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EXCLUSIVE! HOW THE FBI SPIED ON EDWARD SAID

First look at secret files: How G-Men kept Said under surveillance from 1971. David Price traces years of snooping on US's best known Palestinian Bush says 30,000 dead in Iraq but real number caused by 2003 US attack is AT LEAST 180,000, maybe twice that as Andrew Cockburn digs out the real numbers Is the US Constitution worth saving? Hmmm, maybe ... New York Times takes a year to make up its mind. Cockburn and St Clair on NYT and NSA ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now!

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Today's Stories

January 5, 2006

Gilad Atzmon
Sharon Meets His Maker

January 4, 2006

Ron Jacobs
Pity the Miner: A-Diggin' My Bones

Lila Rajiva
Terror Hits Bangalore

Huibin Amee Chew
Why the War is Sexist

Pat Williams
How the West Turned: Biting the Hands That Steal

Linda Milazzo
The House That George and Jack Built: Ownership Society Meets the Entrepreneurial Style

Nick Dearden
The Fantasy of "Even-Handedness": Blair's Cynical Policy on Palestine

James Petras
Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws?

Website of the Day
Rat Out a Lobbyist for Jesus

 

January 3, 2006

James Ridgeway
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and 9/11: How Much Did the Bush Administration Know?

Laith al-Saud
Iraqi Intellectuals and the Occupation: an Interview with Dr. Saad Jawad

Dick J. Reavis
Border Walls: the View from Mexico

Joshua Frank
Hillary Clinton, AIPAC and Iran

Rochelle Gause
Inside Rafah: Collective Punishment as Normalcy

Missy Comley Beattie
How My Mother Went from a Republican to a Screaming Progressive

Paul de Rooij
A Glossary of Dispossession

 

January 2, 2006

Paul Craig Roberts
A Gestapo Administration

Clancy Sigal
A Trip to the Far Side of Madness

Cindy Sheehan
A Tour of Europe: Friends Don't Let Friends Commit War Crimes

Alexander Cockburn
A NYT Editorial Contemplates Iraq

 

Dec. 31 / Jan. 1, 2005/6

Patrick Cockburn
The Year in Iraq

Alexander Cockburn
Who Are We to Complain?: a Diary of 2005

Ralph Nader
Rumsfeld vs. the Military: a Pentagon of Loyalists and Enforcers

James Petras
The Politics of Language: "Escalation" or "Retaliation" in Israeli Attacks on Palestinians

Peter Montague
A Darker Bioweapons Future

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Black Forever: Race, Class and Activism in the South

Vijay Prashad
My California Vacation: Conversations with Indian Americans

P. Sainath
Farm Suicides in Vidharbha

James Brooks
The Spoils of War: Israel's Corruption was Inevitable

Eileen E. Schell
The Farmer Wants a Wife: Hayseeds and Hickxploitation in the Land of Reality TV

Christopher Brauchli
Birds of a Feather: George and Vlad

Jo Guldi
Politics, Gay Marriage and Christianity

Fred Gardner
America's Only Legal Grower

Ben Tripp
A Hapless New Year

St. Clair / Walker / Pollack
Playlists: What We're Listening To This Week

Poets Basement
Engel, Albert, LaMorticella, Buknatski, Davies, Ford and Bear Dog

Website of the Weekend
Commit Bloggamy with Dr. Suzy

 

December 30,2005

Evo Morales
I Believe Only in the Power of the People

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The Toxic Air in Black America

Dave Lindorff
Bush's NSA Spying Jeopardizes National Security

Gary Leupp
Targeting Iran and Syria: Goss Builds Case for Turkey-Based Attacks

Ron Jacobs
A Dead New Year's Eve

Brian Concannon
Down in Haiti, the Chickens are Coming Home to Roost

Sandra Lucas
Inside TeenScreen: the Making of Mental Patients

T.W. Croft
The Wind Has Changed: Gulf Storms, Fables of Reconstruction and Hard Times for the Big Easy

Website of the Day
Images of Mass Consumption

 

December 29, 2005

Norman Solomon
Journalists Should Expose Secrets, Not Keep Them

Missy Comley Beattie
Christmas Without Chase

Dave Zirin
Over the Edge: the Year in Sports

Kevin Zeese
Top 10 Antiwar Stories of 2005

Derrick O'Keefe
Bolivia and Venezuela Offer an Alternative to Neo-Liberalism

Sam Bahour
Turning the Page in Palestine, Again

Macdonald Stainsby
What's Behind Paul Martin's Broadside Against Bush?

Bill & Kathleen Christison
Let's Stop a US/Israel War on Iran

Website of the Day
Deconstructing the Democrats

 

December 28, 2005

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Worst Day of Ted Stevens' Life?

