Notes
Chapter 1
1. For the text of McVeigh’s letter, see Fox News, 2001.
2. Harvard scholar
Samuel Huntington’s contribution makes it clear that the depiction of the US as a rogue state – or at least the recognition that a good part of the world supports that depiction – is not limited to the radical end of the spectrum. Huntington – a member of the Trilateral Commission of the 1970s, and author of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis – published his article in Foreign Affairs in 1999. It is worth quoting at length: While the United States regularly denounces various countries as ‘rogue states,’ in the eyes of many countries it is becoming the rogue superpower…. On issue after issue, the United States has found itself increasingly alone, with one or a few partners, opposing most of the rest of the world’s states and peoples. These issues include UN dues; sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Iraq, and Libya; the land mines treaty; global warming; an international war crimes tribunal; the Middle East; the use of force against Iraq and Yugoslavia; and the targeting of 35 countries with new economic sanctions between 1993 and 1996. On these and other issues, much of the international community is on one side and the United States is on the other. The circle of governments who see their interests coinciding with American interests is shrinking…. In the past few years the United States has, among other things, attempted or been perceived as attempting more or less unilaterally to do the following: pressure other countries to adopt American values and practices regarding human rights and democracy; prevent other countries from acquiring military capabilities that could counter American conventional superiority; enforce American law extraterritorially in other societies; grade countries according to their adherence to American standards on human rights, drugs, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, missile proliferation, and now religious freedom; apply sanctions against countries that do not meet American standards on these issues; promote American corporate interests under the slogans of free trade and open markets; shape World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies to serve those same corporate interests; intervene in local conflicts in which it has relatively little direct interest; bludgeon other countries to adopt economic policies and social policies that will benefit American economic interests; promote American arms sales abroad while attempting to prevent comparable sales by other countries; force out one U.N. secretary-general and dictate the appointment of his successor; expand NATO initially to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic and no one else; undertake military action against Iraq and later maintain harsh economic sanctions against the regime; and categorize certain countries as ‘rogue states,’ excluding them from global institutions because they refuse to kowtow to American wishes…. At a 1997 Harvard conference, scholars reported that the elites of countries comprising at least two-thirds of the world’s people – Chinese, Russians, Indians, Arabs, Muslims, and Africans – see the United States as the single greatest external threat to their societies. They do not regard America as a military threat but as a menace to their integrity, autonomy, prosperity, and freedom of action. They view the United States as intrusive, interventionist, exploitative, unilateralist, hegemonic, hypocritical, and applying double standards, engaging in what they label ‘financial imperialism’ and ‘intellectual colonialism,’ with a foreign policy driven overwhelmingly by domestic politics. (Huntington, 1999)
3. A draft of a proposed resolution for the Durban conference, intended for submission by European Union delegates, reads: ‘The European Union profoundly deplores the human suffering, individual and collective, caused by slavery and the slave trade. They are among the most dishonourable and abhorrent chapters in the history of humanity. The EU condemns these practices, in the past and present, and regrets the suffering they have caused’ – though without acknowledging Europe’s central role in the slave trade.
4. In purely military terms, the shock to the West of successful wars of national independence was duplicated by the events of September 2001, in which the West’s own technologies were turned against it. This has sharply transformed the ‘playing field’ of war and terrorism. In the First World–Third World relationship, terror-bombing that kills thousands on the other side is no longer a Western monopoly.
5. There is much to Alexander Cockburn’s assertion that the post-11 September world has witnessed ‘an imperial onslaught as brazen and lawless as any colonizing sortie of the nineteenth century’ (Cockburn, 2002).
6. The radically different levels of domestic ‘protection’ available to elites versus minorities deserve much greater exposition, but are generally outside the boundaries of the present study, with the exceptions of Ward Churchill’s examination of the residential school system for Native Americans, and Peter Prontzos’s analysis of the costs of structural violence both within and beyond the countries of the developed West.
7. The ideological journey was described in Horowitz’s memoir, Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey (Horowitz, 1997).
8. Important works of revisionist cinema, notably Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue and Arthur Hill’s Little Big Man (both 1970), also contributed to the resurgence of Native American issues. A fuller examination of the dissident stream should attend to such popular-culture artefacts, including some of the fiction and protest music that asked searching questions about US policies at home and abroad.
9. A reasonably objective definition of terrorism is offered by the US Congress: ‘[An] act of terrorism, means any activity that (A) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; and (B) appears to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.’ United States Congressional Code, 1984, quoted in Chomsky (2001: 16n).
10. Stohl’s work places state terrorism, including in Western countries and throughout the Western sphere of influence, alongside terrorism by minorities, insurgent groups, and other ‘retail’ actors. Indeed, in the third edition of the book, published in the late 1980s, Stohl cited as ‘Myth 1’ of the study of terrorism that ‘political terrorism is exclusively the activity of nongovernmental forces,’ and included as a parallel myth ‘that terrorism is not something practiced by the governments of liberal Western democracies’ (Stohl, 1988: 7–8). He stressed as the ‘major requirement’ of the study of terrorism ‘an analysis, rather than an assumption, of the historical and political sources of the terrorism within a conflict situation’.
11. The work by Herman, Chomsky, and McClintock has exerted significant influence over a new generation of scholars of state terror. See, e.g, Sluka, 2000, esp. pp. 7–10.
12. For a sampling of key texts in the literature on comparative genocide (which is not to imply that all these scholars would self-identify as primarily concerned with the subject), see, in alphabetical order: Alvarez, 2001; Andreopoulous, 1999; Bell-Fialkoff, 1999; Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990; Charny et al., 1999; Chorbajian and Shirinian, 1999; Churchill, 1997; Dadrian, 1975; Glover, 1999; Hinton, 2000, 2002; Jonassohn with Björnson, 1998; Katz, 1994; Kuper, 1981; Levene and Roberts, 1999; Markusen and Kopf, 1995; Power, 2002; Rosenbaum, 1996; Rummel, 1994; Schabas, 2000; Stannard, 1992; Staub, 1989; Totten et al., 1997; Wallimann and Dobkowski, 2000.
13. Churchill’s volume is more explicitly positioned in the genocide studies literature. It includes a thorough overview of the field’s evolution and some of its central concerns and debates.
14. The legal definition of genocide, enshrined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the statutes of the new International Criminal Court (ICC) is: ‘any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group, as such; (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group’ (Articles I and II). Article III specifically makes ‘conspiracy to commit genocide,’ ‘incitement to commit genocide,’ and ‘complicity in genocide’ as punishable, regardless of ‘whether they are [carried out by] constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.’
My own preferred definition of genocide, adapting (with the italicized phrase) that of Steven Katz, is: ‘the actualization of the intent, however successfully carried out, to murder in whole or in substantial part any national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, social, gender or economic group, as these groups are defined by the perpetrator, by whatever means.’
15. Concise case-study treatments are available in George’s edited volume Western State Terrorism (see Rolston, 1990; Gervasi and Wong, 1990).
16. The seminal indictments include Chomsky, 1984; Hirst, 1984; and Beit-Hallahmi, 1987.
17. For an overview, see Lifton and Markusen, 1990.
Chapter 2
I am especially grateful for the research assistance of Michael Innes, M.A. candidate in the Department of History, Concordia University, and for a paper he prepared in this context: ‘Genocide and the West: A Survey of Recent Literature.’ I also appreciate helpful comments from members of the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies (MIGS) seminar at Concordia University, led by history professor and genocide scholar Frank Chalk. I assume full responsibility for the content of the chapter, however.
