If you were looking for a fine example of ridiculousness today, look no further than the words of Stephen Mull, the US State Department’s acting assistant secretary for political-military affairs.

Yesterday, Mull made the following comment with regards to those nations currently participating at a conference in Dublin where representatives from more than 100 nations are working to craft a treaty to ban the use, production, stockpile, and sale of Cluster Bombs…

“This would have very grave implications. With one stroke, any country that signs the convention as it is now and ratifies it, in effect would make it impossible for the United States or any of our other allies who rely on these weapons to participate in these humanitarian exercises.”

So, for example, were Brazil to sign the treaty and a massive natural disaster were to devastate part of that country, Mull is basically saying that the United States would not offer humanitarian assistance because of Brazil’s stance on the United States’ refusal to stop producing, using, selling, and stockpiling Cluster Bomb munitions.

Even more – Canada is also represented at the conference and is one of the key nations, along with France and Germany, expected to play a role in swaying the UK’s position on the treaty.

So what if a part of this nation were devastated by a natural disaster? What if my hometown were to be rocked by the long awaited earthquake that we’ve been expecting for basically my entire lifetime? Canada is America’s foremost trading partner, not to mention the fact that after Katrina hit, members of my hometown’s emergency response team were there and helping people before their American counterparts even showed up. So much so, in fact, that various neighbourhoods were awash in Canadian flags as a show of gratitude.

What then, Mr. Mull? Are we on our own because we dared to stand with others and say that the use, production, stockpile, and sale of one of the most despicable conventional weapons in the world should be banned?

Given FEMA’s reposnse to Katrina, and the Bush Administration’s mishandling of the disaster, what of the outpouring of support from other countries, even those the United States government considers enemies, such as Cuba and Venezuela? Do you not think that by taking such a ridiculous position that further isolating the United States from those that, in times of disaster, are willing to forego ideological differences to lend their support is a good idea?

Arrogance knows no bounds, it seems. And all over a bloody bomb.

Cluster Bombs have been employed by various nations for decades. When dropped, the initial casing releases ‘bomblets’ that then spread across a target area. There are numerous classifications for various purposes ranging from incendiary to anti-tank to anti-personnel, and numerous others aimed at affecting specific targets such as runways and electrical infrastructures. The problem with Cluster Bombs is that not all of the bomblets explode on impact and can lay dormant for decades waiting to be triggered by innocents that happen upon them. In the 70’s the United States dropped two million tons of ordinances on Laos. Of that, it is estimated that some 260 sub-munitions did not explode and, to this day, claim the lives of innocent Laotians. In Vietnam, it is estimated that 300 civilians are killed every year by unexploded bomblets. During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 Cluster Bombs were also used by the Israeli Air Force. It is estimated that a quarter of the bomblets failed to explode and have since resulted in over 200 civilian casualties.

I mention this because tomorrow in Dublin a conference begins at which participants will attempt to negotiate a treaty that will ban the production, use, stockpile, and sale of cluster bombs. Unfortunately, some of the world’s foremost powers (the United States, China, and Russia) have refused to attend and, not surprisingly, oppose the treaty. Business is, after all, business.

Unfortunately, that’s a difficult perspective to try and explain to a 13-year-old that’s had their legs blown off, but that’s the world we live in.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with who Viktor Bout is, Nicholas Cage’s character in the film Lord Of War was loosely based on him. Of course, Bout didn’t grow up in New York, as Cage’s character did in the film. He was born and raised in Russia, attended the Moscow Military Institute, and was a member of the KGB. After the fall of the Soviet Union he became one of the world’s premier arms traffickers, dealing all over the world with governments and groups possessing frightening and notorious reputations. It eventually earned him the moniker ‘the merchant of death’.

Bout was apprehended in Thailand during a lengthy sting operation involving US agents posing as Colombian FARC rebels looking to purchase arms (a rather timely coincidence, given current events). The United States is now in the process of having Bout extradited to the United States for attempting to sell arms to a group designated as a terrorist organization.