Lila Rajiva
Operation Romeo: Lessons on Terror Laws from India

Amira Hass
The Humanitarian Lie

Joshua Frank
Let the Drilling Begin: Iraq's IMF Loan

David Swanson
Leaking Top Secret Lies

Richard Thieme
High Time for Torture

Paul Craig Roberts
Three Books to Wake You Up

Website of the Day
Conyers Report: "Constitution in Crisis"

 

December 27, 2005

Evan Jones
Whither the National Guard?

Uri Avnery
The Peretz Shuffle

Mike Whitney
Pop Goes the Bubble!

Gideon Levy
Dusty Trail to Death

David Swanson
Kurt Vonnegut: a Man Without a Country

Norman Solomon
NSA Spied on UN Diplomats During Push for Invasion of Iraq

 

December 26, 2005

Lawrence R. Velvel
The Usurpers of Our Freedoms

Lance Olsen
The Toughest Challenge for Intelligent Design

Ben Terrall
No Holiday Compassion for Haiti's Political Prisoners

Scott Boehm
Santa Drove a Bulldozer

Charlie Ehlen
A Vietnam Vet's Appraisal of Bush

Tom Kerr
The Atheist Dad at Christmas

 

December 24/25, 2005

Aleander Cockburn
The Year of Vanished Credibility

James Petras
Iran in the Crosshairs: Israel's Deadline

Ralph Nader
Talkin' About the "I"-Word

Lila Rajiva
Horowitz's New Project: Begging for Brownshirts

Fred Gardner
Dialogue with the DEA

Ron Jacobs
When Impeachment was Taken Seriously

Dave Lindorff
Xmas Games for a Gitmo World

Gary Leupp
Happy Birthday Mithras!: the True Meaning of December 25th

Saul Landau
Bush's Year in Review: a Report Card from Santa

John Chuckman
A Christmas Tale for Bushtime

Dr. Susan Block
Merry XXX-mas!

St. Clair / Vest / Pollack / Donnelly
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Holt, Jones, Landau, Ross and Albert

Website of the Weekend
Merry Xmas, From the Beatles

 

December 23, 2005

John Ross
The Corrido of Death Row: Mexico Ends the Death Penalty

Chris Floyd
Gospel Truth: Bush Hypocrisy, Radical Holiness and Woody Guthrie

Lawrence Mishel / Ross Eisenbrey
The Economy in a Nutshell

Joanne Mariner
Bringing Torture into Court: the Loopholes in McCain's Bill

Eric Johnson-Debaufre
The Trew Law of Free Democracies?

Ray McGovern
Cheney the Bully; Rockefeller the Coward

J. L. Chestnut, Jr.
What White America Doesn't Hear

Website of the Day
BB King: What I've Learned This Year

 

December 22, 2005

Ingmar Lee
The Citizen's Metamorphosis: I Awoke an Object of Suspicion

Elisa Salasin
Classrooms in Cages

Christopher Brauchli
Absolut Bush: "I Swear to Upturn and Rear End the Constitution of the United States"

Robin Blackburn
Rudolf Meidner, a Visionary Pragmatist

Evelyn Pringle
Dan Olmstead, Autism & the Dangers of Thimerosal

Amira Hass
A 14-Year Old's Prison Journey: "I Refused and He Hit Me"

Francis A. Boyle
Iraq and the Laws of War: US as "Belligerent Occupant"

Stew Albert
The Spies Who Thought We Were Messy

Website of the Day
How to Reach a Human Voice

 

December 21, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
One Nation, Under Prosecutors: Presumed Guilty

Lila Rajiva
A Short History of Radio Free Iraq

Joshua Frank
Nancy Pelosi's Truth

Dave Zirin
The Bray of Pigs: Bush Nixes Beisbol Cubano

Ramzy Baroud
US Image Problem Rooted in History, Not Media

Sonia Nettnin
Connect the Dots: Decoding Bush's Mumbo Jumbo

Ben Saul
Torture as Calculated Policy

Jonathan Cronin
Anniversary of a Handshake: Cherry-picking History in Iraq

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Election Spells Total Defeat for US

Website of the Day
Nixon on Presidential Power

 

December 20, 2005

Jackie Corr
Natural Gas: a Montana Tragedy

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Nothing New About NSA Spying on Americans

Michael Donnelly
"Eco Terrorism": Cui Bono?

Gian Paulo Accardo
Empire of Shame: a Conversation with Jean Ziegler

Pierre Tristam
Trifler, Fibber, Sophist, Spy: How Bush Flouted the Constitution

Norman Solomon
The Foulest Media Performances of the Year

Sen. Robert Byrd
No President is Above the Law

Dave Lindorff
Missing Black Boxes in WTC Attacks Found by Firefighters, Analyzed by NTSB, Concealed by FBI

Website of the Day
FBI's Spy Files: Got Yours Yet?

 

December 19, 2005

Mike Marqusee
The Global War on Civil Liberties

Gary Leupp
Feds Ask Student: "Why are You Reading that Little Red Book?"

