Humanitarian

UPDATE: AUGUST 3

for new statistics, see:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5242732.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5240746.stm

When discussing war, it’s easy to get caught up in inflammatory and highly emotional rhetoric.  Too often, in this flurry of rhetoric, the facts are forgotten or deliberately concealed, making it hard for casual observers to ascertain the truth.  Rather than launch my own emotional op-ed on the new Israeli-Arab war, I would just like to present some uncontroversial facts about the situation in hopes that it clarify the issue a bit.  So, starting from the beginning, what has happened over the past few months that led to yet another horrifying war in the Middle East?

Timeline of events, Israeli-Arab War 2006:

1. March 3, 2006 – Hamas Ceasefire

Hamas agrees to a unilateral, year-long ceasefire with Israel for 2006, provided that Israel refrains from using force against Palestinians.[i]

2. Early June, 2006 – Israeli attacks kill civilians in Gaza

Israel launches a series of unprovoked military attacks on Gaza.  First, on June 9^th, a family of eight civilians is killed on a beach in Gaza by an explosion caused by the Israeli military, according to Palestinian witnesses and Human Rights Watch.  Four days later, an Israeli missile attack killed eleven Palestinians and injured thirty others.  Another missile attack killed three and wounded fifteen a week later.  In response to these attacks, Hamas suspended its ceasefire.[ii]

3. June 25, 2006 – Israeli soldier captured

Palestinian militants capture one Israeli soldier and kill two in a raid.  The militants offer to return the soldiers in return for the release of some of the 9,000 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of children and thousands of women, held in Israeli jails on charges that are perceived as illegitimate  Israel flatly rules out the possibility of negotiation.[iii]

4. June 27, 2006 – Hamas “implicitly accepts” Israel’s right to exist

Hamas “implicitly accepts” Israel’s right to exist, amidst a massive Israeli military buildup on the border of Gaza, a major victory for moderates in the Hamas movement and a breakthrough which could have created the opportunity for a peaceful solution to the conflict through negotiation.  Hamas’ previous policy of rejectionism had been cited as the only major roadblock to negotiations by Israel and the United States.[iv]

5.  Late June, 2006 – Israel invades Gaza

Israel invades the Gaza Strip, bombing the main power plant (crippling water, sewage, and health systems), transportation networks, and other infrastructure targets.  Israel’s offensive has killed at least 140 Palestinians to date including 35 children (August 3), almost exclusively civilians, with many more enduring resource shortages and other hardships as a direct result of the invasion.[v]  Approximately 1/3 of (democratically elected) Palestinian government officials were kidnapped by Israel, with another 1/3 forced into hiding.[vi]

6. July 12, 2006 – Hezbollah raid against Israel

Hezbollah militants capture two Israeli soldiers and kill eight in a raid.  Again, the kidnappers offer to exchange the kidnapped soldiers for Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.  Again, Israel flatly rules out the possibility of such a nonviolent solution.

7. July, 2006 – Israel invades Lebanon

Israel invades Lebanon.  At least 900 Lebanese have died so far in the Israeli offensive, almost exclusively civilians, 3,000 or more have been severely injured, with a million refugees forced to flee the country.  As many as 40 Israelis have died so far in fighting.[vii]  The invasion greatly exacerbated sectarian divisions in Lebanon, a country which, not long ago, endured a brutal civil war that lasted 15 years and left 100,000 dead.

The facts speak for themselves.  Israel has killed over one thousand Lebanese and Palestinians (approximately: 20 before the first Israeli soldier was captured, 140 in Gaza since that capture, at least 900 in Lebanon) so far during the last two month in its reinvasions of Gaza and Lebanon.  According to Israel, it is morally justifiable to kill over one thousand people in order to secure the freedom of 3 hostages, even when the kidnappers have offered nonviolent, diplomatic solutions to the hostage situation!  Needless to say, Israel’s right to do this is never questioned in mainstream debate in the United States (after all, the US government used the deaths of 3,000 Americans in the 9/11 attacks to justify two subsequent wars which have killed at least 5,000 Afghanis and 100,000 Iraqis respectively).

