The World According to Bibi

Bibi and the Bomb

 On Israel, America and the Arrogance of Power

The pressure to attack Iran was racheted up to fever pitch when Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, spoke before the United Nations General Assembly yesterday.  In one of the most hypocritical speeches ever presented at the UN, and there have been many, Bibi, who presides over the only nuclear armed nation in the Middle East, presented the case for a military assault on Iran to prevent them from acquiring an atomic bomb.

He argued that “The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?”  There was not the slightest hint of irony in Bibi’s plea for the liberty of Iranians, even while he stands on the neck of the Palestinian people…and stomp their dreams in the dust.

He painted aghastlyportrait of what would happen should Iran acquire such a weapon, declaring it would endanger the peace of the entire world!  It is a claim that I regard as dangerous hysterical hyperbole, designed to put President Obama on the spot and force him closer to the Israeli position on Iran.

Yet Bibi’s case against Iran was masterfully constructed and eloquently argued overall.  The first part of the speech skillfully painted a convincing portrait of the Islamic fanatics who rule Iran as madmen who are fully capable of launching an atomic attack against Israel.  In light of some of the things they have said on the record, Netanyahu had plenty of examples he could point to: beginning with Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s denial of the holocaust.

Netanyahu’s response to Ahmadinejad’s claim that the Holocaust is a lie was devastating, because most of the people in the world regard the charge as scurrilous and anyone who mouths it a demented moral cripple – this writer included.  The Israeli Prime Minister’s description of the basic character, history and aims of the fanaticism that fuels the Global Islamic Jihad was also fundamentally true:

“Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated.” He declared. “The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization. It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century…”

The Prime Minister’s claim for Israel as a valuable contributor to the advance of science and technology that benefits all humanity was equally true. But Netanyahu’s oration soon degenerated into self-serving propaganda and hyperbolic attacks on the Palestinians, and even the United Nations itself.

“The jury is still out on the United Nations,” he said, “and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims.”

This expression of doubt about UN intentions was intended as a smack in the face for the UN having commissioned the Goldstone Report, which accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes in the 2009 Gaza War, and for calling Zionism a racist ideology in an earlier General Assembly resolution.

The Goldstone Report on the Gaza Strip presented the official findings of a group of international experts who were dispatched by the UN Human Rights Commission to investigate violations of International Human Rights Laws, and International Humanitarian Laws after the Gaza War of 2009. A former South African judge with broad experience investigating war crimes Richard Goldstone, who served as a prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda – headed the commission of inquiry and their findings were widely recognized as valid.

But Israel refused to recognize the commission’s findings or abide by its recommendations.  And almost four years later Bibi had this to say about the report.

“Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.  By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice.”

Well, I don’t know about Roosevelt or Churchill, but President Harry Truman, the only leader in world history who ordered an atomic attack on another country, would have been an excellent candidate for a war crimes tribunal. The evidence strongly suggests the atomic bombing of Japan was a planned attack against a civilian population; therein lies the crime.

The diligent researcher can find abundant evidence that the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan was an arbitrary choice; it was not essential to victory over Japan as we have been told by apologists whose objective is to cover up a horrendous war crime.

The fact is that while Japan had a massive army of 5 million men, spread throughout Asia, with 2 million committed to the defense of the Japanese homeland, and 5,000 Kamikaze suicide pilots ready to crash their planes into US ships, Japan was in the final stages of collapse.

There was already an invasion plan in which the Russians would play a major role, that dramatically reduced the cost to the US in blood and treasure.   It was a widely shared belief among the war planners that Japan could be defeated without the bomb.

Dr. Leo Szilard,  a Hungarian born nuclear physicist who had set in motion the effort to build the bomb by writing a letter to President Roosevelt – co-signed by Dr. Albert Einstein, the world’s most famous physicist – expressed this view. As did many scientists who contributed to the effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb.

The creation of the “Manhattan Project” – code name for the secret US government program that created the atomic bomb – was inspired by the arguments made by Szilard and Einstein that convinced President Roosevelt that Nazi scientist were well on the way to making an atomic weapon.

The horror of such a possibility certainly justifies the American decision to develop a crash program to beat Hitler to the bomb. The Manhattan Project employed 120,000 people and cost 2 billion dollars, and they succeeded in producing the first atom bomb.

This was a great achievement in scientific research, technical mastery and organizational/management.  The  should be enough on its own to refute the silly rightwing dogma introduced by that “charming dunce” Ronald Reagan – in the former Defense Secretary Clarke Clifford’s coinage – who told us that government could do nothing right, even as he sought to head our government.  However by the time the Atomic bomb became a reality, with the successful detonation at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, the Nazi’s had surrendered several months earlier on May 7.  So the war in Europe was over.

With Germany and Italy defeated the last of the Axis powers still at war was the “Empire of the Rising Sun” in Japan.  And there is evidence that Truman wanted to teach these little brown devils a lesson they could never forget, as well as cutting the Russians out of any role in the Far East while also deterring Russian ambitions in postwar Europe.

Beyond the racist attitudes toward the Japanese – which is well documented by Afro-American historian Dr. Gerald Horne in his brilliant revisionist text on the war to control the Pacific region, Race War – these were objectives that looked beyond the defeat of Japan and began to envision the shape of the post war world order.

Recalling the decision to drop the atom bomb on Japan four years later, in 1949, Dr. Szilard says:

“The question of whether the bomb should be used in the war against Japan came up for discussion. Mr. Byrnes did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war. He knew at that time, as the rest of the Government knew, that Japan was essentially defeated and that we could win the War in another six months.

