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By Jeffrey D. Sachs

Hillary Clinton’s speech on ISIS to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) showed clearly what to expect in a Clinton presidency: more of the same. In her speech, Clinton doubled down on the existing, failed U.S. approach in the Middle East, the one she pursued as Secretary of State.

The CIA-led policy in the Middle East works like this. If a regime is deemed to be unfriendly to the U.S., topple it. If a competitor like the Soviet Union or Russia has a foothold in the region, try to push it out. If this means arming violent insurgencies, including Sunni jihadists, and thereby creating mayhem: so be it. And if the result is terrorist blowback around the world by the forces created by the US, then double down on bombing and regime change.

In rare cases, great presidents learn to stand up to the CIA and the rest of the military-industrial-intelligence complex. JFK became one of the greatest presidents in American history when he came to realize the awful truth that his own military and CIA advisors had contributed to the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The CIA-led Bay of Pigs fiasco and other CIA blunders had provoked a terrifying response from the Soviet Union. Recognizing that the U.S. approach had contributed to bringing the world to the brink, Kennedy bravely and successfully stood up to the warmongering pushed by so many of his advisors and pursued peace, both during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis. He thereby saved the world from nuclear annihilation and halted the unchecked proliferation of nuclear arms.

Clinton’s speech shows that she and her advisors are good loyalists of the military-industrial-intelligence complex. Her speech included an impressive number of tactical elements: who should do the bombing and who should be the foot soldiers. Yet all of this tactical precision is nothing more than business as usual. Would Clinton ever have the courage and vision to push back against the U.S. security establishment, as did JFK, and thereby restore global diplomacy and reverse the upward spiral of war and terror?

Just as the CIA contributed to the downward slide to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and just as many of JFK’s security chiefs urged war rather than negotiation during that crisis, so too today’s Middle East terrorism, wars, and refugee crises have been stoked by misguided CIA-led interventions. Starting in 1979, the CIA began to build the modern Sunni jihadist movement, then known as the Mujahedeen, to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The CIA recruited young Sunni Muslim men to fight the Soviet infidel, and the CIA provided training, arms, and financing. Yet soon enough, this US-created jihadist army turned on the US, a classic and typical case of blowback.

The anti-U.S. and anti-Western blowback started with the first Gulf War in 1990, when the U.S. stationed troops throughout the region. It continued with the Second Gulf War, when the U.S. toppled a Sunni regime in Iraq and replaced it with a puppet Shia regime. In the process, it dismantled Saddam’s Sunni-led army, which then regrouped as a core part of ISIS in Iraq.

Next the U.S. teamed up with Saudi Arabia to harass, and then to try to topple Bashir al-Assad. His main crime from the perspective of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia: being too close to Iran. Once again, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia turned to Sunni jihadists with arms and financing, and part of that fighting force morphed into ISIS in Syria. The evidence is that the covert U.S. actions against Assad pre-date the overt U.S. calls for Assad’s overthrow in 2011 by at least a couple of years.

In a similar vein, the U.S. teamed up with France and the UK to bomb Libya and kill Muammar Qaddafi. The result has been an ongoing Libyan civil war, and the unleashing of violent jihadists across the African Sahel, including Mali, which suffered the terrorist blow last week at the hands of such marauders.

Thanks to America’s misguided policies, we now have wars and violence raging across a 5,000-mile stretch from Bamako, Mali to Kabul, Afghanistan, with a U.S. hand in starting and stoking the violence. Libya, Sudan, the Sinai, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are all cases where the U.S. has directly intervened with very adverse results. Mali, Chad, Central African Republic, Somalia are some of the many other countries indirectly caught up in turmoil unleashed by U.S. covert and overt operations.

Of course the U.S. is not solely to blame for all of this. Countries across the Sahel, Horn of Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia are impoverished, suffering from food shortages and hunger, high joblessness, global warming, severe droughts, illiteracy, and the impact of dysfunctional or non-existent schools. The region still reels from the artificial borders and the cynical actions of the colonial powers, Britain and France, after World War I. The British Empire, of course, was key to entrenching radical Wahabism in Saudi Arabia, which now provides cash and ideological support for many of the Sunni jihadists.

Until today, Clinton has not acknowledged the roots of the conflict in the region, including the disastrous role that the U.S. has played, including under her watch as Secretary of State. She has not been a mastermind of it, but has been a loyal backer carried along by the CIA, the broader military-industrial-intelligence complex, and the conventional neocon thinking in DC. That’s no doubt good for her national politics. It’s hard to run for President as an opponent of the permanent U.S. security state. Being a card-carrying member of the U.S. security establishment is the mainstream media’s definition of a “serious” candidate.

Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders are learning this for all their troubles. O’Malley and Sanders wisely and correctly support an America that works with other countries and with the UN Security Council to build peace in the Middle East rather than an America that continues to indulge in endless and failed CIA adventures of regime change and war. While Clinton arrogantly demands that other countries such as Russia and Iran fall squarely behind the U.S., O’Malley and Sanders recognize that it is through compromise in the UN Security Council that we can defeat ISIS and find lasting solutions in the Middle East.

Whether Clinton could ever break free of the military-industrial complex remains to be seen. If she does become president, our very survival will depend on her capacity to learn.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the author, most recently, of “The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity.”

23 November 2015

www.commondreams.org

By William A. Cook

PROLOGUE

How remarkable that the book that tops the New York Times best seller list is authored, if one were to see through the eyes of mid-Eastern victims of American/Israeli invasions since 9/11, by a war criminal. Put simply, the purpose of the book is to defend the indefensible, the legitimacy of the Iraq war and the justified empirical ends of the Neo-cons and Zionist agendas that have brought America to its knees in the eyes of the world as terrorist states(1).Indeed isn’t this the crux of the problem? Is America exceptional? How is it exceptional? And why is it exceptional?

Cheney sees America’s exceptionalism as global supremacy that must be maintained, a continuation then of the Project for the New American Century, proposed in 1992 by Cheney and his Neo-con cabal in lock step with AIPAC, to make America the dominant nation on the planet. Fifteen years after the “second Pearl Harbor,” Cheney views that project as an enormous success darkened only by Obama’s failure to sustain the pressure to maintain dominance. Yet even a cursory view of research shows that the Bush/Cheney administration bungled their adventure into the mid-East economically, politically, and morally. The only nation that can claim success is the Zionist led government of Israel (2).

Exceptionalism is not dominance as Joseph Conrad noted in Heart of Darkness as he describes the beginnings of European colonialism: “They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle the darkness.”

Ironically, Cheney’s book attests to this very point—America’s exceptionalism as he sees it is just that dominance “when you have it,” and Cheney is witness to Obama’s vision of an America that no longer has the resources to fall further into the ditch of debt in order to maintain “America’s global dominance.” His eyes, Obama’s eyes, see the darkness Conrad mentions which Conrad describes as

“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it…and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer sacrifice to…” (3) Like superiority of being, like “chosenness,” like racism that permeates the Zionist/Neo-con mentality giving them the belief that they have a right to dominate the peoples of the world who interfere with their chosen agenda. To give him his due, Obama does not see the world through Cheney’s eyes, he sees through the eyes of the social activist, “to see the world through other people’s eyes and not just our own,”(4) an empathy for those oppressed and without power.

So what then is America’s “exceptionalism”? It is the idea that is at the back of it, the idea that gave rise to a philosophical defense to break away from, to dissolve the bonds that link it to a mother country, to declare the “rights of mankind” before the world justifying, if need be, a revolution against that mother country. Again, ironically, Cheney recognizes the minds that conceptualized this exceptional distinction that differentiated America from the rest of the world by quoting, would you believe, Charles Krauthammer, an ardent supporter of the Neo-con philosophy, when he references the founding fathers of our revolution from Jefferson to Adams to Madison to Hamilton, Washington, Franklin and Jay. Perhaps Krauthammer thought he could yoke the Neo-con’s manifesto, “Project for a New American Century” to these cherished documents that made America truly exceptional. Unfortunately, Krauthammer excludes from his list the dominant voice of our exceptionalism, Thomas Paine, the one father who lived the words he preached. Unlike Jefferson and Washington he did not have slaves to free to fulfill what the words he wrote truly meant.

But the Declaration of Independence is not enough to declare America exceptional. That document provided the philosophical base for a new perception of humankind: from subject of Kings, Emperors and dictators to the source of the power that provides the government for the people, resident in the inalienable rights of birth made possible by the Deist conception of the Creator, the conditions that gave rise to life on this planet. All are equal, all possess these rights, and that is the concept behind the Constitution of the United States, the means by which the Declaration can be practiced in fact. “We the people…” it declared. How glorious the concept, how unique for its time, an idea that toppled the powers of the world by offering a whole new concept of the individual. That becomes the threat to those in power, the knowledge by the people of rights denied over the eons of centuries now the very premise of existence. That’s exceptional.The concept that is, not the document itself. We must note that the Constitution is a flawed document, glued together by Ben Franklin’s compromise (5) that left silent the omission of “all the people” left out: the Native Americans and the slaves.

Fortunately Jefferson argued with Adams that the signing of the Constitution did not guarantee those rights. He understood the weakness of those who would and could gain power over the people even in a democracy of rights proclaimed. He argued for and in 1791 got the Bill of Rights through the Congress. Now in theory the exceptionalism was complete, three documents that changed the world for those provided the rights of birth. Even more fortunately, those rights are now recognized and provided for under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United Nations made available to 194 nations across the planet.
Or so it would seem. Not certainly to the Neo-cons or Cheney who believe that their concepts of power overstep the documents of the US and the UN as Cheney states:“No other nation, international body, or community of nations can do what we do,” … “America’s enemies are on the wrong side of morality and justice.”

Cheney’s book, Exceptional, can only be viewed through his exceptional eyes that have blinded him from the reality of the Neo-cons/Zionist chaos unleashed on the mid-East. The book deserves to be analyzed if only to ensure that its fabrications be seen for what they are. I present here a peep into the Prologue, that item in a book that talks about its content and the authors’ intent.

In order to grapple with Cheney’s Prologue we must keep in mind what he says are Obama’s beliefs and why they are anathema to the Neo-cons/Zionist forces. “He (Obama) is gambling America’s security on the veracity of the mullahs in Tehran. He is unconcerned with maintaining American supremacy because it is inconsistent with his worldview. ‘No world order,’ he tells us, ‘that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.’” In short, Obama sees through the eyes of one who thinks of others caught in the vice of a colonial idea and living a life doomed to suppression of rights and oppression by military forces.

Cheney opens his Prologue with a quote from Daniel Webster:

“And now let us indulge an honest exultation in the conviction of the benefit which the example of our country has produced and is likely to produce on human freedom and human happiness. And let us endeavor to comprehend in all its magnitude and to feel in all its importance the part assigned to us in the great drama of human affairs.”

Strange indeed that Cheney would choose a man who, in his indulgence of an “honest exultation,” would omit as an example of our country’s contribution “to human freedom and human happiness” the malignancy that permeated the institution of slavery which Webster supported. Here is what his biographer wrote of this “exceptional man.”

“He spoke for conservatives, and led the opposition to Democrat Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party. He was a spokesman for modernization, banking, and industry, but not for the common people who composed the base of his opponents in Jacksonian Democracy. “He was a thoroughgoing elitist, and he reveled in it,” says biographer Robert Remini.” (Wikipedia).

One has to pay attention to Cheney’s words and the words he does not provide lest the reality behind his effusive, shall we dare say “exceptional, unrestrained, lavish” words, veil truth that contradicts the very praise he gushes forth as definitive. This one can surmise, Webster’s elitism is something Cheney also revels in, especially his disdain for the common person or, to put it in democratic terms, the individual citizen who should be respected, treated with dignity and called upon to consider actions to be taken in his/her name, like freedom of speech, like creating war regardless of international law, like recognition of the illegality of torture, extrajudicial execution, abandonment of the writ of habeas corpus, the very abandonment of law in favor of dictatorial directives; such is the mindset of one who guided the development of America’s foreign policy under George W. Bush with the aid of the Neo-cons and PNAC, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” a policy antithetical to the founding documents of this democracy.

“Less than fifty years after our founding, the benefit of America’s example for the world was evident. Yet Daniel Webster could not have begun to imagine the true magnitude of the role we would play “in the great drama of human affairs.” We have guaranteed freedom, security, and peace for a larger share of humanity than has any other nation in all of history. There is no other like us. There never has been. We are, as a matter of empirical fact and undeniable history, the greatest force for good the world has ever known.”

Let’s take a serious look at Cheney’s statement: “We have guaranteed freedom, security, and peace for a larger share of humanity than has any other nation in all of history.” No evidence here to demonstrate the truth of this assertion, but who needs it. Consider by contrast a scholar that has investigated just how much guaranteed freedom and security and peace we have as a nation secured for the peoples of the world. James A. Lucas has compiled here an extensive study complete with pages of sources that testify to the accuracy of his statements. It is this reality that Cheney obfuscates with his exuberant words that bury the truth in the very graves of those destroyed by Cheney’s blessed America.