1. We could cover several volumes discussing the ‘proper’ definitions of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, ‘war time,’ and other concepts. Space precludes elaboration, as we have more than enough conceptual complexity to manage. For relevant definitional discussions see Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990; Charny, 1994; Chalk, 1994; Stoett, 1995; Melson, 1992; Katz, 1996; and Palmer, 2000; for a social constructivist approach see Berger, 1993.
2. Balfour offers a succinct summary of the functionalist school: ‘Functional processes formed the foundation for the vast and systematic mass killing that defined the Holocaust and it cannot be understood apart from the role played by such relatively mundane operations … bureaucratic procedures carried out by regular civil servants were essential to both the formulation and implementation of the Holocaust…. Existing organizations adapted themselves and contributed to the evolving task of separating Jews from the society of the Third Reich to the point where their destruction became the logical and efficient solution to an administrative problem’ (1997: 137).
3. Note the evocative title of the volume edited by Cushman and Mestrovic, This Time We Knew: Western Response to Genocide in Bosnia (1996).
4. However, it can be suggested that the Secretary-General’s special envoy to Rwanda downplayed the crisis, suggesting it was evidence of a traditional war between the RPF and the army more than a genocide proper. See Bukhalter, 1994: 46.
5. On this theme see also Kuperman, 2001; Des Forges, 1999; Klinghoffer, 1998.
6. The judge found that the Security Council resolution establishing the arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia ‘in effect called on Members of the United Nations, albeit unknowingly and assuredly unwillingly, to become in some degree supporters of the genocidal activity of the Serbs and in this manner and to that extent to act contrary to a rule of jus cogens.’ In Bosnia v. Serbia II, ICJ Reports 1993, quoted in C. Scott et al. (1994: 14–15). Special thanks to Carol McQueen for bringing this to my attention.
7. ‘Up to 1994, with few exceptions, projects in the pipeline were executed without change; no human rights conditionalities were added to overall aid disbursements or specific projects’ (Uvin, 1998: 99).
8. McMurtry cites an analysis by Chase Manhattan Bank of the Chiapas rebellion in southern Mexico, and quotes as follows: ‘While Chiapas, in our opinion, does not pose a fundamental threat to Mexican political stability, it is perceived to be so by many in the investment community. The government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas’ (1998: 231). This is a fascinating quotation, given the starkness of the language; even if taken as benevolently as possible, elimination would require the destruction of a political organization with non-military means, and of course the Mexican government’s initial approach to the rebellion was anything but non-military. Problematically, however, the only source McMurtry offers is a newspaper article written by himself (1995).
9. Appadurai: ‘Most nations achieve their sense of their cultural homogeneity in the face of remarkable and known diversities and fierce micro-attachments that have to be erased, marginalized or transformed…. Whether it is peasants being transformed into Frenchmen, Scots being turned into Britons, Hindus into Indians, for some nations to be imagined, others have to be deemed “unimaginable” ’ (2000: 132). This is a troubled statement at best, and not because of the determinism creeping in at the end; it also overlooks the possibility of multiple political identities, and the resilience of traditional associations.
10. The Court was asked for two opinions, one concerning whether the use of nuclear weapons would be a violation of the World Health Organization’s constitution (this was rejected); the second asked whether or not the use of nuclear weapons would be a violation of international law. The Court declared that nuclear weapons are generally illegal, but did not conclude definitely on whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in the ‘extreme circumstance of selfdefence.’ This ambiguous declaration has inspired disarmament activists, even though it is clear that the Court was divided over the issue of whether the right to self-defense or the principles of international law should prevail. See Grisdale, 1997.
11. For example, Uvin discusses the debate about distinguishing Tutsi from Hutu: ‘Do the differences in stature … reflect the fact that they are from very different genetic stock … differences in diet, with Tutsi cattle herders living on an almost exclusive diet of milk products? Or are they the result of biased sampling (everyone who was tall was categorized as Tutsi, thus “proving” that all Tutsi are tall)?’ (Uvin: 2001). Uvin cites chapter 2 of Taylor, 1999, as an interesting discussion of this debate.
Chapter 3
This chapter builds upon a series of papers that the author presented in the course of 2001 and 2002, of which the most notable are: ‘Anticipating the Kaiser German soldiers and the Herero Genocide,’ presented at ‘Die koloniale Begegnung: Afrikanerinnen in Deutschland (1880–1945): Deutsche in Afrika (1880–1918),’ Bad Godesberg, 5–8 September 2001; and ‘Presenting the Past to Fight the Present: An Overview of the Manner in which the Herero Genocide Has Been Used for Political Purposes in the Course of the 20th Century,’ Afrika Studie Centrum, Leiden, 2001.
1. Throughout this chapter, I use the term ‘Namibia’ to refer to the territory that used to be known as German South West Africa.
2. Regarding the concept of self-fulfilling settler prophecies, see Marks, 1970.
3. Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia (ELCRN), V12 Karibib, author’s translation.
4. See Bley, 1971: 158–63, for a discussion of the appointment of von Trotha.
5. See Pool, 1979: 219–40. Omaheke is the Otjiherero name for the sandveld area east of the Waterberg.
6. Namibian National Archives Windhoek (NNAW), ZBU D.1.a Band 3–4, leaf 165. With thanks to Mr. W. Hillebrecht for finding it at such short notice. Author’s translation.
7. See Lau, 1989; Poewe, 1986; Spraul, 1988; and Sudholt, 1975.
8. ELCRN, V. 12, Missions Chronieken, Karibib 1906, written by Missionary Elger. See also Berichte der Rheinischen Missions-Gesellschaft, 1906: 11–12. That this mistreatment of Herero was not merely incidental but structural, is indicated by a circular letter from military headquarters in Windhoek to the German officer commanding Karibib in late 1906. The letter noted: ‘due to the mishandling of Herero prisoners, who act as carriers, it is advisable to recruit Ovambo labor as carriers.’ NNAW, STR 19 1. und 4. Kompagnie Karibib, Letter Windhuk 16/11/06.
9. ELCRN, V. 37, Missions Chronieken, Windhoek (Herero/Ovambo).
10. For an overview of German legislation regarding Africans in Namibia, see Zimmerer, 2001.
11. Public Records Office (PRO) CO 537/1–17, Telegram from Mr Long, to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, 4 January 1918, quoted in ‘Memo for War Cabinet,’ 15 October 1918.
12. Prior to the colonization of Namibia, Khoe speakers dominated southern and central Namibia. These people, the majority of whom were pastoralists, were derogatorily referred to in the past as Hottentots, and are presently known as Nama. In the wars of 1904–08, the Nama lost virtually all of their land and at least 30 per cent of their population. For a detailed, and as yet unsurpassed, overview of the German Nama wars, see Drechsler, 1980: 176–217.
13. The glass plate negatives and files – in fact most of the original source material used to compile the ‘Blue Book’ – have been sought out by J. Silvester and J.-B. Gewald in the National Archives of Namibia. Silvester and Gewald are currently preparing an edited and annotated edition of the ‘Blue Book.’
14. Mayer (1967) provides a detailed and authoritative account of the Versailles Treaty negotiations. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1924) contains a complete text of the 1919 Treaty.
