They cry peace, peace, but there is no peace -- not when American missiles are around to derail any talks that might hamper the profitable operations of the Washington war machine.
On Wednesday, missiles from an American drone destroyed a house in the Pakistani village of Damadola, killing at least 15 people, with women and children reportedly among the dead. The ostensible target was a gathering of Taliban fighters, who control the surrounding area in this border region with Afghanistan.
But the real target of the attack, no doubt, was the peace process now underway between the local militants and the new Pakistani government. As AP notes:
The explosions came as Pakistani authorities and Taliban militants exchanged dozens of prisoners in the latest step in a peace process that is stirring growing alarm in the West. NATO claims [that] militant incursions into Afghanistan have increased.
This is a familiar pattern of the worldwide Terror War launched by the Bush Administration. We saw it a few weeks ago in Somalia, when national unity talks between the government and insurgents were disrupted at a delicate stage by the "targeted assassination" of a rebel leader (and the usual assorted civilians) by U.S. missiles.
In the American imperium, subject nations are not permitted to work out their internal conflicts on their own -- especially if this involves a cessation of hostilities that leaves any group or faction disfavored by Washington still standing. Obliteration of the disobedient is the ultimate goal, as Hillary Clinton put it so well the other day. But the Terror War policy of disrupting peace talks has some short-term objectives as well. These include the continuation of the war profiteering that now greases the entire American system; and, perhaps above all, the ape-like show of dominance that gives such deep psychological satisfaction to the pathetic, stunted, needy wretches who control our politics and our political discourse.
What's going on in Lebanon? Nothing you haven't seen before -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine and other places where "the United States is basically instigating and funding civil wars."
So says Professor As’ad AbuKhalil -- better known perhaps as the "Angry Arab," for his indispensable website of the same name. AbuKhalil was born and raised in Lebanon and has an intimate knowledge of troubled land's warring factions there -- and their external backers. Needless to say, the American media's framing of the current flare-up of violence in Lebanon is the usual sinister caricature of reality, with "bad guys" attacking "our friends" out of pure, malevolent, world-gobbling evil.
In fact, "our friends" in Lebanon are actually in league with our allegedly erstwhile friends Al Qaeda. The Hariri faction backed by the Bush Administration is drawing upon the most extremist Sunni armed factions in an attempt to counteract the power of Shiite Hezbollah. This is of course just a continuation of current American strategy in the region, as Sy Hersh outlined last year: giving arms and money to extremist Sunni groups allied with al Qaeda in order to ward off Shiite factions making trouble in our client regimes.
This in turn is part of a broader, more long-standing strategy, going back to 2004, as we noted in a recent report: a global program of arming and funding militias and other violent "non-state actors" to foment trouble where Washington wants trouble, and pressure recalcitrant regimes to bend to the imperial will.
And no, Washington is not "behind" every twist and turn in Middle East politics. But American interventions, direct and covert, are responsible for exacerbating and intensifying conflicts, enflaming sectarian and ethnic divides (or literally building giant concrete walls between them, as in Baghdad today), bolstering tyrannical and/or ineffectual, illegitimate leaders whose misrule provoke more strife, suffering and conflict.
In an interview this week on Democracy Now, AbuKhalil cuts through the corporate media cartoons to give a truer picture of the outbreak in Lebanon:
I think that people may remember, back in the 1980s, the United States government, for two years in the administration of Ronald Reagan, deployed troops from ’82 to ’84. And there was a civil war, and the United States was supporting the rightwing militias of Israel in Lebanon, and they used the discourse of supporting the central government of Lebanon.
Something similar is taking place right now in Lebanon, and this is very much similar to what’s happening in Sudan, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and Somalia. The United States is basically instigating, funding and arming civil wars in all those places. We hear a lot about this inability of the international community to tolerate armed militias. Of course, Hezbollah is an armed militia, but so are the pro-militias of the government. There’s a Los Angeles Times article today detailing the efforts by the United States and allies to create militias throughout the country. And the Washington Post indicated that this government of the United States spent $1.4 billion to prop up the administration of Siniora in Lebanon.
And basically, what happened in Lebanon in the last few days is a partial coup d’etat that was in response to a full coup d’etat that was engineered by the United States and Saudi Arabia and Israel from behind the scene back in 2005, capitalizing on the assassination of Rafik Hariri.
And things have gotten to this point because America basically is responsible, more than their clients in Lebanon. I mean, there were ideas of dialogue in Lebanon, and things were moving in that direction, and then, suddenly, lo and behold, the Assistant Secretary of State of the United States for the Near East, David Welch, shows up in Lebanon, and he basically wanted to stiffen the resolve of the clients and to basically prevent the possibility of dialogue. And then, Walid Jumblatt, one of the clients of the United States and Saudi Arabia and Lebanon today, escalated by deciding on taking the issue of disarming Hezbollah, which is supported at least by half of the Lebanese; and Lebanese parties, including clients of the United States, [had] agreed that the issues of disarming Hezbollah should be left for internal dialogue of the Lebanese themselves...
This [the current violence] is something that experts have warned the United Nations about. If you push things to that point, the other side is going to lash out, and they did lash out, even if one, like me, does not like the scenes of these militias and armed thugs running into the streets of Beirut and so on. But basically, we have to say that this is the doing of US foreign policy, and this is the true face of the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East.....
