Locked, Loaded, and Ludicrous

Trump’s future war with Iran would be ill-advised, illegal, and immoral. It would also occur with near total absence of context.

by Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.) Posted on

"Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance" ~ Albert Maysles

Fifty two years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. broke with the white liberal establishment, the Lyndon Johnson administration, and the U.S. military when he bravely declared America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." King, now canonized, sanitized, and co-opted even by his conservative opponents paid a heavy price for his brutal honesty and Vietnam War opposition. He died, just a year later, wildly unpopular and under extensive FBI surveillance by the very government that now celebrates him with a national holiday. How quickly Americans have forgotten that part of the King legacy.

I must admit it was odd, then – if not altogether surprising – this week, that it took the president of a purported American enemy, Iran’s Hassan Rouhani, to speak a fresh and King-like bit of discomfiting truth. The United States, he correctly, if inconveniently, noted, is today the main "supporter of terrorism" in the Middle East. Specifically, and undeniably, he – his own nation’s flaws aside – observed that at least since 9/11 (if not before) everywhere the US has deployed its military, from West Africa to South Asia, it has shattered societies, caused countless deaths, and often empowered or supported the very Islamists it’s ostensibly combating.

All this came on the heels of President Trump’s ludicrously bellicose tweet that America is "locked and loaded" to strike Iran in the wake of the Islamic Republic’s alleged role in a damaging attack on the Saudi oil industry. Trump has already upped the ante, foolishly announcing the deployment of ever more US troops to Saudi Arabia. Of course last time American soldiers garrisoned the home of Islam’s two holiest cities, an obscure scion of a wealthy Saudi construction magnate took such umbrage that he declared and waged war on America. The young man’s name was Osama bin Laden.

Maybe Trump will strike or invade Iran on the Saudi’s behalf; maybe he won’t. The man is so lazy, uninformed, and erratic that is genuinely difficult to predict his next move. What we do know is he’s already sent Iran-hawk Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to kowtow to the Saudi and Emirati theocrats and coordinate a response that suits these rather nefarious "partners." I’ve written extensive reports demonstrating why war with Iran would be militarily disastrous, regionally cataclysmic, and diplomatically foolhardy. Yet that’s not my point today. Rather, I’ve recently got to thinking that the whole charade in the region feels like a chaotic bar fight in the ghetto.

If it, in fact, were, it’d go something like this. Saudi Arabia is America’s petulant little brother, apt to act tough and posture because his big brother is a huge guy with a big reputation on the block. The United Arab Emirates is the Saudi’s best friend with a serious Napoleon complex. Both want to gain respect and assert themselves at the bar. Problem is there’s this other, older fellow, Iran, ethnically distinct from the two friends, who’s had the nerve to muscle in on their drug (read: oil) trafficking trade.

The two young friends, counting on the support of big brother, have been threatening, isolating, Iran, and backing its enemies for years. Finally, an exasperated and cornered Iran seems to (allegedly) have sent their own little friend with a chip on his shoulder, a Yemeni Houthi, to throw and land a punch right in the Saudi’s gut. Surprised, in pain, and scared, the Saudi and his Emirati buddy initially retreat, run home, and beg the big brother, America, to tramp back to the bar and get revenge. Which is precisely where matters stand now. What unfolds remains to be seen, but what’s certain, is that America feels the need to do something to maintain his street cred.

That flippant, if accurate, analogy aside, something else is lacking from the story; something extremely vital but rare: historical context. Because the inconvenient truth is that since at least 1953, the US – with the aid of its Saudi and Emirati allies – has usually been the aggressor, has waged a veritable war on Iran’s government and people. Seen in this light, consider it the view from Tehran, one begins to understand the hostility and desperation of the Iranians. Consider just a few historical highlights.

Way back in 1953, after a democratically elected and popular Iranian prime minister had the audacity to nationalize the nation’s oil – then under monopoly control by UK corporations – the American CIA and British M16 fostered a coup, toppled Prime Minister Mossadeq, and imposed the rule of a vicious king, or shah, for 26 years. Then, after the Iranian people had the comeuppance to revolt in 1979, kicking out the brutal shah, the US isolated Iran and even backed an invasion and eight year war waged by the Islamic Republic’s sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial Iraqi regime. During that war – which killed some half million Iranians – the US even quietly sank much of Iran’s small navy, and an American ship, the USS Vincennes, shot down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing all 290 aboard. Afterwards, the ship’s commander received a medal, and then President George W. Bush, declared he would "never apologize" for his country’s actions.

