Author: Jim Rissman

From Amman, Jordan, Iraqis hope their stories of dispossession will reach “honest American people” while in North Freedom, Wisconsin, a father wonders if there are any.

In June, John Conyers’ mock impeachment hearing “took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration ‘neocons’ so ‘the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world.’ He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,” according to the Washington Post.

“‘Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation,’ McGovern said. ‘The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic.'”

Conyers quickly denounced the Post for “giv[ing] such emphasis to 100 seconds of a 3 hour and five minute hearing” and divorced himself from McGovern’s “anti-semitic assertion…I consider myself to be friend and supporter of Israel and there were a number of other staunchly pro-Israel members who were in attendance at the hearing. I do not agree with, support, or condone any comments asserting Israeli control over U.S. policy, and I find any allegation that Israel is trying to dominate the world or had anything to do with the September 11 tragedy disgusting and offensive.”

In August, Cindy Sheehan denied having written that her son “was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel.” Like Justin Raimondo, I hope she isn’t engaging in some doomed effort to “appease” the “War Party.”

Jane Fonda is scheduled to introduce George Galloway Sunday night here in Madison and Monday night in Chicago. Galloway just “caused paroxysms” in New York by “saying the planes that slammed into the twin towers four years ago did not come out of ‘a clear blue sky’. Rather it was the fault of the US and its foreign policies, especially on Israel. ‘I believe they emerged out of a swamp of hatred created by us’, he said. ‘I believe that it’s because of the total, complete unending and bottomless support for General Sharon’s crimes against the Palestinian people.'”

Will Fonda show up Monday if Galloway talks like that on Sunday? Will she even show up on Sunday? I’d be speculating even if she didn’t have a history of being an avid supporter of “General Sharon’s crimes.”

Three years ago, under the psuedonym “Jim Rissman,” I wrote a piece for Antiwar that was then used by Freedomfiles.org to anchor its “Atrocities against the Afghan People” section. The Northern Alliance, a U.S. client, took prisoners “in a U.S.-orchestrated military operation,” as the Washington Post put it. Another source, Julian Strauss, picks up the story:

The prisoners were crammed at gunpoint into large, oblong freight containers. When no more could be squeezed in, the metal doors were shut tight. Slowly they began to suffocate.

By the time the containers were opened two days later – at the end of the journey from Kunduz to Sheberghan – many were dead.

“There was no oxygen,” said Maqsood Khan, a 26-year-old Pakistani from Rawalpindi. “We drank the sweat off our own bodies and off the dead men. Some drank their urine. Of 400, half were dead by the time we arrived.”…

Sajjid Mehmood, an 18-year-old from Karachi, said: “There were about 250 men in the container I was in. We were praying, shouting and begging for mercy. It was very difficult to breathe.

“Zubair, a man who was crushed up against me, died after two or three hours. We were praying to God. When the soldiers heard our cries for help they opened the rear doors and began shooting.

“Many of us died, maybe 20 or 30. When the container arrived after 18 hours, 150 out of 250 people were dead.” Today Sheberghan prison, originally built for 500 to 1,000 inmates, houses more than 3,000. The commandant said 807 of them are Pakistanis. The rest are Afghans.

My piece closes with Strauss’ warning that “stories such as these have only served to harden the resolve of Islamic militants.” And sure enough, from the Wall Street Journal we learn that the four London bombers, “of Pakistani descent,” according to friends “had been
influenced by claims of atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq.” (“From Heart of U.K., Four Friends Emerge As Terror Suspects,” 7/14/05)

Unbelievably, in Iraq fours days after the London bombings, “Ten Sunni Muslim tribesmen died after American-trained Iraqi police commandos kept them in an airtight container for more than six hours in 115-degree heat.” Because they belonged to the same tribe as the leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars, “they were locked in what was described as a cargo-type container” and suffocated.

Strauss’ piece was titled Slow death on the jail convoy of misery. I called mine Slow death on the jail convoys of misery to emphasize that the sides in the Afghan civil war took turns suffocating each other. The Iraq occurrence is to say the least a horrific development, for Iraqis, for the Western orchestrators, for the world. One can only hope that freight containers don’t “line the roads” of Iraq as they do in Afghanistan.

(see 10 for introduction)

John Nichols didn’t make it, the streak ends at 109 Capital Times columns, it just wouldn’t be December 30th without him using the word “Israel” for the first time. Last year it was refusenik pilots, this year it’s Richard Ben Cramer.

In a new wrinkle, however, he defends himself. “Throughout the year, I kept buying copies of Cramer’s book and handing it to friends and colleagues, who in turn recommended it to book groups, discussion circles and friends and colleagues of their own.” Why, this rippling effect could turn into a veritable, well, never mind.

But if the book’s “that important,” if it’s “that important” that the U.S. has “‘never done squat'” to get Israel out of the occupied territories, why can’t John say so in the Capital Times, “Your Local Progressive Newspaper?”

And he never says why it’s “that important” that the U.S. has “‘never done squat.'” Israel with a soul is better than Israel without a soul and it would be great to see the injustice done to the Palestinians rectified and the truth of their suffering acknowledged, but the point of this countdown has been to draw attention to a disconnect—many of the same “progressives” who are outraged over how Bush exploits the public’s fear of terrorism are not willing to talk about a fundamental cause of hatred of the U.S.

