Latest on Iran: Is this Aggression?
From the Sydney Morning Herald 1.7.08 (Full text here:
Excerpt:
“Talk heats up on Iran after claim of raids.
THE United States is running a covert operation into Iran funded by $US400 million ($416 million) siphoned from other programs with authorisation from Democratic congressional leaders, according to a report in The New Yorker.
The US Congress agreed to the request from the President, George Bush, late last year to fund a large escalation of secret raids against Iran, the foreign affairs reporter Seymour Hersh wrote.
“United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with presidential authorisation, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of ‘high-value targets’ in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed,” Hersh wrote.
The report, which did not name any sources, was flatly denied yesterday by the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. Mr Crocker told CNN: “US forces are not operating across the Iraqi border into Iran, in the south or anywhere else.” “
If true, is this aggression?
See earlier posts on Iran/Iraq, in particular
http://blog.une.edu.au/klausrohde/2008/03/12/an-ominous-sign-admiral-fallon-resigns/
July 1st, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I think last year when I first had too much to drink and decided to comment on your blog, :), you said that you had independently arrived at many of the same ideas as Noam Chomsky. I would still be very interested indeed if you ever had the time to relate the historical development of your political thought!
July 1st, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I replied to your question in this post:
http://blog.une.edu.au/klausrohde/2007/04/25/on-aggression-the-instinct-for-wars/#comments
I shall be happy to answer any additional questions.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I asked (July 12th 2007):
“What did you think *before* you came to arrive at the same views as Noam Chomsky? What particular pieces of evidence first convinced you? How have your ideas evolved since then? Has any evidence ever caused you to waver in your views? How old were you when you formed these views? Did you arrive at these views in the BRD, or in Australia?”
To which you replied (July 13th 2007):
“I shall get back to your question when I have some time. In the meantime just this: I have lived for many years in South Asia and Africa, and have visited many other countries including Afghanistan (before Russian and US involvement), Iran and Israel, not as a holiday maker but looking at their historical and social backgrounds. I also had discussions with many people there. All this has contributed to the sometimes gradual and sometimes fairly sudden evolution of my views, from very pro-American (when I was young and had just escaped from East Germany), to what I consider more balanced.”
Which is interesting and informative about the environment through which you passed and the people with which you associated while your ideas were changing! But it does not tell me what ideas you hold now, nor the logical and/or emotional justifications you have for those beliefs.
Here is something of the sort I am looking for that I wrote, about a small part of my own Weltanschauung.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I don’t think anybody is interested in my life’s story and how my thoughts have developed, in detail. Therefore just a few points. Underlying my views is a commitment to fairness and understanding all sides in a conflict. In political conflicts between nations, this requires some knowledge of their history. I have always tried to read up as much as possible about history (most recently, during a visit to Vietnam, about the Vietnam war), and to visit countries to gain first hand experience of the people and the localities. So, over many years, I have repeatedly visited many countries in Southeast and South Asia, the Middle and Far East, as well as many other countries. Widening one’s horizon, of course, leads to a change of views, sometimes fairly sudden, sometimes gradual. Thus, as a young student in the then Ostzone (later DDR) I was violently opposed to the communist regime and very pro-American. I remember that I was desperate when the communist North Korea seemed to win the Korean war. My views changed when I moved to West Germany, and again when I went as a lecturer to the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. The deepest impression probably made the Vietnam War. It was fairly obvious to me even then that the pretext given by the U.S. for illegally interfering in Vietnam (illegal, because it ignored a U.N. resolution to hold elections in all of Vietnam, which the Vietcong would have won), namely that if Vietnam would fall to communism, all other countries in Southeast Asia would follow (the famous domino effect), was just that, a miserable pretext. Look at my post on Malaysia/Vietnam, and the reference given there. Even during the war, the Vietminh always kept distance from the Soviet Union and China, although it depended on weapons supplied by them (often quite reluctantly). What the war (particularly the later bloodiest years) really amounted to was a refusal by some U.S. Presidents (Johnson, Nixon) to lose face. And for this, millions of people were bombed and otherwise put to death.
