Fwd: Using the "UN Process" to Help Organize a Massacre--Ed Herman

[Mark Pavlick]

>
>Using The "UN Process" To Help Organize A Massacre
>by Edward S. Herman
>February 17, 2003
>
>
>The U.S. leadership and public never seem embarrassed at beating up very
>tiny countries, some about the size of Columbus, Ohio (Grenada), or using
>high tech weaponry against defenseless people. This is odd, as the image of
>a bully is not a positive one in the culture and the ideas of fair play and
>a level playing field are also frequently encountered. Furthermore, the
>slaughter of civilians and helpless soldiers is not something one would have
>thought would sit well with people brought up in Western religious and
>enlightenment traditions.
>
>A good part of the explanation lies in eye aversion. Photos of victims of
>the ever-improving cluster bombs are almost never shown in the Free Press;
>the famous and exceptional photo of the young Vietnamese girl fleeing a
>napalm attack didn't show burning flesh, only an uninjured person exhibiting
>intense fear. Norman Solomon quotes Patrick Sloyan's study of U.S. and media
>treatment of the Persian Gulf War, where "the Bush administration produced
>not a single picture or video of anyone being killed...[which] left the
>world presuming Desert Storm was a war without death." Marc Herold reports
>that pictures of the end results of the Afghan bombing of at least 283
>separate villages in which civilians were killed are almost completely
>absent from the news reports in U.S. mainstream media. This was another
>"clean" war -- by propaganda service combined with Pentagon censorship.
>
>There is also a rapidly developing language of "surgical" and "precision"
>bombing and "collateral damage" and "tragic errors" designed to sanitize
>U.S. warfare in the public mind. The media have adapted well to this new
>linguistics of apologetics.
>
>Another part of the explanation is the demonization process, which makes it
>urgent that the evil force be exterminated and quickly. Civilian casualties
>are more acceptable when striking people who are said to support or fail to
>remove the demon, so we need not trouble ourselves over their pain,
>especially when we are protected from seeing it. We may be sure, also, that
>the government and media find civilians to be "willing executioners" only in
>target states, and there even when their leaders are allegedly "dictators,"
>but not, for example, in Israel or the United States.
>
>Demonization is also often combined with threat inflation, so that the
>demon's capabilities are frequently exaggerated, and thus the inequality of
>power is scanted and the urgency of terminating the demon's power to do
>damage tends to overwhelm any thought of unfairness and lack of
>proportionality.
>
>Given that this country is by definition fighting an "Operation Just Cause"
>against the forces of evil, any notion of injustice in force imbalance or
>application of advanced technology against peasants disappears. The evil
>force must give way to the cause of justice. The enemy must surrender or be
>exterminated. Thus, any deaths we inflict are really the fault of enemy
>leaders who fail to take advantage of the option of surrender, and those
>civilians who fail to remove them.
>
>We should recall also that this country is the self-appointed policeman of
>the world, whose leaders have generously taken upon themselves the
>responsibility for straightening things out wherever their services are
>needed (although they are prepared to farm out this function to people like
>Pinochet, Suharto, Saddam Hussein [in the 1980s] and Sharon, and local proxy
>forces such as the Nicaraguan contras, Savimbi's Unita, and Al Qaeda [in the
>Afghan War in the 1980s]). We don't need a level playing field as between
>the police and criminals.
>
>Wars and one-sided massacres are also seen by the Bush leadership, and are
>portrayed in the Free Press as games, with soldiers, aircraft carriers and
>missiles being positioned, and bombs and missiles exploded like
>fire-crackers over Belgrade, Kabul and Baghdad. Dan Ellsberg notes that
>Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz have never fought in wars or seen
>mangled bodies: "That may be related...to the fact that they are all
>enthusiastic about this video game that they feel is about to be played, on
>the model of the way they see the Gulf War, or Afghanistan, or Kosovo, where
>nearly all the people who die are adversaries, and not Americans." In games,
>we root for our side to win and the enemy to be crushed. The idea of a level
>playing field is easily suppressed when we are urging on our team in a game.
>
>The media are occasionally upset at the imbalance of forces and unleveled
>playing field. When the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956 and
>Czechoslovakia in 1968 they were aghast at the brutal use of force by a
>Great Power against puny victims. Even more interesting was their concern
>over the unleveled playing field in the election held by the Sandinista
>government of Nicaragua in 1984, where the government's edge in access to
>the media and election resources was harshly criticized. The media were not
>at all bothered by the even greater edge of the murderous regime in El
>Salvador in 1982 and 1984, or Yeltsin's greater edge in the Russian election
>of 1996. This double standard reflecting the state's political agenda and
>following official signals is internalized and institutionalized. The
>reporters are probably not even aware that it exists.
