Iraq has no right to self defense. . .

[AntiLempa]

So says US Doctrine. Edward Herman is right on in a recent essay.


August 15, 2003

Rogues Have No Right To Self-defense:

By Edward Herman
http://zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-08/15herman.cfm

(Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org )

The view that U.S. targets have no right to defend themselves from a U.S. threat or actual attack goes back a long way. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, when the United States was regularly intervening in its backyard to discipline the unruly natives, those who objected and fought against the Marines were always designated “bandits,” even when the resistance “was organized, using flags and uniforms” (M. M. Knight, The Americans in Santo Domingo).

The Vietnamese, in the 1950s and 1960s, resisting a U.S.-imposed puppet ruler and then a direct U.S. invasion, were always terrorists or aggressors in their own country in the U.S. official (and hence media) view, and as Leslie Gelb explained in defending the classification of Vietnam as an “outlaw,” they “harmed Americans” who had come to subdue them (NYT, April 15, 1993).

Gelb, then Foreign Editor of the New York Times (and former State Department and Pentagon official), had internalized the imperial premise of a U.S. right to attack and dominate anywhere and for any reason, and the corollary idea that resistance to such actions is criminal.

One of the grotesqueries in U.S. imperialist history has been the regular U.S. practice of threatening some tiny backyard target, preventing its access to weapons from the United States or U.S. allies, and then pointing to the target’s acquisition of arms from the Soviet bloc as proof of (1) their aggressive intentions and (2) their links to the larger menace of Soviet aggression.
More http://zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-08/15herman.cfm

Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org

[DuctapeFatwa]

1. The US decides which countries have the privilege of self-defense

Any attempt to usurp this authority or resist or oppose the will of the US is terrorism.

[AntiLempa]

2. Exactly.

These points need to be hammered home. I think they can eb very useful in the Peace Movement.

[DuctapeFatwa]

3. Peace is the new Terror

If you invoke the constitution, you hate America.

If you want both Palestinian and Israeli people to live in a respectable, law-abiding country you are an anti-Semite.

If you call for non-violent resolution of conflict, you are a terrorist.

If you object to feudalism, you are anti-capitalist.


Kafka and Orwell are up in heaven fighting over who will sue for copyright infringement first.

[UTUSN]

4. LIMBOsevic's Spin on the U.N. Bombing

He said that the U.N. people had made a conscious decision to distance themselves from U.S. protection, from any outward association with U.S. forces. That the rationale for this was the antagonism of the Iraqis vis a vis the U.S. forces. That, otoh, the U.S. forces were the only protection available, so the U.N. decision was foolhardy and consequently INVITING what happened.

Haha, Kofi ANNAN just said "mistakes have been made BY THE COALITION and by (everybody else). I don't want to get into finger-pointing."

There's that no-finger-pointing again.

[AntiLempa]

5. US Foreign Policy

I think these parallels need to be addressed. Is there any mainstream journalist that we can show this to?

If this can see the light, there might be some hope in reforming or Foreign Policy.