily barred from service, but after US forces papered the region with leaflets urging civilians to “stay put” during the invasion, the killings have once again drawn uncomfortable attention to the inaccuracy of war inside a town.

Despite the killings and the fighting, officials insist that the invasion is “going to plan.” Those paying attention over the past month however will recall repeated predictions of a quick victory with little battle, and the reality has been anything but.

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February 15, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Leave a comment

Preserving the Golden Rule as a Piece of Anti-Nuclear History

By Lawrence S. Wittner | February 8, 2010

The Golden Rule is in danger.  No, not the famed ethical code — though proponents of selfishness certainly have ignored it — but a thirty-foot sailing ship of the same name that rose to prominence about half a century ago.

The remarkable story of the Golden Rule began in the late 1950s, as the world public grew increasingly concerned about preparations for nuclear war.  In the United States, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) was launched in November 1957, and polls showed rising uneasiness about the nuclear arms race — especially giant atmospheric nuclear weapons tests that spewed radioactive fallout around the globe.

Although SANE quickly became the largest peace organization in the United States, smaller groups, committed to civil disobedience, sprang up as well.  One of them, Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons, drew the participation of Albert Bigelow, a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy during World War II.  With the bombing of Hiroshima, Bigelow had concluded that “morally, war is impossible,” and a month before he became eligible for his pension, he resigned from the U.S. Navy Reserve.  Joining the Society of Friends, he plunged into the growing campaign of resistance to nuclear weapons.

In January 1958, Bigelow and three other pacifists wrote to President Dwight Eisenhower of their plan to sail the Golden Rule into the U.S. nuclear testing zone in the Pacific.  “For years we have spoken and written of the suicidal military preparations of the Great Powers,” they declared, “but our voices have been lost in the massive effort of those responsible for preparing this country for war.  We mean to speak now with the weight of our whole lives.”  They hoped their act would “say to others:  Speak Now.”

Of course, this was just what the U.S. government most feared.  Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) officials, and the U.S. Navy brass began frantic conversations on how to counter the pacifist menace.  The U.S. commander-in-chief in the Pacific warned that this group of “Communists or misguided humanitarians” hoped to either “stop tests by preventing us from firing . . . or if we did fire and killed a few people” to “create additional anti-atomic test support.”  Eventually, the administration decided to have the AEC issue a regulation blocking entry by U.S. citizens into the test zone, while U.S. intelligence agencies swapped data on Bigelow, including information on his private telephone conversations and legal plans.

Meanwhile, captained across a stormy Pacific by Bigelow, the Golden Rule arrived in Honolulu, where a U.S. federal court issued an injunction barring the rest of its voyage.  Nevertheless, the four pacifists decided:  “We would sail — come what may.”  And they did.  Overtaken by the U.S. Coast Guard on their journey to Eniwetok, they were arrested, tried, convicted, and placed on probation.  Undaunted, they set sail once more on the Golden Rule for the very heart of darkness, that section of the Pacific unilaterally cordoned off by the U.S. government for its hydrogen bomb tests.  Once again, their voyage was halted by U.S. authorities, and they were arrested, tried, convicted and — this time — given sixty-day sentences and imprisoned.

But their example proved contagious.  An American anthropologist, Earle Reynolds, his wife Barbara, and their two children attended the final trial in Honolulu, and concluded not only that the U.S. government was lying about the dangers of radioactive fallout, but lacked the constitutional authority to explode nuclear weapons in the Pacific.  As a result, determined to complete the voyage of the Golden Rule, they set sail for Eniwetok aboard their own ship, the Phoenix.  On July 1, Reynolds went on the radio to announce that they had entered the U.S. nuclear testing zone.  Soon thereafter he was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a two-year prison term.

These events, which received considerable publicity, triggered a surge of activism.  Picket lines sprang up around federal buildings and AEC offices all across the United States.  In San Francisco, 432 residents — proclaiming that they were guilty of “conspiring” with crew members — petitioned the U.S. attorney to take legal action against them.  Reynolds, out on bail before a higher court ruled in his favor (and, implicitly, in favor of the crew of the Golden Rule), gave a large number of talks on radio and television, as well as to college, high school, and church audiences, on the dangers of nuclear testing.