This study reveals that U.S. military forces were directly responsible for about 10 to 15 million deaths during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the two Iraq Wars. The Korean War also includes Chinese deaths while the Vietnam War also includes fatalities in Cambodia and Laos.

The American public probably is not aware of these numbers and knows even less about the proxy wars for which the United States is also responsible. In the latter wars there were between nine and 14 million deaths in Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan.

But the victims are not just from big nations or one part of the world. The remaining deaths were in smaller ones which constitute over half the total number of nations. Virtually all parts of the world have been the target of U.S. intervention.

The overall conclusion reached is that the United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world.

To the families and friends of these victims it makes little difference whether the causes were U.S. military action, proxy military forces, the provision of U.S. military supplies or advisors, or other ways, such as economic pressures applied by our nation. They had to make decisions about other things such as finding lost loved ones, whether to become refugees, and how to survive.

And the pain and anger is spread even further. Some authorities estimate that there are as many as 10 wounded for each person who dies in wars. Their visible, continued suffering is a continuing reminder to their fellow countrymen.

It is essential that Americans learn more about this topic so that they can begin to understand the pain that others feel. Someone once observed that the Germans during WWII “chose not to know.” We cannot allow history to say this about our country. The question posed above was “How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?” The answer is: possibly 10,000. (James A. Lucas, 24 April, 2007, Countercurrents.org).
N.B. War Crimes Times’ Editor’s note: An edited version of this article appears in the Spring 2014 WCT print edition. The link below is to the original unedited version complete with source notes. The numbers in this article were compiled in 2007. Since then, the U.S. has added to its total through attacks on other nations including Libya, Yemen, and Somalia; with its drone program; with the residual political instability from past actions in Afghanistan and Iraq; and likely from secret special operations.

Needless to say, Cheney mentions nothing of the numbers killed or maimed in these imperialist wars waged in distant countries that he was responsible for, though the rationale for America to wage them is mercurial at best and evil at worst. How does one, as a principle actor in the devastation of millions, avoid recognition of the human destruction wrought by his tenure in office, both under H. W. Bush and W. Bush? How does he as Secretary of Defense under Bush senior omit mention of the most horrific blood bath of that pretty little war of 90 days, the literal burial of thousands escaping from Kuwait on the Highway of Death caught in the pinchers of a destroyed roadway on either end.

Here is testimony by Joyce Chediac to this inhumane bloodbath done under the Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney: “I want to give testimony on what are called the “highways of death.” These are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February 26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.”

U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. “It was like shooting fish in a barrel,” said one U.S. pilot. The horror is still there to see. … On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun, says the Los Angeles Times of March 11, 1991. … There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it’s impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.

“Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic,” said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. “This one-sided carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the U.S. and its coalition partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history. … they were going home, responding to orders issued by Baghdad, announcing that it was complying with Resolution 660 and leaving Kuwait. At 5:35 p.m. (Eastern standard Time)…. President Bush responded immediately from the White House saying (through spokesman Marlin Fitzwater) that “there was no evidence to suggest the Iraqi army is withdrawing. In fact, Iraqi units are continuing to fight. . . We continue to prosecute the war.”

The massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Common Article III, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who are out of combat.”

“After the cease-fire, in an interview with New York Newsday, Maggart and Moreno came forward with some of the first public testimony about the burying alive of Iraqi soldiers. Prior to their interview, then Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, never mentioned the atrocities, even when he submitted a report to Congress just prior to the interviews.” Never admit to what you cannot defend or mention human misery lest it be considered as a weakness. Silence is security for the rapist, the serial killer and the politician that must avoid truth; it is the “Face of Falsehood” that would turn silence of his massacres into “exceptional behavior” when it is in fact “exceptional callousness and cruelty.”

Cheney’s book is a desperate effort to justify the doctrines of the Neo-cons/Zionists based on policies directly opposed to international law as stated in U.S. law and the Charters and Conventions of the United Nations that we have signed. Cheney has served as Secretary of Defense under George 1st and Vice President under George 2nd: as such he has guided into our foreign policy the right of America to preemptively invade sovereign nations based on our assessment of their ability to challenge America’s dominance in the currency that controls world banking and/or threatens America militarily; he has accepted as American policy the right to torture captured enemy soldiers against the Geneva Conventions, to execute extra judicially individuals determined to be a danger to the United States thus erasing American legal procedures without due process, and he has allowed for removal of Habeas Corpus and freedom of speech and due process for American citizens to mention a few..

The consequences of these imposed policies on the United States has been destructive of the very foundational principles of the American exceptional democracy as presented above. A recent study by Princeton University “spells bad news for American democracy—namely, that it no longer exists.”(6)
Ultimately the failure of Cheney’s book lies in its belief that power and the sustainability of power embody the exceptionalism of the United States. It is not so. Cheney knows this and implies as much in his condemnation of Obama’s thought:

“The arc of the moral universe is long,” (Obama) he recites, “but ultimately it bends toward justice,” as though no action is required.’ The truth is America’s eloquent and argued principles will be grasped by those suffering under the boots of oppression because their righteousness cries out to all for relief. Even now the Universal Declaration of Human Rights governs or should govern for the people of 194 nations if member states would take control of that institution and yoke it away from rogue states like America and Israel so that the justice provided for in its operation could manifest itself.

The reality of America’s exceptionalism must be understood before it can be sustained. It is not power, it is a moral transcendent concept that reflects the ultimate meaning of humanity in this world. This concept, the rights provided by life, supersede the transience of military power because they are inclusive of all humans both in America and elsewhere in the world should others desire to accept the concept embedded in America’s foundational documents. These cannot be imposed despite Cheney’s desire to impose what the Neo-cons will.

America can and must declare its faults before it can mirror for the world its virtues. The truth is that we began by hiding the evil we embedded in our Constitution by not speaking truth to the world or to our citizens. Our early Presidents imposed policies detrimental to the values asserted in our foundational documents thus silently declaring justification for those policies. We fought a Civil War that emancipated the slaves only to have the country under Jim Crow laws enslave in a different way. Today the completeness of the freedom guaranteed under the Bill of Rights is not yet complete as the actions in Ferguson so graphically display. All Americans, not just Cheney, must attend to this silence.

For Cheney to wish to impose America’s exceptionalism on the people of the mid-East is more than hypocritical, it is diabolical. Ironically he ridicules Russia for building a wall to separate its people from the enemy, yet he accepts and pays for with America’s tax dollars the building of a 400 mile wall in Palestine calling it self-defense for the Israeli nation. That wall is an insult to Americans who had no say in its construction yet have to bear the hatred of the world for having it built in their name. That wall is an abomination against the very principles America touts to the world, “All men are created equal.” That wall is condemned by the International Court of Justice and subsequently denied as operative by the United States by denying its signature to the right of that court to act. This is democracy?

Who is Cheney to declare what is right and what is wrong. He proclaims the might of America’s military forces and uses them to justify America’s use of power against nations that have not acted against America, but he does not find it abominable that he refused to join those forces and reneged five times, it is reported, because “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.” (Slate, 3/18/2004). A man who has no scruples can justify any actions by sarcastic commentary that mocks those who have nothing important to do and can therefore be drafted, but it doesn’t matter because to him they do not exist. A man who has entered into a position of power cannot afford to deny the premises of his actions without condemning himself before the world, but a man of principle will admit to error because he is not alone in the actions he has imposed. Others have suffered but only if they are recognized by the man in power. A man who arguably directed the administration of George W. Bush cannot give credibility to the consequences of his reign in power even though he itemizes them in his Prologue, not to accept responsibility but to transfer blame to the man who followed Bush: “…the explosive spread of terrorist ideology and organizations, the establishment of an ISIS caliphate in the heart of the Middle East, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and increasing threats from Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia, President Obama has departed from the bipartisan tradition going back seventy-five years of maintaining America’s global supremacy and leadership.”

A man of conscience does not avoid speaking of America’s role in Vietnam because it is embarrassing to talk about or the Iraq war and its exceptional standing as a morally justified war or the immoral policy that yokes America to the Zionist lobby and its affiliates because it destroys America’s credibility abroad; one says nothing—a strategy of silence and omission. A man without a conscience writes a book justifying the actions of his compatriots using the hyperbole of the masters who have conned us in the past, the greatness of America, the exceptional leaders we have had, the victories we have in our recording of the Second World War, because that was a just war, but nothing of the ones he was responsible for because the less said the better.
This book is the face of falsehood, as Melville called it, the deceptive mask that hides the truth knowing in the heart that it is all a lie. To live long enough to see and bear witness to the failures of the policies you worked so hard to impose and see them damned by the people of the world is not easy to take unless you can find solace with those who executed your policies lost in some magnificent retreat, hidden from the world…or to boldly grab your ego and go forth to the lists, pen in hand and challenge the obvious.

1. According to a new poll from WIN and Gallup International, the U.S. represents the largest threat to world peace today.
2. Bruce Riedel. “Iran Big Winner in the Iraqi Debacle.” Brookings
3. Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness. Everyman, 7.
4. Barack Obama. Jim Lehrer News Hour, 2009-12-23.

“ It is very important for I think those of us who desperately want peace, who see war as, at some level, a break-down, a manifestation of human weakness, to understand that sometimes it’s also necessary – and you know, to be able to balance two ideas at the same time; that we are constantly striving for peace, we are doubling up on our diplomacy, we are going to actively engage, we are going to try to see the world through other people’s eyes and not just our own.”

5. Ben Franklin. “Final Speech to the Constitutional Convention.” 9/17, 1787
6. Brendan James, Published TPM Livewire, April 18, 2014.

Would you be kind enough to add Age of Fools as a new release made available at Amazon and other book sellers October 14, 2015. Thanks, Bill
William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. He writes frequently for Internet publications including The Palestine Chronicle, MWC News, Atlantic Free Press, Pacific Free Press, Countercurrents, Counterpunch, World Prout Assembly, Dissident Voice, and Information Clearing House among others. His books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella, and the forthcoming The Plight of the Palestinians. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com

22 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Dr Gideon Polya

The appalling Paris atrocity (130 killed) has led Hollande and Obama to call for the destruction of Islamic State i.e. genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention. A major report by 3 physician organizations recently estimated that 2 million Muslims had died in the US War on Terror but UN data show that Muslim avoidable deaths from deprivation in countries subject to Western military intervention in 2001-2015 now total about 27 million, this demanding peace now and ICC prosecutions of those responsible for this Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide.

President Obama (Antalya, Turkey, 16 November 2015) stated: “Tragically, Paris is not alone. We’ve seen outrageous attacks by ISIL in Beirut, last month in Ankara, routinely in Iraq. Here at the G20, our nations have sent an unmistakable message that we are united against this threat. ISIL is the face of evil. Our goal, as I’ve said many times, is to degrade and ultimately destroy this barbaric terrorist organization” [1].

President Francois Hollande (17 November 2015) stated: “France is at war. No barbarians will prevent us from living how we have decided to live. To live fully. Terrorism will never destroy the republic, because the republic will destroy terrorism’… The sponsors of the attack in Paris must know that their crimes further strengthens the determination of France to fight and to destroy them. We must do more. Syria has become the largest factory of terrorists the world has ever known. France is not engaged in a war of civilisations because those assassins don’t represent a civilisation. Our democracy has triumphed before over adversaries that were much more formidable than these cowards” [2].

There has been saturation coverage in the Western media of the appalling Paris tragedy that killed 130 people on 13 November 2015, this coverage dwarfing reportage of the recent Kunduz Hospital atrocity in Afghanistan perpetrated by the US (22 killed, 2 October 2015 ), the most recent Beirut Massacre by jihadi non-state terrorists (43 killed, 12 November 2015) and the Bamako Mali Massacre by jihadi non-state terrorists (27 killed, 20 November 2015) – clear evidence of the entrenched and egregious racism of the anti-Arab anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Western Mainstream media.

The eminent US organization Just Foreign Policy has estimated that there have been 1.5 million “Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion” and I have estimated (based on UN Population Division 2006 Revision data) that to this we should add a further 1.2 million Iraqis killed through war-imposed deprivation [4, 5]. However the ABC News of the taxpayer-funded ABC (Australia’s equivalent of the UK BBC) commenting on the US withdrawal in 2011 stated: “The withdrawal ends a war that left tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,500 American soldiers dead” [6].

Another ABC News report about Wikileaks document releases states: “The founder of the WikiLeaks website says hundreds of thousands of US military documents leaked by the website show the truth about the Iraq war. The documents suggest senior US commanders turned a blind eye on torture by the Iraqi authorities and show the US has kept records of civilian deaths, despite previously denying it. The documents suggest senior US commanders turned a blind eye on torture by the Iraqi authorities and show the US has kept records of civilian deaths, despite previously denying it. It has put the death toll at 109,000, including more than 66,000 civilians. The US has criticised the release, saying the documents are classified and could lead to military and civilian deaths. But Julian Assange has defended his actions at a press conference just a short while ago, saying the release serves the public interest” [7] .

