Despite all of the troubles plaguing the Iraqi government of late, and the overwhelming condemnation of Nouri Maliki, at least he has had the guts to say something that should have been said months ago…

“He said the Democratic senators were acting as if Iraq was “their property” and that they should “come to their senses” and “respect democracy”.

At least when you overthrow a tyrant yourself you know where you stand. It might take decades for it to occur, for all of the right pieces to fall into place, and for a truly inspired movement to achieve a level of dedication at which point the people are willing to sacrifice for the possibility of a better future.

When democracy is achieved under those conditions it has a chance. That’s not to say that that chance would not be fraught with problems, but at least they would be the problems of those that stood up and took control of their own volition, for their own sake, and their own future as an independent people.

Iraq will suffer the long dark of chaos before anything even remotely resembling what we would consider normality will ever come to it. It is nothing but a pawn in the game of others to be used as they see fit while cast as free, primarily for the sake of those that sit half a world away, convinced that what has transpired there it is a part of some greater global conflict that has been wrapped tightly in the precepts of nobility.

Be it in Iraq or Afghanistan, the truth is that we are fighting ourselves. We are fighting our own creations, our own mistakes, our own ignorance, arrogance, and sense of entitlement. We will not be satisfied until such a time that victory is achieved, and thus must wait for the inevitability of our own undoing to see it realized.

When it comes to subduing nations, as we learned all too well during the Second World War, the best policy is to unleash a level of violence upon them that is utterly cruel and unforgiving. Both Japan and West Germany became democratic in the years following the war, both of them having been so utterly decimated that adhering to the will of those responsible was required to simply save themselves. In both cases they were also occupied by foreign armies, and in both cases those that occupied them played a significant role in the formation of their governments. Perhaps, when all is said and done, that is what should be done in Iraq and Afghanistan if the ultimate goal is to secure the existence of governments that are wholly dependent on those that seek to ensure that they exist to promote foreign interests. Because freedom is not something that exists simply because foreign armies invade and occupy a nation and them claim it free. That presumption is the great mistake of the world’s elite, and one that has been played out time and again around the globe for centuries.

Who are we better than, and what gives us the right to claim ourselves thus? If our way of life is better than most, then why is it the most destructive way of life on the planet? Why does it produce the most waste, the most pollution, and the most weapons of war?

We have been here before on numerous occasions. There was a time, over 2000 years ago, when a great Republic existed that promoted the virtues of democracy no less fervently as we do. They too wandered far a field, using their military might to subdue those considered unenlightened, those considered threats, but most of all – those considered economically quintessential to their existence. And like all who would use freedom as an excuse for a myriad of unscrupulous undertakings, they eventually succumbed under the weight of their own hypocrisy. They too created enemies, ones which would eventually arrive at their gates and smash them into splinters while they sat aghast in disbelief that such a thing could even happen. And they would not be the last to do so.

Self determination is not something that is a predominant feature throughout history. In fact, it is the exception.

John Pilger’s entry posted today on the The Guardian’s Comment Is Free blog entitled “The old Iran-Contra death squad gang is desperate to discredit Chavez” is an interesting read. In it, Pilger confronts some of Latin America’s harsh realities and, having also made a documentary entitled The War On Democracy, which “shows that the principles of democracy can be found more readily among the poorest people of Latin America than anywhere near the corridors of the White House. It features an exclusive interview with Hugo Chávez and Pilger also speaks to former US government officials who claim the CIA waged covert wars in Latin America”, his views on the subject carry some weight.

In the entry Pilger writes…

“In making my film The War on Democracy, I sought the help of Chileans like Roberto and his family, and Sara de Witt, who courageously returned with me to the torture chambers at Villa Grimaldi, which she somehow survived. Together with other Latin Americans who knew the tyrannies, they bear witness to the pattern and meaning of the propaganda and lies now aimed at undermining another epic bid to renew both democracy and freedom on the continent.

The disinformation that helped destroy Allende and give rise to Pinochet’s horrors worked the same in Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had the temerity to implement modest, popular reforms. In both countries, the CIA funded the leading opposition media, although they need not have bothered. In Nicaragua, the fake martyrdom of La Prensa became a cause for North America’s leading liberal journalists, who seriously debated whether a poverty-stricken country of 3 million peasants posed a “threat” to the United States. Ronald Reagan agreed and declared a state of emergency to combat the monster at the gates. In Britain, whose Thatcher government “absolutely endorsed” US policy, the standard censorship by omission applied. In examining 500 articles that dealt with Nicaragua in the early 1980s, the historian Mark Curtis found an almost universal suppression of the achievements of the Sandinista government - “remarkable by any standards” - in favour of the falsehood of “the threat of a communist takeover”.

The similarities in the campaign against the phenomenal rise of popular democratic movements today are striking. Aimed principally at Venezuela, especially Chávez, the virulence of the attacks suggests that something exciting is taking place; and it is. Thousands of poor Venezuelans are seeing a doctor for the first time in their lives, having their children immunised and drinking clean water. New universities have opened their doors to the poor, breaking the privilege of competitive institutions effectively controlled by a “middle class” in a country where there is no middle. In barrio La Línea, Beatrice Balazo told me her children were the first generation of the poor to attend a full day’s school. “I have seen their confidence blossom like flowers,” she said. One night in barrio La Vega, in a bare room beneath a single lightbulb, I watched Mavis Mendez, aged 94, learn to write her own name for the first time.

More than 25,000 communal councils have been set up in parallel to the old, corrupt local bureaucracies. Many are spectacles of raw grassroots democracy. Spokespeople are elected, yet all decisions, ideas and spending have to be approved by a community assembly. In towns long controlled by oligarchs and their servile media, this explosion of popular power has begun to change lives in the way Beatrice described.

It is this new confidence of Venezuela’s “invisible people” that has so inflamed those who live in suburbs called country club. Behind their walls and dogs, they remind me of white South Africans. Venezuela’s wild west media is mostly theirs; 80% of broadcasting and almost all the 118 newspaper companies are privately owned. Until recently one television shock jock liked to call Chávez, who is mixed race, a “monkey”. Front pages depict the president as Hitler, or as Stalin (the connection being that both like babies). Among broadcasters crying censorship loudest are those bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA in spirit if not name. “We had a deadly weapon, the media,” said an admiral who was one of the coup plotters in 2002. The TV station, RCTV, never prosecuted for its part in the attempt to overthrow the elected government, lost only its terrestrial licence and is still broadcasting on satellite and cable.