Fast forward to the war on terror, and the US military invaded and indefinitely occupied the countries on both of Iran’s flanks. President George W. Bush even grouped Iran with a sordid trio of nations he labeled an "axis of evil;" and serious neoconservative officials threw Iran on the short list for future regime changes, with one reportedly quipping that everyone wants to go to Baghdad but "real men want to go to Iran." Then, when an isolated and threatened Iran showed even an inkling of interest in a nuclear program, Washington smacked crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic. 

Sanctions, remember, are a form of economic warfare and always, always, hit the poorest people hardest, largely sparing wealthy elites. No one mentioned that Israel has illegally and (not so) secretly produced hundreds of nuclear missiles for decades now.

Most recently, Trump unilaterally pulled out of an Obama-era nuclear deal between Iran and six other powerful nations, even though his own intelligence services admitted that Iran had complied with the agreement. Since then, Trump’s hawkish, Iran-obsessed, series of national security advisers have threatened war whilst Washington reimposed even more stringent economic sanctions that threaten to bankrupt Tehran and impoverish the Iranian people. This, predictably, has had the counterproductive effect of drawing Iran’s many moderates closer to government hardliners in a typical burst of national solidarity. Then came the strike on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, claimed, not by Iran, but by Tehran’s loosely affiliated Yemeni Houthis.

Nevertheless, most US citizens either don’t know or don’t care about this sordid history and still refuse to acknowledge legitimate Iranian grievances. It’s really not the American way, after all. So on the war drums beat and the metaphorical bar fight seems ready to escalate. Thing is, my experience in New York blue-collar bars has taught me that when little brothers or smaller friends start fights and expect your support, matters rarely end well. Neither will the current maelstrom in the Persian Gulf. Mark my words…

Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and regular contributor to Antiwar.com His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Truthdig, Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. 

July 4th Flag Is a Bloodstained Symbol of Falling Bombs Napalm & Horrible Death for Millions

by Jay Janson

Americans, who flinch at the sight of their nation’s flag, never forget the rage in the voice of former President Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright during TV news bites of him shouting, his finger pointing to heaven, “God bless America? No, no! God damn America for her crimes against humanity”

Many Americans think of July 4th as some sort of very special flag day, but for those Americans bitterly ashamed of USA’s continuous criminal world wide violence and bloodletting, the sight of the flag is almost unbearably uncomfortable.

Americans who flinch at the sight of their nation’s flag, never forgot the rage in the voice of former President Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, during TV news bites of him shouting, his finger pointing to heaven, “God bless America? No, no! God damn America for her crimes against humanity,” and never forgot the snide smiles and head shaking of the criminal media news commentators following the sound bite.

The pop, bang and swish of 4th of July fireworks will be reminding the few peace loving Americans of the sound of mortars and the words of American film maker Michael Moore,”sick and twisted violent people that we’ve been for hundreds of years, it’s something that’s just in our craw, just in our DNA. Americans kill people, because that’s what we do. We invade countries. We send drones in to kill civilians.”

USA’s genocides began even before July 4th 1776 – the New England banks African Slave trade, then the land banks pushing for US genocidal war on Native Americans, Mexicans and Filipinos, before invading China and loan sharking the First World War. The greatest crime was rearming a prostate Nazi Germany for war on the USSR.

Appalled Americans remember hearing US Representative Ron Paul stating during each of the 2012 presidential candidates debates, “Every bombing and invasion starting with Korea was illegal, unconstitutional and a horrific loss of life,” and are still amazed his words could have been so completely ignored.

Independence Holiday in the USA becomes a time when many citizens tend to reflect on the nations two hundred and forty-three year history. It is a history typical of six European overseas empires in the areas of genocide and plunder.

The USA, like its parent colonial power the British Empire, before it, has had its undeservedly wealthy elite through their private speculative investment banks continually investing in genocide in order to both maintain its power over society and accumulate capital extend its power wherever and whenever regardless of laws, including regardless of common law.

US banks have invested in profitable genocide non-stop over the entire life of the nation up to today and have their CIA and Pentagon laying plans for more genocide as we read.

Did Independence Day bring some uneasy feelings about America eventually being brought to justice for so much firing on the poor overseas and denying other nations independence from subservience to America’s plundering Wall Street speculative investment bankers.

Majority humanity must not wait for Americans to free themselves from the deception, egoism, ignorance and violence that is seeded and psyoped into the minds of Americans as children to justify killing of tens of millions of poor in order to, as Martin Luther King said, “maintain unjust predatory investments overseas.”

The 3rd World will one day seek justice in the form of compensation for the millions murdered in their own countries, often in their very own homes, reparations for the mega massive destruction and indemnity for colossal theft of natural resources and that will bankrupt Wall Street’s insane and end war profitability.