At that time Mr. Byrnes was much concerned about the spreading of Russian influence in Europe. . . . Mr. Byrnes’ concern about Russia I fully shared, but his view that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe I was not able to share. Indeed I could hardly imagine any premise more false and disastrous upon which to base our policy, and I was dismayed when a few weeks later I learned that he was to be our Secretary of State.”

 There are many examples of a similar doubt and apprehension among the small band of scientists, politicians and military men who were involved with development and use of the atomic bomb.  Consider, for instance, this passage from the Memoirs of General H. H. Arnold, Commander of the American Army Air Force in the Second World War (1949)

“The surrender of Japan was not entirely the result of the two atomic bombs. We had hit some 60 Japanese cities with our regular H. E. (High Explosive) and incendiary bomb$ and, as a result of our raids, about 241,000 people had been killed, 313,000 wounded, and about 2,333,000 homes destroyed. Our B-29′s had destroyed most of the Japanese industries and, with the laying of mines, which prevented the arrival of incoming cargoes of critical items, had made it impossible for Japan to carryon a large-scale war. . . . Accordingly, it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”

 The point of all this historical reflection is to remind us that the US is the last nation that has the moral authority to lecture other nations on the evils of nuclear weapons, since it is self-evident that it is a lesson we have yet to learn.  As I write, the US has tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in our arsenal.  They are deployed on tripartite launch systems on land, air and sea.  And these doomsday weapons can be delivered anywhere in the world with pin point accuracy within minutes.  It is impossible to defend against, and has the capacity to destroy all life on earth within a half hour from now!

Yet we have Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for commander-In-Chief of this doomsday arsenal, crying about the American military not being strong enough.  It is no wonder that Mitt and Bibi are old friends and business partners, both suffer from the same delusions that they can impose their will on other nations with persistent threats and prolific use of military force.  It is an arrogance characteristic of those drunk with power.

Hence it seems reasonable to the Israeli Prime Minister that while he accuses the Iranians, the ancient land of Persia, of deceiving inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency about their intention to build a nuclear weapon in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while they steadfastly refuse to sign the treaty at all!

In fact, like the US, the Israeli’s refuse to allow any nuclear weapons inspections on their soil.  And they refuse to even say whether they possess nuclear weapons…although scientists who worked in their nuclear weapons program have testified to their existence.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Iranian Prime Minister

 

A Looney Tune who occasionally hits the Mark

Hence, like a broken clock that is right twice every day, the Iranian Prime Minister was right when he made the following points in his speech to the United Nations:

“Unilateralism, application of double standards, and imposition of wars, instability and occupations to ensure economic interests, and expand dominance over sensitive centers of the world have turned to be the order of the day.  Arms race and intimidation by nuclear weapons and weapons of mass-destruction by the hegemonic powers have become prevalent: Testing new generations of ultra-modern weaponry and the pledge to disclose these armaments on due time is now being used as a new language of threat against nations to coerce them into accepting a new era of hegemony.

Continued threat … to resort to military action against our great nation is a clear example of this bitter reality.A state of mistrust has cast its shadow on the international relations, whilst there is no trusted or just authority to help resolve world conflicts…No one feels secure or safe even those who have stockpiled thousands of atomic bombs and other arms in their arsenals.”
In view of these undeniable realities the highlight of Netanyahu’s presentation, a show and tell about nuclear weapons production, has been ridiculed as both a cartoonish performance and a shameless display of hypocrisy.  Bibi held up a chart with a symbolic drawing of a nuclear bomb, which has been derisively dubbed “Bibi’s bomb,” and sparked one American late night comic to suggest that if the Israeli Prime Minister really wants to know what a nuclear bomb looks like he should just go down in his basement and look at a real one!

Tracing the progress of Iran’s atomic program Bibi drew a red line, and dramatically declared if the Iranians are allowed to proceed beyond that point the international community would not be able to stop them from building an atomic bomb.  Hence they would be justified in attacking Iran to stop it!

This was a transparent attempt to build support in the United States for an American backed attack on Iran.  But Bibi’s dramatic demonstration quickly became the object of a wicked comic skit by the political satirist Steve Colbert, and the real thing would be hilarious if it were not so dangerous!

The sad and frightening truth is that nobody is even willing to talk about the real solution to this man made dilemma – where the means of our destruction from mankind’s folly is within our power to end, but nobody wants to willingly surrender what they imagine to be the security and hegemonic advantage possession of nuclear arsenals provide.

But as one who at 19 years old held a Top Secret Security Clearance and was stationed on a Strategic Air Command base with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet, I made up my mind about what to do with nuclear weapons over half a century ago.  Schmoozing with people who were sworn to blow up the planet upon orders from the High command – at the pinnacle of which was General Curtis Lemay, whose nickname among his military colleagues was “The Mad Bomber”- I was privy to our nuclear war plans.

After viewing the official strategic Air command’s secret films of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan, the only people ever subjected to attack by an atomic weapon, I have been convinced that the very possession of nuclear weapons is a crime against humanity!  I have felt this way for over half a century!

Yet even as I write, instead of leading the fight to rid the world of these doomsday weapons, which our nation introduced into the world and remain the only nation to use them against another people – the US is engaging in open diplomatic hostilities toward Iran, and waging a covert war in conjunction with Israel with the objective of maintain Israel’s nuclear monopoly over the Mid-East region by preventing Iran from acquiring a single nuclear weapon.  This is short sighted folly and I believe, ultimately self-defeating.

