UPDATE 2 (9:07PM Central Standard Time): For an easily accessible link to numerous livestreams and ustreams, go here.

UPDATE 1 (8:50PM Central Standard Time): Arrests, police clubbing protesters, chaotic scenes on both ustreams.

INITIAL POST: Occupy is making the connection between austerity at home and perpetual war abroad. This is the fourth day of marches in Chicago, marches conducted in the face of a suffocating police presence. At this time, 8:25 p.m. Central Standard Time, about 2000 to 3000 people are moving through the downtown, with protesters closing off the sidewalks so that the bike police cannot assist in their encirclement:

Live video by Ustream

Here is another ustream:

Live video by Ustream

There are reports that the march is within a block or two of the NATO state dinner where delegates are present. Obama, Obama, we've got some shit to talk about.

Meanwhile, there was also a sympathy march in New York City:

As usual, the kids are taking the lead. Of course, Twitter is the best source of current information, including active ustreams and livestreams, use the hashtags #NoNATO and #OccupyChicago, among others.

Labels: Activism, Anarchism, NATO, Police, Ustream, War on Terror

Apparently not, if the populace of Libya has anything to say about it. Contradictions within the NATO assisted rebellion are rising to the surface pretty quickly. For a similar written account, consider the following:

The first cracks in Libya's rebel coalition have opened, with protests erupting in Misrata against the reported decision of the National Transitional Council (NTC) to appoint a former Gaddafi henchman as security boss of Tripoli.

Media reports said the NTC prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, is poised to appoint Albarrani Shkal, a former army general, as the capital's head of security.

Protests erupted in the early hours of the morning in Misrata's Martyr's Square, with about 500 protesters shouting that the blood of the martyrs would be betrayed by the appointment.

Misrata's ruling council lodged a formal protest with the NTC, saying that if the appointment were confirmed Misratan rebel units deployed on security duties in Tripoli would refuse to follow NTC orders.

Misratans blame Shkal for commanding units that battered their way into this city in the spring, terrorising and murdering civilians.

Such stories are important, because they remind us that the people of Libya have their own historical agency. They cannot be reduced to marionettes of the US, NATO and Saudi Arabia, as some on the left would have us believe. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that they will successfully resist the predation of the US and Europe. But they do possess an indigenous culture and resources that provide them with an opportunity to do so.

A truly left internationalist engagement with the situation in Libya would seek to understand and support those institutions of collective social organization capable of facilitating opposition to the reimposition of repressive social controls for the benefit of transnationals. Given that Gaddafi was perfectly willing to continue to provide such assistance, if a bit querulously, I still remain perplexed as to why NATO intervened. Was Gaddafi really demanding that big a slice of the pie? And, after all, he was reinvesting a lot of the proceeds from his hydrocarbon deals within Europe. But it did, and the question now is whether the Libyans will be allowed to chart their own destiny or have the State Department do it for them. Meanwhile, here is a profile of the CIA's favorite for leadership.

Hat tip to Hossam el-Hamalawy and Louis Proyect.

Labels: American Empire, Europe, Libya, NATO, Neoliberalism, YouTube

UPDATE 4: Sarkozy and Erdogan are still going at it:

Nicolas Sarkozy has belittled Nato's role in the military operations against Muammar Gaddafi, re-igniting the row over who replaces the Americans in charge of the campaign in Libya.

Senior Nato officials said the alliance would decide within days whether to take over the bombing campaign against Gaddafi's forces and David Cameron announced that Nato would "shortly be providing the command and control and the machinery" for the attacks on ground targets in Libya.

The Nato decision is expected by Monday, before foreign ministers meet in London on Tuesday to discuss Libya. Senior officials were confident that the alliance would agree to assume command of all three elements of the campaign against Gaddafi – the air assaults, as well as the no-fly zone and arms embargo already under Nato command.

Turkey and France have been embroiled in a bitter row all week, with Ankara demanding that the Nato alliance, of which it is the member with the second biggest army after the US, takes over and Sarkozy opposed.

Sarkocy wants NATO to provide the force, while leaving the decisions as to the deployment of it to the eleven countries taking part in operations, thus excluding Turkey. Is this an indication that ground troops may soon be necessary? What are the consequences for the future of NATO if Sarkozy prevails? Germany is already on the sidelines, and Turkey may soon find itself there.

UPDATE 3: Libyan airstrikes have brought the economic ambitions of competitors, such as Turkey's Recip Tayyip Erdogan and France's Nicholas Sarkozy to the surface:

The clash between Turkey and France over Libya is underpinned by acute frictions between Erdogan and Sarkozy, both impetuous and mercurial leaders who revel in the limelight, by fundamental disputes over Ankara's EU ambitions, and by economic interests in north Africa.

The confrontation is shaping up to be decisive in determining the outcome of the bitter infighting over who should inherit command of the Libyan air campaign from the Americans and could come to a head at a major conference in London next week of the parties involved.

Using incendiary language directed at France in a speech in Istanbul, Erdogan said: I wish that those who only see oil, gold mines and underground treasures when they look in [Libya's] direction, would see the region through glasses of conscience from now on.

President Gül reinforced the Turkish view that France and others were being driven primarily by economic interests. The aim [of the air campaign] is not the liberation of the Libyan people, he said. There are hidden agendas and different interests.

France is, of course, adamantly oppposed to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

UPDATE 2: Oh, by the way, could someone just tell Dennis the Menace to shut up and go away? He seems to have forgotten that he further embarasses himself every time he purports to represent an ethical liberal position in public. He'll stick with his assertion that the President should be impeached over bombing Libya until . . well, you know, until the President takes him for a ride on Air Force One again. And, then, there are sell outs like Juan Cole and David Corn.

Cole has always been phony. Years ago, in 2006, I posted a comment on his blog in response to his post about his sadness over the fact that the son of the Israeli novelist David Grossman had been killed during the Israeli ground invasion of southern Lebanon, emphasizing Grossman's opposition to it. I responded with a comment to the effect that Grossman did not oppose the Israeli attacks upon Lebanon until he was afraid that his son was going to be ordered to participate in the pending invasion. I also observed that, according to press reports, Grossman expressed no remorse over the loss of Lebanese lives as a result of the Israeli air strikes and ground assault. Cole deleted it, of course, and I thereafter stopped paying attention to anything he had to say.

UPDATE 1: A provocative commentary by Vijay Prashad:

Such options are no longer central, or even on the table. Qaddafi’s rule might fall in a week or a month. In the interim, he is a caged animal, and his loyalists will not dissolve easily. In the short term, he may conduct some kind of spectacular attack on a tanker in the Mediterranean, or else, as he himself warned, inside Europe. This is precisely the kind of pretext that the warmongers seek. The Gulf of Sidra will stand in for the Gulf of Tonkin. Ships of war will dock at Benghazi, and the ground troops will slide along the road that was once the graveyard of Field Marshall Montgomery and Rommel (their half tracks and tanks still litter the road outside Tobruk). Such an assault, which might be inevitable, will revive the debacle in Iraq that lasted from 2003 to 2007, with loyalists now underground in a brutal insurgency against the foreign troops and the people of the east, a defense of their realm and a sectarian conflict at the same time. If this were the scenario, then, as Michael Walzer put it, it would extend, not stop, the bloodshed.

The forces of counter-revolution line up with the West. The Gulf Cooperation Council hastened to pledge its unequivocal support. The United Arab Emirates is sending twenty-four aircraft and Qatar will send as many as six. They will also help fund the between $1-2 billion/month cost of the enforcing the no-fly zone. Saudi Arabia’s troops remain in Bahrain. Their air force is geared up, and it too might fly alongside the French over Libyan skies. No Tunisian and Egyptian planes are on the offer. It is a telling sign that only the counter-revolutionary regimes are excited at the prospect of this battle. They know that it is precisely the best opportunity to stop the tide of the Arab Revolt of 2011.

Meanwhile, Germany is staying out of it as arguments over the mission erupt within NATO. And, not surprisingly, Steven Erlanger and Judy Dempsey of The New York Times are hysterical over this continuing newfound German assertion of independence from the US and France.

INITIAL POST: No doubt you've noticed that I haven't posted anything about the US, French and British airstrikes against Gaddafi's forces in Libya. There is a good reason for it. I don't understand it, so maybe some of you out there can help.

I've heard a number of explanations as to the objectives of the participants, but I've yet to be fully convinced of any of them. Let's go through them. First, there is the claim that the US, France and the British want to assist the rebels in overthrowing Gaddafi so as to increase their influence in the country, a country with the largest known oil reserves in Africa, with much of it being easily refineable, high quality crude. There is a superficial logic to this, except that the US and Europe had a good working relationship with Gaddafi, and Gaddafi was playing by the rules of the game by kleptocratically investing his oil profits in Europe, so much so that he counted former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and current Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi among his friends. He also provided assistance to Berlusconi in regard to preventing African immigrants from crossing the Mediterranean through Libya. As for the US, he was a staunch supporter of the so-called war on terror.