This Fourth of July holiday will still be that of but that of an embarrassing self-proclaimed superior nation, but someday the world will celebrate the birth of kind of the America Ray Charles sang of in his soulful rendition of ‘America The Beautiful.

Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and in the US by Dissident Voice, Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Minority Perspective, UK and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, which Dissident Voice supports with link at the end of each issue of its newsletter.

Malcolm X at Oxford: “They're going to Kill Me Soon”

TEHRAN (FNA)- Malcolm X, an American Muslim convert who became a social activist opposed to systematic injustice in the US, revealed two weeks before his assassination that he had been feeling that FBI was after killing him.

Malcolm X became internationally famous the day after President John F Kennedy was assassinated. Asked to comment, Malcolm calmly informed US TV reporters that he was not at all surprised that “the chickens were coming home to roost”, Tariq Ali wrote for guardian.

It was November 1963 and he was by then a leading member of the Nation of Islam, a black separatist organization. Its leader, Elijah Muhammad, publicly disavowed him and banned him from public speaking.

I had arrived at Oxford a month previously and witnessed the Kennedy assassination on the BBC and read Malcolm’s comments in the press. A year later, Eric Abrahams – the radical Jamaican president of the Oxford Union (and a friend) – decided to invite Malcolm to participate in his farewell debate. The subject was a quote from Barry Goldwater, the alt-right Republican candidate for the presidency: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

To our astonishment, Malcolm agreed to come and defend the motion. A problem arose: the union did not have the funds to pay Malcolm’s fare. Abrahams mentioned this to an acquaintance in the BBC. Within days, the Beeb agreed to buy his plane ticket, provided it had exclusive rights to filming and broadcasting the debate. We laughed a lot and agreed. Yes, the BBC was a different outfit in those times and its director-general, Hugh Greene, appeared mild-mannered but was fiercely independent-minded. As a result, the debate took place and is now part of Malcolm X’s history: two books on his visit to the Oxford Union; a movie under way, and, later this week, a documentary to launch the Smithsonian Channel in the UK.

I met him on the day of the debate. He greeted me with a huge smile as a “Muslim brother”. I felt I had to disillusion him immediately. “Only in name,” I whispered. “I’m an atheist.” To my amazement, he roared. “I’ve just finished a trip to the Muslim world,” he said, “and met many people like you.” It had been an educative trip and he spoke of how the theologians at the al-Azhar mosque in Cairo had convinced him that, whatever else, the Nation of Islam was not a Muslim organization. Islam was universalist, not separatist in any sense of the word. The sight of blue-eyed, fair-skinned pilgrims at Mecca, which pleased him, helped complete his ideological break with his former colleagues.

His speech at the union was not one of his virtuoso performances in terms of rhythm, improvised cadences, silences and eruptions. At his peak, his speeches were like word-jazz, with gestures but no other accompaniment, except the response of the crowd. But that was reserved for his own people. In this, he was not unlike Fidel Castro, whom he had met and hosted in Harlem a few years previously.

Here, in a foreign land at a famous location, he was slightly bemused, whispering to me: “I’ve never addressed such a well-dressed white audience before.” The importance of his speech lay in its political content. He broke with black separatism in public, declaring that intermarriages between races were fine and that black and white people had to get together and fight the system.

Malcolm’s ideas were in a process of transition. He was moving away from a narrow and claustrophobic form of identity politics that had become politically crippling. The storms lay ahead but were visible in the hope that could be seen on the faces of many in the audience that night who gave Malcolm a huge ovation.

Later that night, we spoke in private about many things: he was completely opposed to the Vietnam war and was supportive of the Cuban revolution that had pushed him to study the ideas of socialism and Marx. What of his sparring contemporary, Martin Luther King? He expressed respect but disagreement.

As I rose to leave, I hoped we would meet again. His response stunned me. He was doubtful that we would because “they’re going to kill me soon”. I sat down in a state of shock and two thoughts went through me simultaneously: either he’s a hustler or a very great man indeed. History’s verdict confirmed my instinct. “Who’ll kill you, Malcolm?” He was in no doubt that it would be either the Nation of Islam or the FBI or both. Within three months, he was assassinated by the combination he had predicted, though the entire truth remains hidden from public view.

Malcolm was convinced that the establishment of the time might tolerate black leaders as long as they stayed in the ghettoes. Any attempts to mobilize forces outside would be crushed. Three years after Malcolm X’s death, King was assassinated, too. Confronted by the realities of imperialism and war, King had broken with the Democrats, was thinking of standing as an independent candidate for the presidency, and denounced his own country as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”.