Another matter which is never seriously debated within the United States is the cause of the current crises in the Middle East: had it not been for the unprovoked aggression of Palestinian and Lebanese militants (perhaps with Syrian or Iranian guidance), it is claimed, Israel would never have reinvaded Gaza or Lebanon.  Obviously, this is in stark contrast to the facts. Hamas only suspended its ceasefire after a series of unprovoked Israeli attacks on civilians which killed over 20 people; realistically, it’s hard to imagine that Hamas could have maintained its unilateral ceasefire while Palestinian civilians were being actively attacked (remember that the only condition of Hamas’ ceasefire was that Israel not initiate violence), and one has to wonder if Israel was not trying to elicit a violent response from a Palestinian militant group to justify a new invasion of Gaza.  In Lebanon, it is less obvious which side is to blame for starting this phase of the conflict.  On the one hand, Hezbollah’s raid was the first instance of violence between Israel and the Lebanese in the current phase of conflict, and in that sense, Israel’s reaction could be construed as a nominally defensive, albeit horribly destructive and uncalled for, overreaction.  However, in another sense, Hezbollah’s attack could be seen not as offensive, but as neither offensive of defensive, but an act in ongoing war.  After all, Israel was holding Lebanese political prisoners hostage, and many Muslims see themselves as a united community, so to them, Hezbollah’s attack was not an act of aggression but a legitimate act of resistance against a government which was already in the process of killing dozens of innocent Muslims in a campaign of aggression.  In any case, even if Hezbollah’s attack was an uncontroversial act of aggression, Israel’s response could not possibly be justified.  A peaceful state, in a similar situation, would seek to negotiate the release of its hostages, especially if the kidnappers had already offered a nonviolent and just solution, rather than engaging in a massive bombing campaign that overwhelmingly punished the civilian population of the offending party’s country.

In recent years, the American government has instituted a foreign policy designed to expand and maintain the unipolar neoliberal economic and ideological empire which came into existence following the demise of the Soviet Union.  In its campaign to expand the reach of its mercantile system of global capitalism, the United States has engaged in military operations in countries with policies adverse to American hegemony in order to gain control over markets, geopolitically important areas, and the last of dwindling resources, particularly energy resources.  Although these operations are typically justified as noble humanitarian acts motivated purely by altruism or else as necessary to protect the lives of American civilians in public statements by government officials and in the commentary of the mass media, serious discussion amongst the leaders of the establishment—which is usually devoid of the rhetoric, emotion, and ideological fanaticism which permeates popular discussion of foreign policy—makes it quite clear that the goal of American foreign policy is designed principally to  perpetuate the hegemony of the American political and economic elite throughout the world.  It is important for people interested in dismantling the American Empire to have an understanding of the motives and interests that American foreign policy is designed to satisfy, so that we may develop appropriate strategies for combating this imperial system which are maximally effective.

In order to maintain American political and economic hegemony across the world, it is necessary for the United States to contain potential military, economic, or political rivals that might become powerful enough to threaten US dominance in any of these fields.  This policy of containment typically involves isolating rival states in the international community, surrounding these countries with well-armed and subservient client states in order to prevent the rivals from expanding their spheres of influence, and inhibiting the economic development of contending world powers.  When there is competition for dwindling resources with other emerging powers, as there is today, it is doubly important, from the perspective of political elites in the United States, for the US to gain control over disputed resources; even if the action is not immediately profitable for American corporations, starving rising powers of the raw materials that are necessary for economic development is an end in itself.[i]

The importance of perpetuating the unipolar international system was expressed most clearly in a Pentagon document written by Paul Wolfowitz leaked to the New York Times in 1991, entitled Defense Planning Guidance.  The document makes clear that the principle aim of the American foreign policy following the collapse of the Soviet Union would be to prevent regional powers from threatening the US’ ideological, military, or economic dominance.  This includes stifling attempts by “advanced industrial nations [to] challenge our leadership,” and containing “regional threats and risks,” which could threaten “regions critical to the security of the US and its allies, including Europe, East Asia, the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and the territory of the former Soviet Union... Latin America, Oceania, and Sub-Saharan Africa...  The US will be concerned with preventing the domination of key regions by a hostile power.”  The document warns that the immediate threat to US world domination would be “an authoritarian regime bent on regenerating aggressive military power... in Russia.”

Threats to Hegemony

Presently, the greatest threats to US hegemony include Russia and China, and to some extent India.  Most of America’s recent foreign policy can be interpreted as an attempt to secure America’s position of global dominance in a time when this dominance is being tested by the rise of these nascent Asian superpowers.  Some aspects of American foreign policy have been aimed at directly stifling the growth of China as a power, but many operations have had indirect effects on the balance of global power.  The most direct action that the United States has taken to contain China has been a campaign of encirclement around the country.  The United States has strengthened old alliances and created new alliances with countries surrounding China including Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Nepal, and Indonesia,  and has also increased military aid to some of these countries, to ensure that China can not expand its sphere of influence at the expense of the US.  The US has also worked to diminish the sphere of Russian influence, by offering a great deal of financial backing to pro-EU, pro-NATO, anti-Russian candidates in former Soviet provinces,[ii] leading to the “color-coated revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan.  A similar situation may be developing in Belarus, which has recently been placed under US and EU sanctions following a contested presidential election in which the pro-Russian candidate was named victor.[iii]  The United States has also strengthened its military presence in the oil-rich Caspian region, which has traditionally been Russia’s main source of oil and natural gas, ostensibly to starve Russia of important resources.

