Mouood Mouood English Edition
The Gulf war followed with 12 crushing years of sanctions its legacy. They left 1.5 million Iraqis dead and the living devastated. The current cycle of permanent wars began post-9/11 in October, 2001. First came the Taliban with Iraq ahead as the prime target of choice. It’s huge oil reserves made it the most sought after real estate on earth with a plan to seize them simple at its core – a bold new experiment to erase a nation and create a new one by invasion, occupation and reconstruction for pillage. It would transform Iraq into a fully privatized free market paradise with blank check public funding for profit but none for Iraqis for essential needs, a sustainable economy or critical local infrastructure.
It’s been a disaster with the toll on Iraqis horrific – an inferno of uncontrolled violence throughout the country with new British O.R.B. independent polling data estimating 1.2 million Iraqi deaths since March, 2003 on top of the 1.5 million others since 1990. The war is now longer in duration than WWs I or II and will likely exceed the latter one in inflation-adjusted cost before it ends. It’s not in sight thanks to a complicit Democrat-led Congress that’s long on theater but short on action it can take but won’t. Allied with the administration, it flaunts public demands to end the war, bring home the troops, and will shortly accede to another Bush supplemental request for billions more in funding.
Public sentiment might be stronger if Jeff Nygaard’s June, 2007 Z Magazine article titled “The Secret Air Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” got wider play, so here’s hoping this article gives it some. He explained US Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) posts its daily “airpower summaries” online that makes for horrifying reading “aside (from) the blatant propaganda.” Nygaard explained “relentless” air attacks against Iran and Afghanistan have gone on for years – on average 75 – 100 each day against both countries. It’s a huge unreported story in the dominant media. The death toll is unknown, he says, “but a reasonable estimate” is between 100,000 – 150,000 in Iraq alone, and it’s anyone’s guess in Afghanistan. That’s on top of all other war-related deaths estimated in both countries.
Further, these attacks exclude “guided missiles and unguided rockets fired….cannon rounds (and) munitions used by some Marine Corps and other ‘coalition’ aircraft or any of the Army’s helicopter gunships (plus) munitions used by the armed helicopters of the many ‘private (mercenary hired gun) security contractors’ flying their own missions in Iraq.” If the true human toll were known, it might be shockingly above the most gruesome current estimates and growing daily.
The public has a right to know this, and Congress is obligated to find out, tell them, cut off all funding and end two illegal wars of aggression. Instead, Democrats and Republicans back a further administration aggression against Iran in spite of silenced high level opposition to it. It may come from two large nuclear-armed US carrier strike groups conducting provocative exercises near Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf and Eastern Medditerranean.
Washington makes no secret it wants regime change in Iran, and time is running out for the Bush administration to get it. For months, covert black operations have been ongoing inside the country. It’s aimed to incite internal ethnic and political opposition, and CIA operatives have also been sending Baluchi tribal warriors from neighboring Pakistan on terror raids into neighboring Iranian areas. Now 350 British forces have been provocatively sent from Basra to the volatile Iranian border, and the Pentagon announced it’s building a US base and fortified checkpoints nearby as well. General Petraeus also implied to Congress he’ll act inside Iranian territory to stop its “proxy war” against US Iraqi forces. In the meantime, Iran claims Washington backs Israeli-trained Kurdish Party for Free Life (PJAK) as well as Arab, Azeri and Baluchi incursions inside their territory to undermine its leadership, provoke a response, and provide cover for a US attack.
Without a touch of irony, US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iranian Ambassador Hassan KazemiQumi held four hours of face-to-face talks in Baghdad in May that was the first official bilateral meeting between the countries in almost three decades. It amounted to nothing more than the usual US duplicity that pointed to what’s now happening and likely to escalate. Earlier, George Bush demanded and will soon get harsher US-imposed sanctions through the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007 that’s designed to strangle the country economically. He earlier signed off on a commitment of economic destabilization through media-driven propaganda, now heightened, as well as manipulation of Iran’s currency and international transactions. That, in turn, just prompted Tehran in response to demand foreign energy companies do business in euros and yen.
So far, it’s anyone’s guess what’s ahead with war a real possibility. The Bush administration is pounding Iran with menacing claims of meddling in Iraq and covertly advancing a nuclear weapons program despite having no proof of either. Whatever’s planned could be devastating to the region (and world economy if oil shipments are disrupted), and the kinds of options being considered may cause dire unintended consequences if the worst of them involving nuclear weapons are used.
Bill Clinton’s 1990s Balkan wars took their toll earlier at a time most people shamefully bought the US-led NATO propaganda of a good war against a demonized enemy and a well-intentioned intervention to remove him. It divided and destroyed a country under the guise of humanitarian intervention that provided cover for naked imperialism. Most observers on the left got it wrong and still don’t know NATO (meaning the US) committed illegal aggression to expand into Central and Eastern Europe.
The Balkan wars kept predatory capitalism on a roll for more new markets, resources and cheap exploitable labor by the same ugly methods of choice – wars, subversion or coercion with “uncooperative” leaders like Slobadon Milosevic playing fall guy. He ended up abducted to the Hague and hung out to dry by the ICTY US-run kangaroo court that silenced him (like Saddam in Baghdad) so his secrets went to the grave with him.
So much for democracy in a nation stained by a near-unblemished record of illegal aggression throughout its history and in every post-WW II conflict fought. The only exception was the so-called 1991 Gulf war. It was authorized, as required, by the Security Council but only through bribes and coercion. The US public opposed it until a lot of Kuwaiti government PR massaging turned it around, and the rest is history.
The Harmful Effects of Imperialism at Home
The price at home has been high as well with democracy here just as fake as wherever we leave our imperial footprint. Ordinary Americans are the losers. Repressive laws and crumbling social services are their reward for patriotism. Then there’s the military and what’s diverted to fund it. Annual Pentagon budgets are soaring with the FY 2008 DOD one calling for an astonishing $648.8 billion plus an additional $147.5 billion war supplemental and around $50 billion or more now requested. The final total will likely top out over $850 billion with the usual pork factored in and Congress ready to authorize whatever more is needed.
Then come the 16 US spy agencies and their secret off-the-books budgets. CIA, NSA and the others get tens of billions more without accountability. The CIA is an especially out-of-control, rogue agency accountable only to the President. Post-WW II, it began intervening throughout the world covertly and overtly. No dirty trick is off the table, and CIA invented their fair share of them. It uses them spying, fomenting and supporting wars, deposing foreign heads of state, and now they’re in play on US soil against American citizens. Noted academic and administration critic, Chalmers Johnson, calls the agency “the president’s private army” serving in the same capacity as imperial Rome’s praetorian guard.
The agency is secret and lawless, unaccountable to the public, Congress or the courts with intelligence gathering a sideline operation at most. Since it was created in 1947, but especially now, CIA has an appalling record of toppling democratically elected governments, assassinating foreign heads of state and other key officials, propping up friendly dictators, and now snatching targeted individuals for “extraordinary rendition” to secret torture-prison hellholes from which many won’t emerge or ever get justice.