Yet, as in Nicaragua, the “treatment” of RCTV is a cause celebre for those in Britain and the US affronted by the sheer audacity and popularity of Chávez, whom they smear as “power crazed” and a “tyrant”. That he is the authentic product of a popular awakening is suppressed. Even the description of him as a “radical socialist”, usually in the pejorative, wilfully ignores the fact that he is a nationalist and social democrat, a label many in Britain’s Labour party were once proud to wear.

In Washington, the old Iran-Contra death squad gang, back in power under Bush, fear the economic bridges Chávez is building in the region, such as the use of Venezuela’s oil revenue to end IMF slavery. That he maintains a neoliberal economy, described by the American Banker as “the envy of the banking world” is seldom raised as valid criticism of his limited reforms. These days, of course, any true reforms are exotic. And as liberal elites under Blair and Bush fail to defend their own basic liberties, they watch the very concept of democracy as a liberal preserve challenged on a continent about which Richard Nixon once said “people don’t give a shit”. However much they play the man, Chávez, their arrogance cannot accept that the seed of Rousseau’s idea of direct popular sovereignty may have been planted among the poorest, yet again, and “the hope of the human spirit”, ofwhich Roberto spoke in the stadium, has returned.”

It is often overlooked that the most powerful weapon in the world is, in fact, information. And given that, the use of highly developed counter-intelligence is therefore the pinnacle of power. The United States largely learned the art of counter-intelligence during the Second World War from the British, its undisputed historical masters, and, after the creation of the CIA, went on to perfect it during the Cold War, though credit must also be given the Soviets for their efforts as well. It has been used domestically, internationally, and has infiltrated every medium that is able to be influenced by it, from educational curriculums to newspapers to television. It can be used to discredit foreign leaders, political movements, distort economic realities, and justify military interventions. It can even scapegoat an entire religion for the sake of national hysteria based on the actions of a handful.

In the world of intelligence, it doesn’t get more dirty, nor secretive, than counter-intelligence. During the Cold War it was employed with perfection in such cases as the overthrow of Mosaddeq in Iran (a democratically elected leader), Allende in Chile (a democratically elected leader), and Árbenz in Guatemala (a democratically elected leader) - just not the right sort of democratically elected leaders.

In all three cases, the cause for their removal was purely economic, inferring that they were not in line with those who had benefited from lucratively established practices in their countries. In all three cases, they were painted as communist, or highly socialist, bringing into question the possibility that they might align themselves with the Soviets.

In all three cases it worked. In fact, it worked so well that the realities of their removal are usually dismissed in many curriculums at the post secondary level, some of which actually lean on the propaganda that was used in the counter-intelligence operations themselves. In such cases, operations such as AJAX and PBSUCCESS are explained away as Cold War necessities.

The point of counter-intelligence is not to spread false information. It is to spread confusion so that disinformation seems logical by comparison. The recreation of truth is not particularly the point, only the acceptance that wrongdoing is, in some way, afoot. Thus, portions of populations can be swayed to condemn governments, religious leaders, and even other ethnicities within their societies purely based on a lack of knowledge and the fear that that causes.

Also of importance is the fact that counter-intelligence is commonly double edged. While its use is employed in one fashion in a foreign locale, it is applied in a completely different fashion domestically. Thus, a divergence of realities is created that, domestically, causes public condemnation of those being targeted while, at the same time, creating the required confusion of those being manipulated abroad. In the context of a free society, such as the United States, it is important that this element exists, as it helps project legitimacy.

We are, like it or not, products of decades of counter-intelligence that has, in no small way, affected how we view others. This reality has only helped strengthen and diversify the power of counter-intelligence initiatives, and has most certainly been amplified in a domestic sense to an unprecedented level.

Sheldon Richmond’s recent piece on The Future Of Freedom Foundation’s website is a must read…

“What’s more obnoxious than a person who constantly whines about the injustices committed against him while ignoring his own injustices against others?

A country that does the same thing.

We often hear American politicians and commentators reciting a list of “terrorist” acts committed against the “United States.” It typically includes the 1982 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1996 bombing of U.S. Air Force housing in Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen. Reciting this string of attacks supposedly demonstrates, without further argument, that the United States has been the major victim of violence on the world stage — unprovoked violence perpetrated by “Islamofascists” because we are free. Indeed, it is widely believed that the attacks on September 11, 2001, were in part the result of “our” failure to retaliate for the earlier attacks.

But this is sheer balderdash. The attacks, while often criminally misdirected, were hardly unprovoked.

The last century-plus of U.S. foreign policy has largely been a story of aggression and empire-building. American presidents have intervened and interfered in every region of the world, not in self-defense, but in the name of U.S. “national interest,” which in reality means the interest of well-connected corporations and their ambitious political agents who felt appointed to bring order to the world. As a whole, the American people haven’t gained by this — in fact, they have paid dearly in money and lives. But not as dearly as those on the receiving end of that policy. For all the pious moralizing about democracy and human rights, American foreign policy has treated foreign populations like garbage, beginning with the brutal repression of the Filipino uprising against American colonial rule from 1899 to 1902. That war and its related hardships killed 250,000 to a million Filipino civilians and 20,000 Filipino rebels.

How many Americans know that?

Since that time American presidents have intervened, directly or by proxy, in countless places, including Cuba, Haiti, Colombia (Panama), Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. On many occasions American administrations have engineered regime changes (sometimes with assassinations) to install leaders friendly to “American interests.” Rarely has intervention occurred without the murder of innocent civilians, degrading hardship for survivors, and arms and (taxpayer) money for repressive “leaders.” The paradigm is the 1953 intervention in Iran, when the CIA helped drive an elected, secular prime minister from office so the autocratic shah could be restored to power. His brutal U.S.-sponsored repression of the Iranian people finally provoked a religious revolution in 1979, creating an anti-American theocracy that has been a thorn in the side of U.S. presidents ever since.

Coincidence? Of course not. Americans may be ignorant or forgetful; the victims seldom are.

Iran was neither the first nor last case of “blowback,” the CIA’s term for what happens when a foreign operation explodes in one’s own face.

How many Americans have any inkling of the crimes — yes, crimes — their government has committed against foreign peoples in their name over the last century? Most people don’t know and don’t care — and that’s fine with their rulers because when vengeful foreigners assault American civilians (unjustifiably) or military occupiers, U.S. leaders and jingoist supporters can say “America” was the victim of another unprovoked attack. “Why do they hate us?” they will wonder.