Ron Jacobs
The Antiwar Movement, the Democrats and the Delusions of Bushworld

John Blair
Stealing the Golden Shovel: Lessons on Civil Disobedience

Gideon Levy
Sadism at the Qalandiyah Checkpoint

Kevin Zeese
The Global War on Civil Liberties

Missy Comley Beattie
Warnings from a Military Man and Dad

Don Santina
Ride 'Em Brush Cutter: Cowboy Imagery and the American Presidency

Website of the Day
A Call for Justice in Palestine

 

December 17 / 18, 2005

Cockburn / St. Clair
Time-Delayed Journalism: the NYT and the NSA's Illegal Spying Operation

Gabriel Kolko
The Decline of the American Empire

Susan Alcorn
Texas: Three Days and Two Nights

Werther
The Democrats are an Impotent and Tolerated Opposition Party

Ralph Nader
The Senator Without Guile: Proxmire of Wisconsin

Patrick Cockburn
Counting Ballots and Bodies in Baghdad

Fred Gardner
When Prosecutors Deceive: Did the Feds Frame Bryan Epis?

Dave Lindorff
Spy Scandal Far Larger Than Just NSA

Ned Sublette
Essence is Gasoline

Lee Sustar
The Class War Economy

Jason Leopold
Did Karl Rove Destroy Evidence in Plame Case?

Laura Carlsen
Report from Hong Kong: Deciphering the Language of Globalization

Jeff White
Teacher Fired for Talking About Peace?

Ray McGovern
Torture Between the Lines

Chris Floyd
Pale Fire: the White Death of Fallujah

William Loren Katz
Remembering the First Quagmire at Xmastime: Zachary Taylor vs. the Seminoles

Rose Miriam Elizalde
Mashenka and the Bear: a Tale for Our Time

Greg Moses
Pinter's Provocation: Self Love in America

Heather Gray
Privatizing the Social Contract

Alison Weir
My Bethlehem Experience: the Sequel

St Clair / Walker / Pollack
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Landau, Engel and Albert

Website of the Day
At Least Homeland Security Believes that Mao Still Matters

 

December 16, 2005

Tom Kerr
CNN's Goddess of Vengeance: What's Not to Love About Nancy Grace?

Mark Engler
The WTO in Hong Kong: Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty?

John Bomar
When Ollie North Came to Hot Springs

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Votes; Now What?

Pierre Tristam
Iraq, Ourselves

William S. Lind
The Fine Art of Withdrawal

Cyril Neville
Why I'm Not Going Back to New Orleans

Robert Jensen
Monkey See, Monkey Do: Reason, Evolution and Intelligent Design

Saul Landau
Bolivian Democracy and the US: a History Lesson

Website
CounterPunch & Dr. Price Vanquish Anthropologist Spies

 

December 15, 2005

Oren Ben-Dor
The Ethical and Legal Challenges Facing Palestine

Stan Cox
"Agroterrorists" Needn't Bother

Joshua Frank
Organic Inconsistencies: Federal Food Politics

Ben Terrall
Waivers for State Terror: Bush and the Indonesian Generals

Patrick Cockburn
Silence Descends on Baghdad

Monica Benderman
What Peace Needs

Walter A. Davis
Fear and Loathing in San Quentin

Vijay Prashad
Our Torture Problem

Website of the Day
Hourly Wages After Four Years of "Recovery"


December 14, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Iran Poised to Win Iraqi Elections

Paul Craig Roberts
Lethal Developments

Lawrence R. Velvel
A Bore Called Bob: On Trying to Read Woodward

Wayne Garcia
The Summer of Sami

John Sugg
Preach Peace, Sami; Get Truthful Prosecutors

Gary Leupp
Bush and the Constitution: "Just a Goddamned Piece of Paper"

Ray McGovern
Torture: a Defining Moment

Alan Maass
They Murdered a Peacemaker

April Hurley, MD
NPR Swallows Bush's Guestimate on Iraqi Dead

Kevin Alexander Gray
Richard Pryor's Mirror on America

 

December 13, 2005

Stephen T. Banko, III
Heroes

Patrick Cockburn
America's War So Far: 1000 Days of Getting It Wrong

Laura Carlsen
What's at Play at the WTO

Karl Grossman
Nuclear Routlette in the Troposhere: Another NASA Plutonium Launch

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Original Sin

Kevin Zeese
Report from the International Peace Conference in London

Norman Solomon
At the Gates of San Quentin

Michael G. Smith
Ending the Death Penalty

Stew Albert
California Killers

Bob Dylan
Song for Tookie: George Jackson

Phil Gasper
California Murders Tookie Williams: a Report from San Quentin

Website of the Day
Boot Hill

 

December 12, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
The Defenders of Torture

Lawrence R. Velvel
George the Disconnected

Jessica Stewart
My Husband is at the Gates of Gitmo

George Bisharat
Busharon: a Fusion of Like Minds

Nate Mezmer
Killing Tookie Williams: If a Black Man Dies in America, Does It Make a Sound?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Richard Pryor Wasn't Crazy

