[rad-green] The US’s Inalienable Right to Viole nce

*https://fair.org/home/the-uss-inalienable-right-to-violence/
<https://fair.org/home/the-uss-inalienable-right-to-violence/>*

*FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING                   JANUARY 21, 2020*

The US’s Inalienable Right to Violence
*BY GREGORY SHUPAK <https://fair.org/author/gregory-shupak/>*

[image: US troops at Qayyarah West Airfield, Iraq (photo: Joran
Castelan/USAF)]




[image: WaPo: Reagan would have been proud of Trump’s Iran strike]

*This Washington Post headline  (1/7/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/07/reagan-would-have-been-proud-trumps-iran-strike/>)
is probably true
<https://consortiumnews.com/2013/02/21/how-reagan-promoted-genocide/>.*

Even when critical of US actions, media commentary on recent US bombings
and assassinations
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/donald-trump-war-iran-us-empire> in the
Middle East is premised on the assumption that the US has the right to use
violence (or the threat of it) to assert its will, anytime, anywhere.
Conversely, corporate media coverage suggests that any countermeasure—such
as resistance to the US presence in Iraq—is inherently illegitimate,
criminal and/or terroristic.
Iranian puppeteers

One step in this dance is depicting US military forces in Iraq as innocent
bystanders under attack by sadistic Iranian puppetmasters. Media analysis
of the US murder of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani consistently asserted
that he was “an architect of international terrorism responsible for the
deaths of hundreds of Americans” (*New York Times*, 1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-trump-suleimani.html>) or
“a terrorist with the blood of hundreds of Americans on his hands” (*Washington
Post*, 1/7/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/07/reagan-would-have-been-proud-trumps-iran-strike/>).
According to Leon Panetta (*Washington Post*, 1/7/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-is-facing-the-greatest-test-of-his-presidency/2020/01/07/5f112304-3187-11ea-9313-6cba89b1b9fb_story.html>),
a former Defense secretary and CIA director,

The death of Soleimani should not be mourned, given his responsibility for
the killing of thousands of innocent people and hundreds of US military
personnel over the years.

There is little evidence for this contention that Iran in general or
Soleimani personally is responsible for killing hundreds of Americans. When
the State Department claimed
<https://web.archive.org/web/20190403020557/https:/www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2019/04/290841.htm>
last
April that Iran was responsible for the deaths of 608 American
servicemembers in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, investigative journalist
Gareth Porter (*Truthout*, 7/9/19
<https://truthout.org/articles/lies-about-iran-killing-us-troops-in-iraq-are-a-ploy-to-justify-war/>)
asked Navy Commander Sean Robertson for evidence, and Robertson
“acknowledged that the Pentagon doesn’t have any study, documentation or
data to provide journalists that would support such a figure.”

Porter showed that the US attribution of deaths in Iraq to Iran is an
unsubstantiated government talking point from the Cheney era, one that was
exposed at the time when Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno admitted that, though the US
had attributed Iraqi resistance fighters’ weapons to Iran, US troops found
many sites in Iraq at which such weapons were being manufactured.
[image: Truthout: Lies About Iran Killing US Troops in Iraq Are a Ploy to
Justify War]

*Gareth Porter reported in Truthout (7/9/19
<https://truthout.org/articles/lies-about-iran-killing-us-troops-in-iraq-are-a-ploy-to-justify-war/>)
that “the myth that Tehran is responsible for killing over 600 US troops in
the Iraq War is merely a new variant of a propaganda line that former Vice
President Dick Cheney used to attempt to justify a war against Iran more
than a decade ago.”*

Scholar Stephen Zunes (*Progressive*, 1/7/20
<https://progressive.org/dispatches/-no-evidence-iran-is-responsible-for-the-deaths-of-hundreds-of-americans-zunes-200107/>)
similarly demonstrated the lack of evidence for the idea that Iran is
behind the killing of US forces in Iraq. Zunes noted that the National
Intelligence Estimate on Iraq
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/02/20070202-6.html>, compiled
by America’s 16 intelligence agencies, downplayed Iran’s role in Iraq’s
violence at roughly the same time that the Bush administration was saying
that Iran was culpable.

As Porter pointed out, there was a much simpler explanation for American
deaths in the period: The US targeted Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the
Mahdi Army fought back, imposing more casualties on US troops.

