|
Recent
Stories
May
7, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
Website
of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
May
6, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
with Gretta Duisenberg
Anthony
Gancarski
Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
Are Many; They are Few"
Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
Their Pockets
Peter
Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kenthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01
Website
of the Day
South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
of Washington's Occupations
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
"You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"
April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
of the Iraq War
Uri
Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
Gancarski
Brush with the Law
Mickey
Z.
POWs: Then and Now
CounterPunch
Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents
Robert
Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
Wallace
Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29
Hot Stories
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
May
8, 2003
Banter with "Fricken Idiots"
Evil is as Evil
Does
by MARK ZEPEZAUER
Months later, I still get a stream of interesting
hate mail from my February CounterPunch submission "Why
the Right Hates America."
Some of it was simply insulting, and
some of it was reasonable and respectful, and either way I was
always happy to respond in the same spirit. Sometimes I could
shift a corespondent from the former category to the latter,
as with the software manager to whom the screed below was addressed.
First he said I was a "fricken idiot," and then, with
a little prompting, he was willing to participate in an exchange
of ideas.
Of course, unsurprisingly, that exchange
led to his not-so-original observation that "one of the
things that blinds the left is their inability to acknowledge
evil." Since parodying vast generalizations about "the
left" was the point of the original piece, I guess I'm not
too successful in engaging hearts and minds on the right. But
I pass my reply along in case it might prove useful to other
members of the Evil Empire:
Dear Mr. C.,
My good man, it appears that you're simply
regurgitating propaganda stereotypes about "the left"
which you've gleaned from hate radio. The difference between
the right and the left is not over recognizing the existence
of evil, but over the degree to which the state should regulate
the economy. The tens of millions of folks on the left (who were,
after all, the majority of voters in the last presidential election)
aren't some monolithic  mass of moral relativists
who chew on Foucault and Gramsci over radicchio and lattes. They're
mostly people who believe that other capitalist democracies have
found a better balance in allocating public resources like health
care and education, and who are tired of state subsidy of the
wealthy.
Actually, that's what I believe, so I
shouldn't stereotype the left, either. I have a leak for you
from the other side of the cultural divide: we can't even agree
on our secret handshake, let alone the nature of Truth.
Either way, I don't need any condescending
lectures from the right on the existence of evil, or, God help
us, moral relativism.
First of all, the main critique from
the anti-war movement (which included many on the right as well
as the left) was not that Saddam was anything other than evil
and that "loving him away" was a viable policy. The
thrust of our argument was
1.) The administration was lying about
WMD capabilities, because
2.) There were economic motivations for
the war, and that
3.) Valuable alliances and treaties were
being undermined, while
4.) Havoc would be unleashed on Iraqi
civilians, and
5.) Our security would be weakened by
an open-ended commitment in a volatile region (this last shared
by many in the Pentagon and CIA).
The fact that the Ba'athist regime was
deposed in three weeks negates none of these points. In fact,
the speed with which the regime collapsed, and its refusal to
use any WMDs to prevent that, tends to support the first point
regarding the nature of the threat. To be charitable, the jury
is still out on the other points, but it's not looking too good
for the pro-war camp.
And for that matter, bringing up the
Kurds is a particularly weak point when arguing on behalf of
"moral clarity." They've been screwed four times already
by Uncle Sam, or five if you want to count Woodrow Wilson. First
by Henry Kissinger, who armed them to put pressure on Saddam,
then cut them off and left them to Saddam's mercies after he
did what was desired. Then by Bush senior, who encouraged them
to rebel against Saddam and then had our troops literally stand
by and watch while they were slaughtered (of course Bush - and
not the UN - later declared "no-fly zones" over northern
Iraq when the resulting plight of the Kurds gave him an excuse
to do so).
The Kurds were also betrayed by the CIA
in 1996 when the Agency staged a poorly-planned "Bay of
Pigs"-style uprising using faulty intelligence from Iraqi
exile groups who told them only what they wanted to hear - just
like the Cuban exiles in 1961. And finally, the Kurds have been
slaughtered - in numbers far in excess of anything Saddam did
to them - by our NATO ally Turkey, using donated cash and military
aid from Washington, which only increased when the killing intensified.