Alison Weir
My Bethlehem Experience

Seth Sandronsky
Thank You, Richard Pryor

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: the Beginning of the End

Website of the Day
Wrestling for Peace


December 10 / 11, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
All the News That's Fit to Buy

Landau / Hassen
The Condemned of Nablus

Ralph Nader
The Widening Wasteland of American Media

Linn Washington, Jr
The Philly Media and Mumia: When They Don't Bash, They Ignore

Bill Christison
Apathy, US Culpability and Human Rights Day

Mike Ferner
The Courage of Jim Loney

Elizabeth Schulte
Abortion and the Bush Court

Neve Gordon / Yigal Bronner
Murder in Jerusalem

Linda S. Heard
Saddam's Trial: Grandstanding in the Theater of the Absurd

Ingmar Lee
A Kayak Journey to Vancouver Island's Wildest Forest

Ray McGovern
Lies, Torture and the Six Blind Mice

John Chuckman
Torture and White Phosphorous: the Moral Hell of Condi Rice

John Ryan
An Honorary Degree in Child Sacrifice?: Madeleine Albright and US Foreign Policy

Dick J. Reavis
From Waco to Baghdad

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Hired Pens

Behzad Yaghmaian
Trapped at the Gates of the European Union

Aseem Shrivastava
The Winter in Delhi, 1984

John Ross
Bushlandia in Black and White

Ben Tripp
War, What is It Good For?

St. Clair / Pollack / Vest / Despair
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Hassen, Bear Dog, Ford, Mickey Z, Albert & Engel

Website of the Week
Burn a Brick for Bush

 

December 9, 2005

Linn Washington, Jr.
Roots of Gitmo Torture Lie Close to Home

Dave Zirin / Mike Stark
On Seeing Wesley Baker Die

Patrick Cockburn
Blair Tries to Cover Up $1.3 Billion Iraqi Theft

Alexander Cockburn
Murtha Returns to Attack; Flays Bush

Lila Rajiva
Shooting the Mentally Ill

Gary Leupp
White House Liars on the Defensive

Jason Leopold
Rove Running Out of Answers, Time

Bruce K. Gagnon
So These Are the Democrats?

Andrew Cockburn
Meet Rahm Emmanuel, the Democrats' New Gatekeeper

Website of the Day
"X-mas Time for Visa"

 

December 8, 2005

Kathy Kelly
Blessed are the Merciful in Baghdad

James Petras
The Venezuelan Election: Chavez Wins, Bush Loses (Again)

William S. Lind
Questionable Assumptions: Dissecting the Stategy for Victory

Laura Carlsen
The Strange Mission of Vicente Fox: Free Trade and Mexico

Justin Akers
Bush's Border War

Thomas Graham, Jr
A Nuclear Pearl Harbor in Outer Space?

Norman Solomon
Rumsfeld's Handshake Deal with Saddam

Tariq Ali / Robin Blackburn
The Lost John Lennon Interview

Website of the Day
Pigs at the Trough of War

 

December 7, 2005

John Ryan
Dershowitz vs. Chomsky: a Review of the Harvard Debate

Gary Leupp
Suicide Before Dishonor in Occupied Iraq

Fran Quigley
How the ACLU Didn't Steal Christmas

Jeremy Brecher / Brendan Smith
Bush War Crimes: the Posse Gathers

Joshua Frank
Bird Dogging Hillary

William W. Morgan
Rendition, Torture and Democracy

Dave Lindorff
A Stunning Win for Mumia Abu Jamal

Patrick Cockburn
Saddam: "Come Visit My Cage"

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Website of the Day
Witnesses to Torture

 

December 6, 2005

Ron Jacobs
No One is Illegal; No One is an Infidel

Patrick Cockburn
Inside Saddam's Trial: Tales of the Human Meat Grinder

Yifat Susskind
Death, Politics and the Condom: African Women Confront Bush's AIDS Policy

Mike Whitney
How Greenspan Skewered America

Pat Williams
Public Land Should Stay Public

Paul Craig Roberts
Condi to Europe: Trust Us

Website of the Day
Debunking Woodward

 

December 5, 2005

John Walsh
The Lies of John Edwards: What Did the Democrats Know and When Did They Know It?

Brian Cloughley
The Poor Dead: the Relative Value of Human Lives

Mokhiber / Weissman
The Corporate Crime Quiz

Robert Jensen
How Big Money Eviscerates the First Amendment

Norman Solomon
Hidden in Plane Sight: US Media Ignores Iraq Air War Plan

Peter Rost, MD
An Open Letter to the Justice Department: Pfizer May Have Violated Federal Laws When They Fired Me

Lila Rajiva
The Torture-Go-Round: CIA's Rendition Flights to Secret Prisons

Website of the Day
National Day of Counter-Recruitment


December 3 / 4, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
The Revolt of the Generals

Lawrence R. Velvel
Iraq, Brains and Lies

Rev. William Alberts
The Forgotten Christmas Story: Saying No to King Herod

Saul Landau
Latino Troops Have Parents

Ralph Nader
Consumerama

Paul Craig Roberts
Don't Confuse the Jobs Hype with the Facts

Mike Whitney
Blood Feast: Celebrating Executions in America

Allan Lichtman
The DeLay Scheme: Blatantly Buying Our Government

Dave Lindorff
A Sudden Rush for the Exits?