Anyone the least bit familiar with history will know the answer. The CIA is about to release hundreds of documents about earlier interventions (and domestic spying), so there’s no more excuse for ignorance. Let’s stop whining and get curious. As Walt Kelly’s Pogo put it, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Brilliantly put.

Quite often, the voices within, the ones that the public are not privy to, are the most dangerous. When one listens to President Bush speak it is easy to see that he is a man of limited intellect. His vocabulary, stiff presence, and complete inability to convey himself in a fluid and articulate manner betray that fact, and in doing so raises questions as to the extent of his actual involvement in the continued application of the foreign policy doctrine that now bears his name.

That is not to say that George Bush is an entirely stupid man, only that he is surrounded by individuals that are far more intelligent and manipulative than he is, and ones that have a far greater stake in seeing foreign policy objectives achieved, having supported them since before his actual Presidency began.

The Vice President is one such man.

When Paul Wolfowitz penned the Defense Planning Guidance in 1992 while working under Cheney it caused considerable alarm after parts of it were leaked to the New York Times. While not intended for public release, the paper espoused the tenets of unilateralism and the use of preemptive military action to ensure that no other nation in the post Cold War era could achieve super-power status. It was, in essence, a blueprint for 21st century American imperialism.

The controversy that it caused resulted in the paper’s rewriting, and following the Democratic seizure of the White House in 1994, was rendered moot. But the ideas put forth in Paul Wolfowitz’s initial draft were not abandoned by American neoconservatives. While those that championed the Wolfowitz Doctrine took up residence at the highest levels in the private sector, they continued to promote the doctrine through the Project For The New American Century, whose membership included men such as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, and Zalmay Khalilzad. Following the attacks of September 11th, it was finally adopted as official US foreign policy and has now come to be known as the Bush Doctrine.

It is crucial to point out that while the current Vice President was a member of PNAC, George W. Bush was not. Therefore, the foreign policy doctrine that now bears his name was penned by, and promoted by, others prior to his Presidency, and was most likely implemented at their advisement following 9/11. The President himself had little or nothing to do with its initial structure, only its implementation.

Being that his brother Jeb was a signatory of PNAC’s mission statement, it only stands to reason that President Bush was familiar with it prior to becoming President and that he may very well have privately supported it. But that does not alter the fact that the initial concept itself was penned by Wolfowitz at the behest of Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, almost a decade before Bush’s election to the White House and the events of 9/11.

William Kristol, PNAC’s Chairman, has gone on record as saying that he believes that had 9/11 not occurred, the Wolfowitz Doctrine would still have become official US foreign policy. That is, of course, speculation, but holds some water given his connection to those who were involved with the organization prior to Bush’s first term.

Of the signatories of PNAC’s ‘Statement of Principles’, some went on to hold positions within the administration itself, some of whom have now held a variety of different posts or left their positions altogether, while others remained outside the administration, contributing to the designs of its various policy platforms.

Cabals within governments are nothing new, but given the aggressiveness of the Bush Doctrine this reality should be cause for extreme concern. When one monitors the statements made by various US officials regarding subjects such as, for example, Iran, it is easy to see that there are factions within the administration contradicting one another, which might be why the administration has been plagued by scandal after scandal. One of the more telling aspects of this disconnection is to be found with regards to the office of the Vice President, which, for the last four years, has ‘resisted routine oversight’ regarding its handling of classified information.

From today’s New York Times…

“For four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has resisted routine oversight of his office’s handling of classified information, and when the office in charge of overseeing classification in the executive branch objected, the vice president’s office suggested that the oversight office be shut down, according to documents released today by a Democratic congressman.

The oversight office, a unit of the National Archives, appealed the issue to the Justice Department, which has not yet ruled on the matter.

The effort by Mr. Cheney to shut down the oversight office was disclosed by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Mr. Waxman, who has played a leading role in the stepped-up efforts by Democrats since they took control of Congress to investigate the Bush administration, outlined the matter in an eight-page letter sent today to the vice president and posted, along with other documentation, on the committee’s Web site.

Officials at the archives and the Justice Department confirmed the basic chronology of events outlined in Mr. Waxman’s letter.

The letter said that after repeatedly refusing to comply with a routine annual request from the archives for data on his staff’s classification of internal documents, the vice president’s office in 2004 blocked an on-site inspection of records that other agencies of the executive branch regularly go through.

“I know the vice president wants to operate with unprecedented secrecy,” Mr. Waxman said in an interview. “But this is absurd. This order is designed to keep classified information safe. His argument is really that he’s not part of the executive branch, so he doesn’t have to comply.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, Megan McGinn, said, “We’re confident that we’re conducting the office properly under the law.” She declined to elaborate.

But other officials familiar with Mr. Cheney’s view said that he and his legal adviser, David S. Addington do not believe the executive order applies to the vice president’s office because it has a legislative as well as an executive status in the Constitution.

Other White House offices, including the National Security Council, routinely comply with the oversight requirements, according to Mr. Waxman’s office and outside experts.

The dispute is far from the first to pit Mr. Cheney and Mr. Addington, against outsiders seeking information, usually members of Congress or advocacy groups. Their position is generally based on strong assertions of presidential power and the importance of confidentiality, which Mr. Cheney has often argued was eroded by post-Watergate laws and a prying press.

But the National Archives is an executive branch department headed by a presidential appointee, and it is assigned to collect the data on classified documents under a presidential executive order. The archives’ division that oversees classification and declassification, the Information Security Oversight Office, is an obscure part of the federal bureaucracy.

Mr. Waxman asserted both in his letter and the interview that Mr. Cheney’s office should take the efforts of the National Archives especially seriously because it has had problems protecting secrets.

He noted that the vice president’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to a grand jury and the F.B.I. during an investigation of the leak of classified information — the secret status of Valerie Wilson, the wife of a Bush administration critic, as an undercover Central Intelligence Agency officer.

He added that in May 2006 a former aide in Mr. Cheney’s office, Leandro Aragoncillo, pleaded guilty to passing classified information to plotters trying to overthrown the president of the Philippines.

“Your office may have the worst record in the executive branch for safeguarding classified information,” Mr. Waxman wrote to Mr. Cheney.”

There was a good reason why, when leaked to the New York Times, Wolfowitz’s initial Defense Planning Guidance caused concern. It presented a glimpse of the United States not as a positive force in the world, but as wholly selfish and aggressive one. Unfortunately, Wolfowitz’s vision has become reality, and the consequences of it have as well.

Updated*

May of this year was the deadliest for US forces in Iraq since November of 2004, a fact that the Pentagon conceded yesterday while trying to explain it away by sighting greater operational risks.