That the pundits dusted off 13-year-old propaganda to rationalize killing
Soleimani is a clear indication that they were desperately grasping for any
imperialist apologia within reach. If the American public is led to believe
that Soleimani killed hundreds of Americans, large swathes of it are likely
to regard his assassination as justified, necessary, or at worst a feature
of the tit-for-tat ugliness inherent to war.

The narrative also ideologically shores up the US war on Iran
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/05/war-iran-trump-bernie-iraq-sanctions> in
the American popular consciousness by presenting Iranians as primordially
violent savages out to spill the blood of Americans, notably those in the
military who are in the Middle East, presumably doing nothing but minding
their own business. Presenting Iran as the reason for attacks on US forces
in Iraq also implies that Iraqis had little objection to the US invasion,
legitimizing the US’s ongoing military presence in the country. The most
obvious point about the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq is that they wouldn’t
happen if US soldiers weren’t in Iraq.
When violence isn’t violence

Another media dance move is to condemn anti-imperial violence while
naturalizing imperialist violence. An editorial in the* New York Times* (
1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-trump-suleimani.html>)
said that Soleimani

no doubt had a role in the campaign of provocations by Shiite militias
against American forces in Iraq that recently led to the death of an
American defense contractor and a retaliatory American airstrike against
the militia responsible for the attack.

Having US troops in Iraq, a country in which the US is responsible for
the deaths
of hundreds of thousands <http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/R40824.pdf>,
is not a “provocation,” in the *Times*’ perspective; opposition to their
presence is the provocation.

The December 27 attack
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/27/politics/iraq-rocket-attack-contractor-killed/index.html>
that
killed the US contractor did not occur in a vacuum. In 2018, the US was
suspected of bombing
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-usa-iraq/iran-backed-iraqi-militias-say-wont-be-silent-over-alleged-u-s-strike-idUSKBN1JK0TT>
affiliates
of Kataib Hezbollah, the group the US blames for killing the contractor.
Israel is suspected of carrying out a string of deadly bombings of the
Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, of which Kataib Hezbollah is a key
component, between July and September, a scenario at which Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/airstrikes-said-to-target-iran-backed-militia-base-in-iraq/>
.

The US reportedly
<https://thedefensepost.com/2019/08/26/iraq-strike-kataib-hezbollah/> confirmed
that Israel was behind at least one of the bombings, and said it supports
Israel’s actions while denying direct participation. In any case, the
US’s lavish
military support
<http://inthesetimes.com/article/19479/the-israeli-aid-package-10-more-years-of-the-special-relationship>
for
Israel means that the former is effectively a party to the latter’s
bombing. Thus, the Kataib Hezbollah attack that killed the contractor can
be seen as “retaliatory
<https://fair.org/extra/retaliation-is-reserved-for-one-side/>,” which
complicates the notion that the subsequent US attack was as well.

Another *Times* editorial (1/4/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/04/opinion/editorials/trump-iran-threats-Suleimani.html>)
describes Soleimani as “one of the region’s most powerful and, yes,
blood-soaked military commanders.” At no point is Trump or any other US
leader described as “blood-soaked” or anything comparable—here, or in any
of the mainstream media coverage I can find—even as he and his predecessors
are sopping with that of Afghans
<https://inthesetimes.com/article/21347/war_on_terror_george_bush_afghanistan_occupation_civilians_msf>
, Iraqis
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/06/04/duncan-hunter-admits-his-marine-unit-killed-probably-hundreds-civilians-iraq>
, Libyans
<https://inthesetimes.com/article/21347/war_on_terror_george_bush_afghanistan_occupation_civilians_msf>
 and Syrians
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/04/syria-unprecedented-investigation-reveals-us-led-coalition-killed-more-than-1600-civilians-in-raqqa-death-trap/>,
to cite only a few recent cases. Evidently imperial violence is so
righteous it leaves no trace behind.

