Mike Whitney: The Audacity of Ethnic Cleansing: Obama’s Plan for Afghanistan

By Mike Whitney
Information Clearing House

"Today, we Afghans remain trapped between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other."
Malalai Joya "A Woman Among the Warlords" Scribner Publishing, New York

December 04, 2009 -- The Bush administration never had any intention of liberating Afghanistan or establishing democracy. The real aim was to remove the politically-intractable Taliban and replace them with a puppet regime run by a former-CIA asset. The rest of Afghanistan would be parceled-off to the warlords who assisted in the invasion and who had agreed to do much of the United States dirty-work on the ground. In the eight years of military occupation which followed, that basic strategy has never changed. The U.S. is just as committed now as it was at the war's inception to establish a beachhead in Central Asia to oversee the growth of China, to execute disruptive/covert operations against Russia, to control vital pipeline routes from the Caspian Basin, and to maintain a heavy military presence in the most critical geopolitical area in the world today.

The objectives were briefly stated in a recent counterpunch article by Tariq Ali:

"It’s now obvious to everyone that this is not a ‘good’ war designed to eliminate the opium trade, discrimination against women and everything bad – apart from poverty, of course. So what is Nato doing in Afghanistan? Has this become a war to save Nato as an institution? Or is it more strategic, as was suggested in the spring 2005 issue of Nato Review:

The centre of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward … The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans, and the institutions they have built, to lead the way … security effectiveness in such a world is impossible without both legitimacy and capability." ("Short Cuts in Afghanistan", Tariq Ali, counterpunch)

President Barak Obama's speech at West Point was merely a reiteration of US original commitment to strengthen the loose confederation of warlords--many of who are either in the Afghan Parliament or hold high political office--to pacify nationalist elements, and to expand the war into Pakistan. Obama is just a cog in a much larger imperial wheel which moves forward with or without his impressive oratory skills. So far, he has been much more successful in concealing the real motives behind military escalation than his predecessor George W. Bush. It's doubtful that Obama could stop current operations even if he wanted to, and there is no evidence that he wants to.

The Pentagon has settled on a new counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) which it intends to implement in Afghanistan. The program will integrate psyops, special forces, NGOs, psychologists, media, anthropologists, humanitarian agencies, public relations, reconstruction, and conventional forces to rout the Taliban, assert control over the South and the tribal areas, and to quash any indigenous resistance. Clandestine activity and unmanned drone attacks will increase, while a "civilian surge" will be launched to try to win hearts and minds in the densely populated areas. Militarily, the goal is to pit one ethnicity against the other, to incite civil war, and to split the country in smaller units that can be controlled by warlords working with Washington. Where agricultural specialists, educators, engineers, lawyers, relief agencies and NGOs can be used, they will be. Where results depend on the application of extreme violence; it will also be...unsparingly. This is the plan going forward, a plan designed for conquest, subjugation and resource-stripping. Here is an excerpt from Zoltan Grossman's article in counterpunch "Afghanistan: The Roach Motel of Empires" which details the balkenization strategy:

"We are arming and financing the same vicious men (the Northern Alliance) who brought fundamentalism to Kabul in the first place....Like the Soviets, the Americans do not understand that the insurgency is driven not only by Islamist fundamentalism, but also by ethnic nationalism. In the case of the Taliban, they are representing the grievances of the Pashtuns who have seen the artificial colonial “Durand Line” divide their homeland between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The best way to defuse the Taliban is to recognize the legitimacy of this historical grievance, and incorporate Pashtun civil society into both governments.

But instead of unifying the different ethnic regions of Afghanistan, the NATO occupation seems headed more toward a de facto partition of these regions. The foreign policy team that President Obama has assembled includes some of the same figures who advocated the ethnic-sectarian partition of Yugoslavia and Iraq. Obama’s Special Envoy to Af-Pak, Richard Holbrooke, authored the agreement that partioned Bosnia into Serb and Muslim-Croat republics in 1995, in effect rubberstamping the ethnic cleansing that had forcibly removed populations during a three-year civil war. He also turned a blind eye when Serb civilians were expelled from Croatia the same year, and from Kosovo in 1999.

President Karzai recently instituted a series of laws on women in Shia communities, causing an outcry from women’s rights groups. Hardly unnoticed was his application of different legal standards to different sectarian territories—a sign of de facto (informal) partition. Various “peace” proposals have advocated ceding control of some Pashtun provinces to the Taliban. Far from bringing peace, such an ethnic-sectarian partition would exacerbate the violent “cleansing” of mixed territories to drive out those civilians who are not of the dominant group—the process that brought the “peace of the graveyard” to Bosnia, Kosovo, and much of Iraq." ( Zoltan Grossman, "Afghanistan: The Roach Motel of Empires" counterpunch)

If Grossman is correct, than Obama's professed commitment to Afghan liberation merely masks a vicious counterinsurgency strategy that will ethnically cleanse areas in the south while driving tens of thousands of innocent people from their homes. This is essentially what took place in Baghdad during the so-called "surge"; over a million Sunnis were forced from the city by death squads and Shia militia under the watchful eye of US troops. US counterinsurgency wunderkind Gen Stanley McChrystal played a pivotal role in pacifying Iraq, which is why he was chosen by Obama to oversee military operations in Afghanistan. Here's a clip from an article by Ulrich Rippert "Europe backs Afghanistan strategy aimed at “regionalization”' on the World Socialist Web Site which provides more details on the plan to Balkenize Afghanistan:

"During his inaugural visit to Washington, new German defense secretary, Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg said it was necessary to put aside “the romantic idea of democratization of the whole country along the lines of the western model” and instead “transfer control of individual provinces step by step to the Afghan security forces.”

The new strategy of “regionalization” is aimed at dividing Afghanistan into individual cantons—in a similar manner to what took place in Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia. Up to now the US-NATO occupation supported the government of Hamid Karzai and sold the process to the public as “democratization”. However, occupation forces are moving increasingly to hand over power directly to regional warlords and their militias—on the assumption that such regional forces will follow the orders of their imperial masters. As soon as there is no more danger in a specific province, Guttenberg declared, then the international troops should be withdrawn from that area." (Ulrich Rippert "Europe backs Afghanistan strategy aimed at “regionalization”', World Socialist Web Site)

Obama's escalation is not aimed at strengthening democracy, liberating women or bringing an end to the brutal, misogynist rule of religious fanatics. It is pure, unalloyed imperial politics, the rearranging of the map and its people to serve Washington's interests. As journalist Alex Lantier notes on the World Socialist Web Site, the plan does not end with Afghanistan, but stretches across the globe. The hard-right policymakers behind Obama, still have not abandoned their dream of global rule. Here's an excerpt:

"As Obama indicated elsewhere in his speech, this escalation is one step in plans for even broader wars. “The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly,” he said, “and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Mentioning Somalia and Yemen as potential targets, he added, “our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.”

The inclusion of this passage made clear that Obama was basing his Afghan policy on a report issued last month by Anthony Cordesman of the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Cordesman wrote: “The President must be frank about the fact that any form of victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be part of a much wider and longer struggle. He must make it clear that the ideological, demographic, governance, economic, and other pressures that divide the Islamic world mean the world will face threats in many other nations that will endure indefinitely into the future. He should mention the risks in Yemen and Somalia, make it clear that the Iraq war is not over, and warn that we will still face both a domestic threat and a combination of insurgency and terrorism that will continue to extend from Morocco to the Philippines, and from Central Asia deep into Africa, regardless of how well we do in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

He added: “…the present level of US, allied, Afghan and Pakistani casualties will almost certainly double and probably more than triple before something approaching victory is won.” (Alex Lantier "Obama’s speech on Afghanistan: A compendium of lies" World Socialist web Site)

In the years ahead, we can expect to see relief and reconstruction efforts stepped up to provide security in the heavily-populated areas while the war in the south is expanded and intensified. Tajiks and Uzbeks, in the Afghan military will be enlisted to fight or expel their Pashtun countrymen, while warlords, druglords and human rights abusers are handed over large swathes of the countryside. 30,000 more troops is not enough to lock-down all of Afghanistan, but it may be enough to force hundreds of thousands of people into regional bantustans where they can be controlled by bloodthirsty chieftains, the very same men who leveled Kabul on April 28, 1992, killing 80,000 Afghan civilians. This is Obama's plan for Afghanistan, a carbon-copy of George Bush's.

Background to the Afghan War

From Michel Chossudovsky, America’s “War on Terrorism” (Quebec, Global Research, 2005):

Chapter VI
The Trans-Afghan Pipeline

Washington’s Silk Road Strategy consists in not only excluding Russia from the westbound oil and gas pipeline routes out of the Caspian Sea basin, but also in securing Anglo-American control over strategic southbound and eastbound routes.

This strategy consists in isolating and eventually “encircling” the former Soviet republics by simultaneously taking control of both westbound and east/southbound corridors. In this regard, Washington’s strategy in support of the oil giants is also to prevent the former republics from entering into pipeline ventures (or military cooperation agreements) with Iran and China.

According to the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy organization, the American diplomatic dance with the Taliban was partly an attempt to prevent the construction of a pipeline through Iran and to reduce Russian leverage over Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. [1]

Backed by the Clinton administration, Unocal, the California based oil giant, developed a plan in 1995 to build an oil and gas pipeline route from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and

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Pakistan, to the Arabian Sea. Unocal is also involved in the westbound Baku-Ceyan pipeline project out of Azerbaijan across Turkey and Georgia, together with BP, which has a majority stake in the consortium.

