{"id":45841,"date":"2014-08-11T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=45841"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:46","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:46","slug":"u-s-humanitarian-bombing-of-iraq-a-redundant-presidential-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/08\/u-s-humanitarian-bombing-of-iraq-a-redundant-presidential-ritual\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. \u201cHumanitarian\u201d Bombing of Iraq: A Redundant Presidential Ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"

Associated Press, December 1, 1990<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"iraq1\"New York Times<\/em>, January 17, 1991<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"iraq2\"<\/a> CNN, December 16, 1998<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"iraq15\"New York Times<\/em>, December 17, 1998<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"iraq3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

CNN, March 1, 2003<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"iraq4\"Time<\/em>, John Dickerson, January 28, 2003<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"iraq5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"iraq6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

CBS, March 22, 2003<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"iraq8\"The Daily Beast<\/em>, July 24, 2014<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"iraq10\"<\/a><\/p>\n

New York Times<\/em>, this morning<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"iraq17\"<\/a><\/p>\n

International Business Times<\/em>, January 2, 2014<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"iraq11\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are several brief points worth noting about all of this:<\/p>\n

(1)<\/strong> For those who ask \u201cwhat should be done?,\u201d has the hideous aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya<\/a> \u2013 hailed as a grand success for \u201chumanitarian interventions\u201d \u2013 not taught the crucial lessons that (a) bombing for ostensibly \u201chumanitarian\u201d ends virtually never fulfills the claimed goals but rather almost always makes the situation worse; (b) the U.S. military is not designed, and is not deployed, for \u201chumanitarian\u201d purposes?; and (c) the U.S. military is not always capable of \u201cdoing something\u201d positive about every humanitarian crisis even if that were really the goal of U.S. officials?<\/p>\n

The suffering in Iraq is real, as is the brutality of ISIS, and the desire to fix it is understandable. There may be some ideal world in which a superpower is both able and eager to bomb for humanitarian purposes. But that is not this world. Just note how completely the welfare of Libya was ignored by most intervention advocates the minute the fun, glorious, exciting part \u2013 \u201cWe came, we saw, he died,\u201d chuckled Hillary Clinton<\/a> \u2013 was over.<\/p>\n

(2) <\/strong>It is simply mystifying\u00a0how anyone can look at U.S. actions in the Middle East and still believe that the goal of its military deployments is humanitarianism. The U.S. government does not oppose tyranny and violent oppression in the Middle East. To the contrary, it is and long has been American policy to do everything possible to subjugate the populations of that region with brutal force \u2013 as conclusively demonstrated by stalwart U.S. support for the region\u2019s worst oppressors<\/a>. Or, as Hillary Clinton so memorably put it in 2009<\/a>: \u201cI really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.\u201d<\/p>\n

How can anyone believe that a government whose overt, explicit policy is \u201cregime continuity\u201d for Saudi Arabia<\/a>, and who continues to lend all sorts of support to the military dictators of Egypt<\/a>,\u00a0is simultaneously driven by humanitarian missions in the region?<\/p>\n

(3) <\/strong>\u201cHumanitarianism\u201d is the pretty packaging in which all wars \u2013 even the most blatantly aggressive ones<\/a> \u2013 are wrapped, but it is almost never the actual purpose<\/a>. There are often numerous steps the U.S. could take to advance actually humanitarian goals<\/a>, but those take persistence and resources, and entail little means of control, and are thus usually ignored in favor of blowing things and people up with Freedom Bombs.<\/p>\n

(4) <\/strong>Note how even the pretenses of constitutional democracy are now dispensed with: there is a reasonable legal debate over legality<\/a>, but in essence: the President has the power to order bombing of Iraq because he decides it should happen.<\/p>\n

(5)<\/strong>\u00a0Perhaps having Israel and the U.S. simultaneously bombing Arabs in different countries \u2013 yet again \u2013 will create some extremely negative consequences<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\"iraq12\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(6) <\/strong>This above-documented parade of \u201cSaddam-is-worse-than-Hitler\u201d campaigns was surrounded by stints of U.S. arming and funding of the very same Saddam<\/a>\u00a0(the same, of course, was true of the Taliban precursors, Gadhaffi, Iran, Manuel Noriega, and virtually every other Latest Villain who needed to be bombed; the US was roughly allied with ISIS allies in Syria<\/a> and\u00a0American allies fund ISIS itself<\/a>). The propaganda has gone from \u201cpulling babies from incubators: as bad as Hitler\u201d to \u201crape rooms: worse than Hitler\u201d to the new slogan: \u201cworse than al-Qaeda!\u201d What\u2019s left?<\/p>\n

For quite some time, it was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad \u2013 the democratically elected president of Iran who left office peacefully at the end of his term and who never actually invaded anybody \u2013 who was The New Hitler<\/a>. As all of this demonstrates, there certainly are some heinous, violent people in the world: often including America\u2019s closest allies and the ones who unleash the violence documented here, as well as those at whom that violence is directed. But perhaps some perspective and serious skepticism is warranted the next time we\u2019re relentlessly bombarded with messaging about The New Greatest Villainous Threat in History \u2013 and especially manipulative accusations that opposition to U.S. military attack is indicative of support for those New Villains<\/a> \u2013 as a means to secure acquiescence to the next bombing campaign.<\/p>\n

(7)\u00a0<\/strong>Maybe this<\/a> and\u00a0this<\/a>, rather than humanitarianism, is a more significant influence in this new bombing campaign? Targeted strikes against ISIS is obviously not remotely the same as a full-scale invasion of Iraq, but whatever else is true, and whatever one\u2019s opinions are on this latest bombing, it is self-evidently significant that, as the NYT\u2019s Peter Baker wrote today<\/a>, \u201cMr. Obama became the fourth president in a row to order military action<\/strong> in that graveyard of American ambition\u201d known as Iraq.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, commentator, and author of three New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. His fifth book, <\/em>No Place to Hide<\/em>, about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world, will be released in April 2014. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenn\u2019s column was featured at <\/em>Guardian US<\/em> and <\/em>Salon<\/em>. He was the debut winner, along with Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning. For his 2013 NSA reporting, he received the Gannett Foundation award for investigative journalism and the Gannett Foundation watchdog journalism award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil (the first non-Brazilian to win), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u2019s Pioneer Award. Along with Laura Poitras, <\/em>Foreign Policy<\/em> magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He lives in Rio, Brazil.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those who ask \u201cwhat should be done?,\u201d has the hideous aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya not taught the crucial lessons that (a) bombing for ostensibly \u201chumanitarian\u201d ends virtually never fulfills the claimed goals but rather almost always makes the situation worse; (b) the U.S. military is not designed, and is not deployed, for \u201chumanitarian\u201d purposes?; and (c) \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}