But what will not be given any attention is the fact that, between 2003 and 2005, transport planes belonging to Bout flew US supply missions in Iraq. Even more, that Paul Wolfowitz, then Assistant Defense Secretary, admitted to Congress in 2005 that the United States conducted business with companies that subcontracted work out to those that leased aircraft from him. It should also be mention that, at the time that this occurred, Bout was an internationally wanted fugitive. In total, the United States government paid companies controlled by Bout some $60 million dollars to transport supplies in Iraq between 2003 and 2005, the majority of it paid in fuel costs with the US air force supplying his planes 500,000 gallons of fuel from the Baghdad airport. The fact that Bout didn’t turn a profit on it is something that should also be taken into consideration.

Douglas Farah, one of the authors of the book written about Bout’s life, claimed in an interview today that Bout may have done work on behalf of the US government as recently as last year.

There’s absolutely no question that men like Viktor Bout are dangerous and should be brought to justice. But that said, what Bout has accomplished as an illegal arms dealer is, in truth, so insignificant in comparison to the business done on a global scale by the likes of the United States, China, France, and Russia on a yearly basis as to stupefy.

There is no question that Bout is facing months, if not longer, of questioning at the hands of various US intelligence agencies – at which I am also sure he has a few friends. Whether he ever sees the inside of a courtroom is another matter. If he does, it will most likely occur after he’s cut a deal.

In a speech yesterday in the UAE, President Bush called Iran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Now, to some, that might not sound unseemly, but it shouldn’t be overlooked that Iran is the UAE’s number one trading partner, which Bush completely failed to mention in the speech. Nor did he mention that the UAE is one of the most important conduits for Iranian imports despite US Sanctions, the fact that a significant Iranian ex-pats community that plays a central role in commerce in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, that human rights violations are commonplace in the UAE, or the fact that power is commonly inherited and that democratic development is, at best, a façade.

Instead, he praised the rulers of the UAE for luring foreign investment.

Dancing around such issues is not uncommon. Obviously the remarks regarding Iran were made for the sake of the Iranians and the American public, not necessarily those in attendance, some of whom took offense given their connections with Iran. Bush’s remarks regarding “free and just societies” were also not well received given that those he was addressing have absolutely nothing to gain by the implementation of serious democratic reforms.

With regards to the overtones of Mr. Bush’s speech, it should also not be overlooked that the UAE was one of only three nations to acknowledge the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan when it was in power, the very same group that the United States has accused the Iranians of militarily assisting. Of course, when the Taliban was in power, Tehran did not recognize it as the nation’s official government.

Beyond all of this, and the fact that there is always the issue of arms agreements lurking in the shadows during such visits passed off as joint security initiatives, there are also the contradictions that the United States is currently in negotiations with the Iranians with regards to Iraq, and that while the President is promoting “free and just societies” in the region, the United States is militarily occupying two of them.

Probably the most hypocritical, not to mention historically astonishing, statement made during the speech was…

“For decades, the people of this region saw their desire for liberty and justice denied at home and dismissed abroad in the name of stability. Today, your aspirations are threatened by violent extremists who murder the innocent in pursuit of power. They hate your government because it does not share their dark vision. They hate the United States because they know we stand with you in opposition to their brutal ambitions.”

Of course, the United States was, and still is, one of the leading nations with regards to supporting autocratic regimes in the region, something that people in the region have certainly not forgotten, even if people on this side of the world have. While the President talks freely of liberty and justice in the Middle East, the United States remains as committed as ever to their relationships with the ruling factions of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE. It recently penned an agreement promising $20 billion dollars worth of military aid over the next decade that all of them will benefit from, and yet the President, who has full knowledge of that fact still has the audacity to talk about “free and just societies”. Let’s also not overlook the fact that, by entering into such an agreement the United States had to counteract it by offering the Israelis $30 billion dollars in aid over the same period of time.

The goal of the President’s speech was to target the Iranians, and in doing so speak more so to his domestic audience than anyone else. Unlike those in the region in which he gave the address, domestic perceptions regarding the ‘threat’ that Iran posses are primarily formed based on the constant stream of alarming information provided by the administration and others in the government. The same cannot be said for your average person on the street in the UAE.

This leads us to the inevitable question – is Iran truly the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism?

Examining who has been behind most of the international attacks since the mid 1990’s, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Iran has no affiliation with al-Qaeda or groups linked to it. It does not, unlike elements within Saudi Arabia, Libya, the UAE, and Syria, support the efforts of Jihadists in Iraq, it’s primary link being with militant Shi’ite groups, some of which have substantial influence within Iraq’s Interior Ministry itself – which means the armed forces and police. Thus, if anything, it is guilty of supporting factions within Iraq’s most predominant group, the very same group that did not play a significant role in the rise of the Sunni based insurgency, and one that has, since sectarian tensions came to a head, conducted violent campaigns against Sunnis, which constitute the majority of the insurgency and Jihadist groups whose ranks are replete with foreign fighters.

If anything, Iranian interference in Iraq has been solely based on aiding radical aspects of the Shi’ite population who have had links with Tehran since before the US invasion of the country.

Looking abroad, there is no arguing the fact that Iran supports Hezbullah and other such groups. In truth, though still indefensible, their support of such groups has been largely aimed at helping them in their struggles against other regional powers, many of whom are backed by foreign powers, in an attempt to consolidate power and expand their influence, something that, like it or not, the United States helped write the handbook on.

Also rather telling is this passage…

“They hate the United States because they know we stand with you in opposition to their brutal ambitions.”

Like the people of Chile stood with the United States against the ‘brutal ambitions’ of Salvador Allende, their fears erased when the CIA helped engineer the coup that put Pinochet in power who then went about ‘disappearing’ tens of thousand of Chileans?

Next to the covert global foreign policy undertakings of the United States, Iran is a snow white virgin by comparison. And don’t think that the United States hasn’t endeavored to sponsor terrorists either. In 2005, Luis Posada was held in Texas on the charge of Illegal Presence. The charges were later dropped. While the US Justice Department requested that the court keep Posada in jail because he was, of his own admission, the mastermind behind numerous terrorist attacks, Posada was neither charged with crimes relating to those admissions, nor was a Venezuelan extradition request approved because the a US Immigration judge ruled that were he to be extradited he would face torture.

In 1976, Luis Posada, a long-time asset of the CIA with links to the Cuban American National Foundation, a CIA shill, masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airliner, killing 76 innocent people. He was also involved in the 1997 bombing of numerous Cuban hotels and nigh clubs. While being found guilty in absentia for numerous terrorist attacks and unrealized plots. Ironically, unlike those being held at Guantanamo, Posada was granted his rights under the Constitution with regards to his seizure and the legal proceedings that followed.

The truth is, the United States has another word for ‘terrorist’ when they are the ones producing them. They tend to call them ‘assets’ or ‘paramilitaries’, many of which were trained at the notorious School Of The Americas [1], whose graduates include Manuel Noriega, Cid Diaz, and others used in violent operations by proxy regimes in Latin America.

So is Iran the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism? Have they perhaps been gifted that title because they are a powerful player in a region in which the United States currently finds itself militarily and politically treading water? Is the President’s rhetoric an attempt to whitewash the recent findings of the recent National Intelligence Estimate? Is Iran a nation stupid enough to engage in a clandestine nuclear weapons program with the whole world watching and then provide a nuclear weapon to a terrorist organization? Would they be stupid enough to do it were they not being scrutinized? What are the actual logistics involved in employing a nuclear device capable of causing serious damage? Can such a device be contained within a backpack? And if that is a possibility, and something of that nature did occur, is the Iranian government stupid enough to believe that an immediate retaliation of vastly greater proportions wouldn’t be rained down upon them in the event that it happened? And if they aren’t that stupid, would they seriously consider gifting such a device to a terrorist group? Would members of the Revolutionary Guard do it, knowing full well that by doing it they would be forfeiting their lives and the lives of perhaps millions of others, their families included?

I have written about this in the past, so won’t bother retracing my steps, but consider this. The United States has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Its destructive power is so great that even a portion of it could render this planet completely uninhabitable. They have the ability to launch weapons from domestic and foreign silos, from aircraft, and from naval vessels. In fact, a single Ohio Class nuclear submarine could devastate the Iranian population and launch its compliment from the Gulf providing little to no warning whatsoever. In truth, they could park themselves 20 miles off the Iranian coast and launch submerged and no one would know a thing until it was all over.

