Worldview Blog

Presidential Frontrunners and Human Rights
13 January 2008

Nairn and Vlahos blast all frontrunners

We take it for granted that our presidential candidates are at least decent human beings, even if we don't agree with all of their policy (insofar as they even have one). Be prepared for a shock! It is hard to dismiss the evidence presented in this video from Democracy Now, in which Amy Goodman interviews Allan Nairn and Kelley Beaucar Vlahos. The discussion focuses on the track records of the chief foreign policy advisors to the frontrunners. Even allowing for some interpretation and mitigating circumstances, which I will try to address, their fundamental conclusion seems correct, namely, that foreign life means little when it comes to US interests and the ambition of American politicians. Keep that in mind next time you fall in love with Obama's soaring rhetoric.

ATROCITY-LINKED US OFFICIALS
ADVISING PRESIDENTIAL FRONTRUNNERS
Democracy Now!, 3 January 2008

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, I think one thing you could say about the advisers for all the candidates who have a chance is that the presence of these advisers makes it clear that these candidates aren't serious about enforcing the murder laws and that they're willing to kill civilians, foreign civilians, en masse in order to advance US policy. And they're not serious about law and order. They're soft on crime.

And start with Clinton:

Madeleine Albright, she was the main force behind the Iraq sanctions that killed more than 400,000 Iraqi civilians.

General Wesley Clark, he was the one who ran the bombing of Serbia in the former Yugoslavia, came out and publicly said that he was going after civilian targets, like electrical plants, like the TV station there.

Richard Holbrooke, in the Carter administration he was the one who oversaw the shipment of weapons to the Indonesian military as they were invading — illegally invading East Timor and killing a third of the population there, and he was the one who kept the UN Security Council from enforcing its resolution against that invasion.

Strobe Talbott, he was the one who, during the Clinton administration, oversaw Russia policy, a backing of Yeltsin, which resulted in turning over the national wealth to the oligarchs and a drop in life expectancy in much of Russia of about fifteen years — massive, massive death.

And you have various backers of the Iraq invasion and occupation and the recent escalation, people like General Jack Keane, Michael O'Hanlon and others. That's just Clinton.

AMY GOODMAN: Barack Obama?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Obama's top adviser is

Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski gave an interview to the French press a number of years ago where he boasted about the fact that it was he who created the whole Afghan jihadi movement, the movement that produced Osama bin Laden. And he was asked by the interviewer, 'Well, don't you think this might have had some bad consequences?' And Brzezinski replied, 'Absolutely not. It was definitely worth it, because we were going after the Soviets. We were getting the Soviets.' [. . .]

Another key Obama adviser, Anthony Lake, he was the main force behind the US invasion of Haiti in the mid-Clinton years during which they brought back Aristide essentially in political chains, pledged to support a World Bank/IMF overhaul of the economy, which resulted in an increase in malnutrition deaths among Haitians and set the stage for the current ongoing political disaster in Haiti.

Another Obama adviser, General Merrill McPeak, an Air Force man, who not long after the Dili massacre in East Timor in '91 that you and I survived, he was — I happened to see on Indonesian TV shortly after that — there was General McPeak overseeing the delivery to Indonesia of US fighter planes.

Another key Obama adviser, Dennis Ross. Ross, for many years under both Clinton and Bush 2, a key — he has advised Clinton and both Bushes. He oversaw US policy toward Israel/Palestine. He pushed the principle that the legal rights of the Palestinians, the rights recognized under international law, must be subordinated to the needs of the Israeli government — in other words, their desires, their desires to expand to do whatever they want in the Occupied Territories. And Ross was one of the people who, interestingly, led the political assault on former Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Carter, no peacenik — I mean, Carter is the one who bears ultimate responsibility for that Timor terror that Holbrooke was involved in. But Ross led an assault on him, because, regarding Palestine, Carter was so bold as to agree with Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa that what Israel was doing in the Occupied Territories was tantamount to apartheid. And so, Ross was one of those who fiercely attacked him.

Another Obama adviser, Sarah Sewall, who heads a human rights center at Harvard and is a former Defense official, she wrote the introduction to General Petraeus's Marine Corps/Army counterinsurgency handbook, the handbook that is now being used worldwide by US troops in various killing operations. That's the Obama team.

AMY GOODMAN: John Edwards?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Edwards is a little different. The list of his foreign advisers is not as complete, so it's not as clear exactly where they may be coming from, but it's interesting. Last night on TV, one of the top Edwards advisers, 'Mudcat' Saunders, was complaining about the fact that there are 35,000 lobbyists in Washington. And it appears, from the Edwards list, that many of the military lobbyists are working on the Edwards foreign policy team, because the names that — the Edwards names that are out there mainly come from the Army and the Air Force and the Navy Material Command. Those are the portions of the Pentagon that do the Defense contracts, that do the deals with the big companies like Raytheon and Boeing, etc. One of those listed on the Edwards team is the lobbyist for the big military contractor EADS. So, although Edwards talks about going after lobbyists, if he tries to go after the military lobbyists, he may get a little blowback from his own advisers.

My analysis

Ouch! Nairn names names and makes specific accusations. Are his charges fair and accurate? Based on my knowledge to date, here is my quick response.

Madeleine Albright might argue that we had to 'contain' Saddam, and that sanctions were preferable to going to war. Scott Ritter, the former UN arms inspector, whom I have come to respect as an authoritative voice, insists that Saddam was disarmed by the summer of 1991. After that, according to Ritter, Clinton was really interested in a policy of regime change, like his successor George W. Bush. Regime change is just another word for pre-emptive attack, like Pearl Harbor, which is outlawed by the Geneva Conventions, to which we are signatory. Even if there had been a valid military reason to choke Saddam, the question remains whether an embargo that killed 400,000 innocents was not a war crime. The Geneva Conventions explicitly outlaw the deliberate targeting of noncombatants. Clinton and Albright might argue that we were targeting Saddam, and he bears the responsibility for making his people suffer. Or one could argue that the sanctions were nearly certain to make the population suffer and die, precisely because a dictator like Saddam would ensure that they did. Thus they were equivalent to targeting civilians. I lean towards the latter view. In general, sanctions are ineffective against tough enemies and simply make innocents suffer. The sheer number of victims drives some sanctions into the category of war crime, when the effects are severe enough to lead to disease and mass death. Sanctions satisfy the need to 'do something' about a perceived problem, short of going to war. And if Saddam was indeed disarmed, as claimed by Ritter, then the sanctions were doubly reprehensible.

Why stake so much on Ritter, you ask? Because of his intelligence, cogency, experience and excellent track record. One gains confidence in an 'expert' over time, by corroborating his story with all other available information. You can start by studying the material presented in the link. His lack of high-status credentials, such as degrees from the most prestigious universities, is of no importance. If anything, membership in the establishment should raise some red flags.

On to Richard Holbrooke. It seems clear to me, from reading various articles, that Indonesia's invasion of East Timor and subsequent behavior was outright genocide, which we allowed and even abetted due to Suharto being an 'ally'. Nairn's charges are specific and damning, as far as I can tell (provided they are true). Holbrooke was also involved in the bombing of the Serbs in 1999, which seemed 'humanitarian' at the time, but in fact amounted to taking sides in a civil war, according to Edward Herman. (The Serbs committed atrocities, but so did the KLA.) So much belligerence from 'liberal' Democrats!

Talbott and others (e.g. Jeffrey Sachs) would argue that we were just trying to help Russia become democratic and capitalistic. However, I agree that the sudden shock treatment, which allowed a small group of well-positioned thieves to plunder the state wealth, amounted to a crime against the Russian people. Intentions do not matter. And speaking of intentions, was the robber capitalism under Yeltsin so very different from business as usual in America? Well, let us not digress.

As for the other Hillary Clinton advisors who were in favor of the disastrous Iraq war, this only confirms that Hillary's refusal to repudiate her vote means what critics think it means. By the way, as I have often argued on my pages, there was in fact plenty of evidence that Iraq had no WMD, available in plain English and for free on the website of the IAEA. It was not an honest mistake. But no apology from Hillary, who cares more for the esteem of our imperial establishment than for the opinion of an ignorant and divided public, which can always be swayed by rhetoric and theatrics, like the recent and ridiculous tear episode.

Unfortunately, it is now clear that Obama is no less interested in currying favor with the imperial establishment. Again, he must be calculating that the informed antiwar vote is not enough to worry about, and the uninformed antiwar vote can always be manipulated with rhetoric. This gives a chillingly hypocritical tinge to his preachy oratory. In a way, Hillary seems honest in comparison.

Perhaps it is a bit unfair to dump on Brzezinski, who has recently made a point on TV that the age of colonial interference is over. He has called the Iraq war a disaster and called for a withdrawal. That suggests some change of heart since his Cold War days with Carter. Perhaps he even understands the blowback from aiding the Mujahedeen. And he doesn't seem to hate Muslims, which is a good thing. Notwithstanding his responsibility for helping to create Al Qaeda, however unwittingly, he may be one of Obama's better advisors. Of course, Obama could have turned to a Chalmers Johnson, but dream on!

I suppose the charges against Lake and McPeak are essentially correct. I wasn't following politics so much in those days and haven't bothered to study Haiti. As I just said, Indonesia's invasion of East Timor was an outright war crime, and any complicity in that must be treated accordingly.

Nairn's judgment of Dennis Ross depends on your view of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In the last year or so, I have come to accept that Israel basically wants to strangle the Palestinians out of the West Bank, regardless of whether the government is Labor or Likud. While I support the existence of Israel, I am fair enough to realize that a great injustice was done to the Palestinians. It seems rather evident that a two-state partition more or less along the 1967 borders is the only fair solution. The US has claimed to be an 'honest broker', but this is nonsense. The US has been squarely on Israel's side, due to the power of the Israel Lobby (not 'Jewish Lobby' — there are plenty of Christian religious nuts in the Israel Lobby and plenty of Jews critical of Israel's policy in the West Bank). As a chief negotiator in the 'peace process', Ross has been fully complicit in America's hypocrisy. It would be an insult to the Palestinians to put him in charge of further negotiations.

Well, that's enough. Regardless of whether one would like to add a bit of 'nuance' to the charges of Nairn and Vlahos, the fact is that their essential conclusion is correct. With the three leading Democratic candidates — and of course with all Republicans other than Ron Paul — the bipartisan imperial strategy emerges unscathed from the Iraq disaster. It is fascinating to observe how the generally antiwar public is being taken for a bunch of fools. Perhaps that is because they are. (But blame the corporate media. That's right — 'corporate media'.)

Let's not get too cynical about Obama

UPDATE (17 Jan 08): Robert Parry has an article suggesting we shouldn't get too cynical about Obama on the war. He did oppose it at the beginning, unlike Hillary. He may have supported funding for the troops since then, but one could argue that not doing so would be political suicide, especially for a presidential candidate. We must not allow ourselves to be spun by ruthless warhawk and professional politician Hillary Clinton! The perfect can be the enemy of the good! (But read Stephen Zunes, who is beginning to appear to me as one of the best informed and most even-handed of the progressive commentators on foreign policy. And John Pilger is always outspoken and speaks from many years of direct experience. Read what he says about Robert Kennedy. Very depressing, given the status of that icon in liberal hagiography.)

Robert Parry: Will Anyone Pay for the Iraq War?

John Pilger: The Danse Macabre of US-Style Democracy

Stephen Zunes: Hillary Clinton's Illiberal Belligerence

Stephen Zunes: Barack Obama on the Middle East

Stephen Zunes: A Progressive Looks at John Edwards

Alternet: Entire GOP (minus Ron Paul) embraces Iraq war (video)

Ted Kennedy endorses Obama

UPDATE (28 Jan 08): I have to get a bit optimistic over Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Obama. Whatever Pilger may say of RFK, Ted has earned my respect by opposing the war in no uncertain terms before it began. Also, he seems to have been resolutely fighting all these years for a progressive domestic agenda, at least as much as any other politician. These virtues may not automatically translate to Obama, but if Kennedy's move gives Obama the boost to win, then I would hope that some kind of permanent bond arises and Obama remains receptive to Ted's advice. Indeed, allow me to indulge in even more naivete: People are drawn to Obama because he seems to have a genuinely positive personality. Perhaps he does! And perhaps that will make the difference after all in momentous matters of war and peace. Beneath the thin veneer of rationality, many of our most important decisions are made according to instincts that reflect our basic personality. Let's hope Obama's is not a carefully cultivated fraud.

NOW-NY: Kennedy's endorsement the 'ultimate betrayal' of women

Christopher Hitchens: No surprise Clintons are playing the race card

Ralph Nader blasts the Clintons in an email to supporters

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