Antiwar.com Blog

Occupation Schizophrenia

The Lebanese now seem determined to oust their occupiers. Nothing surprising about that. The desire to be free of foreign rule should be easily grasped by all. As Old Right icon Robert Taft said of American postwar interventionism,

Other people simply do not like to be dominated and we would be in the same position of suppressing rebellions by force in which the British found themselves during the nineteenth century.

Of course, Taft, a true conservative, did not mean that those rebels were all “good” and the imperialists all “evil,” just that imperialism – even with good intentions – breeds resentment and will inevitably backfire on its practitioners. Unlike the Christopher Hitchenses and David Horowitzes of the ’60s, a Taft conservative would find nothing cute and cuddly about Ho Chi Minh; he would simply understand the universal impulses Ho exploited. In the same way, the contemporary antiwar Right has no illusions about the Iraqi resistance to the U.S. occupation. You won’t see them lionized on this site. We don’t look at these bombers and snipers – whether Sunni, Shi’ite, Ba’athist, or other – and see a bunch of Thomas Jeffersons or Gandhis. We recognize that many, if not most, of these folks hold pretty illiberal political and social views. But we also recognize that they are responding in an entirely predictable manner to the invasion and occupation of their homeland.

That’s why it’s so amusing to watch the neocons, who insist on denying any legitimate motives to the Iraqi resistance, legitimize and even celebrate Lebanese resistance leader Walid Jumblatt. Now we all know the neocons can be a little mercurial themselves (e.g., damning centralization for Europe while demanding it for us, ditching democracy at the first sight of a Palestinian, etc.), but this guy is too much. Jumblatt is a cunning little socialist fruitcake who, sensing an opportunity, has quickly transformed from a reliable supporter of the Syrian regime to its harshest critic.

Given that he accuses the Syrians of killing his father almost 30 years ago, his sudden turn is a rather extreme rehash of Al Gore taking money from the tobacco lobby after his sister died of lung cancer, then using her memory to bash Big Tobacco. I seem to recall Gore’s maneuver causing a stir over at Reason, but not so Jumblatt’s. No, they find Jumblatt’s performance thoroughly convincing. Here’s tireless liberventionist Charles Paul Freund:

Democracy “is now coming to our region,” Druze leader Walid Jumblatt told Lebanese who were gathering Sunday for today’s dramatic protests. “There is no going back.”

Well, democracy may well be coming and the Syrians going, but I sure hope no Americans have to die for a Lebanon ruled by Jumblatt’s ilk. And I have a feeling that some may lament the “horrible” Syrian occupation once it’s gone. After all, Lebanon:

– has, especially by local standards, a relatively free press. Reporters Without Borders ranks it #56 out of 139 countries on its press freedom index, higher than any other Arab country – even higher than Israel (#92). (And Reporters Without Borders wasn’t sucking up to Syria, either, which came in at a floor-scraping 126th.)

– boasts a reasonably open and liberal culture. You won’t be seeing any fashion shows like this in liberated Baghdad anytime soon.

– may leave something to be desired in terms of economic freedom, according to the Heritage Institute, but then any economic ranking system that puts the UK and Sweden near the top leaves something to be desired itself. Anyway, North Korea it ain’t.

There’s a lesson in all this somewhere about the blowback from even the most benign occupation, but I’ll leave that to the Syrians to figure out. If the Lebanese want independence, then more power to them. But Western observers should avoid the facile narratives issuing from interested parties.

Militarization of space

From orbiting lasers to metal rods that strike from the heavens, the potential to wage war from space raises startling possibilities—and serious problems

SHOULD THE UNITED STATES, or any nation for that matter, weaponize space? The answer depends not simply on the capabilities and limitations of proposed space weapons but also on the military objectives. The Rumsfeld commission laid out three objectives in which space weapons might play a role: to defend existing military capabilities in space; to deny adversaries the military benefit of space; and to attack adversaries from or within space.

