Containing the Anti-War Movement -- Stan Goff

[bemildred]

The straight dope from Stan Goff.

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For the Democrats, of course, of whom exactly one elected offical (Maxine Waters) has deigned to visit "Camp Casey," this presented quite another problem -- the same problem that the whole movement against the war presented prior to the last electoral farce in 2004. The masses were moving to their left and threatening to expose this moribund Weimar formation as the waste of both money and oxygen that it has repeatedly demonstrated itself to be. But Joshua Frank did an excellent job recently on this site of describing the Democratic Party.

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The Democrats are already grooming a few 2008 candidates, including the execrable Hillary Rodham Clinton who has stated her desire to beef up the war against Southwest Asia. Let's not forget that her husband presided over an Iraqi holocaust that George W. Bush is still trying to match. The Republicans are secure for now with their white nationalist popular base. An active and increasingly militant left is a more immediate threat to the Democrats ­ who have prospered from Repubilican reaction for decades now by capturing social bases that feel they have nowhere else to go. That dilemma is real, but it is also predicated on the notion that to "go there" we need to contain ourselves in electoralism and pluralist policy fights that are engineered by corporations and NGOs.

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Let me just say something about how to withdraw. This is my plan. Hey, if Tom Hayden is qualified to write up exit strategies, why not an old grunt like me, eh?

The Plan: The National Command Authority orders all US forces redeployed out of Iraq within one month and out of the theater in two months. Any commander that fails to meet the deadline will be summarily relieved, and replaced with a commander that will thereby be placed on a shorter timeline. I can promise anyone who has no experience of the military that this is perfectly feasible, and that with that kind of command emphasis, the mission can and will be accomplished.

CounterPunch

[K-W]

1. Great piece. EOM

[papau]

2. Where the heck is he getting numbers for his Clinton (death in Iraq) dump

Some folks say Saddam used access to food and medical care as a way to keep the Shia Arabs under control, causing at least twenty thousand or more excess deaths a year (from disease and malnutrition). Others say it was the ban on importation of Clorine by H W Bush that caused 500,000 excess deaths post Gulf War One.

Granted that Clinton could not get the Clorine ban reversed and survive the GOP "soft on Saddam " BS - and therefore did not try to reverse the Clorine ban - but where the hell is Bill Clinton responsible for an Iraqi "holocaust that George W. Bush is still trying to match"?

This fellow has his head up where he sits.

[bemildred]

3. I have no wish to argue with you Papau.

Here is one example:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084

I consider that Big Dog simply continued a policy that began under Bush I and that has culminated under Bush II with the invasion; which began when the US and Saddam fell out with each other in the late 80s. Saddam was suckered into Kuwait to destroy his offensive capability, then there was a decade long campaign of embargos and bombing to weaken Iraq sufficiently to allow the invasion to work, and then it was invaded and occupied. I know that's not what we've been told, it's presented like it was just inadvertent, but that is what happened. Back then is when the whole revolution in military affairs and PNAC agenda came into being too, and that is not a coincidence.

[papau]

5. I agree as to the deaths - but at lower numbers - the UN quotes below

suggest sanctions was not the cause of the 500,000 - it was one of the causes.

1.a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues states: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."

http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm

2. In the same article a Ms. Bellamy noted that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998. SO THEY PROJECTED a DECREASE in mortality and compared to an actual increase.

Well, it does give the maximum possible number - and it points out the sanctions effect over 2 years of HW Bush and 6 years of Clinton.

But to translate that into Clinton's Holocaust is a bit much.

There was indeed death under Clinton around the world - 800,000 in Africa (of which first 3 weeks killing of 500,000 caught everyone by surprise - as did the refusal to slow down the killing the next 3 weeks as the remaining 300,000 were killed - Clinton being informed of the size of the killing at the 3 week point) and Clinton has apologized for his inaction on this.

But the Chlorine ban was a continuation of Bush policy - I agree Bill should have pushed the UN to remove Chlorine from the ban - but it was not going to happen just because Clinton asked - and the politics of such a request at home in the US was going to be seen through a GOP controlled media.

Thanks for the kind thought re "no wish to argue with you Papau" but feel free to do so, as I enjoy your posts!

peace

:-)

[bemildred]

7. Reasonable people can disagree.

I would agree that he had done better to avoid the 'H' word there, but then he's already out to piss people off, so?

[beetbox]

8. Here's a bit more to add to your discussion

Clinton has given unstinting support to Turkey in its war against its indigenous Kurds. He has also escalated his aid to Colombia. In both of these countries the civilian casualties from counterinsurgency warfare and death squad operations during the Clinton years has exceeded the pre-NATO bombing deaths in Kosovo by a large factor.

