{"id":48211,"date":"2014-10-06T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=48211"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:41","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:41","slug":"why-the-showdown-with-islamic-extremists-is-the-war-the-pentagon-was-hoping-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/10\/why-the-showdown-with-islamic-extremists-is-the-war-the-pentagon-was-hoping-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Showdown with Islamic Extremists Is the War the Pentagon Was Hoping For"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Imperial Game Continues<\/em><\/p>\n

September 28, 2014<\/em> – As the U.S. escalates its bombing campaign against ISIS (or IS or ISIL), U.S. officials seem to have found an enemy we can all love to hate and fear.\u00a0 ISIS beheads hostages, conducts brutal ethnic cleansing and has links to Al-Qaeda.\u00a0 DC power players have eagerly embraced a small war made to order to restore America’s wounded military pride after the first Iraq debacle.<\/p>\n

The contrived nature of the narrative presented by U.S. officials was evident from the outset if one cared to look behind the propaganda screen.\u00a0 As the U.S. bombing campaign began, German Left Party MP Ulla Jelpke\u00a0told a\u00a0 press conference in<\/a>\u00a0Rojava<\/a>\u00a0(Syrian Kurdistan) on\u00a0August 11th\u00a0that the Yazidis on Mount Sinjar were rescued by the Kurdish PKK, who the U.S. government classifies as “terrorists.”\u00a0 Refugees told Jelpke that they were saved by “Allah and the PKK,” not by U.S. bombing.<\/p>\n

Ulla Jelpke hailed the PKK as the most effective force fighting ISIS and other jihadis in Syria and Iraq, and she condemned Turkey for its role on the other side, providing bases, training and support to the jihadis.\u00a0 Even as Turkey has kept its border with Syria open to a flood of fighters and weapons, it has closed it to shipments of food and humanitarian supplies to Rojava, now home to thousands of Yazidi refugees. \u00a0As Jelpke said, “If the US government and its allies are going to wage a serious struggle against ISIS, they must first end the support for the jihadis coming from Turkey and the Gulf states.”<\/p>\n

At the same time, journalist Judit Neurink, who has spent the past 5 years training local journalists in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, told Belgium’s\u00a0De Standaard\u00a0newspaper that reports of ISIS massacres were exaggerated and based mainly on rumors.\u00a0\u00a0 De Standaard\u00a0asked<\/a>, “Is the United States’ bombing based on a false hypothesis?”\u00a0 She replied, “Yes.\u00a0 The US is bombing because the battle was approaching too close to Erbil, where a small American base lies.\u00a0 The Yazidis are useful to add a humanitarian sauce.\u00a0 Indeed there are also Christians fleeing.\u00a0 But if you act only for the Christians, other religious communities in the world would attack you.\u00a0 Now this Yazidi tragedy suited the Americans politically and the stories are exaggerated.\u00a0 Terrible things happen and have happened, that’s a fact.\u00a0 But we have no numbers, no details.”<\/p>\n

But the Yazidis served their purpose for U.S. propaganda.\u00a0 The line was crossed, the bombing was under way and the United States was at war in Iraq\u2026 again. \u00a0It would be naive to think that U.S. intelligence agencies knew less of the real picture than\u00a0Jelpke and Neurink.\u00a0 But the domestic propaganda campaign has succeeded and a majority of Americans tell pollsters they approve of the bombing.\u00a0 The U.S. is building a “coalition of the willing” on a similar basis, persuading allies of the political benefits of aligning with U.S. policy.\u00a0 But the U.S. coalition excludes all three forces that are best placed to resist and marginalize ISIS: the Syrian Army; the PKK; and Iraq’s Sunni tribes.<\/p>\n

After initially helping to drive out Iraqi government death squads, ISIS has outlived its purpose to Sunni Arab tribal leaders in northern and western Iraq.\u00a0 Most Sunni Iraqis don’t want to be part of a fundamentalist Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, where\u00a0 19 people were beheaded<\/a>\u00a0in August\u00a0for offenses ranging from witchcraft to drug possession. \u00a0 Most Iraqi Sunnis<\/a>\u00a0just want civil and political rights in their own country, Iraq.\u00a0 But they justifiably fear the return of Shiite death squads more than they fear ISIS.<\/p>\n

After Shiite militiamen killed 70 people at a Sunni mosque in Diyala province on September 22nd,\u00a0 a reporter for the\u00a0Guardian<\/a>\u00a0embedded with a group of militiamen in Diyala reported, “For these men, the Sunnis as a whole are the enemy, regardless of whether they are ISIS supporters or not.”\u00a0 One militiaman told theGuardian\u00a0that they do not kill women, children or old people, implying that adult men are a different story, but another told the Guardian, “When I liberate an area from ISIS, why do I have to give it back to them?\u00a0 Either I erase it or settle Shia in it.”\u00a0 Another added, “If it’s for me, I will start cleansing Baghdad from today.”<\/p>\n

