Fake Terrorism -
The Road To Dictatorship
by Michael Rivero
from the Free Republic
It's the oldest trick in the book, dating back to Roman times; creating
the enemies you need.
In 70 BC, an ambitious minor politician and extremely wealthy man,
Marcus Licineus Crassus, wanted to rule Rome. Just to give you an
idea of what sort of man Crassus really was, he is credited with
invention of the fire brigade. But in Crassus' version, his
fire-fighting slaves would race to the scene of a burning building
whereupon Crassus would offer to buy it on the spot for a tiny fraction
of it's worth.
If the owner sold, Crassus' slaves would put
out the fire. If the owner refused to sell, Crassus allowed the building
to burn to the ground. By means of this device, Crassus eventually came
to be the largest single private landholder in Rome, and used some of
his wealth to help back Julius Caesar against Cicero.
In 70 BC Rome was still a Republic, which placed very strict limits on
what Rulers could do, and more importantly NOT do. But Crassus had no
intentions of enduring such limits to his personal power, and contrived
a plan.
Crassus seized upon the slave revolt led by Spartacus in order to strike
terror into the hearts of Rome, whose garrison Spartacus had already
defeated in battle. But Spartacus had no intention of marching on Rome
itself, a move he knew to be suicidal. Spartacus and his band wanted
nothing to do with the Roman empire and had planned from the start
merely to loot enough money from their former owners in the Italian
countryside to hire a mercenary fleet in which to sail to freedom.
Sailing away was the last thing Crassus wanted Spartacus to do. He
needed a convenient enemy with which to terrorize Rome itself for his
personal political gain. So Crassus bribed the mercenary fleet to sail
without Spartacus, then positioned two Roman legions in such a way that
Spartacus had no choice but to march on Rome.
Terrified of the impending arrival of the much-feared army of
gladiators, Rome declared Crassus Praetor. Crassus then crushed
Spartacus' army and even though Pompeii took the credit, Crassus was
elected Consul of Rome the following year.
With this maneuver, the Romans surrendered their Republican form of
government. Soon would follow the first Triumvirate, consisting of
Crassus, Pompeii, and Julius Caesar, followed by the reign of the
god-like Emperors of Rome.
The Romans were hoaxed into surrendering their Republic, and accepting
the rule of Emperors.
Julius Caesar's political opponent, Cicero, for all his literary
accomplishments, played the same games in his campaign against Julius
Caesar, claiming that Rome was falling victim to an internal "vast right
wing" conspiracy in which any expressed desire for legislative limits no
government was treated as suspicious behavior. Cicero, in order to
demonstrate to the Romans just how unsafe Rome has become hired thugs to
cause as much disturbance as possible, and campaigned on a promise to
end the internal strife if elected and granted extraordinary powers.
What Cicero only dreamed of, Adolf Hitler succeeded in doing.
Elected
Chancellor of Germany, Hitler, like Crassus, had no intention of living
with the strict limits to his power imposed by German law. Unlike
Cicero, Hitler's thugs were easy to recognize; they all wore the same
brown shirts. But their actions were no different than those of their
Roman predecessors. They staged beatings, set fires, caused as much
trouble as they could, while Hitler made speeches promising that he
could end the crime wave of subversives and terrorism if he was granted
extraordinary powers.
The Germans were hoaxed into surrendering their Republic, and accepting
the rule of Der Führer.
The state-sponsored schools will never tell you this, but governments
routinely rely on hoaxes to sell their agendas to an otherwise reluctant
public. The Romans accepted the Emperors and the Germans accepted Hitler
not because they wanted to, but because the carefully crafted illusions
of threat appeared to leave no other choice.
Our government too uses hoaxes to create the illusion that
We The People
have no choice but the direction the government wishes us to go in.
In 1898, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's
New York Journal were arguing for American intervention in Cuba. Hearst
is reported to have dispatched a photographer to Cuba to photograph the
coming war with Spain. When the photographer asked just what war that
might be, Hearst is reported to have replied,
"You take the photographs,
and I will provide the war".
Hearst was true to his word, as his
newspaper published stories of great atrocities being committed against
the Cuban people, most of which turned out to be complete fabrications.
On the night of February 15, 1898, the USS Maine, lying in Havana harbor
in a show of US resolve to protect her interests, exploded violently.
Captain Sigsbee, the commander of the Maine, urged that no assumptions
of enemy attack be made until there was a full investigation of the
cause of the explosion. For this, Captain Sigsbee was excoriated in the
press for "refusing to see the obvious". The Atlantic Monthly declared
flat out that to suppose the explosion to be anything other than a
deliberate act by Spain was "completely at defiance of the laws of
probability".
Under the slogan "Remember the Maine", Americans went to war with Spain,
wresting from that nation ownership of what is now much of the American
southwest.
In 1975, an investigation led by Admiral Hyman Rickover examined the
data recovered from a 1911 examination of the wreck and concluded that
there had been no evidence of an external explosion. The most likely
cause of the sinking was a coal dust explosion in a coal bunker
imprudently located next to the ship's magazines. Captain Sigsbee's
caution had been well founded.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt needed a war.
He needed the fever of
a major war to mask the symptoms of a still deathly ill economy
struggling back from the Great Depression. Roosevelt wanted a war with
Germany to stop Hitler, but despite several provocations in the
Atlantic, the American people, still struggling with that troublesome
economy, were opposed to any wars.
Roosevelt needed an enemy, and if America would not willingly attack
that enemy, then one would have to be maneuvered into attacking America,
much as Marcus Licinius Crassus has maneuvered Spartacus into attacking
Rome.
The way open to war was created when Japan signed the tripartite
agreement with Italy and Germany, with all parties pledging mutual
defense to each other. Whereas Hitler would never declare war on the
United States no matter the provocation, the means to force Japan to do
so were readily at hand.
The first step was to place oil and steel embargoes on Japan, using
Japan's wars on the Asian mainland as a reason. This forced Japan to
consider seizing the oil and mineral rich regions in Indonesia. With the
European powers militarily exhausted by the war in Europe, the United
States was the only power in the Pacific able to stop Japan from
invading the Dutch East Indies, and by moving the Pacific fleet from San
Diego to Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, Roosevelt made a pre-emptive strike on
that fleet the mandatory first step in any Japanese plan to extend it's
empire into the "southern resource area".
Roosevelt boxed in Japan just as completely as Crassus had boxed in
Spartacus.
Japan needed oil. They had to invade Indonesia to get it, and
to do that they had to remove the threat of the American fleet at Pearl Harbour. There never really was any other course open to them.
To enrage the American people as much as possible, Roosevelt needed the
first overt attack by Japan to be as bloody as possible, appearing as a
sneak attack much as the Japanese had done to the Russians. From that
moment up until the attack on Pearl Harbour itself, Roosevelt and his
associates made sure that the commanders in Hawaii, General Short and
Admiral Kimmel, were kept in the dark as much as possible about the
location of the Japanese fleet and it's intentions, then later scapegoated for the attack. (Congress recently exonerated both Short and
Kimmel, posthumously restoring them to their former ranks).
But as the Army board had concluded at the time, and subsequent
de-classified documents confirmed, Washington DC knew the attack was
coming, knew exactly where the fleet was, and knew where it was headed.
On November 29th, Secretary of State Hull showed United Press reporter
Joe Leib a message with the time and place of the attack, and the
New
York Times in it's special 12/8/41 Pearl Harbour edition, on page 13,
reported that the time and place of the attack had been known in
advance!
The much repeated claim that the Japanese fleet maintained radio silence
on it's way to Hawaii was a lie.
Among other intercepts still held in
the Archives of the NSA is the UNCODED message sent by the Japanese
tanker Shirya stating,
"proceeding to a position 30.00 N,
154.20 E. Expect to arrive at that point on 3 December." (near HI)
President Lyndon Johnson wanted a war in
Vietnam.
