- As the White House lame duck's Inferno in Iraq
and Afghanistan drags on, the wars on the home front continue to fester,
though with some red light at the end of the tunnel, observes Eric Walberg
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- The good, the bad...
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- New enemies in United States President George W Bush's
wars are popping up in unexpected places. The latest one is peaceful Europe,
where determined demonstrators and human rights lawyers recently ambushed
former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld at a breakfast meeting in Paris
organised by Foreign Policy magazine. He fled, fearing arrest over charges
of ordering and authorising torture of detainees at both Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq and in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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- It seems that even the election of an American-friendly
French president is no guarantee of immunity in gay Paris for American
officials anymore. Under international law, authorities in France are obliged
to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer
is on French soil. According to activists in France, who greeted Rumsfeld
with shouts of "murderer" and "war criminal", US Embassy
officials remained tight-lipped about the former defense secretary's whereabouts
citing security reasons. He was whisked off to Germany, where a similar
writ against him was quashed recently, but under the Schengen agreement
that ended border checkpoints across a large part of the European Union,
French law enforcement agents are allowed to cross the border into Germany
in pursuit of a fleeing fugitive. "Rumsfeld must be feeling how Saddam
Hussein felt when US forces were hunting him down," activist Tanguy
Richard said. "He may never end up being hanged like his old friend,
but he must learn that in the civilised world, war crime doesn't pay."
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- General Augusto Pinochet's arrest in Britain in 1999
is the most famous case of successfully arresting such a high level pro-Western
war criminal, though he managed to die in bed at home before any authorities
could bring him to book. Various Israelis have had to cut short their trips
abroad to avoid arrest, and now Rumsfeld has had a taste of this medicine.
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- The International Federation for Human Rights, the Centre
for Constitutional Rights, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human
Rights, and the French League for Human Rights filed the complaint after
learning that Rumsfeld was scheduled to visit Paris. This trend of pursuing
war criminals who like to travel does not portend well for many other participants
of Bush's regime. Just think of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz or the seemingly
harmless war criminal Condoleezza Rice. No concert tours of Europe in your
retirement, Dr Rice. Dubya had never travelled outside the US until shortly
before his "election" seven years ago, so he won't lose much
sleep if he can't see the Eiffel Tower in his twilight years.
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- The guilt for the many crimes that Bush and company have
perpetrated goes deep, and many figures will, like their Israeli counterparts,
have to have international lawyers on retainers, not to mention private
detectives and bodyguards, keeping track of legal proceedings against them
and/or possible acts of revenge. There are possibly millions of Iraqis,
Afghanis, Pakistanis, Brits, Americans - hey, victims and relatives of
victims of Bush's wars can be found in just about every country around
the world. The next few decades will not be easy for these unfortunate
folk.
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1824-27 engravings of Dante's Inferno by William
Blake
"Dante Running from the Three Beasts" (viz. Rumsfeld)
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- The creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC)
in 2002 was supposed to herald a new age where political leaders would
think twice before invading other countries illegally and torturing and
murdering foreign populations or even their own local people, as in the
case of Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Leaders from the latter have endured the
most famous prosecutions, though the trial of Slobodan Milosevich left
a bitter taste in many mouths, with the telltale odour of hypocrisy and
Western scheming, and Milosevich's suspicious death in the Hague still
raising questions.
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- The US under President Bill Clinton signed on to the
ICC but only to influence its agenda. There was never any intention of
submitting it to the Senate for ratification, and since then the US has
blackmailed and bullied anyone it could to sign so-called "Article
98 agreements". In 2003, the United States stopped military aid to
35 countries (among them nine European countries). In 2005, Angola became
the 100th country to cave in to US pressure to avoid the suspension of
military assistance and Economic Support Fund aid. In March 2006, Rice,
bless her heart, admitted that the US position on Article 98 agreements
was "sort of the same as shooting ourselves in the foot".
