Our Empire Documents, Part 4.

7. THE COLD WAR.

One of the most enduring Soviet-threat stories—the alleged justification for the birth of NATO—was the coming Red invasion of Western Europe. If, by 1999, anyone still swore by this fairy tale, they could have read a report in The Guardian of London on newly declassified British government documents from 1968. Among the documents was one based on an analysis by the Foreign Office joint intelligence committee, which the newspaper summarized as follows:

The Soviet Union had no intention of launching a military attack on the West at the height of the Cold War, British military and intelligence chiefs privately believed, in stark contrast to what Western politicians and military leaders were saying in public about the "Soviet threat".

"The Soviet Union will not deliberately start general war or even limited war in Europe," a briefing for the British chiefs of staff—marked Top Secret, UK Eyes Only, and headed The Threat: Soviet Aims and Intentions—declared in June 1968.
"Soviet foreign policy had been cautious and realistic", the department argued, and despite the Viemam War, the Russians and their allies had "continued to make contacts in all fields with the West and to maintain a limited but increasing political dialogue with NATO powers".

In other words, whatever the diplomats and policymakers at the time thought they were doing, the Cold War skeptics have been vindicated—it was not about containing an evil, expansionist ~ communism after all; it was about American imperialism, with "communist" merely the name given to those who stood in its way.

Cold War: …dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—to obviate the need for a land invasion of Japan, thus saving thousands of American lives? However, it's been known for years that the Japanese had been trying for many months to surrender and that the US had consistently ignored these overtures. The bombs were dropped, not to intimidate the Japanese, but to put the fear of the American god into the Russians.

W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000, p.12

During the Cold War, US foreign policy was carried out under the waving banner of fighting a moral crusade against what cold warriors persuaded the American people, most of the world, and usually themselves, was the existence of a malevolent International Communist Conspiracy. But it was always a fraud; there was never any such animal as the International Communist Conspiracy. There were, as there still are, people living in misery, rising up in protest against their condition, against an oppressive government, a government likely supported by the United States. p. 14

Cold War is seen not as an East-West struggle, but rather a "North South" struggle, as an American effort—as mentioned above—to prevent the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model, and to prevent the rise of any regional power that might challenge American supremacy, then that particular map with the pins stuck in it still hangs on the wall in the Pentagon's War Room. (Said a Defense Department planning paper in 1992: "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival...we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." [emphasis added]) 23-24

W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.

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8. THEY MUST FEAR UNRESTRAINED BRUTAL RETALIATION.

In March 1998, an internal 1995 study, "Essentials of Post Cold War Deterrence", by the US Strategic Command, the headquarters responsible for the US strategic nuclear arsenal, was brought to light. The study stated: "Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the US may do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed. The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially 'out of control', can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary's decision makers. This essential sense of fear is the working force of deterrence. That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries."

W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000, p. 26.

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9. WESTERN WAR CRIMINALS?

If George Bush were to be judged by the standards of the Nuremberg tribunals,

he'd be hanged. So too, mind you, would every single American President since

the end of the second world war, including Jimmy Carter.

BBC Interview by Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Paxman , BBC News- May 21, 2004.

The reason why the US refuses to accept the establishment of an International Criminal Court is that its leaders would be likely to be indicted for war crimes.

Blum argues that the following people should be indicted as war criminals:

William Clinton, president, for his merciless bombing of the people Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights, taking the lives of many hundreds of civilians, and producing one of the greatest ecological catastrophe in history; for his relentless continuation of the sanctions and rocket attacks upon the people of Iraq; and for his illegal and lethal bombings of Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan and Afghanistan.

General Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, for his direction of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia with an almost sadistic fanaticism..."He would rise out of his seat and slap the table. 'I've got to get the maximum violence out of this campaign—now!" George Bush, president, for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including many thousands of children, the result of his 40 days of bombing and the institution of draconian; sanctions; and for his unconscionable bombing of Panama, producing $-~ widespread death, destruction and homelessness, for no discernible reason that would stand up in a court of law. General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for his prominent role in the attacks on Panama and Iraq, the latter including destruction of nuclear reactors as well as plants making biological and chemical agents. It was the first time ever that live reactors had been bombed, and ran the risk of setting a dangerous precedent. Hardly more than a month had passed since the United Nations, under whose mandate the United States was supposedly operating in Iraq, had passed a resolution reaffirming its "prohibition of military attacks on nuclear facilities" in the Middle East In the wake of the destruction, Powell gloated: "The two operating reactors they had are both gone, they're down, they're finished." He was just as cavalier about the lives of the people of Iraq. In response to a question concerning the number of Iraqis killed in the war, the good general replied: "It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in."