Not surprisingly, U.S. government officials were horrified.  Appearing on CBS television, AEC chair Lewis Strauss, implied — as he often did when discussing critics of nuclear weapons — that the whole thing was part of a Communist conspiracy.  “At the bottom of the disturbance there is a kernel of very intelligent, deliberate propaganda,” he insisted.

Subsequent events went badly from Strauss’s standpoint.  Within a short time, he was ousted from office, and the Eisenhower administration — barraged by public protests against nuclear testing — felt obliged to halt it and begin negotiations on a test ban treaty.  In 1963, these negotiations culminated in the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which ended atmospheric nuclear tests by the great powers.  SANE and other peace groups were delighted with this first nuclear arms control treaty, as was Bigelow, who only two years before had challenged authority once more, this time as a Freedom Rider.

As for the aging Golden Rule, it has now drifted into obscurity, and is currently housed in a small shipyard in Eureka California, whose owner, Leroy Zerlang, would like to save it from destruction.  If the Smithsonian or another museum decided to preserve the ship, it would provide a fine symbol to future generations of the courageous men who sailed it, of government efforts to halt their activities, and of a nation that ultimately turned against nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

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February 14, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Behind the Drive to War

By Ismael Hossein-zadeh

A most widely-cited factor behind the Bush administration’s drive to war is said to be oil. “No Blood for Oil” has been a rallying cry for most of the opponents of the war. Yet, such claims cannot be supported by facts. Major oil companies have come (in recent years and decades) to prefer peace, stability, and predictability in global markets to war and instability. It is true that big oil, like the arms industry, has handsomely benefited form the heightened tempo of war and militarism. There is no hard evidence, however, that major oil interests encouraged or embraced the Bush administrations drive to war and militarism. On the contrary, evidence shows that for the last quarter century or so oil interests have not favored war and turbulence in the Middle East, including the current invasion of Iraq. Major oil companies, along with many other non-military transnational corporations, have lobbied both the Clinton and Bush administrations in support of changing the aggressive, militaristic U.S. policy toward countries like Iran, Iraq and Libya in favor of establishing normal, non-confrontational business and diplomatic relations.

The claim that attributes the Bush administration’s drive to war to the influence of major oil companies tends to rest more on precedent and perception than reality. Part of the perception is due to the exaggerated notion that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney were “oil men” before coming to the White House. But the fact is that George W.Bush was never more than an unsuccessful petty oil prospector and Dick Cheney headed a company, the notorious Halliburton, that sold (and still sells) services to oil companies and the Pentagon. The larger part of the perception, however, stems from the fact that oil companies do benefit from oil price hikes that result from war and political turbulence in the Middle East. Such benefits are, however, largely incidental. Surely, American oil companies would welcome the spoils of the war (in the form of oil price hikes) in Iraq or anywhere else in the world. From the largely incidental oil price hikes that follow war and political convulsion, some observers automatically conclude that, therefore, big oil must have been behind the war. But there is no evidence that, at least in the case of the current invasion of Iraq, oil companies pushed for or supported the war.

On the contrary, there is strong evidence that, in fact, oil companies did not welcome the war because they prefer stability and predictability to periodic oil spikes that follow war and political convulsion: “Looking back over the last 20 years, there is plenty of evidence showing the industry’s push for stability and cooperation with Middle Eastern countries and leaders, and the U.S. government’s drive for hegemony works against the oil industry.”  As Thierry Desmarest, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of France’s giant oil company, TotalFinaElf, put it, “A few months of cash generation is not a big deal. Stable, not volatile, prices and a $25 price (per barrel) would be convenient for everyone.”

It is true that for a long time, from the beginning of Middle Eastern oil exploration and discovery in the early twentieth century until the mid-1970s, colonial and/or imperial powers controlled oil either directly or through control of oil producing countries—at times, even by military force. But that pattern of imperialist exploitation of global markets and resources has changed now. Most of the current theories of imperialism and hegemony that continue invoking that old pattern of big oil behavior tend to suffer from an ahistorical perspective. Today, even physically occupying and controlling another country’s oil fields will not necessarily be beneficial to oil interests. Not only will military adventures place the operations of current energy projects at jeopardy, but they will also make the future plans precarious and unpredictable. Big oil interests, of course, know this; and that’s why they did not countenance the war on Iraq: “The big oil companies were not enthusiastic about the Iraqi war,” says Fareed Mohamedi of PFC Energy, an energy consultancy firm based in Washington D.C. that advises petroleum firms. “Corporations like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco want stability, and this is not what Bush is providing in Iraq and the Gulf region,” adds Mohamedi.