The “Iraq Body Count” project currently reports “total violent deaths including combatants 224,000”, this highly flawed estimate being unwisely based on the dodgy evidence of media and official reports [8]. The mendacious BBC which, like the endlessly lying, Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted Australian ABC, has an appalling record of malreportage [9, 10] opines: “Other reports and surveys have resulted in a wide range of estimates of Iraqi deaths. The UN-backed Iraqi Family Health Survey estimated 151,000 violent deaths in the period March 2003 – June 2006. Meanwhile, The Lancet journal in 2006 published an estimate of 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths related to the war of which 601,027 were caused by violence” [11].

Western Mainstream media under-reporting in claiming circa 20,000-200,000 Iraqi deaths due to the US War on Terror – when the true figure from top medical epidemiologists, the UK ORB organization and UN demographers is probably in excess of 2 million Iraqi deaths from violence or imposed deprivation – is genocide-ignoring and holocaust-ignoring on a massive scale. A holocaust involves the death of huge numbers of people whereas genocide is defined more precisely by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention which states that “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” [4].

Genocide-ignoring and holocaust–ignoring is far, far worse than repugnant genocide-ignoring and holocaust denial because at least the latter permit public discussion of the matter. The endlessly lying, Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted Western Mainstream media are involved in massive lying by omission, lying by commission, genocide-ignoring, holocaust–ignoring and effective genocide-ignoring and holocaust denial.

Of course this is not new. Thus, for example, generation after generations of lying journalists, politicians, and historians in the English-speaking world have resolutely ignored the “forgotten” WW2 Bengali Holocaust in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons (genocidally racist White Australia was complicit by withholding food from starving Indian from its huge wartime grain stores) [12-15]. History is written by the victors and Western Mainstream media presstitutes are resolutely committed to untruth [16, 17].

It gets worse. Iraq has been subject to repeated Western invasion in the century since British invasion in 1914 (racist White Australia is currently involved in its Seventh Iraq War and its Third Syrian War in a century) and Iraqi deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation since 1914 now total 9 million [4]. Further, Iraq is but one of 20 substantially or significantly Muslim countries variously invaded, occupied, sanctioned and /or bombed by US Alliance forces since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity on 11 September 2001 in which about 3,000 people were killed [3].

All of this raises the key questions of (1) precisely how many millions of Muslims have died from violence or from imposed deprivation in substantially Muslim countries attacked by the US Alliance since 9-11; and (2) how the civilized world should respond.

Kit O’Connell (a US journalist from Austin, Texas, a Daily Staff Writer for MintPress News, and Associate Editor of Shadowproof) (2015): “It may never be possible to know the true death toll of the modern Western wars on the Middle East, but that figure could be 4 million or higher. Since the vast majority of those killed were of Arab descent, and mostly Muslim, when would it be fair to accuse the United States and its allies of genocide? A March report by Physicians for Social Responsibility calculates the body count of the Iraq War at around 1.3 million, and possibly as many as 2 million. However, the numbers of those killed in Middle Eastern wars could be much higher. In April, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed argued that the actual death toll could reach as high as 4 million if one includes not just those killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the victims of the sanctions against Iraq, which left about 1.7 million more dead, half of them children, according to figures from the United Nations [18].

Dr Nafeez Ahmed ( investigative journalist, international security scholar, author of “Zero Point” and associated with the Institute for Policy Research and Development) has concluded that “In Iraq alone, the US-led war from 1991 to 2003 killed 1.9 million Iraqis; then from 2003 onwards around 1 million: totalling just under 3 million Iraqis dead over two decades… the total Afghan death toll due to the direct and indirect impacts of US-led intervention since the early nineties until now could be as high 3-5 million” [19].

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and Physicians for Global Survival (PGS) published a detailed and documented major report in March 2015 on Muslim deaths in Western wars that has been ignored by Mainstream media but concluded (2015): “Executive Summary. This investigation come to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed [in 2011-2013] around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan i.e. a total of 1.3 million. Not included in this figure are further war zones such a Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision –makers are aware of [sic] and propagated by the media and major NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate. The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely” [20].

“Iraq Body Count” makes the absurd claim of 224,000 total violent Iraqi deaths including combatants since the 2003 invasion [8], this being based on media reports, an approach that has been shown by top medical epidemiologists to be severely flawed [4]. The Physicians’ Report [20] estimates 1 million Iraqi deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation in the period 2011-2011 whereas the eminent US Just Foreign Policy estimates – based on data from the UK ORB polling organization and from polling by US medical epidemiologists published in The Lancet – that 1.5 million Iraqis have died due to the US invasion and comments: “The number is shocking and sobering. It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003” (noting that top US medical epidemiologists in their paper in The Lancet estimated that 90% of the deaths found were violent) [5].

Using data from the UN Population Division 2006 Revision data I have made an upper estimate of 2003-2011 Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation totalling 1.2 million, this leading to an estimate of 2.7 million Iraqi deaths from violence (1.5 million) or from war-imposed conditions as determined from differential pre- and post-invasion mortality data (1.2 million) in the period 2003-2011. This approach assumed that these 2 data sets (i.e. “deaths from violence” and “deaths from war-imposed conditions ”) do not overlap if violently killed people do not make it to hospitals etc for “official counting” – indeed the gross, up to 7-fold under-estimate of Iraqi violent deaths by “Iraq Body Count” based on “official counting” validates my approach [4]. A related approach estimates 7.2 million Afghan deaths post-9-11 from violence (1.7 million) or war-imposed deprivation (5.5 million) [21, 22].

Crucially, while the Physicians ‘ Report [20]. estimates “deaths from war-related conditions” as determined from differential immediately pre- and post-invasion mortality data, I assume that the historical pre-invasion trend of massive decreases in mortality in Iraq (and Syria) should have continued and indeed assume that the Iraqi mortality rate post-1990 could and should have attained the base-line rate for high birth-rate impoverished countries of about 4 deaths per 1,000 of population per year and hence given an avoidable death rate of zero (0) but for war-imposed conditions. In other words, the invasion of Iraq not only yielded violent deaths and increased avoidable deaths relative to the pre-invasion year, it also blocked a quite achievable rapid decline to zero avoidable deaths per annum [23].

Avoidable death, avoidable mortality, excess death, excess mortality, premature death, untimely death, death that should not have happened) is the difference between the observed deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics (i.e. the same birth rate and age distribution) [23]. Thus, for example, in 2015 GDP per capita is abut $6,000 for both Cuba and China and about $15,000 for both Iraq and Libya [24], but while there are zero (0) annual avoidable deaths in Cuba and China, as catalogued below annual avoidable deaths in war-devastated Iraq (population 36.4 million) and Syria (population 6.3 million) currently total 47,000 and 14,000, respectively [23].

Finally, the Physicians’ Report estimate of 80,000 Pakistani war-related deaths in 2001-2011 is about 100 times lower than the 9.1 million Pakistani avoidable deaths from deprivation in the period October 2001- October 2015 as estimated (see below) using UN Population 2015 Revision data [24] and assuming a base-line mortality rate for this high birth rate, impoverished country of 4 deaths per 1,000 births per year for zero avoidable mortality that could and should have been attained in Pakistan but for US-driven militarism, dictatorship, terrorism, corruption and war.

Soap, insecticide-impregnated mosquito netting, antibiotics, immunization, basic preventative medicine, maternal education. maternal literacy, and good primary health care are vastly cheaper than drones, bombs, militarization, war and nuclear weapons, as well illustrated by the marvellous example of the terrific health outcomes in US sanctions-impoverished but well-governed Cuba which has an infant mortality rate about the same as for the US that has a 9-fold greater per capita GDP [23, 24].

T o avoid the controversy about how many Muslims have actually been violently killed, one can simply consider how many Muslims have died avoidably from Western war- or Western hegemony- imposed deprivation in the 14 year period from October 2001- October 2015 in substantially or significantly Muslim countries subject to Western sanctions, attack or occupation in that period. This approach has the benefit of being uncontroversial and conservative e.g. it ignores violent deaths in which Muslim bodies or body parts went into mass graves or otherwise did not make it to hospitals or morgues for “official counting”. Of course, whether a child is slowly and painfully killed by economically- and/or militarily-imposed deprivation or is killed quickly by bombs or bullets, the death is just as final and just as irreversible [23].

Below is an alphabetical list of 20 substantially or significantly Muslim countries variously attacked, invaded, occupied or sanctioned by the US Alliance in the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-promoted US War on Terror since the 9-11 atrocity that numerous science, architecture, engineering , aviation, military and intelligence experts believe was a US Government 9-11 false flag operation (with some suggesting Israeli involvement) [3].

Listed below for these 20 US Alliance-violated, substantially or significantly Muslim countries are (a) 2015 population [25]; (b) 1950-2005 avoidable deaths [24], (c) annual avoidable deaths (2015) from the latest UN 2015 Revision data [25], assuming a baseline mortality for high birth rate, impoverished but otherwise peaceful and well-governed countries of about 4 deaths per 1,000 of population per year (for Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Palestine with death rates close to this baseline, avoidable mortality was estimated as 1.4 times the under-5 infant deaths) [24]; (d) average-based 14 year avoidable deaths for the post-9-11 period of 2001-2015, (e) present annual per capita GDP [24], (f) % Muslim (upper estimates), (g) post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths based on Muslim percentage in each country, and (h) Western invasion dates and details.

Post-9-11 avoidable deaths in 18 countries with substantial or significant Muslim populations and variously subject to Western military operations in the post-9-11 US War on Terror:

1. Afghanistan: (a) 32.5 million, (b) 16.6 million. (c) 149,000, (d) 2.2 million, (e) $1,900, (f) 99.8% Muslim, (g) 2.2 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Afghanistan was subject to repeated UK invasions in the 19th century but finally recovered independence in 1919; after the US-backed removal of a socialist government in 1978, the Russians invaded and Afghanistan endured decades of war against the Russians (1979-1989) and thence civil war (1989-1996); in 2001 Afghanistan was invaded by the US Alliance (notably the US, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) on the false basis of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda being responsible for 9-11.

2. Burkina Faso: (a) 18.1 million, (b) 6.8 million, (c) 109,000, (d) 1.5 million, (e) $1,700, (f) 60.5% Muslim, (g) 0.9 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Burkino Faso was a French colony until 1960, post-independence French military presence and French forces boosted in 2013 as part of Operation Barkhane directed against Muslim rebels in the Sahel.

 

3. Central African Republic: (a) 4.9 million, (b) 2.3 million, (c) 55,000, (d) 0.8 million, (e) $600, (f) 15.0% Muslim, (g) 0.1 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) the Central African Republic was a French colony until 1960, post-independence French military presence and France further boosted forces in 2013 as Muslim Genocide expanded (almost all Muslims have been expelled from the capital).

 

4. Chad: (a) 14.0 million, (b) 5.1 million, (c) 147,000, (d) 1.9 million, (e) $2,600, (f) 53.1% Muslim, (g) 1.0 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Chad became ostensibly independent in 1960 but there were major post-independence French military involvements in Northern Chad and France further boosted forces in 2013 as part of Operation Barkhane directed against Muslim rebels in the Sahel.

 

5. Côte D’Ivoire: (a) 20.1 million, (b) 7.0 million. (c) 199,000, (d) 3.0 million, (e) $3,100, (f) 38.6% Muslim, (g) 1.2 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Cote D’Ivoire suffered major French military involvements in suppressing socialists before and after independence in 1960 and a major French re-invasion in 2002.

 

6. Djibouti: (a) 0.9 million, (b) 141,000, (c) 8,000, (d) 0.1 million, (e) $3,100, (f) 94.0% Muslim, (g) 0.1 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Djibouti suffered a major, continuing French, US and British presence after independence in 1977; it was a base for French participation in the 1990-1991 Gulf War; French suppressed Affar rebellion in 1977-2002; France gave the former French Foreign Legion’s Camp Lemonnier to the government of Djibouti, which then leased it to the US in 2001; France maintains over 1,500 troops in Djibouti and French forces in Djibouti have taken part in operations in Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Côte D’Ivoire.

 

7. Iraq: (a) 36.4 million, (b) 5.3 million, (c) 47,000. (d) 0.7 million, (e) $15,300, (f) 97.0% Muslim, (g) 0.7 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Iraq suffered invasion by the UK in 1914 with the UK continuing to repress Iraqi rebellion in Iraq up to and including WW2, notwithstanding ostensible Iraqi independence in 1932; Gulf War (1990-1991) in which 0.2 million Iraqis were killed; 1990-2003 Sanctions; 2003-2011 US Alliance Iraq War; renewed US and Australian military advisers and renewed bombing of Iraq in 2014 by US Alliance (US, UK, Australia, France).