The CentGas Consortium

By transiting through Afghanistan, Unocal’s CentGas pipeline project was meant to bypass the more direct southbound route across Iran. Unocal’s design was to develop a dual pipeline system that would also transport Kazakhstan’s huge oil reserves in the Tenghiz Northern Caspian region to the Arabian Sea.

Although the Russian oil giant Gazprom was part of the CentGas consortium, its participation was insignificant. [2] The hidden agenda was also to weaken Gazprom, which controls the Northbound gas pipeline routes out of Turkmenistan, and undermine the agreement between Russia and Turkmenistan, which handled the export of Turkmen gas through the network of Russian pipelines.

After Unocal had completed a first round of negotiations with Turkmenistan’s President Niyazov, it opened talks with the Taliban. [3] In turn, the Clinton administration decided to back the installation of a Taliban government in Kabul in 1996, as opposed to the Northern Alliance, which was backed by Moscow:

Impressed by the ruthlessness and willingness of the then-emerging Taliban to cut a pipeline deal, the State Department and Pakistan’s ISI agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war against the ethnically Tajik Northern Alliance. As recently as 1999, US taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official. [4]

Meanwhile, the Russians were providing logistical support and military supplies to General Massoud’s Northern Alliance out of military bases in Tajikistan. When Kabul finally fell to the Taliban with the military backing of America’s ally Pakistan, in September 1996, State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said the US found “nothing objectionable” in the steps taken by the Taliban to impose

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Islamic law. Senator Hank Brown, a supporter of the Unocal project, said “the good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at least seems capable of developing a government in Kabul.” Unocal’s Vice-President, Martin Miller, called the Taliban’s success a “positive development”. [5]

When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington said nothing. Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston, Texas, to be entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal…. A US diplomat said, “The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did.” He explained that Afghanistan would become an American oil colony, there would be huge profits for the West, no democracy and the legal persecution of women. “We can live with
that”, he said. [6]

Washington’s endorsement of the Taliban regime instead of the Northern Alliance was part of the “Big Game” and the added rivalry between Russian and US conglomerates for control over oil and gas reserves, as well as pipeline routes out of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. In early 1997, Taliban officials met at Unocal’s Texas office:

[Unocal’s Barry] Lane says he wasn’t involved in the Texas meetings and doesn’t know whether then-Governor George W. Bush, an ex-oil man, ever had any involvement. Unocal’s Texas spokesperson for Central Asia operations, Teresa Covington, said the consortium delivered three basic messages to the Afghan groups. “We gave them the details on the proposed pipelines. We also talked to them about the projects’ benefits, such as the transit fees that would be paid,” she says. “And we reinforced our position the project could not move forward until they stabilized their country and obtained political recognition from the US and the international community.” Covington says the Taliban were not surprised by that demand …. In December 1997, Unocal arranged a high-level meeting in Washington, DC, for the Taliban with Clinton’s undersecretary of state for South Asia, Karl Inderforth. The Taliban delegation included Acting Minister for Mines and Industry Ahmad Jan, Acting Minister for Culture and Information, Amir Muttaqi, Acting Minister for Planning, Din Muhammad and Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, their permanent UN delegate. [7]

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Two months following these negotiations, in February 1998, Unocal Vice President for International Relations, John Maresca, in a statement to the House Committee on International Relations, called for “the need for multiple pipeline routes for Central Asian oil and gas resources”. Implied in his statement, US foreign policy in the region was to be geared towards destabilizing the north, west and southbound pipeline routes controlled by Russia, as well as competing pipelines through Iran:

[A] chief technical obstacle [or more likely political obstacle] which we in the industry face in transporting oil is the region’s existing pipeline infrastructure. Because the region’s pipelines were constructed during the Moscow-centred Soviet period, they tend to head north and west toward Russia. There are no connections to the south and east …

The key question then, is how the energy resources of Central Asia can be made available to nearby Asian markets … One obvious route south would cross Iran, but this is foreclosed for American companies because of US sanctions legislation. The only other possible route is across Afghanistan, which has of course its own unique challenges. The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades, and is still divided by civil war. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company.

Unocal foresees a pipeline which would become part of a regional system that would gather oil from existing pipeline infrastructure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. The 1,040-mile long oil pipeline would extend south through Afghanistan to an export terminal that would be constructed on the Pakistan coast. This 42-inch diameter pipeline would have a shipping capacity of one million barrels of oil per day. The estimated cost of the project, which is similar in scope to the trans-Alaska pipeline, is about $2.5 billion.

Without peaceful settlement of the conflicts in the region, cross-border oil and gas pipelines are not likely to be built. We urge the Administration and the Congress to give strong support to the UN-

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led peace process in Afghanistan. The US Government should use its influence to help find solutions to all of the region’s conflicts. [8]

The Unocal-Bridas Feud

There was something else behind the Unocal pipeline project, which mainstream reports failed to mention. The Taliban had also been negotiating with an Argentinean oil group, Bridas Energy Corporation, and were “playing one company against the other”. [9] Bridas belonged to the wealthy and powerful Bhulgeroni family. Carlos Bhulgeroni is a close friend of former Argentine President Carlos Menem, whose government was instrumental in implementing in 1990 - under advice from the World Bank - a comprehensive deregulation of Argentina’s oil and gas industry. This deregulation contributed to the enrichment of the Bhulgeroni family.

In 1992 - several years prior to Unocal’s involvement - Bridas Energy Corporation had obtained gas exploration rights in Eastern Turkmenistan, and the following year it was awarded the Keimir oil and gas block in Western Turkmenistan. Washington considered this an encroachment. It responded to Bridas’ inroads into Central Asia by sending former Secretary of State Alexander Haig to lobby for “increased US investments” in Turkmenistan. [10] A few months later, Bridas was prevented from exporting oil from the Keimir block.

Unocal and Bridas were clashing in their attempts to gain political control. While Bridas had a head start in its negotiations with Turkmen officials, Unocal had the direct support of the US Government, which was acting both overtly (through diplomatic channels) as well as covertly to undermine Bridas Energy Corp.

In August 1995, at the height of the Afghan civil war, Bridas representatives met up with Taliban officials to discuss the pipeline project. Meanwhile, Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyasov had been invited to New York (October 1995) to sign an agreement with Unocal and its CentGas consortium partner, Delta Oil Corporation of Saudi Arabia. The agreement was signed by President Niyazov of Turkmenistan and John F. Imle, Jr., President of Unocal, and witnessed by Badr M. Al-Aiban, CEO of Delta Oil Corporation.


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Bridas and the Taliban

In February 1996, Bridas Energy Corporation of Argentina and the Taliban provisional government signed a preliminary agreement. Washington responded through its embassy in Islamabad, urging Pakistan’s Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to dump Bridas and grant exclusive rights to Unocal. [11] Meanwhile, the Clinton administration had funnelled, through Pakistan’s ISI, military aid to advancing Taliban forces. This support was a crucial factor in the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in September 1996. Following the installation of a hard-line Islamic government, Unocal confirmed that “it will give aid to Afghan warlords once they agree to form a council to supervise the project”. [12]

Back in Texas, Bridas Energy Corporation filed a $15 billion lawsuit against Unocal, accusing it of dirty tricks and interference in:

… secretly contacting the Turkmen deputy prime minister for oil and gas [in 1996] about its own pipeline plan. According to a Bridas source, the Turkmen government then made an overnight decision to cut off the export of oil from Bridas’ Keimir field on the Caspian Sea. The company also alleges that the deputy prime minister demanded that Bridas, with its cash flow strangled, renegotiate its concession. “We found written evidence that Unocal was behind the
curtains,” the Bridas source said. [13]

BP-Amoco Enter the Pipeline Saga

Facing pending financial difficulties, 60 per cent of Bridas shares were sold in August 1997 to the American Oil Company (Amoco), leading to the formation of the Pan American Energy Corporation. The bidders in the Bridas merger were Amoco and Union Texas Petroleum of the United States, France’s Total, Royal Dutch Shell, Spain’s Endesa and a consortium including Spain’s Repsol and US Mobil.

For Amoco, which later merged with BP in 1998, Bridas was a prize acquisition, which was facilitated by Chase Manhattan and Morgan Stanley. Former National Security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was a consultant to Amoco. Arthur Andersen - the

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accounting firm implicated in the 2002 Enron scandal - was put in charge of “post-merger integration”. [14]

BP-Amoco is the main player in the Westbound pipeline routes out of the Caspian Sea basin including the controversial Baku-Ceyan pipeline project through Georgia and Turkey. By acquiring Bridas, the BP-led consortium gained a direct stake in the east and southbound pipeline negotiations.

Unocal is both a “rival” as well as a consortium “partner” of BP. In other words, BP controls the westbound pipeline consortium in which Unocal has a significant stake. With Bridas in the hands of BPAmoco, however, it is unlikely that a future trans-Afghan pipeline will proceed without the consent and/or participation of BP:

Recognizing the significance of the merger, a Pakistani oil company executive hinted, “If these [Central Asian] countries want a big US company involved, Amoco is far bigger than Unocal.” [15]

Following the takeover of Bridas by Amoco, Bridas’ successor company, Pan American Energy Corporation, continued to actively negotiate with the Taliban. But the dynamics of these negotiations had been fundamentally modified. Pan American Energy was negotiating on behalf of its Chicago-based parent company Amoco. Moreover, the Clinton administration had abandoned its dirty tricks and was now backing Amoco’s subsidiary.