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- Amnesty International and the European Commission Legal
Service argue that these agreements are not valid, that Article 98 refers
to Status of Forces Agreements, mission agreements and extradition treaties,
not to a general exclusion for other states' nationals from being handed
over to the ICC. In October 2002, the Council of the EU adopted a common
position permitting member states to enter into Article 98 agreements with
the US, but not as general protection of US nationals. So US citizens are
still subject to prosecution by many of the 140 ICC member-countries, if
the unlucky parties can be nabbed while on foreign soil, even if those
countries have signed the suspect Article 98 agreements.
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- Too bad Rumsfeld didn't pay heed at the time to the warnings
of the senior diplomats who resigned in the months building up to Bush's
invasion of Iraq in 2003 in protest against his warmongering. John Brown,
who joined the State Department in 1981, said he resigned because he could
not support Washington's Iraq policy, which he said was fomenting a massive
rise in anti-US sentiment around the world. In a resignation letter to
secretary of state Colin Powell, Brown said he agreed with John Brady Kiesling,
a diplomat at the US Embassy in Athens who had quit in February over Bush's
apparent intent on invading Iraq.
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- "I am joining my colleague in submitting my resignation
from the Foreign Service effective immediately because I cannot in good
conscience support President Bush's war plans against Iraq. Throughout
the globe, the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified
use of force," Brown said in the letter, a copy of which he sent to
Agence France Presse. "The president's disregard for views in other
nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth
to an anti-American century. I joined the Foreign Service because I love
our country. Respectfully, Mr Secretary, I am now bringing this calling
to a close, with a heavy heart but for the same reason that I embraced
it."
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- Clearly these honourable diplomats resigned rather than
waited for their pensions, realising that this was their only meaningful
way of protesting against the escalation of US crimes abroad. Maybe they
also wanted to be able to take pictures of the Eiffel Tower in their old
age. Imagine how humiliating, if you are a thinking person and have any
ethical standards at all, to have to defend with a straight face the current
policies of the US government, year in, year out, that is, until you get
your head blown off by one of the millions of people wishing to avenge
their personal loss.
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- ... and the ugly
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- The main theatre of Bush's war on the home front has
been the State Department. The front opened with his unprecedented appointment
of a general as secretary of state, though Colin Powell was probably one
of the most "diplomatic" of Bush's appointments. Powell proved
to be a relative wimp around the White House, and resigned in relief after
four years of being forced to spout most undiplomatic lies. Condoleezza
Rice's ascendancy to the post, which made slightly more sense considering
she was a professor of foreign relations, should have been greeted with
relief by the staff. But the underlying tensions between State and Defense
continue to fester - perhaps metastasise is a more appropriate term. The
US military quietly and repeatedly complains that its forces have been
pressed into service in so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs)
that should have been filled by State, Commerce and Agriculture Department
personnel. Yes, enlisted soldiers can be ordered to go anywhere, and apparently
for indefinitely extended tours of duty, unlike the laid-back civilians.
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"The Harlot and the giant" (viz. Rice and Gates)
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- But this is changing for the better, at least from the
armed forces' point of view with two new developments on the home front
portending the creeping militarisation of State. First, the State Department
has said it will "require" its diplomats to staff its embassy
in Iraq due to a lack of volunteers. The assignments are limited to one
year, unlike the usual 2-3 year extendible foreign postings, and Iraq has
the highest pay of all, including an astounding five free trips home during
the 12-month postings. Forty to 50 new posts will be added next year to
the 200 jobs at the embassy, the biggest in the world. There are few takers,
despite a standing offer of two salaried years learning Arabic prior to
going to Iraq. According to Harry Thomas, state department human resource
director, only those with compelling reasons, such as medical problems
or extreme personal hardships, will be exempt from disciplinary action
for refusing to go. "We have all taken an oath to serve our country
and so if someone decides they do not want to go, then we would consider
appropriate actions. We have many options, including dismissal from the
foreign service."
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- This new directive created a storm, and the usually quiet
corridors of State were the scene of a noisy protest earlier this month.