We have to say that this level of intense tensions and conflict and animosity is the product of a deliberate American-Saudi policy of instigating a Sunni-Shiite conflict, the likes of which Lebanon has never seen. I mean, even somebody like myself who comes from a split background—my mother is Sunni, and my father is Shiite—I mean, we’ve never seen anything like this. Saudi media, with the full cooperation of the United States, have been for three years mobilizing the Lebanese opposition, because that’s the only thing they have....They have been [doing] serious propagandizing to [split] Sunnis from Shiites in order [to] create a militia that can stand up to Hezbollah.
Back at his website, AbuKhalil notes:
What is quite ironic is that Lebanese Forces' media (like LBC-TV) are gleefully airing calls for Jihad... by (Hariri- and Saudi-funded) Salafite groups in North Lebanon. Do they not know what those groups' views are of Christians? They even refer to Lebanese Christians as "crusaders". These are clones of Al-Qa`idah, but the Lebanese Forces seem to be embracing them.
And so in Lebanon -- as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia -- the policies of the Bush Administration have only produced more extremism, more terrorists, more violence.
Can we not discern a pattern here, a clear intention? The "War on Terror" produces terror; it's part of the "creative destruction" that the militarists used to boast about, when they dreamed that their crimes of aggression, torture and murder would lead future generations to "sing songs about us," in the immortal words of Michael Ledeen.
This quote is often attributed to Richard Perle, but it comes from Ledeen's call for "total war" in a speech at American Enterprise Institute on October 29, 2001. Ledeen followed this up with a piece on National Review Online in August 2002, when he mocked Brent Scowcroft's concern that an invasion of Iraq could turn the Middle East into a cauldron. Ledeen's response:
One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.
Ledeen is no mere kibitzer on the rightwing gravy train. He is one of the architects and chief abettors of the cauldronization -- the slaughter and suffering -- we see across the Middle East today. As the Washington Post noted back in the glory days of 2003, when these bloodthirsty wretches were still strutting around beating their chests about their importance:
One [of Karl Rove's advisers] is Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, whose specialties include terrorism and the Middle East. His latest book, according to the official summary, asserts that "America must topple the regimes of the terror masters to eliminate the threat of terrorism."
The two met after Bush's election. "He said, 'Anytime you have a good idea, tell me,' " Ledeen said. Every month or six weeks, Ledeen will offer Rove "something you should be thinking about." More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric.
Nowadays, of course, Ledeen skulks around pretending he opposed the invasion of Iraq: the kind of astonishing lie one might have heard in a Nuremberg courtoom back in the day, and one easily refuted. (As is his current lie that he has always opposed an attack on Iran.) But he, Rove and all the other facilitators of the militarists bear a direct and substantial share of responsibility for the murder and chaos that continues to erupt across the tormented region.
UPDATE: And now Bush is proposing an even more direct U.S. military intervention in Lebanon. Speaking in Cairo -- on yet another one of his pointless trots* around the cauldron (maybe he wants another fancy sword -- or just some more good smoochin' -- from the Saudi king) -- Bush offered to help the Lebanese army "respond more effectively" to Hezbollah. He also took the opportunity to -- what else? -- blame Iran for everything happening in Lebanon, claiming that without the backing of the devilish Persians, Hezbollah -- which, as AbuKhalil noted, is supported by almost half of the Lebanese population -- would be "powerless."
So Bush will soon have yet another proxy war playground to while away his time before retiring to stick his snout in the same corporate trough that has so enriched his fellow war crminal, Tony Blair -- who has already made almost $20 million in corporate pork in less than a year after leaving office.
Who says crime -- especially war crime -- doesn't pay?
*Note. Some might think that Bush is touring the region to build support for an attack on Iran. But that kind of head-knocking and arm-twisting is left to Dick Cheney (who took an ominious swing through the cauldron not long ago). Junior is too witless for any hard-core dealing -- although no doubt he will bluster and bellow to his hosts about Iranian perfidy and "doin' God's will" and whatever else vomits up from his murder-rotted brain.
To divert from atrocity and anguish and political folly for a moment: over at the MySpace page, there are four new songs up, with more to come. These are demos, self-produced, rough-sketch possibilities for the second album, which, if all goes well, might be recorded this summer with Nick Kulukundis, the extraordinary producer, arranger and musician. There are also two songs from the first album with Nick, Wheel of Heaven (available through iTunes), still up on the page. Give 'em a listen if you take a notion.
Civilians are still streaming out of Baghdad's Sadr City, despite the announcement of a truce late last week designed to avert – or at least give the appearance of diverting – a major bloodbath from an all-out assault on the densely-populated area by U.S. forces and their local junior partners. Announced on Saturday, the deal was immediately eviscerated by U.S. forces, who bombed three neighborhoods in Sadr City that very afternoon, as dpa reports.
Oddly enough, when Iraqi government forces tried to enter disputed Sadr City quadrants the next day, they were attacked, the New York Times reports. The Times' intrepid correspondents, including the ever-reliable spin-funnel Michael Gordon, professed to be shocked – shocked! – at such rude behavior, which they presented as clear and unprovoked violations of the nascent truce. Naturally, they omitted any unseemly and unnecessary mention of the American bombing of the day before.
The fighting is Sadr City is concentrated along a demarcation line, Al Quds Street (Jerusalem Street), between areas loyal to nationalist cleric Motqada al-Sadr and areas now under the control of the violent sectarian factions backed by both the United States and Iran; i.e., the Iraqi "government." In addition to bombing residential areas and leading Iraqi government troops in attacks, American forces are also erecting a massive concrete wall, 12 feet high, along three miles of Al Quds street, in attempt to seal off the recalcitrant neighborhoods. Of course, it was considered poor form – or rather, an international outrage – when the Soviets did this kind of thing in Berlin; but in our brave new world, it is now an accepted, even celebrated policy. (Just like torture, concentration camps, aggressive war, warrantless surveilance, etc.) During the past 17 months, throughout the vaunted "surge," U.S. forces have been building ghettos all over Baghdad and elsewhere in the country, often turning over these enclaves to the tender mercies of "former" insurgents and terrorists who, now in the pay of Washington, rule them as private fiefdoms. This, you understand, is what is now known as "liberation."
Civilians still living in the slowly closing concrete trap say they are almost as fearful of a genuine truce as continued warfare. That's because a real truce would allow the violent sectarians empowered by Bush to operate with murderous impunity in their neighborhoods, replacing al-Sadr's draconian militia with something even worse, as McClatchy Papers reports:
Inside Abdul Hassan's home, furnished with colorful rugs and flimsy mattresses, Sakran and his wife hoped for calm after weeks of bombardment and gun battles, but they feared the worst is yet to come. "We just want peace," Sakran's wife, Suham Bresam, said, her eyes heavy from sleepless nights. "This agreement happened and I was up all night from the gunshots and strikes."
Her home was in the middle of the fight on the edge of the district where U.S. forces are holed up in abandoned buildings and the Iraqi Army has set up checkpoints, and she hadn't left it in weeks. A nearly completed wall built by the U.S. military isolates the area, and her modest dwelling is scarred by bullets and shrapnel…
Nowhere in Sadr City is safe from an air strike, Bresam said, but Abdul Hassan's home was safer than her own. At home, the Iraqi Army shoots erratically after a roadside bomb blast hit civilians, and when the Mahdi Army shoots rockets at U.S. aircraft, missiles rain on people's homes.
"It's just the civilians who get hurt," she said....
Before the battle began in late March, the area was peaceful…but they lived in an atmosphere of intimidation. When women were beaten by the Mahdi Army in her neighborhood or Sunnis killed, they objected quietly and never challenged the militia....
But they also fear the Iraqi Army. Videos captured on cell phones are being sent as messages from person to person. Abdul Hassan pulled out his phone to show a public hanging of three men. They stood on police trucks with nooses around their necks as a crowd of people looked on and then the trucks were driven away and the men were hung. Another showed men shot by the Iraqi Security Forces and then burned. In the background Iraqi soldiers spoke.
"Don't say in the name of God the most compassionate the most merciful. They are animals," one soldier said....
Abdul Hassan said the videos were shot in the southern cities of Karbala and Nassiriyah, and he worried that the same would happen in Sadr City if the Iraqi Army had free reign.
"We haven't seen a solution that will give us peace," he said. "We don't want it to be like Karbala or Nassiriyah. We don't want people executed in the streets."
But there will be no peace in Sadr City. The "surge" will continue along the Al Quds line. Bombs will keep falling from American planes, missiles from drone-craft operated by button-pushers bunkered in Nevada will continue to rain death on houses and apartment blocks, and the extremists embraced by George Bush will keep hanging and shooting people in the streets.
II. Meanwhile, civilians in Mosul are likewise fleeing or hunkering down in the face of a major assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces. Patrick Cockburn of the Independent reports that one of Iraq's largest cities has been turned into a "ghost town," as likewise fleeing or hunkering down in the face of an attack by U.S. and Iraqi forces. The latter have launched the attack because, they say, the city has been under the control of "al Qaeda in Iraq" for many months.
That's right; as Juan Cole notes, one of Iraq's largest cities has been in the hands of what is supposed to be America's deadliest enemies in Iraq – even while Americans has been bombarded with propaganda about the "success" of the surge. This is the same city, by the way, that is routinely trumpted as a "success story" in the glittering career of General David Petraeus, architect of the "successful" surge. Petraeus was in control of Mosul during the first months of the war, when he was regularly touted – by Michael Gordon of the NYT, among others – for his remarkable "counterinsurgency techniques" and peerless "nation-building skills." So "successful" were Petraeus' efforts that the current assault to dislodge "al Qaeda in Iraq" is a carbon-copy of a similar operation launched earlier this year, as Cole reports:
Reading news about Iraq is like watching Bill Murray's 'Groundhog Day' in which you have to live through the same day over and over again. So the US and Iraqi governments have announced a new campaign against Sunni radicals in Ninevah province, especially Mosul. Take a look at this article, published late last January: "Thousands of Iraqi army soldiers reached the northern city of Mosul on Sunday in preparation for what the government said would be a major offensive there against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, along with other Sunni militants."
Ninevah governor Duraid Kashmula admitted to Al-Hayat that Mosul "has come to dominated by the leaders of al-Qaeda as a result of the delay in the military operation in the city."
What??! Mosul is Iraq's second largest city at 1.7 million, and it is under the control of "al-Qaeda"? How long has this been the case? All this time? While the US press was reveling in the "calm" in the country?
Mosul was also taken over by insurgents in 2004 – while U.S. forces were destroying Fallujah. It has long been flashpoint for terrorist attacks, reprisals and strife throughout the war. And now, for the second time in less than a year, it is being subjected to a major attack to wrest it away from insurgents. This is the kind of "success" that has fuelled Petraeus' meteoric rise to his current perch in command of the entire "Central Command" of the Terror War.
But what is happening in Mosul today? Patrick Cockburn has the story:
Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al- Qa'ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country's northern capital into a ghost town.
Soldiers shoot at any civilian vehicle on the streets in defiance of a strict curfew. Two men, a woman and child in one car which failed to stop were shot dead yesterday by US troops, who issued a statement saying the men were armed and one made "threatening movements"....
I had been to Mosul down this road half a dozen times since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and on each occasion the military escort necessary to reach the city safely has grown bigger....
That's Petraeus' legacy of "success" in action!
There is no doubt that security in Mosul has been deteriorating over the last six months. Mr Goran, who in effect runs the city, said that 90 people were killed in Mosul last September compared to 213 dead this March, including 58 soldiers and policemen. The number of roadside bombs had risen from 175 to 269 over the same period.
The official theory for this is that al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which has only a limited connection with Osama bin Laden and is largely home grown, has been driven out of its bastions in Anbar and Diyala provinces and Sunni districts of Baghdad. It has retreated to Mosul, the largest Sunni Arab city and the third largest in Iraq.
This is probably over-simple. Attacks on US troops in Anbar province have restarted and in Sunni districts of west Baghdad al-Qa'ida appears to be lying low rather than being eliminated. In many cases in Baghdad al-Sahwa, the supposedly anti-al-Qa'ida awakening councils paid by the Americans, in practice have cosy arrangements with al-Qa'ida.
I was in Mosul on the day it was surrendered by Saddam Hussein's forces in 2003. Scenes of joy were succeeded within the space of a few hours by looting and gun battles between Arabs and Kurds. Five years later Mosul, one of the great cities of the world, looks ruinous and under siege. Every alley way is blocked by barricades and the only new building is in the form of concrete blast walls. The fact that the government has to empty the streets of Mosul of its people to establish peace for a few days shows how far the city is from genuine peace.
How far from peace…. There will be no peace in that tormented land now, because the ones who started the war, and keep it going, see no profit in peace – unless, as we've said before, it is the peace of the grave, with all resistance to their will, their interests, their agenda crushed utterly. There is no middle way for the war-and-dominion machine that bestrides our system. There is only the "obliteration" of resistance – or else, as in Vietnam, ignominous retreat after years of pointless death and ruin. But what do they care? In the words of Suham Bresam: "It's just the civilians who get hurt."
Arthur Silber needs your help. It's as simple as that. One of the most insightful, original, informed and meaningful voices in our political discourse today, Silber must scrape by from month to month on the jagged edge of circumstance, battling ill health with notable courage, surviving on nothing but what his blog can bring in. This is a shameful reflection of how our society regards wisdom and truth: as something to be cut off, unsupported, crushed if possible, and if not -- as in the case of Silber's indomitable spirit -- then marginalized, battered, made to suffer.
In recent weeks, Silber has roared back from a particularly vicious bout that laid him low to write a remarkable string of essays, full of the learning, passion, perception -- and wicked wit -- that is a trademark of his work. Some particularly choice example can be found here: Let the Victims Speak; Why America May Go to Hell; and Cultivate Your Sense of Wonder.
In the latter piece, Silber combines older and new material to speak eloquently about the vision that drives his work:
If I had to select just a single word to express my deepest feeling about the world, and about humankind, it would be that one: wonder. I consider it a measure of how unevolved we are that so many people appear to be capable of that feeling only when they contemplate an imaginary, supernatural plane. It is hardly surprising that our world holds so much unnecessary suffering, when so many people are willing and eager to condemn it to second-rate status in favor of one they've made up out of whole cloth...
I think it highly probable that our circumstances will continue to get significantly worse, although this deterioration may come quickly or comparatively slowly. You may live the rest of your life without seeing the worst of what will happen, or even anything close to the worst -- or you may not. There is no way to know, and the variables are close to infinite. But I say again: it does not have to be this way. Extraordinary events have transpired in history before, and they might again. We need a miracle, but not one delivered to us from a supernatural realm: we require a miracle that we create.
It can happen. Hold on to your sense of wonder; if you do not have a sufficiently strong one, then develop it. For me, it is the most precious resource in the world....
Live in the sense of wonder, and in the world of joy. Take it, feel it and pass it on. That's sometimes all you can do -- for someone, somewhere, one day. It's everything.
I now add that, when you engage in this process, you yourself live ecstatically -- today.
Can we afford to let such a voice fall silent? If you have anything at all to spare, get on over to Silber's site and give what support you can.
Outside Agitators: Another Missile Attack Aimed at Peace Talks Thomas married into the multi-billionaire Bucksbaum clan, owners of about 60 million square feet of shopping malls. Thomas lives better than the average reporter, in Bethesda, in "a palatial 11,400-square-foot house, currently valued at $9.3 million...
Serving the System: Disillusion, Deception and the Obama Campaign Honestly, why even bother with pwogwessives like fd? He's obviously carved a comfy niche for himself in the corporate DNC and can manage to maintain the delusion that Obama is some kind of pwoggie savior. Nice work if you can get it...
There's no ...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond mistah Charlie: check the podcasts; I did an interview with Howard Zinn a few weeks back to discuss 'A peopel's History of American Empire'
Jimmythem: youa make-a me laugh: like you, i like bikes and weed, and liberals make me feel weird and uncomfo...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond The U.S. has had a remarkably consistent policy in the Middle East for nearly 40 years, selling arms to as many factions as possible, and pitting them against each other whenever it can. The "war on terror" just makes this foreign policy more obvious...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond Um. Chris?
You should check your permit.
In most counties, shootin' trolls in a barrel is not exactly above boards...
HA!
oh, that was made to order.
Love,
Scott
Fire Alarm: Feeding the Flames at Traitor's Gate I am in the militia in my state, and the militia is not what the mainstream media make us out to be. However this thing plays out, you and your loved ones will stand a better chance of coming out the other end by getting plugged in to the militia ne...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond I'm glad I stopped by here today, because I need diagnosis: I'm a motorcyclist who smokes wacky weed and likes shiny black boots. Creepy liberal hippies are people who smoke wacky weed, but evil Nazi faggots like shiny black boots. Both hippies AND N...
Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond In the interview you quote from Democacy Now, Professor As’ad AbuKhalil states "There’s a Los Angeles Times article today detailing the efforts by the United States and allies to create militias throughout the country. And the Washington Post in...
New Britney Spears Sex Tape Bares All!
Monday, 21 April 2008
(UPDATED BELOW)
I know no one cares about Somalia; every time I write about it on the website, the traffic drops like a stone. (Let's see if that headline draws a few eyeballs, though. If it works, we might just rename the whole damn blog.) But I don't care if no one cares. There is a continuous slaughter and ravaging of innocent human beings going on in Somalia, a vast atrocity that is sponsored, funded, greenlighted and directly aided by the United States government, and I'm going to keep on writing about it.
This third Terror War campaign of "regime change" by the American military machine has already spawned what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and every day leaves more civilian bodies rotting in the streets, and more fleeing families stranded in the middle of nowhere, with nothing. At every step of the way, the Bush Administration has assisted its proxy force of Ethiopian invaders and CIA-paid warlords, by rocketing villages, killing goatherds, capturing refugees and "renditioning" them to Ethiopian torture chambers, and even sending in openly avowed "death squads" to "kill anyone left alive" after bombing strikes. At every step of the way, the Bush Administration has conducted and assisted operations that Americans once would have considered the stuff of old-movie Nazis, twirling their waxed Prussian moustaches as they send a young mother off to a concentration camp, or order artillery barrages on residential areas, or dispatch death squads to pump bullets into the heads of human beings left twitching, burned and bloodied after a sneak attack by Stukas.
Oh, I know none of this is nearly as important as working up a mighty "blogswarm" against ABC because some witless TV talking heads aimed some witless questions at politicians on the make who have been spouting witless bumpersticker platitudes all over the country for months on end. I know I should be out on the street in protest, sticking it to The Man with some really ironic placards or something. Because after all, the only thing that matters in this election -- where the American proxy war in Somalia has not been mentioned at all, and where all the candidates earnestly pledge to conduct the global War of Terror with even more ruthless efficiency than the "incompetent" Bush -- is what a few Beltway insiders say to each other on the Tee-Vee.
But surely, in the big and glorious tent of the blogosphere, there is room for a minor story or two about a little American-backed mass murder in one of those funny little countries across the ocean, right? Like this AP story featured -- that is to say, buried -- in the New York Times on Monday: "81 Die in Clashes Between Islamists and Troops in Somalia."
You will note the NYT's clever headline, which completely distorts the plain facts reported in the second paragraph of the AP story:
The deaths were caused when Ethiopians fired heavy artillery and tank shells in residential areas of Mogadishu, said the rights leader, Sudan Ali Ahmed, chairman of Elman Human Rights. “We condemn this latest fighting,” he said. Besides the 81 people who were killed, 119 were wounded, he said. His group said that all of those killed were civilians.
This doesn't exactly sound like a fierce firefight between "Islamists" and the unidentified "troops" in the headline. Instead, it sounds as if the occupying forces of a military invader turned their guns on civilians and slaughtered a few dozen of them. But this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood.
Yet let's be fair to the old Gray Lady. It's not just the headline; the AP story itself is riddled with verbal sleight-of-hand to keep the reader from learning the reality behind the "objective" report. For example, directly after quoting Ahmed, the human rights leader, by name, AP goes on to provide some mitigating spin from anonymous "witnesses" who "said that because the insurgents wear civilian clothing, it was impossible to say how many of the dead were noncombatants."
Who were these witnesses? Are they more credible than Ahmed, whose group has condemned the atrocities on all sides, earning the enmity of every armed group in the country? Was Ahmed lying?
What if there were "Islamist fighters" among the dozens of dead? Does that mitigate the crime of firing heavy artillery and tank shells into residential areas? Was it OK for the Nazis to, say, bombard a French neighborhood to ruins, as long as there were a few Resistance fighters wearing civilian clothes in the area?
There were a few more witnesses willing to be named in the story. Let's see what they had to say:
A witness, Aden Shire, said the Ethiopians had seemed to be searching for the bodies of fellow soldiers killed Saturday. Another witness, Omar Abdulahi, said that among the dead he counted were two old men in their homes who had been shot by Ethiopian soldiers.
A woman, Nasteho Moalim, said her 7-year-old daughter and three neighbors had been killed, and her husband wounded, by tank shells that hit their homes.