Stephen Hadley, national security adviser in the George W Bush
administration, wrote in the* Washington Post* (1/5/20
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-soleimani-killing-could-draw-the-us-deeper-into-the-mideast-but-it-doesnt-have-to/2020/01/05/339b606e-3019-11ea-9313-6cba89b1b9fb_story.html>
):

What is clear is that one of the PMFs, Kataib Hezbollah, has been behind
the escalating violence
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iraqi-security-forces-wounded-in-rocket-attack-near-baghdad-airport/2019/12/09/9544bda8-1a64-11ea-9ddd-3e0321c180e7_story.html?tid=lk_inline_manual_9>
over
the past several months
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-airstrikes-on-iran-backed-militia-draw-condemnation-retaliation-threats-in-iraq/2019/12/30/d13a10be-2af0-11ea-bffe-020c88b3f120_story.html?tid=lk_inline_manual_9>
as
part of a campaign (assuredly with Iranian approval) to force out US
troops. The campaign culminated in the December 31 attack on the US Embassy
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iran-backed-militia-supporters-converge-on-us-embassy-in-baghdad-shouting-death-to-america/2019/12/31/93f050b2-2bb1-11ea-bffe-020c88b3f120_story.html?arc404=true&tid=lk_inline_manual_9>
in
Baghdad. (The head of Kataib Hezbollah, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/world/middleeast/iraq-iran-airstrike-al-muhandis.html>
with
Soleimani.)

By expelling US forces, the Iraqi government would be falling into Kataib
Hezbollah’s trap: rewarding the militia’s violent campaign, strengthening
the Iranian-backed PMFs, weakening the Iraqi government and state
sovereignty, and jeopardizing the fight against the Islamic State.

Kataib Hezbollah’s actions are called “violence” twice in these three
sentences, with their apex apparently being “the December 31 attack on the US
Embassy
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iran-backed-militia-supporters-converge-on-us-embassy-in-baghdad-shouting-death-to-america/2019/12/31/93f050b2-2bb1-11ea-bffe-020c88b3f120_story.html?arc404=true&tid=lk_inline_manual_9>
in
Baghdad.” Remarkably, the author makes no mention of the December 29 US
airstrikes on five sites in Iraq and Syria that the US says belong to
Kataib Hezbollah, bombings that reportedly killed 25 and injured 55
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50941693>. Those, it would
seem, do not constitute “violence.” Iraqis damaging the embassy of the
country whose economic sanctions killed half a million Iraqi children
<https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n14/andrew-cockburn/worth-it> is
“violence,” but the US’s lethal air raids are not. And expelling foreign
armies weakens state sovereignty!
[image: NYT: Trump Kills Iran’s Most Overrated Warrior]

*“No one in Baghdad was fooled” by anti-US protests in Iraq, which were
“almost certainly a Soleimani-staged operation to make it look as if Iraqis
wanted America out,” declared Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-general-soleimani.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article>).
(In a 2016 poll
<https://theintercept.com/2016/04/13/young-iraqis-overwhelmingly-consider-u-s-their-enemy-poll-says/>,
93% of young Iraqis said that they perceived the US as an “enemy.”)*

Thomas Friedman’s *Times* article (1/3/20
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/iran-general-soleimani.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article>)
on Soleimani’s murder was bad even by Thomas Friedman standards. He
dismissed the protests at the US embassy:

The whole “protest” against the United States Embassy compound in Baghdad
last week was almost certainly a Soleimani-staged operation to make it look
as if Iraqis wanted America out when in fact it was the other way around.
The protesters were paid pro-Iranian militiamen. No one in Baghdad was
fooled by this.

In a way, it’s what got Soleimani killed. He so wanted to cover his
failures in Iraq he decided to start provoking the Americans there by
shelling their forces, hoping they would overreact, kill Iraqis and turn
them against the United States. Trump, rather than taking the bait, killed
Soleimani instead.

That there were thousands of protesters at the US embassy and that the
Iraqi security forces  stood aside
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iran-backed-militia-supporters-converge-on-us-embassy-in-baghdad-shouting-death-to-america/2019/12/31/93f050b2-2bb1-11ea-bffe-020c88b3f120_story.html?arc404=true>
to
allow them to demonstrate suggests that what happened at the embassy cannot
be reduced to a hoax stage-managed and paid for by Iran. Furthermore, the
US did kill Iraqis two days before the protests, and that’s what ignited
them (to say nothing of the longer term record of the US devastating Iraq
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html>).
Like Hadley, however, Friedman pretends that the US’s December 27 bombings
didn’t happen.

In the imperial imagination, the US has the right to violently pursue its
objectives wherever it wants, and any resistance is illegitimate.

-- 

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sid-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sid-l/CACKppczngysJD%2BsmFtVd2xjNQNvf5Coc3WwHxah%2BNvhpg5vmTg%40mail.gmail.com.

---
To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]>
List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>