The covert action against Iran includes assassinating five Iranian nuclear scientists, and disrupting their computers with virus attacks. Contrary to popular belief in this country, this aggression against Iran on behalf of Israel – a country where we already have a tragic history of meddling in their internal affairs – only strengthens the regime they are intended to overthrow.

And given the size and technological development of Iran, the Israeli’s know they can’t overthrow the regime alone.  That’s why they are trying to lure America into joining Israel in an all-out attack on Iran.  I am certain that this would be an even bigger blunder than the attack on Iraq, and far more costly.  It would stifle our economic recovery and reduce many people to desperation as the Republicans simultaneously shred the safety net as they spend money to destroy life rather than enhance life.

This is where the red line must be drawn, and President Obama must resist Bibi’s attempt to push the US into yet another war in the Islamic world….even at the expense of inciting the wrath of the all-powerful Israel Lobby, and even while his opponent Mitt Romney – a soulless, amoral, lying, unpatriotic opportunist – is accusing him of “throwing Israel under the Bus; blatantly interfering with the Presidents attempts to conduct foreign policy in the best interest of the nation, for no more exalted purpose than gaining a political advantage!  If this is not treason…it ought to be.

Honoring an Iranian Nuclear Scientist

 

The Iranians Honor a Martyr

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Rage in the Islamic World

               

 Wilding Youths in Egypt

 Will it reverberate in the Presidential Election?

When I woke up this morning and turned on the news, everywhere I went the talk was about football and the political firestorms in the Middle East, accompanied by shocking images of raging mobs that seemed intent on burning down what little remains of their impoverished countries.  The commentary from TV talking heads intended to explain these horrific events are by turns amusing, distressing, surprising and frightening. But they are rarely enlightening.

While there is much reliable commentary from visiting experts on both MSNBC and CNN, alas most voters will get their information elsewhere.  Millions get their information from propaganda mills like Fox News, which studies show is the dumbest demographic in America; or they turn to clueless verbal arsonists like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Inghram, Glen Beck, et al.  But there is foolishness even on MSNBC.

Morning Joe,  perhaps the most popular show on the network, is a forum where one finds wisdom and foolishness working in tandem.  The glib Joe Scarborough is like the proverbial cow that gives a good bucket of milk then kicks it over.  Among commentators on the right he is like an eagle among crows, but that’s a very low standard. Hence when he says something smart it is quickly followed by some asinine comment.

Thus when he is talking about the mess Mitt’s campaign is in because he insists upon being the Invisible Man, and won’t let us see where he stands on the critical issues, he’s the smart Joe.  But when he tells us that he doesn’t believe that the rage we are witnessing all over the Muslim world was really sparked by a blasphemous film about the prophet Muhammad, but the rioters are just using it as an excuse for their destructive behavior and attacks on US interests, then attempts to blame President Obama for it – he becomes Joe The Plumber.

The problems in the Middle East are long in the making, centuries in some cases, and they vary in character depending upon the countries involved.  The truth is that there is nothing any American President can do to control the course of events in the contemporary Islamic world.  The French and the British know this from experience, Americans are learning the hard way.

Hence the Republican claim that the present eruptions are the result of President Obama’s mishandling of the mass uprisings in the Arab Spring is spurious nonsense. The choice for any American president confronted with a popular uprising anywhere in the world is whether to practice what we preach regarding the virtues of democracy and support the popular movement, or lose all credibility with freedom loving peoples by supporting murderous autocrats who rule by police state tactics.

When we consider what John McCain and Mitt Romney has had to say about the Middle East region, with McCain ready to wage war everywhere and Romney anywhere, it doesn’t take a foreign policy wonk to conclude that we would be in perpetual warfare all over the Muslim world.

Hence we should view what these jokers say about the present eruptions in the Middle-East with extreme suspicion…if not `horror.  When future historians look back on this era, I am certain that will agree with me: Barack Obama has handled the complex combustible events in the Middle East with Solomonic wisdom.  That’s why he is hated by right-wing warmongers, here and in Israel.

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Playthell Benjamin

Harlem New York

Swptember 17, 2012

American Exceptionalism and the Mid-East Crisis

 

Bill Kristol: Pugnacious Chicken Hawk

 Further Reflections on the Arrogance of Power

While most intelligent Republicans – walking oxymoron’s all – either remained silent or criticized Mitt Romney’s vulgar opportunism in speaking out of turn and lying about President Obama’s position on the attacks against American diplomats in the Mid-East; the Arch-neocon ideologue and far right activist Bill Kristol, came out strongly in Mitt’s defense.

“One can question the timing and tone of Mitt Romney’s statement last night.” said Kristol. “One can note he wasn’t as fluent and clear as he might have been at his press conference this morning. Still, the fact remains that the events of September 11, 2012, represent a big moment for the country. Romney is right to sense this, and to seize on this moment as an occasion to explain the difference between his foreign policy and President Obama’s. He’s right to reject the counsel of the mainstream media, which is to keep quiet and give President Obama a pass.”

For me, this statement is proof positive that Romney is the captive of neo-cons, although there are some advisors with different views. (For a thorough discussion of the worldview and objectives of the neo-conservatives see “How the Iraq War Was Hatched in a Think Tank.”)  Since Mitt is as clueless about world affairs as President Bush was, the neo-cons will shape American his foreign policy just as they did under George II after 9/11; a prospect that terrifies this writer.