This world might be home to moronic fanatics that don’t care about their own lives because of religious zealotry, but they have to get their guns and ammo from somewhere. Those that provide them their wares usually aren’t the sort that are stupid enough to completely overlook what would befall them were they to hand over a nuclear device.

Now, we can claim that by employing preemptive military force we can assure something of that nature won’t occur. Then again, we’re not prepared to deal with Pakistan, which has an arsenal of its own, and whose military establishment has longstanding ties with known militant organizations. Unlike Iran, it’s a nation in chaos, one in which terrorist attacks have been on the rise, and one in which elements of the Taliban, and groups sympathetic to their plight, operate largely unhindered. And while there has been a great deal of talk regarding the uncertainty that the unrest in Pakistan has produced, it is not seen as the sort of threat that Iran is.

Demonizing Iran is, in truth, wholly to the benefit of the United States. It remains the most powerful nation in the region opposed to the US occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. By supplanting a friendly regime in Tehran, the United States would, in essence, created a unified operational area stretching from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. And that reality is something that, in all of this, has remained largely overlooked.

Steve recorded this short video to explain the purpose of Ceasefire and help raise awareness with regards to Canada’s participation in Afghanistan. Please watch it if you have a moment.

The CBC has a rather interesting look today at the growth of Canada’s military exports. If you’re under the impression that we’ve remained a small player in this sector, think again…

“Canada’s military exports have soared in the past decade, a CBC News investigation has found, yet the federal government has not released an annual report on exports of arms and high tech military goods for four years.

Faced with a lack of information from Ottawa, CBC News did its own analysis, by constructing a database from figures kept by the Canada Border Services Agency.

CBC News found that military exports rose 3.5 times between 2000 and 2006. And according to the most recent report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service, Canada was the sixth biggest supplier of arms to the world in 2006.”

To read more on their methodology and conclusions, I encourage you to read the rest of the article.

Obviously, transparency is a very important, and something that we as Canadians should be demanding with regards to this issue.

In an article in today’s London Times, Tim Ried begins…

“President Bush imposed the harshest sanctions on Iran for a generation and branded its military a supporter of terrorism yesterday, fuelling claims that he is preparing possible air strikes against Tehran.”

I have to be honest; I’m somewhat confused. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush clearly included Iran in his “Axis of Evil”. Thus, the fact that the United States has taken this step doesn’t really come as a surprise to me, especially given the fact that they’ve been politically and covertly maneuvering against the Iranians for some time now. There’s no question that Washington is looking for a confrontation. The only thing that remains to be seen is if the President will act before he leaves office and if his administration can employ the same tactics that it did with regards to Iraq to sway the House into supporting him. Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has made her views on Iran very clear, and they are by no means tame either. Thus, most of the Democratic majority, who are centrists by every definition of the word, may very well support a White House led initiative regarding air strikes. Given that the United States has already begun the process of instituting forward operating bases along the Iranian border speaks to the administration’s motives.

In no small way, the administration’s focus on Iran has developed to detract from the disaster in Iraq. It serves as an adjunct that provides the administration leeway with regards to the lack of real political and military successes in Iraq. By claiming that Iranian influence in Iraq to be of significant import places the onus on the Iranians, who were demonized even when a relative moderate was in power. Since Ahmadinejad’s seizure of the Presidency, matters have only deteriorated, though it shouldn’t be overlooked that his ‘victory’ in the 2005 Iranian ‘elections’ was a direct response to what was occurring on Iran’s borders, both situations being the result of a very reckless American foreign policy doctrine.

Secretary of State Rice claimed in testimony before Congress on Wednesday that Iran is…

“perhaps the greatest challenge for American security interests in the Middle East, and possibly around the world.”

We’ve heard those words before. They were used in 2002 and 2003 regarding the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Interestingly, little mention is ever made of Saudi influencing in Iraq, of its support of Sunni insurgent factions, or the fact that a very considerable portion of foreign fighters come from Saudi Arabia, helping bolster the numbers of Iraq’s Salafi Jihadi groups – better known to Westerners as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

There is also the Russian’s to factor into matters, who have remained one of the members of the Security Council, along with China, to continue to deal with Tehran rather openly. Of course, there are other matters regarding Russian-American relations that factor into it as well, and Rice’s comment can’t be discounted as one that doesn’t implicate the Russians as a factor regarding “American security interests in the Middle East, and possibly around the world”.

Now, I’m certainly not giving the Iranians a free pass. I’m sure that they have been covertly involved in Iraq, just as the United States, or any other power, would be were there a conflict raging on their border that could ultimately affect them. As for the nuclear question, I have been through that and would suggest using the search engine if you’re interested in reading my thoughts on that subject.

While the Bush administration has claimed, even after the implementation of these new sanctions, that a diplomatic solution to the problem is their preferred method, it can’t be discounted that there is a reason why eleventh hour diplomacy is being employed, and it has little to do with diplomacy itself. More to the point, it may have far more to do with due diligence on the part of the Bush administration in the event that they have to justify military action to the American people; that they can then claim that all avenues were exhausted despite the fact that they have been goading the Iranians for some time and that the American media has been diligently casting the Iranians in such a negative light as to basically pre-program the domestic psyche that a confrontation with Iran is not simply possible, but inevitable. True, Iranian covert involvement in Iraqi affairs has most likely resulted in the loss of American lives; and while that is certainly of concern, given the regional implications of the US occupation of Iraq, how can anyone think that those in the region would not ultimately involve themselves in some way? The Turkish military has bolstered its forces along the Iraqi frontier, even going so far as to suggest an invasion of northern Iraq itself to deal with cross-border raids by the PKK. At present they are attempting to have a list of high-ranking PKK members extradited from Iraq to Turkey. Of course, the United States is cooperating because it does not want to see the Turks invade northern Iraq, as they have threatened to do. The Turks have also threatened sanctions against parts of Northern Iraq, who receive electricity and other services from Turkey. But the reality is that the PKK will obviously not capitulate to the demands, nor do I believe that sympathetic Kurds in northern Iraq that believe in the ultimate creation of a free Kurdish state will easily betray them.

This where we come to the rather interesting ambiguity of what the sanctions implemented against Iran imply and the reality that exterior factors are playing a very real role in the situation. But before I delve into that, I want to focus on an overlapping issue – the issue of covert military complicity and how it is condemned by nations that have long standing traditions with regards to its use. In this case, I want to use Iran and the United States as examples.

The Hypocrisy Of ‘Might Makes Right’ Covert Military Complicity

The Iranians have been accused of training Shi’ite militants in Iran that then operate inside of Iraq in both an anti-occupational and sectarian manner.

The United States has trained countless paramilitary and militant organizations that have acted in those capacities throughout the world. Their support for a variety of military juntas and dictatorial regimes has also been considerable. One such regime was that of the Shah of Iran itself, who the United States and Great Britain put back into power after the democratically elected leader of Iran in the 50’s attempted to nationalize segments of the Iran’s oil industry.

US covert military support and training is, in fact, globally unprecedented. It knows very little limitation or restriction, operating in economic spheres, such as through numerous aid programs and the underwriting of World Bank loans to secure both privatization rights and military contracts. It has, and continues to, help develop, and by way influence, the intelligence capacities of foreign nations, train irregular and regular forces in nations that benefit their current policy platforms or have lucrative arms agreements with US defense contractors or third parties representing US arms interests. They have trained paramilitary groups, foreign domestic forces, and rogue militant groups that have been guilty of mass killings and disappearances, torture, mass imprisonments, industrial espionage, acts of terrorism, and psychological warfare. They possess a significant capability to manipulate information abroad, to control the flow of information, and employ counter-intelligence operations on a multi-national level.

Compared to this, the Iranians are the tiniest of bugs. While they are responsible for aiding numerous organizations, such as Hezbollah, theirs are operations that, by comparison, are utterly minuscule. Thus, placing things into proper context is obviously of importance, especially when anything that is going to come out of Iran about US covert activities is going to automatically be taken as a lie by the general public.

Iran As A Proxy Issue

Given the growing tensions between the United States and Russia, the use of Iran as a proxy issue is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. The sanctions out in place are focused on Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. The Russians, on the other hand, (along with China) sell arms to Iran, and thus equip its military.