You refer to Noam Chomsky: his entire analysis, in my view, proceeds from the requirement of a fair and not one-sided analysis. One must try to understand the motives of the adversary, implying a knowledge of its history! And this is exactly what I emphasized above. Since Western policy makers generally ignore this requirement, their so-called analyses are a sham, and their policy decisions often highly dangerous or more. Iraq and Iran illustrate the point. Iraq was invaded, allegedly to liberate it from a dictator (whose party had been installed and supported over many years by the West), on false pretexts, leading to millions of deaths and displaced persons. Saddam Hussein had nationalized the oil industry, as earlier done by the democratically elected Mossadeq of Iran (who was consequently overthrown by the U.S.). I don’t claim that this was the reason for the invasion, but I suspect that it plaid some role, at least.
Understanding history, in my view, should lead to more enlightened political actions now. Therefore my emphasis on the threatened actions against Iran. May eminent people (see my previous posts) have warned against attacking Iran. Nobody can possibly foresee all the consequences, which could be disastrous. But the PR industry is running at full speed: Achmadinajad threatening to wipe Israel off the map, etc. To my knowledge, Iran has never threatened to attack any country (including Israel, the correct translation of what that bigmouth Achmadinajad said is actually somewhat milder, see one of my previous posts,
http://blog.une.edu.au/klausrohde/2007/10/04/president-ahmadinejad-at-colombia-and-the-wider-issues/
but as you know “Hunde die bellen, beissen nicht: dogs that bark don’t biteâ€). Iran, if I remember this correctly, actually has specifically ruled out any attack, unless attacked first. High ranking politicians in the U.S. and Israel, however, did exactly that, threatening to attack. There is evidence that Iran has suspended any activities to build an atomic bomb in 2003, but this is downplayed in the press (according to today’s Sydney Morning Herald, the same former U.S. government official who denounced the Bush government for falsely claiming that a uranium shipment from Africa to Iraq had been made, leading to the “exposure” of his wife’s role as a CIA spy, now claims that the U.S. government is again falsifying “evidence†for a supposed nuclear bomb program of Iran).
July 2nd, 2008 at 5:48 pm
“I don’t think anybody is interested in my life’s story and how my thoughts have developed, in detail.”
That is where you may misunderstand me- that is what I am most interested in. Because my expanding life experience and interactions with people from diverse backgrounds has caused my own opinions to move in a diametrically opposed direction. I don’t think we can directly change each other’s minds on any of these matters, because the development of the internet means that we will always rely on different sources. For instance you mention Valerie Plame’s husband (whose name escapes me)- because of the sources I tend to read, and the biases I hold, I consider him a fraud, charlatan, and seeker-after media attention whose opinions on anything can be ignored. But in discussing how our thoughts have developed, we can make our biases clearer to ourselves and get a better understanding of whether our ideas are really as well-thought out as they should be. Hence, there is hope that we might indirectly change each other’s minds given world enough and time.
“It was fairly obvious to me even then that the pretext given by the U.S. for illegally interfering in Vietnam (illegal, because it ignored a U.N. resolution to hold elections in all of Vietnam, which the Vietcong would have won), namely that if Vietnam would fall to communism, all other countries in Southeast Asia would follow (the famous domino effect), was just that, a miserable pretext.”
This is just the sort of thing I want to know- *why* was it obvious to you that this was a miserable pretext?
You know as well as I and the hundreds of thousands who later risked their lives to flee the Workers and Farmers Republic of Socialist Vietnam (or whatver they call it) that the Communists would have won those elections *only* because they would have done a Robert Mugabe in the northern zone that they controlled. Thus it is Pharisaical hairsplitting to claim that for that reason all subsequent American actions are illegal, and therefore bad.
Events since the American withdrawal, in which more Southeast Asian nations did fall to Communism, with enormous resulting human suffering, seem to me to show that the pretext was a perfectly valid one.