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Haiti's Elections

Fred Gardner
Oregon NORML Honors Growers

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
On Freeing the CPT

Carol Wolman
Remembering the 60s

St. Clair / Vest / Walker / Pollack
Playlist: What We're Listening to This Week

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Free the CPT

 

December 2, 2005

Stan Goff
An Open Letter to Congress from a Veteran and Military Dad

Mike Ferner
Beware Iraqization: Melvin Laird, Vietnam and Christmas Bombings Over Baghdad?

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Constitutional Kamikazes: Padilla's No-Win Dilemma

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Questions for the President

Manuel Talens
The Chávez Theorem

Peter Phillips
Death By Torture: Media Ignores the Hard Evidence

J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
Alabama's Taliban: Judge Roy Moore, Preachers and Dixie Hypocrisy

Website of the Day
Support the Hampton University Peace Activists!

 

December 1, 2005

John Walsh, MD
The God Gaps

Ron Jacobs
Hard Rain: Toward a Greater Air War in Iraq?

Jenna Orkin
EPA's Latest Betrayal at Ground Zero

Joshua Frank
Howard Dean's Blunt Message: Forget Palestine

Tiffany Ten Eyck
Rank and File Resistance to Delphi

Missy Comley Beattie
Home on the Range: Where the Fear and the Animus Play

Eli Stephens
The Reed and Kerry Show

Elaine Cassel
A Government Game of "Gotcha" with Jose Padilla

Website of the Day
Rare Erotica

 

 

Subscribe Online

January 5, 2006

How Some Arguments Against the War Might be Twisted to Prolong It

New Challenges for the Antiwar Movement

By ZOLTAN GROSSMAN

The U.S. Occupation of Iraq has entered its fourth calendar year. As criticism of the Iraq War intensifies across the political spectrum, its supporters are deploying new arguments (or repackaged old arguments), in order to defend the war. In December, President Bush delivered a series of speeches to build public support for the Occupation. His speeches were such a failure that they could easily be repackaged and released as a DVD under the title "How to Lose a War in 10 Days."

Yet even some of the Democratic and Republican critics of Bush's policy are not advocating an end to the war, but rather proposing a change in the war's form, or a shift in its focus. Instead of ending the violence, some of their arguments could be used to justify continuing (or even intensifying) violence against Iraqis. Some of the arguments they are making against Bush's Iraq policy can easily be manipulated or twisted by his Administration to prolong the war.

Specifically, the arguments that U.S. troops should be redeployed to neighboring countries, and that the chaos in Iraq could lead to a civil war or Shi'ite theocratic rule, are now being reinterpreted to justify rather than end the war. In this shifting political environment, the peace movement should be extremely cautious that its original arguments against the war do not become a justification of a new phase of the war, or even fodder for a new war.

The "civil war" argument

The growing call for a withdrawal of U.S. troops has reinvigorated the old argument that the troops need to stay to "prevent a civil war." Bush claims that if American forces leave Iraq, chaos will follow. His claim evokes the reign of Louis XV, whose followers proclaimed "Apres moi, le deluge" (After me, the flood).

Yet this argument is made not only by Bush, but across the political spectrum--from Fox News to Hillary Clinton. It is even accepted by some liberals who opposed the invasion of Iraq, and blame Bush for worsening internal divisions among Iraqis, but justify the Occupation as a way to keep those divisions from erupting into war.

The "civil war" argument is at best a self-fulfilling prophecy that is actually helping to stimulate a civil war among Iraqis. At worst, it is based on a racist image of savage uncontrollable Middle Easterners, who need a Great White Father to keep them from slitting each other's throats. The fact is that many of the ethnic and religious divisions in the Middle East have been widened, not narrowed, by foreign control. Since the colonial era, outsiders have tended to worsen internal differences, not improve them, and have exacerbated internal tensions to the point of triggering civil wars.

The reasons are rather simple. Colonial rulers have always tended to side with one internal faction against another. They need native leadership to help them carry out indirect rule, and often offer advantages to leadership from a particular ethnic or religious group. Belgian colonial rule over Rwanda constructed the resentment of Tutsis by Hutus, much as British colonial rule over India exacerbated tensions between Hindus and Muslims. During the 1920-32 British mandate in Iraq, the colonial rulers installed Sunni Arab rulers, and repressed Kurdish and Shi'ite Arab insurgents, laying the groundwork for their own defeat (and for Saddam's later Sunni dictatorship).