What all the forces resisting ISIS really need from the U.S. and its allies is to call off the\u00a0U.S.-backed Iraqi government’s\u00a0death squads, and to end our funding, arming and support for ISIS’ allies in Syria.\u00a0 Instead Congress has voted to provide more weapons and training to jihadis in Syria.\u00a0 Meanwhile the U.S. bombing campaign is enhancing ISIS’ prestige, helping it to attract an estimated\u00a0 6,000 new recruits since August<\/a>.\u00a0 If the goal of U.S. policy was to make a dire situation worse for the people of Syria and Iraq, it’s hard to see how we could do a better job of it.<\/p>\n

For Americans, this campaign brings together many of the familiar themes of the history of U.S. military expansion since the end of the Cold War, and it raises many of the same questions and problems.\u00a0 U.S. officials are evidently encouraged by similarities to the 1991 First Gulf War, a model they revere but have failed to replicate: an unpopular enemy; a limited objective; domestic political support; a broad international coalition to do the fighting and pay for it; and the promise of “victory” over a villainous enemy to win the acclaim of a grateful world.\u00a0 But the two campaigns have other things in common that should give us pause.<\/p>\n

Like the current bombing campaign, the short-lived victory over Iraq in 1991, which ultimately led to the present crisis, was designed with another, distinctly political, purpose in mind: to save the Cold War U.S. military from the threat of substantial disarmament.\u00a0 On the basis of that war, U.S. officials adapted their Cold War military machine from the nominally defensive purpose that had justified building it in the first place to a force that aspired to “full-spectrum dominance” of the entire planet, based on huge investments in surveillance and weapons technology.\u00a0 But instead of being a force for stability and security as U.S. leaders claim, the U.S. post-Cold War military has achieved the exact opposite, depriving millions of people in dozens of countries of whatever stability and security they previously enjoyed, at the cost of more than\u00a0 $10 trillion dollars to U.S. tax-payers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In December 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, former senior officials Robert McNamara and Lawrence Korb testified to the Senate Budget Committee that the military budget could safely be\u00a0 cut in half over 10 years<\/a>\u00a0to leave us with what would now be a $267 billion military budget after adjusting for inflation.\u00a0 In the summer of 1990, Congress began debating serious cuts in the military budget.<\/p>\n

Then Iraq invaded Kuwait, after receiving the infamous\u00a0 “green light” from U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie<\/a>.\u00a0 Whatever Glaspie’s orders or intentions,\u00a0 Kuwait certainly had a green light<\/a>\u00a0from the U.S. to play hardball with Iraq over disputed territory, oilfields and OPEC production quotas, with the assurance that the U.S. would come to its rescue if this provoked a war with Iraq.\u00a0 Sure enough, U.S. aircraft carriers were steaming towards Kuwait and Iraq within hours of the Iraqi invasion, and the predicament of the post-Cold War U.S. military influenced what followed as much as that of Kuwait, which, like the plight of the Yazidis, was opportunistically\u00a0 highlighted and exaggerated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While most Americans saw the end of the Cold War as a chance for peace, many U.S. officials saw it as a new chance for war.\u00a0 Pentagon adviser Michael Mandelbaum\u00a0 told the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>, “For the first time in 40 years, we can conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about triggering World War III”.\u00a0 Heightened inter-service rivalries shaped the war plan, as Lawrence Korb\u00a0 told the\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>, “Even the reserves are scheduled to be sent\u2026 The reserve lobby recognized that their future funding may be jeopardized if their units do not get involved.”\u00a0 And President Bush rejected Iraqi offers to withdraw from Kuwait and avoid the war that would save the U.S. military industrial complex.<\/p>\n

Following Bush’s model, Obama’s coalition-building gives his war a veneer of legitimacy, but it will also open up new markets for U.S. weapons makers.\u00a0 In 1991, after a bombing campaign that killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and inflicted destruction that a UN report called\u00a0 “near-apocalyptic”<\/a>, U.S.\u00a0planes and pilots were dispatched straight to the\u00a0 Paris Air Show<\/a>\u00a0to drum up new business for U.S. weapons makers.\u00a0 The next two years set new records for U.S. arms exports, and the U.S. has maintained a 40% share of global arms exports<\/a>\u00a0ever since.<\/p>\n