I don’t know what’s in Cramer’s book, but a quick web search determines that he is more than willing to talk about this fundamental cause. It also brings forth a final convolution—Cramer plays the key role in an article which cuts to ribbons the same 9/11 Commission Report which I have used as both point of departure and cornerstone.

Philip Weiss sees the glass empty in 9/11 Report Misses One Crucial Point: Mideastern Policy, but I don’t. The reports states thats the “U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors…we can offer [Muslim] parents a vision that might give their children a better future.” Later it says our Israel/Palestine and Iraq policies must be “integrated with our message of opportunity.”

Let’s think positively, the decidely mainstream 9/11 Commission has done activists a tremendous service, advocating for a U.S. foreign policy steeped in morality, decency and justice. Now if only we could get “progressives” to give “a foreign policy steeped in morality, decency and justice” a prominent place on their list of “progressive values.”

(see 10 for introduction)
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A real road map for Middle East peace by John Nichols, December 30, 2004

Daily Yomiuri columnist John Jerney reporting, I’m the only one who’s been paying close enough attention to bring this story to a close.

It turns out that John Nichols is a hero! All along, selflessly, away from the limelight, he’s been getting out the word and he intimates he’ll do the same in 2005.

Ufot has been thoroughly discredited, it’s not raining frogs, it’s raining Questions. He won’t fall into John’s trap again, there will be no countdown next year.

As for poor Jack Newfield, he feels betrayed, behind his back John’s been gushing over a self-hater. Their relationship may be over, but they’ll always have tikkune.

(see 10 for introduction)
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Count the columns, John Nichols insists, but the result has been certified–that’s 109 down, one to go and he’ll have made it through the year without using the word “Israel.”

An earlier countdown entry contained a gratuitous reference to Yasir Arafat, but after smoking a joint I decided it was fortuitously gratuitous. With Arafat gone, “to whom will we give the job of the demonic villain?” Israeli writer Meron Benvenisti asks. “We need a scapegoat on whom to cast the blame for everything, and to clear our consciences.” Elie Wiesel will be lost without one.

Religious studies prof Ira Chernus thought that the 60s had taught us to appreciate the fact that we probably won’t be able to answer the “most important” question about 9/11, did the Bush administration know about the attacks and not stop them, or maybe even orchestrate them? He was surprised to learn that many “leftists” (I think he means “progressives”) had a good vs. evil world view as simple-minded as Bush’s.

According to the Commission Report (p. 149), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed met Bin Ladin in “mid-1996” and made the proposal that “eventually would become the 9/11 operation.” In August, Bin Ladin declared war against the U.S. in his first public fatwa.

After the Oslo II accords were sign in September, 1995, Edward Said implored “liberals” to be aware that the peace “process has made matters far worse” for the “vast majority” of Palestinians. They are “demoralized,” they “may have lost hope” (The Nation 10/16/95).

A New York Times story on December 1, 1995, was headlined, “Iraq Sanctions Kill Children, U.N. Reports,” 567,000 of them. On April, 11, 1996, Israel unleashed “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” bombing an Arab capital (Beirut) for the first time in ten years. A week later, it bombed a UN compound in Qana, killing over 100 women and children. On 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright said, yes, “keeping Saddam in his box” was worth the sacrifice of half a million Iraqi children.

Hijacker Mohamed Atta’s will was dated April 11, 1996, the day Israel unleashed Grapes. Bin Ladin’s first fatwa was issued while “the horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory.” Whereas Leslie Stahl rounded down the 567,000 sanctions figure, Bin Ladin rounded it up. No matter the actual figure, the impact was devastating. As an Iraqi student said, “sanctions really killed our dreams — not my personal dreams only, but those of my Iraqi people, all of us.”

The “1998 bombings of Sudan and Afghanistan created bin Laden as a symbol…and led to a sharp increase in support, recruitment, and financing for al-Qaeda,” according to Jason Burke. “It was in late 1998 or early 1999” that Bin Ladin gave “the green light” for the 9/11 operation, the Commission Report indicates (p. 149).

As one of its recommendations, the Report urges America to “offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law…” As opposed to Bin Ladin, “we can we can offer [Muslim] parents a vision that might give their children a better future” (p. 376).

Benvenisti says the Israelis need a demonic villain to clear their consciences. Does that mean they at least vaguely know that they should have something on their consciences? If so, they appear to be a step ahead of Chernus’ “leftists” and my John Nichols, “progressive bellwether.” Of course, Arafat didn’t “steal” the 2000 election like Bush did (John is the author of a hastily and shoddily put together “book” titled “Jews for Buchanan”).

Where was the brunt of the “anti-war” movement when the Clinton administration was making mincemeat of what was to be the Report’s recommendation? A “most important” unanswerable question is, had a significant fraction of the people who now find Bush’s Iraq invasion and occupation intolerable been awake and protesting in 1996-1998, would the “twin towers have crumbled?” And what wisdom do the 60s have to impart regarding unasked questions?

In 1996-1998, John wrote 483 columns for the Capital Times, two of them containing criticism of the sanctions and two criticism of Israeli policy. He can say he opposed them but he never made them an issue. Now he remembers the Clinton era as a “period of relative peace and prosperity,” and he’s got plenty of company in that regard.

There is tragedy here. Introspection has been swept away in a tidal wave of hatred and scorn, no lesson has been learned.