Things on the Iraqi side of the equation are, obviously, no better. In fact, they remain constant, with 169 Iraqi’s killed on Tuesday and a further 146 wounded. Yesterday saw, thankfully, a decrease, with 66 Iraqi’s killed and 97 wounded.

Equally as troubling, today’s Herald Sun in Australia ran a story about comments made by Tony Snow with regards to comparing Iraq to the long standing US presence in South Korea…

“The half-century US military presence in South Korea may be a model for a future in which US forces play a support role in Iraq rather than a frontline combat role, the White House said.

“The Korean model is one in which the United States provides a security presence, but you’ve had the development of a successful democracy in South Korea over a period of years, and therefore, the United States is there as a force of stability,” said spokesman Tony Snow today.

“You get to a point in the future where you want it to be a purely support model,” said Mr Snow, who sought to ease concerns among US allies, war critics in the United States, and Iraqis over prospects of permanent US bases in Iraq.”

I find that a very interesting statement, even though Snow claimed that the United States would adhere to, at any time, requests by either the Iraqi or South Korean governments to remove themselves from their respective countries. The truth is, the United States does have permanent military bases in South Korea, among them Camp Bonifas, Camp Casey, Camp Castle, Camp Hovey, Camp Humphreys (which South Korean citizens themselves have protested the expansion of), Camp Red Cloud, Camp Stanley, Camp Sears, Kunsan Air Base, and Osan Air Base. They even have their own golf course - Sungnam Golf Course (for a complete list of US instillations in South Korea, click here).

At present, the United States has over 75,000 troops in Asia, not including the Middle East and Central Asia. Of that number, and despite the fact that they are currently fighting two wars, there are over 20,000 US troops in South Korea, down from just under the 40,000 stationed there prior to the invasion of Iraq. Since 2004, the US military has transferred some of their personnel from South Korea to combat theatres elsewhere as the demands on the Armed Forces have increased.

As Mr. Snow eluded to, the United States would, at the request of the South Korean government, remove its forces. But the truth is that there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening any time soon. The US military provides far too convenient a deterrent, not to mention the fact that their presence in South Korea is not solely focused on the North Koreans but, to an extent, the Chinese as well. It should also be pointed out that the US maintains a considerable presence in Japan.

As for Iraq, Think Progress’ look at the US Embassy being built in the Green Zone in Baghdad is an eye opener for those of you unfamiliar with its size and accoutrements. It should be noted that while parts of Baghdad itself are in ruins and have little access to proper civic services, such as decent sewage and water, Think Progress points out…

“The complex “will include two office buildings, one of them designed for future use as a school, six apartment buildings, a gym, a pool, a food court and its own power generation and water-treatment plants.”

The U.S. embassy is likely to create even greater Iraqi resentment toward the U.S. occupation. While Americans will be living in posh quarters, the citizens of Baghdad are forced to survive with just 5.6 hours of electricity a day. Baghdad was also recently rated the world’s worst city in which to live.”

Who says hegemony doesn’t have its perks?

Now watch this drive.

*June 1st, 2007: US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, has also commented about US permanence in the Iraq along the lines of the US garrisoning of the South Korean border.

We were supposed to shoot the Carmelina video that day or the next. Dale Junior was flying in from North Carolina to be in it when his plane was forced to make an unscheduled stop in Kansas. The phone kept ringing, I remember that very well, and when I turned on the television and saw what was transpiring in New York, my mind was flooded with innumerable questions. The three most predominant were: premeditation, impact, and response.

It’s ironic, of course, that the video for Carmelina features torture as its central theme; a clinical, detached, sterilized torture that is presented as entirely routine. It was, in truth, an idea that I took from my favourite film, Brazil, but when I watch it now it seems almost uncanny to me given the course taken with regards to the use of torture and rendition to known torturers by those nations who have claimed to hold the moral high ground since 9/11.

I remember thinking to myself that the response would be, in a word, immense, and at the time thought that the US intelligence community must surely have some significant insight into the impetus of the attacks, one that was far more clearly defined than would later be revealed. In fact, I thought that they would have been far more astute about labeling it blowback.

In Blowback, published prior to 9/11, Chalmers Johnson explores the realities of covert operations abroad and their implications on the United States. The term itself, coined by the CIA, is defined as:

“The unintended consequences of covert operations. Blowback typically appears as a surprise, apparently random and without cause, because the public generally is unaware of the secret operations that caused it. In its strictest terms, blowback was originally informational only and referred to consequences that resulted when an intelligence agency participated in foreign media manipulation, which was then reported by domestic news sources in other countries as accepted facts.”.

There is little question that what occurred on September 11th had roots, and that the attacks themselves were not engineered without the consideration of US Middle East foreign policy history in mind, even if such context seems ridiculous to us, primarily because we were detached from its realities. The world public, which rallied behind the American people following that terrible day, as well as Americans themselves, got lost in a singular explanation, one which would lead to their support of operations and initiatives that have seriously undermined our most sacred principles and exposed the realities of what some of the world’s foremost military powers are both capable of and willing to do.

That, in itself, I believe, was one of the key purposes behind the attacks. To expose the hypocrisy of those that commonly play games with others abroad for their own benefit, and with little consideration for those used, while the general public knows little or nothing of it. There were, of course, other objectives involved, such as the immediate psychological ramifications it would have on the American public, the crippling of world markets, the damage and disarray it would cause the American military and political infrastructures, and the domestic fear that it would cause for years to come. But beneath all of that was something far more brilliant, and I do not mean to use that word to imply that the attacks were anything but murderous, rather to simply demonstrate that by undertaking them the government of the United States would be placed in a position to react as would be expected of them, and that much of the American people, rather than bothering to investigate possibilities, willingly allowed the curtailment of their liberties to occur and got onboard with the administration’s numerous initiatives, even those that had nothing to do with the events of that day whatsoever. In short, it exposed the prevalence of American militarism and how it has been used to affect people throughout the world for decades, be it half way around the world or within the United States itself. To believe that such goals were not a part of the reason for the attacks of 9/11 is to refuse to confront one very important thing: that those who planned the attacks were not fools by any means, and knew well enough what would occur following them, both domestically and internationally.

In truth, it is always easier to view such terrible occurrences in black and white while disregarding motive. But, like any premeditated crime, and 9/11 was surely that to the utmost degree, there is always a reason, even if those reasons are steeped in the psychotic or have historical relevancies that we are not able to put into proper context.

All of this is not meant to excuse or even justify the events of September 11th, but to ignore context is a very slippery slope. No sooner had the attacks taken place than two engines began to turn. One focused on Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the other, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, focused on Iraq. With regards to the former, it was something the world could get behind, a face and a group that, because of the images of that day, represented an immense evil, one that instantly galvanized world support for the United States, a global solidarity that the Bush administration would utterly squander to the point where the very same populations that had once held vigils for the victims of 9/11, including some 1 million Iranians in Tehran, would take to the streets in historically unprecedented numbers to protest the wholly engineered Anglo-American invasion of Iraq – before it even happened.

Six years on, the events of September 11th have been used to justify numerous things, from the unilateral invasion of Iraq to the use of illegal detention and torture – both of which were supported by the American public initially based not on factual realities, but rather the endless wheel of propaganda that 9/11 has afforded the American government. And like the attacks of 9/11, such undertakings have been both illegal in many respects and a very real threat to the reliability and conscience of our political infrastructures.

Coming Face To Face With Cause And Effect

In the sticky world of foreign interventionism and covert operations, it is always important to remember that most of what occurs within the cloud of the unknown often, if not always, has repercussions, even if such repercussions do not materialize for decades. Case in point, the engineered removal of the democratically elected Prime Minister Of Iran in 1953, Dr. Mohammed Mossadeq…

One has to wonder, had Mossadeq not been removed from power, would Iran have developed into the Middle East’s foremost democracy? And if that did occur, what impact would it have had on the region in general regarding the spread of democracy?

Unfortunately, Mossadeq’s removal led to decades of autocratic rule by a monarch and, ultimately, his removal by a movement steeped in the theocratic, one that was not about to overlook decades of Western complicity.

The removal of Mossadeq is a rather straightforward example, in truth. Where lines become blurred is when one begins to examine the support of various groups and regimes in the region depending on how that support coincided with Western foreign policy objectives. And in saying that, the blatant hypocrisy displayed by Western powers cannot be disregarded when examining cause and effect.

For example…

While aiding the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the United States was also involved in aiding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. In fact, after the Israelis captured Soviet made tanks in Lebanon, the CIA worked to transfer them to the Mujahideen by way of the Pakistani ISI. Of course, the majority of the fighters in Afghanistan had long since held Israel in contempt for their occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, so the obvious question has to be asked – did they know that those tanks and arms that had come via ISI were, in fact, part of a greater transfer from the Israelis to the CIA and then to the ISI?

This sort of convolution is nothing new in the annals of covert Western operations. With regards to Afghanistan, it should not be lost on anyone that the point of supporting the Mujahideen was to have them drive the Soviets out of the country and, in turn, exhaust as much of the Soviet’s military resources as possible. That being the case, it is also of paramount importance to realize that once that goal was accomplished the country would be in the hands of religiously motivated guerrillas, the majority of which were entirely sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians.

At the time, backing both the Israelis and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan served US ends. But the duality of that sort of mindset is not something that remains cloaked in secrecy forever. Obviously those involved in helping liberate Afghanistan had ties to, or even came from, Lebanon and Palestine. And eventually the realization that both ends of the candle were being burned by those that had helped support them would be revealed. So too is it important to remember that while the Saudis were involved in aiding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, they were also US allies and worked closely with them. And yet, being a Muslim country, not to mention one in which Islam’s two most holy sites reside, they had allied themselves with a Western power that had extremely strong military ties with Israel.

While not the whole story, such realizations were obviously not lost on the likes of Osama Bin Laden, nor should they have been on the CIA. In the after-action report filed regarding Operation AJAX, CIA analysts conceded that the operation could, at some point, produce blowback. One wonders what the thoughts of CIA analysts were during the 1980’s when the United States was engaged in not only aiding the Mujahideen and what we now refer to as The Northern Alliance, but also the regime of Saddam Hussein. And all the while, in the background, military assistance to Israel continued unabated. That’s not even taking into account other covert operations in other parts of the world, such as in Latin America where the CIA was getting its hands dirty in El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua – just to name a few. Nor does it take into account operations in Africa, Europe, or Asia.

As the Iran-Contra scandal would expose, the US was involved in playing both sides in the Iran-Iraq conflict, though the CIA’s assistance was primarily focused on Saddam Hussein’s efforts. His use of gas against the Iranians was aided by the CIA, who provided him satellite coverage of Iranian positions and troop movements, allowing his forces to better target them. And, as is to be expected, the crimes perpetrated by his regime were, at the time, largely overlooked. Even after he gassed Halabja and the House passed a resolution calling for the suspension of aid to Iraq, the Reagan White House vetoed it stating that it was unclear if Hussein had been responsible or the Iranians had been. And while they did issue a weak statement of condemnation, their support for his regime did not end.

Again, these are historical realities that are not exclusively available to us, but to those that would use them to formulate policies of their own, ones that, after years of either doing business with the United States covertly, or being used as unwitting proxies in the ‘global war against Communism’, might take offense.

Traditionally, we have explained away our evils by evoking the Cold War as justification for our actions. We tell ourselves that it was all necessary and played an integral role in the eventual demise of the Soviet Union, which is a rather skewed perspective when one refuses to take into account the part played by the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and others that worked to help dismantle what they, themselves, viewed as a corrupt entity that was, quite obviously, in its last throes.

So how are we to explain away those actions that have led others to formulate policies, be they steeped in religious fanaticism or not, that are steeped in the recognition of our usury and interference? Because to them the Cold War was never the foremost justification for their actions, even though our reasons for covert support or intervention primarily was. And when the Soviet block fell, and we proclaimed ourselves the victors of the Cold War, what then became of our relationships with those that we had coddled and used in that struggle, even though to them the defeat of global Communism was never their aim?

Pax Americana

During the Gulf War, coalition forces staged air and ground operations from bases within Saudi Arabia. At the end of the war, US military presences in both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait remained, something that displeased a great many Saudis, Osama Bin Laden among them, given that Islam’s two most holy sites are located in that country. The United States would continue to have a military presence in Saudi Arabia until 2003, after which they were forced to relocate after the Saudis finnaly refused to allow them to launch air strikes against Iraq from Saudi bases.

The displeasure created by the US military’s presence in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade should not be disregarded or considered of little import. It is, in fact, a point of real importance with regards to the motivations of men like Osama Bin Laden and others that, to this day, remain in Saudi Arabia and hold drastically anti-Western views, not to mention unfavourable ones regarding the Saudi regime. To us it might not seem that big a deal, but it is not our perspective that matters, something that we all too often disregard when doing the math behind questions such as “why do they hate us?”.

“After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden offered to help defend Saudi Arabia (with 12,000 armed men) but was rebuffed by the Saudi government. Bin Laden publicly denounced his government’s dependence on the U.S. military and demanded an end to the presence of foreign military bases in the country. According to reports (by the BBC and others), the 1990/91 deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in connection with the Gulf War upset Muslims because the Saudi government claims legitimacy based on their role as guardians of the sacred Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina. After the Gulf War cease-fire agreement left Saddam Hussein remaining in power in Iraq, the ongoing presence of long-term bases for non-Muslim U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia continued to undermine the Saudi rulers’ perceived legitimacy and inflamed anti-government Islamist militants, including bin Laden.” – [Link]

More often than not, we tend to look at our actions and positions from a wholly selfish standpoint rather than attempting to empathize with others. In doing so, especially given the mindset created during the Cold War era, we often fail to realize the magnitude of our external influencing.

There are currently some 2,500,000 US personnel serving in the Armed Forces around the world. They man, in total, 737 military bases, making the Pentagon one of the planet’s foremost landlords. To put into perspective just how enormous the US global military presence is, at the height of its dominance, the Romans policed from Britannia in the north to Egypt in the south, from Hispania in the west to Armenia in the east, with a total of 37 major military bases.

To think that such military arrogance should simply be tolerated by the world’s population without question or, in extreme cases, even retaliation, is a stretch. In the face of such an overwhelming global power, and its manipulative undertakings, primarily in the latter half of the 20th century, one seriously wonders why it should come as a shock that someone, somewhere, that has taken offense to the actions or abuses of such a power, might act.

The point is not whether you agree with their cause or not, it’s whether you understand the ramifications of a global imperialism that is routinely cast in a positive light so to detract from the fact that it is, in fact, a global power that, despite its denials to the contrary, acts without impunity with regards to its own objectives.

One ultimately must wonder – if “freedom” is so very contagious and sought after then why does it require 737 military bases to safeguard its survival? And if, by way of examining that question, you come to the conclusion that it isn’t really about freedom, then you must ultimately ask yourself – what is it about?

In the early 1990’s, while Paul Wolfowitz was penning the guidelines for US dominance over the post Cold War world, flames were beginning to spread in various pockets that had once been provinces of US covert assistance. And Afghanistan was one of them.

Forgotten Afghanistan

After being forced to leave Sudan in the spring of 1996, Osama Bin Laden returned to the place of his greatest triumph, a triumph made possible because of the assistance of external forces that aided him and others like him. It would be there that he would help fund the Taliban’s rise to power, a movement in which he would find refuge until the invasion in 2001.

After the attacks of September 11th, despite immediately being linked to them by the United States and then Great Britain, Bin Laden initially denied involvement and released a statement that praised the attackers but claimed that the attacks had been carried out by “individuals with their own motivation”. Of course, after the invasion of Afghanistan, video tapes would be found on which Bin Laden displayed foreknowledge of the attacks and his reasoning behind them, contradicting his initial statement.

The reality is that we may never know the actual truth behind the plot. Being that Bin Laden is most likely in Pakistan, and may even be secretly protected by the Pakistani ISI or others, it isn’t likely that his apprehension is going to occur any time soon. And, of course, that suits the likes of the Bush administration immensely. The longer they can use Bin Laden as their ghost, the more ambiguous and convoluted the War On Terror can become. And that, as we’ve seen demonstrated in Iraq, includes unilateral action against those that had nothing to do with 9/11 but can provide the United States opportunities – as ill conceived as they might be.

But despite that, the war in Afghanistan remains the forgotten war, one that has been largely neglected by the United States in favour of Iraqi operations. In all, there are some 51,000 NATO forces currently in Afghanistan, which was invaded in 2001 directly in response to the attacks of September 11th. Compared to that, there are currently 145,000 US troops alone in Iraq, with 250,000 US troops participating in its initial invasion.

So which is the priority? The apprehension of the man suspected of plotting the devastating attacks on September 11th and the ability to ensure that Afghanistan is secure? Or the implementation of the Bush doctrine in as many locations as will allow before it’s replaced by a new foreign policy platform that will have to struggle to overcome what it has set into motion? Besides Afghanistan, the United States is not only embroiled in a bloody and costly war in Iraq that has completely overshadowed the war in Afghanistan, but have also been active in Somalia, where US air and special forces were used to help remove the ICU from power.

In response to the attacks of September 11th, the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien pledged Canada’s support for US efforts to remove the Taliban from power and capture Osama Bin Laden. Neither objective has been wholly accomplished since 2001, and Canadian involvement in the war has only escalated. There are those that claim that our role in Afghanistan is a vital national security measure, and that by being there we are somehow preventing terrorism from rearing its ugly head on Canadian soil. To this day I struggle to even comprehend such logic, and the attacks in London only further prove that just because we act militarily elsewhere that terrorism is not deterred abroad. If anything, it is encouraged.

The irony is that those we now fight in Afghanistan were once aided by the very country that initially invaded it in 2001 in response to 9/11. And by way of association, we have inexorably linked ourselves to their legacy.

If there is one thing that we in North America have little modern understanding of it is the daily affects of warfare on a society. It’s true that we have participated in wars abroad, but it has not been since the 19th Century that North Americans have been directly effected by the true destructive and traumatizing realities of prolonged conflicts.

The last major incidents on this continent were polar opposites. One involved the planned and executed destruction or internment of Native Peoples, the other was a war between two halves of a nation that began as a fight over State’s rights and union, and ended as a struggle for the emancipation of an enslaved people – though it should be said that the latter was, by no means, realistically achieved.

During both of those conflicts we saw first hand what war looked like. Atlanta, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, and numerous others besides – all of them decimated. So too were Native communities that either chose to fight back or stood in the way of western expansion – something that we like to refer to as ‘manifest destiny’ (of all things).

Our participation in the First and Second World Wars saw grief land on our doorsteps, but it did not expose us to the reigning of bombs, the devastation of our homes, or civilian deaths on a constant and significant level. When the Second World War came to an end, Canada and the United States were two of the only participants that remained completely untouched by the realities of the war, the attack on Pearl Harbour aside.

Thus, we have existed here in North America, despite those brief occurrences, detracted from the true realities of conflict. Only those that were sent to fight in foreign lands have any real understanding of what the ramifications on a society actually are when, on a daily basis, it is exposed to it.