The post-Cold War\u00a0 U.S. military budget<\/a>\u00a0has never fallen below its Cold War baseline of an inflation-adjusted $390 billion.\u00a0 At $600 billion it is higher today than at the peak of the Vietnam War or the Reagan arms build-up.\u00a0 Giving credit where credit is due for its long-term effect on global military spending, the First Gulf War may have been the most expensive war ever fought.<\/p>\n

Similar interests are at work today.\u00a0 All four major U.S. weapons makers have hit\u00a0 all-time highs<\/a>\u00a0on the stock market since the bombing began: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and, not least, General Dynamics, the family firm of\u00a0 Chicago’s Crown family<\/a>, who have bankrolled much of Barack Obama’s political career.<\/p>\n

A headline in Fortune magazine on September 13th crowed:\u00a0 “The war on ISIS already has a winner: the defense industry.”<\/a>\u00a0 The article reported, “\u2026defense analysts are pointing to a pair of sure-bet paydays from the new campaign: for those making and maintaining the aircraft, manned and unmanned, that will swarm the skies over the region, and for those producing the missiles and munitions that will arm them.”\u00a0 It listed Hellfire missile maker Lockheed Martin, Tomahawk cruise-missile maker Raytheon and munitions maker General Dynamics as well-positioned “to reap the biggest windfall.”<\/p>\n

If the President gets his way, the Third Gulf War, like the First, will forestall serious cuts in the U.S. military budget or any reorientation of the militarized U.S. economy to address the pressing needs of the American public.\u00a0 Any small reduction in weapons sales to the Pentagon will be balanced by the marketing value of a high-tech bombing campaign to generate a surge in U.S. weapons exports, as in the 1990s, adding fuel to a world on fire.<\/p>\n

Another disquieting parallel between 1990 and 2014 is that Saddam Hussein and ISIS were both creations of the CIA.\u00a0 These monsters are undoubtedly “our” monsters.\u00a0 What does it say about our leaders that they reserve their most self-righteous fury for those who do their dirty work but then turn to bite the hand that feeds them, a select club that also includes Manuel Noriega and Osama Bin-Laden?<\/p>\n

The\u00a0CIA hired 22-year-old Saddam Hussein<\/a>\u00a0in 1959 to assassinate General Qasim, the revolutionary leader who overthrew the Western-backed Iraqi monarchy in 1958.\u00a0 The plot failed and the CIA whisked Hussein to safety in Beirut, wounded in the leg by one of his fellow assassins,\u00a0then to Cairo, where he was a regular visitor at the U.S. Embassy.<\/p>\n

With CIA support, the Baath Party overthrew and killed Qasim in 1963, and Hussein rose through its ranks to become President of Iraq.\u00a0 The U.S. and other Western allies supplied him with weapons to wage war with Iran, including\u00a0 chemical weapons<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0DIA satellite intelligence<\/a>\u00a0to target them.\u00a0 Two months after Hussein used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurdish villages,\u00a0 Donald Rumsfeld<\/a>\u00a0arrived in Baghdad to negotiate closer relations and reopen the U.S. Embassy.\u00a0 Only when Hussein invaded U.S. ally Kuwait did he become the new bete noir of U.S. propaganda.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and its allies have spent 3 years\u00a0 deploying and arming proxy forces<\/a>\u00a0to overthrow the government of Syria: flying in weapons and jihadis from Libya in\u00a0 unmarked NATO planes<\/a>; setting up\u00a0 command centers<\/a>and training camps in\u00a0 Jordan<\/a>,\u00a0Turkey<\/a>\u00a0and now\u00a0 Saudi Arabia<\/a>;\u00a0throwing open the Turkish border<\/a>\u00a0to flood Syria with\u00a0 special forces<\/a>, jihadis and weapons from\u00a0 Turkey<\/a>,\u00a0Saudi Arabia<\/a>,\u00a0Qatar<\/a>,\u00a0the Balkans<\/a>\u00a0and elsewhere; cynically scheming to\u00a0 undermine the Annan peace plan<\/a>\u00a0in 2012; and rejecting abundant evidence that\u00a0U.S.\u00a0proxies in Syria were more brutal and dangerous than the government they were sacrificing the people of Syria to overthrow.\u00a0 Now that the propaganda bubble has burst in President Obama’s face, ISIS has become America’s new bete noir, or should we say “the new Saddam Hussein”?<\/p>\n

The huge U.S. investment in its tools of violence creates dangerous corrupting influences on the policy process in Washington, but it also comes with a high cost when it comes to dealing with the problems it creates in the real world.\u00a0 As a U.S. general famously remarked, “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”\u00a0 Neoconservative U.S. foreign policy is, by definition, a hammer in search of nails.\u00a0 But, to state the obvious, every problem is not a nail.\u00a0 The world has real problems that our corrupt, militarized government lacks the moral,\u00a0diplomatic\u00a0and intellectual resources to solve, and more hammering can only make things worse.<\/p>\n