He wanted it to help his friends who owned defense companies to
do a little business. He needed it to get the Pentagon and CIA to quit
trying to invade Cuba. And most of all, he needed a provocation to
convince the American people that there was really "no other choice".
On August 5, 1964, newspapers across America reported "renewed attacks"
against American destroyers operating in Vietnamese waters, specifically
the Gulf of Tonkin. The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo
boats launched an "unprovoked attack" on the USS Maddox while it was on
"routine patrol".
The truth is that USS Maddox was involved in aggressive intelligence
gathering in coordination with actual attacks by South Vietnam and the
Laotian Air Force against targets in North Vietnam. The truth is also
that there was no attack by torpedo boats against the USS Maddox.
Captain John J. Herrick, the task force commander in the Gulf, cabled
Washington DC that the report was the result of an "over-eager" sonar
man who had picked up the sounds of his own ship's screws and panicked.
But even with this knowledge that the report was false, Lyndon Johnson
went on national TV that night to announce the commencement of air
strikes against North Vietnam, "retaliation" for an attack that had
never occurred.
President George Bush wanted a war in Iraq.
Like Crassus, George Bush is
motivated by money. Specifically oil money. But with the OPEC alliance
failing to keep limits on oil production in the Mideast, the market was
being glutted with oil pumped from underneath Iraq, which sat over
roughly 1/3 of the oil reserves of the entire region.
George wanted a war to stop that flow of oil, to keep prices (and
profits) from falling any further than they already had. But like
Roosevelt, he needed the "other side" to make the first move.
Iraq had long been trying to acquire greater access to the Persian Gulf,
and felt limited confined a narrow strip of land along Kuwait's northern
border, which placed Iraqi interests in close proximity with hostile
Iran. George Bush, who had been covertly arming Iraq during its war with
Iran, sent word via Jean Kirkpatrick that the United States would not
intervene if Saddam Hussein grabbed a larger part of Kuwait.
Saddam fell
for the bait and invaded.
Of course, Americans were not about to send their sons and daughters to
risk their lives for petroleum products.
So George Bush arranged a hoax,
using public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which has grown rich on
taxpayer money by being most industrious and creative liars!
Hill &
Knowlton concocted a monumental fraud in which the daughter of the
Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States, went on TV pretending to be a
nurse (below video), and related a horror story in which
Iraqi troops looted the
incubators from a Kuwaiti hospital, leaving the premature babies on the
cold floor to die.
The media, part of the swindle from the start, never
bothered asking why the "nurse" didn't just pick the babies up and wrap
them in blankets or something.
Enraged by the incubator story, Americans supported operation
Desert
Storm, which never removed Saddam Hussein from power but which did take
Kuwait's oil off of the market for almost 2 years and limited Iraq's oil
exports to this very day.
That our sons and daughters came home with
serious and lingering medical illnesses was apparently not too great a
price to pay for increased oil profits.
Following the victory in Iraq, yet another war appeared to be in the
offering in the mineral rich regions of Bosnia. Yet again, a hoax was
used to create support for military action.
A photo of Fikret Alic, a Muslim, staring through a barbed wire fence,
was used to "prove" that the Bosnians were running modern day
"Concentration Camps". As the headline of "Belsen 92" indicates, all
possible associations with the Nazi horrors were made to sell the
necessity of sending yet more American troops into someone else's
nation.
But when German Journalists went to Trnopolje, the site of the supposed
Bosnian Concentration Camp, to film a documentary, they discovered that
the photo was a fake! The camp at Trnopolje was not a concentration camp
but a refugee centre. Nor was it surrounded by barbed wire.
Careful
examination of the original photo revealed that the photographer had
shot the photo through a broken section of fence surrounding a tool
shed. It was the photographer who was on the inside, shooting out at the
refugees.
Once again, Americans had been hoaxed into support of actions they might
otherwise not have agreed with.
While several American Presidents have willingly started wars for
personal purposes, perhaps no President has ever carried it to the
extreme that Bill Clinton has.
Coincident with the expected public statement of Monica Lewinsky
following her testimony, Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on
Sudan and Afghanistan, claiming to have had irrefutable proof that
bogeyman extraordinaire (and former Afghani ally) Osama Bin Laden was
creating terrorist chemical weapons there.
Examination of the photos of the debris revealed none of the expected
structures one would find in a laboratory that handled lethal
weapons-grade materials. Assurances from the CIA that they had a
positive soil test for biological weapons fell on their face when it was
revealed that there had been no open soil anywhere near the pre-bombed
facility. Sudan requested that international observers come test the
remains of the factory for any signs of the nerve gas Clinton had
insisted was there. None was found. The Sudanese plant was a harmless
aspirin factory, and the owner has sued for damages.
Later examination of the site hit in Afghanistan revealed it to be a
mosque.
Meanwhile, back in Kosovo, stories about genocide and atrocities were
flooding the media (in time to distract from the Sudanese
embarrassments), just as lurid and sensational and as it turns out often
just as fictional as most of William Randolph Hearst's stories of
atrocities against the Cubans.
Again, the government and the media were hoaxing Americans. A photo was
shown on all the American networks, claiming to be one of Slobodan
Milosovic's Migs, shot down while attacking civilians. Closer
examination shows it to be stenciled in English!
Like Germany under Chancellor Hitler, there have been events in our
nation which strike fear into the hearts of the citizens, such as the
New York World Trade Tower bombing, the OK City Federal Building, and
the Olympic Park bomb (nicely timed to divert the media from witnesses
to the TWA 800 shoot down). The media has been very quick to blame such
events on "radicals", "subversives", "vast right wing conspiracies", and
other "enemies in our midst", no different than the lies used by Cicero
and Hitler.
But on closer examination, such "domestic terrorist" events do not
appear to be what they are made out to be. The FBI had an informant
inside the World Trade Tower bombers, Emad Salam, who offered to
sabotage the bomb. The FBI told him "no". The so-called "hot bed" of
white separatism at Elohim City, occasional home to Tim McVeigh in the
weeks prior to the OK City bombing, was founded and is being run by an
FBI informant!
And nobody has ever really explained what this second Ryder truck was
doing in a secret camp half way from Elohim City to Oklahoma City two
weeks before the bombing.
So, here we are today.
Like the Romans of Crassus' and Cicero's time, or
the Germans under a newly elected Hitler, we are being warned that a
dangerous enemy threatens us, implacable, invisible, omnipresent, and
invulnerable as long as our government is hamstrung by that silly old
Bill of Rights. Already there have appeared articles debating whether or
not "extraordinary measures" (i.e. torture) are not fully justified
under certain circumstances such as those we are purported to face.
As was the case in Rome and Germany, the government continues to plead
with the public for an expansion of its power and authority, to "deal
with the crisis".
However, as Casio watch timers are paraded before the cameras, to the
stentorian tones of the talking heads' constant dire warnings, it is
legitimate to question just how real the crises is, and how much is the
result of political machinations by our own leaders.
Are the terrorists really a threat, or just hired actors with bombs and
Casio watches, paid for by Cicero and given brown shirts to wear by
Hitler?
Is terrorism inside the United States really from outside, or is it a
stage managed production, designed to cause Americans to believe they
have no choice but to surrender the Republic and accept the totalitarian
rule of a new emperor, or a new Führer?
Once lost, the Romans never got their Republic back. Once lost, the
Germans never got their Republic back. In both cases, the nation had to
totally collapse before freedom was restored to the people.
Remember that when Crassus tells you that Spartacus approaches.
Remember that when thugs in the streets act in a manner clearly designed
to provoke the public fear.
Remember that when the Reichstag burns down.
The Unveiling of
the National Security State
All things change, including our time-honored system of government. We
have entered into a new era, marked by the existence of an omnipresent
state, controlled by the very few, bound by no law but its own.
Welcome to the
New World Order.
"Any society that would give up
a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve
neither and lose both."
-Benjamin Franklin
A new American order is in place. Better get
used to it. Or else.
Five centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli explained how to
undertake a revolution from above without most people even noticing. In
his Discourses on Livy, he wrote that one,
"must at least retain the semblance of
the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been
no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely
different from the old ones."
That is, keep the old government structures,
even while you make profound changes to the actual system, because the
appearances are all that most people will notice.
So today, instead of seeing the corpse of a republic in which we live,
we see merely the dead man’s clothing. Those clothes look the same as
ever,
albeit
increasingly worn. We have had a quiet revolution that has not
eliminated our Congressional representatives – it’s simply made them
largely irrelevant.
It’s been a long journey to our current state of affairs. Not
surprisingly, wars have been a major catalyst. Most wars fought by the
United States have added power to the executive branch, while whittling
power away from the legislature.
This includes wars fought for
high-minded purposes such as the Civil War and World War Two, mindless
bloodbaths like World War One, and the dozens of undeclared wars over
the past half-century.
I would select World War Two – and its immediate aftermath – as the real
turning point when the American Dream went awry. This is ironic, since
it was at that moment when America first sat atop the world at the
pinnacle of power.
And therein lies the problem. For this was when the American republic
began its transformation into a national security state. Or, to put it
another way, into an Empire.
Harry Truman has received a free ride from historians who glorify the
all-powerful American State, but it he deserves a large share of the
blame for the existence of our current behemoth .
But enough of the past. This is, after all, post-9/11 America, in which
we are collectively driving our vehicle down a dangerous mountain path,
only to discover suddenly that we’re not doing the driving.
We no longer govern ourselves. There is no "government of the people, by
the people, and for the people," in any meaningful sense – in any sense
beyond what it might have meant to a citizen of the U.S.S.R. in the bad
old days of the Soviet Union.
As Machiavelli saw in his own time (and as he essentially foretold
regarding our own), the dramatic changes to our political institutions
have occurred without the people really noticing.
Consider the extraordinary – "nonstop" would be a better word – number
of U.S. military actions around the world these days. But when did
Congress last issue a declaration of war?
Consider the all-but open purchase of Presidents, members of Congress,
and anyone else of significance by those with financial means. Yet
another set of nails in the coffin of the American Republic.
Consider the internationalization of real power in this world, and the
lack of institutional means to examine or regulate such power. Our
global situation is akin to medieval feudalism, or more simply
gangsterism. The military power of the United States is the primary tool
for enforcement and self-enrichment by those with means. Best of all,
you don’t have to be an American citizen to influence policies of the
U.S. military.
Just ask any influential Saudi Arabian,
Israeli, or Chinese leader. Or various leaders from the world of
organized crime.
Consider the ramming through of the Patriot Act a bare month after
9/11/2001, when it was obvious that not a single member of Congress read
it thoroughly. With such a massively expanded federal ability to spy
into your personal life, you might as well bid farewell to the Fourth
Amendment – at least if you’re doing anything interesting in the opinion
of certain and mysterious bureaucrats.
Consider the conviction held by America’s Founding Fathers that a
functioning democracy requires an informed citizenry. Otherwise, they
argued, the experiment in "government by the people" would be doomed to
failure, and would inevitably transform into oligarchy. Compare that to
our situation today, when ordinary people cannot gain important
information from governing bodies, when the Freedom of Information Act
is increasingly unfriendly, and when people are pacified 24/7 by a
non-stop all-encompassing entertainment-driven culture that dominates
one’s waking moments.
The Romans called that bread and circuses. It
describes our situation well enough today.
In the same vein, consider also the promulgation of lies by America’s
political leadership that served as the pretext for the current war
(e.g. the false link between Iraq and Al Qaida, the falseness of claims
regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction), and the willingness of
America’s so-called Watchdog Media to jump uncritically on board,
beating the war drum. And when recognition is made that the information
was indeed false, it comes too late to prevent the pointless deaths of
thousands of soldiers and civilians.
Consider the horrified reaction to the savagery of Nazi and Japanese
atrocities during the Second World War. To the infamous German defense
- "we were only following orders" - the world responded (rightly) that
there are certain human values that must never be transgressed, and that
torture is never an acceptable human value. Fast forward to the
atrocities committed by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. And the
defense offered by (what some like to refer to as) America’s finest:
that they did no wrong, since they were only following orders. Just ask
American soldier, Lyndie England. That’s what she told the world.
Consider the ominous, burgeoning discussion on developing protocols in
the event that the upcoming Presidential election needs to be "delayed"
due to a possible terrorist attack. Delay the election? Even during
America’s Civil War, the election of 1864 occurred right on schedule.
We’ve come a long way, indeed.
What has happened by degrees over the past fifty years is that our
traditional political structure and culture have eroded and degraded
into something that prior generations of Americans would have found
shocking and unrecognizable. Indeed, they would have found our current
state of affairs to be positively un-American.
Machiavelli certainly had it right, but an addendum is necessary. After
the true and deep structures of power have been sufficiently
transformed, the outward appearance must eventually catch up. As the old
song says, something’s got to give, and the outward trappings will need
to be revised to reflect the new order.
Thus we see, in the wake of
9/11, that the veil of the New State is
being lifted. It is a State that has become so expansive and powerful,
it is no longer possible to hide it with the fig leaf of the old,
honorable ideology of republican virtue. Consider our era the "coming
out party" of the National Security State.
The millions of bumper stickers that proudly proclaim "God Bless
America" would be better expressed with a slight change:
"May God have mercy on the United
States of America."
"Just War"
The medieval doctrine of "Just War" (justum
bellum, or, more precisely jus ad bellum) was propounded by:
-
Saint Augustine of Hippo (fifth
century AD)
-
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) in
his "Summa Theologicae"
-
Francisco de Vitoria (1548-1617)
-
Francisco Suarez (1548-1617)
-
Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) in his
influential tome "Jure Belli ac Pacis" ("On Rights of War and
Peace", 1625)
-
Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1704)
-
Christian Wolff (1679-1754)
-
Emerich de Vattel (1714-1767)
Modern thinkers include
-
Michael Walzer in "Just and Unjust
Wars" (1977)
-
Barrie Paskins and Michael Dockrill
in "The Ethics of War" (1979)
-
Richard Norman in "Ethics, Killing,
and War" (1995)
-
Thomas Nagel in "War and Massacre"
-
Elizabeth Anscombe in "War and
Murder"
According to the Catholic Church's rendition
of this theory, set forth by Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in his Letter to
President Bush on Iraq, dated September 13, 2002, going to war is
justified if these conditions are met:
"The damage inflicted by the aggressor
on the nation or community of nations [is] lasting, grave, and
certain; all other means of putting an end to it must have been
shown to be impractical or ineffective; there must be serious
prospects of success; the use of arms must not produce evils and
disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated."