In the case of Vietnam, the people of that country had been embroiled in conflicts for the better part of 1,000 years prior to US military involvement there. That fact was something that was largely overlooked by the Americans at the time, and, in no small way, the same historical reality exists in the country in which the Canadian Armed Forced currently find themselves.

So how do we view those that have endured decades, if not centuries, of continued strife? How do we place histories of conflict into proper context with regards to our own actions and beliefs? To the average Canadian, Afghanistan automatically brings to mind numerous things: al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the War On Terror, poppy cultivation, and religious fanaticism. But refusing to properly examining the history of the region, and the causes and affects that have led us to this point, only reveals our limited vision regarding it and, more importantly, the justifications that we are currently clinging to with regards to the perceived results of our military participation there.

A Crossroads

Studies and archeological evidence suggests that some fifty thousand years ago Afghanistan was inhabited by a farming culture, one of the earliest in the world. The region itself is literally a crossroads, one that bridges three crucial points of the Asian compass – East, West, and Central Asia, which led to the influencing of the region by a variety of different cultures, the earliest being that of the Iranians.

Like most regions of the world that have been influenced by countless other cultures, Afghanistan has been invaded and occupied countless times throughout its history. Among the more notable were the Median Empire, the Persian Empire, the Greeks under Alexander, the Kushans, the Hepthalites, the Arabs, the Turks, the Mongols, and the British. The introduction of Islam into the region occurred during The Islamic Conquest of Afghanistan between 652-870 CE, when it was invaded by the Arabs. Thus, Islam, and it’s tenets, have influenced the region for some 1,350 years.

Like the history of much of central Asia and Persia, that of Afghanistan is extremely complex. In fact, to properly examine it in detail from the creation of the Airyānem Vāejah nation to the Anglo-Afghan wars fought between 1839 and 1880 would require years. But the central point is that it is a part of the world that has been gripped by conflict for ages, and one whose people, no matter the time of their arrival or initial historical origins, have been affected by it for centuries.

This fact, in and of itself, is of extreme importance when examining the current attitudes of Afghanistan’s various factions, their goals, and their allegiances. As I have said, despite our cultural foundations, those primarily being Northern European for the most part, we are not a people (North Americans, that is) with a prolonged history of domestic conflict experiences. That point is utterly crucial when examining events in Afghanistan today and our disconnect between what we perceive as a righteous cause and what others perceive as simply another military invasion and occupation of their country, something that they, and their ancestors, can place into context only too well.

The Great Game

It is vitally important to remember that Afghanistan has long since been used by foreign powers as a means for imperial expansion and buffering. In the case what is historically referred to as The Great Game, which, given its arrogance, was aptly titled, it was used as a buffer between British and Russian imperial interests, though the British would have more to do with interfering with its internal politics.

The first Anglo-Afghan War, often referred to as ‘Auckland’s Folly’, began in 1839 and lasted until 1842. For all intents and purposes, this action was, as far as the British outcome was concerned, a total disaster. After placing Shah Shuja on the thrown in Kabul, something that caused immense disdain amongst much of the population, the British were forced to maintain a permanent military presence to ensure the survival of his rule (sound familiar at all?). Unfortunately, numerous Afghan tribes opposed British interference and Shuja’s station, many of whom banded together under the leadership of Mohammad Akbar Khan, the son of Dost Mohammed Khan.

Given the realities of the discontented forces arrayed against them, the British eventually, after several incidents involving the killings of senior British officials and failed attempts to negotiate terms to remain in the region, secured an agreement that allowed for the safe passage of British forces and their supporters back to the British outpost in Jalalabad.

While in retreat, the British were harassed by Ghilzai fighters and eventually massacred at the Gandamak pass, with only one British officer of the contingent surviving the ordeal. The massacre at Gandamak pass lead to the creation of the region’s now famed moniker - ‘the graveyard for foreign armies’.

As expected, Shah Shuja’s reign lasted a handful of months after the British exodus. He was eventually assassinated in the Spring in 1842 and in 1843 Dost Mohammed Khan regained the throne.

The diversity of the Afghan population has always been at the center of its problems, there is no questioning that. But when a foreign power is thrown into the mix, especially ones that choose to support certain rulers that placate their needs, it is more common than not for those diverse elements to band together in defense of their right to self determination, even if on a local level.

British and Russian complicity in Afghanistan throughout the latter half of the 19th Century is no secret, nor is it a secret that they supported those that best suited their objectives in the region, laying the primitive groundwork for the economic and military activities that we now employ to influence others for our benefit. It is also here, in Afghanistan’s past, that we find examples of the sort of foreign arrogance which has helped shape the views of many Afghans with regards to foreign interference.

In 1907, Russia and Great Britain signed the Convention of St. Petersburg, an agreement that divided the region into various areas of Russian and British influence. This was done, of course, without the participation of the ruler of the country at the time.

The usury of Afghanistan’s various rulers was not a lesson lost on their 20th Century counterparts. Habibullah Khan, for example, played both sides against one another during World War One, securing weapons and other incentives from the German-Turkish alliance in exchange for his agreement to attack the British in India. Instead, he used the opportunity to negotiate an end to British involvement in Afghan foreign policy - which, in truth, only produced little more than a respite.

Habibullah Khan, who died in 1919, was succeeded by his son, Amanullah Khan, who during his tenure began modernizing, establishing relations with other nations, and then finally declared Afghanistan an independent nation. The ‘audacity’ of this declaration sparked the final Anglo-Afghan War, the Convention of St. Petersburg having been rendered moot following the revolution in Russia.

During the conflict, King Amanullah’s home was intentionally targeted by the British air force, an occurrence that led to the penning of a statement that is just as relevant today as it was then. In response to the attack, King Amanullah wrote…

“It is a matter of great regret that the throwing of bombs by zeppelins on London was denounced as a most savage act and the bombardment of places of worship and sacred spots was considered a most abominable operation. While we now see with our own eyes that such operations were a habit which is prevalent among all civilized people of the west”.

The Looming Effects Of Unrealized Arrogance

Like the landscape of Afghanistan, its faces are varied and rugged and complex. Centuries of instability, tribal clashes, foreign interferences, and being viewed as somehow ‘primitive’ with regards to self governance play a significant role in the current Afghan mindset. In many ways, like Iraq, Afghanistan consists of nations with a nation. And the only unique circumstance in their history that has defused those boundaries is the cooperation of its people to rid the country of those that would attempt to use it for their own purposes.