During the past few decades, major oil companies have consistently opposed U.S. policies and military threats against countries like Iran, Iraq, and Libya. They have, indeed, time and again, lobbied U.S. foreign policy makers for the establishment of peaceful relations and diplomatic rapprochement with those countries. The Iran-Libya Sanction Act of 1996 (ILSA) is a strong testament to the fact that oil companies nowadays view wars, economic sanctions, and international political tensions as harmful to their long-term business interests and, accordingly, strive for peace, not war, in international relations.

In May of 1997, for example, major U.S. oil companies such as Conoco, Exxon, Atlantic Richfield, and Occidental Petroleum joined other non-military U.S. transnational corporations to create an anti-sanction coalition. Earlier that same year Conoco’s Chief Executive Archie Dunham publicly took a stance against unilateral U.S. sanctions by stating that “U.S. companies, not rogue regimes, are the ones that suffer when the United States imposes economic sanctions.” Texaco officials have also argued that the U.S. can be more effective in bringing about change in other countries by allowing U.S. companies to do business with those countries instead of imposing economic sanctions that tend to be counterproductive.

The Military-Industrial-Zionist-Alliance

A widely-shared view attributes the Bush administration’s militaristic foreign policy to the influence of neoconservative forces and the power of their ideology: the small but influential cabal of starry-eyed ideologues, bent on spreading the U.S. economic and political system, along with American power and influence, managed to single-handedly drive the country to war through lies and false pretexts. Some of these critics compare the “ideologically-driven” neoconservative militarists to the idealistic Jacobinic forces ofmore than two centuries ago in Europe, the eighteenth century French revolutionaries whose intention to remake Europe in revolutionary France’s image launched the Napoleonic Wars. Proponents of this thesis further argue that the neoconservatives’ domination of the Bush administration’s foreign policy amounted to a political coup d’etat.

While this argument may not be altogether false, it is woefully deficient. By placing an inordinately high emphasis on pure or abstract ideology, and on political personas or the role of individuals, the argument tends to lose sight of the bigger, but largely submerged, picture: the powerful military-industrial-Likud interests—the real architects of war and militarism—that lie behind the façade of neoconservative figures in and around the Bush administration. There is clear evidence that the leading neoconservative figures have been long-time political activists who have worked through think tanks set up to serve either as the armaments lobby or the Likud (militant Zionist partisans) lobby or both—going back to the 1990s, 1980s and, in some cases, 1970s. These corporate-backed militaristic think tanks include the American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, National Institute for Public Policy, and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. There is also evidence that the major components of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, including the war on Iraq, were designed long before George W. Bush arrived in the While House—largely at the drawing boards of these think thanks, often in collaboration, directly or indirectly, with the Pentagon and the arms lobby.

Take the Center for Security Policy (CSP), for example. It “boasts that no fewer than 22 former advisory board members are close associates in the Bush administration. . . . A sixth of the Center’s revenue comes directly from defense corporations.” The Center’s alumni in key posts in the Bush administration include its former chair of the board, Douglas Feith, who served as Undersecretary of Defense for policy, Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim, former Defense Policy Board chair Richard Perle, and longtime friend and financial supporter Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In its 1998 annual report, the center “listed virtually every weapons-maker that had supported it fromits founding, from Lockheed, Martin Marietta, Northrop, Grumman, and Boeing, to the later ‘merged’ incarnations of same—Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and so forth.”

Likewise, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an influential Washington think tank and a major lobbying force for the military-industrial-Zionist alliance, can boast of being the metaphorical alma mater of a number of powerful members of the Bush administration. For example, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne Cheney, State Department arms control official John Bolton (now U.S. ambassador to the UN), and former chair of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle all have had long-standing ties with the Institute. The Institute played a key role in promoting Ahmed Chalabi’s group of Iraqi exiles, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), as a major Iraqi opposition force “that would be welcomed by the Iraqi people as an alternative to the regime of Saddam Hussein” once the Untied States overthrew that regime. “From 1998 on, when there was U.S. government money openly available to support the Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein due to the AEI-backed Iraqi Liberation Act, Chalabi’s INC grabbed the bulk of the funding.” In return, the INC, working closely with the AEI, played an important role in the justification of the invasion of Iraq. It served, for example, as a major source of (largely fabricated) intelligence for the civilian militarists of the Pentagon whenever they found the intelligence gathered by the CIA and the State Department at odds with their plans of invading Iraq.