 

8. Iran: (a) 79.1 million, (b) 14.3 million, (c) 55,000 (d) 1.0 million, (e) $17,400, (f) 99.4% Muslim, (g) 1.0 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Iran is one of the world’s oldest nations and has not invaded another country for several hundred years; the US engineered a coup against the secular and democratic Mossadegh government in 1953 with the installation of dictatorship under the Shah; the US imposed sanctions on Iran after the revolution that removed the Shah in 1979; the US backed Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War in which 1.5 million Iranians were killed (Iranian 1980-1988 avoidable deaths 2.1 million); under urging from the Zionist-perverted US the UN imposed sanctions on Iran over its nuclear energy program that Iran declared to be for peaceful purposes only; the last major direct violent US action against Iran was the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by a US guided missile cruiser killing all 290 on board; US ally Apartheid Israel bombed an Iranian ship in Sudan in 2009; an estimated 68,000 Iranians have died since 9-11 from opiate drug-related causes due to the US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world share in 2001 to 93% by 2007 (1.2 million people have died world-wide since 9-11 due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry, the breakdown as of 2015 including 280,000 Americans, 256,000 Indonesians, 68,000 Iranians, 25,000 British, 14,000 Canadians, 10,000 Germans, 5,000 Australians and 500 French; about 4,000 Iranian border guards have died trying to block opiate smuggling from US-occupied Afghanistan; under urging from the Zionist -perverted US the UN imposed deadly sanctions on Iran in 2006 over its nuclear energy program that Iran declared to be for peaceful purposes only (no sanctions were applied to the nations including Apartheid Israel that actually have nuclear weapons) – these opiate-related deaths and deaths from sanctions are reflected in huge post-9-11 avoidable mortality in Iran.

 

9. Lebanon: (a) 5.9 million, (b) 0.5 million, (c) 1,000, (d) 16,000, (e) $18,000, (f) 59.5% Muslim, (g) 10,000 post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Lebanon suffered French occupation after WW1 and gained independence in 1944; substantially occupied by Apartheid Israel in 1982 (3,000 Palestinians killed in the Sabra and Shatila Massacre); Israel withdrawal in 2000; in 2006 Apartheid Israel attacked again killing over 1,000, making 1 million homeless and destroying infrastructure on a huge scale.

 

10. Libya: (a) 6.3 million, (b) 0.8 million, (c) 6,000, (d) 78,000 (27,000 in 2011-2015), (e) $15,900, (f) 94.0% Muslim, (g) 73,000 post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Libya gained independence in 1950 and under rule by Muammar Gaddafi in 1969-2011 became the most prosperous country in all of Africa, but the 2011 France-UK-US (FUKUS) Alliance bombing campaign removed Gaddafi, splintered and devastated the country, killed 100,000 people and generated 1 million refugees with annual avoidable deaths increasing 3-fold after Western intervention.

 

11. Mali: (a) 20.1 million, (b) 7.0 million, (c) 199,000, (d) 1.8 million, (e) $1,700, (f) 90.0% Muslim, (g) 1.6 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Mali was brutally subdued by the French in the 19th century but secured independence in 1960 but with French hegemony; in 2013, France launched airstrikes against Tuareg rebels who had conquered the northern half of the country and finally defeated them in a so-called Operation Serval. France followed up Operation Serval with Operation Barkhane dedicated to killing Muslim rebels in the Sahel countries of Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.

12. Mauritania: (a) 17.6 million, (b) 1.3 million, (c) 123,000, (d) 2.3 million, (e) $4,300. (f) 100.0% Muslim, (g) 2.3 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Mauritania was invaded by the French in the 19th century so as to consolidate French territory from Senegal to the Sudan, and Mauritanian resistance was only finally overcome in the 1930s; Mauritania became formally independent in 1960 but was subject to French hegemony and interference. France’s Operation Barkhane involves thousands of air-supported French troops dedicated to killing Muslim rebels in the Sahel countries of Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.

13. Niger: (a) 19.9 million, (b) 6.6 million, (c) 111,000, (d) 1.8 million, (e) $1,100, (f) 94.0% Muslim, (g) 1.7 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Niger was conquered by France in the late 19th century but became ostensibly independent in 1960 but under French hegemony; the French Operation Barkhane involves thousands of air-supported French troops dedicated to killing Muslim rebels in the Sahel countries of Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.

14. Pakistan: (a) 188.9 million, (b) 49.7 million, (c) 660,000, (d) 9.1 million, (e) $4,700, (f) 96.0% Muslim, (g) 8.7 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Pakistan gained independence from the UK in 1947 after 2 centuries of British rule in which 1.8 billion Indians died avoidably from deprivation in the British Raj; independence in 1947 was marked by generation of 18 million refugees between India and Pakistan (half Muslim, half Hindu) and up to 1 million people were killed; in 1971 US-backed Pakistani forces killed 3 million mostly male Bengalis and raped 300,000 Bengali women in a Bengali Holocaust that marked the creation of Bangladesh; Australian-targeted US drone attacks commenced in 2004.

15. Palestine: (a) 4.7 million, (b) 0.7 million, (c), 5,000, (d) 70,000, (e) $4,900 (cf its Occupier Apartheid Israel’s $33,000) , (f) 85.0% Muslim, (g) 60,000 post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Palestine has an ancient history dating back to the very start of agrarian civilization; British forces invaded in 1914 and together with Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) forces conquered Palestine; the 1917 Balfour Declaration promised Palestine to the genocidal Zionists as a Jewish Homeland; Surafend Massacre of Palestinians by Australian and New Zealand ANZAC troops in 1918; 1948 creation of the State of Israel with massive forcible expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians and Zionist seizure of about 80% of Palestine; in 1967 Israel seized all of Palestine plus part of Syria; 90% of the land of Palestine has now been ethnically cleansed and Israeli Apartheid means that of 12 million Palestinian, 6 million are forbidden to step foot in Palestine and of 6 million Palestinians living under Israeli rule only 28% ( 1.7 million Palestinian Israelis) can vote for the government ruling them – the rest have essentially zero human rights; 2 million Palestinians have died since 1936 from Zionist violence (0.1 million) or Zionist -imposed deprivation (1.9 million).

16. Philippines: (a) 100.7 million, (b) 9.1 million, (c) 270,000, (d) 2.7 million, (e) $7,000, (f) 11.0% Muslim, (g) 0.3 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) the Philippines was acquired by the US from Spain at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War (1898) but in the subsequent 1899-1913 Philippines-US War about 1 million Filipinos died; the Philippines became independent in 1946 but with retention of US bases; in the 21st century US forces returned to combat communist rebels and thence Muslim rebels in the south in Operation Enduring Freedom – Philippines (OEF-P) (many Filipinos object to this military action by the US in their country).

17. Somalia: (a) 10.8 million, (b) 5.6 million, (c) 91,000, (d) 1.2 million, (e) $600, (f) 96.0% Muslim, (g) 1.2 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Somalia was repeatedly invaded by Italy in the 19th and 20th centuries. The British took over Somalia in WW2. Independence in 1960 was followed by war against Ethiopia and civil war, the effects of which were exacerbated by drought and famine. The US invaded in 1992 and after extensive civil war an Islamic administration assumed power in 2005. However the US backed an Ethiopian invasion in 2007 and thence a Kenyan invasion. In 2009 France and Germany invaded Somali waters to retake a captured French yacht and in 2013 French special forces from Djibouti failed in an operation to rescue a captured French intelligence agent.

18. Sudan: (a) 40.2 million, (b) 13.5 million, (c) 157,000, (d) 2.3 million, (e) $4,300, (f) 97.0% Muslim, (g) 2.3 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Sudan was conquered by the UK in 1898 but eventually became independent in 1958; the US under Clinton notoriously bombed a Sudan pharmaceutical factory in 1998 (Professor Noam Chomsky estimated that 10,000 Sudanese would have died from disease as a result); US ally Apartheid Israel bombed Sudan in 2009 and such Israeli bombing attacks on Sudan are presently continuing. Apartheid Israeli arms are heavily involved in the US-backed civil war in the newly independent South Sudan.

19. Syria: (a) 18.5 million, (b) 2.2 million, (c) 14,000, (d) 190,000 (68,000 in 2011-2015), (e) $5,100, (f) 96.0% Muslim, (g) 171,000 post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Syria, one of the oldest nations in the world, was allocated to France by the 1916 Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement that divided the Middle East between Britain and France; Syria was put under a League of Nations mandate to France in 1920; in 1944 Syria became independent and in 1945 Syria became a founding member of the UN with the last French forces leaving Syria in 1946; in 1967 the Syrian Golan Heights region was captured and largely ethnically cleansed by Apartheid Israel which continues to periodically bomb Syria; commencement of Sunni rebellion in 2011 backed diplomatically and materially by Turkey, the US, UK, France, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Apartheid Israel. The Syrian Civil War has so far killed about 0.3 million people violently, killed a similar number of people through war-imposed deprivation, and generated about 12 million refugees. Syria was once a haven of religious toleration and a world leader per capita in providing haven for refugees, but over half of its population are now refugees themselves and Syria has now been devastated in a sectarian civil war involving the Assad Government versus anti-Assad Sunni rebels (of which ISIS is the most powerful) that are variously backed by the UK, US , France, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Australia and Apartheid Israel.

20. Yemen: (a) 19.9 million, (b) 6.6 million, (c) 111,000, (d) 1.2 million, (e) $1,100, (f) 100.0% Muslim, (g) 1.2 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) South Yemen gained independence from the UK in 1967 and North and South Yemen unified in 1989; continuing armed conflict with Australian-targeted US drone attacks in the 21st century that are continuing. Currently Yemen is being war criminally invaded by an anti-Houthi Saudi-led Coalition including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, and Sudan.

Summary and conclusions.

The post-9-11 avoidable deaths in the 20 countries violated by the West in the post-9-11 War on Terror total 34.0 million. However we can re-assess this data by considering the Muslim percentage of the population in these 20 countries and can estimate that post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths in these 20 US Alliance-violated countries total 26.8 million, noting that, as discussed above, it is likely that most of the violent Muslim deaths in the Zionist-promoted US War on Terror are not included in this estimate. About half the victims of this Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-prosecuted Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide are children.

This carnage of 26.8 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths is 26,800,000/130 = 206,154 or about 200,000 times greater than the 130 murdered in the recent appalling Paris massacre – however, in contrast to the saturation coverage of the appalling Paris atrocity, this Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide is resolutely ignored by genocidally racist, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-subverted Western Mainstream media.

Using data from the UN Population Division 2006 Revision of World Population Prospects it was previously determined that Iraqi avoidable deaths in 1990-2003 and 2003-2011 totalled 1.7 million and 1.2 million, respectively, and combining this data with Gulf War violent deaths of 0.2 million and Iraq War violent deaths of 1.5 million, yielded estimates of Iraqi deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation totalling 1.9 million (1990-2003), 2.7 million (2003-2011) and 4.6 million (1990-2011) [4, 22, 23]. However using the present UN 2015 Revision data [25] one estimates Iraqi avoidable deaths in 1990-2003 and 2003-2011 totalling 0.5 million and 0.4 million, respectively, this yielding estimates of Iraqi deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation totalling 0.7 million (1990-2003), 1.9 million (2003-2011) and 2.6 million (1990-2011). The UN 2015 Revision data on Iraq may underestimate avoidable deaths because they are based on data provided by the US-installed regime which, for example, implausibly claims that Iraq under-5 infant mortality declined after imposition of Sanctions in 1990 and declined further after the US invasion in 2003 [25].

Similarly, using 2006 Revision data it was determined that Afghan avoidable deaths and violent deaths in 2001-2014 totalled 5.5 million and 1.7 million, respectively for a total of 7.2 million post-invasion deaths from violence or from deprivation. However using the present UN 2015 Revision data [25] based on data from the government of US occupied Afghanistan one estimates that Afghan avoidable deaths and violent deaths in 2001-2015 have totalled 2.3 million and 0.7 million, respectively, for a total of 3.0 million post-invasion deaths from violence or from deprivation.

The 2015 Paris Massacre in which 130 innocent civilians were murdered by jihadis is a shocking crime that must be unequivocally condemned but is already being exploited (a) by the jihadi non-state terrorist perpetrators as a victory and evidence for more atrocities to come, and (b) by the US state terrorists, French state terrorists and US Alliance state terrorists as a “French 9-11” with calls from Obama and Holland to genocidally destroy jihadi rebels in Syria and Iraq [1, 2].

Completely missing from the continuing hysterical response to the Paris atrocity from US lackey Western Mainstream journalists, politicians and academics is any public airing of the horrendous reality of 27 million Muslims dying avoidably since 9-11 in 20 substantially or significantly Muslim countries that have been attacked by US Alliance state terrorists. Jihadi non-state terrorists must be condemned (a) for the violent crimes they personally commit against innocent people and (b) for the vastly greater crimes committed by the US Alliance against Muslims in response to jihadi outrages. Indeed jihadi non-state terrorists are among the greatest assets of US imperialism – every jihadi atrocity is another excuse trumpeted by Mainstream media for more atrocities against the Muslim world by US state terrorists and US Alliance state terrorists.

