Axis of Hope: papers

Bill Blum: US, The Rogue State

Bill Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.

I was told that it would be okay for me not to wear a tie and jacket, that you would not think of me as a vulgar Yank. But I think the subject of my talk tonight could be called Vulgar Yanks. We're faced with a terrible dilemma. The most powerful and most violent nation in history is led by a moron. He and the rest of the imperial Mafia want nothing less that world domination. They routinely use lies to give a reasonable, or even a humanitarian, gloss to their interventions. Like they would have us believe last week that if Saddam Hussein had agreed to go into exile, the US would not have invaded Iraq and taken it over. The day after Bush gave his ultimatum, we could read in The New York Times, quote, Öeven if Saddam Hussein leaves Iraq within 48 hours, as President Bush has demanded, allied forces plan to move north into Iraqi territory, American officials said today, unquote. But we already knew that, didn't we.

In the past few weeks before the war began, I received emails from a couple of Iraqis in exile, who took me to task for opposing the war. They went into a long description of how evil Saddam Hussein is and they demanded to know of me how I could not want to overthrow him. I asked each of them if they would be willing to be in Iraq when the bombs begin to fall. Would they be willing to see their family killed? Would they be willing to see their homes demolished, and their schools and their hospitals and their mosques? And I also said to them, that I despise George W. Bush at least as much as they despise Saddam Hussein. That doesn't mean that I would want some foreign power to come and bomb Washington D.C. And I say that not simply because I happen in Washington.

I understand that some of you who have been protesting the war have been called anti-American. Well, I have also. I'm not sure which is more absurd, to call Americans or foreigners anti-American. It's a term used by people who have no other argument to use.

Since September 11th, George Bush has repeatedly said that the reason terrorists target the US is that they, it's because of our freedom and our democracy, as he sees it, and our wealth and our secular government and just our overall goodness. That's why they attack us. He can't admit that it has anything to do with what the US does to the world, with US foreign policy. To admit that would open up a can of worms. It's just like the Israelis who attack any of their critics as being anti-Semitic. For the record, there's an abundance of evidence which shows that the terrorists who attacked the US [here and there] are motivated by our foreign policy. The US Department of Defence itself concluded in a study in 1997, quote, Öhistorical data show a strong correlation between US involvement and international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States, unquote. From what I've read in the US press, two of the leading suspects in the bombing of Bali have stated that they were chiefly motivated by the US bombing of Afghanistan.

Without changes in US foreign policy, the war on terrorism is as doomed as the war on drugs. There's a cartoon I saw a while ago in the States, someone is saying, we once had a drug problem and then we declared a war on drugs and now you can't buy drugs anywhere. It'll be the same with the war on terrorism.

I don't think, by the way, that poverty plays a role in creating terrorists. We seem to confuse terrorism with revolution. The hijackers of September 11th, or some would say the alleged hijackers, were largely middle and upper class, educated and apparently rather sophisticated.

I must say that I'm thrilled with the current anti-war movement, at least as much as I was in the 1960s with the anti-Vietnam movement. The leaders of the American empire, the Imperial Mafia, I call them, George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Chaney and Colin Powell and Condoleesa Rice and Paul [Wolferwitz] and Richard Pearl ñ remember those names. Cracks have been showing in their armour. In the heat of September 11th, they took over Afghanistan without too much of a protest anywhere. Then they looked at their schedule and said, well, who's next. Aha, Iraq. And then they, much to their surprise, the world has erupted in protest. And that includes the American people. Do you know that more than 150 city and county governments in the US have given, have stated resolutions condemning the war. And if you took a poll asking the right questions, you would get a huge percentage against the war. But the question they ask usually is, do you support the President's attempt to overthrown Saddam Hussein. That question, the way it's stated, implies that the only consequence of a war would be to oust a dictator. Well, even I might say yes to that question. But if they asked the question, with the same questions I was asking my two Iraqi correspondents, about the bombing and so on, then the result I think would be highly against the war.