A meeting of 300 diplomats, infuriated at the move sprung without any notice
or discussion, confronted Thomas. Jack Croddy, a senior foreign service
officer and ex-NATO political adviser, told the meeting, "I'm sorry,
but basically this is a potential death sentence and you know it. Who will
raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded?" One veteran
of a nightmare posting in Basra, Rachel Schnelling, appealed to Thomas,
"we have a moral imperative as an agency to take care of people who
come back with war wounds. I asked for treatment and I didn't get any of
it," she said in comments greeted with a standing ovation.
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- American Foreign Service Association President John Naland
said a recent survey found only 12 per cent of the union's membership believed
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was "fighting for them".
Thomas shot back, "Don't you or anybody else stand there and tell
me I don't care about my colleagues. I am insulted." When he had calmed
down, he went on to explain that the State Department had made "directed"
assignments before, such as in 1969 when an entire junior foreign officer
class was sent to Vietnam. Thomas pooh-poohed suggestions that young Americans
would be deterred from joining the foreign service given the increasingly
criminal nature of US activities abroad and the need by the diplomatic
corps to defend and even promote these actions. "After Google and
Disney, we are the most popular place for people to work," Thomas
said, referring to a recent survey. Of course, this can be interpreted
in a less kindly light - American youth are living in blissful ignorance
of the world, fed cultural pap the likes of Mickey Mouse, and don't know
what they're in for.
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- Besides having to live in war zones and defend the criminal
policies which the military is busy carrying out at present, another gripe
that the diplos have with the military is their reliance on mercenaries
to protect them, since the army is unable to do so. Richard Griffin, assistant
secretary of state for diplomatic security, recently resigned (in protest?
disgrace?) after the release of a damning report on the lack of adequate
monitoring of the Blackwater security firm. Within hours, the Iraqi government
revoked the immunity from prosecution granted to private security firms.
The most infamous incident of Blackwater's policy of "shoot first,
ask later" was on 16 September in which employees of Blackwater killed
17 innocent Iraqis in Baghdad. The guards were escorting a US state department
convoy.
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- Despite the Iraqi government's attempts to legislate
otherwise, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) stipulates that the
"multinational force, foreign liaison missions, their personnel, property,
funds and assets and all international consultants shall be immune from
Iraqi legal process". Good thing for the Aussies and Brits, as murder
and pillage are not limited to the US private thugs. On 9 October Australian
Unity Resources Group guards fired upon a car in central Baghdad killing
two women, and on 18 October guards of a British security company fired
on a car wounding three people. And this is only the tip of the massive
mercenary iceberg in Iraq, which no one bothers (or allows) keeping tabs
on. It's not at all clear that it is legal for diplomats to be hiring mercenaries
to "protect" them, and again, who wants to face the possibility
of being charged as an accomplice to murder or whatever years down the
line in some tinpot European country?
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- But a second development in the ongoing militarisation
of State has been courtesy of the military's new allies in the diplomats'
own Ivory Tower colleagues. The US Army and Marine Corps recently published
its new Counterinsurgency Field Manual (No. 3-24), its new Little Red Book,
at the prestigious University of Chicago Press, tastefully printed in a
camouflage, faux-field ready edition, designed to slip into flack jackets
or Urban Outfitter accessory bags. General (Dr) David Petraeus himself
wrote the forward along with posterboy Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, and
Harvard JFK School of Government's Sarah Sewell the introduction. It has
spawned a minor media orgy, with sexy Nagl decked out in parade dress pitching
it in Newsweek and on all the TV networks as Petraeus's intellectually
fuelled "smart bomb" - the secret weapon for victory in Iraq.
In what looks like a surprise meeting of minds with the armchair diplomats
the Manual is being hyped by all as a move away from the crude logic of
"shock and awe" in the common goal of pacifying the natives,
or as it's called in newspeak, "winning hearts and minds", through
a new appreciation of local culture. The big stick's "speak softly".
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"Lucifer" (decide yourself)
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- A co-author, one of a supposedly new breed of warrior-
anthropologists, Montgomery McFate (curiously a woman), PhD (Yale), is
currently the US Army's Human Terrain System's senior social science adviser.
