Does any­one know Leon Panetta’s email ad­dress? I’d like to send him my list of United States as­sas­si­na­tion plots. More than 50 for­eign lead­ers were tar­geted over the years, many suc­cess­fully. 7

Not long ago, Iraq and Iran were re­garded by US­rael as the most sig­nif­i­cant threats to Is­raeli Mid­dle-East hege­mony. Thus was born the myth of Iraqi Weapons of Mass De­struc­tion, and the United States pro­ceeded to turn Iraq into a bas­ket case. That left Iran, and thus was born the myth of the Iran­ian Nu­clear Threat. As it began to sink in that Iran was not re­ally that much of a nu­clear threat, or that this “threat” was be­com­ing too dif­fi­cult to sell to the rest of the world, US­rael de­cided that, at a min­i­mum, it wanted regime change. The next step may be to block Iran’s life­line — oil sales using the Strait of Hor­muz. Ergo, the re­cent US and EU naval buildup near the Per­sian Gulf, an act of war try­ing to goad Iran into fir­ing the first shot. If Iran tries to counter this block­ade it could be the sig­nal for an­other US Bas­ket Case, the fourth in a decade, with the dev­as­tated peo­ple of Libya and Afghanistan, along with Iraq, cur­rently en­joy­ing Amer­ica’s unique gift of free­dom and democ­racy.

On Jan­u­ary 11, the Wash­ing­ton Post re­ported: “In ad­di­tion to in­flu­enc­ing Iran­ian lead­ers di­rectly, [a US in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cial] says an­other op­tion here is that [sanc­tions] will cre­ate hate and dis­con­tent at the street level so that the Iran­ian lead­ers re­al­ize that they need to change their ways.”

How ut­terly charm­ing, these tac­tics and goals for the 21st cen­tury by the leader of “The Free World”. (Is that ex­pres­sion still used?)

The neo-con­ser­v­a­tive think­ing (and Barack Obama can be re­garded as often being a fel­low trav­eler of such) is even more charm­ing than that. Lis­ten to Danielle Pletka, vice pres­i­dent for for­eign and de­fense pol­icy stud­ies at Amer­ica’s most promi­nent neo-con think tank, Amer­i­can En­ter­prise In­sti­tute:

The biggest prob­lem for the United States is not Iran get­ting a nu­clear weapon and test­ing it, it’s Iran get­ting a nu­clear weapon and not using it. Be­cause the sec­ond that they have one and they don’t do any­thing bad, all of the naysay­ers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a re­spon­si­ble power. We told you Iran wasn’t get­ting nu­clear weapons in order to use them im­me­di­ately.” … And they will even­tu­ally de­fine Iran with nu­clear weapons as not a prob­lem. 8

What are we to make of that and all the other quo­ta­tions above? I think it gets back to my open­ing state­ment: Being “the only nu­clear power in the Mid­dle East” is a great card for Is­rael to have in its hand. Is US­rael will­ing to go to war to hold on to that card?

Please tell me again … What is the war in Afghanistan about?

With the US war in Iraq sup­pos­edly hav­ing reached a good con­clu­sion (or halfway de­cent … or bet­ter than noth­ing … or let’s get the hell out of here while some of us are still in one piece and there are some Iraqis we haven’t yet killed), the best and the bright­est in our gov­ern­ment and media turn their thoughts to what to do about Afghanistan. It ap­pears that no one seems to re­mem­ber, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was not re­ally about 9-11 or fight­ing ter­ror­ists (ex­cept the many the US has cre­ated by its in­va­sion and oc­cu­pa­tion), but was about pipelines.

Pres­i­dent Obama de­clared in Au­gust 2009: “But we must never for­get this is not a war of choice. This is a war of ne­ces­sity. Those who at­tacked Amer­ica on 9/11 are plot­ting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Tal­iban in­sur­gency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Amer­i­cans.” 9

Never mind that out of the tens of thou­sands of peo­ple the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been iden­ti­fied as hav­ing had any­thing to do with the events of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.

Never mind that the “plot­ting to at­tack Amer­ica” in 2001 was de­vised in Ger­many and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the United States bombed those coun­tries?

In­deed, what ac­tu­ally was needed to plot to buy air­line tick­ets and take fly­ing lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Per­haps a black­board? Ter­ror­ists in­tent upon at­tack­ing the United States can meet al­most any­where, with Afghanistan prob­a­bly being one of the worst places for them, given the Amer­i­can oc­cu­pa­tion.