So suddenly the Imperial Mafia have been made to feel vulnerable. Very unappreciated. Almost like the bad guys. Even the most brutal oppressors, they need some [love], they need to appear legitimate. Remember General Pinochet of Chile? He was in power for seventeen years and he decided to have a referendum on his continuation in power. He just needed to feel legitimate. And he lost, much to his surprise, he lost the vote and he had to leave office. So thus it has been that the lords of the White House have had to pretend that they were seeking the official approval of the Security Council for war. Lo and behold, even more protests. They threatened and bribed, without shame, the members of the Council to get their vote. At the same time, declaring that they would go ahead with the war, even if they failed to get the vote. So why were they pursuing this vote then? Obviously they need to have a certain gloss of respectability. As arrogant as they are, they still need to appear to be somewhat legitimate. They've been forced to make up one story after another about why Iraq was a threat, an imminent threat, a threat increasing in danger with every passing day. A nuclear threat. That Iraq was tied to al-Qaeda. Only to have each story amount to nothing. They told us for a long time that Iraq must agree to have the weapons inspectors back in and Iraq agreed to do this and the US said, oh no, that isn't good enough.

No-one believes their stories. Those who are not laughing at them are shaking their heads in wonder ñ what planet are these guys from? The madman, even after the war has begun, have continued to seek some respectability. Perhaps you've noticed in the past few days, there's a movement at the UN General Assembly for a vote condemning the war and the US has been voting feverishly to block this vote. Why? Why do they care? And Australia and the US and the UK have each send letters to the members of the Security Council, once again explaining the reasons for this war. Saying the same old nonsense over and over again, which has been rejected before, again and again, they're still making the same pitch to the members of the Council with these letters. They still need to have some kind, at least the appearance of legality. And the US Government just announced that forty-four countries support the war. What does that mean? Forty-four counties, in each one you have one or two or three men at the head of the government who have signed, who have been bribed or threatened enough to sign on and seventy to ninety per cent of their population is against the war. But these one or two or three men in the government have said okay, and so the US Government boasts about how all these countries are supporting their war. It's almost pathetic.

So they attack Iraq in the face of all the opposition. I think it may well be the beginning of the end for the American empire. That has to be an ongoing objective of the anti-war movement. To keep raising the political price for the White House, to proclaim loudly the crimes and the absurdities of the empire, to not let them get away with anything, at least not cheaply. As evil as they are, they still need that certain measure of respectability and we can't give it to them.

Here's one of the empire's absurdities, which may have escaped your attention. First we have Robert [Cagan], a leading light of the American foreign policy establishment and an architect of an interventionism that seeks to impose a neo-conservative agenda upon the world. [Cagan] declares that the US must refuse to abide by certain international conventions, like the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Accord on Global Warming. The US, he says, quote, Ömust support arms control but not always for itself. It must live by a double standard, unquote. That's Robert [Cagan]. Now we have Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat, a top adviser to Tony Blair on foreign policy, and he writes, quoteÖthe challenge to the post-modern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. When dealing with more old fashioned kind of states, outside the post-modern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era ñ force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the 19th century world of every state for itself, unquote. His expression, every state for itself, can be better understood as simply that some state, somewhere, is doing something that the American empire and its junior partner in London don't like.

So there you have it. The double standard is out. The golden rule of do unto others as you would have others do unto you ñ I'm sorry, the double standard is in. The golden rule is out. Noam Chomsky has spoken of, quote,Öthe principle of universality. If an action is right or wrong for others, it is right or wrong for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others, plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response or of right and wrong, good and evil, unquote.

Robert [Cagan] and Robert Cooper of course know this. A seven year old child with an acute sense of unfairness knows it very well. It's usually called hypocrisy. So why do the empire intellectuals pedal this double standard silliness. I put it this way ñ they, like most of us, have a vision for the kind of world they would like to live in. Let's call it, in their case, a laissez-faire, globalised, Judeo-Christian, law and order, white man's burden, ridding the planet of all governments not subservient to Washington world. Now, most of the world have already experienced enough of that, thank you. And so the Imperial Mafia have a very difficult time selling or defending their utopia, based on anything legal or moral, or ethical or fairness standards. So, what to do? Aha. They decide that they're not bound by such standards, but the rest of the world is.

Thus it is, that the US cannot only ignore the Criminal Court and global warming and arms control, but it can subsidise its food exports and erect tariffs on steel imports and denounce any lesser nation that tries to do anything similar. This is a variety of arrogance properly categorised as breathtaking.