Another example of the interlocking network of neoconservative forces in the Bush administration and the militaristic think tanks that are dedicated to the advancement ofthe military-industrial-Zionist agenda is reflected in the affiliation of a number of influential members of the administration with the Jewish Institute for the National Security Affairs (JINSA). JINSA “is on record in its support of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and against the Oslo Accord. . . . In its fervent support for the hard-line, pro-settlement, anti-Palestinian Likud-style policies in Israel, JINSA has essentially recommended that ‘regime change’ in Iraq should be just the beginning of a cascade of toppling dominoes in the Middle East.”

JINSA has influential friends either as liaisons with or members of the Bush administration. For example, Douglas Feith, assistant secretary of defense during the first term of the Bush administration, is a former JINSA advisor. General Jay Garner, the initial head of the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, is also a former JINSA advisory board member. JINSA advisor Michael Ladeen, who also unofficially advises the Bush administration on Middle Eastern issues, has occasionally talked about the coming era of “total war,” indicating that the Bush administration should expand its policy of “regime change” in Iraq to other countries in the region such as Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. “In keeping with its role as a cheerleader for U.S. intervention in the Middle East, JINSA chose to honor Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz . . . to receive the 2002 edition of its Henry M. ‘Scoop’ Jackson public service award. The corporate sponsor of the affair was Northrop Grumman, a company that Wolfowitz worked for as a paid consultant prior to joining Rumsfeld’s Pentagon.”

The fact that neoconservative militarists of the Bush administration are organically rooted in the military-industrial complex and/or the militant Zionist supporters of “greater Israel” is even more clearly reflected in their incestuous relationship with the jingoistic lobbying think tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Like most of its counterpart institutes within the extensive network of neoconservative think tanks, PNAC was founded by a circle of powerful political figures a number of whom later ascended to key positions in the Bush administration. As William Hartung describes, “In many ways, the founding of PNAC in 1997 marked the opening salvo in the formation of the Bush policy of aggressive unilateralism. The signatories of PNAC’s founding statement of principles are a rogue’s gallery of intransigent hardliners, ranging from Iran-Contra re-treat Eliot Cohen, to ex-Pentagon hawks I. Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld, to neo-con standbys Frank Gaffney, former Reagan drug czar WilliamBennett, and Norman Podhoretz, to the President’s brother and partner in electoral crime, Jeb Bush.” Add the signature of Vice President Dick Cheney to the list of PNAC founders, “and you have the bulwarks of the neo-con network that is currently in the driver’s seat of the Bush administration’s war without end policies all represented in PNAC’s founding document.”

A closer look at the professional records of the neoconservative players in the Bush administration indicates that “32 major administration appointees . . . are former executives with, consultants for, or significant shareholders of top defense contractors.” For example, James Roche, former air force secretary who took over the army, is a former president of Northrop Grumman; his assistant secretary Nelson Gibbs is another Northrop alumni. An under secretary at the air force, Peter Teets, was chief operating officer at Lockheed while Michael Wynne, a Defence Department under secretary, was a former senior vice-president at General Dynamics. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself is an ex-director of a General Dynamics subsidiary, and his deputy during the first term of the Bush administration, Paul Wolfowitz (now the head of the World Bank), acted as a paid consultant to Northrop Grumman. Today, point out Hartung and Ciarrocca, the armaments lobby “is exerting more influence over policy making than at any time since President Dwight D. Eisenhower first warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex over 40 years ago.”