Note that none of the above examples
of moral relativism are the work of "peaceniks."
As long as we're on the topic, perhaps
we might examine the moral relativism of Donald Rumsfeld, who
travelled to Baghdad to kiss Saddam's ass on behalf of Ronald
Reagan (and the Bechtel corporation) in 1983. Or we might take
a look at the clarity of Dick Cheney's morality, specifically
regarding his surreptitious use of Halliburton subsidiaries to
do millions of dollars worth of business with Saddam during the
1990s - and then lying about it to the American public while
running for Vice President.
We could, if you like, examine the morality
of George H. W. Bush's sons getting rich off of insider trading
and sweetheart deals with Gulf dictators arising from their daddy's
war against Saddam, as long as we're on the topic.
It's certainly useful in propagandizing
the American public into supporting your war to compare Saddam's
evil to that of Hitler or Stalin, thus implying that he posed
a comparable threat. Of course those guys headed two of the major
military powers on the planet, whereas Saddam in 2003 headed
a poorly-equipped military with no air force or navy, which had
been weakened by 13 years of sanctions.
Certainly if you were one of the victims,
it doesn't matter which of those regimes was the most evil. But
in terms of sheer numbers, the per capita genocide champ after
Hitler was Suharto of Indonesia - a valued US ally for all 30
of his bloody years in power. Likewise, Saddam was a piker compared
to Mobutu in Zaire, or the Rios Monnt regime of Guatemala, both
cherished allies of Uncle Sam. Come to think of it, so was Saddam,
as long as he was useful to us.
Of course the point of bringing this
up is not that I "hate America" or to complain that
we didn't do "everything right" (please). The point
is that governments which mount crusades against "evil"
only when it turns out to be convenient to their economic or
geostrategic policies may have other motivations at work besides
those which are publicly professed.
Now, as far as sanctions go, it's true
that they were imposed by the UN Security Council in response
to the invasion of Kuwait. They have been maintained ever since
by US and British veto power. One of the conditions of the sanctions
program is that any permanent Security Council member can put
a "hold" on any imports to Iraq, and the US and UK
have consistently used that power to deny life-saving medical
equipment and infrastructure to the Iraqi people.
In fact we now have declassified Pentagon
documents from the first Gulf War which prove that the US intentionally
destroyed Iraq's water treatment plants and electrical generating
stations (itself a war crime), with the intention of making the
sanctions more lethal. This was done in the full knowldege that
Iraqi civilians would die in large numbers from easily preventable
diseases, in order to put political pressure on the Ba'athist
regime. And the use of "holds" was employed strategically
in order to prevent the rebuilding of the health care system
and the civilian infrastructure. Can this be characterized as
anything other than evil?
I can of course document what I say here
if the so-called "liberal media" has failed to bring
any of this to your attention. In the meantime, you might want
to do an internet search on "Hans von Sponek" or "Denis
Halliday," two UN officials who resigned in protest of these
sanctions of mass destruction.
It's true that France, Germany and Russia
have done business in Iraq, as, of course have the US and the
UK. One can even claim that some governments' opposition to war
stemmed in part from economic motivations - though one can hardly
do so with a straight face while simulateously denying economic
motives on behalf of the US and UK for mounting a war.
But you are simply mistaken in claiming
that France or Russia profit from the oil for food program. That
program was set up because, just as the Pentagon hoped, Iraqi
civilians were dying in large numbers, though that had become
something of a PR headache. It was set up in such a way that
the Iraqi regime could not profit from it or in any way control
the revenue (though they did profit from smuggling oil outside
of it).
A quarter of the revenue was skimmed
off the top to pay reparations to the al-Sabah dictatorship of
Kuwait, and much of the rest has gone to pay claims by the US
and Britain. It's true that the UN itself has received quite
a bit of the total, but the individual member states didn't make
a dime. They made their money off business deals, just like Cheney
and the Bushes.