Let's step back a bit. We need to understand where this empire has come from. It is remarkable indeed that in the 21st century, the US Government is still going around dropping huge amounts of very powerful explosives upon the heads of totally innocent people all over the world. It wasn't supposed to be this way. In the mid-1980s, Michel Gorbachov, instituted the beginning of the end for the Soviet police state. In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and people all over Eastern Europe were celebrating a new day. Soon thereafter, South Africa freed Nelson Mandela from prison and apartheid began to crumble. And before the year 1990 was over, Haiti held its first free election ever and they elected a genuine progressive as its leader. It seemed like anything was possible. Optimism was as widespread then as pessimism may be today. In the midst of this marvellous period, the US joined the celebration by invading and bombing Panama, only weeks after the Berlin Wall fell. At the same time, the US was shamelessly intervening in the election in Nicaragua, to defeat the Sandanistas. Then when Albania and Bulgaria, newly free from the grip of communism, as the media would put it, dare to elect governments not acceptable to Washington. Washington just stepped in and overthrew those governments. Soon came the bombing of Iraq for forty horrible days and nights without mercy. And that was that for our hopes for a new and better world.

But the American leaders were not through. They were soon off attacking Somalia. More bombing and killing. Meanwhile, they continued bombing Iraq for years. They intervene to put down dissident movements in Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador and Peru, just as if it were still the Cold War in the 1950s and 60s, or the 1970s and 80s. Still doing it in the 1990s and continuing into the new century. Then they bombed the people of Yugoslavia for seventy-eight days and nights. Then came the bombing of Afghanistan for almost a year and in all likelihood have by now killed many more people in that sad country than were killed on September 11th in the US. And people continue to die in Afghanistan, even as I speak. They die from the bombing wounds, from the effects of depleted uranium and from the landmines created by the [folding] cluster bombs. The US should've learnt from September 11th that bombing civilians is wrong. And all these years, still keeping their choke hold on Cuba. And that's just a partial list. There was none of the peace dividend that the Americans and other peoples had been promised for the end of the Cold War.

Now, what the heck is going on here? Americans have all been taught since childhood that the Cold War, including the war in Vietnam and the war in Korea, the huge military budgets and all the interventions and the overthrow of their governments ñ at least the ones we knew about ñ we were told that this was all to fight the same menace, the international communist conspiracy, headquartered in Moscow. So what happened? The Soviet Union was dissolved. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved. The Eastern European satellites became independent, the former communists became capitalists. And nothing changed in American foreign policy. Even NATO remained. NATO, which we had been told was set up to thwart a Russian, a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, even NATO remains, bigger and more powerful than ever. NATO with a global agenda. The whole thing had been a con game. The Soviet Union and something called communism, per se, had not been the object of Washington's global attacks. There had never been an international communist conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or movement or even individual that stands in the way of the expansion of the American Empire. By whatever name Washington gives to this enemy, whether it's communist, drug trafficker, rogue state or terrorist.

You see the US, or the American Empire, is against terrorists. What do you call a man who blows up an airplane killing seventy-three people, who attempts assassinations against several diplomats, who fires canons at ships docked in American ports, who places bombs in numerous commercial and diplomatic buildings in the US and abroad. Dozens of such acts. His name is Orlando [Bosch]. He's a Cuban and he lives in Miami, unmolested by the authorities. The City of Miami once declared a day in his honour, Orlando [Bosch] day. He was freed from prison in Venezuela, where he had been held because of the airplane bombing. Partly because of pressure from the US Ambassador, a man named Otto [Rife], who last year was appointed by George W. Bush to the State Department. After [Bosch], we turn to the US in 1988. The US Justice Department condemned him as a totally violent terrorist and was all set to deport him. But that was blocked by President Bush the First, with the help of his son, Jed Bush, in Florida. So is George W. and his family against terrorists? Well, they're against those terrorists who are not allies of the empire. The plane that [Bosch] bombed, by the way, was a Cuban plane. He's wanted in Cuban for that and a host of other serious crimes and the Cubans have asked Washington to turn him over to them but Washington has refused. To the Cubans, he's like Osama bin Laden is to the US. Can you imagine if bin Laden was in Cuba and the Cubans refused to turn him over to Washington? Can you imagine if Cuba had an Osama bin Laden day? [laughter].