The only “ne­ces­sity” that drew the United States to Afghanistan was the de­sire to es­tab­lish a mil­i­tary pres­ence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea re­gion of Cen­tral Asia — which re­port­edly con­tains the sec­ond largest proven re­serves of pe­tro­leum and nat­ural gas in the world — and build oil and gas pipelines from that re­gion run­ning through Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is well sit­u­ated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of south Asia, pipelines that can by­pass those not-yet Wash­ing­ton clients, Iran and Rus­sia. If only the Tal­iban would not at­tack the lines. Here’s Richard Boucher, US As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for South and Cen­tral Asian Af­fairs, in 2007: “One of our goals is to sta­bi­lize Afghanistan, so it can be­come a con­duit and a hub be­tween South and Cen­tral Asia so that en­ergy can flow to the south.” 10

Since the 1980s all kinds of pipelines have been planned for the area, only to be de­layed or can­celed by one mil­i­tary, fi­nan­cial or po­lit­i­cal prob­lem or an­other. For ex­am­ple, the so-called TAPI pipeline (Turk­menistan-Afghanistan-Pak­istan-In­dia) had strong sup­port from Wash­ing­ton, which was eager to block a com­pet­ing pipeline that would bring gas to Pak­istan and India from Iran. TAPI goes back to the late 1990s, when the Tal­iban gov­ern­ment held talks with the Cal­i­for­nia-based oil com­pany Un­o­cal Cor­po­ra­tion. These talks were con­ducted with the full knowl­edge of the Clin­ton ad­min­is­tra­tion, and were un­de­terred by the ex­treme re­pres­sion of Tal­iban so­ci­ety. Tal­iban of­fi­cials even made trips to the United States for dis­cus­sions. 11 Tes­ti­fy­ing be­fore the House Sub­com­mit­tee on Asia and the Pa­cific on Feb­ru­ary 12, 1998, Un­o­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Maresca dis­cussed the im­por­tance of the pipeline pro­ject and the in­creas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in deal­ing with the Tal­iban:

The re­gion’s total oil re­serves may well reach more than 60 bil­lion bar­rels of oil. Some es­ti­mates are as high as 200 bil­lion bar­rels … From the out­set, we have made it clear that con­struc­tion of the pipeline we have pro­posed across Afghanistan could not begin until a rec­og­nized gov­ern­ment is in place that has the con­fi­dence of gov­ern­ments, lead­ers, and our com­pany.

When those talks stalled in July, 2001 the Bush ad­min­is­tra­tion threat­ened the Tal­iban with mil­i­tary reprisals if the gov­ern­ment did not go along with Amer­i­can de­mands. The talks fi­nally broke down for good the fol­low­ing month, a month be­fore 9-11.

The United States has been se­ri­ous in­deed about the Caspian Sea and Per­sian Gulf oil and gas areas. Through one war or an­other be­gin­ning with the Gulf War of 1990-1, the US has man­aged to es­tab­lish mil­i­tary bases in Saudi Ara­bia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Afghanistan, Pak­istan, Uzbek­istan, Tajik­istan, Kyr­gyzs­tan, and Kaza­khstan.

The war against the Tal­iban can’t be “won” short of killing every­one in Afghanistan. The United States may well try again to ne­go­ti­ate some form of pipeline se­cu­rity with the Tal­iban, then get out, and de­clare “vic­tory”. Barack Obama can surely de­liver an elo­quent vic­tory speech from his teleprompter. It might even in­clude the words “free­dom” and “democ­racy”, but cer­tainly not “pipeline”.

Love me, love me, love me, I’m a Lib­eral (Thank you, Phil Ochs. We miss you.)