But wait; everything's OK, it wasn't an American-backed war crime after all, because someone in the neighborhood fired back at the Ethiopian/warlord forces that were firing heavy artillery and tank shells into the civilian area:
On the government’s side, at least one Somali soldier and two Ethiopians were killed, said another witness, Asha Shegow Abikar.
Those bodies were certainly not taken to the hospitals and clinics in the disputed area where the human rights group totaled up the dead from Sunday's battle, so they did not figure into Ahmed's death count.
But in the end, what does it matter? Anyone killed in one of our righteous "regime changes" had it coming one way or another, right? The story goes on to retail the same kind of amorphous demonization we have seen of every single person in the Terror War (and its conjoint operations) who does not openly and avidly collaborate with an occupying force. In its very brief background graf on the conflict -- which naturally omits any mention at all of American involvement -- AP tells us that:
Ethiopian troops supporting the transitional government’s soldiers ousted Islamist fighters from power in Mogadishu, the capital, in December 2006.
What the forces of the Ethiopian dictatorship actually ousted with the help of American money, training, weapons -- and direct military support -- was a federation of Islamic groups that had coalesced into the first relatively stable government that Somalia had known since 1991. Some of the groups in this Islamic Courts coalition had militias -- like every other clan and political faction and criminal organization in the anarchic land. But not everyone involved in the new government, and not everyone who supported it, or tolerated it for the security and stability it had brought, were "Islamist fighters." Yet AP's description -- repeated over and over in most of American media stories on this Terror War front -- paints them all with this sinister brush.
And thus any Somali who now opposes the Ethiopian occupation is automatically an "Islamist fighter" or an "insurgent" or, inevitably, a "terrorist." Just as every Palestinian in Gaza is part of Hamas, and every Iraqi not actively working for the Bush-backed government is a "Mahdi Army fighter" or an "insurgent" or, inevitably, "al Qaeda" -- and thus fair game for a drone missile attack launched by some goober eating Hot Pockets at his computer terminal in Nevada. The killing of anyone slapped with these labels is considered "justified" by the Bush Regime, and by the American press. Even the murder of innocent people who happen to be in vague proximity to someone assigned one of these ever-expanding labels is considered a "regrettable" but necessary bit of "collateral damage."
And so the slaughter goes on in Somalia. If you are an American, it has your name on it. If you are a Democrat, neither of your presidential candidates gives a damn about it. (It goes without saying that Bush-hugger John McCain doesn't give a damn.) But hey, that's all right; the main thing is that George Stephanopoulos probably feels a bit sheepish right now. I'm sure that will make Nasteho Moalim feel a whole lot better as she buries her seven-year-old daughter.
The bodies of 10 people have been found in a mosque in the Somali capital, after two days of clashes between Ethiopian troops and insurgents. Local residents blame the killings on the Ethiopians, who are backing the government against Islamist fighters.
Six of the dead are religious leaders from the Tabliq Sufi sect, which is not involved in the conflict...
Aden Haji Yusuf, 60, was one of the local elders helped to bury the dead on Monday. "We are now out, for the first time in two days, to discover the dead bodies of some neighbours and bury them," he said.
Tabliq official Shiekh Abdi-kheyr Isse said the Ethiopians had "slaughtered" the clerics. "The Ethiopians surrounded al-Hidaya Mosque on Sunday and killed [the] mullahs mercilessly, including Sheikh Sa'id, the chief of the group in southern Somalia," he said.
Elsewhere, the story notes that the "regime change" in Somalia has had the same effect as the similar operations in Iraq and Afghanistan: it has destroyed moderate forces, radicalized multitudes, and fueled the rise of religious extremism:
Islamic militants of the al-Shabab movement are still holding the south-western town of Wajid, 90 kilometres (52 miles) north of Baidoa, the current seat of the interim parliament. They took the town on Sunday, shutting down video cinema and kiosks selling narcotic leaves known as "khat" and also forced some boys in the city to shave their heads because they had their hair cut into western styles, witnesses said.
"Heavily armed young men, who masked their faces with turbans, have been in control of the town and they have also been patrolling in the streets," local resident Madey Isaq Nur told the BBC by telephone.
This actually follows a much older strategy followed by the US and the UK in the region. The Western powers have long favored alliances with pliant (or paid-off) warlords and tyrants -- the Saudis, the Shah, Mubarak, Saddam, etc. -- helping them destroy any centrist forces that might pose a genuine alternative to rule by U.S. clients. Very often this also takes the form of deliberately stoking religious extremism, giving violent sectarian groups money, arms, and support to bring down more nationalist, secular targets: such as the democratic Iranian government toppled in favor of the Shah. Or Israel's role in the rise of Hamas as a counterforce to the secular, nationalist PLO. Or Putin's obliteration of Chechen society, leaving nothing but Kremlin-backed warlords and fanatical extremists to fight it out.
Likewise in Iraq, the Bush Administration has empowered a client government dominated by violent Shiite factions long aligned and nurtured by Iran's mullahs. And of course the supreme example of this strategy is the key American role in creating an international organization of militant Islamic extremists to topple the secular, Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan.
And even where active support is not given to extremists (as in Egypt today), the chaos and suffering wrought by aggressive "regime changes" and the political repression imposed by American-backed tyrants drive people toward extremist factions, which are often the only alternative organization left standing when civic society has been destroyed.
But again, that's all OK; the more chaos and extremism there is out there, the bigger the profits of the war machine -- and of the politicians who serve it so faithfully.