15. Note the remarkable similarity in language used by Brigitte Lau (1989: 5), who stated, nearly seventy years later, that the ‘Blue Book’ was ‘an English piece of war propaganda with no credibility whatsoever.’
16. NNAW, ADM 225, Memorandum on the Blue Book, Annexure A. In addition, the administration was ‘requested to make representations to the Union Government and to the British Government to have this Bluebook expunged from the official records of those Governments.’ Furthermore, Strauch’s motion requested that the Administration ‘take into consideration the advisability of making representations to the Union Government and the British Government to impound and destroy all copies of the Bluebook, which may be found in the public libraries in the respective Countries and with the official booksellers mentioned on the title-sheet of the Bluebook.’
17. PRO F0371/26574 Minute, 20 June 1941.
18. Regarding the term Vernichten, Lau took her lead from Karla Poewe, who stated: ‘The use of the word “vernichten,” which unknowledgeable people translate as extermination, in fact meant, in the usage of the times, breaking of military, national, or economic resistance’ (Poewe, 1985: 60). For a response to this debate over meaning, see Jonassohn and Doerr, 1999.
19. Research into the origins and compilation of the Report on the Natives of South-West Africa and their Treatment by Germany (London 1918), which is being edited and annotated for publication in 2002 by J.-B. Gewald and J. Silvester, indicates the report was based on sound evidence.
20. A slightly reworked copy of this chapter was published in Heywood, 1995: 39–52. Lau’s article elicited responses from Randolph Vigne and Henning Melber (1990); Tilman Dedering (1993); and J.-B. Gewald (1994: 67–76). Lau’s piece followed on a series of articles and books that have sought to deny the genocide, or, at the very least, called for a revision of histories dealing with the war. See, in this regard, Kühne, 1979; Nuhn, 1989; Poewe, 1986; Spraul, 1988; and Sudholt, 1975.
21. See www.traditionsverband.de/; author’s translation.
22. Nordbruch is a German citizen who, upon completing his German national service, moved to South Africa in 1986. He continues to live in South Africa, yet travels widely lecturing to right-wing audiences. He is closely linked to the German National Partei Deutschland (NPD), being one of their foremost speech writers.
23. Thus, while searching for waterholes in the newly established Herero reserves in the eastern reaches of South West Africa, British administrators stumbled across the site of the German massacre of Herero at Ombakaha. See Gewald, 1999: 182.
24. Scott is one of the more remarkable figures of southern African history. Having encountered Gandhi in India, he became actively involved in the anticolonial struggle, first in India and later in southern Africa. Initially Scott campaigned amongst the Indian community in Natal, and later became active in drawing attention to and improving the shameful living conditions in Bethel, one of Johannesburg’s ‘native locations.’ Following his lobbying for Namibian independence, Scott was declared a prohibited immigrant and prevented from ever returning to Namibia and South Africa. In exile, he founded the Africa Bureau in London, and continued campaigning for Namibia’s independence, even going so far as to drop his initial nonviolent approach. In 1958, while attending the All African People’s Conference in Accra, Scott delivered a speech to the delegates on behalf of the Herero people living in Namibia, who had been prevented from sending their own representatives. In his speech, Scott called for the creation of an African Freedom Army, saying: ‘Africa needs such a freedom army urgently if it is to be saved from inhumanity.’ Scott continues to be fondly remembered by many in Namibia. His activities brought the injustices of colonial rule in Namibia to the attention of the wider world. For an overview of this remarkable man’s life, see Troup, 1950.
25. NNAW, SWAA 1981, A 427/48, Rev. M. Scott, typed copy of article that appeared in the New Statesman and Nation, 5 March 1949.
26. Hannah Arendt was the first academic to alert the world to the linkages that exist between Germany’s colonial past and the later development of the National Socialist state (see Arendt, 1967). The work of East and West German historians Horst Drechsler and Helmut Bley further developed this theme, and recently a new generation of historians has once again taken it up. A sampling of some of the papers presented at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association in Houston, Texas, in November 2001 shows the current prominence of the trend. They included Jan-Bart Gewald, ‘Anticipating the Kaiser: German Soldiers and the Herero Genocide’; Jeff Gaydish, ‘‘Die Lösung der Eingeborenenfrage”: The Role of the Swakopmund Concentration Camp in the Development of German “Native Policy” in Southwest Africa’; and Casper Erischsen, ‘Shark Island: Forgotten Concentration Camps and History in Colonial Namibia, 1904–1908.’
27. See note 26.
28. See, for example, NNAW, SWAA 1981, A 427/48, M. Scott, draft letters of Bowker written to the Windhoek Advertiser and published 1 March 1950.
29. These included Moses Katjiongua, Mburumba Kerina, Fanuel Kozonguizi, Zedekia Ngavirue and many more.
30. Katjavivi’s 1984 thesis formed the basis for Katjavivi, 1988. Similar to Katjavivi’s work was that of fellow Herero exile, Kaire Mbuende (1986).
31. Author’s personal observation regarding meetings held in Amsterdam in 1988 and 1989.
32. Published accounts in The Namibian newspaper, 25 August 1999 and 8 September 1999.
33. Case papers in the possession of the author.
Chapter 4
Thanks are due to Shiinindio (John Peter Kelly) for his counsel and encouragement in my preparation of this essay, dedicated as it is to his late daughter – and my own much beloved wife – Kizhiibaabinisek (Leah Renae Kelly), who was among the myriad victims still being claimed by the genocide embodied in Canada’s Indian residential schools.
1. For a seminal articulation of the ‘settler state’ concept and the especially virulent form of colonialism inherent to such entities, see Price, 1949.
2. Sheridan’s actual statement was that ‘the only good Indians I ever saw were dead’; quoted in Hutton, 1985: 180.
3. The quotations are assembled from articles in Saturday Night (23 November 1907) and the Montreal Star (15 November 1907), as well as a banner story titled ‘Schools Aid White Plague – Startling Death Rolls Revealed Among Indians,’ The Ottawa Citizen, 16 November 1907.
4. The term ‘broker class’ is borrowed from Rodolfo Acuña (1988: 377–86).
5. See, for example, the United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, UNGA Res. 1514 (XV), 15 UN GAOR, Supp. (No. 16) 66, UN Doc. A/4684 (1961) Pt. 2; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, UNGA Res. 2200 (XXI), 21 UN GAOR, Supp. (No. 16) 49, UN Doc. A/6316 (1967), reprinted in 6 I.L.M. 360 (1967) Art. 1 (1); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UNGA Res. 2200 (XXI), 21 UN GAOR, Supp. (No. 16) 52, UN Doc. A/6316 (1967), reprinted in 6 I.L.M. 368 (1967) Art. 1 (1); and the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development, UNGA Res. 41/128, 41 UN GAOR, Supp. (No. 53) UN Doc. A/41/925 (1986).
6. For the texts of 371 treaties with Indians duly ratified by the US Senate, see Kappler, 1973.
1. I do not examine the possible crimes that the Soviet Union and Red Army perpetrated, including the mistreatment and murder of German prisoners of war, or the ethnic cleansing of Germans from Eastern Europe and the former eastern territories of the country, which included up to 2 million murders and tens of thousands of rapes.