Traditional American allies such as the European Union and Japan may also challenge the unipolar system in the near future, as they are no longer dependent on US military support to protect them from “Soviet aggression” and may desire more independence from Washington.  The European Union and China are developing increasingly close ties, and together could be economically and militarily powerful enough to counter the dominance of the United States in international affairs.  The Centre for European Reform notes that “China's exports to the EU have risen by an astonishing 820 per cent since 1990, while EU sales to China have jumped by 600 per cent... Bilateral trade is expected to top €180 billion, making the EU China's largest trading partner, ahead of the US and Japan. EU-based companies have also ploughed vast amounts of investment into the booming Chinese market. Many EU companies, such as Volkswagen or Carrefour (a French retail giant), now rely heavily on China for their profits.”[iv] The European Union also repealed an arms embargo and has started to sell weapons to China, as has Israel; amidst deafening protest from ideologues in Washington. 

Meanwhile, Asia has continued to grow closer together and assert itself as a unified bloc; Japan and India have agreed to back each others’ bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, China and India have settled border disputes and have become increasingly friendly, China and Pakistan have agreed to cooperate in anti-terrorist anti-separatist actions.  Asia is also becoming more economically integrated, with bilateral trade between India and China reaching $13.6 billion in 2004, threatening to surpass bilateral trade between India and the US which is currently at $20 billion.[v]  While there still may be divisive political and ethnic tensions between China and Japan, their economies are highly integrated.  According to Asia Times, “China is Japan's biggest trading partner, accounting for 20.1% of its trade in 2004. In concrete terms, it was worth a staggering 22.2005 trillion yen ($206.56 billion) in 2004 with exports to China hitting 11.8278 trillion yen and imports totting up to 10.3727 trillion yen. Major Japanese firms such as Toyota Motor Corp are expanding rapidly in China while big Chinese players such as the Shanghai Electric Group are entering the Japanese market.”[vi]

Given the trend towards greater Asian unity and independence, and greater closeness between the EU and Asia, it seems obvious that if the United States intends on holding onto unipolar dominance, it will have to act quickly to disrupt the unification of Asia, solidify oil resources under its rule, and perhaps attempt to isolate China by allying itself with India.  The US has been courting India for an anti-China alliance in recent years.  On this subject, the Economist magazine reports that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has positioned India “no longer as a leader of the third world, nor [as a non-aligned country], but as ‘proud to identify with those who defend the values of liberal democracy and secularism across the world’... India's strategists [say that] America needs India more than India needs it.”[vii]  Earlier this year, the United States signed a major nuclear deal with India in a further attempt to solidify an anti-China alliance.[viii]

Neoliberalism versus unipolarity?

Why is it necessary to control economic and military rivals, when today’s world of capitalist globalization is supposed to be destroying the nation-state and leading to global integration? Contrary to the argument put forward by globalization’s enthusiasts, such as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, neoliberalism is not an internationalist system, and global economic integration is certainly not going to lead to more stability or a more peaceful world.  In fact, the economic system that is referred to as “globalization” is merely a mercantilist project designed to benefit American corporations.  This system of mercantilism rarely tolerate competition from other capitalist powers, let alone from alternative systems of economic management, and can only be perpetuated by constant military action to suppress challenges to its rule.  The fact is, the slogan of capitalist globalization—“plutocrats of the world unite”—can never be achieved; it is simply incompatible with capitalist logic of infinite individual accumulation.  The oligarchs in Russia, China, and the United States will always be in competition with each other and will only cooperate when it is absolutely necessary to do so to suppress internal dissent.