In my lifetime, Afghanistan has been a nation decimated by conflict, extreme poverty, and countless human rights violations. But through all of it, it should not be overlooked that the determination and dedication of its people, when push comes to shove, has always been the most overlooked and underestimated factor. There is no excusing the actions and policies of the Taliban, just as there is no excusing the conduct of the Northern Alliance during the invasion of the country in 2001 and US abuses of Afghan detainees both in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo during that period. Those factors alone point to why there has been a resurgence in support for the Taliban, whose face might be one of religious fanaticism, but whose numbers may be swelling not because of their ideology, but because they are the only ones willing to stand up to occupational forces.

History repeating itself.

If one is to look for an example of a true American patriot, look no further than Daniel Ellsberg. For if the protection of the integrity of one’s nation is ever outweighed by the protection of a corrupted federal system, then patriotism itself is nothing save the willingness to forgive the abuse of an entire population.

Having been exposed to American television of late, primarily Fox News, which isn’t a mainstay on Canadian television, I have been surprised at how many neoconservatives often routinely guest on their programs, the most common of which, I find, is William Kristol, one of the founders of The Weekly Standard, chairman of the Project For The New American Century (which is now little more than an answering machine), and a member of the American Enterprise Institute.

Kristol’s neoconservative credentials are considerable, and he has routinely made no qualms about his support for American hegemony. One need only listen to his assertions in Why We Fight, or, for that matter, the assertions of the likes of Richard Perle, to see that these are individuals that have found themselves trapped in a belief system that is both unrealistic and has had devastating repercussions on the United States and its people, primarily the United States Armed Forces. And they, like the Vice President and others, persist in their views despite the disastrous results that they have produced.

What you will not see on primetime US news networks are individuals who possess vast amounts of knowledge about US foreign and covert policy history, and whose views, given their knowledge, is far too dangerous and too difficult to counter to entertain the thought of ever including them in a discussion on a major network. In fact, their views have been largely marginalized by the neo-patriotic fervor that has gripped North America, making them easily dismissible rather than overwhelmingly impacting.

I am not talking about people with limited experience either. Chalmers Johnson, head of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a retired Professor emeritus who taught political science at the University of California from 1962 to 1992, and best selling author (Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic), was a CIA consultant from 1967 to 1973 for the Office of National Estimates. Johnson’s knowledge of the ramifications and implementations of American militarism is vast, and his voice has, in many ways, been marginalized primarily because the debate on such issues has become so one dimensional and lowbrow that to entertain the views of someone with that sort of knowledge would be both next to impossible to counter within the framework of a television news program, not to mention damaging to whomever risked allowing such a dissident voice to be heard.

The question must be asked – why are leading intellectuals who have written some of the most telling and impacting literature on subjects ranging from foreign policy history to the overt militarism of the Western world not included in mainstream discourse? Is it because the information that would be relayed might be too complex for most to grasp? Would it require too much of an alteration to the average thought processes of viewers who are used to the simplistic nature in which the events of the last six years have been presented them? And if that is the case, then does that not lend credence to the assertion that societies that remain ignorant, and are treated as such, willingly abandon their primary power within the context of government accountability?

Noam Chomsky is painted a fringe radical by many, yet is the most published, and read, authority on US foreign policy history in the world. How does one compare his works to, for example, those of Anne Coulter? Even though Coulter is a best selling author, her work is in no way comparable to that of Chomsky’s or, for that matter, Howard Zinn’s, Naomi Klein’s, Tariq Ali’s, Chalmer’s Johnson’s, or even journalists such as James Risen. In fact, neither is the work of like-minded individuals that one might consider brighter than Coulter, such as David Horowitz.

Like Kristol, these are people that have found themselves trapped within an ideology that is an absolute dead end because it primarily refuses to take into account that which is of the utmost importance when examining issues, such as the global war on terror - context and complicity.

History, despite its many faces, can no longer be manipulated on a permanent basis. The latter half of the 20th Century changed the face of recorded history in that our ability to examine it has increased to such an extent that it is now possible to peel back those layers that have traditionally been wrapped around it and look at it in a purer sense than has ever been afforded us. Perception obviously still plays a key role, but it is undeniable that the ability to examine historical information at its most fundamental levels has become far more accessible.

So what dangers do they present, those voices that are not so easily disregarded as those of celebrities, as good intentioned as they might be, that foolishly appear on the O’Reilly factor and fumble through information while being torn to shreds for the entertainment of viewers by a man employing falsehoods that they cannot immediately expose?

There are reasons why the likes of Bill O’Reilly, et all, do not entertain the idea of speaking with anyone who possesses the sort of knowledge that is not easily discounted. It’s because to refute it would require them to both refute historical evidence and the examples that prove it largely unassailable. And if men such as Bill O’Reilly have to use tactics like yelling and interrupting those he has on his program simply to counter half formed arguments, he’d probably have to show up with a shotgun in his hands were he ever to sit down with the likes of Gwynne Dyer.

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman interviews Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky on patriotism in America.

Of interest, for those of you that are interested, or, for that matter, interesting, is a piece by Conn Hallinan from the 15th of this month about the some of the finer points of AFRICOM, America’s newest military command. AFRICOM came into being shortly before the United States used the Ethiopian armed forces, supported by US air power and small teams of special forces, to destabilize the Islamic Courts Union which had stabalized of most of Somalia and, for the first time in years, brought a semblance of normalcy to the country. The United States would go on to back the very same War Lords that, a decade ago, it had worked to undermine.

An excerpt…

“The White House’s plans for Africa, which reach far beyond the Horn, are part of a general militarization of U.S. foreign policy. A recent congressional report found that “some embassies have effectively become command posts, with military personnel in those countries all but supplanting the role of ambassadors in conducting American foreign policy.�? The United States is already pouring $500 million into its Trans-Sahel Counterterrorism Initiative that embraces Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria in North Africa, and nations boarding the Sahara including Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Chad, and Senegal. A major U.S. base in Djibouti houses some 1,800 troops and played an important role in the Somali invasion.

With Africa expected to provide a quarter of all U.S. oil imports by 2015, a major focus of AFRICOM will be the Gulf of Guinea. The gulf countries of Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola, and the Congo Republic all possess enormous oil reserves. Some of them are plagued by exactly the kind of “instability�? that AFRICOM was created to address.

Nigeria, for instance, is the world’s eighth largest oil exporter. “Though all the eyes of the public seem focused on the atomic ambitions of Iran, Nigeria is at the greatest risk of oil disruption today,�? according to Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial Corporation. A year ago, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) shut down one-fifth of Nigeria’s oil production through a series of attacks on pumping stations and oilrigs.�?