A just war is, therefore, a last resort, all
other peaceful conflict resolution options having been exhausted.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy sums up the doctrine
thus:
The principles of the justice of war are
commonly held to be:
-
Having just cause (especially
and, according to the United Nations Charter, exclusively,
self-defense)
-
Being (formally) declared by a
proper authority
-
Possessing a right intention
-
Having a reasonable chance of
success
-
The end being proportional to
the means used
Yet, the evolution of warfare - the
invention of nuclear weapons, the propagation of total war, the
ubiquity of guerrilla and national liberation movements, the
emergence of global, border-hopping terrorist organizations, of
totalitarian regimes, and rogue or failed states - requires these
principles to be modified by adding these tenets:
-
That the declaring authority is
a lawfully and democratically elected government
-
That the declaration of war
reflects the popular will
(Extension of 3) The right intention
is to act in just cause
(Extension of 4) ... or a reasonable
chance of avoiding an annihilating defeat
(Extension of 5) That the outcomes of war are preferable to
the outcomes of the preservation of peace
Still, the doctrine of just war, conceived
in Europe in eras past, is fraying at the edges. Rights and
corresponding duties are ill-defined or mismatched. What is legal is not
always moral and what is legitimate is not invariably legal. Political
realism and quasi-religious idealism sit uncomfortably within the same
conceptual framework. Norms are vague and debatable while customary law
is only partially subsumed in the tradition (i.e., in treaties,
conventions and other instruments, as well in the actual conduct of
states).
The most contentious issue is, of course, what constitutes "just cause".
Self-defense, in its narrowest sense (reaction to direct and
overwhelming armed aggression), is a justified casus belli.
But what about the use of force to (deontologically,
consequentially, or ethically):
-
Prevent or ameliorate a slow-motion
or permanent humanitarian crisis
-
Preempt a clear and present danger
of aggression ("anticipatory or preemptive self-defense" against
what Grotius called "immediate danger")
-
Secure a safe environment for urgent
and indispensable humanitarian relief operations
-
Restore democracy in the attacked
state ("regime change")
-
Restore public order in the attacked
state
-
Prevent human rights violations or
crimes against humanity or violations of international law by
the attacked state
-
Keep the peace ("peacekeeping
operations") and enforce compliance with international or
bilateral treaties between the aggressor and the attacked state
or the attacked state and a third party
-
Suppress armed infiltration,
indirect aggression, or civil strife aided and abetted by the
attacked state
-
Honor one's obligations to
frameworks and treaties of collective self-defense
-
Protect one's citizens or the
citizens of a third party inside the attacked state
-
Protect one's property or assets
owned by a third party inside the attacked state
-
Respond to an invitation by the
authorities of the attacked state - and with their expressed
consent - to militarily intervene within the territory of the
attacked state
-
React to offenses against the
nation's honor or its economy.
Unless these issues are resolved and
codified, the entire edifice of international law - and, more
specifically, the law of war - is in danger of crumbling.
The
contemporary multilateral regime proved inadequate and unable to
effectively tackle:
-
genocide (Rwanda, Bosnia)
-
terror (in Africa, Central
Asia, and the Middle East)
-
weapons of mass destruction (Iraq, India,
Israel, Pakistan, North Korea)
-
tyranny (in dozens of members of the
United Nations)
This feebleness inevitably led to the resurgence of "might is right"
unilateralism, as practiced, for instance, by the United States in
places as diverse as Grenada and Iraq. This pernicious and ominous
phenomenon is coupled with contempt towards and suspicion of
international organizations, treaties, institutions, undertakings, and
the prevailing consensual order.
In a unipolar world, reliant on a single superpower for its security,
the abrogation of the rules of the game could lead to chaotic and lethal
anarchy with a multitude of "rebellions" against the emergent American
Empire. International law - the formalism of "natural law" - is only one
of many competing universalist and missionary value systems.
Militant Islam is another.
The West must adopt the former to counter
the latter.
Truth is ignored,
hidden, embellished, or whitewashed i.e. given the Hollywood treatment
What many people see of America is not really America; it is Hollywood. Not
just foreigners, even Americans see America through the eyes of Hollywood.
Take World War II.
Many Americans think that it was they who saved the
world!
(It was actually Russia, led by like-it-or-not
Stalin, which was the first to inflict a defeat on the Nazis, free a host of
countries from occupation, enter Berlin and take charge of Hitler's bunker.)
Not many know that not until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, America
had never entered the War on the side of Britain and France. Or, more
correctly, they have absolutely no idea of the significance of this
decision. Like the grandfather of George Bush,
America was busy trading with
Nazi Germany. Many, like Bush family patron William Farris (of Standard Oil,
now Exxon), were making their fortunes off Nazi slave labor.