The Iraqi government cooperated in every
way to make sure that the food got to their people, since that
helped to maintain their dependence on the government. In fact,
as the anti-war movement has long argued, the sanctions made
Saddam and his thugs more powerful, not less. If we really wanted
to get rid of Saddam without a war, and if we really cared about
the suffering of the Iraqi people, we would have lifted those
sanctions years ago. Plenty of dictators more or less as brutal
as Saddam have been deposed by their own people, many in relatively
bloodless revolutions, including regimes in the Philippines,
Indonesia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Saddam's departure might also have been
hastened by the International Criminal Court, that treaty supported
by most of the planet and trashed by the current adminstration.
By indicting Saddam and his top lieutenants for crimes against
humanity, we could have given other members of the Ba'ath regime
an incentive to overthrow him. That may or may not have worked,
but without it one certainly can't argue that all peaceful means
had been exhausted before the resort to warfare. The point isn't
that the UN is "noble," but that international cooperation,
and laws which bind the powerful as well as the powerless, are
a better means of insuring security than unilateral cowboy adventures.
One might note that UN weapons inspectors
destroyed more of Iraq's weapons than either one of the Gulf
Wars. Nor did the current administration make the case for why
we had to have a war immediately in March 2003, and that we couldn't
spare another week, or month, or year for the inspectors to do
their job. Of course, now that it's our job to prove that those
weapons existed, we say it might take a year or more. Imagine
that.
Nobody is arguing that Iraqis don't deserve
to live free of dictatorship. Indeed, the anti-war movement has
argued on behalf of a good many countries that deserve to be
free of dictators, whether or not those regimes are supported
by our tax dollars. It's a good thing that Saddam is out of power,
though it's unclear what sort of regime will replace him. But
Uncle Sam shouldn't strain his arm patting himself on the back.
He still supports some of the nastiest regimes on the planet,
including those of Uzbekistan, Columbia and Eritrea. If we're
going to go to war against every government that commits evil,
we're going to be busy from now until doomsday.
And finally, you guess that I "hated"
seeing Iraqis pulling down the Saddam statue and cheering us
as liberators. Let me set you straight. I'm very happy that Saddam
Hussein is no longer in power. I'm angry but not surprised that
so many in this country are gullible enough to see staged propaganda
events as some sort of vindication for the devastation we've
brought to Iraq. The big statue across from the Palestine Hotel
was pulled down by US troops, not by Iraqis. The US media dutifully
cropped their pictures of that event to imply that the Iraqi
crowd was much larger than it really was, when in fact the square
was mostly empty. The photos show that many of the Iraqis cheering
us on were members of Ahmad Chalabi's INC, exiles grown fat off
of Pentagon subsidies and flown in for the occasion.
Meanwhile Iraqi children are dying from
cholera and cluster bombs, and our depleted uranium rounds have
contaminated still more of the country for centuries to come.
All of this was avoidable, but not if the United States wanted
to dictate the composition of the next Iraqi government. Some
Iraqis cheered the fall of Saddam without cheering the US, some
regard the US as a liberator, some will curse us to their dying
day, some are throwing rocks at us, and some are throwing grenades.
And we've already started gunning down protestors, and whether
or not you believe the honorable Pentagon when it says we were
fired on first, that hardly shows a universal welcome from the
folks on the street.
Whether we leave behind as much chaos
as did our recent liberations in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia remains
to be seen. But of course that needn't trouble anyone on the
right, since you folks have a monopoly on the clear-headed recognition
of evil.
PS: If you want more on Reaganomics,
Election 2000, North Korea, or the most prosperous decade in
recent history (hint: not the one you think), just ask. And don't
flatter yourself that I took all this time just to enlighten
you. With a few edits, I can prepare this article for a wider
audience, which other muddle-headed leftists can copy and send
to their morally pure rightist friends. Let me know if you'd
like your email address included.
Just kidding!
Mark Zepezauer is
an author and cartoonist based in Tucson, Arizona. His most recent
book is Boomerang!
How Our Covert Wars Have Created Enemies Across The Middle East
And Brought Terror To America, from Common Courage Press.
He can be reached at: comicnews@earthlink.net
Today's
Features
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
Website
of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|