Perhaps, the US, the French and the British believe that they can cut a better deal on the sharing of profits from future oil exploration and sales than they had with Gaddafi. Much of the oil is supposedly in the eastern regions of Libya under rebel control, and, by this line of reasoning, a line in favor among some on the British left, they would be satisfied with a de facto partition of Libya that resulted in the rebels taking control of much of the country's oil reserves. Possibly. But there are some obvious problems with this, most importantly the fact that the rebels remain more unpredictable in their future dealings with the US and Europe than Gaddafi would have been. So, there is no certainty that the rebels would supply oil on terms more favorable than Gaddafi. Furthermore, there is also no certainty as to how the rebels would put their oil profits to use. There is still a possibility that they would put them to the sort of mischievous use for which Gaddafi and the Iranians have been known. One wonders if the US and Europe expect the rebels to conduct themselves in a manner similar to the mafiosos of Kosovo, with whom they have a good relationship.

Second, there is the belief that the Libyan airstrikes are a sort of camouflage, an intentional effort to distract attention from the US/Saudi efforts to suppress democratic movements in Yemen and Bahrain. Here, again, there is a superficial logic, but it assumes that there is a necessity for the effort, a necessity that I fail to perceive. In the US, there is no significant outcry about the violence inflicted upon protesters in Yemen and Bahrain, indeed, few Americans are even aware of it. To the extent that they are aware, they have, at least in regard to Bahrain, accepted the new propaganda line that the protesters must be suppressed to contain Iran. Apparently, even the Europeans have accepted it, with a European Union foreign policy advisor, Robert Cooper, recycling US fears of the Iranians by expressing alarm over the prospect of a Shia government there. As for the crackdown itself, he concluded accidents happen. His boss, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, is impressed by the offer of talks by the Crown Prince. No one has been willing to touch the most taboo subject of all, the question as to whether the Iranian social model, as seriously flawed as it is, would constitute a significant improvement in the lives of everyone in Bahrain with the exception of the wealthy elite that runs the country. In any event, there is no indication that a Libyan distraction is required.

Third, there is the possibility of another, potentially more compelling distraction. Both Europe and the US are imposing harsh austerity programs after having channeled trillions of dollars of through transnational finacial institutions to preserve them and the investments of the people who purchased their financial instruments. Clearly unable to resist the cuts of a Republican House of Representatives, President Obama shows that he can stand up to that evil African Gaddafi. Similarly, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is implementing a harsh austerity program that will inflict the most punishment upon the poorest people in society. Reminscent of Thatcher'as response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he has also been the most strident advocate for military action. Meanwhile, the last member of the intervention triumvirate, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, finds himself extremely unpopular, so he may believe that the airstrikes will improve his domestic political prospects. French pilots flew the first missions over Libya. It is, however, a doubled edged sword. In addition to the possibility that the intervention will fail, people are beginning to notice, at least in the US, that the military operation is substantially eroding the proposed savings from domestic budget cuts proposed by Republicans, placing the credibility of the austerity effort at risk. For now, though, it is merely an indication that the accumulation of capital through the military industrial complex still works as it has done since the beginning of World War II. After all, governments have to purchase those weapons somewhere.

Labels: American Empire, David Grossman, Europe, France, Germany, Gulf States, Libya, NATO, Neoliberalism, Sub-Proletarianization of America, Sub-Proletarianization of Europe, United Kingdom

From today's New York Times:

NATO must be willing to fight and operate far from its borders to defend its members in a new world of terrorism, piracy and cyberattacks, according to a proposed strategy for the alliance released Monday.

The proposal, NATO 2020, also urges the alliance to restore credibility to its pledge of collective security, which it said was a prerequisite for efforts further afield.

NATO must be versatile and efficient enough to operate far from home, former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who led a team of experts in writing the report, said at a news conference in Brussels. In order to sustain the political will for operations outside its area, NATO must see that all its members are reassured about the security of their home territories.

War without end, with the usual suspects:

In a post-1999 world of terrorism, nuclear proliferation and the spread of missiles to more aggressive countries and even non-state actors, like Hezbollah and Hamas, and threats to the security of energy supplies and the Internet, NATO must reform to remain relevant, the report said, adding: Although NATO is busier than it has ever been, its value is less obvious to many than in the past.

Yes, that's a rather mild way of putting it, almost a kind of dry humor. After all, if you are French, German, Italian or another resident of the EU, the prospect of going off to fight in faraway places like Afghanistan looks less and less appealing. But there are two important things that should be mentioned.

First, the report is an implicit acknowledgement that the US military is stretched too thin to continue to perform the role of imperial, capitalist police unilaterally, and requires more assistance than the window dressing provided by the coalitions of the willing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Second, the participants involved in the drafting of the report are frightened by the fear that dare not speak its name, the decline of the nation state itself as a form of social organization. Hence, the emphasis upon non-state actors and the Internet as particular perils.

One can easily understand why they are concerned. Nation states emerged for many reasons, and were often consolidated through military violence, but they have persisted because of shared identities, invariably mythologically manufactured, and the belief that the citizens of them could assert control over their lives through them. Unfortunately, the institutions of these states were never able to assert the degree of social control that they presumed to impose (with the collapse of real, existing socialism exposing the limits of the state in regard to asserting authority over its peoples and boundaries), and, to the extent that such controls were successfully implemented by means of economic regulation, public education and social welfare programs, neoliberal trends have been eviscerating them, leaving only the bones behind.

It is no surprise, then, that people like Albright find themselves desperately looking towards transcontinental military alliances like NATO as a means of preserving the existing global order. Accordingly, this is a subject that deserves more attention on the left, equal to the efforts that have been expended towards understanding the roles of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in facilitating the expansion of global capitalism. For anarchists, who reject the necessity of organizing life through nation states, this may be an opportunity to advocate for a more benign social vision.

From a perspective based upon world systems theory, Immaneul Wallerstein places the situation within a grand context:

The conjunction of the three elements—the magnitude of the normal crash, the rise in costs of production, and the extra pressure on the system of Chinese (and Asian) growth—means that we have entered a structural crisis. The system is very far from equilibrium, and the fluctuations are enormous. From now on, we will be living amidst a bifurcation of the systemic process. The question is no longer, how will the capitalist system mend itself, and renew its forward thrust?, but rather, what will replace this system? What order will emerge from this chaos?

We may think of this period of systemic crisis as an arena of struggle for the successor system. The outcome may be inherently unpredictable, but the nature of the struggle is clear. We are faced with alternative choices, which cannot be spelled out in institutional detail, but may be suggested in broad outline. We can choose collectively a new system that essentially resembles the present one: hierarchical, exploitative and polarizing. There are many forms this could take, and some could be harsher than the capitalist world-system in which we have been living. Alternatively we can choose a radically different system, one that has never previously existed—a system that is relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian. I have been calling the two alternatives the spirit of Davos and the spirit of Porto Alegre, but the names are unimportant. What is important is to see the possible organizational strategies on each side, in a struggle that has been going on in some form since 1968 and may not be resolved before circa 2050.

Along these lines, Albright and her NATO associates are working hard to refashion it as an instrument for global domination, socially, territorially and cybernetically. Meanwhile, in the UK, the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition has promised a broad review of New Labour measures that restricted civil liberties, with the promised repeal of a plan to require national ID cards, the reiteration of the historic protections through the defense of trial by jury and the restoration of the rights of non-violent protest, but my suspicion is that many of these measures will go by the wayside as conflict over austerity within the UK and the EU intensifies. It goes against the grain of more centralized governmental control over potentially restive populations.

NOTE: The Wallerstein article is only accessible to those who have a New Left Review subscription. For those of you who do, go here.

Labels: American Empire, Anarchism, Europe, NATO, Neoliberalism, New Left Review, US Military

Investigations into the February 12th night raid in Khataba village in Afghanistan are discovering that the truth is worse than we could have imagined:

US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times.

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public.

The claims were made as Nato admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last night. It had initially claimed that the women had been dead for several hours when the assault force discovered their bodies.

Despite earlier reports we have determined that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men, said Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale, a Nato spokesman. The coalition continued to deny that there had been a cover-up and said that its legal investigation, which is ongoing, had found no evidence of inappropriate conduct.

A senior Afghan official involved in a government investigation told The Times: “I think the special forces lied to McChrystal.”

Why did the special forces collect their bullets from the area? the official said. They washed the area of the injuries with alcohol and brought out the bullets from the dead bodies. The bodies showed there were big holes.

As you might have guessed, US media reported on this raid by credulously accepting the NATO explanation, until Afghan investigators and the London Times forced the truth out into the open. In an excellent article posted at Salon today, Glenn Greenwald places this incident within the larger context of NATO's success in persuading the media to accept its false, propagandistic descriptions of events in Afghanistan. Interestingly, Greenwald documents how an Afghan newspaper published, right after the attack, a more nuanced, more accurate description of it, primarily because the reporter talked to the residents of Khataba as well as NATO press officers.

And therein lies the problem. US newspapers and cable channels, to the extent that they attempt to cover the war in Afghanistan at all, look to official sources for the most accurate information. Conversely, like some American feminists, they consider the accounts of Afghans themselves to be the least credible, and, as noted by Greenwald, don't bother to even inquire about them, much less report them.

It is tempting to ascribe this phenomenon solely to nationalistic pressures associated with war coverage, but that would be a mistake. Elite newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post have always practiced this method across the board, even before there was a war on terror. Articles invariably follow a pattern: official US sources first, other friendly official sources second, and, if the reporter gets that far, local accounts and concerns. Of course, sources from governments or groups considered hostile by the US are presented last, with an appropriately dismissive tone. The pattern, with minor variations, is followed without fail regardless of whether the subject of the article is a foreign or domestic subject.

And, as we have learned in relation to the invasion of Iraq and a possible attack upon Iran, off the record official US sources are considered more credible than on the record statements from anyone else, even more credible than direct evidence that refutes them. So, what we have here is a style of propagandistic journalism, a style that predates the war on terror and invasion of Iraq, but one that has become more crude and transparent because of the sensitivity of public opinion.

Of course, the New York Times has finally reported that US troops were responsible for the deaths in Khataba, but, naturally, placed the following emphasis upon it:

The disclosure could not come at a worse moment for the American military: NATO officials are struggling to contain fallout from a series of tirades against the foreign military presence by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has also railed against the killing of civilians by Western forces.

The dead Afghans, it seems, are merely a backdrop for those poor US and NATO officials that now have to deal with the unpleasantness of being caught out in a lie, a kind of deceased human scenery, as it were, like mannequins used to display the lastest fashions at Saks Fith Avenue. Or, perhaps, like a multitude of Banquo's ghosts, causing panic attacks among officials and American reporters alike. And that Karzai! Can't someone get him to shut up? Note the use of the verb railed in the characterization of his objections to civilian killings by US and NATO forces, a subtle way of suggesting that he is either hysterical or exaggerating them.

And, then, finally, there are those pro-war feminists again. Maybe, someone can get around to asking them how the war in Afghanistan is for the benefit of the women there, when US troops are shooting and killing pregnant women, and then, afterwards, carving the bullets out of their bodies.

Labels: "Support the Troops", "War on Terror", Afghanistan, American Empire, Death Squads, Feminism, Mainstream Media, NATO, Sadomasochism

From a CIA report posted on the wikileaks website:

Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission.

• According to INR polling in the fall of 2009, French women are 8 percentage points less likely to support the mission than are men, and German women are 22 percentage points less likely to support the war than are men.

• Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences.

Presumably, there wouldn't be any testimonials by Afghan women about this episode:

The operation on Friday, February 12, was a botched pre-dawn assault on a policeman’s home a few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan. In a statement after the raid titled “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery”, Nato claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room.

A Times investigation suggests that Nato’s claims are either willfully false or, at best, misleading. More than a dozen survivors, officials, police chiefs and a religious leader interviewed at and around the scene of the attack maintain that the perpetrators were US and Afghan gunmen. The identity and status of the soldiers is unknown.

The raid came more than a fortnight after the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan issued new guidelines designed to limit the use of night raids. Special forces and Western intelligence agencies that run covert operations in Afghanistan have been criticised for night raids based on dubious or false intelligence leading to civilian casualties.

The first person to die in the assault was Commander Dawood, 43, a long-serving, popular and highly-trained policeman who had recently been promoted to head of intelligence in one of Paktia’s most volatile districts. His brother, Saranwal Zahir, was a prosecutor in Ahmadabad district. He was killed while he stood in a doorway trying to protest their innocence.

Three women crouching in a hallway behind him were hit by the same volley of fire. Bibi Shirin, 22, had four children under the age of 5. Bibi Saleha, 37, had 11 children. Both of them, according to their relatives, were pregnant. They were killed instantly.

The men’s mother, Bibi Sabsparie, said that Shirin was four months pregnant and Saleha was five months. The other victim, Gulalai, 18, was engaged. She was wounded and later died. “We had already bought everything for the wedding,” her soon-to-be father-in-law, Sayed Mohammed Mal, the Vice-Chancellor of Gardez University, said.

And, of course, Malaya Joya need not apply.

Hat tip to The Angry Arab News Service and, more specifically, Mouin

Labels: "War on Terror", Afghanistan, American Empire, Death Squads, Europe, Feminism, Islamic Fundamentalism, NATO

Yet another deadly air strike in Afghanistan:

U.S. Special Operations Forces ordered an airstrike that killed at least 27 civilians in southern Afghanistan and the soldiers may not have satisfied rules of engagement designed to avoid the killing of innocents, Afghan and coalition officials said Monday.

The airstrike Sunday hit a group of minibuses in a remote part of the south near the border between Uruzgan and Daykundi provinces. The area is hundreds of miles from Marjah, where the largest allied offensive since 2001 is now in its second week. But the airstrike nonetheless illustrated one of the major problems for coalition forces as they try to win over civilians in Marjah and across Afghanistan: figuring out who is a civilian and who is an insurgent—and not killing the civilians.

It also underscored the risks of the expanding use of Special Operations Forces, whose primary mission is hunting down Taliban, as the leading edge of the fight against the insurgents. Many Special Operations missions by their very nature emphasize the use of violent force, and coalition officials say they have led to a string of recent successes against valuable targets.

Apparently, General McCrystal is having some difficulty communicating the new policy about minimizing civilian casualties in the field. Or, could it possibly be that the purported new policy has only been announced for public relations purposes in the US?

On the ground in Afghanistan, it seems that the war is being fought as it has always been fought, by attempting to instill fear in the civilian populace through the application of indiscriminate violence. In this instance, the intention is pretty clear. Special Forces fired upon any transport on the highway to send a strong message that it was a free fire zone and that anyone who traveled along it did so at the risk of their lives. They weren't overly concerned whether non-combatants were in the minibuses or not, as long as the Taliban got the message.

Labels: "War on Terror", 9/11, Afghanistan, Air War, American Empire, NATO

From today's New York Times:

President Obama will send an additional 17,000 American troops to Afghanistan this spring and summer in the first major military move of his presidency, White House officials said on Tuesday.

The increase would come on top of 36,000 American troops already there, making for an increase of nearly 50 percent. In issuing the order, Mr. Obama is choosing a middle ground, addressing urgent requests from commanders who have been pressing for reinforcements while postponing a more difficult judgment on a much larger increase in personnel that the commanders have been seeking.

In a written statement issued by the White House on Tuesday evening, Mr. Obama said that deteriorating security in Afghanistan demands urgent attention and swift action to address a problem that has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires.

Last year, I explained that Obama communicates about Afghanistan in a confused way that reveals a fundamental lack of understanding about what is transpiring there. Nothing has changed. Incapable of implementing a coherent policy, he is instead resorting to the tried and true method of new troop deployments to mask it. Given the obvious dissatisfaction of the Obama administration with Karzai, one wonders how long before he ends up like Diem.

Labels: "War on Terror", 9/11, Afghanistan, American Empire, Barack Obama, NATO

Labels: Democrats, Elections, Hizbullah, Israel, Lebanon, NATO

antiwar.com maintains that local media within Pakistan is reporting that Pakistani troops fired upon US helicopters engaged in an unauthorized incursion into South Waziristan. Who needs to elect Barack Obama president when the current administration is implementing his policy in the tribal regions of Pakistan?

With Obama having opened the door to unilateral US military action in Pakistan against al-Qaeda, the Bush administration is typically pressing the concept to maximum advantage, exploiting the confusion on the ground, the inability to distinguish between al-Qaeda, the Taliban and local tribal resistance to the US military presence in this region, as well as domestic confusion about the nature of the occupation of Afghanistan. Would Obama, if elected President, rescind Bush's recently reported executive order authorizing US Special Forces operations in Pakistan? It doesn't sound likely, does it? Perhaps, if I can find the time, I will e-mail the campaign and ask about it. Not surprisingly, NATO is declining to participate.

If you are old enough, you have the disquieting feeling that you've seen this movie, before, or, at least, something very much like it. In 1969 and 1970, during the Vietnam War, President Nixon authorized, first, the carpet bombing of eastern Cambodia in an attempt to destroy North Vietnamese forces that used that sparsely populated area adjacent to South Vietnam as a sanctuary, and then, when that failed, ordered a full scale invasion. Of course, one cannot compare the relatively limited US military operations in Pakistan with an invasion of Cambodia that required thousands of American and South Vietnamese troops, but it is not commonly known that US intervention in Cambodia started with the types of military action that we now see in Pakistan.

For example, the carpet bombing of Cambodia and subsequent invasion was preceded by an extensive bombing campaign and special forces operations that commenced in 1965:

Thanks to the Air Force database, we now know that the U.S. bombardment started three-and-a-half years earlier, in 1965, under the Johnson administration. What happened in 1969 was not the start of bombings in Cambodia but the escalation into carpetbombing. From 1965 to 1968, 2,565 sorties took place over Cambodia, with 214 tons of bombs dropped. These early strikes were likely designed to support the nearly 2,000 secret ground incursions conducted by the CIA and U.S. Special Forces during that period. B-52s -- long range bombers capable of carrying very heavy loads -- were not deployed, whether out of concern for Cambodian lives or the country's neutrality, or because carpet bombing was believed to be of limited strategic value.

The failure of the bombing campaign initiated by LBJ presented Nixon with a stark choice: accept the unfavorable contours of a negotiated settlement of the war, or escalate with the use of ground forces. As already mentioned, we know the decision that he made, and the people that were killed within Cambodia, and even within the US, at Kent State, because of it. Even the ideologically friendly wikipedia entry concludes with this evaluation of the consequences:

The Cambodian people, whose fate was the most dramatically effected by the results of the incursion, were basically ignored by all but a few historians listed below. The incursion, about which the Cambodian government was not even informed until it was under way, heated up what was basically a low-key civil war and irrevocably widened the boundaries of the conflict. The withdrawal of U.S. forces, after only a 30-day campaign "left a void so great that neither the Cambodian nor the South Vietnamese armies were able to fill it."

Lon Nol's forces would then have to contend with not only PAVN and the NLF, but with an ever-growing indigenous insurgency, which was now fully supported by Hanoi and its armed forces. The Nixon administration, callous of the weakness of the Cambodian regime and its military, pushed its new ally into a conflict that it had no possibility of winning. Cambodia (like neighboring Laos) would be sacrificed for the withdrawal of the Americans and the future existence of the Republic of Vietnam. Millions of Cambodians would pay the ultimate price as a result of those decisions.

Let's repeat that: Cambodia (like neighboring Laos) would be sacrificed for the withdrawal of the Americans and the future existence of the Republic of Vietnam. It is hard to read this sentence in the current context of Afghanistan and Pakistan without feeling a distinct chill. If the airstrikes and special forces raids fail, what will the next President do? Pull back? Or, like Nixon, escalate with more ground forces? Momentum would clearly be with the escalation option, given that no one has politically prepared the American public for a pragmatic reduction in the US presence in those countries.

In this instance, US leadership is much more ambitious, even if it is increasingly aware of the deterioration of conditions under the Afghan occupation. Unlike in Southeast Asia in the early 1970s, the US is not trying to find a way to put a positive face upon a major defeat, but, rather, still considers an unconditional victory essential. Pat Buchanan has properly observed that an incremental increase in the number of US forces in neighboring Afghanistan, as proposed by Obama, can only lead to an escalation imposed by adverse external events. Likewise, it is also hard to imagine any other outcome in neighboring Pakistan.

At this point, at such an early stage of intervention (but, is it really that early, how many raids and airstrikes have conducted in Pakistan since 2001?), there is only a succession of troubling questions. Is a bipartisan consensus being formed, based upon the grotesquely cynical belief that, through the expansion of the conflict, both Pakistan and Afghanistan can be refashioned in a way more favorable to US interests? With the liberals and conservatives, walking on two legs to form a coalition to ensure its implementation? Liberals would, of course, perform their usual role, promoting a more purportedly surgical intervention, a magical one, if you will, that will kill fewer people, while the conservatives, ever the realists, acknowledge the force required, evidencing a willingness to see it through to the end, no matter how bloody. If so, we need to remind the proponents that Pakistan, unlike Cambodia in the 1970s, has a nuclear weapons arsenal.

Labels: "War on Terror", Afghanistan, Air War, American Empire, Barack Obama, NATO, Pakistan

From antiwar.com:

At approximately 3 AM this morning, US helicopters landed in a tiny village in South Waziristan, not far from the Afghanistan border. Troops emerged and opened fire on the villagers, killing at least 20 civilians according to North-West Frontier Province Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani. Governor Ghani condemned the attack as “cowardly” and urged the Pakistani military “to defend the sovereignty of the country” with a response to the attack.

And while neither NATO or American spokesmen would comment officially on the incident, CNN quotes a senior US official as having confirmed the operation, which was reportedly linked to recent attacks on US troops in Afghanistan. The New York Times quotes another official who was briefed on the incident predicting that this “is perhaps a stepping up of activity against militants in sanctuaries in the tribal areas” and that there is potential for further such moves. NATO missile and artillery strikes against targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas are not uncommon, but this is the first confirmed operation involving US ground troops in Pakistan.

Obama, of course, has frequently emphasized the need to withdraw from Iraq in order to confront the Taliban and its supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan:

Instead of being distracted from the most pressing threats that we face, I will harness all elements of American power to overcome them. My first order as Commander in Chief will be to end the war in Iraq and refocus our efforts on Afghanistan and our broader security interests. Let me be clear--my plan would not abandon Iraq. It is in our strategic interest to maintain a residual force that will go after al-Qaeda, train Iraqi security forces and protect U.S. interests. But we must recognize that the central front in the war on terror is not in Iraq, and it never was. The central front is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is unacceptable that almost seven years after 9/11, those responsible for the attacks remain at large. If another attack on our homeland occurs, it will likely come from this same region where 9/11 was planned. Yet today we have five times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan.

I will send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan and use this commitment to seek greater contributions--with fewer restrictions--from NATO allies. I will focus on training Afghan security forces and supporting an Afghan judiciary. I will once and for all dismantle al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The solution in Afghanistan is not just military--it is political and economic. That is why I would also increase our nonmilitary aid by $1 billion. These resources should fund projects at the local level to impact ordinary Afghans, including the development of alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers. And we must demand better performance from the Afghan government through tough anticorruption safeguards on aid.

Finally, we need a stronger and sustained partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO to secure the border, to take out terrorist camps and to crack down on cross-border insurgents. We should condition some assistance to Pakistan on their action to take the fight to the terrorists within their borders. And if we have actionable intelligence about high-level al-Qaeda targets, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot.

Yesterday's attack is precisely the kind of action that will form the centerpiece of Obama policy, his incomprehensible distinctions between al-Qaeda, the Taliban, terrorists and insurgents aside. Isn't it rather odd that only McCain is characterized as ignorant about basic facts associated with the region, when Obama promiscuously conflates resistance to the US presence to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which he then, quite naturally, conflates as well. You would have thought that his anthropologist mother would have provided him with more nuanced methods of analysis beyond this sort of crude reductionism.

In fact, the tendency to characterize resistance to the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan as instigated solely by a highly coordinated, hierarchically structured al-Qaeda and Taliban organization is rather dubious:

Analysts from the 40-nation, US-led coalition are realising that the insurgency is much more complicated than they had thought. Hundreds, if not thousands of groups are ranged into a complex and shifting pattern of alliances of interest. Groups fight the coalition, and contest each other's authority and influence. Their nature also varies enormously.

"It is probably better to talk about insurgencies than an insurgency," said one specialist with the United Nations in Kabul. "Some of these groups are just six guys and they hate the six guys from the next village."

Local people have long been aware of this. At a community level, the names of local Taliban commanders are well known and few are unaware of the complex local power struggles that led one minor warlord to fight while another stays neutral or sides with the government.

Degrees of ideological commitment differ. Interviews conducted through intermediaries with the Taliban reveal that older commanders, many of whom fought the Soviets, often see the current situation as the latest phase in a long and chaotic power struggle. But a younger generation is more influenced by the jihadi or takfiri hardline ideology closer to that of al-Qaida and see their struggle as part of a global war against the west.

Overlaying this web of allegiances, calculation of interest, and ideological and generational difference are lines of loyalty to men such as Hekmatyar in the north-east, the clan of veteran warlord Jalalauddin Haqqani in the east and to the core of the Taliban who seized power in 1996 and are now based in Pakistan.

Even the last are by no means united. Western and Afghan intelligence sources in Kabul describe feuds and disputes over strategy and ideology among the Taliban higher command. There are fierce arguments over the justification of suicide bombing or attacks on aid workers. One commander, interviewed indirectly, said he condemned killing Afghans. Another justified the deaths of "hypocrite collaborators".

Accordingly, in some instances, participation in the Taliban is a gesture of nationalist, or even local and regional, resistance, while, in others, it is ideological in character. Or, to put it differently, participants in the resistance often bring their pre-existing motivations to the Taliban, frequently hostility to the US/NATO occupation and the subordinates through which it governs, instead of the Taliban imposing a coherent, ideological perspective upon them. It therefore resists the sort of simplification imposed by Obama, McCain and US foreign policy analysts, a Cold War projection dictated by the imperatives of our culture, the need to characterize conflicts in simple shades of black and white, good and evil, not theirs. The fragmentation of the resistance is its greatest strength, and one that makes it virtually impossible to overcome through the indiscriminate application of military force.

Interestingly, both the 2004 and 2008 Democratic Party platforms promote an increased reliance upon the special operations forces that carried out yesterday's attack. The cross border incursions contemplated by Obama would invariably involve their use as well. Here, we encounter the romance associated with the Green Berets in the early stages of the Vietnam War, a sentimental belief that we can create a uniquely trained counterinsurgency force of a small number of people that can achieve great military and geopolitical successes without killing very many people. For awhile, RFK was seduced by it, until the facts on the ground in Southeast Asia disproved it.

Sadly, there is no elite constituency in this country (except, perhaps, in the Pentagon) for addressing Afghanistan and Pakistan through a policy of conscious deescalation. As Seamus Milne has observed, the consequences of a policy of continued escalation are dire, the spread of this violent conflict throughout the region. Pat Buchanan sees the peril as well:

"We have to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in," says Barack Obama of the U.S. war in Iraq. Wise counsel.

But is Barack taking his own advice? For he pledges to shift two U.S. combat brigades, 10,000 troops, out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, raising American forces in that country from 33,000 to 43,000.

Why does Barack think a surge of 10,000 troops will succeed in winning a war in which we have failed to prevail after seven years of fighting? How many more troops is he prepared to commit? Is the Obama commitment open-ended?

For, without any visible strategy for victory, Barack is recommending the same course LBJ took after the death of JFK. Johnson bombed North Vietnam in 1964, landed Marines in 1965 and built U.S. forces from 16,000 advisers on Nov. 22, 1963, to 525,000 troops in January of 1969.

Gradual escalation, which is exactly what Barack is recommending.

Not surprisingly, being a nationalist, Buchanan neglects to mention that it will also lead to a dramatic increase in civilian casualties as well. Milne, however, has suggested a rational alternative:

The only way to end the war is the withdrawal of foreign troops as part of a political settlement negotiated with all the significant players in the country, including the Taliban, and guaranteed by the regional powers and neighbouring states. A large majority of Afghans say they back negotiations with the Taliban, even in western-conducted opinion polls. The Taliban themselves insist they will only talk once foreign troops have withdrawn. If that were the only obstacle, it could surely be choreographed as a parallel process. But given the scale of commitments made by the US and Nato, the fire of the Afghan war seems bound to spread further.

Down this road lies the prospect of collective security that could reduce attacks upon Americans, and diminish, if not eliminate, the prospect of future Islamic fundamentalist violence within the US. Conversely, increased militarization increases the risk that we will experience such attacks in the near future.

Labels: "War on Terror", 9/11, Afghanistan, American Empire, Barack Obama, NATO

The United Nations confirms that 90 people, including 60 children, were killed as a result of a US/NATO airstrike last Friday in Herat province. I guess that, in a perverse way, you could say that the US and NATO honored the service of those 10 French troops killed a few day earlier.

I have perused the New York Times, the Guardian and the Independent, over the last several days, and encountered few articles about the incident beyond those generated by wire services. Interestingly, the Times took the most interest, although all emphasized the Afghan government response, a demand for a formal treaty authorizing the presence of NATO forces and the firing of two Afghan generals involved in the operation, than they did the incident itself.

Apparently, the media assumes that, for us, the lives of Afghans are relatively insignificant in comparison to larger geopolitical concerns, especially when it appears that one of our surrogates is trying to slip the leash. As I said in May 2007:

One wonders if NATO is subjecting the Afghans to the kinds of indiscriminate, violent brutalities that occupation forces have inflicted upon people so often in the past when it is no longer possible to evade recognition of defeat.

I don't think that we have to wonder about this anymore. As reported by lenin, the number of monthly airstrikes in Afghanistan has increased from about 500 a month last summer to over 2000 a month now. He also astutely observes that, if elected, Obama will receive favorable responses to requests for more troops from other countries. He additionally informs us that progressives, whatever that means, appear to be supportive of such a course.

Sadly, there are few who recognize that we can't get out of Iraq by trading off the lives of Afghans. Seamus Milne is one of them, as he recently confronted the pervasive myth that Afghanistan is the good war in contrast to the bad one in Iraq:

The original aims of the invasion, it will be recalled, were the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and the destruction of al-Qaida in the aftermath of 9/11. None of those aims has been achieved. Instead, the US and its friends brought back to power an alliance of brutal and corrupt warlords, gave them new identities as democrats with phoney elections, and drove the Taliban and al-Qaida leaderships over the border into Pakistan.

Far from reducing the threat of terrorism, this crucible of the war on terror has simply spread it around the region, bringing forth an increasingly potent campaign of resistance and giving a new lease of life to a revamped Taliban as a champion of Pashtun nationalism. And as mission creep has detached the Afghan war from its original declared target of al-Qaida - let alone the claims made about women's rights, which have been going into grim reverse again in much of the country under Nato tutelage - it has morphed into the kind of war of "civilisation" evoked by Sarkozy and Browne, a certain recipe for conflict without end. No wonder British politicians have talked about digging in for decades.

I concur with his pessimistic assessment of the future:

The only way to end the war is the withdrawal of foreign troops as part of a political settlement negotiated with all the significant players in the country, including the Taliban, and guaranteed by the regional powers and neighbouring states. A large majority of Afghans say they back negotiations with the Taliban, even in western-conducted opinion polls. The Taliban themselves insist they will only talk once foreign troops have withdrawn. If that were the only obstacle, it could surely be choreographed as a parallel process. But given the scale of commitments made by the US and Nato, the fire of the Afghan war seems bound to spread further.

Milne cannot, however, bring himself to say the unmentionable. US policies in Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s exploded in Pennsylvania and New York City on 9/11. Is it possible that something similar will happen again? As long as Americans retain an alarming complacency about killing people in other countries, I would have to say that the answer to this question is yes.

Labels: "War on Terror", 9/11, Afghanistan, Air War, American Empire, Mainstream Media, NATO

In October of 2001, I participated in a protest, along with about 30 other people, against the US invasion of Afghanistan. We marched along Russell Boulevard in Davis, California, passing by people entering the stadium to watch the UC Davis Aggies play football. They either ignored us or looked at us as if we were freaks.

At least, at that time, there was a plausible pretense that the war was about al-Qaeda and getting the people responsible for 9/11. No longer. On Monday, 10 French peacekeepers were killed in an insurgent attack of unknown origin, although there is a report that they were actually killed by NATO air support which NATO denies. Upon hearing of the French deaths, my immediate reaction was, oh, no, NATO and the US are going to launch some airstrikes to kill a bunch of people so as to look like they are doing something about it.

Which is, of course, exactly what happened:

A US-led operation in western Afghanistan has killed 76 civilians, including 50 children and 19 women, according to claims from the Afghan interior ministry.

But the death toll has been challenged by US forces, who said only 30 people, all of them Taliban fighters, lost their lives in today's air strikes.

Another Afghan government department, the defence ministry, said five civilians and 25 insurgents died in the operation in Shindand district in Herat province.

If the figure of 76 civilians is proved correct, it would be one of the largest civilian losses of life since the US-led operation against the Taliban began in 2001.

An Afghan interior ministry spokesman said that the civilians had been killed by "accident", but that it was sending investigators to find out how the tragedy occurred.

This incident follows immediately upon the heels of earlier reports that 20 out of 30 alleged Taliban insurgents killed by US airstrikes in the province of Laghman were actually civilians, again mostly women and children.

For more background on what is happening here, please consider reading my post of August 4th entitled People in White. Taking the indiscriminate killing of Korean peasants and refugees by the US during the Korean War as an example, it explores the question as to why the US has perpetually killed large numbers of civilians during its military interventions since World War II.

Domestically, the political alternatives are dim. Obama wants to take troops out of Iraq, so that he can put more troops in Afghanistan. That's the choice that we have in this election, a choice between a Republican candidate who wants to make killing Iraqis his priority, and a Democratic opponent who wants to emphasize killing Afghans. Will the US ever pull out of the killing fields of the Middle East and Central Asia during my lifetime? Only if forced to do so.

Labels: "War on Terror", Afghanistan, Air War, American Empire, Barack Obama, NATO

Georgia invades South Ossetia:

Georgia launched a major military offensive Friday to retake the breakaway province of South Ossetia, prompting Moscow to send tanks into the region in a furious response that threatens to engulf Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally, and Russia in all-out war.

Hundreds were reported dead in the worst outbreak of hostilities since the province won defacto independence in a war against Georgia that ended in 1992. Witnesses said the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali was devastated.

"I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars," said Lyudmila Ostayeva, 50, who had fled with her family to Dzhava, a village near the border with Russia. "It's impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged."

And the Russians respond:

The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday afternoon that it would protect Russian citizens in the territory and Russian peacekeepers who came under fire in Tskhinvali.

“The Georgian leadership has unleashed a dirty adventure,” the ministry said in a statement, posted on its Web site. “The blood shed in South Ossetia will remain on the conscience of these people and their entourage. We will not allow anyone to do harm to our peacekeepers and citizens of the Russian Federation.”

But are Georgians solely responsible for this dirty adventure? One wonders, especially in light of this passage from the Associated Press article, a fact conveniently omitted from New York Times coverage:

More than 1,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers were at the base last month to teach combat skills to Georgian troops. Georgia has about 2,000 troops in Iraq, making it the third-largest contributor to coalition forces after the U.S. and Britain.

The White House on Friday urged Russia and Georgia to peacefully resolve their dispute over South Ossetia.

"We urge restraint on all sides — that violence would be curtailed and that direct dialogue could ensue in order to help resolve their differences," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.

Curiously, the US is not capable of condemning a Georgian invasion and Guernica like air attack upon Tskhinvali, but then, that would be expecting a lot after US Marines just got done training Georgian forces. Instead, the White House just urges restraint, which is what it usually does when an ally has launched an attack and the other side moves to defend itself.

The Russians have been angry for quite awhile about proposals to admit Georgia into NATO. Now, Georgian troops have attacked South Ossetia after having been trained by the US. The Russians no doubt believe, with good reason, that the US greenlighted the invasion. If I were Georgian, I'd be very concerned, because it is probable that the Russians are about to teach them a terrible lesson about the consequences of hubris.

Labels: American Empire, Georgia, NATO, Occupation of Iraq, Russia

Amazing. Generals from five NATO countries advocate the use of nuclear weapons and the mass slaughter of civilians to prevent the proliferation nuclear weapons:

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.

Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a "grand strategy" to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".

The manifesto has been written following discussions with active commanders and policymakers, many of whom are unable or unwilling to publicly air their views. It has been presented to the Pentagon in Washington and to Nato's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, over the past 10 days. The proposals are likely to be discussed at a Nato summit in Bucharest in April.

"The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible," the authors argued in the 150-page blueprint for urgent reform of western military strategy and structures. "The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

The morality of such a proposal is, of course, appalling. The existing nuclear powers abrogating to themselves the right to use nuclear weapons against the peoples of other countries to stop them from obtaining nuclear weapons themselves. Of course, as has been recently demonstrated with Iran, a country doesn't actually have to be attempting to develop nuclear weapons, or obtaining them from elsewhere, but merely accused of doing so. Strangely, the article describes such a policy as part of a larger root and branch reform of NATO. Sort of like, I guess, how Hindenburg and the Nazis, with some behind the scenes help from the Soviets, reformed the defensive Reichswehr into the first strike capability of the Wehrmacht.

It is essentially the genocide option. Bin Laden and al Qaeda are maligned, and justifiably so, for launching attacks upon the US that resulted in the deaths of about 3,000 people, and yet US and European military strategists are now proposing the right to kill tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, to enforce nuclear non-proliferation. Predictably, the authors of the report fail to mention that one of the primary reasons that there is no realistic prospect of a nuclear free world is because countries with such a capability have displayed no willingness to reduce their arsenals, much less eliminate them.

Furthermore, they, again, quite predictably, refuse to acknowledge that US threats against countries without nuclear weapons, such as Iran and North Korea, are leading countries to conclude that the only deterrent to US conventional military force is a nuclear one. US insistence that countries around the world acquiesce to US military and economic coercion is a major source of global instability that contributes to nuclear proliferation, and an alternative that advises US policymakers to stop using the war on terror to facilitate imperial expansion is not even recognized.

If one engages in the morally dubious enterprise of engaging the policy on its merits, it quickly reveals itself as ridiculous. A nuclear first strike upon any country would result in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of deaths, initiate an open-ended conflict with the likelihood of killling many thousands more, and present the country who initiated the strike with the necessity of killing millions more in the country that it attacked through more nuclear and conventional attacks in an effort to bring the conflict to a conclusion, assuming, of course, that other countries did not intervene.

Or, to describe it in less alarmist language, the policy assumes that the country engaged in the first use of nuclear weapons possesses the power to decide when to initiate the conflict, and when to bring it to a conclusion. One need not know very much history to immediately perceive that such arrogance is without any factual foundation whatsoever.

Basically, as noted by Jorge Hirsch, any country launching a first strike will be immediately elevated to the status of global pariah. Domestically, any country engaged in such a strike will confront significant social unrest to the extent that the ability to maintain public order would be lost for quite awhile, if not permanently. The emergence of underground domestic groups, organized around the principle of violent resistance (one hesitates to call them terrorist in this context), is highly probable.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, NATO, Nuclear Attack, War with Iran

From yesterday's New York Times:

Amid a continuing flurry of reports about civilian casualties in Afghanistan, the leader of a tribal council in Farah Province said Saturday that 108 noncombatants had been killed Friday in a NATO airstrike.

The report was denied by a NATO spokesman and could not immediately be confirmed from other sources.

“NATO soldiers, along with the Afghan National Army and people from the national police, came to Shewan Village and told us they needed to search three or four houses,” the tribal chief, Hajji Khudai Rahm, said in a telephone interview. “As we talked, a firefight began and 20 houses were destroyed when the planes dropped bombs.

“We counted 108 bodies, including women and children,” he said. “Fourteen local policemen were among the dead. Right now, things are calm, but people are digging through the rubble to find more bodies.”

Also, Reuters reported that residents and officials in Kunar Province said 36 civilians had been killed in recent airstrikes, 11 of them on Thursday during a bombardment, and 25 more on Friday as they attended a funeral for the deceased.

Beyond the obvious humanitarian concerns that we should have about such atrocities, we must ask, how long before the blowback reaches the continental US?

Labels: "War on Terror", Afghanistan, Air War, American Empire, NATO, Sadomasochism

UPDATE 2: According to the Guardian and The Independent, the number of civilian dead in Hyderabad has been reduced to 45. First, the Guardian account:

Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, has called for an investigation into reports that 45 innocent Afghans were killed in a Nato-led air assault in the south of the country, the latest in a series of attacks which an incensed public is calling "civilian massacres".

Clashes began on Friday when Taliban fighters ambushed a joint US-Afghan military convoy, which was attempting to clear the Helmand river of Taliban positions.

The international forces, including British troops who suffered fatalities on Saturday and yesterday, then called in air strikes on houses in the village of Hyderabad, in Helmand's Gereshk district where they said insurgents were sheltering.

Despite ongoing fighting, an Afghan team of investigators was able to establish that 62 Taliban were also killed during the attack, said Dur Ali Shah, the mayor of Gereshk, and Muhammad Hussein Andewal, the provincial police chief.

Hyderabad resident Muhammad Khan told the Associated Press that the air strikes killed seven members of his family, including his brother and five of his brother's children. A "lot of dead bodies" were buried on Saturday, he said by telephone.

The International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) admitted some innocent villagers had died but denied the toll reported by the two Afghan officials.

"We had evidence of less than one dozen apparent civilians who were killed in that engagement," said Major John Thomas, spokesman for Isaf, the Nato-led force tasked with bringing stability to Afghanistan.

Isaf has repeatedly lamented the Taliban's tactic of dispersing among the Afghan population, blaming them for innocent loss of life.

"The civilian dead that we surveyed were in a trench line, in an enemy position, where the Taliban were using heavy machine guns, mortars, small arms and rocket propelled grenades," he said.

While Mr Karzai has condemned the Taliban for using human shields, he has also said the foreign soldiers consider Afghan lives "cheap".

For completists, here is the one in The Independent.

UPDATE 1: According to the Washington Post, the death toll from the air strikes in the city of Hyderabad in Helmand province may now be 100 or more:

Just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised international forces for being "careless," Afghan officials reported Saturday that possibly 100 or more civilians had been killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault.

The battle in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, which was prompted by a Taliban ambush, began Friday night and continued into Saturday morning, Afghan officials said. It ended with international forces bombing several compounds in the remote village of Hyderabad.

"More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there," said Wali Khan, a member of parliament who represents the area. "The people are already unhappy with the government. But these kinds of killings of civilians will cause people to revolt against the government."

Another parliament member from Helmand, Mahmood Anwar, said that the death toll was close to 100 and that the dead included women and children. "Very few Taliban were killed," he said.

Spokesmen for the international forces acknowledged that civilians were killed in the battle, though they disputed the numbers. Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO force, said the civilian death toll was "an order of magnitude less" than what Afghan officials reported.

Thomas said U.S. ground forces helping to carry out a NATO mission had come under fire by Taliban insurgents using small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Thomas said the troops responded by firing on insurgents who were shooting from a compound and a network of trenches. U.S. helicopters and NATO bombers were later brought in for support, he said.

Thomas said troops returned to the area after the battle and found what appeared to be civilian bodies among the dead insurgents in the trenches. "This confirms for us again that militants are willing to fire from among civilians," he said.

"We are deeply saddened by any loss of innocent lives," U.S. Army Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition forces spokesman, said in a statement. "Insurgents are continuing their tactic of using women and children as human shields in close combat."

Karzai has not accepted that argument, repeatedly criticizing international troops for not doing more to protect noncombatants. After a series of particularly deadly incidents in June that Karzai blamed on poor coordination, he told reporters that international troops would have to "work the way we ask them to work."

A war to eliminate al-Qaeda was transformed into one to eradicate the Taliban. This is the inevitable consequence, as will be our eventual defeat. We are not far from NATO spokespeople describing much of the populace of the countryside as Taliban, because, how else to justify the escalation in violence being used to such horrible effect? One naively wonders, will the perpetrators of these attacks some day be brought before The Hague? Doubtful, of course. As already mentioned below, people angered by these killings have other means to register their displeasure, and we should anticipate that they will do so.

ORIGINAL POST: It seems to get worse and worse with each passing day:

Anti-Taliban air strikes by US- and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan killed 65 villagers including children, a local official said Saturday, amid growing anger here over civilian deaths.

The toll from Friday's operation in the southern province of Helmand given by a district mayor was the highest since 2001, when US-led forces used heavy bombing in their campaign to drive the extremist Taliban from power.

It was impossible to independently verify the number of civilians killed in Girishk district, as the area is remote and difficult to access, but local residents also claimed that scores had been killed and wounded.

Of course, this is just the worst of several such incidents in recent weeks, such as this one and this one, and, back in March, this one. It is quite remarkable that the Europeans are so willingly participating with us in these killings, this apparent effort to punish provincial Afghans for their unwillingness to support the suppression of the Taliban.

Someday, a tireless historian will document how NATO was transformed from a military alliance created for the purpose of confronting the prospect of Russian armour spilling into West Germany through the Fulda Gap into one conducting nearly daily airstrikes in Helmand province reminiscent of the Condor Legion's assault upon Guernica. One wonders how long this can continue without violent blowback in Europe, and, yes, even here in the US. Perhaps, this is what the British are experiencing today.

Labels: "War on Terror", Afghanistan, Air War, American Empire, NATO, Sadomasochism

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin condemned the unilateral global policies of the US and its European allies in a speech reminscent of Hugo Chavez's at the United Nations last September ("We are Men and Women of the South"). Arizona Senator John McCain, one of the most aggressive militarists in recent American history, had a front row seat. With the Pentagon preparing for air strikes against nuclear research facilities in Iran, the speech, like Chavez's, is a significant one:

Speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy

February 11, 2007

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Thank you very much dear Madam Federal Chancellor, Mr Teltschik, ladies and gentlemen!

I am truly grateful to be invited to such a representative conference that has assembled politicians, military officials, entrepreneurs and experts from more than 40 nations.

This conference’s structure allows me to avoid excessive politeness and the need to speak in roundabout, pleasant but empty diplomatic terms. This conference’s format will allow me to say what I really think about international security problems. And if my comments seem unduly polemical, pointed or inexact to our colleagues, then I would ask you not to get angry with me. After all, this is only a conference. And I hope that after the first two or three minutes of my speech Mr Teltschik will not turn on the red light over there.

Therefore. It is well known that international security comprises much more than issues relating to military and political stability. It involves the stability of the global economy, overcoming poverty, economic security and developing a dialogue between civilisations.

This universal, indivisible character of security is expressed as the basic principle that “security for one is security for all”. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out: “When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.”

These words remain topical today. Incidentally, the theme of our conference – global crises, global responsibility – exemplifies this.

Only two decades ago the world was ideologically and economically divided and it was the huge strategic potential of two superpowers that ensured global security.

This global stand-off pushed the sharpest economic and social problems to the margins of the international community’s and the world’s agenda. And, just like any war, the Cold War left us with live ammunition, figuratively speaking. I am referring to ideological stereotypes, double standards and other typical aspects of Cold War bloc thinking.

The unipolar world that had been proposed after the Cold War did not take place either.

The history of humanity certainly has gone through unipolar periods and seen aspirations to world supremacy. And what hasn’t happened in world history?

However, what is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.

It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.

And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.

Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.

I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today’s – and precisely in today’s – world, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation.

Along with this, what is happening in today’s world – and we just started to discuss this – is a tentative to introduce precisely this concept into international affairs, the concept of a unipolar world.

And with which results?

Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centres of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. Mr Teltschik mentioned this very gently. And no less people perish in these conflicts – even more are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!

Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.

We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?

In international relations we increasingly see the desire to resolve a given question according to so-called issues of political expediency, based on the current political climate.

And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasise this – no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.

The force’s dominance inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, significantly new threats – though they were also well-known before – have appeared, and today threats such as terrorism have taken on a global character.

I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.

And we must proceed by searching for a reasonable balance between the interests of all participants in the international dialogue. Especially since the international landscape is so varied and changes so quickly – changes in light of the dynamic development in a whole number of countries and regions.

Madam Federal Chancellor already mentioned this. The combined GDP measured in purchasing power parity of countries such as India and China is already greater than that of the United States. And a similar calculation with the GDP of the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – surpasses the cumulative GDP of the EU. And according to experts this gap will only increase in the future.

There is no reason to doubt that the economic potential of the new centres of global economic growth will inevitably be converted into political influence and will strengthen multipolarity.

In connection with this the role of multilateral diplomacy is significantly increasing. The need for principles such as openness, transparency and predictability in politics is uncontested and the use of force should be a really exceptional measure, comparable to using the death penalty in the judicial systems of certain states.

However, today we are witnessing the opposite tendency, namely a situation in which countries that forbid the death penalty even for murderers and other, dangerous criminals are airily participating in military operations that are difficult to consider legitimate. And as a matter of fact, these conflicts are killing people – hundreds and thousands of civilians!

But at the same time the question arises of whether we should be indifferent and aloof to various internal conflicts inside countries, to authoritarian regimes, to tyrants, and to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction? As a matter of fact, this was also at the centre of the question that our dear colleague Mr Lieberman asked the Federal Chancellor. If I correctly understood your question (addressing Mr Lieberman), then of course it is a serious one! Can we be indifferent observers in view of what is happening? I will try to answer your question as well: of course not.

But do we have the means to counter these threats? Certainly we do. It is sufficient to look at recent history. Did not our country have a peaceful transition to democracy? Indeed, we witnessed a peaceful transformation of the Soviet regime – a peaceful transformation! And what a regime! With what a number of weapons, including nuclear weapons! Why should we start bombing and shooting now at every available opportunity? Is it the case when without the threat of mutual destruction we do not have enough political culture, respect for democratic values and for the law?

I am convinced that the only mechanism that can make decisions about using military force as a last resort is the Charter of the United Nations. And in connection with this, either I did not understand what our colleague, the Italian Defence Minister, just said or what he said was inexact. In any case, I understood that the use of force can only be legitimate when the decision is taken by NATO, the EU, or the UN. If he really does think so, then we have different points of view. Or I didn’t hear correctly. The use of force can only be considered legitimate if the decision is sanctioned by the UN. And we do not need to substitute NATO or the EU for the UN. When the UN will truly unite the forces of the international community and can really react to events in various countries, when we will leave behind this disdain for international law, then the situation will be able to change. Otherwise the situation will simply result in a dead end, and the number of serious mistakes will be multiplied. Along with this, it is necessary to make sure that international law have a universal character both in the conception and application of its norms.

And one must not forget that democratic political actions necessarily go along with discussion and a laborious decision-making process.

Dear ladies and gentlemen!

The potential danger of the destabilisation of international relations is connected with obvious stagnation in the disarmament issue.

Russia supports the renewal of dialogue on this important question.

It is important to conserve the international legal framework relating to weapons destruction and therefore ensure continuity in the process of reducing nuclear weapons.

Together with the United States of America we agreed to reduce our nuclear strategic missile capabilities to up to 1700-2000 nuclear warheads by 31 December 2012. Russia intends to strictly fulfil the obligations it has taken on. We hope that our partners will also act in a transparent way and will refrain from laying aside a couple of hundred superfluous nuclear warheads for a rainy day. And if today the new American Defence Minister declares that the United States will not hide these superfluous weapons in warehouse or, as one might say, under a pillow or under the blanket, then I suggest that we all rise and greet this declaration standing. It would be a very important declaration.

Russia strictly adheres to and intends to further adhere to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as well as the multilateral supervision regime for missile technologies. The principles incorporated in these documents are universal ones.

In connection with this I would like to recall that in the 1980s the USSR and the United States signed an agreement on destroying a whole range of small- and medium-range missiles but these documents do not have a universal character.

Today many other countries have these missiles, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea, India, Iran, Pakistan and Israel. Many countries are working on these systems and plan to incorporate them as part of their weapons arsenals. And only the United States and Russia bear the responsibility to not create such weapons systems.

It is obvious that in these conditions we must think about ensuring our own security.

At the same time, it is impossible to sanction the appearance of new, destabilising high-tech weapons. Needless to say it refers to measures to prevent a new area of confrontation, especially in outer space. Star wars is no longer a fantasy – it is a reality. In the middle of the 1980s our American partners were already able to intercept their own satellite.

In Russia’s opinion, the militarisation of outer space could have unpredictable consequences for the international community, and provoke nothing less than the beginning of a nuclear era. And we have come forward more than once with initiatives designed to prevent the use of weapons in outer space.

Today I would like to tell you that we have prepared a project for an agreement on the prevention of deploying weapons in outer space. And in the near future it will be sent to our partners as an official proposal. Let’s work on this together.

Plans to expand certain elements of the anti-missile defence system to Europe cannot help but disturb us. Who needs the next step of what would be, in this case, an inevitable arms race? I deeply doubt that Europeans themselves do.

Missile weapons with a range of about five to eight thousand kilometres that really pose a threat to Europe do not exist in any of the so-called problem countries. And in the near future and prospects, this will not happen and is not even foreseeable. And any hypothetical launch of, for example, a North Korean rocket to American territory through western Europe obviously contradicts the laws of ballistics. As we say in Russia, it would be like using the right hand to reach the left ear.

And here in Germany I cannot help but mention the pitiable condition of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

The Adapted Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed in 1999. It took into account a new geopolitical reality, namely the elimination of the Warsaw bloc. Seven years have passed and only four states have ratified this document, including the Russian Federation.

NATO countries openly declared that they will not ratify this treaty, including the provisions on flank restrictions (on deploying a certain number of armed forces in the flank zones), until Russia removed its military bases from Georgia and Moldova. Our army is leaving Georgia, even according to an accelerated schedule. We resolved the problems we had with our Georgian colleagues, as everybody knows. There are still 1,500 servicemen in Moldova that are carrying out peacekeeping operations and protecting warehouses with ammunition left over from Soviet times. We constantly discuss this issue with Mr Solana and he knows our position. We are ready to further work in this direction.

But what is happening at the same time? Simultaneously the so-called flexible frontline American bases with up to five thousand men in each. It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfil the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all.

I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?

The stones and concrete blocks of the Berlin Wall have long been distributed as souvenirs. But we should not forget that the fall of the Berlin Wall was possible thanks to a historic choice – one that was also made by our people, the people of Russia – a choice in favour of democracy, freedom, openness and a sincere partnership with all the members of the big European family.

And now they are trying to impose new dividing lines and walls on us – these walls may be virtual but they are nevertheless dividing, ones that cut through our continent. And is it possible that we will once again require many years and decades, as well as several generations of politicians, to dissemble and dismantle these new walls?

Dear ladies and gentlemen!

We are unequivocally in favour of strengthening the regime of non-proliferation. The present international legal principles allow us to develop technologies to manufacture nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes. And many countries with all good reasons want to create their own nuclear energy as a basis for their energy independence. But we also understand that these technologies can be quickly transformed into nuclear weapons.

This creates serious international tensions. The situation surrounding the Iranian nuclear programme acts as a clear example. And if the international community does not find a reasonable solution for resolving this conflict of interests, the world will continue to suffer similar, destabilising crises because there are more threshold countries than simply Iran. We both know this. We are going to constantly fight against the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Last year Russia put forward the initiative to establish international centres for the enrichment of uranium. We are open to the possibility that such centres not only be created in Russia, but also in other countries where there is a legitimate basis for using civil nuclear energy. Countries that want to develop their nuclear energy could guarantee that they will receive fuel through direct participation in these centres. And the centres would, of course, operate under strict IAEA supervision.

The latest initiatives put forward by American President George W. Bush are in conformity with the Russian proposals. I consider that Russia and the USA are objectively and equally interested in strengthening the regime of the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their deployment. It is precisely our countries, with leading nuclear and missile capabilities, that must act as leaders in developing new, stricter non-proliferation measures. Russia is ready for such work. We are engaged in consultations with our American friends.

In general, we should talk about establishing a whole system of political incentives and economic stimuli whereby it would not be in states’ interests to establish their own capabilities in the nuclear fuel cycle but they would still have the opportunity to develop nuclear energy and strengthen their energy capabilities.

In connection with this I shall talk about international energy cooperation in more detail. Madam Federal Chancellor also spoke about this briefly – she mentioned, touched on this theme. In the energy sector Russia intends to create uniform market principles and transparent conditions for all. It is obvious that energy prices must be determined by the market instead of being the subject of political speculation, economic pressure or blackmail.

We are open to cooperation. Foreign companies participate in all our major energy projects. According to different estimates, up to 26 percent of the oil extraction in Russia – and please think about this figure – up to 26 percent of the oil extraction in Russia is done by foreign capital. Try, try to find me a similar example where Russian business participates extensively in key economic sectors in western countries. Such examples do not exist! There are no such examples.

I would also recall the parity of foreign investments in Russia and those Russia makes abroad. The parity is about fifteen to one. And here you have an obvious example of the openness and stability of the Russian economy.

Economic security is the sector in which all must adhere to uniform principles. We are ready to compete fairly.

For that reason more and more opportunities are appearing in the Russian economy. Experts and our western partners are objectively evaluating these changes. As such, Russia’s OECD sovereign credit rating improved and Russia passed from the fourth to the third group. And today in Munich I would like to use this occasion to thank our German colleagues for their help in the above decision.

Furthermore. As you know, the process of Russia joining the WTO has reached its final stages. I would point out that during long, difficult talks we heard words about freedom of speech, free trade, and equal possibilities more than once but, for some reason, exclusively in reference to the Russian market.

And there is still one more important theme that directly affects global security. Today many talk about the struggle against poverty. What is actually happening in this sphere? On the one hand, financial resources are allocated for programmes to help the world’s poorest countries – and at times substantial financial resources. But to be honest -- and many here also know this – linked with the development of that same donor country’s companies. And on the other hand, developed countries simultaneously keep their agricultural subsidies and limit some countries’ access to high-tech products.

And let’s say things as they are – one hand distributes charitable help and the other hand not only preserves economic backwardness but also reaps the profits thereof. The increasing social tension in depressed regions inevitably results in the growth of radicalism, extremism, feeds terrorism and local conflicts. And if all this happens in, shall we say, a region such as the Middle East where there is increasingly the sense that the world at large is unfair, then there is the risk of global destabilisation.

It is obvious that the world’s leading countries should see this threat. And that they should therefore build a more democratic, fairer system of global economic relations, a system that would give everyone the chance and the possibility to develop.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, speaking at the Conference on Security Policy, it is impossible not to mention the activities of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). As is well-known, this organisation was created to examine all – I shall emphasise this – all aspects of security: military, political, economic, humanitarian and, especially, the relations between these spheres.

What do we see happening today? We see that this balance is clearly destroyed. People are trying to transform the OSCE into a vulgar instrument designed to promote the foreign policy interests of one or a group of countries. And this task is also being accomplished by the OSCE’s bureaucratic apparatus which is absolutely not connected with the state founders in any way. Decision-making procedures and the involvement of so-called non-governmental organisations are tailored for this task. These organisations are formally independent but they are purposefully financed and therefore under control.

According to the founding documents, in the humanitarian sphere the OSCE is designed to assist country members in observing international human rights norms at their request. This is an important task. We support this. But this does not mean interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, and especially not imposing a regime that determines how these states should live and develop.

It is obvious that such interference does not promote the development of democratic states at all. On the contrary, it makes them dependent and, as a consequence, politically and economically unstable.

We expect that the OSCE be guided by its primary tasks and build relations with sovereign states based on respect, trust and transparency.

Dear ladies and gentlemen!

In conclusion I would like to note the following. We very often – and personally, I very often – hear appeals by our partners, including our European partners, to the effect that Russia should play an increasingly active role in world affairs.

In connection with this I would allow myself to make one small remark. It is hardly necessary to incite us to do so. Russia is a country with a history that spans more than a thousand years and has practically always used the privilege to carry out an independent foreign policy.

We are not going to change this tradition today. At the same time, we are well aware of how the world has changed and we have a realistic sense of our own opportunities and potential. And of course we would like to interact with responsible and independent partners with whom we could work together in constructing a fair and democratic world order that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all.

Thank you for your attention.

Of course, Putin had his self-serving moments (for example, his criticism of the OSCE, which has played a prominent role in highlighting atrocious human rights violations by the Russians in Chechnya, and discerning readers can spot others), as will any national leader when speaking in public, but he clearly confronted the Bush Administration, and also challenged the Europeans: continue to facilitate unilateral US policies at your peril. Like Chavez, he deliberately made his remarks in a high profile appearance, in front of an institution influenced, if not dominated, by the US. For this reason, like Chavez's earlier speech in front of the United Nations, it will resonate globally. For Putin, as well as millions around the world, Iran is a red line that the US dare not cross.

Labels: American Empire, Disarmament, Europe, Hugo Chavez, NATO, United Nations, Vladimir Putin, War with Iran