Meanwhile, in August 1998, Amoco and BP announced their decision to unite their global operations leading to the formation (together with Atlantic Ritchfield) of the world’s largest oil company.

The Bridas-Unocal rivalry had evolved towards “a fall-out” between two major US corporations (Unocal and BP-Amoco), which were also “partners” in the westbound pipeline projects. Both Unocal and BP-Amoco have extensive links to seats of political power, not only in the White House and Congress, but also with the military and intelligence establishment in charge of covert operations in Central Asia. Both companies contributed generously to the Bush presidential campaign.

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The merger between BP and Amoco (leading to the integration of British and American oil interests) had no doubt also contributed to the development of closer political ties between the British and US Governments. Responding to the merger of American and British interests in oil, banking and the military-industrial complex, Britain’s new Labour government, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, has become America’s unconditional ally.

The US Embassy Bombings

In the course of 1998, talks between Taliban and Unocal officials had stalled. The honeymoon was over. Then came the East African US Embassy bombings, allegedly by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, and the launching of cruise missiles against targets in Afghanistan.

The official suspension of negotiations with the Taliban was announced by Unocal in August 1998 in the immediate wake of the punitive actions against Afghanistan and Sudan, ordered by President Clinton. Whether the 1997 takeover of Bridas by Amoco and the subsequent merger of BP-Amoco (also in August 1998) had a bearing on Unocal’s decision remains unclear. Nonetheless, “the Big Game” had evolved: Unocal was now competing against the world’s largest oil company, BP-Amoco.

The Texas Court Case: BP-Amoco (Bridas) versus Unocal

Two months later in this evolving saga, in October 1998, a Texas court dismissed the (formerly Argentinean-owned) Bridas’ US$15 billion lawsuit against Unocal “for preventing them developing gas fields in Turkmenistan”. [16] It turned out that the court ruling was in fact against Bridas’ parent company, BP-Amoco, which had, a year earlier, acquired a controlling stake in Bridas.

In all likelihood, there was a mutual understanding between Unocal and BP-Amoco, which are consortium partners in the Caspian Sea basin. Moreover, while Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former National Security Adviser (in a Democratic administration), was acting as a consultant for Amoco, Henry Kissinger, a former Secretary of State (in a Republican administration), was advising Unocal Corporation.

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The acquisition of Bridas by BP-Amoco suggests that BP will, in all likelihood, be a major player in future pipeline negotiations, most probably in an agreement with Unocal.

Unocal Withdraws But Only Temporarily

While Unocal had formally withdrawn from the CentGas consortium in the wake of the cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and the Sudan, BP-Amoco’s subsidiary, Pan American Energy, (the successor company to Bridas), continued to actively negotiate with Afghan, Russian, Turkmen and Kazakh officials regarding the trans-Afghan pipeline project.

Meanwhile, a turnaround had occurred in US foreign policy under the Clinton administration towards Bridas: No more dirty tricks against a company which is now owned by one of America’s largest oil conglomerates! Visibly, in the last two years of the Clinton administration, Unocal’s rival in the pipeline negotiations, BPAmoco, had the upper hand.

Despite Unocal’s temporary withdrawal, the CentGas consortium was not disbanded. Unocal’s partner, Delta Oil Corporation of Saudi Arabia, in CentGas continued to negotiate with the Taliban.

George W. Bush Enters the White House

The evolving pipeline saga gained a new momentum upon George W. Bush’s accession to the White House in January 2001.

At the very outset of the Bush administration, Unocal (which had withdrawn in 1998 from pipeline negotiations under the Clinton administration) reintegrated the CentGas Consortium and resumed its talks with the Taliban (in January 2001), with the firm backing, this time, of senior officials of the Bush administration, including Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage. Dick Armitage had previously been a lobbyist for Unocal in the Burma/Myanmar Forum, which is a Washington-based group funded by Unocal. [17]

These negotiations with the Taliban occurred only a few months before the September 11 attacks:

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Laila Helms [daughter of Senator Jesse Helms], who was hired as the public relations agent for the Taliban government, brought Rahmatullah Hashimi, an advisor to Mullah Omar, to Washington as recently as March 2001. Helms was uniquely positioned for the job through her association with her uncle Richard Helms, former chief of the CIA and former Ambassador to Iran. One of the negotiating meetings was held just one month before September 11, on August 2, when Christina Rocca, in charge of Asian Affairs at the State Department, met Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salem Zaef, in Islamabad.

Rocca has had extensive connections with Afghanistan, including supervising the delivery of Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen in the 1980s. At the CIA, she had been in charge of contacts with Islamist fundamentalist guerrilla groups. [18]

Unocal ‘Appoints’ Interim Government in Kabul

In the wake of the bombing of Afghanistan, the Bush administration designated Hamid Karzai as head of the interim government in Kabul. While highlighting Karzai’s patriotic struggle against the Taliban, what the media failed to mention is that Karzai had collaborated with the Taliban government. He had also been on Unocal’s payroll.

In fact, since the mid-1990s, Hamid Karzai, who later became President, had acted as a consultant and lobbyist for Unocal in negotiations with the Taliban. His appointment - visibly on behalf of the US oil giants - had been casually rubber-stamped by the “international community” at the November 2001 Bonn conference, held under UN auspices.

According to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan:

Karzai has been a Central Intelligence Agency covert operator since the 1980s. He collaborated with the CIA in funneling US aid to the Taliban as of 1994 “when the Americans had - secretly and through the Pakistanis [specifically the ISI] - supported the Taliban’s assumption of power.” [19]

“Coincidentally, President Bush’s Special Envoy to Kabul, Zalmay Khalizad, had also worked for Unocal. He had drawn up the risk

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analysis for the pipeline in 1997, lobbied for the Taliban and took part in negotiations with them.” [20] Khalizad had occupied the position of Special Advisor to the State Department during the Reagan administration, “lobbying successfully for accelerated US military aid to the Mujahideen”.

He later became Undersecretary of Defense in the Bush Senior Cabinet. [21] When George W. was inaugurated in January 2001, Khalizad was appointed to the National Security Council. While Clinton’s foreign policy had provided support to US oil interests in Central Asia, under the Republicans oil company officials were brought into the inner sphere of political decision-making.

The ‘Reconstruction’ of Afghanistan

Washington had set the stage. According to a World Bank representative in Kabul, “reconstruction in Afghanistan [was] going to open up a whole range of opportunities.” [22]

Two days after the bombing of Afghanistan commenced, on October 9, the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlain, met with Pakistani officials regarding the trans-Afghan pipeline. The pipeline, according to the report, was slated to “open up new avenues of multi-dimensional regional cooperation, particularly in light of recent geopolitical developments [bombing of Afghanistan] in the region”. [23]

With Afghanistan under US military occupation, the role of Hamid Karzai as the country’s President is to “broker” the pipeline deal on behalf of the Anglo-American oil giants with the firm backing of the Bush administration.

In the immediate wake of the October 2001 bombing raids, the media reported that “two small companies”, Chase Energy and Caspian Energy Consulting (acting on behalf of major oil interests), had contacts with the governments of Turkmenistan and Pakistan to revive the pipeline deal. While the identity of the oil companies behind these “small firms” was not mentioned, it just so happens that the President of Caspian Sea Consulting, S. Rob Sobhani, had been a consultant to BP-Amoco in Central Asia. Sobhani also sits on the Council of Foreign Relations’ “Caspian Sea

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Discourse”, together with representatives of major oil companies, the George Soros Open Society Institute, the CIA and the Heritage Foundation (a Republican party think tank).

According to S. Rob Sobhani:

It is absolutely essential that the US make the pipeline the centerpiece of rebuilding Afghanistan …. The State Department thinks it’s a great idea, too. Routing the gas through Iran would be avoided, and the Central Asian republics wouldn’t have to ship through Russian pipelines. [24]

According to Joseph Noemi, CEO of Chase Energy, September 11, and the “War on Terrorism” are a blessing in disguise for Afghanistan:

If the United States’ presence continues in the region, [September 11] is probably the best thing that could have happened here for the Central Asian republics … This region, in terms of oil economics, is the frontier for this century and Afghanistan is part and parcel of this. [25]

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Notes

1. Knight Ridder News, 31 October 2001.
2. Jim Crogan, “The Oil War”, LA Weekly, 30 November 2001.
3. Ibid.
4. Ted Rall, “It’s About Oil”, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 November 2001, p. A25.
5. Ishtiaq Ahmad, “How America Courted Taliban”, Pakistan Observer, 20 October 2001.
6. John Pilger, “This War is a Fraud”, Daily Mirror, 29 October 2001.
7. Jim Crogan, “Pipeline Payoff to Afghanistan War”, California CrimeTimes, November 2001, http://www.californiacrimetimes.com/. See also Jim Crogan, “The Oil War: Unocal’s once-grand plan for Afghan pipelines”, LA Weekly, 30 November-6 December 2001.
8. US Congress, Hearing on US Interests in the Central Asian Republics, House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, Committee on International Relations, Washington, DC,
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0f.htm.
9. See Karen Talbot, “US Energy Giant Unocal Appoints Interim Government in Kabul”, Global Outlook, No. 1, Spring 2002, p. 70.
10. “Timeline of Competition Between Unocal and Bridas”, World Press Review, December 2001, www.worldpress.org.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Alexander Gas and Oil Connections, http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/company/cnc75005.htm, 12 August 1997
14. Larry Chin, “Unocal and the Afghanistan Pipeline”, Online Journal, 6 March 2002, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI203A.html, 6 March 2002.
15. Ibid.
16. Timeline, op. cit.
17. Larry Chin, op. cit.
18. See Karen Talbot,“US Energy Giant Unocal Appoints Interim Government in Kabul”, Global Outlook, No. 1, Spring 2002. p. 70.
19. Karen Talbot, op. cit. and BBC Monitoring Service, 15 December 2001.
20. Karen Talbot, op. cit.
21. Patrick Martin, “Unocal Advisor Named Representative to Afghanistan”, World Socialist Web Site, 3 January 2002.
22. Statement of William Byrd, World Bank Acting Country Manager for Afghanistan, 27 November 2001.
23. Quoted in Larry Chin, “The Bush administration’s Afghan Carpet”, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI203B.html, 13 March 2002.
24. Daniel Fisher, “Kabuled Together”, Forbes Online, 4 February 2002, http://www.forbes.com.
25. Knight Ridder News, 30 October 2001.