2. I focus solely on Western policymakers and wartime military leaders and do not examine the role or responsibility of the actual soldiers, the bombing crews. Many of the same arguments made regarding German perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity surface here, such as the wartime necessity of obeying orders and the (perceived) lack of choice. Garrett (1993: 75–85) discusses this dimension and argues that many crew members knew what they were doing and had ethical and moral difficulties carrying out the bombings.
3. Mention should also be made of the destruction of the German East as the Red Army advanced. Cities like Königsberg, Stettin and Breslau were literally obliterated, due to bombing, shelling and actual battle.
4. To contextualize these figures, the American bombing of Japan resulted in between 330,000 and 900,000 deaths and between 475,000 and 1,300,000 injuries, including 80–100,000 in the firebombing of Tokyo and 140,000 in the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. About 43 per cent of the built-up area of the major cities was destroyed (Schaffer, 1985: 148; Markusen and Kopf, 1995: 178–82; see also Dower, 1986). The Luftwaffe’s bombing of Britain, including the London Blitz, and the Anglo-American bombing of France before the liberation resulted in about 60,000 deaths each (Kurowski, 1977: 356). The resources expended by the Allies in these campaigns were substantial. Combined, the USAF and the RAF lost 158,000 personnel and 21,914 bombers (USSBS, 1945: 1). Werrell (1986: 707) estimates that 40–50 per cent of the British war effort was devoted to the Royal Air Force (RAF) and as much as 30 per cent into the bombing offensive alone. The United States spent about 25 per cent of its total war-related expenditures on aviation, with some estimates ranging as high as 35 to 40 per cent.
5. Transportation (especially rail) and public utilities like electricity were also hit, which greatly affected civilian life. Nevertheless, these are legitimate and justifiable military targets.
6. Mention should also be made of the foreign slave laborers who were used in many factories, especially during the later phases of the war, many of whom also fell victim to the bombing. In addition, thousands of Allied prisoners of war died in the raids, the most notable example being Dresden.
7. Some authors argue that this is an exaggeration of the actual state of battle. The German defeat was not as rapid or as preordained as commonly thought. Fighting was fierce in Belgium (the Battle of the Bulge), and the Allies made various military ‘errors’ in the Low Countries (Macksey, 1987). Levine (1992: 176) writes: ‘As the Ardennes offensive ended, there was intense gloom among the Western Allied leaders. It was not seen as a last-gasp effort but as evidence that the enemy was still strong. They feared the enemy would succeed in putting large numbers of jets and new-type submarines into action.’ Neillands (2001: 382–405) notes that the Rhine had still not been crossed by the time of the Dresden raid in February 1945. This is to say, Allied leaders did not have the benefit of hindsight, and it was not clear until relatively late that the Nazi regime was utterly defeated.
8. The German ability to increase manpower by employing otherwise economically inactive segments of the population and slave labor were similarly overlooked. Most bombed cities needed between one month (Bremen) and five months (Hamburg) to return to 80 per cent capacity, a much shorter time than predicted.
9. A similar set of conclusions emerged for the Royal Air Force (Webster and Frankland, 1961: 268).
10. Many Nazi leaders similarly disagreed with these Allied views. Albert Speer, the minister for armaments and munitions production, repeatedly singled out the bombing campaign as ‘the greatest lost battle on the German side’ and the ‘cause of all our setbacks’ (Neillands, 2001: 384).
11. Most authors conclude the opposite in the case of the bombing, conventional and nuclear, of Japan. Overy (1986: 126) writes: ‘The “knockout blow,” in all its horror and inhumanity, finally proved its point.’ In general, ‘Air power was more effective in the Far East than in the European theater’ (100).
12. Macksey (1987: 177–8) highlights the little-known mining and blocking of the Danube river between April and September 1944, which halved oil deliveries from Romania at a minimal cost.
13. Early raids (which actually started on 4 September 1939) were exceedingly costly, given technological limitations and strong German defenses. There was no effective alternative to indiscriminate night bombing before 1943, short of not bombing at all. There have been several justifications for the decision to pursue this course of action, including bolstering British morale on the home front, fighting Nazism by the only means possible at the time, and providing a kind of second front years before an actual land invasion was possible.
14. Macksey (1987: 165) makes a similar point regarding Roosevelt’s inopportune declaration of the unconditional-surrender policy. He also argues that a fundamental flaw of the area-bombing doctrine was that it did not take British experience during the Blitz into consideration, or exaggerated leading Nazis’ apocalyptic responses to early raids such as Hamburg (168).
15. Several qualifications are necessary. Military operations in frontline sieges or battles caused some of the damage to the cities and civilian casualties. This kind of destruction is not under scrutiny because individual German military commanders had not surrendered when given the chance. Instead they engaged the enemy and risked what would come until the city under their command fell. Although numerous cities and towns in the West were destroyed in this way, due to fanatical SS or military commanders (Naumann, 1998), this was particularly pronounced on the Eastern front where battles with the Red Army were especially intense and uncompromising (e.g. Königsberg). Regarding Berlin, the USSBS could not determine how much destruction was caused by its bombing raids versus that done by the final ground battles. Second, the tactical use of bombing, accompanying and supporting a ground offensive, especially when used against a ‘defended’ city or against legitimate military or economic targets is also an acceptable practice. Civilian casualties as a consequence of such raids (e.g. workers in munitions plants) are considered acceptable collateral damage in international law. See Hays Parks, 1992.
16. In contrast to common perceptions of the Luftwaffe being the clear aggressor and pioneer of terror-bombing tactics (based on the bombings of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, Rotterdam, Warsaw, and later Coventry), recent scholarship argues that terror tactics evolved dialectically and that excesses on the German side were mistakes that were contrary to official Luftwaffe policy. Rotterdam, for example, was bombed after it had surrendered, but the military authorities could not call back all of the bombers. See Boog, 1992.
17. Some authors argue that the decision was made much earlier, in late 1940 (Walzer, 1977: 255).
18. Many authors discuss the prewar doctrines associated with people like Douhet, Trenchard and Mitchell, who thought that bombing (seen as inevitable, given advances in technology) was a more humane way of waging war. It would minimize the casualties from trench warfare as experienced in World War I, and would have a massive effect on the enemy, delivering a quick ‘knock-out’ blow. Overall, the widely accepted belief was that strategic bombing could win the war alone. All of these premisses, at least in Europe, proved false. See Garrett, 1993: 4–9, and Schaffer, 1985: 20–35, 80–106.
19. In August 1944, Roosevelt went so far as to state: ‘We have got to be tough with Germany, and I mean the German people not just the Nazis. We either have to castrate the German people or you have got to treat them in such a manner so they can’t just go on reproducing people who want to continue in the way they have in the past’ (Markusen and Kopf, 1995: 168).
20. Some of Schaffer’s views have been contested (see Mierzejewski et al., 1981). The record regarding Japan, and particularly the views of the architect of those campaigns, General Curtis LeMay, is very different, with no ambiguity as to the intent (burning cities and killing civilians). See Markusen and Kopf, 1995; and Dower, 1986. Note that most authors draw a connection between the strategic offensives against the two countries, with the bombings of Japan (in 1945) representing the culmination of trends begun with the bombing of Germany.
21. It was only in the 1949 revision to the Conventions that specific provisions were made to safeguard civilians during times of war.
22. Hays Parks notes, however (1992: 324), that the 1907 Hague Declaration ‘is generally regarded as of no legal significance,’ as almost all powers declined to sign it. Later efforts to stipulate and codify international law pertaining to bombing, such as the Washington Naval Conference (November 1921-February 1922) and the Hague Commission of Jurists (1923), were ‘never adopted by any country’ and were ‘an immediate and total disaster’ (339).
23. There has been a sustained assault on Churchill’s reputation in recent years, emphasizing his incompetence and opportunism. See Hitchens, 2002.
24. Of course, this argument, carried to its logical conclusion, would justify genocide and the complete extermination of an enemy, given that almost anything an enemy does during hostilities supports the ability to make war. Even further, the obvious exception – the killing of children – can also be perversely justified, if such individuals are viewed as future soldiers or munitions producers, who, if the war does not end quickly, would become legitimate targets.
25. ‘One item was not raised in the official proceedings: that of the air raids. All those taking part fought shy of this tricky problem … many years later Jackson admitted that the problem had in fact been discussed. The delegates, however, agreed to drop the controversial question because there would have been countercharges against the Allies’ (Heydecker and Leeb, 1962: 62). See also Hays Parks, 1992: 346.
26. Harris returned embittered to his native South Africa in 1946. Numerous postwar writings attest to his awareness of, and bitterness towards, the official slights against him. Such attitudes are also evident among veterans today. For example, a massive campaign was mounted against a Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) television series, The Valour and the Horror, especially the episode entitled ‘Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command,’ which criticized the policy and actions of the RAF (including its many Canadian volunteers). Veterans and their organizations, such as the Bomber Harris Trust (www.blvl.igs.net/~jlynch/bharis29.htm), raised a considerable sum of money, forcing the CBC’s ombudsman to apologize and prompting the Canadian Senate to hold hearings on the matter, but failing to get the Canadian Supreme Court to hear the case. See Bercuson and Wise, 1994; and Hay, 1992. An official and independent military history later declared the series’ depiction of events as historically accurate.
27. Markusen and Kopf (1995: 69, 244–58) go further still, contending that the strategic bombing was genocidal under the terms of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
1. The first dealt with the condition of wounded and sick members of armed forces on the battlefield; the second with the wounded and sick at sea; the third with the treatment of prisoners; and the fourth with the protection of civilians in wartime. The emphasis on war was replaced by a wider emphasis on ‘armed conflict.’
2. In fact, Article 3 (common to all four conventions) had taken great care to specify that there were non-international armed conflicts to which the conventions should equally apply.
Chapter 7
1. Quoted in Cribb, 1990: 14. I want to express my debt to Cribb’s important book, with which I shall sometimes take issue on particulars of interpretation. In general, Cribb’s approach is phenomenological, mine is aetiological; he stresses irrationality where I also see rationality. I freely concede that there is merit to both approaches.
2. Fall quoted in Valentine, 1990: 89.
3. Obviously there will often be management and psychological exploitation of responsive atrocities as well.
4. Statement by Allan Nairn on the suspension of US military training aid to Indonesia, 9 May 1998.
5. Declassified Documents Quarterly Catalogue, 1982, 001786 (DOS Memo for President of 17 July 1964); emphasis in original.
6. New York Times, 17 March 1998: A3.
7. International Herald Tribune, 7 February 1998, emphasis added.
8. Straits Times (Singapore), 31 December 2000. As far as I can determine, this singular reversal of Prabowo’s fortunes was not reported in the mainstream US press.
9. See Nairn, 1998; New York Times, 17 March 1998: A3.
10. New York Times, 23 March 1998: A18. The editorial attitude of the Times has shifted considerably since 1966, when its columnist James Reston described the Indonesian massacre and change of government as ‘A Gleam of Light in Asia.’
11. Washington Post, 22 February 1997: ‘The Pentagon’s inspector general yesterday said repeated mistakes were made in the 1980s that caused descriptions of “objectionable” actions such as execution and torture to be included in US Army manuals’ (A11).
12. New York Times, 24 June 2001. A bipartisan group of members of Congress has proposed House Resolution 1810, which would close the school permanently.
13. See also Dunn, 1996: 261: ‘On the Indonesian side, there have been many reports that many soldiers viewed their operation as a further phase in the ongoing campaign to suppress communism that had followed the events of September 1965.’
14. John Smith, scout, quoted in Billington, 1974: 568. See also Churchill, 1997: 234. Smith’s objectivity was challenged at the time, but today even defenders of the Sand Creek raid concede that most women and children there were killed, and their bodies mutilated (see, e.g., Dunn, 1985).
15. House of Representatives, 38th Cong., 2nd Sess., ‘Massacre of Cheyenne Indians,’ quoted in Hoig, 1977: 167. See also United States Congress, 1867a and 1867b.
16. See Churchill, 1997: 228–34. Silas Soule, one of the chief witnesses who testified against Chivington, was subsequently murdered by another soldier, who then escaped under mysterious circumstances. See Hoig, 1997: 172.
17. See Dunn, 1985 (an anthology).
18. Philadelphia Ledger, 19 November 1900, as quoted in US Cong., Senate, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., S. Doc. 166, 2. See also Miller, 1982; and Karnow, 1989: 188.
19. Interview with a pro-US Filipino colonel, as reported in Kerkvliet, 1979: 196; see also McClintock, 1992: 121.
20. See Bohannan and Valeriano, 1962. Valeriano was also employed to train the Cuban Task Force for the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion.
21. San Francisco Chronicle, 18 June 1998: A18.
22. Sarwo Edhie had allegedly been a CIA contact while serving at the Indonesian Embassy in Australia. See Pacific, May/June 1968.
23. In ‘Pemberontakan G30S/PKI dan penumpasannya’ (The revolt of the G30S/PKI and its suppression), trans. Robert Cribb, in Cribb, 1990: 164.
24. Charles Bohannon and Napoleon Valeriano, quoted in McClintock, 1992: 118.
25. Remark by CIA officer Pat McGarvey, quoted in Valentine, 1990: 62. Vietnam observer and counterinsurgency consultant Bernard Fall commented in 1965 that ‘What we’re really doing in Vietnam is killing the cause of “wars of liberation.” It’s a testing ground – like Germany in Spain. It’s an example to Central America and other guerrilla prone areas.’ Fall quoted in Valentine, 1990: 89.
26. Valentine, 1990: 44, 62–3. The term ‘counter-terror’ had more justification in Vietnam than in some other countries. Following French precedent, the NLF also, after summary trial of a selected victim before a ‘people’s court,’ would then kill their victim in the center of the village, and leave the body on display with a death notice attached (Valentine, 1990: 43). There was no comparable PKI practice in Indonesia.
27. Neil C. Livingstone, quoted in McClintock, 1992: 429: ‘In reality, death squads are an extremely effective tool, however odious, in combating terrorism and revolutionary challenges.’ Commenting on the Argentine experience, Livingstone wrote: ‘Too often the death of one family member at the hands of government security forces radicalized every brother, sister, and cousin, who then became terrorists in order to avenge the victim. Thus, when a terrorist was identified every member of his or her family was often killed to prevent blood feud.’ For more on Livingstone, see Scott, 1989.
28. New York Times, 2 April 1995: 6. See also Nairn, 1995. Richard Nuccio, the State Department whistle-blower who revealed the CIA involvement to Congressional Representative Torricelli, had his clearances revoked as a result by CIA Director John Deutch, backed ultimately by President Clinton (New York Times, 6 December 1996).
29. New York Times, 2 June 1998: A12: ‘In March 1996, the Administration reacted to evidence that President Ernesto Samper had taken money from Cali traffickers by cutting off almost all American aid to Colombia except for what was designated to fight drugs….Yet according to many officials, the Pentagon quietly distinguished itself by finding creative ways around the restrictions. “We refused to disengage,” said a Pentagon official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.’
30. For the same reason, I was even ambivalent about the 1999 cuts in US military aid to Indonesia, made in response to the army’s sponsorship and protection of may-hem committed by pro-Indonesian militias. My position has been that the US, having trained the Indonesian army in terrorist psywar, should now accept responsibility for encouraging it in a more humanitarian direction.
Chapter 8
1. When examining the larger context of the attack on ‘our’ Hawaiian property at Pearl Harbor in World War II, it is important to note that the indigenous peoples of Hawaii have never to this day consented to the involuntary annexation of their land by the United States in 1898. Furthermore, evidence now abounds that not only was there knowledge in advance at the highest levels within the US government of the Japanese attack, but that the latter was deliberately provoked to persuade an isolationist US population to enter the war that it would not support unless attacked first (Stinnett, 2000).
2. On 18 June 1948, US President Harry Truman signed National Security Directive 10/2 (NSC-10/2), in which covert operations were specifically, and broadly, defined. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), created less than a year earlier, and directly answerable to the President through the newly established National Security Agency (NSC), was given primary responsibility for carrying out the covert actions as the NSC may from ‘time to time direct.’ There was an important stipulation, however, that ‘the US government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.’
This vaguely worded authority has been utilized thousands of times to carry out covert actions, from assassination attempts, government overthrows, and paramilitary operations, to concerted propaganda efforts, interference in free elections, and economic destabilization campaigns, in every corner of the world. The first indication of numbers of operations was revealed in 1976 when the Church Committee Report on CIA activities was published, and its chair, US Senator Frank Church (D-ID), stated that from 1961 to 1974 he had identified 900 major and 3,000 minor operations (Prados, 1996). If the period from 1947, when the CIA was first created, to 1960 witnessed covert actions at the same rate, one can estimate 1,800 major and 6,000 minor covert operations through 1974. Former CIA officer John Stockwell extrapolated in 1990 that the CIA likely had initiated and overseen about 3,000 major and over 10,000 minor covert operations up to that time (Stockwell, 1991).
Increasingly, the Special Operations components of the various military services work very closely, almost as associates, with the CIA. The Pentagon has acknowledged that Special Operations Forces have been deployed on thousands of missions to more than a hundred countries. In addition, the US has either an embassy or interests section in the vast majority of the world’s 200-plus nations. At virtually all of these stations are assigned CIA case officers working under State Department cover.
The US government has historically provided military and/or economic aid to more than 150 countries, and regularly protects the assets and operations of thousands of transnational corporations, and trillions of dollars worth of investments, throughout the globe. This policy has regularly established the need for ‘stable’ economic climates, free of any ‘threatening’ insurgent activities by a nation’s citizens – the majority of whom, more often than not, are aggrieved and suffering.
Identification of the nature and specific locations of the various secret US activities is made more difficult by the institution of ‘plausible deniability.’ However, by perusing various sources, one can identify more than a hundred countries from 1947 to the present where the CIA has chosen, from its vast menu of covert options, to interfere with the sovereignty of indigenous groups and nation-states. Almost without exception, every one of these actions has violated both domestic and international laws (Barnaby, 1988: 56–7, chart; Blum, 1995; Herman and Chomsky, 2002; Third World Guide, 1986: 489–96; Center For National Security Studies, 1977).
3. Modern, systematic structural adjustment was initiated in Chile following the 1973 military coup by General Augusto Pinochet, carried out at the insistence of the US, that overthrew the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende. Chilean economists, trained at the conservative post-World War II University of Chicago School of Economics under the leadership of Milton Friedman and George Stigler, were able radically to transform the Chilean economy, using the junta’s dictatorial power to establish what they viewed as the free-market paradise originally sketched out by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776). The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) enthusiastically contributed money to facilitate the socialization of the adjustment’s benefits in favor of the rich, while the losses were thrust upon the poor. The emerging democracy in Chile was destroyed, and the economic dominance of the Chilean upper class substantially increased. This effectively perpetuated the egregious effects of colonization in a different form.
Chapter 9
1. In June 1999, 5,800 documents covering the period 1973–78 were declassified; in October 1999, 1,100 further documents covering the period 1968–73 were released; and finally, in November 2001, thousands of other documents covering mainly the period 1978–91 were declassified (State Department, 13,050; CIA, 1,550; FBI, 620; Pentagon, 370; National Security Council, 110; Justice Department, 50; and National Archives, 310).
2. The Chilean Socialist Party (PS) was founded in April 1933. Its declaration of principles stated: ‘The Party adheres to Marxism as the method for interpreting reality and recognizes the class struggle as the motive force of history’ (Socialist Party cited in Debray, 1971: 132–3). However, the Chilean Socialist Party refused to follow the international-ideological line pursued by the Chilean Communist Party (PC), supporting instead a socialist movement conducted by popular forces at a purely Latin American level.
3. Kissinger himself was aware of these procedures, writing: ‘The Chilean Congress would hold a runoff vote as required when no candidate received an electoral majority. Traditionally, it backed the candidate who received the plurality; it was expected to do so in this case and name Salvador Allende President of Chile’ (Kissinger, 1979: 653).
4. W.E. Colby, Director Central Intelligence, Washington, D.C., ‘CIA’s [words deleted] Program in Chile [deleted],’ Memorandum for Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, 23 September 1973.
5. ‘Minutes of the Meeting of the 40 Committee,’ 8 September 1970, prepared by Frank M. Chapin, NSC Declassification Review [B.O. 12958] /X/ Release in full by L. Salvetti 7/28/2000.
6. After President Truman established the CIA at the beginning of the Cold War, and throughout the Eisenhower administration, it was deemed necessary that a trustworthy body be appointed to supervise all covert operations. The Special Group was known as the 54/12 Group, after the National Security Directive that created it. During the Johnson administration, it became known as the 303 Committee; subsequently, under Nixon and Ford, it was referred to as the 40 Committee. The numbers kept changing according to the rooms it occupied at the Old Executive Office, annexed to the White House, where the Departments of State, War and Navy functioned (Hitchens, 2001: 16–17).
7. In his memo, Kissinger reiterated his opinion that the State Department was unwilling to proceed with a covert operation. He further suggested that Ambassador Korry was the only one reporting on current developments in Santiago. However, Korry’s reporting was considered ‘inconsistent and contradictory,’ and thus, Kissinger wrote, ‘we cannot be sure of what the situation really is and how much Korry is justifying or camouflaging.’ Henry A. Kissinger, ‘Memorandum for the President,’ The White House, 17 September 1970, non-log 10Z.
8. A few days before, Kissinger had met with Agustín Edwards, owner and publisher of the conservative Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, who had come to Washington to warn the administration about the dangers of Allende’s confirmation as Chilean president (Kissinger, 1979: 673).