Kristol, who always reminds me of Daffy Duck with an attitude, is a dangerous sword rattler with a checkered past.  He was the director and guiding light of the Project for a New American Century – from whence the policy wonks who beguiled George Bush into invading Iraq were hatched -and thus played a major role in egging America into war with Iraq.

He is such a rabid right-wing ideologue that the New York Times gave him column but was forced to kick his keaster to the curb after a brief tenure.  Kristol is part of a group of crazed rightwing egghead policy wonks that include people like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz, who believe a unipolar world can be shaped in America’s image through the promiscuous employment of military might.

I can think of no one who is considered a credible analyst of foreign affairs that has been as wrong on the big questions as Bill Kristol.  His continued prominence as an intellectual on the far right testifies to their estrangement from reality.  His role in promoting the Iraq war should have confined him to the sidelines for at least a generation.

Yet here he is still talking the same silly warmongering smack, trying his best to get us into a war with the Islamic Republic of Iran – which would make the Iraq adventure look like a dress rehersal – while we are still fighting wars he helped launch eleven years and four trillion dollars ago.

The truth is that Kristol – an impassioned American Zionist, was calling for an invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Sadam Hussein during the Clinton Administration because he thought Sadam was a threat to Israeli dominance in the region.  In a November 16, 1998 article published in the Weekly Standard, titled “How to Attack Iraq,” Bill Kristol rants, “It now seems fairly certain that sometime in the next few weeks the Clinton administration will have to strike Iraq. There are really no acceptable alternatives.”

Since this was over a year before 9/11 why did Kristol consider an invasion inevitable?  He tells us, “Saddam’s recent demand for the expulsion of UN weapons inspectors and for the removal of Richard Butler as head of the inspections regime is mostly a ploy to buy time…The longer the present crisis lasts, the more weeks the United states spends arguing with its allies and with Russia, the closer Saddam comes to his real objective: Finally acquiring chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them.”

It is enough to know that this crazed, warmongering, rabid American Exceptionalist with grand imperialist ambitions and his ideological minions are architects of Romney’s foreign policy, and observe the present anti- American rage all over the Muslim world unfolding as I write, in order to recognize that Mitt Romney’s election to the Oval Office would be an unmitigated disaster!  It would imperil the national security of the United States and threaten the peace of the world.

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Playthell George Benjamin

Harlem, New York

September 13, 2012

Mitt Romney Cannot Be Trusted With Foreign Policy!

 

Mitt making Mischief in Poland

 On the Road to Disaster

It has become conventional wisdom among forward looking people guided by humane objectives, that Mitt Romney would not only be bad news on domestic policy should he become president,  but his foreign policy would also be disastrous.  Listening to his ignorant and bellicose statements on international relations, I find myself quoting the old Yankee catcher Yogi Berra: “It’s de ja vu all over again!” Not only does Mitt talk like he wants to bomb Iran, but start economic and shooting wars with Russia and China too.

Now Romney is wading into the extremely complex problems of the volitile Middle East.  After the tragic murder of the American ambassador and three of his Embassy staff in Libya, Mitt  gave us a glimpse  of how he would handle a serious foreign crisis.

Consider his reaction to a perfectly reasonable conciliatory statement from the American Embassy in Cairo condemning the religious bigotry expressed in a US produced film that  insulted the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and sparked the uprising.  “…the administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt,” says Mitt,  “instead of condemning their actions. It’s never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values.”

First of all the US embassy had not yet been attacked when the statement was made; the ambassador was trying stave off an assault by an enraged mob and save American lives.  Romney called the President’s response  “disgraceful’ and an “apology for American values” before Barack had uttered a word. This statement not only demonstrates that Romney is a reckless amateur in the art of diplomacy, but that he is also a dangerous lying opportunist without a moral core.

Romney is clearly willing to imperil the lives of American diplomats and put American interests in danger throughout the volitile Middle-East, where a furor towards America is building on the Arab street to gain political advantage.   Hence Congressman Rangel’s statement today was on the money; he said the Romney/Ryan team would be a risk to our national security.

Rangel, my long time Congressman from Harlem – described Romney as the equivalent an empty headed automaton from central casting who is given a script by right-wing neo-cons and he recites it as if he knows what he is talking about.

The truth is that what Romney understands about the world is how to make money from globalization, by shipping American jobs overseas where they can maximize profits by exploiting cheap labor.  He clearly knows nothing about I relations between nation states.  He is another, dumber version of George bush on this subject.  And this is really frightening because Romney is surrounding himself with foreign policy advisors from the Project For a New American Century. 

These are the same people who were the architects of George Bush’s Iraq policy; which means that they are writing the scripts Mitt is reciting.  That’s why Mitt’s rhetoric about the danger Iran poses to the US and Israel sounds like a replay of Bush’s hysterical language about Iraq.  And we have every reason to believe that if Mitt is elected we will be at war with Iran as fast as they can get the Jets off the Ground.

It is also clear that he will allow his old business associate Bibi Netanyahu, the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister, to call the shots as to when and where to start wars in the region – a question I will have more to say about in another essay.  This is why Mitt Romney cannot be trusted with conducting American foreign policy; he would quickly put this nation firmly on the road to disaster!