The sincerity of the US campaign against terrorism can be further questioned, because last year they sentenced to prison five Cubans who came to Florida to uncover plots by the anti-Castro Cubans to further attacks upon Cuba. They were acting within the war on terrorism because these terrorists in Miami had conducted numerous attacks upon Cuba. They even, these five Cubas even turned over that information to the FBI. So what was their reward? They were all arrested and sentenced for fifteen years to a life in prison, almost all of them to life in prison. And they're still there under very inhumane conditions. And Washington has also supported the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, who have carried out numerous terrorist attacks for years, all over the Balkans, and have had close associations with al-Qaeda. But they've been America's allies, because they've been attacking nations which are out of favour with Washington. Bush also speaks often and angrily against harbouring terrorists. Now, does the man really mean that? Well, what country harbours more terrorists than the US. Orlando Bosch is only one out of hundreds of anti-Castro terrorists in Miami. These people have carried out hundreds, if not thousands, of terrorist acts, in the US, in Cuba and elsewhere. All kinds of arson attacks, assassinations and bombings. They have been harboured in the US in safety for decades, as have numerous other terrorists and friendly torturers and human rights violators, from Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Haiti and elsewhere. All allies of the empire. The CIA is looking for terrorists in the caves of Afghanistan while the agency sits in bars in Miami having beers with terrorists.

What are we to make of all this? How are we to understand American foreign policy? Well, if I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page one would say, don't ever look for the moral factor. US foreign policy has no moral factor built into its DNA. Clear your mind of that baggage, which only gets in the way of seeing beyond the cliches and the platitudes.

It's not easy for most people to accept what I say at face value, especially Americans. It's not easy to swallow my message. People see American leaders on TV and in the press, they see them with their families, they see them laughing and joking, they see them talking about freedom and democracy and God and love and justice and human rights. How can such people be immoral monsters? How can they be called immoral? They have names like George and Dick and Donald, not a single Mohamed or Abdullah in the bunch. [laughter]. And they even speak English. Well, George almost does. [laughter]. People named Mohamed and Abdullah we know cut arms off people for simple theft. We know that that's horrible. The West is too civilised for that. But people named George and Dick and Donald drop cluster bombs on cities and villages and the many unexploded ones become landmines and very soon a child comes along and touches it and loses and arm or a leg, or both arms and both legs. But American leaders are not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering, it's just that they don't care. The same as a psychopath or a sociopath. And as long as the death and the suffering are not happening to them or their families or to their golf buddies, as long as the right people and the right corporations are making profits and gaining power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering are not happening to any of these kinds of people, then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom we send into these battles, who come back, the ones who make it back alive, they come back with Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things. The Imperial Mafia are as fanatic and as fundamentalist as Osama bin Laden. And the regime change they accomplished in Afghanistan has really gone to their heads. And now they'll soon be adding Iraq. They'll be no stopping them.

On page two of American Empire for Dummies, I put this in a box outlined in bright red ñ Following the bombing of Iraq in 1991, the US wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the UAE. Following its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the US wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia. Following its bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2, the US wound up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, Georgia, Yemen and Djhouti.

This is not very subtle foreign policy. It's certainly not covert. The men who run the American Empire are not too easily embarrassed, albeit they do crave a certain measure of respect. And that's the way the empire grows, a base on every corner, ready to be mobilised to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. Fifty-seven years after the end of World War Two, there are still major bases, US bases in Japan and Germany. Forty-nine years after the end of the Korean War, the US still has 37,000 armed forces in South Korea. And just last year, the US Defence Department announced, proudly, quote, The US military is currently deployed from more locations than it has been throughout history, unquote.

Who would've imagined that any of this would be the case, ten years after the end of the Cold War. The US State Department has more than once, in the past few months, held a conference on how to improve America's image around the world, in order to reduce the level of hatred. It's image that they're working on, not policies, not changes of policy. But the policies' score card reads as follows: from 1945 till the end of the century, the US attempted to overthrow more than forty foreign countries and to crush more than thirty popular movements in rebellion against oppressive governments. In the process, the US bombed some twenty-five countries and caused the end of life for several millions of people. At the same time, condemning many more millions to a life of agony and despair.