9. In a recent study of civilian-military relations in Chile, Patricio Manns has shown that the military was involved in politics from the dawn of Chilean independence (Manns, 1999). Frederick Nunn, in his own historical work on the Chilean military, has suggested that ‘the study of civil-military relations in Chile and Latin America (and elsewhere, for that matter) has a fruitful future because of the intricacies, exceptions, and contradictions involved’ (Nunn, 1976: xii; cf. Burr, 1965). Relations with the military and the Chilean armed forces in general concerned Salvador Allende, who perceived them as an integral part of his economic and social policies. ‘The Armed Forces and the Carabineros,’ Allende interview with the foreign press, Santiago, 5 May 1971 (Allende, 1973: 135–7).
10. ‘Memorandum of Conversation’ – NSC Meeting – Chile (NSSM 97), Cabinet Room, The White House, Friday, 6 November 1970, 9.40 a.m.
11. Ibid.
12. ‘Details of US Economic Assistance to Chile and from Multilateral Funds during the Government of Frei, Allende, and Pinochet’, in Mares and Rojas Aravena, 2001: 11.
13. ‘The Programme of Unidad Popular,’ approved by the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Radical Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Movement of Unitary Action (MAPU) and the Independent Popular Action, Santiago, 17 December 1969.
14. ‘The Nationalization of Copper,’ Allende speech in the Plaza de la Constitución, Santiago, 21 December 1970, in Allende, 1973: 78–83.
15. ‘The Nationalization of the Banks,’ Allende speech broadcast on radio and television, Santiago, 30 December 1970, in Allende, 1973: 84–9.
16. One of the first decisions taken by the Allende administration was the restoration of diplomatic ties with Cuba. See ‘Relations with Cuba,’ Allende speech broadcast on radio and television, Santiago, 11 November 1970, in Allende, 1973: 67–8.
17. In his first annual message to Congress, Allende compared the historical challenge of the Russian Revolution in 1917 with the challenges facing Chile: ‘the opportunity has arisen to build a new model of society, not just where, in theory, it was to be expected, but where concrete conditions have arisen which favored its emergence. Chile is today the first nation in the world called upon to set up the second model for transition to a socialist society’ (Allende, 1973: 140). See ‘The Chilean Road to Socialism,’ Allende’s first annual message to Congress, Santiago, 21 May 1971, in Allende, 1973: 138–66.
18. See also US Senate, Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, ‘Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations: The International Telephone and Telegraph Company and Chile 1970–1971,’ 21 June 1973, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1973.
19. ‘The United States of America,’ Allende speech in response to a statement by President Nixon, Punta Arenas, 27 February 1971 (Allende, 1973: 103–8).
20. Joyce Horman et al. v. Henry Kissinger et al., Civil Action 77–1748, 3 October 1977. This wrongful-death lawsuit against Kissinger and twelve other State Department official was dismissed without prejudice in 1981.
21. Charles Horman was born in New York City in 1942 and attended Phillips Exeter Academy. He later graduated from Harvard University with magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honours. In 1964 Horman became a Fulbright Scholar. He was enlisted in the Air Force National Guard at the time of the Vietnam War, when he also served as a journalist.
22. Rhonda Copelon et al., Attorneys for the Plaintiffs, ‘Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief and for Damages,’ Joyce Horman et al. v. Henry Kissinger et al.
23. Patrick J. Ryan, US Military Group, ‘Sitrep 2: Valparaiso, Chile,’ 1 October 1973.
24. Commander-in-Chief of US Southern Command, Fort Amador, Panama Canal Zone, to Commander of US Military Group, Santiago, Chile, 21 November 1975.
25. Terry Simon, ‘Statement of Terry Simon,’ Horman Case in the US–Chile Declassification Project Documents.
26. Elmer B. Staats, Comptroller General of the United States, ‘An Assessment of Selected US Embassy-Consular Efforts to Assist and Protect American Overseas During Crises and Emergencies,’ Report of the General Accounting Office of the United States, 4 December 1975.
27. Richard R. Fagen, Stanford, California, to Senator J. William Fulbright, Washington, DC, 8 October 1973.
28. A neighbor had taken a taxi at the same time and by coincidence followed the same route as the military truck with Horman in it. See Nathaniel P. Davis, Santiago, Chile to Henry A. Kissinger, Washington, DC, 5 October 1973.
29. Rubenstein, ‘Chronology of Information Received and Actions Taken Concerning Welfare and Whereabouts in Chile of Charles Edmund Horman.’
30. Smith to Shlaudeman, US–Chile Declassification Project Documents.
31. Government of Chile, Santiago, to Government of the United States, 30 October 1973, and Rudy V. Fimbres, Robert S. Driscoll and William V. Robertson to Harry W. Shlaudeman, Washington, DC, 25 August 1976.
32. Primera Línea, 9 September 2001.
Chapter 10
1. We agree with Jahan’s comments about ‘economic disparity,’ ‘misuse of religion in politics,’ and ‘the monopoly of state power in the hands of a narrow … elite.’ However, her assumption that the Bengali nationalist movement planned to create a different vision of society and polity, with the aim of establishing a ‘secular democratic state,’ in our view misrepresents the sociopolitical slant of the bulk of the ordinary population. Examined honestly, over 80 per cent of the Bangladeshi population is Muslim, and the Islamic heritage has been deeply rooted in the region for at least three centuries (Smith, 1957). Undeniably, atrocities have been committed in the name of religion, but these were flaws of individual rulers, not representative of the ideology of Islam. The Bangladeshi population is both highly tolerant and highly religious. The idea of secularism – that is, attempting to remove religion from people’s lives and politics – likely did not animate the nationalist movement in the way that Jahan suggests.
2. Rummel writes: ‘The human death toll over only 267 days was incredible. Just to give for five out of the eighteen districts some incomplete statistics published in Bangladesh newspapers or by an Inquiry Committee, the Pakistani army killed 100,000 Bengalis in Dacca, 150,000 in Khulna, 75,000 in Jessore, 95,000 in Comilla, and 100,000 in Chittagong. For eighteen districts the total is 1,247,000 killed. This was an incomplete toll, and to this day no one really knows the final toll. Some estimates of the democide [NB Rummel’s ‘death by government’] are much lower – one is of 300,000 dead – but most range from 1 million to 3 million…. The Pakistani army and allied paramilitary groups killed about one out of every sixty-one people in Pakistan overall; one out of every twenty-five Bengalis, Hindus, and others in East Pakistan. If the rate of killing for all of Pakistan is annualized over the years the Yahya martial law regime was in power (March 1969 to December 1971), then this one regime was more lethal than that of the Soviet Union, China under the communists, or Japan under the military (even through World War II)’ (Rummel, 1994: 331).
Chapter 11
1. As Lemkin wrote in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: ‘The alarming increase in barbarity typified with the advent of Hitler led the author to make a proposal to the Fifth International Conference for the Unification of Penal Law (held in Madrid in 1933, in cooperation with the Fifth Committee of the League of Nations) to the effect that an international treaty should be negotiated declaring that attacks upon national, religious, and ethnic groups should be made international crimes, and that perpetrators of such crimes should not only be liable to trial in their own countries, but, in the event of escape, could also be tried in the place of refuge, or else extradited to the country where the crime was committed. His proposal not having been adopted at that time, he feels impelled to renew it now after the world has been faced with the tragic experiences of German rule. The negotiation of such a treaty at the present time by all nations of the civilized world, both belligerents and neutrals, would provide not only a more adequate basis for the punishment of war criminals but also the necessary procedural machinery for the extradition of such criminals by members of the United Nations and neutrals. Moreover, it would also provide an adequate machinery for the international protection of national and ethnic groups against extermination attempts and oppression in time of peace’ (Lemkin 1944: xiii, emphasis added).