And for his part in the cover up of war crimes in Vietnam by troops of the same brigade that carried out the My Lai massacre. General Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander in Chief, US Central Command, for his military leadership of the Iraqi carnage; for continuing the carnage two days after the cease-fire; for continuing it against Iraqis trying to surrender.


Ronald Reagan, president, for eight years of death, destruction, torture and the crushing of hope inflicted upon the people of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Grenada by his policies; and for his bombings of Lebanon, Libya and Iran. He's forgotten all this, but the world shouldn't. Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State under Reagan, for rewriting history' even as it was happening, by instituting Iying as public policy. He was indispensable to putting the best possible face on the atrocities being committed daily by the Contras in Nicaragua and by other Washington allies in Central America, thus promoting continued support for them; a spinmeister for the ages, who wrestled facts into ideological submission. "When history is written," he declared, "the Contras will be folk heroes." 70. Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense for seven years under Reagan, for his official and actual responsibility for the numerous crimes against humanity perpetrated by the United States in Central America and the Caribbean, and for the bombing of Libya in 1986. George Bush pardoned him for Iran-Contra, but he should not be pardoned for his war crimes

Lt. Col. Oliver North, assigned to Reagan's National Security Council, for being a prime mover behind the Contras of Nicaragua, and for his involvement in the planning of the invasion of Grenada, which took the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians.

Henry Kissinger… for his Machiavellian, amoral, immoral roles in the US interventions into Angola, Chile, East Timor, Iraq, Vietnam and Cambodia, which brought unspeakable horror and misery to the peoples of those lands. Gerald Ford, president, for giving his approval to Indonesia to use American arms to brutally suppress the people of East Timor, thus setting in motion a quarter-century-long genocide.

Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, a prime architect of, and major bearer of responsibility for, the slaughter in Indochina, from its early days to its extraordinary escalations; and for the violent suppression of popular movements 5 in Peru. 70

W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.

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10. WESTERN ACCESS TO THIRD WORLD RESOURCES.

 "Western countries have almost always opposed the efforts of Third World people to throw off repressive regimes in order to redirect the country’s resources to local needs. Such movements would hinder the freedom for rich world corporations to access wealth. They have usually been branded communist.""…Western countries do not tolerate such developments (struggles for liberation from the western empire), and in fact, consider any nation that supports liberation struggles…as an enemy to be destroyed…" p. 593"

With its extensive and valuable investments in the Third World accruing large profits, and its dependence on foreign sources of raw materials, the US clearly stands to lose heavily from these revolutions. Its response has been to step up a global military machine, enter into alliances with repressive and reactionary regimes, and intervene against revolutionary movements." 599

E. Hutchful, The Peace Movement and the Third World, Alternatives, Sp4ring, 1984, 593-603.

Reviewing President Eisenhower's strategic thinking, diplomatic historian Richard Immerman observes that he "took it as an article of faith that America's strength and security depended on its maintaining access to—indeed control of global markets and resources, particularly in the Third World." Like other rational planners, he assumed that the West was safe from any Soviet attack, and that such fears were "the product of paranoid imagination." But the periphery "was vulnerable to subversion," and the Russians, Eisenhower wrote, "are getting far closer ~ to the Third World masses than we are" and are skilled at propaganda and other methods "to appeal directly to the masses." These are common features of the planning record. 28.

"The Third World itself is the real enemy." P. 33

N. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, 1991.

The grand prize of this war is unimpedable control by U.S. multinational oil corporations over the world's greatest oil and gas deposits which are located around the Caspian Sea of Central Asia, formerly the territory of the Soviet Union

Prof. John McMurtry." The New Totalitarian Movement", Mid 2002.(The reference is to the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.)

"The major policy imperative is to block indigenous nationalist forces that might try to use their own resources in conflict with US interests." 54

"……the term aid is a emphemism for methods by which the taxpayer funds business efforts to enhance market penetration and investment opportuinities." 68

"It is a war against the Third World." 64

N. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Verso, 1991.___________________

“… the primary concern is to prevent independence, regardless oF the ideology. Remember, we're the global power, so we have to make sure that all the various parts of the world continue serving their assigned functions in our global system. And the assigned functions of Third World countries are to be markets for American business, sources of resources for American business, to provide cheap labor for American business, and so …the main commitment of the United States internationally, in the Third World, must be to prevent the rise of nationalist regimes which are responsive to pressures from the masses of the population for improvement in low living standards and diversification of production; the reason is, we have to maintain a-climate that is conducive to investment, and to ensure conditions which allow for adequate repatriation of profits to the West. Language like that is repeated year after year in top-level U.S. planning documents, like National Security Council reports on Latin America and so on—and that's exactly what we do around the world.”