For a recent example, see Hillary Clinton's bloodthirsty promise to "obliterate" Iran if it dares to attack Israel -- something that is not even remotely a possibility. What will be the effect of Clinton's bellicosity? Why, to strengthen the extremists and hardliners in Iran, of course! To store up more suffering, death and chaos for generations to come.
But why on earth would she do that? Well, which candidate has received the most money from the war machine in this campaign? Here's a hint: It's not Bush-hugger McCain or Business-as-usual Barry. (Although both men are also trousering plenty of blood money, of course.)
Well Chris, hats off to you again on another solid report about the war that the texas fuhrer & co obviously don't want us knowing about. I just want to personally say that I do care about somalia and honestly dunno why anyone who reads this site wouldn't care, since its all part n parcel of the much wider war being waged on the region. Think folks with enough knowledge to read your articles in the first place are not interested in hearing only half the story but again in true form you say you don't care if no one cares your going to keep writing about it and you should this site isn't about ratings its about telling the truth, last time I checked (folks that want "news" made with ratings in mind can check out the fox noise network :)
But back to the the literally burning issue, Somalia is being plundered. Dark forces from Washington have conspired and planned, then sent billions in Military Hardware, Bribes and expertise and rained them down on this country to undermine and destroy a local political movement from restoring order. Why?
Dr Omar De Kock in his article (Who's sawing off the Horn of Africa") on Global Research wrote: "As part of Operation Enduring Freedom US Naval vessels have engaged in several military strikes in Somalia" Doesn't that sound a bit suspicious? He concludes that Somalia/Ethiopia is to some extent "a southern front" in the larger middle east war theatre.
If that is true is Iran going to be "the eastern front" of enduring freedom?
In one of your previous articles "Kill anyone still alive" you mention Barnett as saying that Somalia was "Iraq done right" Hmmmm what was done so well in this campaign as opposed to Iraq????
Maybe it was the privatisation of the early stages on the war involving "illegal mercenaries" back in June of 2006 as I just read tonight here
I'm forever grateful you refuse to shut up about this cynical, state sponsored genocide, for the sake of our possible posterity. They will need to know that not all of us were monsters from hell, and there will be very little hard evidence of that fact to be found. But perhaps it will be gleaned that there were a few impassioned voices for humanity still out there, refusing to bow down before the monolithic evil that covers the globe.
The bombings by the Bush administration in Somalia have had the destabilizing effect that was intended. This was another attempt to cause utter confusion and chaos so that LARGE OIL COMPANIES could get offshore OIL rights for nothing.
Indeed, when there is war in 4 separate theaters, the attention of the public is on whatever “conflict” involves LARGE OIL COMPANIES. The western elitist press, who has better things to do than actually report the truth about what is happening, has decided to put a false priority on the news items that can sell the most advertising.( $ ) The BBC Africa has been reporting on the Somalia situation, more than most of the other “news” organizations.
Bush Foreign Policy:
1). Bomb third world countries that have OIL. 2). Put out faulty intelligence and CIA claims that Al-Qaeda is involved. 3). Pay off right wing organizations (Like the UN) to bolster your efforts. 4). Try to destabilize the governments by whatever means are available, so that LARGE OIL COMPANY INTERESTS ARE FAVORED over human rights and decency issues.
Learning is the key to healing.
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Continue reporting on Somalia, Chris,it's one of the major reasons to me to visit your site.Because anywhere else there is not much indepth reporting on this subject.Great article again
When Bush 41 committed U.S. troops to Somalia, he was on his last global junket as president of the United States. At the time, I thought the commitment was just another way the GOP planned to make life difficult for the incoming Democratic administration of Bill Clinton -- one more hot potato to drop in the opposition's hand.
I was surprised, therefore, at what I thought was Clinton's stupidity in not pulling U.S. forces OUT of Somalia as soon as he had the power to do so. My sense of the situation was reinforced after the famous Mogadishu shootout (of "Blackhawk Down" fame), when rightwingers in the beer joints all snickered cynically about "Bill Clinton's war." And of course it did no good to point out that Poppy Bush was the guy who sent our boys in there.
So I never figured out why Clinton left our troops in Somalia. And that means I never actually knew why Bush 41 sent them there in the first place. And I still don't know. So if somebody could background me on that, I might be more curious about what happens there.
Furthermore I've arrived at the conclusion that it does no good for me, as an American citizen, to rail about what happens in Somalia or Iraq or Palestine or any such place. That's because our United States government (from the POTUS right down to the lowliest congresscritter) no longer gives one shit what anybody thinks of what it's doing about anything at all.
All of the conflicts in which we are now involved are but symptoms. Stopping them (if we had the power) does nothing to fix what's wrong here at home. And what's wrong here at home boils down to piracy on a grand scale. Pirates, organized criminals, have seized control of the United States government and now use our military might to rape and plunder the rest of the nations on this planet.
That is the problem as I see it. There is no non-violent solution to the problem. We will overthrow this government or else the rest of the world will come here and do the job. Revolution at home would be incredibly difficult and dangerous, but if we allow the latter scenario to develop, things for us will be more difficult still.
It's still your privilege to vote this year if you want to. But if you do, you're part of the problem.
Chris, I was heartened to read you say that you will continue to address events in Somalia even if no one else seems to care. What we are doing in that country is beyond shameless and if you don't cover it the US govt. wins by default.