Today, Russian President Putin claimed that the implementation of a missile shield in Eastern Europe was akin to the introduction of MRBM’s by the Soviet Union into the Western Hemisphere…

“Similar actions by the Soviet Union, when it deployed missiles in Cuba, provoked the Caribbean crisis. For us, technologically, the situation is very similar.”

Of course, he went on to claim that the United States and Russia are allies and that he and Mr. Bush are good friends, but a statement of that magnitude is not made without purpose behind it. Nor are statements regarding the sale of weapons to Iran by the Russians made by the Assistant Secretary of State without purpose.

The two issues are, of course, conjoined, being that the defense shield is being implemented to guard against attacks from nations such as Iran. In fact, Iran has been specifically sited as one of the foremost reasons for the necessity of the shield.

Thus, you have the Russians and Chinese, two of the five permanent Security Council members, that have arms agreements with Tehran – and in the case of Russia have technologically aided in the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program, and the rest of the Council at odds with the Iranian program, sighting it as a threat. Interestingly, the implementation of the defense shield is in nations with which the US has burgeoning military ties and thus refuses to back down from its implementation.

At the end of the day, the five permanent members of the Security Council represent the five largest arms dealers in the world. So basically, this is all just mathematics. You need enemies to ensure return in the business of war, and when an age as politically and militarily ambiguous as the one in which we now find ourselves is ushered in, all bets are off.

I first read Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart Of Darkness, when I was fifteen - being that it was the premise for one of my favourite films, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. I would revisit it again in my late 20’s after reading an article in which Conrad’s time spent as the captain of a steamer in the Congo was highlighted. For those of you that haven’t read it, I would recommend that you do for numerous reasons, the foremost being Conrad’s commentary on the human condition with regards to the depths and limitations of human psychological endurance and corruption.

There is, of course, dark colonial aspects to the piece that are also of import, but being the son of a man that was born in colonial India, and whose family lived there for over a century, the realities of that mindset are nothing new to me. I was, even at a young age, aware of the sort of racism and arrogance found in the colonial mindset, and brutally exposed to it when one of my great uncles would visit from South Africa.

That said, my mention of Conrad’s story is in response to Kurt Langmann’s recent editorial in the Abbotsford News in which my position on Afghanistan is questioned and he suggests that I read Heart Of Darkness.

The article is somewhat geopolitically narrow, as it wanders through an ambiguous argument that relies on a variety of contextual dissimilarities while attempting to unify them by pointing to the inevitability of violent outcomes. Our role in Afghanistan turns to UN involvement in Africa as a measure with which to address the ineffectuality of UN peacekeeping operations, attempting to abridge the two. In doing so, Langmann offers up numerous examples of the inability of the United Nations to effectively address past and ongoing conflicts in Africa while using my mention of the need for a more astute UN mandate in Afghanistan as pretext.

First, let me say that my mention of a clearly defined and commanded UN mission in Afghanistan is one steeped in the need for any such force to be complimented by personnel from states within the region itself, as I have mentioned on this website before. But, of course, that alone would not detract from the reality that UN forces would face the same sort of dangers that NATO troops now face.

The rules of engagement with regards to UN forces are, obviously, different than that of regular conventional forces. In the simplest of terms, they are only permitted to return fire when fired upon, or when the lives of those under their protection are threatened. That said, they are not traditionally meant to be aggressive in nature, merely a presence to deter violence in hopes of providing stability. But that is not to say that they do not represent a military force themselves. As anyone with an understanding of UN peacekeeping is aware, when soldiers under the UN flag are included in an operation, they are equipped to deal with military occurrences. Counter-insurgency, on the other hand, is not something that falls within their mandate.

That said, and as I have written previously, the rubber stamp provided by the UN with regards to operations in Afghanistan was simply procedural, lending credence to the actions of those that invaded the country in response to 9/11. Like the Bush administration’s refusal to join the ICC, or its disregard of the 53rd Article of the UN Charter with regards to the illegal invasion of Iraq, the United States and other permanent Security Council members have always used the UN as a plus-minus apparatus with regards to their own objectives. It should never be overlooked that the Council’s five permanent members constitute the world’s five most prolific arms dealers, and that theirs is one of the most hypocritical positions with regards to passing judgment on the use of truly effective interventionism in locales where they do business or have a vested interest in a particular outcome.

