Book Review: War Is a Crime by David Swanson

[DickMcManus]

Book Review: War Is a Crime by David Swanson

Prior to 2001, the Taliban was willing to turn Osama bin Laden over to
a third country if he was promised a fair trial and no death penalty,
and if some evidence of his guilt of crimes were offered. In July 2001
the United States was known to have plans to take military action
against the Taliban by mid-October.

When the United States attacked Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, the
Taliban again offered to negotiate for the handing over of bin Laden.
When President George W. Bush refused, the Taliban dropped its demand
for evidence of guilt and offered simply to turn bin Laden over to a
third country. Bush rejected this offer and continued bombing.

In April 2012, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis concluded that all
claims of success and progress have been dishonest: "Senior ranking
U.S. military leaders have so distorted the truth," he wrote, "when
communicating with the U.S. Congress and American people in regards to
conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become
unrecognizable."

A Congressional report in 2010 documented payoffs made by the U.S. to
the Taliban for the safe passage of goods through Afghanistan, payoffs
that amounted to either the first or second largest source of income
for the Taliban, the other being opium. Afghans, including those
fighting for the Taliban, often signed up for training and pay from
the United States and then departed, sometimes repeating the process a
number of times. The United States has been funding, training, and
arming both sides of the war.

LIBYA

The United States and Europe had been arming and working with Muamar
Gadaffi in Libya for years, up to shortly before "intervening" against
him in 2011. Gadaffi had given up his nuclear program. Gadaffi had
displeased the West and displeased the Arab dictatorships. He was
unreliable. He wanted too much of Libya's wealth for Libyans. He was
too independent. He even called the Saudi monarch the worst thing in
the book: "made by Britain and protected by the U.S." And he made that
remark in Qatar, another nation that became his enemy.



The Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt was out of control. Nonviolent
movements were overthrowing dictators. It was opponents of the Arab
Spring who helped to arm the rebels in Libya -- and later in Syria --
but not just to arm them, also to control them. This began under the
banner of humanitarianism.

Gulf and NATO nations' media began talking about 50,000 dead and a
genocide underway. The number came from Sayed al-Shanuka, a Libyan
member of the International Criminal Court who had defected. There was
no explanation of where or how the 50,000 had been killed.

On April 10th, Human Rights Watch reported on the dead in Misrata. The
highest numbers came from Dr. Muhammad el-Fortia who claimed there
were 257 dead, with only 22 percent of them women -- suggesting that
fighters had been targeted rather than homes. By the middle of June
credible reports claimed 10,000 had been killed over four months by
both sides, including by NATO's bombing. NATO, dominated by the United
States, entered the war on the pretext of protecting civilians from
mass slaughter. There is no solid evidence that slaughter would have
occurred. Some observers believe the rebels had the upper hand. The
rebels were, in any event, very well armed. There were other options
available, as well. The African Union had been proposing a peace
settlement, one that Gadaffi might have agreed to.

But NATO immediately abandoned humanitarian rescue as the goal of its
mission, replacing it with the need to overthrow Gadaffi. General
Khalifa Belqasim Hifter was brought in from his home in Virginia by
the CIA to lead the rebels, along with other CIA-friendly Libyans.
Obama, Sarkozy, and Cameron published an essay on April 15th
announcing their plan to overthrow Gadaffi, something the United
Nations did not authorize. U.S. Navy Admiral Samuel Locklear admitted
in May to Congressman Mike Turner (R., Ohio) that NATO was trying to
assassinate Gadaffi.

The New York Times admitted to "scores" of dead from NATO strikes
unacknowledged by NATO. Over 600,000 civilians fled the country,
including 100,000 Libyans, while another 200,000 Libyans were
internally displaced. NATO had bombed the city of Tripoli for months,
occasionally apologizing for the deaths of civilians, but leaving many
observers with the impression that the goal was "shock and awe" -- or
"terror bombing" as opposed to "precision bombing." Among the targets
were media outlets, in which journalists were killed by NATO's missile
strikes.

Because cruise missiles and drones did the dirty work, U.S. Department
of State Legal Adviser Harold Koh told Congress that the war was
neither a war nor even "hostilities" (the language in the War Powers
Act). If no U.S. pilots or soldiers were at risk, then the bombs were
not hostile. They were friendly explosions.

Leon Panetta told the U.S. Senate that President Obama could go to war
in Syria or elsewhere without Congress, without the United Nations,
and with or without NATO.

The lead investigator for the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno-
Ocampo made statements as if they were indisputable about alleged
crimes by Gadaffi, including claims about mass-rape and the handing
out of Viagra to troops, stories pushed at the same time by U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice. Eventually Amnesty
International investigated and found no grounds for the accusations.
Moreno-Ocampo did not investigate NATO's crimes in Libya, any more
than he has ever done so in Iraq or Afghanistan. On January 19, 2012,
the Arab Organization for Human Rights, the Palestinian Center for
Human Rights, and the International Legal Assistance Consortium
reported that NATO had targeted civilian areas and committed war
crimes.

BOSNIA

In 1995, President Clinton announced that he would "help the people of
Bosnia to secure their own peace." A Lie. Almost two decades later,
U.S. and other foreign troops have never left , and the place is
governed by a European-backed Office of High Representative. U.S.
involvement in Yugoslavia gave NATO a reason to exist after the
collapse of the Soviet Union. It was also not unrelated to lead, zinc,
cadmium, gold, and silver mines, cheap labor, and a deregulated
market.

Enron gave $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 1997, six
days before accompanying Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor to Bosnia
and Croatia and signing a deal to build a $100 million power plant.
The annexation of Kosovo created a militarized buffer between
Yugoslavia and the projected route of an oil pipeline through
Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania. The pipeline is being built, with
U.S. government support, to provide the United States and Western
Europe with access to oil from the Caspian Sea. Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson said in 1998: "This is about America's energy security.
It's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics
come out right."


DOMINICAN REPUBLIC AND GRENADA


The United States when invading the Dominican Republic in 1965,
Grenada in 1983, and Panama in 1989. In the case of the Dominican
Republic, U.S. citizens who wanted to leave (1,856 of them) had been
evacuated prior to the military action. Neighbourhoods in Santo
Domingo where Americans lived were free of violence and the military
was not needed in order to evacuate anyone. All the major Dominican
factions had agreed to help evacuate any foreigners who wanted to
leave.


In the case of Grenada (an invasion that the United States banned the
U.S. media from covering) there were supposedly U.S. medical students
to rescue. But U.S. State Department official James Budeit, two days
before the invasion, learned that the students were not in danger.
When about 100 to 150 students decided they wanted to leave, their
reason was fear of the U.S. attack. The parents of 500 of the students
sent President Reagan a telegram asking him not to attack, letting him
know their children were safe and free to leave Grenada if they chose
to do so.


In the case of Panama, a real incident could be pointed to, one of a
sort that has been found anywhere foreign armies have ever occupied
someone else's country. Some drunk Panamanian soldiers had beaten up a
U.S. navy officer and threatened his wife. While President Bush
claimed that this and other new developments prompted the war, the war
plans had actually begun months prior to the incident.


President Lyndon B. Johnson's invasion of the Dominican Republic in
1965 used the pretence of American lives at risk. But that
justification had been cooked up as a substitute for a claim of
combating communism, which Johnson knew to be baseless and couldn't be
sure would fly. In a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann later explained
that the U.S. ambassador had asked the head of the Dominican military
if he'd be willing to play along with the alternative lie:

"All we requested was whether he would be willing to change the basis
for this from one of fighting communism to one of protecting American
lives."

KOREA

Americans were told that North Korea had attacked South Korea and had
done so at the behest of the Soviet Union as part of a plot to take
over the world for communism. In fact, the evidence suggests that the
South was the aggressor. Whichever side attacked, this was a civil war
and the Soviet Union was not involved.

The War on Korea saw the deaths of an estimated 500,000 North Korean
troops; 400,000 Chinese troops; 245,000 - 415,000 South Korean troops;
37,000 U.S. troops; and an estimated 2 million Korean civilians.

WORLD WAR II

When a resolution was introduced in the U.S. Senate in 1934 expressing
"surprise and pain" at Germany's actions, and asking that Germany
restore rights to Jews, the State Department "caused it to be buried
in committee." By 1937 Poland had developed a plan to send Jews to
Madagascar, and the Dominican Republic had a plan to accept them as
well. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain came up with
a plan to send Germany's Jews to Tanganyika in East Africa.
Representatives of the United States, Britain, and South American
nations met at Lake Geneva in July 1938 and all agreed that none of
them would accept the Jews.


On November 15, 1938, reporters asked President Franklin Roosevelt
what could be done. He replied that he would refuse to consider
allowing more immigrants than the standard quota system allowed. Bills
were introduced in Congress to allow 20,000 Jews under the age of 14
to enter the United States. Senator Robert Wagner (D., N.Y.) said,
"Thousands of American families have already expressed their
willingness to take refugee children into their homes." First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt set aside her anti-Semitism to support the
legislation, but her husband successfully blocked it for years.


In July 1940, Adolf Eichmann, "architect of the holocaust," intended
to send all Jews to Madagascar, which now belonged to Germany, France
having been occupied. The ships would need to wait only until the
British, which now meant Winston Churchill, ended their blockade. That
day never came. On November 25, 1940, the French ambassador asked the
U.S. Secretary of State to consider accepting German Jewish refugees
then in France. On December 21st, the Secretary of State declined. By
July 1941, the Nazis had determined that a final solution for the Jews
could consist of genocide rather than expulsion.





World War II, is still the deadliest of all time, with military deaths
estimated at 20 to 25 million (including 5 million deaths of prisoners
in captivity), and civilian deaths estimated at 40 to 52 million
(including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine).

Source: War Is a Crime by David Swanson

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9419-lies-and-consequences-in-our-past-15-wars