New round-up: Afghanistan

From yesterday’s news:

At his annual Mansion House foreign affairs address Gordon Brown says that a ‘clear timetable’ for the handover of security to Afghan forces could be agreed as early as January 2010. ‘The international community will meet to agree plans for the support we will provide to Afghanistan during this next phase.’

In a speech to the NATO parliamentary assembly David Miliband says the military commitment in Afghanistan is ‘not a war without end’ but that NATO’s priority was not to risk leaving a ‘vacuum’ for a resurgent Taliban.

Transparency International reports that Iraq and Afghanistan are among the most corrupt states on the planet. ‘When essential institutions are weak or non-existent, corruption spirals out of control.” And who made ’em weak to non-existent in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Now some quotes from Aram Roston’s article in The Nation last week, ‘How the US Funds the Taliban’:

On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime’s ambassador in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat’s right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

But Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1997.

Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal’s cousin President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who in a separate case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn. The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals’ private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan. One of Watan's enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.
…

Whereas in Iraq the private security industry has been dominated by US and global firms like Blackwater, operating as de facto arms of the US government, in Afghanistan there are lots of local players as well. As a result, the industry in Kabul is far more dog-eat-dog. “Every warlord has his security company,” is the way one executive explained it to me.

In theory, private security companies in Kabul are heavily regulated, although the reality is different. Thirty-nine companies had licenses until September, when another dozen were granted licenses. Many licensed companies are politically connected: just as NCL is owned by the son of the defense minister and Watan Risk Management is run by President Karzai’s cousins, the Asia Security Group is controlled by Hashmat Karzai, another relative of the president. The company has blocked off an entire street in the expensive Sherpur District. Another security firm is controlled by the parliamentary speaker’s son, sources say. And so on.
…

“Most escorting is done by the Taliban,” an Afghan private security official told me. He’s a Pashto and former mujahedeen commander who has his finger on the pulse of the military situation and the security industry. And he works with one of the trucking companies carrying US supplies. “Now the government is so weak,” he added, “everyone is paying the Taliban.”

Taliban, Mr Miliband? Taliban Schmaliban!

The last eight years begin to look like a speeded-up version of so many old-model colonisation-decolonisations. Invade and destroy the old regime; secure the resources; divide and rule the population; identify and cultivate the most corruptible local elites; install them in power; officially pull out, … but in reality control of the economy remains in our hands. I say ‘our hands’ but mean the bloody hooks of the bankers and contractors. As in Egypt, so in Afghanistan, we, the real we, merely provided the initial tax base and soldiery (this is Combat Barbie’s ‘service.’).

The system of transferring nominal authority without threatening the bankers’ actual control was developed and perfected by Sir Andrew Cohen at the Foreign office in the late 1940s. See Ronald Robinson, ‘Imperial Theory and the Question of Imperialism after Empire,’ and the same author’s contribution to Morris-Jones and Fischer (Eds), Decolonization and After: The British and French Experience (Cass, 1980), ‘Andrew Cohen and the Transfer of Political Power in Tropical Africa, 1940-1951.’ In the first of these Robinson asks whether decolonisation and the recognition of nationalist claims was not simply the ‘continuation of imperialism by other and more efficient means?’ Aye, and still is.

Drummer Hodge vs. ‘Combat Barbie’ Hodge

Katrina Hodge / Lance Corporal Hodge / Combat Barbie / Miss England hopes to ‘serve in Afghanistan.’ To serve whom?

Thomas Hardy wrote some fine war poems including ‘Drummer Hodge’ about a Boer war casualty. Hodge was a sometimes derogatory name for a rural labourer and Hardy had written about their situation sympathetically. We are meant to understand that the disenfranchised soldier, fighting to secure the Transvaal gold mines for other men, had been the disenfranchised English labourer of peacetime, and to causally link the two states. Hardy is right, men with productive land of their own in a country controlled by their own people are not often found fighting imperial wars as soldiers for hire. Needless to say, nor would their women seek reason or glory in an imperial misadventure like the present Afghan war.

Drummer Hodge
by Thomas Hardy

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined – just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew –
Fresh from his Wessex home –
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellation reign
His stars eternally.

Media rejoice as pro-war beauty becomes Miss England

___________________________Christie and Hodge______________________


When Rachel Christie somewhat bizarrely won the Miss England beauty contest earlier this year our ‘anti-racist’ mainstream media were cockahoop - because she wasn’t White. The ITN News reporter said that Christie’s non-Whiteness made her ‘a thoroughly modern beauty queen’; Christie herself said that she hoped to be a role-model to Black youngsters:

‘I want to show them you can do anything you want, whatever your colour. I don't like hearing: "I can't do this or that because I'm black." They should stop behaving in a way that stereotypes them. If you come across as smart, if you dress nicely and speak well, it shouldn't make a difference if you're black or white.’

It made a difference to the media, every piece of news coverage mentioned her race as a positive factor. I quoted some headlines at the time:

I won Miss England to prove being black is NEVER an excuse for failure
First Black Miss England crowned
Victory for Linford Christie’s niece as she becomes first black Miss England
100m star Christie’s niece crowned first black Miss England
Linford Christie's niece is first black Miss England

But now that Christie has conformed to stereotype and been forced to hand back her crown after punching another girl repeatedly in the face in a nightclub brawl, the media are strangely silent about race. Maybe her uncle Linford Christie, the drug cheat sprinter, is right about the media’s racism but wrong about which groups it privileges?

Fortunately for the media, though, every cloud has a silver lining, and while Christie’s resignation means no more anti-White propaganda can be squeezed from this story, her replacement offers propaganda scope for one of their other wars:

Miss England: 'I Want To Serve In Afghanistan'

The soldier recently crowned Miss England has expressed her wish to one day serve on the frontline alongside comrades in Afghanistan.

Lance Corporal Katrina Hodge, dubbed "Combat Barbie" by Army colleagues, had been due to join the British effort before she was drafted in to compete for the Miss World crown.

The 22-year-old soldier, who has already served in Iraq, said she hopes to be deployed when her reign as Miss England ends in July next year.

The 2009 runner up was fast-tracked in as a replacement for the year's original winner Rachel Christie.

The 21-year-old relinquished the beauty title following her arrest over an alleged brawl in a Manchester nightclub.

How convenient. I wonder if the second runner-up was a professional global warming activist?

‘The Same Old Hun?’: Anti-German Propaganda

More from Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1979):

In war it is almost axiomatic that the peoples of the combatant nations must be taught to hate each other. This applied to Britain no less than it did to Germany in the Second World War. Writing before the war, Hans Speier stated, ‘In modern war, in which mass opinions count, the enemy has to be wholly identified ... with the principle of evil, so that one can mobilize the power of right for one’s own cause.’ As if with the Ministry of Information’s propaganda in mind, Joseph Geoghegan observed during the war that the enemy was denied any shred of justification:

He so blatantly represents the negation of all good, he so deliberately runs counter to every law of God or man, he carries with him such a foul string of barbarities that it becomes only right and proper to smite him hip and thigh.

While the Ministry saw it as a prime duty on the home front ‘by the dissemination of truth to attack the enemy in the minds of the public’, it became clear as the war progressed that statements made about the enemy represented a deliberate attempt to manipulate public opinion and attitude. ‘All propaganda is lies’, wrote Orwell in 1942, ‘even when one is telling the truth.’ The validity of this paradox is borne out by an examination of the Ministry’s use of the ‘truth’, for the propagandists did select facts to serve ends and they did offer as truth statements which at best could be described as convenient assumptions. On one issue - the nature of the RAF’s bombing strategy in Germany - they were not above stretching the truth to the threshold of lying.

A contemporary psychologist, E. H. Henderson, suggested that

[p.137]

the aim of the propagandist is to inculcate certain attitudes by means which prevent critical thinking. That the Ministry of Information attempted to accomplish this should cause no surprise. What is worthy of comment, however, is the fact that the Ministry simultaneously attached great importance to releasing simple, unadorned news and tried to persuade other departments to limit their requests for censorship strictly to matters of security. The ambivalence in departmental attitudes cannot be attributed to poor co-ordination between one division and another, since on the same day a senior officer might berate the Admiralty for withholding unpleasant news and then suggest at a meeting that the public should be induced to regard the Germans with hatred as a means of sustaining morale. […]

To judge by the resources, man hours and thought expended on telling the public what attitudes they ought to adopt towards the· enemy, the Ministry considered the matter to be one of cardinal importance. […]

[p.138]

The critical question as to whether the German people were to be characterised as incorrigibly aggressive was left for the consideration of the Ministry. Yet this matter, so closely related to a post-war settlement, should have merited the Cabinet’s closest attention. Unlike its operations in censorship and the issue of news, the Ministry was virtually unconstrained by higher authority in pronouncements on the enemy.

In July 1938 Stephen King-Hall insisted:

We must go into the war with a conviction in the minds of the people that it was forced on us and that we did all that was honourably possible to avoid it ... The danger would appear to be that in a crisis which may arise very suddenly we shall have public opinion in a muddle in this country ... we may find ourselves in the dangerous position of the Cabinet having issued threats and being committed to action for which public opinion is unprepared and might not support.

In the event, it was the public that clamoured for a firm declaration of war when Chamberlain appeared to waver after the Germans attacked Poland. Having prepared a considerable amount of material, the Ministry adopted a historical, almost scholarly, emphasis in explaining the causes of the war. In a pamphlet of some 6,000 words, D. A. Routh, the historian, reached deep into German history to expose the roots of her latest act of aggression and, while not sparing the nation from charges of wickedness, concluded:

... the tragedy of Germany is the tragedy of a great people who, through lack of political experience and for reasons lying far back in their history, have twice failed to prevent their national power from falling into the hands of violent and ambitious rulers ... The overthrow of National-Socialism is the one hope for the future of the German people.

In Assurance of Victory it was argued that Britain had striven to ameliorate the harsher provisions of the Versailles Treaty and to integrate Germany in a peaceful Europe but, misled by Hitler, the Germans had insisted on supporting a treacherous foreign policy. There was now no recourse but to prevent Germany from trampling

[p.140]

on the rights of other nations, a policy ‘which British Governments have consistently pursued in the face of the attempts of any Power to dominate Europe by force’. […]

Once the British were at war there was little sign of reluctance to pursue a struggle ‘quietly accepted as inevitable’ and as a consequence the Ministry’s long-winded statements about its cause became superfluous. A source of greater concern - and one that would continue well into 1941 - were reports of public confusion about Britain’s military aims. It was one thing to know who had started the war but quite another to know what victory was meant to achieve or, indeed, whether the government would stop short of the complete defeat of the enemy. […]

[p.141]

When the war moved closer to home and it was realised the fight was on in earnest the tone of the propaganda underwent an abrupt change, a process greatly hastened by Churchill’s accession to the premiership on 10 May.

As British troops. were being evacuated from Norway, the Policy Committee agreed that the separation of the German people from Nazism should in future be avoided. And after Dunkirk:

The Director General asked whether it was thought that the Ministry should now begin to stir up people’s more primitive instincts. After discussion it was considered that we should now pay more attention to stirring up people’s anger ... It might be merely sufficient to impress the people that they were in fact angry.

[p.142]

Two weeks later a paper setting out proposals for an ‘Anger Campaign’ was circulated at the Policy Committee. It is one of the more remarkable documents of wartime government, not merely because it illustrates the mood which gripped the propagandists themselves but also because it demonstrates the extent to which they were capable of misunderstanding the British public.

The public, ‘patient, long-suffering, slow to anger, slower still to hate’, were believed to be ‘harbouring little sense of real personal animus against the average German man or woman [and] accepting with amazing phlegm bitter reverses without overmuch recrimination’. This placidity must be replaced with ‘personal anger ... against the German people and Germany’. This raises two difficult questions. First, what justification was there for thinking that the people felt no anger towards the Germans? And second, was anger necessary ‘as a factor in increasing the war effort and preparing the British public for every emergency’? Such evidence as was available to the Ministry suggested that there was nothing approaching the almost hysterically bellicose mood of the British in the early months of the First World War, which is not to say that in the middle of 1940 the public regarded the Germans with equanimity. What did the Home Intelligence reports indicate? Hitler’s discomfiting ability to realise his military predictions aroused apprehension but it was Italy rather than Germany which earned the anger of the British after Mussolini’s declaration of war on 11 June. Not until September 1940 were there any reports of bitterness against the Germans, and even then they were said to have been aroused not by Nazi ideology or German victories in Europe but by direct air attacks on Britain. ‘It is so strange’, observed Harold Nicolson, ‘that in this moment of anxiety there is no hatred of Hitler or the Germans.’

Granted, then, that the Ministry had good reason to suppose that the people did not hate the enemy, what justification was there for the deduction that this represented a danger? It is too easy to be wise after the event. We know that the British people displayed resilience and determination, though in no greater measure than German civilians later in the war, but we must avoid the anachronism of imputing that knowledge to the propagandists in June 1940, when invasion seemed a distinct probability. Nevertheless, stolidity and phlegm might just as easily have indicated a sober realisation of the trials that lay ahead and a determination to withstand them; whereas anger of the semi-hysterical sort the Ministry wished to inculcate might, if spontaneously present, have revealed a certain brittleness and instability far more worrying than outward placidity.

[p.143]

It was the opinion of contemporary psychiatrists and social psychologists (whom, for the most part, the Ministry studiously avoided consulting) that hate is a poor basis for morale. The emotion, asserted one authority, prevents discrimination between good and bad individuals among the enemy, blinds one to historical realities and may, if continued into peacetime, affect post-war settlements and lay the foundation for another war. If the reasoning then current in the Ministry is followed, where does it lead? The public were not angry. They were, therefore, either not aware of the danger of the situation or were unwilling to construct for themselves good reasons for standing up to the Nazis. In consequence they were incapable of resisting whatever lay ahead.

So in order to ‘change the attitude of the most stolid and unvengeable people in the world’ it was proposed to mount a massive and, at first, clandestine campaign. Photographs, cartoons, posters, film, radio, leaflets, speeches, exhibitions, window displays - all were to be put at the service of ‘the modern art of propaganda - all pervasive, subtle and persistent’. The Ministry should be seen to enter the campaign only after non-official propaganda had succeeded and the people were beginning to feel stirrings of anger. The methods of Goebbels had not been overlooked, for, as the paper averred with a hint of admiration, ‘it is exactly upon these intensive lines that propaganda has succeeded in creating the militant Germany of to-day from a battered, helpless nation’. The officials of the Ministry were urged to regard themselves as ‘a small group of expert propagandists ... in a position to tap and colour and guide every source of public expression’. The ‘total attack’ was to have as its principal weapon the co-operation of the twenty or thirty most influential journalists of the national press who, in consultation with the Ministry, would write a ‘stream of carefully worded features’ based on certain themes. In suggesting one such theme, ‘The German Character’, the paper stressed the importance of tailoring the style and content to the class of the reader. For the broad mass the emotional appeal was felt to be most suitable:

EUROPE’S GANGSTERS RAMPANT
THE RECURRING MADNESS OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE
HUNS, GOTHS AND VANDALS
GERMAN LUST FOR WORLD DOMINATION
1870 - 1914 - 1939
‘THEY DO NOT CHANGE’
BLOWS ARE ALL THEY UNDERSTAND
FREDERICK - BISMARCK - WILHELM - HITLER
THEY SHALL NOT PASS
WHY THE KAISER CALLED THEM ‘HUNS’
THE ROUT OF THE GERMANS IN 1918
THE GERMAN IS NOT INVINCIBLE
THESE BULLIES CAN BE BEATEN
THE LESSON OF THE AIR FORCE
INFERIORITY COMPLEX -- THE ROOT OF GERMAN AGGRESSION

The ‘sophisticated and educated classes’ were to be given ‘more restrained and factual’ evidence:

The fundamental ‘rottenness’ of the German character - historical analysis.
German writers on the Germany bully complex - Nietzsche, Treitschke, etc.
Detailed instances where Germans have crumpled up.
German weaknesses.
Germany’s ‘case’ torn to shreds - refutation of Versailles Treaty attacks, etc.
Events since the war have utterly confuted the weak-kneed apologists for Hitler. His ‘lebensraum’ is the whole world. His ‘culture’ the death of every other race.

The middle classes - ‘still not mentally at war’ - had to be convinced that the Germans intended to rob them of their incomes and culture; the professional classes ‘told of refugee professional men, of how they have been hounded and put to menial tasks - like washing dishes and cleaning lavatories’; and shopkeepers, businessmen and industrial workers disabused of the idea that ‘things might go much the same way under Hitler’. While being careful to emphasise that stories of German brutality should not be allowed to arouse fear rather than hatred, the Ministry insisted that atrocity stories are believed and are effective. Thus another Nurse Cavell story was to be found and news of German ruthlessness treated so as to illustrate triumphant courage ‘such as the woman in Bruges in 1914 who slaughtered two Germans who had killed her son’.

The smaller touches were not omitted. Nazi leaders, it was recommended, should never be mentioned without an appropriate label: ‘Hitler - the Arch Gangster’, ‘Jew Baiter Streicher’ and ‘Lie Minister Goebbels’. The BBC must be persuaded to cease referring to ‘Herr’ Hitler and ‘Signor’ Mussolini. A rather more drastic suggestion was

[p.145]

that ‘a few death sentences on traitors would have a great effect in heightening the public temper against the enemy’.

Hitler posed a very difficult problem. Later in the war it would be possible to make a joke of him but in 1940 it was not easy to counter the impression of his political and military omniscience, and all that could be done was to suggest somewhat feebly that the opposite was the case:

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that Hitler’s success is engendering a legend of infallibility which is immensely powerful ... THIS LEGEND MUST BE DEFEATED. It must be made clear that the little countries Hitler has invaded were lying defenceless at Hitler’s door for generations. Even in France he is only making headway by sheer weight of metal. Hitler is personally fallible, despicable, cowardly ... He is important only as the embodiment of the German lust for power in the most evil guise it has ever taken.

This latter assertion contains the essence not only of the Anger Campaign but of the tenor of domestic propaganda for the rest of the war, namely that there can be no distinction between a German and a Nazi. Nazism is but the latest and most virulent manifestation of the inherent wickedness of the German race. Stephen King-Hall’s propaganda theme of 1938 - ‘we reluctantly destroy German bodies in order to save the souls of the rest’ - had been hastily jettisoned. The new orthodoxy, suggested the propagandists, should be embodied by a famous writer such as J. B. Priestley in a short wall text to be issued in millions:

The Secret Beast

In the middle of a great civilised continent, far from the sea which brings a breath of the outer world to freshen men’s minds, a secret people dwell.

Ever and again they become crazed with a spell of hero worship. A leader arises among them who tells them that they are greater than the other peoples of the world. Knowing nothing of the world’s vastness and of the seas which link land to land, they believe - and march out to slaughter and destroy.

The secret people of the Germanys are worse than fools in their folly. When their madness comes upon them, out leaps a primitive, barbarian beast-like instinct. They kill without pity, rejoicing in blood, as animals kill. They know no law, as animals know no law.

[p.146]

They are Europe’s secret beasts, roused to senseless fury. It is all Europe’s mission to cower them and cage them today, as all Europe has had to do before.

The Hun is at the gate. He will rage and destroy. He will slaughter the women and the children. But in the end, he will run from the men as he has always run in the past.

Out then and kill ... the extermination of the wild animal let loose on Europe is the plain business of Europe’s citizens.

By these and other means a fundamental change of public attitude was to be wrought. The wish was very much father to the thought. No evidence was forthcoming during the brief life of the Ministry to support the belief that public opinion and emotion were so malleable, and just how seriously the proposed campaign was regarded in the department it is difficult to tell. The men responsible for approving it were well educated, intelligent and worldly and it is barely conceivable that they could contemplate treating the British public as a body of credulous simpletons. Moreover, in proposing a reversion to the crudest type of First World War propaganda, were they not aware of the scepticism which the falsity and unscrupulousness of that propaganda had engendered between the wars? The explanation must be tentatively sought in the states of mind of the propagandists themselves. They knew what the public could only strongly suspect - that the threat to Britain was imminent and grave - and the Anger Campaign seems to have been devised to stir up their own ‘primitive instincts’ as profoundly as those of the people at large. The Ministry saw about them a dangerous complacency whose cure it was their urgent duty to prescribe. While other men produced the munitions and manned the beaches the propagandists probably felt the need to do something which could be interpreted, if only by themselves, as of equal importance to the nation’s defence. It was at this time, too, that the Ministry were advocating the imposition of compulsory censorship, but this departure from the liberal attitude with which censorship was normally exercised was soon abandoned. Not so the new propaganda. For, although the Anger Campaign was not implemented on the heroic scale originally contemplated, its principal themes were embodied in the Ministry’s public attitude towards the enemy for the rest of the war.

[p.147]

Big Lies

The news is not a neutral phenomenon; it is rather the manufactured production of ideology. ~ The Glasgow University Media Group

***

There are many ‘Big Lies,’ not least the one that a certain German fellow originated the practice and advocated its use. One big lie is that the establishment parties are deadly foes, another is that government more generally reacts to public opinion than shapes it.

From a 1939 Ministry of Information memo to the Home Office on civilian morale:

It must be realised that large masses of people distrust the radio and a press which they know to be censored. Hence support for the energetic prosecution of war, from those sections of the Labour Movement known to be most opposed to the Government on other matters will have a quite disproportionate effect in raising civilian morale ... It is not too much to say that ... their propaganda value will be actually increased if the speakers attack the Government on other points ...

The people must feel that they are being told the truth. Distrust breeds fear much more than knowledge of reverses. The all important thing for publicity to achieve is the conviction that the worst is known. This can be achieved by the adoption, publication and prosecution of a policy. The people should be told that this is a civilians’ war, or a People’s War, and therefore they are to be taken into the Government’s confidence as never before ... But what is truth? We must adopt a pragmatic definition. It is what is believed to be the truth. A lie that is put across becomes the truth and may, therefore, be justified. The difficulty is to keep up lying ... It is simpler to tell the truth and, if a sufficient emergency arises, to tell one big, thumping lie that will then be believed.

‘The Preservation of Civilian Morale’ September 13th 1939, HO 199/434. Italics in original.

Iraq Replay III

From James Petras, The Power of Israel in the United States

Chapter 1: Who Fabricated the Iraq War Threat? The Jewish Lobby, Not Big Oil

Who Fabricated the Iraq War Threat?

The debate and criticism in the US Congress and media of the Bush Administration’s fabricated evidence of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and a host of other misconduct (lying to Congress, military tribunals in Guantanamo, torture in Abu Ghraib, CIA renditions, spying on Americans, and corruption in general) has finally reached the point of a Congressional attempt to generate an impeachment inquiry. [1] The initial investigation and testimony of top US military and civilian officials in the Pentagon and State Department, which revealed profound differences and divisions between themselves and the ‘political appointees’, has now been embellished by public statements against the Bush administration from retired generals, who claimed to reflect the views of the active military, and called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. [2] The testimony and evidence of the professionals’ revelations have been crucial to understanding the structure of real power in the Bush Administration, since it is in times of crisis and divisions in the governing class that we, the public, are given insights into who governs, and for whom. The ongoing debate, criticism, and division in Washington today provide just such instances.

After years of UN inspections, and a comprehensive 15-month search by the Iraq Survey Group, following thousands of searches and interviews by close to ten thousand US military, intelligence and scientific inspectors, it has been definitively demonstrated, and at last admitted by President George W. Bush, that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction (or even of useful national defense). This raised the key question: who in the Bush regime provided the fabricated evidence and for what purpose?

The initial response of the Bush apologists was to attribute the fabrications to ‘bureaucratic errors’ and ‘communication failures’ or as then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz cynically claimed, to the need to ‘secure a consensus for the war policy’. CIA Director Tenet became the self-confessed scapegoat for the ‘mistakes’. As the investigations progressed, however, testimony from a multiplicity of high level sources in the regime revealed that there were two channels of policy making and advisers, 1) the formal structure made up of career professional military and civilians in the Pentagon and State Department, and 2) a parallel structure within the Pentagon made up of political appointees. From all available evidence it was the ‘unofficial’ political advisers organized by Wolfowitz, Feith, and Rumsfeld in the Office of Special Plans (OSP) who were the source of the fabricated evidence, which was used to ‘justify’ the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The OSP, which only existed briefly from September 2002 to June 2003, was headed by Abram Shulsky and included other neo-conservatives, who had virtually no professional knowledge or qualification in intelligence and military affairs. Douglas Feith, then Undersecretary of Defense, and Paul Wolfowitz set up the OSP. Shulsky was an avid follower and protege of Richard Perle, the well-known militarist and long time supporter of military attacks on Arab regimes in the Middle East.

According to the testimony of a Pentagon insider, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Near East and South Asia Division and Special Plans in the Pentagon, the ‘civil service and active duty military professionals were noticeably uninvolved in key areas’ of interest to Feith, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, namely Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowski went on to specify that ‘in terms of Israel and Iraq all primary staff work was conducted by political appointees, in the case of Israel a desk officer appointee from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and in the case of Iraq, Abe Shulsky.’ Equally important, the ex-Pentagon official addressed the existence of ‘cross-agency cliques’. She described how the members of a variety of neoconservative and pro-Israel organizations (Project for a New American Century, the Center for Security Policy, and the American Enterprise Institute), also held office in the Bush regime and only interacted among themselves across the various agencies. She pointed out that major decisions resulted from ‘groupthink’ -- the uncritical acceptance of prevailing points of view and the uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated views. Kwiatkowski was forced to resign by her chief after she told him that ‘some folks (the cliques and networks) in the Pentagon may be sitting beside Hussein in the war crimes tribunal’ for their destructive war and occupation policies.

What became very clear was that the OSP and its directors, Feith and Wolfowitz, were specifically responsible for the fabricated evidence of the ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ that justified the war on Iraq. The OSP and the other members of the networks that operated throughout key US agencies shared a rightwing pro-militarist ideology and were fanatically pro-Israel. Feith and Perle authored an infamous policy paper in 1996 for Likud Party extremist, Benjamin Netanyahu, entitled ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’, which called for the destruction of Saddam Hussein and his replacement by a Hashemite monarch. The governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran would then have to be overthrown or destabilized, the paper asserted, in order for Israel to be secure in a kind of ‘Greater US-Israel Co-Prosperity Sphere.’ The finger clearly pointed to Zionist zealots who directed the OSP, like Abram Shulsky and Feith, as the source for the ‘phony intelligence’ which led to the war that Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were seeking. The manner in which the Zionist zealots organized and acted - as a clique of arrogant like-minded fanatics hostile to any contrary viewpoints from the professional intelligence, civilian, and military officials - indicated that their loyalties and links were elsewhere, most evidently with the Sharon regime in Israel. As the Guardian’s Julian Borger wrote on July 17, 2003, the OSP ‘forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam’s Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorize.’ It is interesting to note that the influential rightwing Zionists in the Bush Administration actually provided ‘reports’ on Iraq which were at variance with reports from the Israeli Mossad, which did not believe that Iraq represented any ‘threat’ to the US or Israel. Mossad’s skepticism was shared by the CIA, now known to have advised the Bush administration on the non-existence of WMD. [3] With the primary intelligence agencies of Israel and the US advising otherwise, is it credible to presume that their negative findings on Iraqi WMD were overruled due to better information, and not to better clout?