Langmann points to Sudan as an example of how a UN mandated force would not change the bloody outcome of what continues to transpire there. And while the AU has recently committed 26,000 peacekeepers to help further deal with the situation, an undertaking that has been criticized by the UN due to the lack of training received by those being deployed and the inability of the AU to effectively impact the situation in the past, one has to examine the undertones of what has transpired there with regards to the Security Council itself and the unwillingness to directly confront Khartoum with regards to the allowance of UN forces in the country.

At the height of the genocide in Darfur, the Chinese were able to block numerous initiatives because of their economic dealings with Khartoum. For over a decade the Chinese have sold the Sudanese a considerable amount of arms, and are also the foremost exporter of Sudanese oil. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end with the Chinese. The United States, which has actually classified what is transpiring in Darfur as genocide, recently enlisted the help of the Sudanese government in recruiting operatives to use as moles to infiltrate Salafi Jihadi groups in Iraq. That would be the very same government that has been guilty of supporting the Janjiweed militias who have been largely responsible for the murder of countless innocents and the displacement of millions.

The reason why the UN is ineffectual when it comes to peacekeeping is, ironically, the body within it that conducts the oversight of security. And within that reality, the policies and objectives of those that hold permanent seats surpass the realistic needs of those that require that very body to act on their behalf. If ever there was an example of the complete and utter failure of the Security Council as measured against the priorities of some of its foremost members, it would be UNAMIR. While the world was glued to the conflict raging in the Balkans, Roméo Dallaire was being sold down the river, forced to watch a genocide of immense proportions occur in front of his eyes while being denied support from the very body that sanctioned the mission to help stop it.

The truth? The Security Council had no vested interest in Rwanda. The French were known supporters of the Hutus and the rotating seat on the Council at the time was actually filled by the Rwandan government responsible for backing the Interahamwe. The United States, worried that there would be a repeat of events in Somalia the year before, vetoed Dallaire’s request that a mere 4,000 troops and reasonable logistical support would significantly deter the situation. And thus, over 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus were massacred in 100 days.

Langmann writes in his article…

“A couple of years ago my little brother, Mark, was dispatched to central Africa. His mission? To repair the bullet-riddled bodies of UN “peacekeeping” helicopters, operated by blue-helmeted UN forces that were trying to enforce the ceasefire imposed on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). And not only were the “insurgents” firing on “peacekeepers,” the latter were shooting back. That’s right, peacekeepers have guns and they use them.”

Langmann’s statement is a given, of course, and should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone. UN forces have been attacked in a variety of locales over the decades and, given their mandate, return fire when fired upon if ordered to do so. To suggest that people don’t understand that is somewhat naïve. In the case of insurgents firing on them, that too is to be expected, that’s simply a reality of peacekeeping.

Unlike the UN response to the conflict in the Balkans in the 90’s, UN forces in the DRC have not been favoured with the sort of considerable backing that those in the Balkans were. For example, MONUC, The Mission of the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has seen extremely minimal support from most of the permanent member states of the Security Council. The UK? Seven observers. France? Three troops and three observers. In fact, the only permanent member of the Security Council to actual devote a significant number of ground forces to the operation has been China, with 218 troops and 13 observers. The majority of the contingent, with regards to troops being on the ground, come from, of all places, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Uruguay.

It’s here that the question has to be asked – why? And the answer is quite straight forward – the bottom line. In the 90’s the United States helped directly build the arsenals of eight of the nine nations involved in the Congo conflict. Since the passing of a UN resolution banning arms sales to those involved, it has since stopped, or at least gone dark, but the fact remains that business is business and proper intervention cannot take place, or be supported, where it might possibly threaten business. With regards to Darfur, the same is true with regards to China’s position, as well as past US involvement in financing and arming The Sudan People’s Liberation Army and their current need to placate Khartoum, despite their past support for the SPLA, given their recent overtures regarding covert intelligence operations in Iraq.

So what is the point of using the United Nations as a mechanism with regards to foreign intervention? That’s a very good question, but one that cannot be dismissed because of the stranglehold that the permanent members of the Security Council enjoy. If we are to abandon the existence of an international organization created to safeguard the welfare of nations and those who inhabit them, not to mention a basis for the safeguarding of international law, then the only option left us is to completely accept the bilateral and unilateral actions of the world’s foremost powers as both inevitable and justified simply because of their military might. Thus, it is up to nations such as Canada to demand that our inclusion in foreign military interventions be tempered by not only the tenets of an organization that exists to represent the equality of global security, but the compliance of those in a position to dismiss it to act according to its purpose for the sake of creating a just, respected, and professional force that will be taken seriously whenever it is deployed.

You simply can’t cut an arms deal with certain nations in one of the world’s most conflict ridden regions without cutting another to counterbalance it. So that is precisely what the United States is in the midst of doing.

The US is currently preparing an arms deal with the Saudis and other Gulf states worth $20 billion dollars over the next decade. But as expected, the Israelis aren’t entirely too happy about the prospect of it, so the United States plans to extend to them a package that will total $30 billion dollars over the next decade.

As it stands now, the United States gives Israel some $2.4 billion dollars in military aid a year, thus the new deal would constitute a 25% increase.

“The BBC’s Bethany Bell in Jerusalem says the package is seen as an attempt to allay Israeli concerns over the planned arms deal with Saudi Arabia, reportedly worth $20bn (£9.8bn) over the next decade.

Defence officials quoted by US media said the sales would include advanced weaponry, missile guidance systems, upgraded fighter jets and naval ships.

Mr Olmert said the increased support was a sign of US commitment to maintain Israel’s military “advantage over the Arab states”.”

In total, the United States is committing $50 billion dollars over the next decade to the military capabilities of foreign countries that will, in no small way, ensure that a heightened state of arms proliferation remains prevalent in a region of the world which should, in truth, be the focus of moderation, not proliferation.

Of course, this is all fantastic news for US military contractors, their employees, and those innumerable Congressional districts that rely on the defense sector.

The G8 Summit is underway in Heiligendamm, Germany, during which numerous issues, such as the environment, will no doubt receive a lot of lip service while producing nothing of realistic import. As has become the trend, Bono and Geldof are also attending the summit and are meeting with various heads of state to push anti-poverty and AIDS initiatives. Bono praised President Bush’s recent announcement that he’ll pour some $30 billion dollars over the next five years into the fight against AIDS in Africa. Of course, they had a nice little photo-op together, something that always makes me shiver. There’s just something about willingly standing next to a war criminal with a smile on your face that is unsettling to me. That, and before I even comment on the President’s AID’s package I’d have to be privy to the fine print, which I’m sure is substantial and probably includes caveats with regards to participation in the War On Terror.

Also of interest this morning is a story involving Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan and BAE Systems, the United Kingdoms largest arms dealer…

“A Saudi prince who negotiated a £40bn arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia received secret payments for over a decade, a BBC probe has found.

The UK’s biggest arms dealer, BAE Systems, paid hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.”

[…]

“The investigation found that up to £120m a year was sent by BAE Systems from the UK into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington.
The BBC’s Panorama programme has established that these accounts were actually a conduit to Prince Bandar for his role in the 1985 deal to sell more than 100 warplanes to Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of one of the accounts was to pay the expenses of the prince’s private Airbus.

David Caruso, an investigator who worked for the American bank where the accounts were held, said Prince Bandar had been taking money for his own personal use out of accounts that seemed to belong to his government.

He said: “There wasn’t a distinction between the accounts of the embassy, or official government accounts as we would call them, and the accounts of the royal family.”

Mr Caruso said he understood this had been going on for “years and years”.

“Hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars were involved,” he added.

According to Panorama’s sources, the payments were written into the arms deal contract in secret annexes, described as “support services”.

They were authorised on a quarterly basis by the MoD.

Prince Bandar was Saudi ambassador to the US for 20 years

It remains unclear whether the payments were actually illegal - a point which depends in part on whether they continued after 2001, when the UK made bribery of foreign officials an offence.

The payments were discovered during a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation.”

You remember Prince Bandar. He was the Saudi ambassador to the US in 2001, the very same that appeared on Larry King Live to do damage control immediately following 9/11 given that the majority of the hijackers were Saudis.