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in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 27, 2003
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassination Policy: the
Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Recent
Stories
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
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
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August
27, 2003
An Interview with
Tariq Ali
The
War is Not Going Well for Bush
By DAVE RILEY
Tariq Ali is an editor of New Left
Review and the author of The
Clash of Fundamentalisms
and the forthcoming, Bush
in Babylon.
Riley: How would you contrast the
Vietnam anti-war movement of the 1960s with the movement against
the US war on Iraq today?
Ali: The anti-war movement of the 1960s
was not simply an anti-war movement. It was also a movement that
wanted victory for one side, that wanted the Vietnamese to win.
So that gave it extra zest. People knew which side they were
on. It was ultra-radical for that reason.
The anti-war movement that erupted before
the Iraq war was certainly broader and much larger. You can put
all the Vietnam demonstrations together and add them up and,
globally, it was 100 times larger. But, this was not a movement
supporting one side -- because no-one in the anti-war movement
supported Saddam Hussein -- it was rather a movement trying to
stop a war that many people believed was completely unjustified.
And not just unjustified, but the reasons
for it were kept completely hidden from public view by the US
and British governments. It wasn't about weapons of mass destruction.
It was about capturing an oil-producing country with a regime
 that was very hostile to Israel, which
was giving money to the Palestinians. These were the reasons
for that war -- apart from being a way of showing just what imperial
power is and what it can do.
People felt they were being lied to.
They were not happy about this war. They felt it was irrational.
That explains the size of the mobilisations. It brought out large
numbers of people who were not usually political.
Riley: Does this indicate that, over
the last 30 years, the "Vietnam syndrome" has remained
a powerful force?
Ali: The reason why it is such a force
is that the Vietnamese people inflicted a defeat on the US. Fifty-thousand
US soldiers died in that war. The Americans could not maintain
their hold on that country and were forced to withdraw as a result
of the combination of Vietnamese military successes and the fact
that the anti-war movement had spread into the US army itself.
GIs opposed to the war organised large demonstrations of GIs
outside the Pentagon and this scared the living daylights out
of them.
Riley: How do you assess the receding
of the anti-war movement in the period after the invasion of
Iraq?
Ali: I think people really believed they
could stop the war. And when they found they couldn't, it demoralised
large numbers of them. Lots of people have said to me, "What's
the point of demonstrating if it changes nothing". I tried
to say nicely: "Look, they are going to make this war, and
we need to be mobilising once the war starts and once it goes
on". But lots of people felt that by demonstrating and by
coming out in large numbers they would stop the war.
Riley: If people were saying that
troops were withdrawn from Vietnam because of the mass anti-war
movement, does that mean that they misread the history of the
Vietnam War?
Ali: To say that the US war against Vietnam
was bought to an end because of the [Western] anti-war movement
is wrong. It was because the Vietnamese people had been resisting
three big empires for a long, long time and everyone knew the
history of that struggle. Partially, it was bought to an end
by the anti-war movement, but what made the anti-war movement
happen -- after all it didn't exist as a large movement until
the Vietnamese people began to score big victories against the
US forces. What made the anti-war movement very big, was that
many US people realised the war could not be won.
I think there is demoralisation, but
I don't think people should be too demoralised. The war isn't
going well for Washington. The US administration thought it would
capture Iraq and everyone there would welcome them. That hasn't
happened. There is a resistance movement and it is not just made
up of the remnants of the Baath Party. There are lots of other
people resisting the occupation as well.
The only people capable of stopping the
US-led occupation is the resistance in the region.
If this resistance carries on, I think
the US will switch its tactics, probably by bringing in blue-helmeted
United Nations mercenaries to run Iraq for them. For the US,
the main thing in Iraq is to push through the privatisation of
Iraq's oil, to achieve the liberalisation of the Iraqi economy
and to get the big US  corporations in there. They
are not too concerned as to how the country will be run, as long
as that sort of economic structure is maintained.
Riley: The anti-war movement seems
to have led to a crisis in the British Labour Party. How has
the anti-war movement impacted on social democracy in Britain
and, in particular, the political alignment and views of the
population?
Ali: The size and scale of the movement
shook everyone, including the Labour Party, and gave lots of
Labour MPs courage to come out against the war. This is why Prime
Minister Tony Blair started telling more and more lies. Even
a number of Blairite MPs have said they would have voted against
the war had they known Blair was lying about Baghdad's weapons
of mass destruction. I think if 10 more Labour MPs had voted
against Blair on the war issue, he would only have stayed in
power with Conservative Party votes.
From that point of view, the anti-war
movement was effective. But you have to also understand that
the British ruling class was divided on this. Half the intelligence
agencies weren't convinced of [the need to go to war]. The military
itself wasn't particularly convinced. The furore that has surrounded
the death of David Kelly, the scientist, is all part and parcel
of this.
Kelly told the BBC that the government
had grossly exaggerated the threat. For that the government wanted
to punish him and drove him to his death. It's as simple as that.
So there was division over this war that was not confined to
the anti-war movement, but also reached upwards into various
strata of British society and this is what is creating the big
crisis for the Blair government.
Riley: Is Iraq becoming a "quagmire"
for the US?
Ali: I have just finished a book on the
history of Iraq, Bush in Babylon, which should be out in September.
My thesis is that US President George Bush's administration made
a very big mistake with Iraq. Washington thought it was going
to be like Kosova in the 1990s, that US troops would be welcomed
by sections of the Iraqi population.
Apart from the quislings, no-one welcomed
them. Even people who hated Hussein did not want this occupation
and are unhappy about it. So the US and British governments have
a very real problem on their hands.
There have just been big protest demonstrations
in Basra, in southern Iraq, and the British have had to fire
rubber bullets just like they did in Ireland. The US troops fire
real bullets but the British use rubber bullets. They know what
to do because they are more experienced colonialists.
The resistance is attracting people from
all over the Arab world.
There are 20 or so different resistance
groups which have been set up. The Iraqi Communist Party is not
one of them -- it's collaborating in the quisling Governing Council.
There are small leftist groups, there are lots of religious groups
and lots of non-religious groups -- none of them want the occupation.
When you have that degree of hostility it is a real problem for
the occupying powers.
There were some quislings who thought
that this occupation would be like in Japan or Germany after
the Second World War -- where the US rebuilt the country. There's
no sign of that in Iraq. What these people forget is that the
reason Japan and Germany had to be rebuilt was because of the
"Communist threat", because of the existence of the
Soviet Union. Now, Washington does not feel threatened.
We are witnessing imperialism in the
epoch of neoliberal economics and the "Washington consensus".
Why rebuild hospitals and recreate the state health service in
Iraq when you are dismantling it in your own countries? There's
a big ideological and financial problem for them which is why
they are using the corporations.
Riley: What does the Iraq experience
suggest for the future of US foreign policy?
Ali: I think Washington has realised
that the Iraq operation has not been a success. The Bush gang
won't admit it but they know it. The US empire has historically
preferred to rule the world indirectly not directly. It tries
to find governments that will do its bidding, regardless of whether
they are elected or are military dictatorships, like those that
have ruled in Latin America and large parts of Asia.
Washington would like to return to that
situation, except that now the key criteria of US support is
whether these regimes impose neoliberal economics and open the
country up to a market economy. So they abandoned Milosevic and
Hussein because they wouldn't cooperate in that. Burma is another
country on their list, not because it is a military regime --
after all they deal with a military regime in Pakistan endlessly
-- but because it is closed to foreign companies.
Riley: Some are suggesting that the
US is looking for another military target? Do you think that
is a likely scenario?
Ali: Washington's eyes are on Iran. But
if it does move on to Iran, it will create a new resistance.
The clerics are so hated in Iran -- curiously you'll have more
people welcoming US troops than you had in Iraq -- but still
it will be a mess and not a pushover. And again they will incite
Iranian nationalism.
They will not attack North Korea, precisely
because North Korea does have weapons of mass destruction. They
have said that if they are attacked they will use them. It may
be bluff but it works. The Chinese regime would not accept US
intervention in North Korea and would try to stop it, because
it would bring US troops right to its borders.
Riley: How do you assess the future
of the UN?
Ali: The UN is irrelevant in the sense
that it cannot be relied on to do anything against the wishes
of the US. What the organisation will be used for is to clean
up the empire's mess. It will go in, try and clean up the mess
and put a gloss on it -- Kofi Annan will stand up and mutter
sweet inanities and people will say: "Oh well, at least
this is a step forward. The UN is there. We've got the Americans
out."
The UN is an instrument of US foreign
policy; when Washington cannot use it in that way, it uses something
else. But what the UN cannot be used for is as an instrument
against US policy.
Tariq Ali spoke with Socialist Alliance's
DAVE RILEY in Brisbane on August 13. This interview originally
appeared in Green Left Weekly.
All rights reserved, Green Left Weekly.
Redistribution permitted with this notice attached. Redistribution
for profit prohibited.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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