The American tendency to select "good guys" to fight "bad guys" in internal conflicts strongly resembles this colonial history. The U.S. entered Somalia in 1992 as a "peacekeeping" force to keep warring clan militias apart, but took sides against one warlord, and paid the consequences. In former Yugoslavia, U.S. interventions opposed Serbian nationalists, but sided with Croatian and Albanian nationalists. The massive expulsion of Kosovar Albanians in 1999 started after NATO began bombing the Serbs, and was followed by a reverse expulsion of the Serbs and others. Outside intervention in Kosovo and Bosnia brought a "peace" based only on this successful "ethnic cleansing."

Since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it has been following the same pattern, siding with Kurdish militias and fighting a Sunni Arab insurgency. Its stance toward the majority Shi'ite Arabs has been almost schizophrenic, marked by wild swings between empowering and fighting the Shi'ite militias. U.S. efforts to integrate Sunnis into the government have been mainly public relations moves to undercut the insurgency. As long as Bush equates "democracy" with "majority rule," the minority Sunnis will remain afraid. The inconsistency of Bush's approach is helping to stimulate an actual civil war. Any group that he supports has the stigma of being seen by Iraqis as American puppets.

It is simply not inevitable that in the absence of Western troops, Iraqis will naturally want to kill each other. Despite their ethnic and religious diversity, Iraqis have a set of common experiences that have helped construct a state identity over the past century. Iraqis' resistance to Turkish and British colonial rule, and the overthrow of their pro-Western monarch, were only the beginning. In recent decades, Iraqis have also together faced Saddam's harsh repression, a brutal border war with Iran, and bombing, sanctions, and occupation by the Americans and British. Iraqis have more in common with each other than with foreign rulers or exiles.

On December 12, Bush reiterated and contradicted the "civil war" argument at the same time, with his odd statement that "It took a four-year civil war and a century of struggle after that before the promise of our Declaration was extended to all Americans. It is important to keep this history in mind as we look at the progress of freedom and democracy in Iraq."

Would Bush have argued that British troops should have stayed in the Thirteen Colonies because regional divisions among Americans could lead to a "four-year civil war"? Iraqis could easily turn his statement around: Americans fought for their independence from foreign occupation and domination even though they were torn by internal differences. The suggestion that full self-determination should be delayed due to the risk of civil war is not one we would make to ourselves.

Indeed, the British did use the fact that the colonists were divided by sectional loyalties as an argument against American independence. For example, a British resident of New York, stated in a letter in London's Morning Chronicle on February 2, 1775 that "should the liberty side get the better, it will end in the destruction of the colonies, as New England only wants to grind the other provinces. Most sensible people here, people of propertyare of this opinion, and say that one master is better than a thousand, and that they would rather be oppressed by a King than by a rascally mob."

Of course, the British did withdraw and the Americans did have a Civil War, 78 years later. Would the British have been a neutral peacekeeping force between North and South? The question is moot because no Americans advocated in 1861 that the British should back send the redcoats to prevent our own bloody civil war.

If Americans would not want an foreign military presence to prevent our own regional or ethnic strife, why would Iraqis? Contradictions in a sovereign state sometimes lead to a civil war, but denying full sovereignty is not a solution. Frustrated by outside control they cannot change, Iraqis are taking out their frustrations on each other. Our continued military presence in Iraq may not prevent a civil war, but instead guarantee one. The only way it may ultimately be preventing a civil war is by turning Iraqis of all backgrounds against us.


The "redeployment" argument

Rep. John Murtha's call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq opened a wider debate on the war, but his actual call was misinterpreted by all sides in the debate. Murtha advocated not an end to the war, but a "redeployment" of troops to neighboring countries and aircraft carriers, from which they could continue to combat the Iraqi insurgency. While the Occupation would end, the air strikes that began in 1991 would not end, nor would armed raids made at the "request" of the Iraqi government.

Another parallel exists between the Iraq War debate and old British debates over the American colonies. In 1766, British Secretary at War William Barrington proposed to redeploy troops from the Thirteen Colonies to Canada and Florida (and for some to return home), in order to save costs, "remove an irritant and serve as a conciliatory gesture," in a way that the forces could return to the eastern seaboard in case of a rebellion. His plan was ultimately rejected by General Thomas Gage, who felt the troops would be "too far away for prompt action in the event of serious trouble."

Rep. Murtha's redeployment argument is being rejected for the same reasons by Donald Rumsfeld, who is at the same time trying to defuse Murtha's call by gradually withdrawing some troops. A full-scale withdrawal, Rumsfeld claims, would undercut the Iraqi government and hand a victory to the insurgents.