The Jewish Lobby, Not Big Oil

Contrary to the view of most American progressives that oil, and specifically the interests of Big Oil, is the primary mover, there is no evidence that the major US oil corporations pressured Congress or promoted the war in Iraq or the current confrontation with Iran. To the contrary: there is plenty of evidence that they are very uneasy about the losses that may result from an Israeli attack on Iran. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to suppose that Big Oil is far from happy about taking the rap for all that is happening in the Middle East, particularly when it combines with public anger at high gas prices, and leads to Senate inquiries.

There is an abundance of evidence for the past 15 years that:

1. The oil companies did not promote a war policy.
2. The wars have prejudiced their interests, operations and agreements with prominent Arab and Islamic regimes in the region.
3. The interests of the oil companies have been sacrificed to the state interests of Israel.
4. The power of the pro-Israel lobbies exceeds that of the oil companies in shaping US Middle East policy.

A thorough search through the publications and lobbying activities of the oil industry and the pro-Israel lobbies over the past decade reveals an overwhelming amount of documentation demonstrating that the Jewish lobbies were far more pro-war than the oil industry. Moreover the public records of the oil industry demonstrate a high level of economic co-operation with all the Arab states and increasing market integration. In contrast the public pronouncements, publications, and activities of the most economically powerful and influential pro-Israel Jewish lobbies were directed toward increasing US government hostility to the Arab countries, including exerting maximum pressure in favor of the war in Iraq, a boycott or military attack on Iran, and US backing for Israeli assassination and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

The most striking illustration of Jewish power in shaping US policy in the Middle East against the interest of Big Oil is demonstrated in US-Iran policy. As the Financial Times notes: ‘International oil companies are putting multi-billion dollar projects in Iran on hold, concerned about the diplomatic standoff [sic] [US economic-military threats] over the country’s nuclear programme’. [4] In fact, as Michael Klare pointed out:

No doubt the major U.S. energy companies would love to be working with Iran today in developing these vast oil and gas supplies. At present, however, they are prohibited from doing so by Executive Order (EO) 12959, signed by President Clinton in 1995 and renewed by President Bush in March 2004. [5]

Despite the fact that billions of dollars in oil, gas and petro-chemical contracts are in play, the pro-Israel lobby has influenced Congress to bar all major US oil companies from investing in Iran. Through its all-out campaign in the US Congress and Administration, the US-Jewish-Israeli lobby has created a warlike climate which now goes counter to the interests of all the world’s major oil companies including BP, the UK-based gas company, SASOL (South Africa), Royal Dutch Shell, Total of France, and others.

A question to ponder is whether ‘war for oil’ is the same as ‘war in the interests of Big Oil.’ Writing in the prestigious French monthly, Le Monde Diplomatique, in April 2003, Yahya Sadowski argued:

As part of their grand plan for using a ‘liberated’ Iraq as a base from which to promote democracy and capitalism across the Middle East, [the Neocons] want Baghdad to explore for new reserves, rapidly increase production capacity and quickly flood the world market with Iraqi oil. They know that this would lead to an oil price crash, driving it to $15 a barrel or less. They hope that this collapse will stimulate economic growth in the US and the West, finally destroy Opec (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), wreck the economies of ‘rogue states’ (Iran, Syria, Libya), and create more opportunities for ‘regime change’ and democratisation...

Multinational companies - giants such as ExxonMobil, British Petroleum, Shell, Total and Chevron-Texaco - have diversified sources of production and have less to fear from a price collapse. But the US administration does not listen to them (most are not even American). When Bush Junior was elected, they lobbied hard for a repeal of the Iran-Libya sanctions act and other embargos that curbed their expansion of holdings in the Middle East. The Bush team rebuffed their pleas and Vice-President Dick Cheney produced his 2001 national energy policy that focused on opening new areas within the US for energy exploration. [6]

... Multinational oil companies, US and other, have plenty to be ashamed of, from their despoliation of the Niger Delta to their support for state terrorism in Indonesia. But they have not been pushing for a war against Iraq. The Bush administration planned its campaign against Baghdad without input from these companies, and apparently without a clue about the basics of oil economics. [7]

The neo-con objective of bringing down OPEC (while achieving access to oil for Israel) was foiled by the dismal state of the Iraqi oil infrastructure, after the impact of a decade of international sanctions (as Sadowski argued), and by the Iraqi resistance, [8] which has rendered the prospect of any bonanza from Iraqi oil revenues moot.

To understand the central role of the Zionist ideologues in shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere, it is important to frame it in the context of US-Israel relations and the powerful influence of the pro-Israel lobby inside of the US. As Patrick Seal described them in the liberal US weekly, The Nation, ‘The Friends of Ariel Sharon (among the Jewish pro-Israel zealots) loath Arabs and Muslims... What they wished for was an improvement in Israel’s military and strategic environment’.

The US invasion of Iraq and its aggressive military posture toward most Arab regimes in the Middle East made the names of these Zionist policymakers known to the world. Wolfowitz and Feith were second and third in command of the Pentagon. Their proteges in the OPS included

Abram Shulsky, Richard Perle, then chairman of the Defense Policy Board, and Elliot Abrams (a defender of the Guatemalan genocide of the 1980’s), then Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs for the National Security Council. Washington's most influential pro-Israel zealots include William Kristol and Robert Kagan of The Weekly Standard, the Pipes family and a large number of pro-Israel institutes which work closely with and share the outlook of the rightwing Zionists in the Pentagon. The consensus among US critics of the Bush Administration is that ‘9/11 provided the right-wing Zionist zealots with a unique chance to harness US Middle East policy and military power in Israel’s interest and succeeded in getting the United States to apply the doctrine of pre-emptive war to Israel’s enemies’. [9] The evidence implicating the US Zionists in the war policy was so overwhelming that even the mainstream Zionist organizations refrained from crying ‘anti-Semitism’.

Concerned more with Israeli supremacy than US military losses, the zealous Zionists ignored the emerging quagmire of the US military in Iraq, and went on to plan new wars targeting Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia, raising a whole new series of ‘intelligence reports’ accusing the Arab countries of funding, protecting and promoting terrorism. Their prefabricated intelligence continued to flow while they were in government office, and does so even today.

As US military casualties mount daily in Iraq, with an unofficial estimate of 2579 US deaths by August 1st, 2006, [10] as the military costs of the war near $300 billion [11] and further undermine the US economy, the American public has become disenchanted with the Bush Administration. As the public investigations proceeded, the operations of the OSP, and the identity of its architects and propagandists who promoted the US war against Iraq and for Israel’s supremacy were made public.

Yet what might have been anticipated as a harsh and righteous backlash by the American public against the neo-conservative Zionist ideologues and their networks in and out of the government in general is only slowly mounting - and may not rise sufficiently swiftly to deflect their plans for a forthcoming war against Iran. True, the OSP has been shut down, Paul Wolfowitz has been forced out of the Pentagon and moved to the World Bank, [12] Douglas Feith seems set to find a niche in academia, [13] and Richard Perle has resigned his chairmanship of the Defense Policy Board. But Elliot Abrams’ star is on the ascendant, [14] Donald Rumsfeld, however attacked by his own generals, remains under presidential protection in the Department of Defense, Dick Cheney remains in the saddle, and the Bush Administration has moved on to target Iran in terms and processes startlingly similar to those which preceded the war against Iraq.

Though the understanding of the general public appears to have moved beyond the original official reasons for war (WMDs, the presence of Al Qaeda, and ‘bringing democracy’), and even beyond its supplemental pretexts (regime change, human rights), the present focus of both public and progressive criticism is directed largely towards the interests of Big Oil or ‘empire’ as the source of the conflict. The notion that the US went to war against Iraq for the greater good of Israel remains largely absent from commentary in the major media.

A very small number of progressive Jews raised serious questions about the uncritical support of Israel by mainstream Jewish organizations and were sharply critical of the Zionist zealots in the Pentagon. However, in the wake of the firestorm ignited by the publication of the Mearsheimer and Walt article, ‘The Israel Lobby’ in the London Review in March 2006, it seems clear that the extent of Israeli influence not only on US Middle East policy, but on America’s democratic political institutions and processes as a whole poses a much greater problem for progressive Americans, especially since most progressive Jews went into denial - denying the relevance of the essay, and denying the power of the Jewish Lobby to impact American foreign policy, a point that will be more fully elaborated in a later chapter.

Iraq Replay II

From Neo-conned! Again, D. L. O’Huallachain & J. Forrest Sharpe (Eds), (Norfolk, Virginia: IHS Press, 2007)

Chapter 3 Postscript: On Luttwak’s Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook
by Maurizio Blondet

It is not a recent book. Published by Harvard University Press in 1968, it is entitled Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook. Its author is Edward Luttwak, the well-known military expert who was an adviser on National Security to Ronald Reagan. He is Jewish, an ultra-conservative, and a militarist with known links to the CIA, to friends in the Pentagon, to the military-industrial complex, and, naturally, to JINSA (the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs).

We will seek to present crucial passages from this old book, limiting ourselves to italicizing and commenting upon the ideas which could have been in the minds of those – if our hypothesis is correct – who orchestrated the tragedy of September 11.

Chapter 1: What is a Coup d’État?