The Paris atrocity can be seen as “blowback” for horrendous crimes committed by the US Alliance against the Muslim world from West Africa to South East Asia [26, 27]. The horrible reality is that the US has a long history of false-flag operations(with 9-11 being the most immediately and subsequently deadly) [3] , supporting terrorism and exploiting terrorist acts by Indigenous insurgents lacking military industries, navies, airforces and tanks, and essentially only armed with light arms and explosives for bombs.

Indeed the US has along history of supporting terrorists (e.g. US-backed terrorists in Ecuador who would bomb Catholic churches knowing that the socialists would be blamed; the US-backed Gladio organization that committed atrocities in post-war Europe that would be blamed on communists; and backing jihadi fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s and in the Balkans in the 1990s) [28]. Indeed the US has an appalling record of replacing secular governments in the Muslim world with sectarian regimes (e.g. Afghanistan, 1978; Iraq, 2003; Libya, 2011; and now in Syria today but for Russian support for the Assad Government ) [29].

Even the appalling Western Mainstream media can no longer ignore the Elephant in the Room realities that (a) the illegal US Alliance invasion of Iraq generated sectarian warfare and the Sunni rebellion that transmuted into ISIS, and (b) support for anti-Assad rebels by the US Alliance state terrorism – US state terrorism, UK state terrorism, French state terrorism, Australian state terrorism, Apartheid Israeli state terrorism, Turkish state terrorism, Jordanian state terrorism, Qatari state terrorism and Saudi Arabian state terrorism – has led to ISIS (Islamic State, IS, ISIL, Daesh) dominating rebel-held Syria.

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent, pro-peace people must wonder what they can do in the face of appalling non-state terrorism (e.g. as exhibited by ISIS in killing 130 innocent people in this latest Paris atrocity) and the vastly worse carnage wrought by US state terrorism, UK state terrorism, French state terrorism, and Apartheid Israeli state terrorism in the Muslim world involving post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths in 20 US Alliance-violated countries now totalling 26.8 million. Decent people who are utterly opposed to both non-state terrorism and state terrorism must (a) inform everyone they can, (b) urge and support urgent cease-fire, dialogue and compromise between all parties to prevent a worsening catastrophe in both Iraq and Syria, and (c) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, parties, politicians, companies, corporations and countries disproportionately involved in militarism, violence, war, genocide, non-state terrorism and state terrorism.

References.

[1]. Barack Obama, “Press conference by President Obama – Antalya, Turkey”, White House, 16 November 2015: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/16/press-conference-president-obama-antalya-turkey .

[2]. Martin Robinson, “France will be in a state of emergency for THREE MONTHS: Holland vows to “destroy” ISIS and pledges “no barbarians will prevent us from living how we have decided to live:”, Daily Mail, 17 November 2015: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3320731/France-state-emergency-THREE-MONTHS-Hollande-vows-boost-spending-security-pledges-no-barbarians-prevent-living-decided-live.html ).

[3]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .

[4]. “Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ .

[5]. Just Foreign Policy, “Iraq Deaths”: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq .

[6]. “US military marks end of its Iraq war”, ABC News, 16 December 2011: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-15/us-military-marks-end-of-its-war-in-iraq/3733982 .

[7]. ABC News, “Iraki leaks show scale of civilian casualties” , 24 October 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-10-23/iraqi-leaks-show-scale-of-civilian-casualties/2308808 .

[8]. “Iraq Body Count”: https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ .

[9], “Censorship by the BBC”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbythebbc/ .

[10]. “ABC fact-checking unit & incorrect reportage by the ABC (Australia’s BBC)”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/abc-fact-checking-unit ,

[11]. BBC, “Iraq War in figures”, 14 December 2011: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-11107739 .

[12]. “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”, Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust .

[13]. Gideon Polya (1998), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, 2008 edition that is now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ .

[14]. Gideon Polya (1995) ” The Forgotten Holocaust – The 1943/44 Bengal Famine”: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com.au/2005/07/forgotten-holocaust-194344-bengal.html .

[15]. Gideon Polya (2011), “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”, Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[16]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home .

[17]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ .

[18]. Kit O’Connell, “4 million Muslims killed in Western wars: should we call it genocide?”, MintPress News, 18 August 2015: http://www.mintpressnews.com/4-million-muslims-killed-in-western-wars-should-we-call-it-genocide/208711/ .

[19]. Nafeez Ahmed, “Unworthy victims: Western wars have killed 4 million Muslim since 1990”, MintPtress News, 9 April 2015: http://www.mintpressnews.com/unworthy-victims-western-wars-have-killed-four-million-muslims-since-1990/204182/.

[20]. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), “Body Count. Casualty figures after 10 years of the “War on Terror” Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan”, March 2015: http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/body-count.pdf .

[21]. “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/

[22]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ).

[23]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country since Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on he web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality_05.html .

[24]. “List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita .

[25]. UN Population Division 2015 Revision of World Population Prospects: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/ .

[26]. Gideon Polya,”Appalling Paris Atrocity – Non-State Terrorist Blowback For US Alliance And French State Terrorism Atrocities”, Countercurrents, 16 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya161115.htm .

[27]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous US state terrorism and French state terrorism led to the appalling non-state terrorist Paris atrocity”, Gideon Polya Writing, 2015-11-18 : https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/2015-11-18 .

[28]. Gideon Polya, “US Profits From Jihadist Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 19 November, 2004: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-polya191104.htm .

[29]. Gideon Polya, “Fundamentalist America Has Trashed Secular Governance, Modernity, Democracy, Women’s Rights And Children’s Rights In The Muslim World”, Countercurrents, 21 May, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya210515.htm .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .
22 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By John Pilger

In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”. As Barack Obama wages his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and Francois Hollande promises a “merciless” attack on the rubble of Syria, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger’s murderous honesty.

As a witness to the human consequences of aerial savagery – including the beheading of victims, their parts festooning trees and fields – I am not surprised by the disregard of memory and history, yet again. A telling example is the rise to power of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who had much in common with today’s Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They, too, were ruthless medievalists who began as a small sect. They, too, were the product of an American-made apocalypse, this time in Asia.

According to Pol Pot, his movement had consisted of “fewer than 5,000 poorly armed guerrillas uncertain about their strategy, tactics, loyalty and leaders”. Once Nixon’s and Kissinger’s B-52 bombers had gone to work as part of “Operation Menu”, the west’s ultimate demon could not believe his luck. The Americans dropped the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on rural Cambodia during 1969-73. They leveled village after village, returning to bomb the rubble and corpses. The craters left giant necklaces of carnage, still visible from the air. The terror was unimaginable. A former Khmer Rouge official described how the survivors “froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half-crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told… That was what made it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win the people over.” A Finnish Government Commission of Inquiry estimated that 600,000 Cambodians died in the ensuing civil war and described the bombing as the “first stage in a decade of genocide”. What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot, their beneficiary, completed. Under their bombs, the Khmer Rouge grew to a formidable army of 200,000.

ISIS has a similar past and present. By most scholarly measure, Bush and Blair’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the deaths of at least 700,000 people – in a country that had no history of jihadism. The Kurds had done territorial and political deals; Sunni and Shia had class and sectarian differences, but they were at peace; intermarriage was common. Three years before the invasion, I drove the length of Iraq without fear. On the way I met people proud, above all, to be Iraqis, the heirs of a civilization that seemed, for them, a presence.

Bush and Blair blew all this to bits. Iraq is now a nest of jihadism. Al-Qaeda – like Pol Pot’s “jihadists” – seized the opportunity provided by the onslaught of ‘Shock and Awe’ and the civil war that followed. “Rebel” Syria offered even greater rewards, with CIA and Gulf state ratlines of weapons, logistics and money running through Turkey. The arrival of foreign recruits was inevitable. A former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote, “The [Cameron] government seems to be following the example of Tony Blair, who ignored consistent advice from the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6 that our Middle East policy – and in particular our Middle East wars – had been a principal driver in the recruitment of Muslims in Britain for terrorism here.”

ISIS is the progeny of those in Washington, London and Paris who, in conspiring to destroy Iraq, Syria and Libya, committed an epic crime against humanity. Like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, ISIS are the mutations of a western state terror dispensed by a venal imperial elite undeterred by the consequences of actions taken at great remove in distance and culture. Their culpability is unmentionable in “our” societies, making accomplices of those who suppress this critical truth.

It is 23 years since a holocaust enveloped Iraq, immediately after the first Gulf War, when the US and Britain hijacked the United Nations Security Council and imposed punitive “sanctions” on the Iraqi population – ironically, reinforcing the domestic authority of Saddam Hussein. It was like a medieval siege. Almost everything that sustained a modern state was, in the jargon, “blocked” – from chlorine for making the water supply safe to school pencils, parts for X-ray machines, common painkillers and drugs to combat previously unknown cancers carried in the dust from the southern battlefields contaminated with Depleted Uranium. Just before Christmas 1999, the Department of Trade and Industry in London restricted the export of vaccines meant to protect Iraqi children against diphtheria and yellow fever. Kim Howells, parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Blair government, explained why. “The children’s vaccines”, he said, “were capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction”. The British Government could get away with such an outrage because media reporting of Iraq – much of it manipulated by the Foreign Office – blamed Saddam Hussein for everything.

Under a bogus “humanitarian” Oil for Food Programme, $100 was allotted for each Iraqi to live on for a year. This figure had to pay for the entire society’s infrastructure and essential services, such as power and water. “Imagine,” the UN Assistant Secretary General, Hans Von Sponeck, told me, “setting that pittance against the lack of clean water, and the fact that the majority of sick people cannot afford treatment, and the sheer trauma of getting from day to day, and you have a glimpse of the nightmare. And make no mistake, this is deliberate. I have not in the past wanted to use the word genocide, but now it is unavoidable.” Disgusted, Von Sponeck resigned as UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq. His predecessor, Denis Halliday, an equally distinguished senior UN official, had also resigned. “I was instructed,” Halliday said, “to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults.”

A study by the United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, found that between 1991 and 1998, the height of the blockade, there were 500,000 “excess” deaths of Iraqi infants under the age of five. An American TV reporter put this to Madeleine Albright, US Ambassador to the United Nations, asking her, “Is the price worth it?” Albright replied, “We think the price is worth it.”

In 2007, the senior British official responsible for the sanctions, Carne Ross, known as “Mr. Iraq”, told a parliamentary selection committee, “[The US and UK governments] effectively denied the entire population a means to live.” When I interviewed Carne Ross three years later, he was consumed by regret and contrition. “I feel ashamed,” he said. He is today a rare truth-teller of how governments deceive and how a compliant media plays a critical role in disseminating and maintaining the deception. “We would feed [journalists] factoids of sanitised intelligence,” he said, “or we’d freeze them out.” Last year, a not untypical headline in the Guardian read: “Faced with the horror of Isis we must act.” The “we must act” is a ghost risen, a warning of the suppression of informed memory, facts, lessons learned and regrets or shame. The author of the article was Peter Hain, the former Foreign Office minister responsible for Iraq under Blair. In 1998, when Denis Halliday revealed the extent of the suffering in Iraq for which the Blair Government shared primary responsibility, Hain abused him on the BBC’s Newsnight as an “apologist for Saddam”. In 2003, Hain backed Blair’s invasion of stricken Iraq on the basis of transparent lies. At a subsequent Labour Party conference, he dismissed the invasion as a “fringe issue”.

Here was Hain demanding “air strikes, drones, military equipment and other support” for those “facing genocide” in Iraq and Syria. This will further “the imperative of a political solution”. The day Hain’s article appeared, Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck happened to be in London and came to visit me. They were not shocked by the lethal hypocrisy of a politician, but lamented the enduring, almost inexplicable absence of intelligent diplomacy in negotiating a semblance of truce. Across the world, from Northern Ireland to Nepal, those regarding each other as terrorists and heretics have faced each other across a table. Why not now in Iraq and Syria? Instead, there is a vapid, almost sociopathic verboseness from Cameron, Hollande, Obama and their “coalition of the willing” as they prescribe more violence delivered from 30,000 feet on places where the blood of previous adventures never dried. They seem to relish their own violence and stupidityso much they want it to overthrow their one potentially valuable ally, the government in Syria.

This is nothing new, as the following leaked UK-US intelligence file illustrates:

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative [sic] forces… a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals [and] to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria. CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main [sic] incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals… a necessary degree of fear… frontier and [staged] border clashes [will] provide a pretext for intervention… the CIA and SIS should use… capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

That was written in 1957, although it could have been written yesterday. In the imperial world, nothing essentially changes. In 2013, the former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas revealed that “two years before the Arab spring”, he was told in London that a war on Syria was planned. “I am going to tell you something,” he said in an interview with the French TV channel LPC, “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria… Britain was organising an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer Minister for Foreign Affairs, if I would like to participate… This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned.”