The U.S. had also closed its gates to European
Jews wanting to flee persecution; (forcing them to go to Palestine where
they established Israel and have since remained in conflict with the
original owners of the land and with their Arab neighbors.)
Franklin Roosevelt spent much of his time
assuring his nation that he would NEVER send "their children in harm's way"
- certainly a poor foil alongside real heroes like Winston Churchill,
Charles de Gaulle or even Josef Stalin.
It was precisely this geographic and
political isolation from the conflict, which drew people in the war zone
like a magnet to the American continent.
So, after sheep-faced Americans joined the war, films like Casablanca were
released, which had Americans showing hitherto unseen courage and sparing no
effort to save hapless Europeans from evil Nazis. Sure, these films helped
sell a lot of "war bonds" to aid the war effort but "war films" continued to
be made even after the real war was over - all of them showing Americans as
the selfless saviors of the world; all of them conveniently ignoring the
enormous sacrifices made by the Russians and the heavy losses made to bear
on civilians in the Axis nations.
During the War, American soldiers like good
soldiers everywhere went about raping and pillaging when they were not busy
fighting. In almost all of the war films, Americans GIs were, for mysterious
reasons, models of good behavior. It is this image that generations of
Americans have believed in, rather than in what history books would have had
to offer.
Rambo II, starring Sylvester Stallone, has Islamic fighters in Afghanistan
portrayed as brave freedom fighters, quite in line with government policy at
that time. By the time True Lies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was made,
the "freedom fighters" had become "terrorists" both on screen and in the
real world! Movies that romanticize military life (aiding recruitment,
usually from poorer sections of the American society) such as Top Gun or
Black Hawk Down get active cooperation (and under-publicized editorial
input) from the U.S. military while others that question military postures
have to rope in a foreign government for using their military hardware. .
In May 2003, an Iraqi boy who suffered burns all over his body, had his arms
amputed above the elbow, and lost 20 members of his family after an American
missile hit his home became subject of a media frenzy. Although the boy
refused American offers of free medical treatment, Hollywood went ahead and
made a movie starring George Clooney with an expectedly different story
ending.
In the Balkans, American soldiers have been
indicted of raping women and forcing them into prostitution but that did not
stop Hollywood from making a movie, which showed the opposite - an American
soldier killing another soldier to prevent a rape from happening! George
Bush and 9/11 was also subject of a movie. However, it featured no pet goat.
In sharp contrast, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which attempted to come
to terms with truth, was received with unrepressed hostility.
With every war, the deception continues to grow.
Even though the fall of the
Saddam statue in the middle of Baghdad or the rapturous welcome given to Ahmed Chalabi on his return to Iraq or the daring rescue of Private
Jessica Lynch are considered as classics among military psy-ops films,
Hollywood remains unbeaten in their effort at perpetuating myths for the
U.S. government.
Sure, Hollywood has no designs on the world and
they are in it with the American war machine only because it is a mutually
rewarding relationship. However, truth becomes a casualty - not just in war
but also in peace. This blackout is made complete by sanitized coverage of
world events by the American media.
In Iraq, for example, news reports are solely based on the version provided
by the U.S. military spokesman. American journalists rarely leave the safe
confines of the fortified "Green Zone" in Central Baghdad. However, to fool
the American public, videos shot by Iraqi journalists are placed in the
background. The American journalist wears a bullet-proof vest, stands in
front of the camera and then files "his report."
A white screen (not seen by viewers) placed
behind this brave journalist allows video technicians in a New York or
Washington D.C. studio to be able to seamlessly mix the two videos, creating
the illusion of the journalist having actually visited the scene.
With this kind of deception, the American
military remains free to drop bombs on houses of innocent people.
The
Big War, World War I, began for us in 1917 and ended in 1918.