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Playthell George Benjamin

Harlem, New York

September 13, 2012

What Americans Should Learn From 9/11

The second airliner heads into the tower

 Facing Some Unpleasant Truths

It was a crystal clear day just like today, with blue cloudless skies, when the great terror struck New York a decade ago.   And as I survey the panoramic view of downtown Manhattan form my window on Harlem’s Sugar Hill, while listening to replays of the actual broadcasts on WNBC; it all comes back to me, bubbling up from the dusty basements of my consciousness.

The skyline of Manhattan looks natural now, but for a long time after the hijacked airliners crashed into the towers, bringing them down before our eyes, the city looked lopsided.  The Twin Towers were clearly visible from my windows, and I witnessed the second plane crash into the tower and saw them fall!

The towers looked different ways on different days, depending upon how the sun rays were reflecting off them.  They were a daily part of my life.  Hence I felt an acute sense of loss and had a hard time adjusting to the look of the city without the giant towers.

Since I began writing down my responses to the tragedy within hours after it happened, there is a clear record of my reaction. Then as now, I was appalled by the widespread sense of denial by my countrymen. Their expressions of disbelief and insistence on America’s innocence rang hollow with me.

I had been expecting a terrorist attack for several months because of the Palestinian Intifada provoked by Israeli leader Ariel Sharon when he created and incident at the “Dome of the Rock,” which Muslims call “The Mosque of Omar.” As I watched the violence on television, with Palestinians throwing rocks and the Israeli’s firing bullets, I became convinced that we would see a terrorist attack in response.

As the Palestinian people danced in the streets at the sight of the collapsing towers, I was convinced I had been right – in spite of a swift statement of denial from Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. But history would prove me wrong – I had the right string but the wrong yo yo, as the song goes.  The attack had been the result of misguided American policy in the Middle-East, but the perpetrators had a different argument with the US and the Palestinian issue was almost ancillary.

Al Qaeda, was a far more deadly enemy, and unlike the Palestinian issue there is no obvious solution to the conflict between us; theirs is a historic grievance inspired by a rejection of modern secular society itself.  We had made an enemy that would never go away; entered a state of total war that wouldn’t end until one side or the other was annihilated.  The Bushmen’s misunderstanding of the nature of global Jihad made the 9/11 assault possible.

Despite ongoing attempts to cast the Bush Administration as innocent victims of volatile clandestine forces that nobody could have predicted, the historical record shows otherwise.  The evidence reveals a pattern of arrogance, ignorance and indifference to the advice of intelligence experts that led directly to 9/11, and the Iraq and Afghan wars that we are still fighting 11 years later.

This is the lesson of two very important books on the subject “Your government Failed You” by Richard Clark, written shortly after the attack, and the newly published 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars,” by Kurt Eichenwald, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a former reporter for The New York Times.

The unique value of Dick Clark’s book is that it provided an insider’s view of the struggle to get then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to call a meeting of the different intelligence agencies and have them compare the bits and pieces of intelligence on Al Qaeda and see what picture would emerge, sort of like putting the pieces of a puzzle together.  She refused.

Dr. Rice was an expert on the Soviet era Russian military and nuclear war strategy.  Hence she was so obsessed with building the “Star Wars’ that she ignoring Dick Clarke’s warnings.  I fact, she was scheduled to present an important speech on “National Security” on the day of the attack.  But that speech was not on the looming threat from the Islamic Jihadists in Al Qaeda, but how to build the anti-missile system around Russia, although the soviet threat was gone!  History will not be kind to this wicked witch of the west.

The revelations in Kurt Eichenwald’s book shows how the neo-cons from the Project for a New American century, brought into the Bush Administration by Dirty Dick Cheney confused matters with their obsession with toppling Sadam Hussein in Iraq, a man who posed absolutely no threat to the US.

It was at their insistence that the CIA’s warning about the intention of Al Qaeda to launch a massive terror attack on the US.  And it was this same crew who came to prominence in the Bush foreign policy establishment after the attack, who talked Bush into invading Iraq, the most disastrous foreign policy decision in American history!

I have written at considerable length about how this decision was reached; for a detailed analysis of the decision making process that led to the attack on Iraq read “How the Iraq War was Hatched in a Think Tank” and “The Iraq attack: Bush’s March of Folly” on this blog.  What both of these essays show is that we got into the Iraq war the same way we got into the catastrophic Vietnam War: politicizing intelligence in order to justify a preconceived policy.

Later today I shall be posting a commentary on the present crisis in the Middle East – a complex, multifaceted, dangerous mess – and Mitt Romney’s response to it.  However it is critical that all Americans understand a minimal essential lesson we must from the 9/11 attack to avoid disaster in the future: Meddling in Middle Eastern politics is a very dangerous business, and politicizing intelligence to justify a war of choice deadly folly!

A Warning of Things to Come?

“Ye shall reap what ye sow”

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Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem, New York

September 12, 2012

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Mr. Chameleon

A Shameless Hypocrite

 To be or not to be: That’s the Question

When Mitt Romney is not playing Mr. Mum with his taxes, or his deal making as CEO of the Winter Olympics, he’s playing Mr. Chameleon with his politics; changing colors to suit the political environment.  It’s becoming harder and harder to discern his true colors, and we are left to ponder a mystery.  The more we see of Mitt the less we know about who he really is.

While it is clear to me that the public is being played for suckers by cold blooded flim flam men, whose job is to confuse fact with fiction, I cannot escape the sickening feeling that The Mittster and his mythmakers might just get away with it.  The thing about chameleons is that you have to pay close attention in order to notice that they are changing colors.  And many Americans, perhaps most, are not paying attention to the unfolding political drama at all.