Thanks Chris for your great reporting on Somalia. Your readers should also check out http://www.blackagendareport.com/ index.php?option=com_ content&task=view&id=449&Itemid=36 Black Agenda Reportfor more news on Somalia
1). Bomb third world countries that have OIL. 2). Put out faulty intelligence and CIA claims that Al-Qaeda is involved. 3). Pay off right wing organizations (Like the UN) to bolster your efforts. 4). Try to destabilize the governments by whatever means are available, so that LARGE OIL COMPANY INTERESTS ARE FAVORED over human rights and decency issues.
The only thing I'd add to this good summary is that "right-wing" (point 3) may not be as accurate as corporatist or imperialist. I say this because if you believe all political perspectives can be shown by the left-right linear scale, there are right-wing people who aren't in favor of empire or corporatism. They're the old-school conservatives, literal conservatives. Not many of them left these days, but they do exist. But still, BLAQFATHER makes an excellent summary.
So I never figured out why Clinton left our troops in Somalia. And that means I never actually knew why Bush 41 sent them there in the first place. And I still don't know. So if somebody could background me on that, I might be more curious about what happens there.
Chris - Keep up the good works culling through the news coverage on the Somalian GWOT front. Your efforts are appreciated.
Also, we need to keep reminding ourselves that the media's disinterest in Somalia (like Dafur, like the Congo) is part of the historic racial prism. This is going on over in Africa. Life is cheap there. These people all have dark skins. If there were a bunch of publicity about the ongoing slaughter being funded covertly under the table by Uncle Sam, or orchestrated overtly from overhead with US air strikes, the notoriety might get rabble rousers like that Jeremiah Wright fellow all worked up, and that could get awkward or even out of hand.
So it's better to just turn away, sort of like we did in Rwanda, Guatemala, East Timor, and places like that.
Jimmythem -
Good point on George I presenting Bill Clinton with the Mogadishu hot potato as a welcoming present.
Even though George H W Bush obviously had some sort of strategic purpose in sending troops into Somalia in the first place (he certainly did not envision losing to a draft dodging Dem in 1992), much of the US military build up there was carried out when Bush had become a lame duck. The table was set, with scarcely a bloodstain on the cloth or napkins.
If Bill Clinton embraced a US military build up in Somalia, he could perhaps prove he was not a wimp, and help exorcise the ghosts of Vietnam like Reagan-Bush had done. If he withdrew, his cowardice would be proved. Then when he events eventually forced Clinton's hand (Blackhawk down, bodies dragged through the streets on the evening news), Clinton could be attacked from the right for lacking resolve.
The military/industrial/intelligence complex had it all covered however things came unraveled. And it worked.
George the Lesser has been diligently sprinkling special forces throughout much of Africa and central Asia for several years now, in a similar hot potato pattern. If McCain wins, the Pentagon is all set. If Obama wins, it's his no-win partisan problem to deal with, with the same range of undesirable, politically manipulable options.
Thanks Chris for this one. Let me just join in with other commenters here and cherish the bitter comfort of having your magnificent voice around to help us understand the twisted cruelty of our times. Corporate media spin is ubiquitous and only forcibly startling people out of it will open the road to more decency. No one does that better than you do. Thanks again.
If Bill Clinton embraced a US military build up in Somalia, he could perhaps prove he was not a wimp, and help exorcise the ghosts of Vietnam like Reagan-Bush had done. If he withdrew, his cowardice would be proved. Then when he events eventually forced Clinton's hand (Blackhawk down, bodies dragged through the streets on the evening news), Clinton could be attacked from the right for lacking resolve.
That might be a plausible scenario in an alternate universe, like Bizarro World.
However, in America, the Bill Clinton who was our President was not an honest man, nor was he a peaceful man, nor was he a humanitarian. He was and is a corporatist and imperialist. This fact may be uncomfortable and/or difficult to reconcile for you, Bill, but it remains true. It does us no good whatever to romanticize Bill Clinton as some noble pure-hearted saint who was done wrong by Poppy Bush. Poppy Bush and Bill Clinton are pals, Bill. Business pals. Bill Clinton has asked to fill a seat on the Carlyle Group when the time is right. I propose that if Swillary the Swine should get the POTUS office then the time will be right in Jan 2009.
Either way, I can't agree with your characterization, because it removes all blame from Slick Willie and puts all blame on Poppy. The blame is to be equally shared. Bill Clinton didn't pull the troops because he feared being branded a "coward." He left them there because they served the interests of those who advised him and funded his campaign.
It really is that simple.
Bill Clinton was never anyone's friend but his own.
It's really sad seeing someone like Jendayi Frazier cheerleading the slaughter. On March 7, offshore UN navel units fired Tomahawk missiles at a berg in the middle of nowhere, Dhobley, claiming it was after "al-Qaeda terrorists" (Yeah, right). Three women and three children were killed.
Personally, I am not surprised at the mayhem and indiscriminate bloodletting as I remember the DoD's role in the Dirty War (under Carter) and the needless and cruel interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Did you know that Colin Powell flew to Katmandu to arrange for arms to be shipped to King Gyanendra? He would have high-fived a massacre there, too.
Thank you for your work Chris, I care about Africa and the "unpeople" suffering under the boot of the West. I write a weekly column for my school paper and want to do one on Somalia, is there a way I can get a hold of you to discuss this? The contact info link isn't working.
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