The Anti-Empire Report #127
By William Blum – Published April 7th, 2014
Is there anyone out there who still believes that Barack Obama, when
he’s speaking about American foreign policy, is capable of being
anything like an honest man? In a March 26 talk in Belgium to “European
youth”, the president fed his audience one falsehood, half-truth,
blatant omission, or hypocrisy after another. If George W. Bush had
made some of these statements, Obama supporters would not hesitate to
shake their head, roll their eyes, or smirk. Here’s a sample:
–
“In defending its actions, Russian leaders have further claimed
Kosovo as a precedent – an example they say of the West interfering in
the affairs of a smaller country, just as they’re doing now. But NATO
only intervened after the people of Kosovo were systematically
brutalized and killed for years.”
Most people who follow such things are convinced that the 1999
US/NATO bombing of the Serbian province of Kosovo took place only after
the Serbian-forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well
underway; which is to say that the bombing was launched to
stop this “ethnic cleansing”. In actuality, the systematic deportations of large numbers of people did not begin until a few days
after
the bombing began, and was clearly a reaction to it, born of Serbia’s
extreme anger and powerlessness over the bombing. This is easily
verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the
bombing began the night of March 23/24, 1999, and the few days
following. Or simply look at the
New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:
… with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear
took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would now vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation. [emphasis added]
On March 27, we find the first reference to a “forced march” or anything of that nature.
But the propaganda version is already set in marble.
–
“And Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized,
not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful
cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo’s neighbors. None
of that even came close to happening in Crimea.”
None of that even came close to happening in Kosovo either. The
story is false. The referendum the president speaks of never happened.
Did the mainstream media pick up on this or on the previous example?
If any reader comes across such I’d appreciate being informed.
Crimea, by the way, did have a referendum. A real one.
–
“Workers and engineers gave life to the Marshall Plan … As the
Iron Curtain fell here in Europe, the iron fist of apartheid was
unclenched, and Nelson Mandela emerged upright, proud, from prison to
lead a multiracial democracy. Latin American nations rejected
dictatorship and built new democracies … “
The president might have mentioned that the main beneficiary of the Marshall Plan was US corporations
, that the United States played an indispensable role in Mandela being
caught and imprisoned, and that virtually all the Latin American
dictatorships owed their very existence to Washington. Instead, the
European youth were fed the same party line that their parents were fed,
as were all Americans.
–
“Yes, we believe in democracy – with elections that are free and fair.”
In this talk, the main purpose of which was to lambaste the Russians
for their actions concerning Ukraine, there was no mention that the
government overthrown in that country with the clear support of the
United States had been democratically elected.
–
“Moreover, Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into
Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. … But even in Iraq, America
sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or
annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain.
Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully
sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.”
The US did not get UN Security Council approval for its invasion, the
only approval that could legitimize the action. It occupied Iraq from
one end of the country to the other for 8 years, forcing the government
to privatize the oil industry and accept multinational – largely
U.S.-based, oil companies’ – ownership. This endeavor was less than
successful because of the violence unleashed by the invasion. The US
military finally was forced to leave because the Iraqi government
refused to give immunity to American soldiers for their many crimes.
Here is a brief summary of what Barack Obama is attempting to present as America’s moral superiority to the Russians:
The modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi
failed state … the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years,
with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied,
overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly …
the people of that unhappy land lost everything – their homes, their
schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their
neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their
careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their
physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare
state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety,
their security, their children, their parents, their past, their
present, their future, their lives … More than half the population
either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or
in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with
depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster
bombs lying in wait for children to pick them up … a river of blood
running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may
never be put back together again. … “It is a common refrain among
war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in
2003,” reported the
Washington Post. (May 5, 2007)
How can all these mistakes, such arrogance, hypocrisy and absurdity
find their way into a single international speech by the president of
the United States? Is the White House budget not sufficient to hire a
decent fact checker? Someone with an intellect and a social conscience?