The last objective is perhaps the most alluring: the prompt and deadly projection of force anywhere on the globe. The psychological impact of such a blow might rival that of such devastating attacks as Hiroshima. But just as the unleashing of nuclear weapons had unforeseen consequences, so, too, would the weaponization of space. What’s more, each of the leading proposed space weapons systems has significant physical limitations that make alternatives more effective and affordable by comparison.

Also, check out Noam Chomsky’s talk at MIT about this subject.

War is Peace, Democracy is Freedom

The democratic peace theory, which claims that democracies don’t wage war on each other, championed by pro-censorship “freedomist” R.J. Rummel, is littered with problems, perhaps most notably its shifting of definitions to the point that “democracy” seems mainly to mean “the United States government and its allies.” Since, categorically, the U.S. does not wage war on its allies or itself, and the favored way to get into the “democracy” club is to be assimilated by U.S. intervention, the “democratic peace theory,” at least as is advanced by interventionists, is really a formula for perpetual war. In making the world safe for imperial democracy, the U.S. government is more than willing to pressure, sanction, invade, bomb and occupy other countries in the world whose regimes the current administration does not like, and turn them into “democracies” – that is, governments about which our government feels comfortable, and, thus, will no longer wage war against.

To be a “democracy,” the regime must play ball with the U.S. (kind of like the Taliban did when it was a U.S. drug war ally and Saddam did when he was a U.S. anti-Iranian ally), and so R.J. Rummel considers Afghanistan to be one. “I’m willing to call it a democracy now. In any case, surely, the country has been liberated.” Call me cynical, but if the Afghanistan regime ever morphs into an enemy of the U.S. – as have former allies in virtually every major country in the Middle East, at one time or another, mostly thanks to U.S. interventionism – I very much doubt it will be praised as a “democracy” any more.

To the War Party, “democracy” may entail the warlordism of Afghanistan and is perfectly consistent with censorship, both here and abroad. But how do the democratic war theorists define war? Looking at Rummel’s Q&A, we see an obvious question with an interesting answer:
Continue reading “War is Peace, Democracy is Freedom”

Counter-recruitment in schools

A Turning Point for the Anti-War Movement?

One of the barriers to counter-recruitment activism in colleges and universities has been a set of laws known as the Solomon Amendments, which since 1997 has threatened campuses with the loss of federal funds if they ban recruiters and ROTC. A parallel law was implemented in 2002 to stop high schools from restricting recruiter access to students and student lists. Multiple lawsuits challenging the college-related law were introduced in 2003, and on November 29, 2004, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the Solomon Amendments violated the plaintiffs’ free speech rights (see also the district court victory in Burt v. Rumsfeld, the case brought by Yale). The Justice Department indicated that it will appeal the appellate ruling to the US Supreme Court, and has asked for a stay from the Third Circuit.

Basic Training: Basic Cruelty, Basic Misogyny

An interview with Tyler Gilbert, who recently went through basic training in the US military;

“They Called Iraqis ‘Ragheads'”

The guy who carried my tray was the nicest guy I met there. He was Islamic. His name was Thomas. He decided that he couldn’t kill people. He stopped eating because he had a dream one night that told him he was wrong for the military. They tried to force-feed him. They pulled him out of class, accusing him and another Muslim of being terrorists, just because they were Muslim. Eventually, the drill sergeant told me he went AWOL. I had never met anyone who was Muslim before, but he was the nicest guy I met there. In the platoon, they called Iraqis “ragheads,” and all sorts of racist shit. I was prejudiced too until I met these Muslim guys. My views of Muslims have totally changed.

One drill instructor said, “We’re in Iraq for a good reason. The news isn’t reporting the good stuff we’re doing there. The news is bullshit, they’re lying because they’re only saying the bad stuff about the Army.” They said we should all support George Bush. They were trying to brainwash us. One of the drill sergeants came back from Iraq training Iraqis. He was less gung-ho. He told us, “We’re stupid. We’re training them and then they turn around and fight us instead.”