An­gela Davis, star of the 1960s, like most mem­bers of the Com­mu­nist Party, was/is no more rad­i­cal than the av­er­age Amer­i­can lib­eral. Here she is re­cently ad­dress­ing Oc­cupy Wall Street: “When I said that we need a third party, a rad­i­cal party, I was pro­ject­ing to­ward the fu­ture. We can­not allow a Re­pub­li­can to take of­fice. … Don’t we re­mem­ber what it was like when Bush was pres­i­dent?” 12

Yes, An­gela, we re­mem­ber that time well. How can we for­get it since Bush, by all im­por­tant stan­dards, is still in the White House? Wag­ing per­pet­ual war, re­lent­less sur­veil­lance of the cit­i­zenry, kiss­ing the cor­po­rate ass, po­lice bru­tal­ity? … What’s changed? Ex­cept for the worse. Where’s our sin­gle-payer na­tional health in­sur­ance? Noth­ing even close. Where’s our af­ford­able uni­ver­sity ed­u­ca­tion? Still the most back­ward in the “de­vel­oped” world. Where’s our le­gal­ized mar­i­juana — I mean re­ally le­gal­ized? If you think that’s changed, you must be stoned. Where’s our abor­tion on de­mand? What does your guy Barack think about that? Are the in­dis­pens­able labor unions being res­cued from obliv­ion? Ha! The ul­tra-im­por­tant min­i­mum wage? In­fla­tion ad­justed, equal to the mid-1950s.

Has the Amer­i­can threat to the en­vi­ron­ment and the world en­vi­ron­men­tal move­ment ceased? Tell that to a ded­i­cated ac­tivist-in­ter­na­tion­al­ist. Has the 50-year-old em­bargo against Cuba fi­nally ended? It has not, and I can still not go there legally. The po­lice-state War on Ter­ror at home? Scarcely a month goes by with­out the FBI en­trap­ping some young “ter­ror­ists”. Are more Banksters and Wall Street So­ci­ety-Screw­ers (ex­cept for the harm­less in­sider-traders) being im­pris­oned? Name one. The re­ally tough reg­u­la­tions of the fi­nan­cial area so badly needed? Keep wait­ing. How about ex­ec­u­tives of the BP Oil Spill Com­pany being ar­rested? Or war crim­i­nals, mass mur­der­ers, and tor­tur­ers with names like … Oh, I don’t know, let’s see … maybe like Ch­eney or Bush or Rums­feld or Wol­fowitz or some­one with a crazy name like Con­doleezza? All walk­ing com­pletely free, all cel­e­brated.

“A major de­cline of pro­gres­sive Amer­ica oc­curred dur­ing the Clin­ton years as many lib­er­als and their or­ga­ni­za­tions ac­cepted the pres­ence of a De­mo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent as an ad­e­quate sub­sti­tute for the things lib­er­als once be­lieved in. Lib­er­al­ism and a so­cial de­mo­c­ra­tic spirit painfully grown over the pre­vi­ous 60 years with­ered dur­ing the Clin­ton ad­min­is­tra­tion.” — Sam Smith13

“A change of Pres­i­dents is like a change of ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paigns for a soft drink; the prod­uct it­self still tastes the same, but it now has a new ‘image’.” — Richard K. Moore

++++++++++

Notes

1. Haaretz.com (Is­rael), Oc­to­ber 25, 2007; print edi­tion Oc­to­ber 26 ↩

2. Wash­ing­ton Post, March 5, 2009↩

3. “Face the Na­tion”, CBS, Jan­u­ary 8, 2012; see video ↩

4. The Guardian (Lon­don), Jan­u­ary 31, 2012″ ↩

5. “PBS’s Dis­hon­est Iran Edit”, FAIR (Fair­ness and Ac­cu­racy in Re­port­ing), Jan­u­ary 10, 2012↩

6. Reuters, Jan­u­ary 12, 2012 ↩

7. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm ↩

8. Video of Pletka mak­ing these re­marks ↩

9. Talk given by the pres­i­dent at Vet­er­ans of For­eign Wars con­ven­tion, Au­gust 17, 2009 ↩

10. Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Ad­vanced In­ter­na­tional Stud­ies, Wash­ing­ton, DC, Sep­tem­ber 20, 2007↩

11. See, for ex­am­ple, the De­cem­ber 17, 1997 ar­ti­cle in the British news­pa­per, The Tele­graph, “Oil barons court Tal­iban in Texas“. For fur­ther dis­cus­sion of the TAPI pipeline and re­lated is­sues, see this ar­ti­cle by in­ter­na­tional pe­tro­leum en­gi­neer John Fos­ter. ↩

12. Wash­ing­ton Post, Jan­u­ary 15, 2012 ↩

13. Sam Smith was a long­time pub­lisher and jour­nal­ist in Wash­ing­ton, DC, now liv­ing in Maine. Sub­scribe to his mar­velous newslet­ter, the Pro­gres­sive Re­view. ↩

    About the Author

    

    Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater…