The Progressive Response
Volume 8, Number 15
June 3, 2004
Editor: John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
| Foreign Policy In Focus | |
The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) as part of its Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. FPIF, a "Think Tank Without Walls," is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." FPIF is joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/, or email <feedback@fpif.org> to share your thoughts with us.
John Gershman, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) (online at www.irc-online.org) and co-director of FPIF. He can be contacted at <john@irc-online.org>.
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
BLACKMAIL EFFORTS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AT THE UN END IN FAILURE THIS TIME
By Ian WilliamsBUSH POLICIES MAKE TERRORISM A GROWTH INDUSTRY
By By R. Bruce St JohnSTACY SULLIVAN ON MILOSEVIC AND GENOCIDE
By Edward S. HermanTHE YUGOSLAVIAN FAIRY TALE
By George SzamuelyPRESIDENT BUSH’S MAY 24 SPEECH ON IRAQ: A CRITIQUE
By Stephen ZunesBUSH'S AIDS RELIEF PLAN WILL DELAY DRUGS, REWARD BIG PHARMA
By Jim Lobe
II. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-Takes
BLACKMAIL EFFORTS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AT THE UN END IN FAILURE THIS TIME
By Ian Williams
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0406blackmail.html).
On Wednesday, May19th, the U.S. delegation withdrew the “blackmail-the world” resolution that they had been trying to force to a vote in the Security Council, when they realized that there was a serious chance that other members may try to call Washington’s bluff. The resolution was to renew Resolution 1487, which in turn was to renew Resolution 1422, which sought to exempt U.S. military in UN peacekeeping forces from any chance of arrest and removal for trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
On previous occasions, the U.S. was prepared to veto every peacekeeping operation across the globe unless it got its way – which was an illustration for the rest of the world of how the unilateralist obsessions of the Pentagon gang in the Bush administration, and their envoy in the State Department John Bolton, could threaten world peace.
The resolution requested the ICC not to open proceedings against any current or former officials from “a contributing state nor a party to the Rome Statute” for a twelve month renewable period. However, the last twelve months have not been encouraging for the U.S. Ironically, supporters of the ICC used to suggest that it was unthinkable that U.S. military would be guilty of crimes against humanity, or that the U.S. would fail to deal with adequately.
Sadly, their argument--that the U.S. had little or nothing to fear from the court--does not ring so true anymore. The behavior of the U.S. military in Abu Ghraib and potentially in Afghanistan combined with the deaths and abuse of journalists suggest exactly the kind of culture of impunity that the ICC was set up to counter.
Faced with the American threat to veto peacekeeping in previous years, the British have led some of the Europeans into the “hold your nose and vote for the resolution” lobby. This time, with the images of battered bodies of dead Iraqis and the humiliated live ones fresh in the minds of the world, and indeed of Americans, is an opportune moment for the Europeans to make a stand.
(Ian Williams contributes frequently to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) on UN and international affairs.)
BUSH POLICIES MAKE TERRORISM A GROWTH INDUSTRY
By R. Bruce St John
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405terrorgrowth.html).
Bush administration policies in the war on terrorism mutated the global threat, mobilizing anti-U.S. sentiment. The crisis in Iraq, coupled with radical shifts in U.S. policy in the Middle East and elsewhere, gave extremists a new focus, allowing radical groups to widen their appeal among Muslims and others. A terrorism alarm sounds everyday somewhere in the world, canceling flights, closing embassies, killing people.
First, the Bush administration has steadfastly refused to define terrorism. In the Bush lexicon, terrorism is a catchall term for interpreting diverse conflicts, from separatist movements to paramilitary activity to arms and narcotics trafficking. The failure to define terrorism enabled the White House to label almost anybody opposed to its policies as a terrorist organization. Groups as diverse in structure and objectives as Peru’s Shining Path, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Basque Fatherland and Liberty, the Communist Party of the Philippines, and Hamas are on the State Department’s list of designated foreign terrorist organizations.
Early on, this approach served the White House well in its search for recruits in the war on terrorism. Opposition groups in countries whose support the U.S. deemed essential to winning the war were often labeled “terrorist” in an effort to curry support from host governments. But over time, the failure to define terrorism has become a real liability. The U.S. now has some 5 million names on its master terror watch list, people who are identified as terrorist or believed to represent a potential threat. By listing any terrorist from any terrorist organization, we create a problem, not a solution. We lose focus, and we jeopardize democratic values, trying to monitor that vast number of people. The size of this inclusive terror list also belies official statements that the real concern, al-Qaeda and its affiliates, are relatively small in number, a few hundred or thousand at most.
Related to the first factor is the Bush administration’s eager application of the al-Qaeda label to virtually any Islamic group threatening terrorist acts. Regional terrorist groups are invariably portrayed as having been co-opted by al-Qaeda and subject to its command and control. As a result, geographical and country specialists have been forced on the defensive. With the media focused on the global war on terrorism, the White House is not interested in the historical, political, economic, and cultural factors that shaped regional dissident groups. Take Southeast Asia as an example. All of the U.S.-designated terrorist groups in the region were founded long before al-Qaeda made its appearance. Some originated in the 1940s. Al-Qaeda wanna-bes are out there, often motivated by Bush administration policies, but al-Qaeda isn’t everywhere.
Third, the Bush administration has come to see Arab-Muslim terrorism as a phenomenon quite separate from its causes. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute remains the central issue in the Middle East, and until Washington returns to the role of honest broker, there is no hope for a peaceful resolution. The Bush administration has largely accepted the Israeli version of the intifada, viewing the violence of the Palestinians as “terror” and the inevitable Israeli response as “legitimate self-defense.” As a result, both sides are trapped in a downward spiral of violence and retaliation. White House support for Israel’s policy of extrajudicial killings, which undermines U.S. initiatives to promote human rights, democracy, and civil society in the region, only compounds the problem.
(Ronald Bruce St John, an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, has published widely on Middle Eastern issues. His latest book on the region is Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife(Penn Press, 2002).)
(In February of this year, FPIF reprinted a piece by Stacy Sullivan (http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0402milosevic.html) on Slobodan Milosevic’s trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). That article prompted responses from Ed Herman and George Szameuly on the ICTY as well as political developments in the Balkans in the 1990s. Excerpts of their contributions are below (the complete versions of their pieces are available online at (http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405ssgenocide.html for Herman’s and at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405fairytale.html for Szamuely’s). We encourage continued debate and dialogue on this issue. Please send your feedback to john@irc-online.org).
STACY SULLIVAN ON MILOSEVIC AND GENOCIDE
By Edward S. Herman
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405ssgenocide.html.)
Liberals and much of the left have been badly bamboozled on recent Yugoslav history and the role of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, with former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic having been hyper-demonized and the history of the Balkans rewritten to fit what Lenard Cohen calls the “paradise lost/loathsome leaders” paradigm. But numerous serious scholars have rejected this history and regard the U.S. and other NATO powers as heavily responsible for the disasters since 1990. Lord David Owen’s Balkan Odyssey, and his testimony before the Tribunal, make it very clear that Milosevic was eager for a settlement of the Bosnian wars well before the Dayton agreement in 1995, and that he regularly had major conflicts of interest with the Bosnian Serbs. It is clear from Owens, as well as from other experts that the U.S. government played a key role in the failure of the 1991 Vance plan, the 1992 Cutileiro plan, and the 1993-94 Vance-Owen and Owen Stoltenberg plans, as the Clinton administration armed the Bosnian Muslims, and later the KLA in Kosovo, while encouraging them both to hope (and work) for U.S.-NATO military intervention on their behalf.
Milosevic was not indicted along with Mladic and Karadzic in 1995 for the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in prior years, so the belated attempt in The Hague in 2002 to make him responsible for those killings suggests that UN war crimes tribunal chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte did this because she saw that the killings in Kosovo fell far short of anything she could pass off as “genocide.” Even establishment spokespersons like retired U.S. Air Force General Charles Boyd and UN official Cedric Thornberry have stressed that the Bosnian killings in the years 1991-1995 were by no means confined to those by Bosnian Serbs: the Croatians and Bosnian Muslims, the latter supplemented by thousands of imported mujahideen, slaughtered many thousands of their ethnic enemies in the area. But the Tribunal, organized, funded, and essentially controlled by the U.S. and Britain, was only interested in pursuing NATO targets, and these were almost exclusively Serbs.
There is now substantial literature that makes a strong case that the Tribunal is not only a crudely political arm of NATO, but that it is a “rogue court.” As a political arm, it regularly cleared the ground for NATO military actions and since that victory the Tribunal has worked hard to prove that the NATO war was just.
The Milosevic trial is the main vehicle for proving NATO’s virtue, though it has been a major flop in proving its case and maintaining an image of fairness and justice. The latter problem was nicely illustrated in the Tribunal’s recent privileged treatment of the U.S. government and Wesley Clark. Thus, the U.S. government was given the right to demand a closed session of the court and to redact testimony; Clark was allowed to communicate with outsiders and obtain and insert into the record a truth testimonial from Bill Clinton, in straightforward violation of Judge May’s trial rules.
(Ed Herman is an economist and media analyst. He has a regular “Fog Watch” column in Z magazine. With Philip Hammond, he co-edited Degraded Capability: the Media and the Kosovo Crisis (Pluto: 2000).)
THE YUGOSLAVIAN FAIRY TALE
By George Szamuely
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405fairytale.html.)
It is always fascinating to watch the eagerness with which so-called progressives unquestioningly accept an official history full of virtuous U.S. officials and villainous savages trying the patience of the peaceful, law-abiding Great Powers. Case in point: the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and Stacy Sullivan’s recent account of them in Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0402milosevic.html). The actual sequence of events that caused those wars is very different from the reporting of the establishment media and, unfortunately, much of the progressive media. According to this story, the wars of the past decade were all started by the Serbs, who sought to destroy Yugoslavia and turn it into a mono-ethnic Greater Serbia.
The West, well-meaning and indecisive as ever, stood by unwilling to intervene as the Serbs went on their rampage to carve out lands belonging to the other nations of Yugoslavia and drive out all non-Serbs. Not until the United States was finally moved to act to bring the Serbs to heel was peace and independence possible. And, thanks to the efforts of the United States, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia came into being to ensure that there would be no impunity for Serb leaders and their campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Today, tribunal judges supposedly toil away on behalf of the war crimes’ victims, painstakingly trying to balance judicial fairness against the need to ensure that such things never happen again.
The problem is that not one part of this fairy tale is true. The wars in Yugoslavia started with the electoral triumph of anti-Communist nationalists in Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia in the country’s first multiparty elections in 1990. Slovenia and Croatia, with encouragement from abroad, particularly Germany and the United States, pushed for independence right away, in violation of the constitution of Yugoslavia. Serbia’s position, in accord both with the Yugoslav constitution and with democratic aspirations, was that the constituent nations of Yugoslavia could neither be forced to stay nor forced to leave Yugoslavia against their will.
U.S. policy in the Balkans was cynical and war-mongering. It seems strange that a journal of progressive opinion should unquestioningly accept the doctrine that small nations should simply accept the diktats of great powers. Nor should it unquestioningly accept its claims about humanitarian crises when even the most superficial survey of the historical record will show that it was the policies of the Great Powers that caused these crises. Finally, it is surprising that it unquestioningly accepts that a court largely funded and staffed by the very great powers that had caused so much havoc in Yugoslavia ($17 million in 2003 from the U.S. alone) should act as a disinterested impartial judicial body.
(George Szamuely, a writer based in New York City, was born in Hungary and educated in England. He has served as an associate at the Manhattan Institute, editor at Freedom House, film critic for Insight, research consultant at the Hudson Institute, and as a weekly columnist for the New York Press.)
PRESIDENT BUSH’S MAY 24 SPEECH ON IRAQ: A CRITIQUE
By Stephen Zunes
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405bushiraqspeech.html.)
The most striking element of President George W. Bush’s May 24th speech at the Army War College regarding the situation in Iraq was that it could come across as quite convincing as long as you agreed with the following assumptions:
Such assumptions, however, are extremely dubious.
Most Iraqis and other observers argue that it is the ongoing presence of American forces which is driving the insurgency and radicalizing elements of the diverse resistance to the U.S. occupation.
The claim by President Bush in his speech that he “sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security, not to stay as an occupying power” would ring hollow to the millions of Iraqis who knew that their country was no threat to America’s security and that--well over a year after the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime--U.S. troops remain in charge.
Similarly, his claim that “Our agenda…is freedom and independence, security and prosperity for the Iraqi people” will not be seen as credible by a nation that has seen the U.S. occupation bring war, chaos, repression, record unemployment, and a breakdown of basic services.
While most Iraqis presumably prefer a system which promotes individual freedom, they--like most peoples who have a history of suffering under foreign rule--place an even higher priority on national freedom. As a result, by contrasting the goals of Iraqis fighting U.S. occupation forces and the U.S. occupation simply as “one of tyranny and murder, the other of liberty and life” is a false dichotomy.
Despite repeated assertions to the contrary, the United States will not “transfer full sovereignty to a government of Iraqi citizens” on June 30. It appears that the “sovereign Iraqi government” the Bush Administration claims will assume power on that date will lack many of the attributes generally associated with a sovereign state. For example, the United States, not the Iraqi government, will continue to control Iraq’s security, including Iraqi police and military personnel. This interim Iraqi authority will not have the power to enact new legislation or overturn laws imposed during the U.S. occupation. In addition, given the chaos engulfing the country and the widespread non-cooperation with U.S. occupation forces, there are questions as to how much governing power the United States has to transfer anyway.
Furthermore, there is so much ill will toward the United States at this point that the legitimacy of virtually any Iraqi-led government that emerges, will--whether rightly or wrongly--be questioned.
(Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003).)
For more information see:
Iraq One Year Later
By Stephen Zunes (March 2004)
http://www.fpif.org/papers/2004iraq-ann.html
Misleading Rhetoric in 2004 State of the Union Address
By Stephen Zunes (January 21, 2004)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0401souann.html
BUSH'S AIDS RELIEF PLAN WILL DELAY DRUGS, REWARD BIG PHARMA
By Jim Lobe
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405aidsrelief.html.)
Africa and AIDS activists say the Bush Administration’s pledge to expedite its approval process for low-cost, generic anti-retroviral drugs by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will really slow delivery of drugs to those suffering while undermining the authority of the United Nations and World Health Organization.
“The net effect is to continue to delay the delivery of life-saving drugs to the most needy,” said Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, a Washington-based grassroots network and frequent critic of the administration’s anti-AIDS plan.
The administration, which has been under strong pressure from anti-AIDS groups and U.S. lawmakers to approve inexpensive fixed-dose combination drugs, or FDCs, produced by generic manufacturers in India, Brazil and other developing countries for use by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, announced Sunday it would soon put in place a FDA “fast-track” approval scheme that could approve “high-quality” drugs in as little as two to six weeks.
The WHO, which has its own review process to determine the safety and effectiveness of medicines, has already approved a number of FDCs produced by generic manufacturers for use by the World Bank, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
But the Bush Administration has taken the position that such drugs must also be reviewed for safety and effectiveness by the FDA in order to qualify for use by agencies receiving U.S. anti-AIDS funds, despite the fact that many of the steps taken by WHO in its review process are identical to the FDA’s.
That position has frustrated activists, who argue that the WHO’s review process is sufficiently rigorous to pass muster, and that setting up a parallel process not only undermines the U.N.’s credibility, but also would create additional delays to getting life-saving drugs to hundreds of the roughly 8,000 people—including 6,000 Africans—who die of AIDS each day. Nonetheless, the administration depicted Sunday’s announcement in Geneva by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson as a major breakthrough that would not only expedite approval but also encourage competition between generic manufacturers and brand-name companies for the FSC market.
(Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
For more information see:
AIDS Appointee Shows that Business Still Rules the Roost
By Jim Lobe (July 3, 2003)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0307tobias.html
New Global AIDS Bill Meets Activist Skepticism
By Jim Lobe (May 20, 2003)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305aidslegis.html
House Passes $15-Billion Global AIDS Measure
By Jim Lobe (May 2, 2003)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305aidsfund.html
For additional resources see:
Africa Action
http://www.africaaction.org
Global AIDS Alliance
http://www.globalaidsalliance.org
Health GAP
http://www.healthgap.org
Partners in Health
www.pih.org
II. Letters and Comments
Re: Ex-Diplomats Protest Bush's Anti-Palestinian Policies (http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405exdip.html)
Jim Lobe notes: “The diplomats made a similar point in their letter, urging Bush to return Washington to the position of a truly honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians. A return to the time-honored American tradition of fairness will reverse the present tide of ill will in Europe and the Middle East...”
Let us call a spade, a spade. The US has never been "a truly honest broker." The U.S. aids Israel financially, militarily, politically, and socially. Only if all this aid is cut off, then and only then could some peace be found in this conflict. Until then Israel will continue to use weapons and machinery made by the US and shipped to Israel as aid to kill Palestinians, to demolish their homes and devastate their lives. How many settlements on Palestinian land has the U.S. sponsored? Even the security wall--which is stealing land yet again--is being paid for by the U.S. Israel is the only nation in the region that has WMD and can go unchecked. Their atrocious acts have been going on for 60 years under all U.S. presidents, not just Bush; it is not a new issue.
Can anyone sincerely believe that Israel would be committing these atrocious acts if they did not have US unconditional backing?
As to the time-honored fairness, that’s just double-faced diplomatic comment, isn't it?
--Marina Karacosta, aracosta@otenet.gr
Re: Ex-Diplomats Protest Bush's Anti-Palestinian Policies (http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0405exdip.html)
Here’s an anecdote in confirmation of this theme:
I am retired from USAID and IBRD but still do short consulting missions. Last year I visited 7 West African countries in as many weeks on a USAID program design mission. Since happily I am in possession of an extra (Irish) passport, I mentioned to the various Foreign Service Officers I met in AID missions and embassies that I now traveled with this--even when on US government business. All of them expressed varying degrees of envy and admiration and none thought this was in any way reprehensible.
-Clark FSO
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