Of course, Rumsfeld's arguments are merely old napalm in a new bottle. In September 1963, President Kennedy told CBS that in South Vietnam "....it is the people and the Government itself who have to win or lose this struggle. All we can do is help, and we are making it very clear. But I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake." He later told NBC "What I am concerned about is that Americans will get impatient and say, because they don't like events in Southeast Asia or they don't like the Government in Saigon, that we should withdraw. That only makes it easy for the Communists. I think we should stay." Had JFK withdrawn U.S. forces in 1963, he could have avoided a war that needlessly stretched on for 12 more years.

Yet the experience of Vietnam also offers other, more sinister lessons. The peace movement's sincere exhortations to "support the troops-bring them home" may be manipulated by an administration not to wind down a war but to intensify it. Withdrawing troops is not the same as ending a war, because the war may be continued in a way that causes even more deaths.

During the Vietnam War, the Nixon Administration undertook the program of "Vietnamization," by training South Vietnamese troops to take over the fight against the Viet Cong insurgency, allowing a phased withdrawal of U.S. ground troops. Nixon was responding to the fixation of the mainstream peace movement on American casualties and the draft. Yet the rest of the antiwar movement criticized "Vietnamization" as using "brown bodies" as cannon fodder in a U.S.-sponsored war.

At the same time, Nixon stepped up the Air War, resulting in many deaths among Vietnamese civilians, largely out of sight of the media. Although fewer Americans came home in body bags, more Vietnamese civilians died from aerial bombings. It was not until the U.S.-created South Vietnamese army collapsed in 1975 that the American war finally came to an end.

During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Pentagon generally avoided large-scale commitments of U.S. troops because of the "Vietnam Syndrome," or the public fear of losing Americans in an "unwinnable" quagmire. Instead, the Reagan/Bush Administrations launched smaller-scale invasions of Grenada and Panama, trained troops to fight rebels in El Salvador and the Philippines, trained rebels as proxies against Nicaragua and Angola, and lobbed bombs, shells and missiles against Libyans, Syrians, and Iranians. When the U.S. lost troops in a civil war, as in Lebanon (and later in Somalia), the reaction was to quickly withdraw the rest of the ground forces.

Soon after Saddam Hussein launched his invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, President Bush initiated the largest deployment of U.S. troops since Vietnam. The U.S. peace movement failed to learn the lessons of the Nixon and Reagan years, and largely focused on the prospect of bodybags coming back from the Persian Gulf, rather than on the threat of war to Iraqi civilians, and to their self-determination to oust their own dictator.

Our movement did not understand how changes in high-tech weaponry and tightened media control would sanitize the public view of the Gulf War after it began in January 1991. The media depicted the air war as a series of "surgical strikes" that both avoided American deaths and spared Iraqi civilians. Relatively few Americans were killed in the 100-hour ground war. For the first time in world history, an image was painted of warfare in which the invader took on little or no risk to its own forces.

This new image of sanitized war was reinforced during the Clinton Administration of the 1990s. The U.S. bombed Yugoslavia during the 1999 Kosovo War, and incurred zero casualties. From 1993 to 2000, Clinton repeatedly bombed Iraq, and enforced harsh sanctions against the country, again with little or no cost to American lives. Yet global public opinion turned against the sanctions and bombings as harming civilians more than Saddam.

After 9/11, when the new Bush Administration launched an air war against Afghanistan, some global media attention was paid to the civilian casualties, with precious little attention within the U.S. But when Bush began to rattle his sabre at Iraq, a powerful movement grew in opposition to the new war. Mindful that the first Gulf War and sanctions mainly hurt Iraqi civilians, the new movement put their concerns front and center. Since it did not fixate only on potential American casualties, the U.S. movement was able to integrate itself with the global outcry against the war, and become part of a worldwide campaign. For the first time since Vietnam, Americans were actively opposing a war mainly because it would hurt and kill other people.

Despite its unprecedented strength, the movement failed to stop Bush's determination to invade Iraq in 2003. The media was corralled into Pentagon-controlled pools, trumpeted the triumphs of the invaders, and portrayed any dissent as being "against the troops." By the time the peace movement was able to regroup, it was diverted into a presidential campaign of a candidate who had backed the invasion, and who fearfully softpedaled any criticism of the Occupation. The fixation on American casualties crept back into the peace movement's lexicon as the number of GI deaths crept upwards.

Bush and Rumsfeld are beginning to to respond to this concern, by gradually redeploying or withdrawing some troops. They are trying to create an image of a war that is winding down, even as they intensify violence in insurgent zones such as Anbar Province. The war could grow smaller but more efficient, with an even higher Iraqi death toll.

The effects of the war (from all sides) on Iraqi civilians should not be separated from the terrible effects of the war on U.S. troops and their families. Withdrawing U.S. ground troops without ending the war could actually inflict more pain on Iraqi civilians, if it means increased bombing, and less media and public attention to the consequences. People are just as dead if they are hit by a bomb as by a bullet. Either Iraqis are human beings worthy of the same care and protection as Americans, or they're not.

A mere return to the constant bombing of the Clinton Administration will not solve the underlying political conflicts of Iraq, which can only be solved by complete Iraqi self-determination. This kind of "redeployment" will not win America any more friends, either in Iraq or the rest of the world, and could simply set a process of "re-invasion" into motion all over again. The only guarantee of saving face in Iraq would be a withdrawal of U.S. troops and bombers from the region, and a guarantee that the U.S. would not keep control of Iraq's oil economy or military bases, or interfere in its internal reconciliation.

The "Shi'ite bloc" argument

A new argument that is being heard from both conservative and liberal circles is that the Shi'ites have become the main threat to U.S. interests in the region. The argument is based on a truth, that Arab Iraq is falling under theocratic Muslim rule, and is moving away from any prospect of secular democracy. The recent election results lend support to this view of Iraqi politics.

Yet some Fox News commentators are claiming to see an emerging "Shi'ite bloc" of Iran, southern Iraq, Alawite-ruled Syria, and Lebanese Hezbollah. Some Republican neo-cons may even urge Bush to pull back support for elected Iraqi Shi'ite leaders, as he takes a harder line on Iran's nuclear and human rights policies. They are being joined by some Democrats, who criticize Bush for choosing the "wrong target"-invading Iraq instead of Iran. They also rightfully criticize Bush's invasion for inadvertently strengthening the hand of Iran in the region.

Yet the risk is that they may be steering Bush toward just what he desires: the expansion of his war into Iran, the second pivot of his "Axis of Evil." Destabilizing Iran, or Iraq's Shi'ite parties, would not lessen the level of violence in the region, but increase it. Already, the war in Iraq's Shi'ite region is bleeding over into Iran's Arab Shi'ite province of Khuzestan. A military strike against Iran (whether for its nuclear program, its support for Iraqi Shi'ites, or oppression of its own Arab minority), will doom any democratic aspirations in Iran or Iraq.

The "Shi'ite bloc" argument is based on a false premise: that Iraqi Shi'ite parties are merely puppets of Iran. Iraqi Shi'ite clerics distance themselves from the Iranian model. They understand from Iran's experience that clerics should not run a government, because misrule could alienate reform-minded youth from religion. The argument also fails to grasp the lasting animosity of the Iran-Iraq War, in which state loyalties trumped religious and ethnic loyalties.

The argument revives the fear of Shi'ite revolution that caused the U.S. to back Saddam's Sunni dictatorship in the 1980s. If the U.S. shifts back to favoritism toward the Sunnis, such as rehabilitating some hated Ba'athist party hacks, it will simply generate more religious conflict. It is too late to correct the mistakes of the past, by making new mistakes. The best help that the U.S. could offer to secular parties is to end the Occupation and the war.

Iraqi Arabs are rejecting secular politicians not simply because they are secular, but because they view many many of the former exiles as American stooges. They are voting for the parties they see as most likely to push for U.S. withdrawal. American neo-cons are opposing Iraqi Shi'ite rule not because Shi'ite parties are religious or tilt toward Iran, but because they may eventually call for a full U.S. withdrawal.

If the new Iraqi government kowtows to the Americans, it may be ousted by the Iraqi people. If it confronts the Americans, and calls for full Iraqi control over the country's oil economy and military bases, it may be destabilized by Washington. Everyone in the region knows that the CIA ousted Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh in a 1953 coup because he had nationalized Iran's oil industry.

A U.S. intervention against Iraqi Shi'ites is not a far-fetched prospect. In fact, it has already happened. In 2004, U.S. troops were locked in battle with the militia led by the nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is now cooperating with the Shi'ite-dominated government. In 2005, British troops in Basra clashed with Shi'ite police, whom they had earlier trained. As Bush and Blair accuse Iran of aiding Iraqi Shi'ite parties and militias, they are setting the stage for war against the new Iraq that their invasion created.

In the Philippines in 1898, the U.S. invaded the country to "liberate" it from oppression, but then ended up fighting against the very Filipinos it had "liberated." In Iraq in 2003, the U.S. invaded to "liberate" the country from Saddam, but has ended up fighting against Saddam's worst enemies. If the identity of America's "enemy" shifts from Ba'athists and Sunni Islamists to the Shi'ites, the war in Iraq will grow and mutate beyond anyone's control.

It is one thing to point out that the current war has failed to bring democracy to Iraq, and has increased the risk of civil war in Iraq. But the peace movement should not let criticism of the invasion become a justification for increased U.S. interference in Iraqis' internal affairs, nor for a troop redeployment that would step up the bombing and claim more Iraqi lives. It is one thing to point out that the Occupation has heightened the regional ambitions of Iran and prospects for theocratic rule in Iraq. But we should not inadvertently let our criticisms of the last war to become the seeds of a new war.

Dr. Zoltan Grossman is a member of the faculty at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He earned a Ph.D. in Geography at the University of Wisconsin, and is a longtime peace and justice organizer. His other writings can be found at http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz.

He can be reached at: grossmaz@evergreen.edu


 

 

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