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Well, I have just returned from Vietnam. On the way to it, we took a Sydney taxi with a driver of Vietnamese origin who told us that he did not like communism, and that is why he had left the country. So, I am well aware that many left Vietnam after the communists had taken over. And - after all - I had left a communist country myself and am well aware of what was happening there. Nevertheless, a whole country has been destroyed, and millions killed. Even today, many die because of herbicide poisoning. Do you want to tell me that all this was justified? If you would read some books on Vietnamese history, you might perhaps agree that the Vietcong and later the Vietminh were primarily a nationalist and not a communist movement. How do you explain that a peasant country, vastly inferior in military equipment etc. to the USA, could beat a superpower? It can be explained only by the greater moral resolve of the people. Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh), apparently (if I can believe what I read) was a universally admired and respected leader, and - according to the book I refer to in my Malaysia/Vietnam post, the Vietminh would have won any election at any time during the Vietnam war. - Soon after the Vietnam war was over, there was a military conflict between China and Vietnam, further evidence that the domino theory was a fake.
“Events since the American withdrawal, in which more Southeast Asian nations did fall to Communism, with enormous resulting human suffering, seem to me to show that the pretext was a perfectly valid one.” ???? Which are these countries? (Laos and Cambodia became communist because of the American involvement).
“This is just the sort of thing I want to know- *why* was it obvious to you that this was a miserable pretext?” I shall comment on this on my return from Brisbane in about two weeks. Time is running short.
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
“Laos and Cambodia became communist because of the American involvement”
This is the sort of assertion that it is useless for you to make, because it is unverifiable and we can argue about it endlessly. Plenty of countries (Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, South Yemen, etc.) were taken over by Marxists without any meddling by the United States. You cannot know that the same would not have happened to Cambodia and Laos if the US had just sat back and let South Vietnam be gobbled up.
Regardless of the *ultimate* cause of the Communist victory in Cambodia- and fair enough, the long and destructive US bombing campaign may have played a major role- the *proximate* cause was the *cessation* of US intervention. If the US had continued to prop up its client regime, there would have been no Khmer Rouge, no empty cities, no killing fields and no pyramids of skulls.
July 20th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
“I think last year when I first had too much to drink and decided to comment on your blog, :), you said that you had independently arrived at many of the same ideas as Noam Chomsky. I would still be very interested indeed if you ever had the time to relate the historical development of your political thought!’
Here is some relevant information concerning your question. I came first under the pernicious influence of Noam Chomsky in Armidale. I don’t remember exactly when, but probably around 10 or perhaps 15 years ago. My first reaction was: finally somebody who writes what I think.
Now a question to you stated in the heading of this post. Do you think it is aggression?
July 20th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
““Laos and Cambodia became communist because of the American involvementâ€
This is the sort of assertion that it is useless for you to make, because it is unverifiable and we can argue about it endlessly. Plenty of countries (Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, South Yemen, etc.) were taken over by Marxists without any meddling by the United States. You cannot know that the same would not have happened to Cambodia and Laos if the US had just sat back and let South Vietnam be gobbled up.”
Here is an excerpt from
http://www.taxivantha.com/1_Cambodia/116.htm
“King Sihanouk realised this fact and tried to keep Cambodia neutral, fearing his country would be subjugated by Vietnam when the US would be defeated, just like the French at Dien Bien Phu. Cambodia and its king however had to pay dearly for sticking to this policy of neutrality. In the sixties, CIA conspiracies to dispose of Sihanouk were discovered, involving the rightwing Khmer Serei troops in South Vietnam. Another plot involved Dap Chuon’s establishment of a “free” state that would have included Siem Reap and Kampong Thom provinces and the southern areas of Laos that were controlled by the rightist Laotian prince, Boun Oum.â€
There are better and more comprehensive accounts, but they all show that it was the destabilizing efforts of the U.S. which led to the final success of the communists there.