A coup d’état is not necessarily assisted by either the intervention of the masses, or, to any significant degree, by military-type force. The assistance of these forms of direct force would no doubt make it easier to seize power, but it would be unrealistic to think that they would be available to the organizers of a coup.

If a coup does not make use of the masses, or of warfare, what instrument of power will enable it to seize control of the State? The short answer is that the power will come from the State itself.

A coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the State apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder [JINSA infiltrated the Pentagon in precisely this manner].

Chapter 2: When is a Coup d’État Possible?

First of all, Luttwak lists the necessary “preconditions”:

1. The social and economic conditions of the target country must be such as to confine political participation to a small fraction of the population [this is the case in America where non-voters are the majority].
2. The target State must be substantially independent and the influence of foreign powers in its internal political life must be relatively limited [the United States is the only State remaining that enjoys these conditions].
3. The target State must have a political centre. If there are several centres these must be identifiable and they must be politically, rather than ethnically, structured. If the State is controlled by a non-politically organized unit [like the CFR, the representative of business] the coup can only be carried out with its consent or neutrality.

Already in the Preface, Luttwak underlined as essential the fact that the perpetrators of a coup must be able to count upon “the absence of a politicised community,” upon the apathy of the public. “The dialogue between the rulers and the ruled [upon which democratic legitimacy is founded] can only take place if there is a large enough section of society which is sufficiently literate, well fed and secure to ‘talk back.’” But “without a politicised population, the State is nothing other than a machine. Then the coup d’état becomes feasible because, like every machine, one can take control of everything by grasping the essential levers.” Now Luttwak identifies this “machine” in the Bureaucracy.

The growth of modern bureaucracy has two implications which are crucial to the feasibility of the coup: the development of a clear distinction between the permanent machinery of State and the political leadership [which changes], and the fact is, like most large organizations, the bureaucracy has a structured hierarchy with definite chains of command . . . . The importance of this development lies in the fact that if the bureaucrats are linked to the political leadership, an illegal seizure of power must take the form of a “Palace Revolution,” and it essentially concerns the manipulation of the person of the ruler. He can be forced to accept policies or advisers, he can be killed or held captive, but whatever happens the Palace Revolution can only be conducted from the “inside” and by “insiders” [in these pages, we have seen nothing but the work of insiders surrounding a weak President]. The State bureaucracy has to divide its work into clear-cut areas of competence, which are assigned to different departments. Within each department there must be an accepted chain of command, and standard procedures have to be followed. Thus a given piece of information, or a given order, is followed up in a stereotyped manner, and if the order comes from the appropriate source, at the appropriate level, it is carried out . . . . The apparatus of the State is therefore to some extent a “machine” which will normally behave in a fairly predictable and automatic manner.

A coup operates by taking advantage of this machine-like behaviour; during the coup, because it uses parts of the State apparatus to seize the controlling levers; afterwards because the value of the “levers” depends on the fact that the State is a machine.

Who are the best conspirators? Here is how Luttwak describes them:

All power, all participation, is in the hands of the small educated elite, and therefore radically different from the vast majority of their countrymen, practically a race apart. The masses recognize this and they also accept the elite’s monopoly on power, unless some unbearable exaction leads to desperate revolt . . . . Equally, they will accept a change in government, whether legal or otherwise. After all, it is merely another lot of “them” taking over [this is precisely the case of American society: a great mass of badly educated people, remains passive because of need, accepts the new capitalist flexibility so as to hold on to or find work].

Thus, after a coup . . . the majority of the people will neither believe nor disbelieve . . . . This lack of reaction is all the coup needs on the part of the people to stay in power.

The lower levels of the bureaucracy will react – or rather fail to react – in a similar manner and for similar reasons: the “bosses” give the orders, can promote or demote and, above all, are the source of that power and prestige . . . . After the coup, the man who sits at district headquarters will still be obeyed – whether he is the man who was there before or not – so long as he can pay the salaries . . . .

For the senior bureaucrats, army and police officers, the coup will be a mixture of dangers and opportunities. For the greater number of those who are not too deeply committed, the coup will offer opportunities rather than dangers. They can accept the coup and, being collectively indispensable, can negotiate for even better salaries and positions.

As the coup will not usually represent a threat to most of the elite, the choice is between the great dangers of opposition and the safety of inaction. All that is required in order to support the coup is, simply, to do nothing – and that is what will usually be done.

Thus, at all levels, the most likely course of action following a coup is acceptance . . . . This lack of reaction is the key to the victory of the coup.

Chapter 3: The Strategy of a Coup d’État

If we were revolutionaries, wanting to destroy the power of some of the political forces, the long and often bloody process of revolutionary attrition can achieve this. Our purpose is, however, quite different: we want to seize power within the present system, and we shall only stay in power if we embody some new status quo supported by those very forces which a revolution may seek to destroy . . . . This is perhaps a more efficient method, and certainly a less painful one, than that of a classic revolution [this is a perfection description of the neoconservative coup d’état].

Though we will try to avoid all conflict with the “political” forces, some of them will almost certainly oppose a coup. But this opposition will largely subside when we have substituted our new status quo for the old one, and can enforce it by our control of the State bureaucracy and security forces. We shall then be carrying out the dual task of imposing our control on the machinery of State while at the same time using it to impose our control on the country at large.

As long as the execution of the coup is rapid, and we are cloaked in anonymity, no particular political faction will have either a motive, or opportunity, to oppose us.

Chapter 4: The Planning of the Coup d’État

Whether it is a two party system, as in much of the Anglo-Saxon world, where parties are in effect coalitions of pressure groups, or whether they are the class or religion-based parties of much of continental Europe, the major political parties in developed and democratic countries will not present a direct threat to the coup. Though such parties have mass support at election time, neither they nor their followers are versed in the techniques of mass agitation. The comparative stability of political life has deprived them of the experience required to employ direct methods, and the whole climate of their operation revolves around the concept of periodic elections.

Though some form of confrontation may be inevitable, it is essential to avoid bloodshed, because this may well have crucial negative repercussions amongst the personnel of the armed forces and the police.

Chapter 5: The Execution of the Coup d’État

With detailed planning, there will be no need for any sort of headquarters structure in the active stage of the coup: for if there is no scope for decision making there is no need for decision-makers and their apparatus. In fact, having a headquarters would be a serious disadvantage: it would constitute a concrete target for the opposition and one which would be both vulnerable and easily identified . . . . We should avoid taking any action that will clarify the nature of the threat and thus reduce the confusion that is left in the defensive apparatus of the regime . . . . The leaders of the coup will be scattered among the various teams. [As we can see Luttwak is theoretically discussing an invisible coup d’état: the infiltrated coup participants speak with the voice of the legitimate government, of that which they have seized. On September 11, let’s remember, the immediate entourage of President Bush were not thinking of an Arab attack, but of a military coup d’état. It is for this reason that the President was taken to a secure location for 10 hours].

In the period immediately after the coup, they [the high level Civil Servants and Military Commanders] will probably see themselves as isolated individuals whose careers, and even lives, could be in danger. This feeling of insecurity may precipitate two alternative reactions, both extreme: they will either step forward to assert their loyalty to the leaders of the coup or else they will try to foment or join in the opposition against us. Both reactions are undesirable from our point of view. Assertions of loyalty will usually be worthless since they are made by men who have just abandoned their previous, and possibly more legitimate, masters. Opposition will always be dangerous and sometimes disastrous. Our policy towards the military and bureaucratic cadres will be to reduce this sense of insecurity. We should establish direct communications with as many of the more senior officers and officials as possible to convey one principal idea in a forceful and convincing manner: that the coup will not threaten their positions in the hierarchy and the aims of the coup do not include a reshaping of the existing military or administrative structures [this appears to be exactly the task of JINSA].

The masses have neither the weapons of the military nor the administrative facilities of the bureaucracy, but their attitude to the new government established after the coup will ultimately be decisive. Our immediate aim will be to enforce public order, but our long-term objective is to gain the acceptance of the masses so that physical coercion will not longer be needed . . . . Our far more flexible instrument will be our control over the means of mass communication . . . . In broadcasting over the radio and television services our purpose is not to provide information about the situation, but rather to affect its development by exploiting our monopoly of these media. [This is exactly what the American mass media has done since September 11.]

[The action of the media] will be achieved by conveying the reality and strength of the coup instead of trying to justify it [the emotional blow of the collapse of the World Trade Centre was presented with plenty of “reality” and “force” by CNN]. We will have fragmented the opposition so that each individual opponent would have to operate in isolation. In these circumstances, the news of any further resistance against us would act as a powerful stimulant to further resistance by breaking down this feeling of isolation. We must, therefore, make every effort to withhold such news. If there is in fact some resistance . . . we should strongly emphasize that it is isolated, the product of the obstinacy of a few misguided or dishonest individuals who are not affiliated to any party or group of significant membership. The constant working of the motif of isolation, and the emphasis on the fact that law and order have been reestablished, should have the effect of making resistance appear as dangerous and useless.

There will arise, Luttwak says, “the inevitable suspicions that the coup is a product of the machinations of the Company [American slang for the CIA]. This can only be dispelled by making violent attacks on it . . . and the attacks should be all the more violent if these suspicions are in fact justified . . . . We shall make use of a suitable selection of unlovely phrases [for example, anti-Americanism? Anti-Semitism?]. Even if their meanings have been totally obscured by constant and deliberate misuse, they will be useful indicators of our impeccable nationalism.”

It seems to this author that these paragraphs describe, with shocking precision, all that has taken place in America since September 11.