But even after President Obama himself declared that there is\u00a0 “no\u00a0American\u00a0military solution”<\/a>\u00a0to the problems the U.S. and its allies have caused in Iraq and Syria, he promptly reverted to the default option: bombing.\u00a0 When you only have one tool, the pressure to “do something” means only one thing: bombing to prevent ethnic cleansing, but which actually triggered ethnic cleansing, in\u00a0 Kosovo<\/a>; bombing to restore warlords to power in Afghanistan and flood our own streets with\u00a0 heroin<\/a>; bombing to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan; bombing to support jihadi militias and plunge\u00a0 Libya<\/a>\u00a0into chaos; bombing to push\u00a0 Yemen<\/a>\u00a0to the verge of disintegration; bombing to plunge\u00a0 Somalia<\/a>\u00a0back into chaos every time it tries to pick itself up off the floor; and bombing to shock and awe Iraq into an endless state of war.<\/p>\n

After\u00a094,000 U.S. air strikes<\/a>\u00a0since 2001 have spread chaos and violence to country after country, our morally, legally and intellectually bankrupt leaders still have only one response: more bombing.\u00a0 Substituting an addiction to billion-dollar bombers for a real foreign policy based on the American public’s interest in peace and international cooperation leaves them without real tools to fix the damage they’ve done. They rummage around in\u00a0their embarrassingly limited tool-box, and like Monty Python’s\u00a0 Spam-loving Vikings<\/a>, all they can come up with is: bombing, bombing, bombing, bombing and bombing.<\/p>\n

In 1928, when world leaders drafted and signed the\u00a0 Treaty for the Renunciation of War<\/a>, or the Kellogg Briand Pact, they renounced “war as an instrument of national policy,” and then hung German leaders for violating it.\u00a0 The U.N. Charter, the enduring international vision and legacy of President Roosevelt, expanded that commitment to peace and international law.<\/p>\n

Since 1990, the U.S. has restored war as an instrument of national policy, on the myopic and arrogant presumption that the collapse of its strategic enemy would permit it to reshape the world through the illegal threat and use of overwhelming and deadly violence.\u00a0 To overcome the political and legal obstacles toits\u00a0policy of aggression, the U.S. has developed a sophisticated strategy of\u00a0 “information warfare”<\/a>\u00a0to demonize its enemies and politically justify its aggression.\u00a0 It has adopted the techniques of Hollywood and the advertising industry to create false narratives and choices, appealing to fear, racism and the worst aspects of human nature, while abusing and manipulating the best instincts of young Americans who volunteer to serve their country: their humanity, their courage to defend the downtrodden and their belief in freedom, justice and democracy.<\/p>\n

We must somehow find the political will to speak truth to power and to elect and empower new American leaders\u00a0who will\u00a0make a historic recommitment to peace, disarmament, diplomacy and the rule of law.\u00a0 There are things that we can all do to make our voices heard:<\/p>\n

– Work with\u00a0 Peace Action<\/a>,\u00a0United For Peace and Justice<\/a>,\u00a0Win Without War<\/a>,\u00a0Veterans For Peace<\/a>,Progressive Democrats of America<\/a>, the\u00a0 Green Party<\/a>,\u00a0RootsAction<\/a>, or whichever peace movement groups are the best fit for you. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

– Call your Representatives’ staffers before and after they vote on critical war and peace issues.\u00a0 Check Peace Action’s\u00a0 Congressional Voting Records<\/a>\u00a0to see how your Reps have voted in the past, pay attention to how they vote in future and start holding them accountable.\u00a0 Some progressive Democrats take brave stands for peace, but get little recognition for it, so learn to tell the difference between a real peacemaker and a warmonger, Democratic or Republican. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Just as Iraqis deserve better than a choice between ISIS and Shiite death squads, you don’t have to settle for a choice between war criminals with different letters after their names.\u00a0\u00a0But you can’t elect real peacemakers if you can’t tell the difference.\u00a0 If you made a mistake with Obama, you’re not alone.\u00a0 Have you met the Nobel Committee?\u00a0 But please, don’t get fooled again!<\/em><\/p>\n

________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of <\/em>Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. Davies also wrote the chapter on “<\/em>Obama at War” for the book, <\/em>Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

The Imperial Game Continues – As the U.S. escalates its bombing campaign against ISIS (or IS or ISIL), U.S. officials seem to have found an enemy we can all love to hate and fear. The contrived nature of the narrative by U.S. officials was evident from the outset if one cared to look behind the propaganda screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48211","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=48211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}