Or does the desire to score propaganda points trump everything else?
Is this another symptom of the Banana-Republicization of America?
Long live the Cold War
In 1933 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the Soviet
Union after some 15 years of severed relations following the Bolshevik
Revolution. On a day in December of that year, a train was passing
through Poland carrying the first American diplomats dispatched to
Moscow. Amongst their number was a 29 year-old Foreign Service Officer,
later to become famous as a diplomat and scholar, George Kennan.
Though he was already deemed a government expert on Russia, the train
provided Kennan’s first actual exposure to the Soviet Union. As he
listened to his group’s escort, Russian Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov,
reminisce about growing up in a village the train was passing close by,
and his dreams of becoming a librarian, the Princeton-educated Kennan
was astonished: “We suddenly realized, or at least I did, that these
people we were dealing with were human beings like ourselves, that they
had been born somewhere, that they had their childhood ambitions as we
had. It seemed for a brief moment we could break through and embrace
these people.”
It hasn’t happened yet.
One would think that the absence in Russia of communism, of
socialism, of the basic threat or challenge to the capitalist system,
would be sufficient to write
finis to the 70-year Cold War
mentality. But the United States is virtually as hostile to
21st-century Russia as it was to 20th-century Soviet Union, surrounding
Moscow with military bases, missile sites, and NATO members. Why should
that be? Ideology is no longer a factor. But power remains one,
specifically America’s perpetual lust for world hegemony. Russia is the
only nation that (a) is a military powerhouse, and (b) doesn’t believe
that the United States has a god-given-American-exceptionalism right to
rule the world, and says so. By these criteria, China might qualify as a
poor second. But there are no others.
Washington pretends that it doesn’t understand why Moscow should be
upset by Western military encroachment, but it has no such problem when
roles are reversed. Secretary of State John Kerry recently stated that
Russian troops poised near eastern Ukraine are “creating a climate of
fear and intimidation in Ukraine” and raising questions about Russia’s
next moves and its commitment to diplomacy.
NATO – ever in need of finding a
raison d’être – has now issued a declaration of [cold] war, which reads in part:
“NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday [April 1, 2014] reaffirmed their
commitment to enhance the Alliance’s collective defence, agreed to
further support Ukraine and to suspend NATO’s practical cooperation with
Russia. ‘NATO’s greatest responsibility is to protect and defend our
territory and our people. And make no mistake, this is what we will
do,’ NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. … Ministers
directed Allied military authorities to develop additional measures to
strengthen collective defence and deterrence against any threat of
aggression against the Alliance, Mr. Fogh Rasmussen said. ‘We will make
sure we have updated military plans, enhanced exercises and appropriate
deployments,’ he said. NATO has already reinforced its presence on the
eastern border of the Alliance, including surveillance patrols over
Poland and Romania and increased numbers of fighter aircraft allocated
to the NATO air policing mission in the Baltic States. … NATO Foreign
Ministers also agreed to suspend all of NATO’s practical cooperation
with Russia.”
Does anyone recall what NATO said in 2003 when the United States
bombed and invaded Iraq with “shock and awe”, compared to the Russians
now not firing a single known shot at anyone? And neither Russia nor
Ukraine is even a member of NATO. Does NATO have a word to say about
the right-wing coup in Ukraine, openly supported by the United States,
overthrowing the elected government? Did the hypocrisy get any worse
during the Cold War? Imagine that NATO had not been created in 1949.
Imagine that it has never existed. What reason could one give today for
its creation? Other than to provide a multi-national cover for
Washington’s interventions.
One of the main differences between now and the Cold War period is
that Americans at home are (not yet) persecuted or prosecuted for
supporting Russia or things Russian.
But don’t worry, folks, there won’t be a big US-Russian war. For the
same reason there wasn’t one during the Cold War. The United States
doesn’t pick on any country which can defend itself.