Also, let us not forget that the Khmer Rouge were finally overthrown by communist Vietnam (a further nail in the coffin of the domino theory).
July 20th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
It is, of course, aggression, but in response to the significantly greater Iranian aggression in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Lebanon, Argentina, usw. But I do not trust your sources of information, and you do not trust my sources of information, so I do not think it will not be productive for us to address this question!
I am more interested in, *why* was it obvious to you at the time that the ‘domino effect’ was a miserable pretext?
July 20th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
I agree that American involvement in destabilising Cambodia was a significant factor in ithe lead-up to ts fall to the Khmer Rouge. However:
*This did not happen until American support for Lon Nol was ended unilaterally, making this the proximate cause of the Khmer Rouge’s triumph and providing a clear example of: ‘We fail to fight communism, and it triumphs’ (approximately the same as) ‘the domino effect’
*There is no guarantee that Sihanouk would have been able to preserve his neutrality in the face of Communist destabilisation, in the absence of shenanigans by the CIA. There are certainly examples of nations which maintained their neutrality and were subverted by communism regardless(e.g., Tibet, Ethiopia)
So I think it is distorted hindsight to say that Cambodia became communist ‘because’ of American involvement. I do not think that the subsequent history of Indochina necessarily confirms the ‘domino effect’, but I think on the face of it is evidence that it was an honestly held fear and the main motivation for US involvement, and not a pretext.
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:30 am
I just came across this:
http://search.msntv.msn.com/search/Search.aspx?q=countries+the+us+has+invaded+since+1945&FORM=WEBTV&cfg=MSTVXML&first=46
It may be of some relevance at least as a source for useful links. I shall reply to your last comment later.
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 am
“This did not happen until American support for Lon Nol was ended unilaterally,”
Why was the support withdrawn? I would guess because the U.S. realized that he had no chance of winning. Very similar to Vietnam, where the U.S. withdrew support of the president Ngo Dinh Diem it had installed and who had lost the little support he had in the population partly at least because of his style of autocratic government (just remember his infamous “tiger cagesâ€). He saw what was coming and asked the U.S. ambassador to grant him and his family asylum. This request was refused, he fled to Cholon (Saigon Chinatown), but was soon killed. The generals who took over subsequently, proved as unpopular and unsuccessful, which finally led to the communist takeover. It is true, of course , that there was considerable anticommunist sentiment among certain strata of Vietnamese society (I did not check this up, but believe mainly among the French educated and Catholics), but decisive was that the U.S. supported governments could never match the overwhelming support of the Vietcong and Vietminh among the peasantry, and the popularity of Ho Chi Minh. President Eisenhower estimated (but one should probably better say “guessedâ€) that the Vietcong would have gained 80% of the votes if elections had been held at the time.
But more important in the general context: was the U.S. sincere with its domino theory? Perhaps it was, but I remember that at the time many people in Europe (I cannot give you percentages etc., of course) sincerely believed that the struggle in Vietnam was first of all a freedom struggle of a population first suppressed by the French colonial masters, and later by the U.S. installed governments.
Nevertheless, I agree with you that one cannot be sure about anything. Therefore, using “because’ was probably an overstatement.
July 24th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
By sheer coincidence I came across a book which I read 40 years ago but had forgotten about. It is: Robert Grün: Ho Chi Minh, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag München, 1969.
Some interesting additional points relevant to the discussion (my translations).
p.120: President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was a devote catholic, did not only prevent buddhists from reaching any important positions in his administration, but actively persecuted them. For example, on August 21, 1963 (originally planned for August 24, the anniversary of the 32,000 murders of protestants in the Bartholomaeus night by the catholic French government), just before midnight, special forces in Saigon, Hue and other cities and towns stormed many pagodas, imprisoned many nuns and monks, with many deaths. (Vietnam had about 70% buddhists and 10% catholics).