This sample evidence indicates that the view that the neoconservative militarists’ tendency to war and aggression is inspired by an ideological passion to spread American ideals of democracy is clearly unwarranted. Their success in orchestrating the unprovoked war against Iraq stemmed largely from the fact they were working essentially on behalf of two immensely powerful special interests, the military-industrial complex and the influential Zionist lobby in the United States. Neoconservative architects of war and militarism derive their political clout and policy effectiveness largely from the political machine and institutional infrastructure of these two powerful interest groups.

~~~

Bibliography:

William D. Hartung, How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy?

Johnathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler. The Global Political Economy of Israel

Cyrus Bina, “The American Tragedy: The Quagmire of War, Rhetoric of Oil, and the Conundrum of Hegemony,” Journal of Iranian Research and Analysis, vol. 20, no. 2
Conundrum of Hegemony,” Journal of Iranian Research and Analysis, vol. 20, no. 2
http://www.lib.drake.edu:8080/dspace/bitstream/2092/373/1/ChapmanUnivPaper.pdf.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of the recently published The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

February 12, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

As Afghan assault looms, many civilians haven’t fled

By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers | February 9, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — As U.S.-led coalition troops prepare for a long-awaited offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, few civilians have managed to escape the town at the center of the operation, raising the risk of civilian casualties that could undermine the Obama administration’s military strategy for the country.

The U.S.-led force said Tuesday that fewer than 200 families — around 1,200 people — had left the town of Marjah and the surrounding area, which have a population of about 80,000.

“Commanders in the area are reporting no significant increase in persons moving out of Nad-e Ali district in the last month,” the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement. “Despite reports of large numbers of civilians fleeing the area, the facts on the ground do not support these assertions.”

Thousands of U.S., British and Afghan soldiers are poised to push into the area, with preliminary operations reported to have begun late Tuesday. Afghan police will accompany the soldiers in an effort to establish law and order quickly.

The presence of a large number of civilians could make the operation much trickier and provide a test of the new coalition military doctrine of protecting the population. A large media contingent from around the world will accompany the troops, recording their progress.

An estimated 2,000 Taliban fighters are dug in and are believed to have planted roadside bombs and booby-trapped buildings. Residents said the insurgents had dug trenches in a traffic circle and mined the roads out of town. It may be too late for those who haven’t escaped by now.

“If (NATO forces) don’t avoid large scale civilian casualties, given the rhetoric about protecting the population, then no matter how many Taliban are routed, the Marjah mission should be considered a failure,” said Candace Rondeaux, an Afghanistan-based analyst at the International Crisis Group, an independent research and campaigning organization.

Although international forces counted relatively few evacuees, local people told McClatchy that more civilians had evacuated, though still only a fraction of the population. Leaflets dropped over the town had warned townspeople for days of the impending offensive.

“The message to the people of the area is, of course, keep your heads down, stay inside when the operation is going ahead,” Mark Sedwill, the civilian head of NATO in Afghanistan, told reporters in Kabul… Full article

February 11, 2010 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

The Democrats are Coming After Social Security

Obama’s Change Drops its Mask

By Shamus Cooke | February 9, 2010

It’s official: the Democrats are coming after Social Security and Medicare. All the backroom scheming and political conspiring is finally out in the open.

In an unusually long, 1,800 word editorial, entitled The Truth about the Deficit, published February 7, The New York Times — cheerleader for neoliberalism — gives its solution to the country’s debt problems. The main idea is summed up thus:

“To truly tame deficits will require serious health care reform [Obama’s plan slashes Medicare], the sooner the better. Other aspects of the long-term fiscal problem — raising taxes and retooling [reducing] Social Security — must take place in earnest as the economy recovers.”

Later the article is clearer: “And then there is Social Security. What is needed is a combination of benefit cuts and tax increases that preserve the program’s essential nature.” Of course those surviving on Social Security already live in poverty and cannot afford “benefit cuts.” Also, to make a dent in the deficit, benefit cuts to social security will have to be quite substantial, to the point where the program’s “essential nature” will be destroyed.

The New York Times acknowledges that such a course of action will be completely undemocratic and unpopular, but that politicians “must gather the political will to do what must be done…”

How can politicians destroy these cherished social programs in the face of such popular resistance? By trickery, of course. And this is exactly what Obama has proposed with his “bi-partisan deficit-reduction commission.” This idea puts Democrats and Republicans together to create a plan to destroy social programs. This way both parties share the blame, so that no one is to blame. The New York Times reveals Obama’s hidden motives:

“The deficit commission that Mr. Obama intends to establish could be helpful in breaking this logjam [resistance to cutting social security], by calling for necessary changes that politicians would be loath to broach without political cover.”

Labor unions and community groups also understand Obama’s treacherous motives. Dozens of them — including the AFL-CIO and Change to Win — signed a statement condemning the goals behind Obama’s “deficit commission.” The statement included some politically savvy points, including the following:

“…the proposed budget commission — which will be viewed as a way to actually cut Medicare benefits, while insulating lawmakers from political fallout — could confuse people and undermine the reform effort. And an American public that only recently rejected privatization of Social Security will undoubtedly be suspicious of a process that shuts them out of all decisions regarding the future of a retirement system that’s served them well in the current financial crisis.”

The statement concludes:

“We urge you to act decisively to prevent the creation of such an extraordinary and undemocratic budget commission.”

However, it is not enough for only the leaders of unions and community groups to pressure the Democrats over this issue, especially when Obama has made it clear that he prefers the advice of Wall Street CEO’s. Unions and progressive groups must educate and mobilize their base to confront both the Democrats and Republicans over the protection of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

None of the major unions which signed the anti-commission statement have information about this plot on their websites; none are organizing their members to confront this plan — a plan that the entire political establishment is in agreement with. Nor are unions seriously proposing other ideas to fix the deficit, and the fixes are obvious.

The military budget must be slashed. Obama plans to spend over $700 billion in 2011 for the military. Both Democrats and Republicans are fine with this. Most Americans are not.

More importantly, taxes on the rich need to be increased. The nation’s tax structure changed drastically under Reagan and the two Bushes, with taxes on the wealthiest Americans dropping from 70 percent to the present day 35 percent. Under Eisenhower the richest Americans paid 90 percent of their income towards taxes. The loss in revenue that resulted from these giant tax reductions is one of the major contributors to the current deficit. It must be reversed in order to save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

This is the solution that working-class Americans would prefer, rather than have their Medicare, Social Security, and public education destroyed. It is up to the union movement and community groups to unite and mobilize their members and all working people to demand this as a solution to the deficit and Great Recession.

Without a massive mobilization with rank and file participation, the corporate elite will continue to have their way unchallenged, with more bank bailouts and more war. A coalition of progressive groups with clear demands to address the recession will have the backing of the majority of Americans, while being resisted adamantly by both Democrats and Republicans.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com

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February 9, 2010 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

Iran proposes signing nuclear disarmament treaty

Press TV – February 6, 2010

Iran has offered to work with Germany to draw up an “all-encompassing nuclear disarmament treaty” with a clear deadline for total annihilation of atomic weapons.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki first introduced the offer in a Friday meeting with his German counterpart Guido Westerwelle on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

“Other than our two countries, other states can take part in this initiative,” said Mottaki, recollecting how various countries had come together to seal the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

Mottaki made the remarks just days after the ‘Global Zero’ summit in Paris, which brought together some 200 politicians, generals, businessmen, clerics, academics and arms experts in the hope of finding a way to total nuclear disarmament.

Both US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev sent messages of support to the international assembly.

In his message, Obama reaffirmed his campaign promise that “a world without nuclear weapons . . . is one of my highest priorities.”

Obama and Medvedev are finalizing a major new treaty to dismantle 2,000 of the 5,000 strategic (long-range) warheads they have in their stockpiles.

However, Obama and Medvedev together control 95 per cent of the world’s 23,000 nukes.

February 6, 2010 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

The defense industry is pleased with Obama

By Laura Flanders | Online Journal | February 4, 2010

Who says the president is failing to show leadership? In one area at least, there’s no sign of flag or falter. If anything, the administration’s only becoming more forthright. Sad to say, that area is military build-up.

Last year, the White House made a big deal of cutting a weapons program — the F-22 fighter jet — and the cuts conveniently obscured the growth in spending on unmanned aircraft or drones (the weapons that Pakistanis say killed a record 123 civilians in 12 attacks last month; 41 for every alleged Al Qaeda member.)

This year, the president dispensed with window dressing. No big deal about cuts — except on the domestic side. While the administration’s record $3.8 trillion budget shrinks or freezes spending on domestic needs, it requests $708.3 billion for war. That’s $14.8 billion more than we’re spending now.

