Radio debate over the next war
Dr. Strangelove vs. Ramsey Clark
By John Catalinotto
Anyone who tuned in to the middle of the debate on Pacifica
radio's Democracy Now! show on March 20 might have thought that
Dr. Strangelove had jumped off the movie screen and into the
radio studio.
They should have been relieved that host Amy Goodman had
also invited Ramsey Clark of the International Action Center to
be there to counter every dangerous, destructive scheme
Strangelove promoted.
It wasn't Strangelove himself on the air, of course, but the
nearest thing. Former CIA Director James Woolsey was promoting
a plan to overthrow the Iraqi government. It involved Kurdish
forces in northern Iraq, Shiites in the south, the Iraqi
National Congress in the center, and some assistance from the
Turkish army.
The Pentagon, of course, was the key element. It would be
there to back the whole thing up with bombing and perhaps with
troops. The goal, said Woolsey, would be to install a
"democratic regime."
Clark leapt back at him. "When Washington overthrew
Mossadegh in Iran, it put in the shah. When Allende was
overthrown by the Chilean armed forces, the Pinochet
dictatorship began. When Lumumba was murdered, the Congolese
were left with the 35-year reign of Mobutu. No U.S.
intervention has ever installed a democratic regime."
Clark also pointed out that Woolsey's law firm receives
millions in payments from the Iraqi National Congress, a
U.S.-created opposition group.
Woolsey's presence was no accident. He is a key spokesperson
for a new right-wing propaganda offensive aimed at all sectors
of U.S. society, even the progressive Pacifica listeners. Of
course, he probably didn't anticipate having to go head-to-head
with an opponent as capable and well informed as Clark. The war
hawks are accustomed to a virtual monopoly of the media.
War propaganda machine
If war is too serious to be left to the military, as World
War I French Premier George Clemenceau reportedly said, then
the Bush administration obviously thinks war propaganda is too
serious to be left to even the most compliant moneyed media. It
has turned to William Bennett, former education secretary and
right-wing ideologue. Bennett co-chairs the Empower America
think tank, which promotes privatization, the end of
affirmative action and other reactionary schemes.
Bennett has gotten together with Woolsey, former Reagan
Pentagon official Frank Gaffney and other right-wing hacks
euphemistically known as "neo-conservatives" to start a new
Empower-backed pro-war pressure group called Americans for
Victory Over Terrorism.
AVOT's first big move was a full-page ad in the March 10 New
York Times. The group's goal is to maintain the post-Sept. 11
backing for Bush's endless crusade against oppressed peoples
around the world, currently disguised as a "war on terror."
They know that real support for a war is a lot thinner than
it appears and might not survive heavy U.S. troop casualties or
great sacrifices at home. So their goal is to repress, squelch
and censor any opposition before it can gain momentum, while in
general promoting the war.
To that end they have targeted even the mildest sort of
opposition to Bush's policies. For example, among their targets
is former President Jimmy Carter, who criticized Bush for using
the phrase "axis of evil," arguing that it was "overly
simplistic and counter-productive."
They also named Congressperson Maxine Walters, who said,
"Some of us, maybe foolishly, gave this president the authority
to go after terrorists. We didn't know that he, too, was going
to go crazy with it."
Bennett, Woolsey and some of the others in AVOT are known
for pushing hardest for a war of aggression against Iraq. Since
1991 they have been frustrated that the Pentagon wasn't
occupying that country, which would let U.S. big business
control its vast oil reserves.
Unable to convincingly blame Iraq for the Sept. 11 attacks
or the anthrax letters, Woolsey and Company are now chiming in
with Bush's allegations that Iraq possesses "weapons of mass
destruction" as a reason to attack that country.
They never mention that U.S. sanctions have killed over 1.5
million Iraqis and are still killing thousands of children each
month. And heaven forbid that anyone use the term "weapons of
mass destruction" to describe the Armageddon-level arsenal the
Pentagon employs.
Ad demands end to sanctions
While AVOT speaks in the interests of the oil billionaires,
a popular organization countering these war schemes also
recently placed an ad, this one in the March 20 International
Herald Tribune. It called for an end to the sanctions that for
more than 11 years have been murdering the Iraqi people.
Three former senior United Nations officials who resigned to
protest the continued sanctions--Denis J. Halliday, Hans von
Sponeck and Jutta Burghardt--together with the Bridge to
Baghdad group in Italy organized hundreds of prominent
individuals and organizations to support this demand for
unconditional lifting of the sanctions.
The statement calls the sanctions "not simply a crime
against the children of Iraq and millions of Iraqi families. It
is a violation of internationally recognized human rights and
humanitarian standards."
Among the signers are Arundhati Roy, Archbishop Desmond
Tutu, Ramsey Clark and Sara Flounders of the International
Action Center, Noam Chomsky and Edward Said. For the statement
and a full list of signers, see http://www.notinournames.org/iht/statement.html.
To hear a broadcast of the radio debate, go to
http://www.webactive.com/webactive/pacifica/demnow/dn20020320.html.
Reprinted from the April 4, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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