In the Clinton years these recurrent U.S. policies have impacted heavily on Cuba and most dramatically on Iraq. The tightening of the embargo on Cuba under the Toricelli-Helms bill, signed into law and enforced by Clinton, which banned the sale of U.S. food and curtailed access to water treatment chemicals and medicines, took a heavy toll. According to a 1997 report of the American Association of World Health, the food sale ban "has contributed to serious nutritional deficits, particularly among pregnant women, leading to an increase in low birth-weight babies. In addition, food shortages were linked to a devastating outbreak of neuropathy numbering in the tens of thousands. By one estimate, daily caloric intake dropped 33 percent between 1989 and 1993." The decisive offsetting consideration, however, was that Clinton was able to preserve some of his political support from the powerful Cuban lobby in Florida.

The most monumental of Clinton's war crimes, however, has been his policy of sanctions on Iraq, supplemented by the maintenance of intense satellite surveillance and regular bombing attacks that have often resulted in civilian casualties. UNICEF reports that in 1999 more than 1 million Iraqi children under 5 were suffering from chronic malnutrition, and some 4,000-5,000 children are dying per month beyond normal death rates from the combination of malnutrition and disease. Death from disease was greatly increased by the shortage of potable water and medicines, that has led to a 20-fold increase in malaria (among other ailments). This vicious sanctions system, causing a creeping extermination of a people, has already caused more than a million excess deaths, and it is claimed by John and Karl Mueller that Clinton's "sanctions of mass destruction" have caused "the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout all history" (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999). U.S. mainstream reporters, who have so eagerly followed the distress of the Kosovo Albanians, somehow never get to Iraq for pictures of the thousands of malnourished children.

U.S. Ieaders commit war crimes as a matter of institutional necessity, as their imperial role calls for keeping subordinate peoples in their proper place and assuring a "favorable climate of investment" everywhere. They do this by using their economic power, but also (by means of "bombs bursting in the air" and) by supporting Diem, Mobutu, Pinochet, Suharto, Savimbi, Marcos, Fujimori, Salinas, and scores of similar leaders. War crimes also come easily because U.S. Ieaders consider themselves to be the vehicles of a higher morality and truth and can operate in violation of law without cost. It is also immensely helpful that their mainstream media agree that their country is above the law and will support and rationalize each and every venture and the commission of war crimes.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/International_War_Crimes/ClintonWarCriminal_Herman.html

Television interview, "60 Minutes", May 12, 1996:

Lesley Stahl, speaking of US sanctions against Iraq:
"We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"

Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." <2>



Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes...known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few…No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
– James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

[papau]

9. Talk about over the top - wow - thanks for proving there are spinners on

the left.

Kurds who have died at the hands of a dozen nations for a 1000 years are Clinton's fault as the Turks fought the Kurdish rebels inside Turkey during Clinton's 8 years and he still support the government of Turkey. Try to get the GOP Congress to pass a resolution condemning the Turks for the Armenian walk to Syrian slavery (if you survived - over a million did not)

Then the factoid that daily caloric intake dropped 33 percent in Cuba between 1989 and 1993. And that the Clorine Ban Bush put on Iraq he had already put on Cuba - causing infant death from bad water. And the Lack of US food sales meant Cuba could not buy from Canada or some other nation.

WOW

The "U.S. Ieaders commit war crimes as a matter of institutional necessity, as their imperial role calls for keeping subordinate peoples in their proper place and assuring a "favorable climate of investment" everywhere. They do this by using their economic power, but also (by means of "bombs bursting in the air" and) by supporting Diem, Mobutu, Pinochet, Suharto, Savimbi, Marcos, Fujimori, Salinas, and scores of similar leaders. War crimes also come easily because U.S. Ieaders consider themselves to be the vehicles of a higher morality and truth and can operate in violation of law without cost. It is also immensely helpful that their mainstream media agree that their country is above the law and will support and rationalize each and every venture and the commission of war crimes." is an interesting list that drops some of the worst folks that we supported under the "cold war" excuse - and not any "investment" idea.

And I agree as to our media supporting big money in the US over all other moral thoughts.

[bemildred]

4. FWIW.

I am not convinced we would be in Iraq now if Big Dog was President. He's a smart man. But he went along with the policy, Hillary was a big fan of the Contras in Nicaragua, they are both pro-empire and all that.

I think one reason the Neocons were so desperate to get Shrub in the White House was precisely to continue with this policy, but it is nevertheless very telling that 95% of the DC political establishment was not willing to lift one finger to stop it.

[papau]

6. Very True - and thanks for the info on Hillary re the Contra's - I have

only had a few business meetings with her and those around her -and that dealt with the Health and tax changes in 93.

I had no clue that she was feeling positive toward the Contra's. I knew nothing of her politics pre-late 80's. That actually hurts her image with me a great deal.

I think the Neocons being pushed by the media - and the fear of the Dems in DC of the media - was a function of the stupid communications act that Bill signed - granted he got a few concessions but sometimes you must just say NO. Monopoly media power is one of our curses these days.

[pberq]

10. Big Dog and Hillary part of "the left"?

I don't consider these people part of the left. They are part of the DLC hijacking of the Democratic party.