“So the nationalism we oppose doesn't need to be left-wing—we're just as opposed to right-wing nationalism. I mean, when there's a right-wing military coup which seeks to turn some Third World country on a course of independent development, the United States will also try to destroy that govlernment—we opposed Peron in Argentina, for example. So despite what you always hear, U.S. interventionism has nothing to do with resisting the spread of "Communism”, it's independence we've always been opposed to everywhere — and for quite a good reason. If a country begins to pay attention to its own population, it's not going to be paying adequate attention the overriding needs of U.S. investors. Well, those are unacceptable priorities, so that government's just going to have to go.

N. Chomsky, Understanding Power,

Iraq business will now be taken by foreign corporatoions.

On 22 Sept it was announced that the US administration in Iraq would allow unlimited foreign investment in Iraq, except in the oil and minerals sector, with repatriation of 100% of profits permitted, and a maximum business tax rate of 15%.

This means the vast amount of business activity that takes place in Iraq has now been “given” to foreign corporations; they are the one’s who will come in and buy it up, under bonanza conditions.

Iraq was a “ socialist” economy; the government owned the major firms and foreign corporations had no access to tall his business activity.

The ultimate goal; control over resources.

“In reality, as many of the chapters in this book show, the real threat to the US and Britain in the postwar period came not from communist or the Soviet Union but from nationalist forces within developing countries. The principal “threat” they posed was to Western control over their economic resources – the fear that a country’s resources might be primarily used to benefit its people. Nationalist movements and governments were invariably labelled as communist to justify action against them. All US interventions until the invasion of Panama in 1989, and many British interventions, were justified as defending the free world from Soviet expansion.” 76

Britains basic priority – virtually its raison d’etre for several centuries -- is to aid British companies in getting their hands on other countries’ resources. 210

“When it comes to US interventions in Latin America, a clear pattern is visible, a popular government comes into power with an agenda of addressing poverty and inequality, these priorities threaten the control of resources by US businesses; the government is deemed an agent of international communism; and the US sends troops, or covertly engineers a change in government, to restore ‘order’ and ‘security”.

            M.Curtis, Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the, Vintage, 2003.

11. THE US GIVES SANCTUARY TO TERRORISTS

"The Cuban exiles in Miami have committed hundreds of terrorist acts, in the US and abroad." 78 The Cuban exiles are in fact one of the longest-lasting and most prolific terrorist groups in the world, and they're still at it. During 1997 they carried out a spate of hotel bombings in Havana, directed from Miami. Hijacking is generally regarded as a grave international crime, but although there have been numerous air and boat hijackings over the years from Cuba to the US, at gunpoint, knifepoint and/or with the use of physical force, including at least one murder, it's difficult to find more than a single instance where the United States brought criminal charges against the hijackers. In August 1996, three Cubans who hijacked a plane to Florida at knifepoint were indicted and brought to trial In Florida. This is like trying someone for gambling in a Nevada court. Even though the kidnapped pilot was brought back from Cuba to testify against the men, the defense simply told the jurors that the man was Iying, and the jury deliberated less than an hour before acquitting the defendants. Cubans are not the only foreign terrorists or serious human-rights violators who have enjoyed safe haven in the United States in recent years. …

There's former Guatemalan Defense Minister Hector Gramajo Morales. In 1995, a US court ordered Gramajo to pay $47.5 million in damages to eight Guatemalans and a US citizen for his responsibility in the torture of the American (Sister Dianna Ortiz—see "Torture" chapter) and the massacre of family members of the Guatemalans (among-thousands of other Indians whose death he was responsible for)…The judge stated that "The evidence suggests that Gramajo devised and directed the implementation of an indiscriminate campaign of terror ~. against civilians." 80

Florida is the retirement home of choice violators seeking to depart from the scene of their crimes. Former general Jose Guillermo Garcia, head of El Salvador's armed forces in the 1980s, when military-linked death squads killed thousands of people suspected of being "subversives", has lived in Florida since the early 1990s. 81

The system of international criminal prosecution covering genocide, terrorism, war crimes and torture makes all governments responsible for the criminal prosecution of offenders. ..84

W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.

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