>
>A country as powerful and aggressive as the United States can even get the
>"international community" and its institutions to serve the imperial agenda.
>The United States was able to kill millions of Indochinese and use chemical
>weapons of mass destruction on a large scale, with no noticeable opposition
>from the UN or international community. As regards its client state
>Indonesia, even during the years in which Indonesia invaded, occupied, and
>committed virtual genocide in East Timor, in violation of UN rulings
>(weakened, however, by U.S. bargaining on behalf of the genocidist), not
>only was nothing done to punish Indonesia, it continued to receive a steady
>flow of gifts from a World Bank-organized lending group. U.S. transnationals
>and officials -- including Bill Clinton -- were pleased with Suharto's rule,
>which was friendly to foreign corporate interests and subservient to U.S.
>political guidance, even if ruthless with the Indonesian, East Timorese and
>West Papuan citizenry. So Suharto was free to exploit and massacre.
>
>As regards Saddam Hussein and Iraq, it is notorious, although hardly
>mentioned in the Free Press, that the United States not only helped Saddam
>acquire chemical weapons and means of their delivery in the 1980s, it
>actively worked to prevent any international criticisms of his use of those
>weapons. (And by inference, this country would have furiously opposed
>"disarming" Saddam, who was at that time killing the right people.) U.S.
>power, therefore, had to reverse itself after Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in
>August 1990, moving from protecting Saddam and his use of "weapons of mass
>destruction" (WMD) to pretending that his possession of those weapons was a
>fearsome threat. It even succeeded in manipulating the UN into uniquely
>intensive sanctions and inspections programs to deal with the alleged
>threat.
>
>The Media's Outstanding War Propaganda Service
>
>This reversal was successful because the U.S. mainstream media did another
>superb job of war-supportive propaganda service, and because U.S. power
>permitted a further abusive manipulation of the UN. As regards the media
>performance, which paralleled that during the Persian Gulf war, some of the
>main elements have been the following:
>
>1. Virtual suppression of the history of active U.S. support of Saddam's
>acquisition and use of chemical weapons in the 1980s, when he was far more
>powerful than he is now. This helps avoid having to confront the question:
>How can he be a threat now, in his much weaker state, when he was perceived
>as an asset deserving of aid and protection earlier when he served U.S.
>purposes?
>
>2. Virtual suppression of the fact that the bombing during the 1991 war, the
>sanctions regime, and inspections and associated destruction of weapons have
>made Iraq very poor and militarily only a shadow of its power during the
>years of U.S. support.
>
>3. Virtual suppression of the fact that high UNSCOM officials have declared
>that at least 90-95 percent of Iraq's chemical weapons have been destroyed.
>
>4. Virtual suppression of the fact that the International Atomic Energy
>Agency has repeatedly said that Iraq has no nuclear weapons or ongoing
>nuclear weapons program.
>
>5. Virtual suppression of the fact that the sanctions regime imposed by the
>United States and Britain has been responsible for the death of over a
>million Iraqis, including over 500,000 children, and constitutes a major war
>crime.
>
>6. Virtual suppression of the fact that the United States is responsible for
>at least three major violations of Security Council Resolution 687 under
>which inspections have been carried out: (a) it has openly proclaimed that
>sanctions will continue until there is a regime change, which was never part
>of 687; (b) it has imposed "no-fly zones" and engaged in numerous related
>bombing attacks on Iraq, although these are nowhere sanctioned by 687; (c)
>they have used inspections as a means of spying to obtain information
>unrelated to the purpose of 687 but useful in military attacks on Iraq.
>
>7. Virtual suppression of the fact that while 687 calls for the elimination
>of weapons of mass destruction throughout the Middle East, the United States
>has made no effort to enforce this on Israel.
>
>8. Virtual suppression of the fact that Israel is in violation of many more
>Security Council resolutions than Iraq, and that these are unenforceable
>because the United States is in a close alliance with Israel. So Israel can
>acquire nuclear weapons for "self defense," but Iraq cannot do the same, by
>virtue of U.S. selective choice.
>
>9. Virtual suppression of the fact that Iraq only used chemical weapons when
>under U.S. protection, while failing to use them in 1991 when in conflict
>with the United States. Suppressing this is important as it points up the
>fact that Iraq couldn't use WMD offensively even if it had them, because
>both the United States and Israel have far greater capability and Iraq's use
>would be suicidal.
>
>10. Virtual suppression of the fact that the UN and aid agencies predict
>that the U.S. high tech war will cause a humanitarian crisis among the
>already highly vulnerable Iraqi civilian population. This follows a long
>pattern of the U.S. mainstream media averting eyes from the human costs of
>U.S. wars on target country populations.
>
>11. Virtual suppression of the fact that an unprovoked attack and invasion
>of a country is "the supreme international crime differing only from other
>war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
>whole," as described by Robert Jackson, U.S. representative at the Nuremberg
>trials. It is also the very action that the UN and UN Charter were designed
>to prevent, and it would be in straightforward violation of that Charter.
>
>12. Instead of facts and context along the lines of the above, the
>mainstream media have provided a steady stream of administration claims and
>opinions, many highly repetitive, unenlightening and serially shown to
>misrepresent facts, along with voluminous data on military plans and
>dispositions. This has been a display of "press release journalism" that
>represents a public sphere virtually destroyed by propaganda service to a
>war-dedicated government.
>
>The "UN Process"
>
>Although the Bush-Cheney regime openly announced its intention to remove
>Saddam Hussein by force, it allowed itself to be persuaded to bring the UN
>into the picture. The point of this deviation from straightforward
>unilateralism was quite explicitly to give the attack -- which would
>constitute flagrant aggression and a violation of the most essential
>principle in the UN Charter -- an aura of legality and a sense that it was
>not a purely unilateral or Anglo-Saxon action. As Thomas Friedman put it,
>"The Bush team discovered that the best way to legitimize its overwhelming
>might -- in a war of choice -- was not by simply imposing it, but by
>channeling it through the UN"
>
>It was thought that by intensifying the inspections process, making it
>outlandishly intrusive and virtually forcing Saddam to prove a negative, a
>war could be expedited with Security Council approval -- that Saddam would
>either turn down the new inspections system, or that he would soon be found
>delinquent in one of a hundred ways that could be interpreted as "material
>breach." Meanwhile, by intensive propaganda and "diplomacy" (i.e., bribery
>and bullying) it should be possible to get Security Council consent for war,
>or at least mobilize a respectable "coalition" cover to support the attack.
>
>This system has its humorous aspects. One is that the U.S. leaders and
>pundit supporters have been very up front about the fact that they are
>damned well going to bomb and massacre no matter what, so that the resort to
>the UN is purely a facade and cover. For the Bush officials the "UN process"
>is one of getting UN backing for the planned war, by hook or by crook. It
>has nothing to do with consultations or substantive multilateralism, or with
>any decision role for anybody but the Bush warriors. When an administration
>official says, noting French and German constraints, that "We haven't given
>up on the UN process," all he means is that he hasn't given up on the effort
>to get approval for the U.S. war -- the "process" is USING the UN to obtain
>a legal-moral cover, nothing more.
>
>The "UN process" has worked well so far, although not to absolute bully
>perfection. It has worked wonderfully well if we consider that the UN SHOULD
>have mobilized to actively oppose the announced U.S. aggression. Instead, it
>has supinely taken the road of accommodating but slowing down the aggressor.
>Although the sanctions-inspections regime was the aggressor's own
>concoction, under U.S. pressure the UN members have continued to pretend
>that it reflects the world's view that Saddam is a ferocious threat to world
>peace who needs this special treatment. They have, therefore, cooperated
>with the aggressor in creating the more intensive, intrusive and "prove a
>negative" system of inspections, thereby implicitly justifying the
>aggressor's claim that this was terribly important and that everybody agreed
>to this; and they have established demands and conditions that would help
>the aggressor prove that his aggression was needed. THIS WAS THE GREATEST
>ACT OF APPEASEMENT SINCE THE ACCOMMODATION TO HITLER AT MUNICH.
>
>The imperfection came about because Saddam groveled and allowed the
>inspectors to come in even under the intrusive terms of Security Council
>Resolution 1441, and because, under the pressure of mass global disapproval
>of the forthcoming invasion and its uncertain but almost sure negative
>impact on the global community, France, Germany, Russia and China have
>dragged their feet in giving a go ahead to a U.S.-British attack. But the
>bully is stepping up the pressure, and France and Germany, while still
>resisting, are showing signs of weakening. This suggests the likelihood of a
>"compromise" second resolution that the bully will interpret as a go-ahead
>for massacre.
>
>For the bully, the stakes are too high, the cruise missiles and other forces
>are in place, an election looms ahead, Sharon and his friends are eager for
>massacre, and the game must be played. The bully may soon start bombing even
>without a successful "UN process." The only thing really in his way is the
>growing upheaval from below, which needs to reach a still higher critical
>mass, and actions to strengthen political backbones and constitute a serious
>brake on the planned aggression.