Who would have thought when I wrote this that six years later a leading contender for nominee as Republican U.S. presidential candidate would be arguing the same thing in his campaign.
He sums up the problem with U.S. foreign policy nicely: “We don’t mind our own business!”
Fun fact: U.S. military veterans have given more money to Ron Paul’s campaign than all the other campaigns put together.
Jason Burke’s Osama bin Laden obituary for The Guardian perpetuates the myth that the Taliban never offered to hand Bin Laden over:
Faced with an ultimatum, the Taliban again refused to surrender Bin Laden, who initially denied involvement, and an American-led aerial bombing campaign followed.
In fact the Taliban publicly offered in October of 2001 to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third country, provided the U.S. halted the illegal bombing of Afghanistan and produced the necessary evidence about involvement of Bin Laden or any of his associates in the 11 September attacks. Would they have gone through with the offer? We’ll never know because Bush rejected it, putting an end to any possibility of a potentially peaceful, legal resolution to the events of 11 September 2001, and opened up the way for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the millions who have lost their lives or had them destroyed as a result.
Update: Jason Burke says he’ll correct obituary.
I’ve long been a fervent critic of the U.S. but it wasn’t always this way. The fervour came about from a realisation that much of what I was led to believe about America as a child was a lie. I don’t have the same fervour when it comes to abusive powers like China and Russia. I wasn’t constantly barraged with the notion that these countries are the greatest nations ever to have graced the planet with their presence. It’s a high expectations, low outcomes kind of a thing.
And so to the latest example of American hypocrisy. While the U.S. preaches to the world about justice and freedom it is renowned for the opposite:
It’s quite notable that the mere threat of ending up in American custody is considered (at least by Assange’s lawyers) to be a viable basis for contesting extradition on human rights grounds. Indeed, this argument is not unusual.
Indeed, almost every person I’ve spoken who has or had anything to do with WikiLeaks expresses one fear above all others: the possibility that they will end up in American custody and subjected to its lawless War on Terror “justice system.” Americans still like to think of themselves as “leaders of the free world,” but in the eyes of many, it’s exactly the “free world” to which American policies are so antithetical and threatening.
In 1980 Iraq invaded Iran. In response the United States, Britain, France, Germany and the Soviet Union provided Hussein the means to build a chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programme.
In 1986 the United States with Britain blocked all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, and on 21 March the United States became the only country to refuse to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq’s use of these weapons.
Iraq failed to defeat Iran and in 1988 a cease fire was declared.
In 1990 a U.S. Ambassador met with Hussein under instructions “to broaden and deepen our relations with Iraq” and declared “we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” No explicit go ahead was given for the invasion of Kuwait but a month later Hussein invaded, under the assumption that the United States would not respond.
Hussein had been cut loose.
The Security Council imposed a brutal near-total financial and trade embargo, killing half a million Iraqi children.
When the World Trade Centre was attacked in 2001 they tried to pin it on Hussein. Then there was the whole ‘Saddam could nuke Britain in 45 minutes’ thing. Then they tried to link Saddam to Al-Qaeda. When all of these excuses crumbled Tony Blair and his ilk were left to proclaim that they invaded Iraq because Saddam was a bad man, a torturer and murderer.
Thanks to WikiLeaks, and some brave whistleblower, we now have a very clear portrait of a United States and Britain complicit in the torture and murder of Iraqis. Blair has run out of excuses.
In the mean time Iraq’s oil reserves have been handed over to the markets.
Matthew Nasuti, for Kabul Press:
The paradox for NATO and the Americans is that in September, 2010, they will have deployed the largest number of troops they ever had in Afghanistan, and yet that is when they are the most vulnerable, as the supply needs for this huge force are potentially crippling.
The Tea Party — thousands of hard-working middle-class FOX viewers fighting to make sure the rich pay less in taxes.
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: “My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside.”
Kathleen Wells of Race Talk interviews Noam Chomsky on Israel.