Perplexed and bewildered by the avalanche of political ads preaching different versions of reality, the average voter gets turned off and seeks solace in bread and circuses; often ending up voting for a candidate because they think he would make a good beer drinking partner… or they just feel good vibes emanating from him.

But those of us who are paying attention see a chameleon whose political allegiance is dictated by expedience and changes colors to fit the situation. We are witnessing a dramatic demonstration of Mitt’s tricknology on his Israeli sojourn; where his philosophy appears to be “when in Israel think like the Israelis.”   There are three poignant examples that stand out.  First there is Mitt’s praise of the Israeli nation.  “To step foot into Israel is to step foot into a nation that began with an ancient promise made in this land,” Romney declared.

He went on to observe: “The historian Paul Johnson, writing on the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Jewish state, said that over the course of Israel’s life, 100 completely new independent states had come into existence. “Israel is the only one whose creation can fairly be called a miracle”…It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.”

The problem with this fulsome praise is that it contradicts the fundamental beliefs of the Mormon Church in which Mitt is a High Priest.  It is central to the beliefs of the Church of Latter Day Saints that upon his Resurrection Jesus Christ came to what is now the United States to preach his new Covenant, and that the new Zion (Israel) would arise here in America!

Hence if he is true to the teachings of his church the Israeli’s are apostates – preachers of a false doctrine.  It cannot be otherwise because the Mormon and Israeli doctrines are irreconcilable.  But since Mitt is as secretive about his religious beliefs as he is about his taxes most Americans didn’t recognize that Willard Mitt Romney was lying his butt off as he praised the Jews in Israel.  But he was equally duplicitous in his effusive praise of the Israeli economy and medical system.

The top marginal tax rate for Israeli’s earning over 125,000 dollars is 48% and the medical system is socialized: it is free, universally available to every citizen, and is paid for by a tax levied on all tax payers.  These are the very things that Romney is so adamantly against here at home; he is building his campaign on opposition to them.  Has nobody ever told Mitt that charity begins at home: or is he just a phony baloney lying so and so!

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Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem, New York

Augudt 1, 2012

The Puppet: Mitt Romney Recites Neo-Con Lines in Israel

  What is Mitt Promising BB?

 On Rattling Swords and Waving the Bloody Shirt

AfterlisteningtoMitt Romney’s speech in Israel, where he practically pledged to invade Iran if elected President; I thought “here we go again!”  The last thing the American people need is another fuzzy headed businessman in the Oval Office who thinks the answer to our protracted economic crisis is to give more money to the very rich and regulate the private sector less.  A President so clueless about foreign affairs, his view of the world can be completely molded by policy wonks with an agenda.  That’s exactly what we had in George W. Bush.

Lest we forget, the result was a series of disasters.  Among these was the failure to heed repeated warnings from US intelligence operatives that Islamic Jihadists were planning a devastating terrorist attack on the US homeland, because misguided ideologues were still fighting a cold war against a nation that no longer existed.

This resulted in the most successful assault on American soil by a foreign force since the War of 1812.  And the ill-conceived wars of choice that we are still fighting almost 12 years later –three times the length of World War II.  The Bush economic policy was also disastrous and resulted in the near collapse of the world financial system; resulting in the loss of 40% of Middle Class wealth and 67% of Afro-American wealth. And millions of Americans are still facing foreclosure on their homes, while Mitt proposes an enhanced version of Bushonomics.

Whatever one believes about who the good and bad guys are in the Middle East, the question that must be asked with the utmost urgency is: Can this nation afford another major war? The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been estimated to cost out at around four trillion dollars by Nobel Prize winning economist ……of Columbia University.  And a war with Iran would make those wars look like a dress rehearsal.

It is instructive to note that the American society of Civil Engineers has estimated that we could have completely rebuilt the infrastructure of our nation for half that expenditure – an investment that would have boosted our present economy, employed a multitude of workers, and laid the basis for a new economy suited to 21^st century realities.

Hence those like Mitt Romney, who argue that it is a false dichotomy to say we can’t engage in war and nation building in the Mid-East and rebuild our nation at the same time, are wrong.  Yet, driven by an unfaltering opportunism, a self-righteous sense of “American Exceptionalism,” and scripted by neo-con fanatics like John Bolton – who helped convince the Bushmen to attack Iraq in a war of choice – Mitt Romney has committed America to a war with Iran in his hysterical Jerusalem Speech.

Mitt even has put the choice of whether this nation will attack Iran in the hands of his old business buddy Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister.  This should outrage all patriotic Americans who believe that our president should put American interests first; and a war with Iran is not in our national interests!

Despite the fact that Mitt was speaking in Israel, it was a speech designed to win the Jewish, and especially the Christian Evangelical vote, back home.  Since Jews are only 4% of the electorate, and only around 7% of American Jews say that US policy toward Israel is a deciding factor in how they vote, plus President Obama won 80% of the Jewish vote; Mitt must motivate the Evangelicals or he’s doomed to defeat at the polls.

That’s why Mitt’s message was aimed at millions of Evangelical Christian fanatics, whose support of Israel is based on their “End Time” theology.  And many of these people are already skeptical of Mitt’s Mormon beliefs. So, like the soulless charlatan that he is, Mitt gave BB the right to take our nation to war; which would fulfill the fantasies of the Christian Right masquerading as biblical prophecy.  Such an unprincipled, dangerous, opportunist should never be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office; let alone become the commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces!