p.130: the eleventh of the generals who took over after president Ngo Dinh Diem’s exit was general Nguyen Ca Ky. He declared when taking over power:
“My example is Adolf Hitler. Hitler was the most important statesman and the greatest hero of this century. He failed because of communism and international jewry, especially in the USA. I shall neither fail because of communism nor of buddhism –which is our jewry. I shall be the Vietnamese Hitler, but a Hitler who will win the war. Bombs on Warsaw and Coventry – that was Hitler – bombs on Hanoi and Haiphong – that’s what I shall be.â€
The Americans, apparently, were not pleased, but supported him anyway.
p. 138: When the first bombs fell on Northvietnam, Ky said: “This is the most beautiful day of my life.â€
p. 139: The American journalist Theodore Draper: “ Johnson has decided to escalate the war not because of infiltration from the North, but because of the collapse of the South†(desertations from the South Vietnamese army had swollen enormously, and the government had lost most of the meagre support it had).
July 25th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I do not see how these anecdotes about Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Cao Ky are really relevant.
You and I are well aware that the US supported many unworthy and despicable people in the years 1945-1991: The Shah, Pinochet, Somoza, Saddam al-Tikriti, etc. These were unfortunately the best instruments available at those times and places for pursuing the greater struggle, which I believe to have been worthwhile and justified. You will not persuade me that the goals and motivations of the struggle against Communism were wrong by regaling me the wickednesses of one ally, any more than recounting the crimes of Stalin could persuade me that we were wrong to help him resist Hitler.
August 4th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Vale Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
August 4th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Two good quotes from this article:
“…it would have far-reaching political and psychological effects in the region and enormous strategic consequences for the United States. It is not a question of dominoes; the metaphor I like is a water table, in which the pressure would rise in every society in the region…”
“South Vietnam had pluralist politics, including a free press and contested elections at every level of government — to the point that parliament was dominated by opposition parties. In the end, it was overrun by the North Vietnamese regular army. “Idealists” in America were holding South Vietnam to an impossible standard, even as it faced a relentless threat from a force that observed no democratic constraints at all.”
August 5th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Interesting, but somewhat dubious. In the end, South Vietnam was indeed overrun by the North Vietnamese regular army. However, the lead up to it is the crucial point. A totally corrupt country offered no substantial resistance in spite of the massive support of the USA, because the overwhelming majority of the population (peasants, buddhists) had been suppressed or at least maltreated over many years.
Free elections for the whole of Vietnam could under international supervision have been held after the French defeat, before the Americans became directly involved. But, of course, at that time and somewhat later as well:
“President Eisenhower estimated (but one should probably better say “guessedâ€) that the Vietcong would have gained 80% of the votes if elections had been held at the time.”
August 5th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
One afterthought: I have no sympathy at all for any kind of crusading philosophy, whether aimed at spreading the catholic faith in Spain and the Americas, Islam (by military force), to “recover” the holy lands (by the crusades), or democracy (by wars of liberation etc., whether in Iraq, Vietnam, etc.). If one wants to convert, one should do it by example. Otherwise we get what we did get: millions of dead, and more often than not an effect opposite to the intended one.
August 6th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I think one can provide a perfectly splendid example, but this will be totally useless for people who are unable to act on this example. The oppressed people who President Bush #1 called upon to rise up and rebel in 1991 were crushed like bugs, despite the marvellous example he was provding of a free and secular society.
I do not regret the replacement of the Aztec empire by the Spanish, nor the paganism of the Age of Ignorance by Islam, nor Napoleon’s conquest of the feudal states of Germany, nor the casting down of Saddam Hussein. I think in all of these cases the improvement was vast and significant and could not have been achieved by those liberated by the ‘crusades’ without outside assistance (except on a vastly longer timescale during which millions more would have suffered and died).
I have a great deal of sympathy for any crusading philosophy, be it Catholicism, Islam, Democracy, the Communism of the interwar years, and even the Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to my door. This intrinsic difference between us is of course no ground at all for me to argue that I am right and you are wrong. It is just one of those things.
I do think an argument could be made that crusading philosophies are more ‘memetically fit’ than non-crusading ones.