The total includes $548.9 billion for “regular” war, plus $159.3 billion for special spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Oh yes, the administration’s also asking Congress to increase spending on new nuclear weapons by more than $7 billion dollars over the next five years — despite that peace prize-winning pledge to cut the US arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world.

The quote of the day comes from the CEO of a military contractor-funded policy group called the Lexington Institute. Loren Thompson tells Tuesday’s New York Times, “The defense industry is pleased but bemused . . . It’s been telling itself for years that when the Democrats got control it would be bad news for weapons programs. But the spending keeps going on.”

Take that you Nobel committee!

And to think some whiners complain about Democrats suffering from a lack of direction.

February 4, 2010 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia vs. the Houthis: A senseless war winds down

By Rannie Amiri | February 1, 2010

It has been nearly three months since the Saudi military directly inserted itself in the conflict between Zaidi rebels and the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen’s mountainous northwest governorate of Saada. After two of its border guards were killed last November by the rebels, known as Houthis (named after their erstwhile leader, Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi) and claims made that they had crossed into Saudi territory, a massive aerial assault was unleashed.

Using U.S. and Western-supplied weapons unavailable to Saleh’s government, the Saudi military employed Apache helicopters, F-15 and Tornado jets, infrared detection equipment, surveillance drones and quite possibly banned white phosphorus shells, to target Houthi positions in the rugged terrain of the border region and well into Yemen proper.

Despite their sophisticated weaponry, Saudi Arabia lost an unusually high number of soldiers; 133 at last count. Although an unknown number of Houthi fighters – and Yemeni civilians – were killed in the attacks, what is known is the great humanitarian toll the Saudi intervention exacted on the population. Already a cauldron of human suffering, malnutrition and overflowing camps for the internally displaced as a result of five years of war, the fresh offensive only added to the misery of Saada and the neighboring provinces.

Since the conflict began in 2004, aid agencies place the number of displaced Yemenis at 200,000. The Saudi government’s policy of forcibly returning those fleeing the conflict back into the war zone – a morally reprehensible practice not to mention a violation of international law – was widely condemned.

This week, the Houthis announced a unilateral ceasefire and declared their intention to voluntarily withdraw from any Saudi territory occupied. The current Houthi leader, Abdul Malek al-Houthi, stated, “If the Saudi regime maintains its aggression after this initiative, it would be showing that its intention is not to defend its territory, but to invade our borders.”

Yet, just after of the Houthi proposal was made, the Saudi government claimed it was they who had driven the rebels out of the border region.

“They did not withdraw. They were forced out,” asserted Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khaled bin Sultan.

In order for Saudi Arabia to accept the Houthi ceasefire, Sultan said the rebels must create a 10 km buffer zone between them and the border, agree to let Yemen’s military to take up positions along it, and return six captured Saudi soldiers.

Regardless of whether any tenable agreement is actually reached, it must be asked: what was accomplished by Saudi Arabia’s attack on Yemen?

Militarily, nothing.

The more salient question is: what was the real message behind Saudi Arabia’s (fruitless) intervention?

Although it was purportedly to defend the “territorial integrity” of the Kingdom, even supporters of the Royal Family concede it was more to stem perceived encroaching Iranian influence at its doorstep. Yet that too is a spurious argument.

To date, there has been no convincing evidence of any significant material support provided to the Houthi rebels by the Iranian government. Claims of such have been found to be no more credible than those issued by Yemen’s government that Abdul Malek al-Houthi had been killed in the fighting (he appeared on video a few days later appearing quite healthy).

To understand the real motive behind the bombardment, one only needs to return to the primary demand of the Houthi rebels: an end to the ever-increasing socioeconomic marginalization and religious discrimination of the Zaidi community in Yemen.

This war was not just to aid the fledging Saleh regime in combating an enemy far less threatening to its existence than al-Qaeda, but to send a clear message to Saudi Arabia’s own citizens who suffer the same systemic and institutionalized discrimination as do the Zaidis. Namely, Shia Muslims, Ismaili Muslims, Sufi Muslims and any who dare challenge the authority of the House of al-Saud or the doctrines of the officially-sanctioned Wahabi school of thought.

Saudi Arabia’s own oil-rich Eastern Province has seen tensions with Saudi Shia Muslims escalate in recent months as the Wahabi religious establishment clamps down ever more harshly on the practice of their religion and liberties as citizens of the state.

The senseless war in Saada waged by the Saudi government was thus meant to send an unmistakable warning to any in the Kingdom who might espouse similar beliefs or demands as the Houthis: do so at your own peril.

One wonders, though, whether those on the Saudi side who advocated or supported such reckless interventionism were aware of this equally important admonition: military force never succeeds in quieting the quest of people striving to achieve their basic rights, freedoms, and dignity.

Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.
Source

February 3, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

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