Human Terrain Teams (HTTs) - I'm not making this up - are now embedding
anthropologists with troops operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, using ethnographic
knowledge to advise and inform troops in the field while travelling with
armed escorts (Blackwater, anyone?) and are, in some instances, themselves
armed and wearing uniforms, yet McFate incredibly maintains that these
anthropologists are in compliance with basic anthropological ethical standards,
that terrified locals used in research projects participate under conditions
of "voluntary informed consent". When asked how voluntary ethical
informed consent was produced in the presence of occupation soldiers and
mercenaries, McFate told writer and anthropologist David Price that was
not a problem because "indigenous local people out in rural Afghanistan
are smart, and they can draw a distinction between a lethal unit of the
US military and a non-lethal unit."
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- Not surprisingly, it turns out the Manual was cribbed
from many unacknowledged sources, including T E Lawrence, whose services
to British imperialism in the Middle East won him a knighthood (which he
curiously refused) almost a century ago, belying the argument that such
intellectuals constitute a "new breed". Whether these latter-day
Machiavellis plagiarise each other or not is hard to get too worked up
about when the Baghdad Museum is ransacked and a country destroyed, helped
along by the CPA, HTTs and PRTs, and it is unlikely that this Manual will
win any more hearts and minds than the shock-and-awe bombing, but it is
winning hearts and minds in America, apparently convincing an avalanche
of American youth to opt for the foreign service instead of Disney. A truly
sad testament to the state of US youth and scholarship, prostituting themselves
as cheerleaders for war criminals. Nagl gets it right in his sound byte
on the popular Daily Show: "If I could sum up the book in just a few
words, it would be: 'Be polite, be professional, be prepared to kill."
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- Veiled conscription and now the Manual reveal the militarisation
of both the form and content of American diplomacy. Reality is imitating
art, in this case, the art of war. The thugs are winning not only on the
home front, but in the battlefield, where PRTs blur into HTTs, both staffed
with diplomats and their grad student colleagues, bringing the now-conscripted
diplomats' war-diplomacy smack-dab into the hearts and minds of the terrified
natives who haven't yet become collateral damage to the occupation forces'
war.
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- But this is exactly what happened in Vietnam, so there
is really nothing terribly new here. When you have a warmonger in the White
House, who happens to be both departments' boss by the way, war trumps
diplomacy. It doesn't take a nuclear physicist to figure that one out.
And the red glow at the end of the tunnel makes the end result look more
like a red-light district for the diplos. Not to worry, the soldiers will
be sure to come and visit.
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- But seriously, there are many generals and soldiers who
dislike the wars they are being forced to fight just as much as the vast
majority of US intellectuals and diplos. If only these antagonists could
focus their wrath on their common real enemy staring at them from the other
end of the tunnel. There's lots of antiwar sentiment and awareness of the
duplicity of the Bush regime, as the ongoing countrywide demonstrations
show. This is a lose-lose situation for everyone apart from Bush's cronies.
All the grounds to impeach their boss are in place, just waiting for a
catalyst.
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- And with Democratic congressman and presidential candidate
Dennis Kucinich's motion last week to impeach Vice-President Richard Cheney,
Bush's Divine Comedy Part II - the Purgatory - is beginning to unfold,
however haltingly. Kucinich didn't dare to attack Bush himself, focussing
on Cheney's lies about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and
ties to Al-Qaeda, and his threats of war against Iran. The resolution was
referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where it will no doubt languish.
Bush effectively built himself a firewall against impeachment long ago
by declaring a state of war. To impeach a president-at-war and admit to
the world that his wars were illegal would be unprecedented in history
and is virtually impossible. This volume of Bush's biography will take
a long time to write.
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- ***
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- Eric Walberg is a Canadian journalist at Al-Ahram Weekly
in Cairo. You can reach him at www.geocities.com/walberg2002/
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- Be a better pen pal. Text or chat with friends inside
Yahoo! Mail. See how.???
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