The only effective opponents of ISIS are accredited demons of the west – Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and now Russia. The obstacle is Turkey, an “ally” and a member of Nato, which has conspired with the CIA, MI6 and the Gulf medievalists to channel support to the Syrian “rebels”, including those now calling themselves ISIS. Supporting Turkey in its long-held ambition for regional dominance by overthrowing the Assad government beckons a major conventional war and the horrific dismemberment of the most ethnically diverse state in the Middle East.

A truce – however difficult to negotiate and achieve – is the only way out of this maze; otherwise, the atrocities in Paris and Beirut will be repeated. Together with a truce, the leading perpetrators and overseers of violence in the Middle East – the Americans and Europeans – must themselves “de-radicalise” and demonstrate a good faith to alienated Muslim communities everywhere, including those at home. There should be an immediate cessation of all shipments of war materials to Israel and recognition of the State of Palestine. The issue of Palestine is the region’s most festering open wound, and the oft-stated justification for the rise of Islamic extremism. Osama bin Laden made that clear. Palestine also offers hope. Give justice to the Palestinians and you begin to change the world around them.

More than 40 years ago, the Nixon-Kissinger bombing of Cambodia unleashed a torrent of suffering from which that country has never recovered. The same is true of the Blair-Bush crime in Iraq, and the Nato and “coalition” crimes in Libya and Syria. With impeccable timing, Henry Kissinger’s latest self-serving tome has been released with its satirical title, “World Order”. In one fawning review, Kissinger is described as a “key shaper of a world order that remained stable for a quarter of a century”. Tell that to the people of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Chile, East Timor and all the other victims of his “statecraft”. Only when “we” recognise the war criminals in our midst and stop denying ourselves the truth will the blood begin to dry.

John Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London. He has twice won Britain’s Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US. Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger
21 November, 2015
Johnpilger.com

Updated by Zack Beauchamp on November 16, 2015

On Thursday, one day before terrorists who appear to have been linked to ISIS launched a series of devastating attacks across Paris, President Obama went on ABC and made a comment that now looks pretty bad:

What is true is that from the start, our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them.

In the wake of Paris, it looked to many like Obama had badly overhyped his administration’s efforts against ISIS. At Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate, moderator John Dickerson asked Hillary Clinton if the quote meant that the Obama administration’s legacy will be “that it underestimated the threat from ISIS.”

Obama’s comments don’t look quite as bad in context. Rather, as PolitiFact points out, Obama was saying that ISIS’s territorial expansion in the Middle East has been contained — that, partly as a result of US actions, its march across Syria and Iraq had been halted. That’s both a much more modest claim and factually correct.

“The statement is, in the context of the interview … almost entirely correct,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told me.

But as the Paris attacks show, that in itself is hardly cause for triumphalism. And it’s not necessarily a coincidence that this attack occurred as ISIS has been losing ground in Syria and Iraq. Perversely, the world’s success in containing ISIS territorially actually makes the group more dangerous internationally, at least in the short term.

Some analysts worry that as ISIS suffers battlefield losses, it may shift more of its energy away from the battlefield and into international terror attacks like what happened in Paris.

ISIS is losing ground in Syria and Iraq

On the ground in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has in fact been stalled and in many places even turned back. According to Will McCants, the head of the Brookings Institution’s Project on US Relations With the Islamic World, ISIS “lost something like 25 percent of their territory” since its peak last summer.

By the end of June 2015, ISIS had lost nearly 10 percent of the remaining territory it held at the beginning of the year. Red areas on this map show ISIS territorial losses, and green shows gains:

(IHS Jane’s 360)

At the end of June, Kurdish fighters broke through in northern Syria, taking the strategic town of Tal Afar and advancing to within roughly 30 miles of ISIS’s de facto capital, Raqqa.

These losses have continued since.

“You look back to the past two months,” Gartenstein-Ross says, “and it’s just two month of steady losses.”

He ticks off a list of ISIS losses: Baiji district in Iraq, almost all of its presence near the Kurdish-held city Kirkuk, the outlying areas near Ramadi, and defeats in parts of Syria (like northern Aleppo). Just last week, ISIS lost the Iraqi town of Sinjar, which cuts off an important highway connecting its Iraqi and Syrian holdings.

None of these losses mean that ISIS is on the verge of collapse. Rather, they’re part of a slow but steady process of chipping away at the group’s holdings, taking advantage of its structural weaknesses — too many strong enemies, vulnerability to airpower, no real ability to hide — to put it on the path toward defeat.

“Right now — and I approve of this — we’re moving at a very deliberate rate,” Michael Knights, the Lafer fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says. “We’re pushing forward nice and slowly, snipping off little bits of the caliphate, [and] building our confidence.”

The problem: As ISIS weakens, it could get more dangerous abroad

(As ISIS loses territory in Syria and Iraq, it poses less of a danger to the people who are far and away its primary victims: Syrians and Iraqis. Still, whether Obama meant to imply this or not, his comments sounded to many like an argument that because ISIS was being contained territorially, it was less of a danger; that the threat it posed to the US was being contained as well.

Obama’s comments were “terribly, terribly phrased — just disastrously,” Gartenstein-Ross says. “When you use the term ‘containment,’ people naturally think of it on two sort of dual tracks, terrorism and territory.”

As ISIS weakens as a state by losing territory, it may actually become more dangerous as a terrorist organization. Until Paris, ISIS didn’t really focus much effort on staging attacks on foreign targets outside of the Middle East. Some analysts worry that Paris represents the beginning of ISIS devoting more resources to staging these dramatic attacks outside its territory — perhaps in part to compensate for its territorial losses.

“We don’t yet know that there’s a trend,” Gartenstein-Ross cautions. “But I do think it’s likely that that pivot does and will exist.”

ISIS thrives on a narrative of victory. The reason it attracts so many foreign recruits, including Westerners, is that it sells itself as the prophesied Islamic caliphate: that its victories are inevitable and divinely inspired. If it’s losing territory, then it needs to sell this narrative through other means. That means claiming “victory” over the West by hitting it with terrorist attacks.

“Much of ISIS’s ideological support and recruiting strength emanates from a narrative that it is victorious,” J.M. Berger, the co-author of ISIS: A State of Terror, explains via email. The Paris attack “changes the conversation from ‘ISIS is contained’ on November 12 to ‘ISIS is rampaging uncontrollably’ on November 14.”

Moreover, ISIS may believe that terrorist attacks are its best way of striking back against — and maybe, it believes, deterring — foreign attacks. That conclusion would likely be wrong, but ISIS may still believe it. The French are part of the US-led coalition bombing ISIS in Syria and Iraq. ISIS suicide bombers have also recently hidden in a civilian part of Beirut where Hezbollah, an ISIS enemy, is strong. The group is also suspected of bombing a Russian civilian airliner in Egypt.

From ISIS’s point of view, these kinds of attacks could be a way to warn off countries that are partly responsible for its territorial defeats. The more you fight ISIS, the more of a target you become — and ISIS won’t leave you alone until you leave it alone.

“I think it has made the calculation that it can no longer pursue its expansion strategy in Syria and Iraq without changing the calculations of the enemies currently halting its expansion,” McCants says. “These attacks would be a way of inflicting costs on them.”

Gartenstein-Ross sees a similar logic at work. “If you’re experiencing territorial losses, how do you make up for that? Well, pivoting to asymmetric warfare makes a lot of sense,” he says. “You can impose a cost on countries for being part of an effort to beat you back.”

It is ISIS’s status as both terrorist group and mini state that make it so dangerous: Until ISIS is defeated more thoroughly in its Iraqi and Syrian territory, it will have substantial resources at its disposal to plan and execute international terrorist attacks.

“ISIS is a state that has millions of dollars that it can spend on these kinds of operations,” McCants says. “We’re not talking about al-Qaeda hiding out in Pakistan. We’re talking about an actual government that has money to put behind plots and has very motivated people, many of them with European passports that can carry them out.”

That suggests a kind of grim irony to the ISIS war. In military terms, the campaign to defeat ISIS is going better than most people think. But in some ways, at least in the near term, that may be making ISIS more dangerous than ever.

 

By Tony Cartalucci

The terrorist attacks carried out in the heart of the French capital, either coincidentally or intentionally, have served as the perfect point of leverage for the West on the very eve of the so-called “Vienna talks” regarding Syria.

With its serendipitously strengthened hand and with France taking a more prominent role, the West is attempting to reassert not only its narrative, but its agenda regarding the ongoing conflict in Syria, an agenda that has – as of late – been derailed by Russia’s military intervention and recent gains made on the battlefield by Syrian military forces. The London Guardian stated in its article “Paris attacks galvanise international efforts to end Syria war” that:

The Isis attacks in Paris have galvanised international efforts to end the war in Syria, with a new deadline set for negotiations between the warring parties and for a country-wide ceasefire.

There is still no sign of agreement, however, on the key question of the future of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

It should seem extraordinary to the global public that even after the attacks in Paris, the West still insists on undermining the Syrian government toward its goal of “regime change,” which includes continued material support to armed militants – all of which are extremists, and many of which have either coordinated with, or fought under the banner of Al Qaeda and even the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS).

This is also considering the fact that the Syrian government is now currently engaged in battle with ISIS in and around Aleppo, and is currently threatening to sever its supply lines leading out of NATO-member Turkey’s territory.

Regarding this point, the Guardian would even report:

It was clear, however, that Russia and the US have again had to agree to disagree about Assad. The Paris attacks “show that it doesn’t matter if you’re for Assad or against him,” said the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. “Isis is your enemy.”

However, to explain the West’s apparent failure to prioritize, the Guardian claims:

Isis, in their [the West’s] view, is a symptom of political failings in both Iraq and Syria. The Vienna participants are to meet in Paris before the end of the year to review progress toward a ceasefire and the selection of delegations for the Syrian talks.

In reality, ISIS is not a “symptom of political failings.” It is the result of concerted, immense, multinational state-sponsorship. Entire armies of the immense scale ISIS operates on do not rise out of “political failings,” they rise from huge, preexisting financial networks, region-wide logistical support, multinational political support, intelligence networking, and experienced military planning and organizational skills.

The West and its regional allies, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, clearly constitute this immense multinational state-sponsorship ISIS has so far enjoyed. A look at any map depicting the Syrian conflict shows ISIS supply lines running directly out of NATO-member Turkey’s territory and in numerous reports, even out of the West’s most prominent papers, it is even admitted that ISIS is supplied in Syria, via Turkey.

It is clear then that “political failings” are not the “cause” of ISIS except only in the sense that the “failure” to exact regime change in Syria has prompted the West to continue propping up ISIS and other terrorist groups until the government in Damascus falls – and only when Damascus’ regional and global allies abandon it.

The West Got What it Wanted in Libya – And Created ISIS in the Process

The West’s claims during the Vienna talks that if only they get their way in Syria, the threat of ISIS will subside, is betrayed by the events surrounding the very rise of ISIS in Syria in the first place.

Just before the conflict reached critical mass in Syria during 2011, the US, UK, France, other NATO members, as well as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), were already in the process of fully dividing and destroying Libya in pursuit of regime change.

They insisted that regime change was the only way to end the bitter fighting that had swept the country – regime change that just so happened to fulfill the long-held desire by Washington and Europe to see Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi ousted from power.

Through arming what the West called “rebels,” and through direct military intervention which included large-scale, nationwide airstrikes, naval bombardments, and even special forces, NATO devastated the country and turned it over literally to Al Qaeda. The West’s “rebels” turned out to be sectarian extremists all along, and in fact – with NATO’s help – they promptly took their weapons, fighters, and cash to begin the invasion of northern Syria via Turkey later that year.

The Business Insider would report in its article, “REPORT: The US Is Openly Sending Heavy Weapons From Libya To Syrian Rebels,” that:

The administration has said that the previously hidden CIA operation in Benghazi involved finding, repurchasing and destroying heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, but in October we reported evidence indicating that U.S. agents — particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens — were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.

There have been several possible SA-7 spottings in Syria dating as far back as early summer 2012, and there are indications that at least some of Gaddafi’s 20,000 portable heat-seeking missiles were shipped before now.

On Sept. 6 a Libyan ship carrying 400 tons of weapons for Syrian rebels docked in southern Turkey. The ship’s captain was “a Libyan from Benghazi” who worked for the new Libyan government. The man who organized that shipment, Tripoli Military Council head Abdelhakim Belhadj, worked directly with Stevens during the Libyan revolution.

Belhadj, it should be mentioned, was the commander of US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) – which is literally Al Qaeda in Libya – and was so before, during, and after the 2011 Libyan war. Belhadj was also reportedly aligned with ISIS as it officially established itself in the shattered North African state. Fox News would report in its article, “Herridge: ISIS Has Turned Libya Into New Support Base, Safe Haven,” that:

[Catherine] Herridge reported that one of the alleged leaders of ISIS in North Africa is Libyan Abdelhakim Belhadj, who was seen by the U.S. as a willing partner in the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

“Now, it’s alleged he is firmly aligned with ISIS and supports the training camps in eastern Libya,” Herridge said.

It is clear that despite Western claims that regime change in Libya would be the beginning of the end for Libya’s violence and instability, it was only the end of the beginning – and not only for chaos in Libya – but for other nations across North Africa and in Syria itself.

Using Another 9/11 to Justify Creating Another Libya

NATO’s intervention and regime change in Libya did not avert a refugee crisis, it helped create one. NATO’s intervention and successful regime change in Libya did not make the region or the world safer, it turned the entire nation into a breeding ground for terrorist organizations with so-far unprecedented reach and operational capacity. NATO’s goals in Libya did not prevent the refugee crisis, it helped start it. And with all of this in mind, having seen this and taken full stock of Libya’s outcome, the West has nonetheless moved forward with precisely the same agenda in Syria.

In all reality, the West has no intention of bringing peace or stability to Syria. Their goal is to leave Syria as divided and destroyed as Libya, and to use the chaos and instability fostered there as a springboard for other targets of the West’s proxy warfare – most likely Iran, Russia, and targets deeper in Central Asia.

The West promises that it will end the chaos in Syria, just like they promised it would end in Libya. It will not end in either.

With Libya’s fate in mind, and a repeat performance clearly taking shape in Syria should the West get its way, it must be made clear that no matter how many innocent people are killed by terrorists the West itself helped create and perpetuate, they will not get an opportunity to turn Syria into the “Libya of the Levant,” no matter how convenient and well-timed these killings are, no matter how deep they are within the heart of Europe or North America, and no matter how tragic and regrettable the aftermath is.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

18 November 2015

By Prof. Tim Anderson

The following Infographics is by Professor Tim Anderson

It summarizes detailed information regarding the ISIS, which is contained in a forthcoming book entitle The Dirty War on Syria

By John Chuckman

Mass murder, as that which just occurred in Paris, is always distressing, but that does not mean we should stop thinking.

Isn’t it rather remarkable that President Hollande, immediately after the event, declared ISIS responsible? How did he know that? And if he was aware of a serious threat from ISIS, why did he not take serious measures in advance?

Within days of Friday 13, French forces assaulted an apartment with literally thousands of bullets being fired, killing a so-called mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Just how are you instantly elevated to the rank of “mastermind”? And if security people were previously aware of his exalted status, why did they wait until after a disaster to go after him?

Well, the ugly underlying truth is that, willy-nilly, France for years has been a supporter of ISIS, even while claiming to be fighting it. How do I know that? Because France’s foreign policy has virtually no independence from America’s. It could be described as a subset of American foreign policy. Hollande marches around with his head held stiffly up after getting off the phone at the Élysée Palace, having received the day’s expectations from Washington. He has been a rather pathetic figure.

So long as it is doing work the United States wishes done, ISIS remains an American protectorate, and regardless of Hollande’s past rhetoric, he has acted according to that reality. But something may just have changed now.

It is important to note the disproportionate attention in the West to events in Paris. I say disproportionate because there are equally ugly things going on in a number of places in the Middle East, but we do not see the coverage given to Paris. We have bombs in Lebanon and Iraq. We have daily bombings and shootings in Syria. We have cluster bombs and other horrors being used by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. And of course, there are the ongoing horrors of Israel against Palestinians.

We have endless interviews with ordinary people in Paris, people who know nothing factual to help our understanding, about their reaction to the terror, but when was the last time you saw personal reactions broadcast from Gaza City or Damascus? It just does not happen, and it does raise the suspicion that the press’s concern with Paris is deliberately out of proportion. After all, Israel killed about twenty times as many people in Gaza not very long ago, and the toll was heavily weighted with children, many hundreds of them. Events in Paris clearly are being exploited for highly emotional leverage.

Leverage against what? Arabs in general and Muslims in particular, just part of the continuing saga of deliberately-channeled hate we have experienced since a group of what proved (after their arrest) to be Israeli spies were reported on top of a truck, snapping pictures and high-fiving each other as the planes hit the World Trade Center in 2001. What those spies were doing has never been explained to the public. I’m not saying Israel is responsible for 9/11, but clearly some Israeli government interests were extremely happy about events, and we have been bombarded ever since with hate propaganda about Muslims, serving as a kind of constant noise covering the crimes Israel does commit against Palestinians and other neighbors.

It is impossible to know whether the attack in Paris was actually the work of ISIS or a covert operation by the secret service of an ISIS supporter. The point is a bit like arguing over angels on a pinhead. When you are dealing with this kind of warfare – thugs and lunatics of every description lured into service and given deadly toys and lots of encouragement to use them – things can and do go wrong. But even when nothing goes wrong in the eyes of sponsors for an outfit like ISIS, terrible things are still happening. It’s just that they’re happening where the sponsors want them to happen and in places from which our press carefully excludes itself. Terrible things, for example, have been happening in the beautiful land of Syria for four or five years, violence equivalent to about two hundred Paris attacks, causing immense damage, the entire point of which is to topple a popularly-supported president and turn Syria into the kind of rump states we see now in Iraq.

A covert operation in the name of ISIS is at least as likely as an attack by ISIS. The United States, Israel, Turkey, and France are none of them strangers to violent covert activities, and, yes, there have been instances before when a country’s own citizens were murdered by its secret services to achieve a goal. The CIA pushed Italian secret services into undertaking a series of murderous attacks on their own people during the 1960s in order to shake up Italy’s “threatening” left-wing politics. It was part of something called Operation Gladio. Operation Northwoods, in the early 1960s, was a CIA-planned series of terrorist acts on American civilians to be blamed on Cuba, providing an excuse for another invasion. It was not carried out, but that was not owing to any qualms in the CIA about murdering their own, otherwise no plan would have ever existed. The CIA was involved in many other operations inside the United States, from experiments with drugs to ones with disease, using innocent people as its subject-victims.

There have been no differences worth mentioning between Hollande’s France and America concerning the Middle East. Whatever America wants, America gets, unlike the days when Jacques Chirac opposed the invasion of Iraq, or earlier, when de Gaulle removed France’s armed forces from integration within NATO or bravely faced immense hostility, including a coup attempt undertaken by French military with CIA cooperation, when he abandoned colonialism in Algeria.

If anything, Hollande has been as cloyingly obsequious towards America’s chief interest in the Middle East, Israel, as a group of Republican Party hopefuls at a Texas barbecue fund-raiser sniffing out campaign contributions. After the Charlie Hebdo attack, Hollande honored four Jewish victims of the thugs who attacked a neighborhood grocery store with France’s highest honor, the Legion of Honor. I don’t recall the mere fact of being murdered by thugs ever before being regarded as a heroic distinction. After all, in the United States more than twenty thousand a year suffer that fate without recognition.

Israel’s Netanyahu at the time of the Charlie Hebdo attack actually outdid himself in manic behavior. He barged into France against a specific request that he stay home and pushed himself, uninvited, to the front row of the big parade down the Champs-Élysées which was supposed to honor free speech. He wanted those cameras to be on him for voters back home watching.

Free speech, you might ask, from the leaders of Egypt, Turkey, the UAE, and Israel, who all marched in front? Well, after the free-speech parody parade, the Madman of Tel Aviv raced around someone else’s country making calls and speeches for Jewish Frenchmen to leave “dangerous” France and migrate “home” to Israel. It would in fact be illegal in Israel for someone to speak that way in Israel to Israelis, but illegality has never bothered Netanyahu. Was he in any way corrected for this world-class asinine behavior? No, Hollande just kept marching around with his head stiffly up. I guess he was trying to prove just how free “free speech” is in France.

But speech really isn’t all that free in France, and the marching about free speech was a fraud. Not only is Charlie Hebdo, the publication in whose honor all the tramping around was done, not an outlet for free speech, being highly selective in choosing targets for its obscene attacks, but many of the people marching at the head of the parade were hardly representatives of the general principle.

France itself has outlawed many kinds of free speech. Speech and peaceful demonstrations which advocate a boycott of Israel are illegal in France. So a French citizen today cannot advocate peacefully against a repressive state which regularly abuses, arrests, and kills some of the millions it holds in a form of bondage. And Hollande’s France enforces this repressive law with at least as much vigor as Israel does with its own version, in a kind of “Look, me too,” spirit. France also has a law which is the exactly the equivalent of a law against anyone’s saying the earth is flat: a law against denying or questioning the Holocaust. France also is a country, quite disgracefully, which has banned the niqab.

Now, America’s policy in the Mideast is pretty straightforward: subsidize and protect its colony Israel and never criticize it even on the many occasions when it has committed genuine atrocities. American campaign finance laws being what they, politics back home simply permits no other policy. The invasion of Iraq, which largely was intended to benefit Israel through the elimination of a major and implacable opponent, has like so many dark operations backfired. I call the invasion a dark operation because although the war was as public as could be, all of America’s, and Britain’s, supposed intelligence about Iraq was crudely manufactured and the reasons for undertaking an act which would kill a million people and cripple an entire country were complete lies.

America’s stupid invasion created new room for Iran to exert its influence in the region – hence, the endless noise in Israel and Saudi Arabia about Iran – and it led directly to the growth of armed rabble groups like ISIS. There were no terrorists of any description in Saddam’s Iraq, just as there were no terrorists in Gadhafi’s Libya, a place now so infested with them that even an American ambassador is not safe.

Some Americans assert that ISIS happened almost accidentally, popping out of the dessert when no one was looking, a bit like Athena from the head of Zeus, arising from the bitterness and discontents of a splintered society, but that view is fatuous. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens by accident in this part of the world. Israel’s spies keep informed of every shadowy movement, and America always listens closely to what they say.

It is silly to believe ISIS just crept up on America, suddenly a huge and powerful force, because ISIS was easy for any military to stop at its early stages, as when it was a couple of thousand men waving AK-47s from the backs of Japanese pick-up trucks tearing around Iraq. Those pick-up trucks and those AK-47s and the gasoline and the ammunition and the food and the pay required for a bunch of goons came from somewhere, and it wasn’t from Allah.

A corollary to America’s first principle about protecting Israel is that nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in Israel’s neighborhood that is not approved, at least tacitly, by the United States. So whether,

in any given instance of supply and support for ISIS, it was Israel or Saudi Arabia or Turkey or America – all involved in this ugly business – is almost immaterial. It all had to happen with American approval. Quite simply, there would be hell to pay otherwise.

As usual in the region, Saudi Arabia’s role was to supply money, buying weapons from America and others and transshipping them to ISIS. Ever since 9/11, Saudi Arabia has been an almost pathetically loyal supporter of America, even to the extent now of often cooperating with Israel. That couldn’t happen before an event in which the majority of perpetrators proved to be Saudi citizens and which led to the discovery that large amounts of Saudi “go away” money had been paid to Osama bin Laden for years. But after 9/11, the Saudis feared for the continuation of their regime and now do what they are told. They are assisted in performing the banking function by Qatar, another wealthy, absolute state aligned with the United States and opposing the rise of any possibly threatening new forces in its region.

Of course, it wasn’t just the discoveries of 9/11 that motivated Saudi Arabia. It intensely dislikes the growing influence of Iran, and Iran’s Shia Muslim identity is regarded by Sunni sects in Saudi Arabia in much the way 17th century Protestantism was viewed by an ultramontane Catholic state like Spain. The mass of genuine jihadists fighting in Syria – those who are not just mercenaries and adventurers or agents of Israel or Turkey or the Saudis – are mentally-unbalanced Sunni who believe they are fighting godlessness. The fact that Assad keeps a secular state with religious freedom for all just adds to their motivation.

ISIS first achievement was toppling an Iraqi government which had been excessively friendly to Iran in the view of Israel, and thereby the United States. Iraq’s army could have stopped them easily early on but was bribed to run away, leaving weapons such as tanks behind. Just two heavy tanks could have crushed all the loons in pick-up trucks. That’s why there was all the grotesque propaganda about beheadings and extreme cruelty to cover the fact of modern soldiers running from a mob. ISIS gathered weapons, territory, and a fierce reputation in an operation which saw President al-Maliki – a man disliked by the United States for his associations with Iran and his criticism of American atrocities – hurriedly leave office.

From that base, ISIS was able to gain sufficient foothold to begin financing itself through, for example, stolen crude sold at a discount or stolen antiquities. The effective splitting up of Iraq meant that its Kurdish population in the north could sell, as it does today, large volumes of oil to Israel, an unheard of arrangement in Iraq’s past. ISIS then crossed into Syria in some force to go after Assad. The reasons for this attack were several: Assad runs a secular state and defends religious minorities but mainly because the paymasters of ISIS wanted Assad destroyed and Syria reduced in the fashion of Iraq.

Few people in the press seem to have noted that ISIS never attacks Israel or Israeli interests. Neither does it attack the wheezingly-corrupt rulers of Saudi Arabia, the Islamic equivalent of ancient Rome’s Emperor Nero. Yet those are the very targets a group of genuine, independent warrior-fundamentalists would attack. But ISIS is not genuine, being supplied and bankrolled by people who do not want to see attacks on Israel or Saudi Arabia, including, notably, Israel and Saudi Arabia. ISIS also is assisted, and in some cases led, by foreign covert operators and special forces.

