LID: For the Soviets, Osama bin Laden would have been a “terrorist extraordinaire” when he was involved in resisting their efforts to take over Afghanistan. But now the shoe is on the other foot.
FB: Let's be clear about all this. Bin Laden is our guy. The Carter administration, as well as the Reagan people, worked hand-in-glove with bin Laden and the CIA. That's where he and al-Qaeda came from! As long as he was fighting the Soviet Union, he was “a freedom fighter,” part of the Mujahideen. But once these Islamic warriors turned against the U.S. and its view of the world – assuming that they ever believed it – they became “terrorists” overnight. These terms are devoid of any substance. They are designed, quite simply, to squash dissent. We used to throw around the term “Communist” a lot in the old days, even when the accused were very far from being such. It was a convenient way of ridding oneself of problems through the use of the smear technique.
LID: You mentioned that one of the real problems making this war on terror so vague, so sweeping and so meaningless – to the point of allowing it to encompass just about anything the Bushites want it to – is that all the normal protections afforded to people on the opposite side of an armed force can be twisted, manipulated, or just dispensed with.
FB: It's dehumanizing to Arabs, Blacks, Muslims, Asians, Coloreds. We cannot forget the racist element of the war here, very much like Vietnam. In Vietnam, we had to dehumanize them in order to kill them – so we called them “gooks.” Now instead of looking at these people as human beings, with grievances and a cause that they have not made known to our people but might like to, we call them “terrorists.” We dehumanize them in order to make it easier for the American people to do terrible things to them that we otherwise would not be doing in all likelihood. I doubt seriously that we would be treating white Christians or white Jews this way. These terrorists, as we call them, are throwaway people.
LID: Of course in Serbia and Kosovo, it was the other way around. It was white Christians who were being attacked in another illegal and unjust war for their alleged crimes against Muslims, never mind that the faction that we supported were real terrorists, i.e., the KLA. In that light it simply seems like the terrorists are always whomever we've chosen to oppose in whatever the conflict de jour is. Now speaking of Kosovo – just to digress for a second – our sense is that the legal background for the assault on Serbia was just as specious as that used in the war against Iraq.
FB: I agree with you. In fact, in that same book mentioned above there is a chapter on humanitarian intervention in which I also condemn the arguments used to justify the Serbia intervention.
LID: Now there may have been some argument that the Serbia bombing was a “humanitarian effort” to protect Muslims and Kosovars, though we would agree with you that it was an entirely bogus pretext. But that shows, doesn't it, that we will pick up whatever flag is useful – “humanitarian aid,” “WMDs,” “terrorism” – to accomplish our other aims?
FB: All of these wars, Afghanistan and Iraq – and our less well-known military interventions elsewhere of late – have one thing in common: oil and natural gas. That is what all this “imperial hubris” is about. We are running out of these things, things so vital to our economy. The Pentagon knows it, and so they are scrambling to get whatever oil and natural gas they can find – whether it's in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Columbia, Jibouti, or the Suez Canal. They are now planning military intervention on the west coast of Africa because oil and gas have been found there. If you look at all they are doing – not what they are saying, but what they are doing – they are deploying forces all over the world where there is oil and gas to be had. There is no deployment, however urgent the situation, where there is no oil and gas.
LID: Let's give some thought, if we may, to the Guantánamo detainees. One thing that has struck us as problematic – and it goes all the way back to 9/11 – is that, in the context of the “war on terror,” Uncle Sam is making an informal declaration of war against irregular forces all over the globe. Anyone with a gun who does not sympathize with the American way of life, or the politics of the government, is automatically deemed “an enemy.” Correct us if we are wrong, but under the normal process of declaring war, the opposing sides' troops are recognized as lawful combatants who are guaranteed certain rights. Here, where we are picking a fight with all the irregular forces of the world, they are immediately deprived of their rights – or so it seems to us. It appears that much of the Geneva Conventions have been set aside and that POW rights have effectively been ignored and nullified. If this is so, it seems to be the height of hypocrisy.
FB: It is most definitely the case. What that is going to do is react to the disadvantage of our own men and women in the armed forces, because what we have done is to send a message that we don't care about the Geneva Convention – and that can only expose our armed forces to grave harm and danger. Battle is bad enough, but if they get wounded or captured the only protection our people have is the Geneva Convention. If we are now saying we just don't care about any of this in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gitmo, then there is no kind of protection for our armed forces. Even Secretary of State Powell pointed this out in a memo to Bush. I regret to say you will likely see outright savagery being inflicted on our armed forces – and certainly to the extent that we are inflicting it on our opponents. The U.S. marine filmed shooting dead a wounded resistance fighter in a mosque in Fallujah has set a dangerous precedent. It says, in effect, that if you are an Iraqi fighting the occupation and you are caught, you are likely to get your head blown off. What hope, then, is there for wounded or captured American troops in Iraqi hands?
LID: A lot of media coverage has been given to the tribunals in Gitmo, variously termed “Combatant Status Review Tribunals” and “Administrative Review Boards” – not to mention the infamous military commissions established under the President's Military Order of November 13, 2001. The heated discussion is all about whether or not these tribunals are sufficient to provide for the rights of the detainees. Our sense is that they don't come close, because of clear obligations on the part of those doing the detaining (i.e., us) to provide for a Geneva Article 5 tribunal, which passes a judgment on whether people should be held as POWs or not – and until those tribunals are conducted, the detainees are supposed to be presumed to be POWs and afforded POW rights. Something our government has conspicuously not done.
FB: These kangaroo courts – I'm talking “military commissions” now – were opposed by the professional military lawyers in the Judge Advocate General's (JAG) office at the Pentagon. They were opposed by the professional international lawyers in the State Department. The only lawyers who supported these kangaroo courts were right wing, war-mongering lawyers that inhabited the office of White House counsel Alberto Gonzales – now attorney general – and John Ashcroft at the Department of “Injustice.” That is to say, none of the professionals who know anything at all about human rights or the laws of war. As I said, even the professional military lawyers were against these courts. As you know, in late November 2004 the federal district judge in Washington, D.C., struck the whole thing down, though in July 2005 it was rehabilitated by an appeals court for the D.C. circuit in a frankly ridiculous decision. Though in the district case – Hamdan v. Rumsfeld – the judge applies the law as it should have been applied in the first place.1
LID: What are the details of these recent decisions?
FB: The first decision simply struck down the kangaroo court procedure down at Gitmo. That decision was then overturned on the basis that the Geneva Conventions are not “self-executing,” though honestly, what good is a right if it cannot be protected in the courts? When the Department of Justice first made the appeal, they were probably hopeful that they'd get it to the Supreme Court, which the Bushites control; now it looks like that might happen, as the attorneys for Hamdan have themselves appealed. Do remember, by the way, that it was the five Republican justices that gave the presidency to Bush Jr. in 2000 to begin with, a
nd started this whole problem. After that happened the Democrats were derelict in their duty by not putting in Bills of Impeachment against those five Supreme Court Justices. They rolled over and played dead, just as Gore and Kerry have done. What good are they?
LID: On a side (but related) note, one of the pretexts we have heard that was supposed to have justified our aggression in Afghanistan is the phrase, “Afghanistan is a failed state.” It appears everywhere in the political literature on the subject and it seems to say that, as a consequence, the norms of international law between one sovereign State and another simply don't apply. Would you say that is gibberish?
FB: Yes, it means nothing. It's just a category, a description, pulled out of thin air and developed.
LID: The Afghans don't see things the way we do, so they can be dismissed as a nonentity, right?
FB: Yes. In fact we were actually negotiating with the Taliban government in Afghanistan during the Clinton administration about the construction of a huge oil pipeline through their territory, and it appears that Clinton was about to establish diplomatic relations with them.
LID: So, Afghanistan being a “failed state” did not impede that process!
FB: Not at all. All we cared about was getting into that Central Asian oil field and raking in big money.
LID: On the legal question of one sovereign state versus another, many commentators and public figures – Robin Cook, Kofi Annan, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, and yourself to name but a few – have come out in black and white saying the aggression against Iraq was illegal. This is also the opinion of some hundreds of international lawyers around the globe that have made statements on various occasions.1 Even Richard Perle conceded that international law would have “gotten in the way” of the Iraq invasion, had it been obeyed. What this means, at least from our point of view, is that we deposed by force of arms a legitimate government, recognized as such throughout the world, and that consequently the government that was in place is still the legitimate government at least de jure if not de facto. Do you agree?
FB: Yes. Under the laws of war as codified in U.S. Army Field Manual 2710, we did indeed depose the legitimate government of Iraq. The U.S. and Britain are – still – what is known as the “belligerent occupants” of Iraq. The so-called Allawi government was nothing more than a puppet government. But the laws of war do not prohibit us from establishing a puppet government if that is what we want as occupiers. Again, under the above law, we are responsible for the behavior of that puppet government. We have displaced the legitimate government of Iraq and have imposed a puppet government – twice. What happens now depends on if and when the belligerent occupation by the U.S. and U.K. ends, and if the Iraqi people themselves have an opportunity to reestablish their own government. It's important to keep this in mind, despite all the talk about the transfer of sovereignty, democracy, and elections. That's all nonsense. The sovereignty resides in the hands of the Iraqi people. They never lost it in the first place. It was never ours to transfer. A belligerent occupant does not obtain sovereignty. Sovereignty remains with people and with the state that is occupied. We never had anything to transfer to Allawi. He remained at all times the puppet head of a puppet government. The January 2005 elections did nothing but establish another puppet government, no matter who did or did not participate, and in what numbers.
LID: And any so-called trial of former members of the legitimate government conducted under the auspices of this puppet government – particularly if the occupyingforces are still there – is very problematic as well.
FB: They are simply more kangaroo court proceedings. Clearly there are procedures. Saddam is a prisoner of war. Prisoners of war under the Third Geneva Convention can be tried for the commission of war crimes, but they are subject to all the protections of the third Geneva Convention. In this situation Saddam would be entitled to a trial in the form of a court-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Clearly he will not get that. He will get a kangaroo summary procedure and then they will take him out and kill him. Several of the so-called Iraqi human rights people involved in setting up these kangaroo courts have already said as much. Saddam will not get a fair trial. Of that there can be very little doubt.
LID: Are there any other important points of which we should be aware?
FB: Before the start of the war against Iraq, President Putin of Russia and Walter Cronkite both publicly stated that if Bush went to war against Iraq, he could set off a third world war – and that is the situation we find ourselves in now. This is an extremely volatile area of the world. Two-thirds of the world's energy resources are there – the very thing that we are going after. That that is what we are doing is very clear to Russia, Europe, China, India, Pakistan. It's very clear we are going all out for the oil and the gas in order to control the future of the world's economy. The longer we, the American people, let this go on, the more we risk a wider regional war that could easily degenerate into a world war.
LID: Rumsfeld's favorite words for the Iraqi resistance is “extremist,” “terrorist,” etc. We assume there is no question that the Iraqis who are defending themselves from occupation have every legitimate right to do so, regardless of what outside influence there may or may not be in Iraq?
FB: This is clearly an illegal and criminal war being waged by Bush Jr. and Tony Blair. So, of course, the Iraqi people have a right to resist an illegal, criminal war under international law. That's the danger in all of this. Hitler got away with marching into Austria and Czechoslovakia, but then he went into Poland and that led to the start of WWII. Here we have Bush who has waged two wars now, in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is now threatening Syria, Iran, and North Korea. We have a very similar situation here. Either the current situation is brought under control, or they launch one more aggressive war. That could start a chain reaction leading to a regional war – and perhaps to another world war.
LID: Let's hope we can reverse the tide before that happens.
FB: I think we have to, and that is why Ramsey and I are pressing ahead with impeachment. Remember, and this is very important, Nixon won a landslide victory against McGovern in 1972. Massachusetts was against him, but the rest of the country supported him. Yet he and Agnew were out of office less than two years later. So, that is the scenario that I think we must pursue with respect to Messrs. Bush and Cheney.
1. See the discussion of military commissions and related tribunals in chapter 29 and its postscripts, on pp. 443–489 of the present volume.—Ed.
1. Vide supra, p. 368, note 2.—Ed.
The [next] priority for change – the first element of a new politics for the United States – is in our policy toward the world. Too much and for too long, we have acted as if our great military might and wealth could bring about an American solution to every world problem.
—Robert F. Kennedy, U. S. Attorney General
and presidential candidate, 1968
PROPPING UP A DYING GIANT:
AMERICAN ECONOMIC AND MILITARY SURVIVAL TACTICS
THE EDITORS' GLOSS: It is a frightening thought for many Americans. The idea that someday the United States won't be the “biggest,” the “best,” the most powerful, the leader of a more-or-less global Pax Americana. But it is probably historically inevitable. Greece, Rome, Spain, Britain – all examples of great powers that have come and gone.
The funny thing is – and a paradox for “worried” imperial Americans – England, Spain, Italy, and Greece are still fantastic places to visit and, in many respects, wonderful places to live. The pizza, the art, and the wine in Italy are not less appreciable because Italy is not managing the foreign affairs of all Europe. The cultural traditions of law and civilization refined by the British Empire are not of less value because the “empire” has been reduced to modest proportions. The works of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle still represent some of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time, notwithstanding Athens's modern confinement to a small island. The cathedrals, the hills,
and the Rioja of Spain are no less delightful as a result of the independence of South America. Many of these cultural treasures pertain, though, to a side of life that many – certainly not all – Americans fail, in many ways, to appreciate. They have little to do with speed, size, power. They have a lot, however, to do with what makes life worth living.
The point is, being a humble country – a proud but cooperative member of the family of nations – is not such a bad thing. Some would say it's a natural thing. Some would also say it's where the U.S. is headed, willing or no. A balanced perspective would urge us towards willingness, knowing that the life of a nation doesn't end with the eclipse of empire. The unbalanced one, which currently guides our “ship of state” – as Wallerstein puts it – is less resigned to facts and more convinced that “imperial America” is the only America possible and desirable. This view threatens everyone, but above all Americans. Prof. Wallerstein's perspective on this problem follows, in what first appeared as the introductory chapter to his book Alternatives.
CHAPTER
26
In Her Death Throes:
The Neoconservative Attempt to Arrest the Decline of American Hegemony
Neo-Conned! Again Page 53