If I were the president, I could stop a terrorist attacks against the US in a few days, permanently. I would first apologise, very publicly and very sincerely, to all the widows and the orphans, all the tortured and the impoverished and all the millions of others of the Americans, of the victims of US interventionism. Then I would announce that America's global interventions, including all the bombings, had come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the fifty-first state of the union. [APPLAUSE]. I would inform them that, oddly enough, they are now a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least ninety per cent and pay reparations to all our victims and to repair the damage from our bombings. [APPLAUSE]. There would be more than enough money. Do you know what the US Defence budget comes to in one year? In one year, it's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born. That's what I would do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I would be assassinated. [laughter]. By my dying words would be, don't mourn, organise. Keep the pressure up on the bastards.

This is a fascinating time to be an activist. You're lucky to be part of it. In the mid-1960s, I was working at the US State Department, my heart was set on becoming a foreign service officer. Little did I know that I would soon become a ranting and raving commie pinko subversive. [laughter]. Enemy of all that is decent and holy. Because a thing called Vietnam came along and I swept up by the anti-war movement, as so many are today. You're up against a formidable foe. It takes courage to stare down the American Empire. We can't fight them militarily, but we can do battle against them morally. That's where they're vulnerable. You have to continue to take away from them the aura of America, that mystique that leads people all over the world to believe that American leaders mean well. They do not mean well. Their bombs do not mean well. Their system does not mean well. Capitalism as a system, the theory that says the worst people acting from their worst motivations can somehow produce the most good for the most people. Neither do the international financial Mafia mean well. The leaders of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank know that their policies precipitate riots from totally poor people all over the world. They say so in their own document, they speak of social unrest which can be expected from their policies. Throughout the Cold War and afterwards as well, the US used the World Bank and IMF and the Inter-American Development Bank and other international financial institutions as weapons against third world nations to suit political and economic goals. And those who declined to play this game, who refused to turn their country over to the new world order, paid a heavy price. Like the Serbs, who refused to surrender to the joys of globalisation and still clung to most of their socialist system. Real dinosaurs they were. The US, with some help from Germany, tore apart the nation of Yugoslavia, republic by republic. Though, in case you were thinking otherwise, the bombing of Yugoslavia was not an act of humanitarianism. You can read further details about that in my book. After Yugoslavia had been murdered, the body was picked apart by the vultures from the World Trade Organisation and the transnational corporations, as well as the IMF and the bank, the World Bank.

Just as Yugoslavia served as a bad example in Europe, so Iraq served as a bad example to other nations in the Middle East. The last thing the Imperial Mafia want in that region of the Middle East is independence, self-defining nations that wish to control their own land and labour and natural resources. For over a year, Iraq had been pricing its oil sales in the Euro, instead of the US dollar. And other members of OPEC, like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have hinted that they were thinking of doing the same. This could be a financial nightmare for the US and may well be a key hidden reason for the invasion of Iraq. Once they take over Iraq, will Iran and Saudi Arabia have the nerve to switch to the Euro? Other reasons for the invasion, which are not very publicised, besides the Euro, of course is the oil, Israel, the things it will do for Israel, globalisation, the multinationals will march in Iraq and privatise everything, very soon. Plus there is [the factor] of idealism. These men of the Imperial Mafia really believe that they are on a moral crusade to save the world, to improve it, in America's image, of course. One of their members said a while ago that we should not shy away from these interventions. If we do what we have to do, our children will sing great songs about us. Quote unquote.

So now we have two super powers in the world. One is the US, the other is the combined power of the anti-war movement and the global justice movement. Together those two movements constitute a new super power. And they can't, they offer the best hope of thwarting the first super power. These two movements are an expression of true internationalism. And we are saying, no blood for oil, no blood for Bush, no blood for Blair and no blood for Howard.

You remember the Watergate scandals of the 1970s in the US? There were two laws of politics which came out of that scandal, which I'd like to cite in closing. The first Watergate law of politics states, no matter how paranoid you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine. [laughter]. The second Watergate law states, don't believe anything until it's been officially denied. [laughter]. Both laws are still on the books. And I thank you very much.