 A Fraud at the Wailing Wall

 I bet he’s counting votes back home

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 Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem, New York

July 31; 2012

The World According to Mitt

 Yet another pugnacious Republican draft dodger

 The Danger Zone is Everywhere!

After listening to Mitt Romney’s speech before the veterans of Foriegn Wars at South Carolina’s Citadel, a military academy, I thought: “Tt’s de ja vous all over again.”  Once more the Republicans are attempting to win a presidential election by playing on the paranoia and misguided patriotism of the American public; conjuring up enemies abroad and manufacturing war hysteria at home.

Mitt Romney is beginning to look more and more like a reincarnation of George Bush, but without the former President’s compassion or military experience.  The thing that unites Romney and Bush, and distinguishes them from all other Presidents should Romney win, is that they would be the only occupants of the Oval Office with MBA’s from Harvard.

Judging by the economic performance of the first Chief Executive with this coveted degree, there is cause for alarm. Bill Clinton, who presided over our last economic boom, has called Mitt’s economic plan nothing but a reincarnation of the Bush plan…”but this time on steroids.”  That’s scary enough, but Mitt’s vision of foreign policy, and related issues of war and peace, is terrifying.

Like Bush, Mitt knows little of the world beyond the business world.  Yes he was governor of Massachusetts for four years, like Bush was governor of Texas, but most of what he understands about foreign affairs has to do with global markets; mainly where to ship the jobs of American workers in order to provide the greatest returns for his investors.

Hence maximizing profits, not matters of morality and compassion, guided Mitt’s decisions.  And he left a trail of wrecked lives and mutilated companies – which he says are killers too –  in his wake.   But  if Mitt brings the same ruthless amoral approach to foreign policy, maintaining a tally sheet of wins and losses with global domination as the ultimate objective, we can be sure there will be constant wars and rumors of wars.

Already Mitt has shown a willingness to pick fights all over the world: Iran, Venezuela, China, and Russia; who he says is our number one geo-political threat.  So reckless is Mitt’s rhetoric that the venerable Colin Powell has publicly chastised Mitt and said his party’s presumptive presidential candidate is wrong on Russia.

Powell’s  incredulous facial expression and blasé body language suggested that the former Secretary of State believe Mitt’s view of the world should be classified under “Nutsy Coo Coo!” Especially since Mitt’s most influential advisors were routinely dismissed as “The Fuckin Crazies” during the Administration of George I, when Colin Powell was the American Othello.

The former General’s outspoken dissent suggest that the protracted war between the Realpolitique crowd, represented by people like Brent Scowcroft, Richard Luger, Colin Powell, George H.W. Bush, et al, and the Neo-Con’s represented by Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton, is flaring up again.  Judging from Romney’s paranoid vision and bellicose rhetoric it is fair to assume the Neo-Cons have the candidate’s ear.  That explains why neither Brent Scowcroft nor Colin Powell has endorsed The Mittster.

This is yet another good reason for the rest of us to be worried about what a Mitt Romney presidency would mean for war and peace.  What we know for sure is that these two factions have been fighting to impose their vision of the world on American foreign policy since Operation Desert Storm. 

At the beginning of the rein of  George II  the Powell/Scowcroft Realpolitique faction was firmly in charge. But after the terrorist attack on 9/11 George II panicked and the “crazies,”  who were recruited from the Project for A New American Century,“ a Neo-Con think tank, by Dirty Dick Cheney,  took charge of US foreign policy.

These are the architects of policies that led to the invasion of Iraq, America’s greatest diplomatic blunder, and the bungling of the Afghanistan mission.  And while we are still fighting those wars almost 12 years later, Mitt wants to start others.  Hence although both Mitt and Barack both talk about the 21^st Century being a new American century….it really scares me when Mitt says it.  Because I see danger zones everywhere!

 Stop the Madness! 

 Don’t Antgonize the Russians!

 *************

Playthell George Benjamin

Harlem, New York

July 25, 2012 

Happy Birthday Madiba!

A Real Smoothie

 Now Let Us Praise a Great Man!

If presidentObama was looking for a role model he could not do better than NelsonMandela, the liberator of South Africa and the world’s greatest living statesman.  I would not be at all surprised to discover that Barack learned a trick or two from the great leader.  After all, our President is a first rate intellectual who is well read, and endlessly curious about the world.  Hence he could not have failed to notice that our country has a history much like that of South Africa.

They were both founded by colonists who were deposited in new world’s by Dutch charter companies.  It was the Dutch East India Company that deposited the Afrikaners on The South African Cape, and the Dutch West India Company that brought the settlers to New Amsterdam – lately New York.

Both groups of European settler colonialists subdued that indigenous populations of color, and in an orgy of land hunger seized their best land and ruthlessly murdered all who resisted.  And it was a Dutch East India ship that brought the first African labor to the English settlement of Jamestown, in Virginia; after they decimated the Native American population with guns and disease.

In both countries the white settler population established a racial caste system based on white supremacy.  Under these systems racial caste status was codified in law, verified in pseudo-scientific “scholarship” and rigorously enforced by the armed might of the state.  Both men emerged from humble circumstances behind the veil of color and rose to the highest elective office in the land.  And each left some disappointment in those supporters who believed that their ascension to the pinnacle of power would immediately end their suffering; answer their every grievance; and make them whole.

Beyond this the nature of their experiences diverges radically.  Nelson Mandela became the President of a country that was predominantly black and Barack became the President of a country that was predominantly white, yet in both countries the whites held privileged status in the pigmentocracy.  But Mandela had the harder row to hoe because the election of Barack Obama did not carry the threat of radically upsetting the power relations between racial groups in America, as it did in South Africa.

While Barack Obama’s road to power went through a private school in the American paradise of Hawaii, elite Ivy league universities, Community organizing in a Major American city, the state legislature, a law professorship in an elite university, and the US Senate.  Nelson also became a lawyer and community organizer: But he spent almost three decades in prison on South Africa’s Robbin Island: A hell on earth.

That’s where Mandela was steeled in the struggle and prepared to lead the nation to a peaceful end to white political domination.  Just as Mandela had shown unshakable courage as an ANC militant, he demonstrated the same resolve when dealing with the bomb throwers on his left, who wanted to start a race war that would have wrecked the country and hemorrhaged the nation’s blood and treasure!

Although much remains to be done in South Africa, and widespread racial conflict may yet come to that beautiful yet troubled land; the extension of political power to the black majority in South Africa remains one of the greatest political triumphs of oppressed peoples in 20^th century! A century consumed by peoples revolutions.  And the courtly courageous Nelson Mandela was its guiding light.

So enjoy this day to the fullest Modiba; you have done your nation great service…and the know it!!!!!  That’s why millions of school children will sing praises unto your name, and multitudes will smile and drink a libation of spirits in your honor all over the world.  The United Nations honors you by calling on people of goodwill everywhere to spend 67 minutes doing something to make the world a better place – one minute for each year of your public service.

This is my contribution.  Happy birthday Modiba!  No life in the last century has been better lived, and the world may never see your like again.  What Shakespeare said of the noble Moor Othello is profoundly true of you: “The elements so blended in him / that all the world could see…here was a man!”

 A Life Long Fighter

And he is still swinging at 94!!!

(Double click to see Mandla at White House as President of SA”)

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 Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem, New York

Nelson Mandela Day, July 18, 2012

The Islamist Claim Victory in Egypt!

  Muhamed Morsi, Egypt First Islamist President?

 

Now What Happens Next?

The comedian Paul Mooney invented a character called “Negrodamous;” a prescient black man who can predict the future.  I am beginning to feel more and more like that guy…except my stories ain’t funny.  Alas, it is now apparent that my predictions on both the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Egyptian upheaval were right on the money.

My prediction that the apolitical character of the Occupy Wall Street movement would insure they would end up like Jack the Bear, making tracks but getting nowhere in terms of diminishing the power of the Plutocrats has certainly come true. One part of the segmented leadership of OWS has announced that the only solution to American Problems is “world Revolution,” and another has decided that challenging the seat of progressive Democratic Congresswoman Lydia Valesquez is what they should be about.

Although the Egyptian upheaval, which served as their model, is a far more complex political phenomenon; I managed to get that right too.  From the outset I warned that we should be wary of uncritically embracing the popular resistance movement, because it contained dangerous elements that could be propelled to power.  This is because like all mass social movements, the Egyptian leadership was polycepalous and segmented; which means they have many leaders representing different factions.

While they all agree that overthrowing the Mubarak government was a vital necessity; any basis for unity between secular liberals and conservative Islamist stopped there.  Although all factions said they wanted an end to tyranny the Devil lurked in the details.  I suspected they were sleeping in the same bed but dreaming different dreams.

Some thought me cynical when I pointed out the naiveté of a young female doctor in a miniskirt interviewed by the New York Times, who gushed over how helpful members of the Muslim Brotherhood were in supporting the idealistic youths who thought they were ushering in a western style liberal /secular democracy.

Other’s thought me a reactionary when I sympathized with the middle class Egyptian women who came out in support of President Honsi Mubarak and the military, against the “revolutionaries” who advocated popular democracy.  As highly educated women they foresaw the danger of an Islamic takeover in a popular election and they knew the horrors that befell women, especially modern women like them, everywhere Islamic fundamentalists take power.

The military men understand it too, that’s why they have steadfastly kept Islamists from taking power ever since Egypt’s first President, Abdel Gamal Nasser, a military man trained at Britain’s elite Sandhurst military academy, hung the theologian Syyid Qutb, the ideological leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, in 1966.  What we are witnessing in Egypt is a reflection of the FLN’s policy in Algeria, where the military overturned a popular election that chose an Islamic party, and took control.  And as I have written repeatedly: The only impediment to an Islamist takeover in all of these Muslim countries is the secular military caste.

Hence with a victory by Muhamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who claimed to have won by a million votes on Monday, and Ahmed Shafiq, former President Hosni Mubarak’s last appointed Prime Minister, Claiming to have won on Tuesday, we shall soon see if Morsi becomes the first Islamist President that’s allowed to take power by the military strongmen in a Sunni Muslim country.

With the announcement by the Military elite that they will be the architects of the new Egyptian Constituition, in order to keep it a secular document and prevent the institution of Sharia law, and that only the military high command can remove a military commander…it looks like de ja vu all over again with a faceoff by the theocrats and military secularists that marked the beginning of modern Egyptian politics.

This conflict presents President Obama with a dilemma: shall he support the results of Egypt’s first democratic election….or cast his fate with the military strongmen; exactly where America’s support has been for the last half century.  We shall see.

 Where the Real Power Resides

The Nemisis of the Islamist

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Playthell Benjamin

Harlem, New York

June 20, 2012