Cuba … Again … Still … Forever
Is there actually a limit? Will the United States ever stop trying
to overthrow the Cuban government? Entire books have been written
documenting the unrelenting ways Washington has tried to get rid of tiny
Cuba’s horrid socialism – from military invasion to repeated
assassination attempts to an embargo that President Clinton’s National
Security Advisor called “the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a
nation in the history of mankind”.
But nothing has ever come even close to succeeding. The horrid
socialism keeps on inspiring people all over the world. It’s the
darnedest thing. Can providing people free or remarkably affordable
health care, education, housing, food and culture be all that important?
And now it’s “Cuban Twitter” – an elaborately complex system set up
by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to disguise its
American origins and financing, aiming to bring about a “Cuban Spring”
uprising. USAID sought to first “build a Cuban audience, mostly young
people; then the plan was to push them toward dissent”, hoping the
messaging network “would reach critical mass so that dissidents could
organize ‘smart mobs’ – mass gatherings called at a moment’s notice –
that might trigger political demonstrations or ‘renegotiate the balance
of power between the state and society’.”
It’s too bad it’s now been exposed, because we all know how wonderful
the Egyptian, Syrian, Libyan, and other “Arab Springs” have turned out.
Here’s USAID speaking after their scheme was revealed on April 3:
“Cubans were able to talk among themselves, and we are proud of that.”
We are thus asked to believe that normally the poor downtrodden
Cubans have no good or safe way to communicate with each other. Is the
US National Security Agency working for the Cuban government now?
The
Associated Press, which broke the story, asks us further
to believe that the “truth” about most things important in the world is
being kept from the Cuban people by the Castro regime, and that the
“Cuban Twitter” would have opened people’s eyes. But what information
might a Cuban citizen discover online that the government would not want
him to know about? I can’t imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with
relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television
programs from Miami and other southern cities; both CNN and Telesur
(Venezuela, covering Latin America) are seen regularly on Cuban
television”; international conferences on all manner of political,
economic and social issues are held regularly in Cuba. I’ve spoken at
more than one myself. What – it must be asked – does USAID, as well as
the American media, think are the great dark secrets being kept from the
Cuban people by the nasty commie government?
Those who push this line sometimes point to the serious difficulty of
using the Internet in Cuba. The problem is that it’s extremely slow,
making certain desired usages often impractical. From an American
friend living in Havana: “It’s not a question of getting or not getting
internet. I get internet here. The problem is downloading something or
connecting to a link takes too long on the very slow connection that
exists here, so usually I/we get ‘timed out’.” But the USAID’s “Cuban
Twitter”, after all, could not have functioned at all without the
Internet.
Places like universities, upscale hotels, and Internet cafés get
better connections, at least some of the time; however, it’s rather
expensive to use at the hotels and cafés.
In any event, this isn’t a government plot to hide dangerous
information. It’s a matter of technical availability and prohibitive
cost, both things at least partly in the hands of the United States and
American corporations. Microsoft, for example, at one point, if not at
present, barred Cuba from using its Messenger instant messaging service.
Cuba and Venezuela have jointly built a fiber optic underwater cable
connection that they hope will make them less reliant on the gringos;
the outcome of this has not yet been reported in much detail.
The grandly named Agency for International Development does not have
an honorable history; this can perhaps be captured by a couple of
examples: In 1981, the agency’s director, John Gilligan, stated: “At one
time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with
CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity
we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.”
On June 21, 2012, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our
America (ALBA) issued a resolution calling for the immediate expulsion
of USAID from their nine member countries, “due to the fact that we
consider their presence and actions to constitute an interference which
threatens the sovereignty and stability of our nations.”
USAID, the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy (and the
latter’s subsidiaries), together or singly, continue to be present at
regime changes, or attempts at same, favorable to Washington, from
“color revolutions” to “spring” uprisings, producing a large measure of
chaos and suffering for our tired old world.
Notes
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission,
provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this
website are given.