The “good black, bad black” dichotomy was never that accurate. Both King and Malcolm were political leaders in transition; both were breaking with previously held positions. Where might they have been had their lives not been brutally truncated? Who can say?

Malcolm’s famous description of the two-party system still remains the subject of much debate: “Foxes and wolves usually are of the same breed. They belong to the same family – I think it’s called canine. And the difference is that the wolf when he shows you his teeth, you know that he’s your enemy; and the fox, when he shows you his teeth, he appears to be smiling. But no matter which of them you go with, you end up in the dog-house.”

We Need a Martin Luther King Day of Truth

by EDWARD CURTIN

As Martin Luther King’s birthday is celebrated with a national holiday, his death day disappears down the memory hole. Across the country – in response to the King Holiday and Service Act passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1994 – people will be encouraged to make the day one of service. Such service does not include King’s commitment to protest a decadent system of racial and economic injustice or non-violently resist the U.S. warfare state that he called “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.”

Government sponsored service is cultural neo-liberalism at its finest, the promotion of individualism at the expense of a mass movement for radical institutional change.

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous,” warned Dr. King, “than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

How true those words. For the government that honors Dr. King with a national holiday killed him. This is the suppressed truth behind the highly promoted day of service. It is what you are not supposed to know. It is what Thomas Merton, as quoted by James W. Douglass, called The Unspeakable: “It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and officials declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.  It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his service.”

The word service is a loaded word; it has become a smiley face and vogue word over the past 35 years. Its use for MLK Day is clear: individuals are encouraged to volunteer for activities such as tutoring children, painting senior centers, or delivering meals to the elderly, activities that are good in themselves but far less good when used to conceal an American prophet’s radical message. After all, Martin Luther King’s work was not volunteering at the local food pantry with Oprah Winfrey cheering him on.

The Assassination

King was not murdered because he had spent his heroic life promoting individual volunteerism. To understand his life and death – to celebrate the man – “it is essential to realize although he is popularly depicted and perceived as a civil rights leader, he was much more than that. A non-violent revolutionary, he personified the most powerful force for a long overdue social, political, and economic reconstruction of the nation.” Those are the words of William Pepper, the King family lawyer, from his comprehensive and definitive study of the King assassination, The Plot to Kill King, a book that should be read by anyone concerned with truth and justice.

Revolutionaries are, of course, anathema to the power elites who, with all their might, resist such rebels’ efforts to transform society. If they can’t buy them off, they knock them off. Fifty one years after King’s assassination, the causes he fought for – civil rights, the end to U.S. wars of aggression, and economic justice for all – remain not only unfulfilled, but have worsened in so many respects. And King’s message has been enervated by the sly trick of giving him a national holiday and then urging Americans to make it “a day of service.” The vast majority of those who innocently participate in these activities have no idea who killed King, or why. If they did, they might pause in their tracks, and combine their “service” activities with a teach-in on the truth of his assassination.

Because MLK repeatedly called the United States the “greatest purveyor of violence on earth,” he was universally condemned by the mass media and government that later – once he was long and safely dead and no longer a threat – praised him to the heavens. This has continued to the present day of historical amnesia.

Educating people about the fact that U.S. government forces conspired to kill Dr. King, and why, and why it matters today, is the greatest service we can render to his memory.

William Pepper’s decades-long investigation not only refutes the flimsy case against the alleged assassin James Earl Ray, but definitively proves that King was killed by a government conspiracy led by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, Army Intelligence, and the Memphis Police, assisted by southern Mafia figures.

The Trial

This shocking truth is accentuated when one is reminded (or told for the first time) that in 1999 a Memphis jury, after a thirty day civil trial with over seventy witnesses, found the U.S. government guilty in the killing of MLK. The King family had brought the suit and Pepper represented them. They were grateful that the truth was confirmed, but saddened by the way the findings were buried by the media in cahoots with the government.

Pepper not only demolishes the government’s self-serving case with a plethora of evidence, but shows how the mainstream media, academia, and government flacks have spent years covering up the truth of MLK’s murder through lies and disinformation. Another way they have accomplished this is by convincing a gullible public that “service” is a substitute for truth.

But service without truth is a disservice to the life, legacy, and radical witness of this great American hero. It is propaganda aimed at convincing decent people that they are serving the essence of MLK’s message while they are obeying their masters, the very government that murdered him.

It is time to rebel against the mind manipulation served by the MLK Day of Service. Let us offer service, but let us also learn and speak the truth.

“He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery,” King told us, “Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth.”

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely.  He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

1st Int’l Confab against US/NATO bases addresses militarism

Unlike so much political discourse in the US, which is obsessed with the quixotic character of President Donald Trump, an international conference on US/NATO bases pierced the distracting fog to focus on continuity of US militarism regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

These were the views of Roger D. Harris, board member of the 33-year-old anti-imperialist human rights organization named ‘Task Force on the Americas’, who is active with the Campaign to End US-Canadian Sanctions Against Venezuela.

For the first time in the history of humanity, the technical means are at hand to eliminate poverty if resources were not diverted to making war. World hunger could be abolished with only a small diversion from military budgets. The only luxuries that so-called middle-class Americans would have to forego would be the Blue Angels air show and drone-bombing wedding parties in West Asia and Afghanistan. Yet, military spending is expanding, and with it global poverty.

On November 16-18, some 300 peace activists representing over 35 countries gathered in Dublin, Ireland, for the first International Conference against US/NATO Military Bases to address this tragic paradox of the technical ability to serve humanity and the political proclivity by the ruling circles in the West to do the opposite.

Roger Cole of the Irish peace organization PANA identified the twin threats to humankind of global warming and global war, both driven by accelerating militarization.

Ajamu Baraka of the US-based Black Alliance for Peace highlighted the reactionary role of the US and its allies, which have by far the largest military expenditures in the world. The material basis for the absence of peace and the accelerating proliferation of military bases, in his words, is US imperialism.

Guantánamo, which has earned notoriety for American atrocities against detainees, was the first of the world network of US foreign military bases, according to keynote speaker Dr. Aleida Guevara from Cuba, daughter of the late Che. Cuba opposes this violation of national sovereignty. Today the US possesses some 1000 foreign military bases with troops stationed in over 170 countries.

Australian Annette Brownlie of IPAN (Intellectual Property Awareness Network) warned of a new Cold War. The recent US National Security Strategy document, focusing on “great power confrontation,” signals open preparations for direct military confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia and China.

David Webb of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the UK explained that the US is the only nation with nuclear weapons based outside its soil. US policy is to develop “usable” nuclear weapons in an enhanced first-strike capacity. Missile defense, he reproved, is the shield for the sword of nuclear weapons. The purpose of missile defense is to protect the aggressor against the inevitable retaliation after a first nuclear strike.

Margaret Flowers of Popular Resistance reported that the recent US midterm elections brought in more Congressional representatives with military or security state backgrounds. The duopoly of the two US “war parties” is united in supporting an accelerated arms race. Well over half of the US government’s discretionary budget now goes to the military.

The session on the environmental and health impacts featured testimony on the toxic effects of military bases in Okinawa, Czech Republic, and Turkey. The US Department of Defense is the world’s largest polluter.

National Coordinator of the Irish Trade Union Federation and Secretary of the People’s Movement, Frank Keoghan, described the transformation of the European Union (EU) into a war project with the recent rush to create a single EU army. Ilda Figueiredo from the Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation and another activist from France warned that the drive for an EU army would transform all national military bases into NATO bases and would in effect allow “nuclear bomb sharing.”

Margaret Kimberley of the Black Agenda Report chaired the Africa session. South African Chris Matlhako and Kenyan Ann Atambo discussed the dependency of African states on foreign aid, which is used as a tool to facilitate the occupation of Africa by foreign militaries.

Paul Pumphrey of Friends of the Congo described the development of US strategy in Africa, which has used African proxies to allow domination and extraction of valuable resources such as coltan from the Congo. Now the strategy also includes direct occupation by the US military. George W. Bush established AFRICOM in 2008 with just a single acknowledged US military base on the continent, followed by an explosion to some 50 bases and a military presence in practically every African nation under Obama.

The session on Latin America and the Caribbean outlined the immediate threat of military intervention in Venezuela, caught in the crosshairs of US imperialism. Veteran Cuban peace activist Silvio Platero of MOVPAZ condemned the continuing US blockade of Cuba and the colonial status of Puerto Rico. Speakers from Colombia (now a NATO partner), Argentina, and Brazil reported that their right-wing governments are cooperating militarily with the US.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire from Ireland made an impassioned plea for all-out support of WikiLeaks whistleblower Julian Assange, “our hero of truth,” lest he die in a US prison.

The conference concluded on a high note of unity among the international peace forces. Conference coordinator Bahman Azad of the World Peace Council closed with a call to first educate and then mobilize.

Actions are being planned in Washington, D.C., around the 70th anniversary of NATO on April 4th. Coincidentally that is the date of the assassination of Martin Luther King and of his famous speech a year before when he presciently admonished, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.”