There does seem to be a good deal of news around the idea of France becoming serious in fighting ISIS, but I think we must be cautious about accepting it at face value. Putin is reported as telling ship commanders in the Mediterranean to cooperate and help cover the French aircraft carrier approaching. Hollande keeps calling for American cooperation too, as Putin has done for a very long time, but America’s position remains deliberately ambiguous. A new American announcement of cooperation with Turkey in creating a “safe zone” across the border with northern Syria is a development with unclear intentions. Is this to stop the Kurds Erdogan so despises fighting in the north of Syria from establishing themselves and controlling the border or is it a method for continued support of ISIS along the that border? Only time will tell.

I do think it at least possible Hollande may have come around to Putin’s view of ISIS, but America has not, and the situation only grows more fraught with dangerous possibilities. I’ve long believed that likely America, in its typically cynical fashion, planned to destroy ISIS, along with others like al-Nusra, once they had finished the dirty work of destroying Syria’s government and Balkanizing the country. In any event, Israel – and therefore, automatically, America – wants Assad destroyed, so it would be surprising to see America at this point join honestly with Putin and Hollande.

America has until now refused Russia any real support, including such basic stuff as sharing intelligence. It cooperates only in the most essential matters such avoiding attacks on each other’s planes. It also has made some very belligerent statements about what Russia has been doing, some from the America’s Secretary of Defense sounding a lot like threats. Just the American establishment’s bully-boy attitude about doing anything which resembles joining a Russian initiative does not bode well.

After all, Putin has been portrayed as a kind of Slavic Satan by American propaganda cranking stuff out overtime in support of Ukraine’s incompetent coup-government and with the aim of terrifying Eastern Europe into accepting more American weapons and troops near Russia’s border, this last having nothing to do with any Russian threat and everything to do with America’s aggressive desire to shift the balance of power. How do you turn on a dime and admit Putin is right about Syria and follow his lead?

And there are still the daily unpleasant telephone calls from Israel about Assad. How do you manoeuvre around that when most independent observers today recognize Assad as the best alternative to any other possible government. He has the army’s trust, and in the end it is the Syrian army which is going to destroy ISIS and the other psychopaths. Air strikes alone can never do that. The same great difficulty for Hollande leaves much ambiguity around what he truly means by “going to war against ISIS.”

It is an extremely complicated world in which we live with great powers putting vast resources towards destroying the lives of others, almost killing thousands on a whim, while pretending not to be doing so. We live in an era shaped by former CIA Director Allen Dulles, a quiet psychopath who never saw an opportunity for chaos he did not embrace.

The only way to end terror is to stop playing with the lives of tens of millions in the Middle East, as America has done for so long, and stop supporting the behaviors of a repressive state which has killed far greater numbers than the madmen of ISIS could dream of doing, demanding instead that that state make peace and live within its borders. But, at least at this stage, that is all the stuff of dreams.

John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. He has many interests and is a lifelong student of history. He writes with a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason, and concern for human decency. John regards it as a badge of honor to have left the United States as a poor young man from the South Side of Chicago when the country embarked on the pointless murder of something like 3 million Vietnamese in their own land because they happened to embrace the wrong economic loyalties. He lives in Canada, which he is fond of calling “the peaceable kingdom.” He has been translated into at least ten languages and is regularly translated into Italian and Spanish. Several of his essays have been published in book collections, including two college texts. His first book was published, The Decline of the American Empire and the Rise of China as a Global Power, by Constable and Robinson, Lo
20 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org

By Ali Abunimah

Israeli occupation forces wrought death, injury and destruction this week as they carried out revenge demolitions of Palestinian homes and fired on protesters.

More than 85 Palestinians have been killed in escalated violence since 1 October, dozens in what human rights organizations and international monitors have condemned as summary executions.

Sixteen Israelis were slain in the same period.

More than 9,000 Palestinians and 133 Israelis were injured, according to the United Nations monitoring group OCHA.

On Thursday, a Palestinian and two Israelis were killed in a shooting attack near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the occupied West Bank.

According to Israel’s Haaretz, a Palestinian driver opened fire toward cars near the settlement of Alon Shvut, killing three people.

The alleged assailant was arrested after he crashed his car into another vehicle.

Those killed in the attack have been identified as Shadi Arafa, a 24-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank city of Hebron; Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old US citizen; and Yaakov Don, a 49-year-old West Bank settler.

Earlier, two Israelis – 51-year-old Reuven Aviram and Aharon Yesayev, 32 – were killed in a stabbing attack at an office building in Tel Aviv.

The alleged assailant was taken into custody. He was identified as Riad al-Masalma, a Palestinian from Dura village near Hebron.

That occupied West Bank city has borne the brunt of recent Israeli violence, including 29 killings since the start of October.

Last Friday, two Israeli settlers – a father and his adult son – were killed after an unknown assailant opened fire on their car in southern West Bank.

Killings and revenge demolitions

Thursday’s killings follow a wave of Israeli violence against Palestinians.

Israeli forces blew up six homes in the occupied West Bank belonging to families of Palestinians who allegedly committed attacks against Israelis.

At least 16 additional homes in the same buildings or adjacent to those targeted were damaged or destroyed.

The demolitions made 47 people, including 20 children, homeless, from both the targeted and adjacent structures, according to OCHA.

Israel carried out the revenge demolitions after its high court rejected an appeal by human rights organizations.

Israel claims that the policy, used exclusively against Palestinians and never against Jews, deters attacks, but even its army has refuted this.

OCHA affirmed that the demolitions are “a form of collective punishment and as such are illegal under international law.”

“Vindictive”

Shortly after midnight on 16 November, Israeli forces invaded Qalandiya refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Ramallah, to destroy the family home of Muhammad Abu Shahin.

Abu Shahin is accused – though has not been convicted – of killing an Israeli in the West Bank last June.

Israeli forces “called on loudspeakers to the residents of nearby houses, instructing them to leave their homes and move about 100 meters away,” the human rights group B’Tselem reported. “When Abu Shahin’s apartment was blown up, the apartment on the floor below it was also damaged, as was an apartment in a nearby building that was home to four people, including two minors.”

Abu Shahin’s wife and children lived in the targeted house.

Palestinian residents confronted the Israeli forces invading the camp.

Israeli soldiers shot dead Laith Assad Manasra, 21, and Ahmad Abu al-Aish, 28, in the densely populated refugee camp.

Dozens more were injured, including 17-year-old Yousif Abu Latifa, who was critically wounded. Witnesses told the Ma’an News Agency that Israeli forces fired tear gas at ambulances attempting to reach the wounded.

On 14 November, Israeli forces used explosives to destroy four apartments in Nablus that were home to relatives of Palestinians accused, but not convicted, of killing two West Bank settlers on 1 October, leaving 14 people homeless, according to B’Tselem.

The force of the explosions destroyed six other apartments that were not targeted, making 16 more people homeless.

In the Ramallah-area village of Silwad, Israeli forces blew up the home of the mother and brother of Muaz Hamad, who Israel accuses of killing a West Bank settler in June.

The explosion damaged eight nearby houses, according to B’Tselem.

In addition to being illegal under international law, the group says that Israel’s policy of punitive demolitions is “a draconian, vindictive measure directed at entire families who have done nothing wrong nor are they suspected of any wrongdoing.”

Another 27 Palestinians, including 12 children, were also made homeless as Israeli forces demolished another 17 homes and other structures in across West Bank, including East Jerusalem, under the pretext that they lacked building permits, OCHA reported.

Killing and raids

On 17 November, Israeli forces killed 24-year-old Muhammad Saleh, from Aroura village, near Ramallah.

Israel stated that Saleh opened fire on a military jeep, but the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) notes that there “was no eyewitness to confirm or deny the Israeli claim.”

In what appears to be standard practice, Israeli forces prevented Palestinian medics from reaching Saleh, PCHR said.
In the last week, OCHA said more than 1,100 Palestinians, including 203 children, were injured amid ongoing confrontations with Israeli forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces raided almost 80 Palestinian communities in the West Bank and arrested more than 100 Palestinians, including 38 children, according to PCHR.

Slap on the wrist

Another event this week highlighted the stark contrast between the brutality Israel directs towards Palestinians and the impunity it affords its own citizens.

An Israeli Border Police officer convicted for the savage beating of Palestinian American teenager Tariq Abukhdeir was given a slap on the wrist – six weeks of community service.

The attack – in which one officer held the boy down while another methodically kicked and pummeled him in the head – was recorded on video.

This week two UN special rapporteurs called on Israel to end its policy of summary executions of Palestinians.

The independent human rights experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council said that the current escalation of violence is “occurring within the existing context of policies and practices under the longstanding Israeli occupation which entail violations of Palestinian human rights.”

For their part, Israeli leaders continue to exploit the attacks in Paris by insisting that Palestinians are driven by the same motivations as the suspected Islamic State gunmen and bombers who killed 130 people last Friday.

Meanwhile Israel announced plans for 454 more settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem, a move even Israel’s staunch allies the United States and Germany criticized.

Ali Abunimah Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books. Also wrote One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Opinions are mine alone.

20 November, 2015
Electronicintifada.net

By Peter Van Buren

We Meant Well

Wars are expensive. The recruitment and sustainment of fighters in the field, the ongoing purchases of weapons and munitions, as well as the myriad other costs of struggle, add up.

So why isn’t the United States going after Islamic State’s funding sources as a way of lessening or eliminating their strength at making war? Follow the money back, cut it off, and you strike a blow much more devastating than an airstrike. But that has not happened. Why?

Donations

Many have long held that Sunni terror groups, ISIS now and al Qaeda before them, are funded via Gulf States, such as Saudi Arabia, who are also long-time American allies. Direct links are difficult to prove, particularly if the United States chooses not to prove them. The issue is exacerbated by suggestions that the money comes from “donors,” not directly from national treasuries, and may be routed through legitimate charitable organizations or front companies.

In fact, one person concerned about Saudi funding was then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who warned in a 2009 message on Wikileaks that donors in Saudi Arabia were the “most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

At the G20, Russian President Vladimir Putin said out loud what has otherwise not been publicly discussed much in public. He announced that he has shared intelligence with the other G20 member states which reveals 40 countries from which ISIS finances the majority of its terrorist activities. The list reportedly included a number of G20 countries.

Putin’s list of funders has not been made public. The G20, however, include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the European Union.

Oil

One source of income for ISIS is and has robustly been oil sales. In the early days of the air campaign, American officials made a point to say that the Islamic State’s oil drilling assets were high on the target list. Yet few sites have actually been targeted. A Pentagon spokesperson explained that the coalition has actually been trying to spare some of ISIS’s largest oil producing facilities, “recognizing that they remain the property of the Syrian people,” and to limit collateral damage to civilians nearby.

The U.S. only this week began a slightly more aggressive approach toward the oil, albeit bombing tanker trucks, not the infrastructure behind them. The trucks were destroyed at the Abu Kamal oil collection point, near the Iraqi border.

Conservative estimates are that Islamic State takes in one to two million dollars a day from oil sales; some see the number as high as four million a day. As recently as February, however, the Pentagon claimed oil was no longer ISIS’ main way to raise money, having been bypassed by those “donations” from unspecified sources, and smuggling.

Turkey

One of the issues with selling oil, by anyone, including ISIS, is bringing the stuff to market. Oil must be taken from the ground using heavy equipment, possibly refined, stored, loaded into trucks or pipelines, moved somewhere and then sold into the worldwide market. Large amounts of money must be exchanged, and one to four million dollars a day is a lot of cash to deal with on a daily basis. It may be that some sort of electronic transactions that have somehow to date eluded the United States are involved.

Interestingly, The Guardian reported a U.S.-led raid on the compound housing the Islamic State’s chief financial officer produced evidence that Turkish officials directly dealt with ranking ISIS members, including the ISIS officer responsible for directing the terror army’s oil and gas operations in Syria.

Turkey’s “open door policy,” in which it allowed its southern border to serve as an unofficial transit point in and out of Syria, has been said to be one of ISIS’ main routes for getting their oil to market. A Turkish apologist claimed the oil is moved only via small-diameter plastic irrigation pipes, and is thus hard to monitor.

A smuggled barrel of oil is sold for about $50 on the black market. This means “ several million dollars a day worth of oil would require a very large number of very small pipes.

Others believe Turkish and Iraqi oil buyers travel into Syria with their own trucks, and purchase the ISIS oil right at the refineries, transporting themselves out of Syria. Convoys of trucks are easy to spot from the air, and easy to destroy from the air, though up until now the U.S. does not seem to have done so.

So as is said, ISIS’ sources of funding grow curious and curiouser the more one knows. Those seeking to destroy ISIS might well wish to look into where the money comes from, and ask why, after a year and three months of war, no one has bothered to follow the money.

And cut it off.

Peter Van Buren spent a year in Iraq as a State Department Foreign Service Officer serving as Team Leader for two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Now in Washington, he writes about Iraq and the Middle East at his blog, We Meant Well. His new book is We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books).
© 2015 Peter Van Buren

19 November, 2015