                All of this completely contradicts the theories of Thomas Friedman, who suggested that corporate globalization would usher in a new period of world harmony.  Friedman’s thesis is that no two countries that both have a McDonald’s restaurant have ever waged war against each other; thus, McDonald’s must be the harbinger of world peace, as anyone who knows the joy of a Big Mac will be too complacent to fight for anything.  For one thing, when was the last time a third world country (one without a McDonald’s) invaded anyone?  To my knowledge, the only recent example of such an occurrence was Saddam Hussein’s invasions of Iran and Kuwait, both with American weapons, with American encouragement in the first example and a “green light” from George H. W. Bush in the second.  Other than that, it doesn’t seem to be the countries without McDonald’s that are starting all of the world’s wars.  A more realistic thesis would state that the US invades countries that have not opened their doors to US corporate domination and then installs puppet regimes with pro-American business policies. So, it makes about as much sense to say that McDonald’s restaurants bring world peace as it does to say that Christian churches brought peace during the Crusades; no two countries with Christian Churches attacked each other during the crusades, as the Christians were far too busy committing atrocities against Muslims in Palestine.  In both cases, one group was trying to export its own system, be it neoliberalism or Christianity, and was invading countries precisely to instate this system and to erect the McDonalds or Christian Church.

            The struggle between the American Empire and the powers of the emerging world for global hegemony will be grand in scale, and will most likely define international politics throughout the early part of the 21^st Century.  It is important for us to understand the nature of this struggle, and to understand that it is ultimately rooted in the capitalist economic system, if we wish to develop rational strategies for confronting imperialism.

No country in the world has suffered more sustained misery at the hands of the American Empire in the post-Soviet era than Iraq, which has been punished with a degree of ferocity unseen since the invasion of Vietnam.  The people of Iraq have endured horrific tragedies caused by the United States government during the past 20 years, beginning with the rule of the ruthless tyrant Saddam Hussein who was armed and aided by the United States[1] during the 1980s while he may have massacred between 50,000 and 100,000 Iraqis.[2]  Later, when relations between the United States and the dictator soured, the people of Iraq endured a US invasion[3] in 1991 during which as many as 100,000 Iraqis died and 300,000 were wounded as a direct result of the atrocities committed by the US military.[4] During the Gulf War the United States committed widespread abuses and war crimes, including the infamous use of bulldozers to plow living, injured, and dead Iraqi soldiers into the ground, burying some alive.[5]  Civilian targets were purposely attacked,[6] Iraqi soldiers who had raised a white flag in surrender were mercilessly killed,[7] and the military used depleted uranium in bullets and missiles, causing untold suffering including birth disorders and genetic defects.[8] The US bombing campaign targeted Iraq’s electrical power plants—crippling its water, sewage, and medical systems—and also destroyed the majority of Iraq’s industrial infrastructure, severely crippling its economy and limiting its ability to provide for its population.

Following the utter devastation of Iraq’s economy in the Gulf War, the United States imposed draconian economic sanctions on the country which prohibited the sale of food, medicine, machinery, and other humanitarian items[9] to Iraq.  The effect of the embargo was catastrophic for the Iraqi civilian population: it is estimated that perhaps 1.7 million Iraqis died as a direct result of the sanctions, including perhaps 1 million Iraqi children under the age of five years old.[10]  The culpability of the United States in the deaths of the 1.7 million Iraqis cannot seriously be disputed; it is simply ridiculous to claim that a government could impose complete sanctions preventing the sale of food, medicine, machinery, and other vital items to a country utterly demolished by war, with no means of providing for its own population, and not realize that such an embargo would lead to millions of civilian deaths. The government officials responsible for the imposition of the sanctions were clearly aware of the human toll of their policies, and were remorseless: when Clinton’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeline Albright, was confronted with the fact that half a million Iraqi children had died because of the economic sanctions on the television show 60 Minutes in 1996, she did not challenge the statistic, but infamously declared “we think the price is worth it.”  

The sanctions remained in effect until the 2003 military invasion, which has led to an additional 100,000 Iraqi deaths thus far according to the best estimate by the British medical journal the Lancet.^[11]  Once Saddam Hussein’s regime had been defeated, the United States established a military occupation in the country, began a counterinsurgency campaign against anti-occupation forces, and proceeded to turn over much of the Iraqi economy to American corporations.  Among the many egregious atrocities[12] committed by the United States in Iraq include the use of napalm in combat^[13] and brutal torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.[14]

The extremely brutal American policy towards Iraq during the past 20 years would seem to be so terrible as to border on genocide. The term “genocide,” like the term “holocaust,” is one that contains extreme emotional value and should never be used lightly, or for purposes of political persuasion.  However, the atrocities perpetrated against the people of Iraq during the last 20 years are so extreme that we should at least be willing to discuss the applicability of a term such as “genocide.”

The term “genocide” is defined by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as:

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”[15]

Of the five acts listed above which are classified as being genocidal, the United States has clearly and indisputably engaged in the first three, directly killing with its own military at least 200,000 Iraqis during 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq, causing serious bodily injury to the 300,000 Iraqis injured during the Gulf War, the 42,500 civilians (at the very least) injured during the 2003 invasion,[16] and the untold thousands exposed to depleted uranium and napalm, and deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about destruction by passing sanctions on the sale of food and medicine to an impoverished, economically devastated country.  Dennis Halliday—the UN Humanitarian Coordinator on Baghdad, Iraq who resigned in protest over the sanctions—clearly thought the United States’ actions met the United Nations’ definition of genocide, as he said upon resigning: “I don't want to administer a program that satisfies the definition of genocide.”[17]

            But, it would seem, simply killing members of a group, causing bodily harm to members of a group, or deliberately inflicting destructive conditions on a group of people is not a great enough crime to merit the term “genocide.”  If every instance in which one of those three acts occurred were to be classified as genocide by the UN, then every single war, ethnic conflict, and counterinsurgency campaign in the world would qualify as genocide.  Perhaps a better way to determine whether or not the actions taken against Iraqis by the United States government classify as genocide is to compare the Iraq situation with other historical situations that are generally accepted as genocides.  In mainstream discourse, there are several campaigns of mass-murder which have been deemed genocide, including the extermination of more than 10 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political dissidents by the Third Reich in Germany, the annihilation of perhaps 1.5 million Armenians by nationalists in Turkey, and the murder of at least 800,000 Tutsi by Hutu nationalist in Rwanda.  Other events which are generally described as genocide in mainstream discourse—despite some dissention—include the massacre of 1.7 million Cambodians by the country’s government under the Khmer Rouge regime, the murder of millions of dissidents by the government of Joseph Stalin in the USSR and Mao Tse-Tung in the People’s Republic of China, the colonization and murder of an untold number of indigenous inhabitants of the western hemisphere by European colonialists, the ethnic warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo which has caused approximately 4 million deaths, and the various campaigns ethnic cleansing associated with the demise of Yugoslavia.

Iraq is certainly comparable to several events typically described as “genocides” in terms of death toll; the death toll caused by the United States during the last 20 years—roughly 1.9 million Iraqis[18]—surpasses the death toll of the Cambodian auto-genocide (1.7 million), the Armenian Genocide (1.5 million), the Rwandan Genocide (800,000), and the Bosnian Genocide (200,000).  It would appear that, measured just in terms of deaths, US policy towards Iraq should certainly qualify as genocide.

However, some people argue that genocide is a term that can only be used to describe campaigns designed to completely obliterate an entire ethnic, social, or political group from the earth, and nothing short of this—no matter how high the death count—merits the term genocide. US Policy in Iraq clearly does not meet this description; the US government’s motive for killing nearly 2 million Iraqis is clearly more about enforcing corporate political and economic hegemony than it is about a racial agenda.  However, there are many other historical cases of mass-violence typically called genocide that arguably do not involve purposeful obliteration of a single group, such as the extermination of indigenous Americans by Europeans—which was essentially a campaign of colonization so unspeakably brutal that almost all of its victims were killed—or Pol Pot’s massacre of millions of his fellow Cambodians who stood in the way of his political, economic, and social goals.  If we decided that US policy toward Iraq should not be described as genocide, then the extermination of Native Americans or Pol Pot’s massacre should not be described as genocide either.  However, if we continue to call Pol Pot’s massacre genocide, then we must accept that the US Iraq policy must also be deemed genocide. 

Anyway, I doubt that it makes a great deal of difference to the victims of a mass-slaughter whether their murder’s intention was to exterminate them or merely to take control of their resources.[19]  If we elect not to classify US Policy towards Iraq during the last 20 years as genocide, we do so only because of a technicality in terminology, and not because the people of Iraq have suffered any less than the victims of comparable tragedies that technically are genocides.

Regardless of whether US policy toward Iraq is to be classified as genocide or not, it is important that we as Americans begin to understand the magnitude of the crimes committed by our country’s government; that the number of deaths is even large enough to merit comparisons to the Cambodian Genocide ought to be enough to galvanize many Americans into opposition to the war and the occupation of Iraq.  The criminal war against the people of Iraq is still going on, and it must be our utmost priority to end the campaign of colonization and extermination.  We must do absolutely everything that we can to ensure that not another Iraqi dies at the hands of the US government.  We must demand that American troops leave Iraq immediately.  Every day that US troops remain in Iraq, the slaughter continues, and the suffering endured by the people of Iraq and the people of the United States increases.