2. Among Lemkin’s manuscripts currently being edited and prepared for publication by this author are: Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin (a manuscript of somewhere between 300 and 450 pages); Introduction to the Study of Genocide (an incomplete manuscript of nine chapters, comprising 140 pages, including a rationale for the project); The Hitler Case (only 60 pages of a five-chapter text have been found thus far – the project was evidently never completed); and A History of Genocide: I. Antiquity; II. The Middle Ages; III. Modern Times (62 chapters in total, but only one chapter of Volume I, three of Volume II, and 12 of Volume III have been found) (Jacobs, 1999: 109–11). To date, only one edited manuscript has been published: Lemkin’s assessment of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, Germany, 1945, to which Lemkin served as a legal advisor. This has been given the title Raphael Lemkin’s Thoughts on Nazi Genocide: Not Guilty? (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellon Press, 1992, 375 pages). It is now out of print.
3. Parenthetically, what has been overlooked in the discussion of the use of Lemkin’s invented word ‘genocide’ is his first footnote to this chapter: ‘Another term could be used for the same idea, namely, ethnocide, consisting of the Greek word, “ethnos” – nation – and the Latin word “cide” ’ (Lemkin, 1944: 79).
4. See also Berman, 2001.
Chapter 12
1. Interview with Jean Omosombo, September 2002.
Chapter 13
1. Jonas Savimbi, the murderous guerrilla leader of UNITA, was hardly known for his commitment to democratic ideals, but was dubbed a ‘freedom fighter’ by the Reagan administration for his fight against the Soviet-supported (but somewhat more democratic) leaders of the MPLA government. President Reagan received Savimbi in 1986 and accorded him all the honors of a visiting head of government. The administration even cooperated with the apartheid regime in South Africa to arm Savimbi, as part of its global policy that paid no heed whatsoever to the consequences for the civilian population of the targeted states. See Agence France-Presse, 2002; Weinrich, 1992.
2. In a similar fashion, the Afghan fundamentalist rebels, the precursors to the Taliban – now dubbed enemies of the US – were useful to Washington in its proxy war with the Soviets, designed to gain revenge for the debacle that was Vietnam.
3. Somalia is mostly a society of egalitarian nomads and small farmers who own the land they cultivate. When the element of Islam is added to the mix, one finds few people prepared to espouse the cause of revolutionary communism. The communist movement in Ethiopia was therefore more appealing to the Soviets. In addition, Ethiopia was the larger country, and thus a greater prize in terms of the East–West geopolitical struggle.
4. In a case that recalls the ambiguous messages sent by US Ambassador April Glaspie, alleged to have encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait (Shalom, 1993), Barre received a message that he interpreted as meaning the US would provide him with arms if he went to war with Ethiopia. The message in question, from President Carter, was delivered by Barre’s American doctor (see Lefebvre, 1991: 184). Incidentally, April Glaspie would go on to become a senior political advisor to Admiral Jonathan Howe, the man who bungled the US–UN humanitarian mission in Somalia in 1993.
5. In many ways, both the US and the USSR betrayed the democratic aspirations of Third World peoples by supporting atrocious and dictatorial regimes such as the Barre government in Somalia. One of the tragic consequences of that betrayal is the political stance, or trap, that some nascent Muslim intellectuals fell into during the 1980s and 1990s, expressed in the well-known slogan: ‘no Easternisms, no Westernisms; this time it is Islamism.’
6. After Barre was overthrown in 1991, the north withdrew from its merger with the south, or Somalia proper, and reverted to its pre-1960 name of Somaliland. Before the 1960 merger between the two regions, Somalia was an Italian colony, while Somaliland was under British rule. Somaliland is now a de facto state that lacks international recognition but is otherwise a peaceful and stable country, while the civil war that overthrew the Barre regime still smolders in the south, depriving the country of a credible government.
7. Marion H. Smoak, a retired ambassador and chief of protocol during the Nixon administration, rebuked Howard Wolpe, then chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa in the House of Representatives, for expressing caution about arms deliveries to the Barre regime in 1982. Smoak argued: ‘Red herrings from some members of the Congress and those of a defeatest [sic] belief must be recognized for what they are. No territory has been dragged behind the iron curtain thus far in this administration. Somalia must not be the first’ (Smoak, 1982).
8. For a full account of the Barre regime’s depredations, see Africa Watch, 1990. See also Amnesty International, 1988.
9. The estimates of the killings vary from 50,000 to 100,000. See, for example, The Gazette, 1990.
10. For a full treatment of the ravages of food aid in Somalia during Barre’s years of alignment with the West, see Maren, 1996.
11. See Campbell, 1988. As someone who personally lost half his family during the 1988 massacres in Hargeisa, I have always wondered what part that critical assistance played in amplifying Barre’s atrocities in the region.
12. Sometimes the relationships between American ambassadors and other high US officials, on the one hand, and officials of the Barre regime, on the other, went beyond the cordial to the truly personal. For example, Ambassador Crigler wrote a letter of support for one former Barre official who was under investigation for war crimes in Canada. The letter stated that a certain Mohamed Sheikh Olow was ‘someone of the highest integrity and moral conviction.’ The man in question was an acting governor of the Northwest province when thousands of people were massacred and the regional capital, Hargeisa, reduced to rubble. See Magnish, 1997.
13. I have explored the background and failure of the US-led humanitarian intervention in Somalia in another work; see Abdullahi, 1995.
14. It is true that the Somalis were independent from their former colonial masters; but were they a free people or a subject people under the Barre regime? In the total absence of liberty and democracy, one may well say that under Barre the Somali people were a subject people who instead of a foreign colonial master had over them a native dictatorial master.
15. The term ‘colder war’ is drawn from Pilger, 2002.
Chapter 15
1. Originally published in AAUG Monitor 15, no. 1, Spring 2000, under the title ‘Economic Sanctions on the People of Iraq: First Degreee Murder or Manslaughter?’
Chapter 16
1. The 19 specific charges can be found in Appendix III of Clark, 1992: 264–5.
2. For a summation of Parenti’s case see, Parenti, 2000: 110–13.
3. The figure of 30,000 was first claimed by Hashim Thaci at Rambouillet. See Daalder and O’Hanlon, 2000: 151.
4. Estimates vary, however. Parenti gives a figure of 200,000 (2000, 157, 161); Daalder and O’Hanlon claim 100,000 (2000: 177).
5. Mason (1999) also argues that the United Nations Security Council had to be bypassed, because for domestic reasons (namely Chechnya, Tibet, and Taiwan) neither Russia nor China would have agreed to the campaign.
6. For a more complete discussion, see Parenti, 2000: 116–17.
7. This was an argument made recently by former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake in his 6 Nightmares: Real Threats in a Dangerous World and How America Can Meet Them (Lake, 2000: 162–3).
1. ‘While the budget is being touted for fighting terrorism, the bulk of the funding goes for buying weapons and a force structure designed during the Cold War,’ such as for twelve new Trident II (D-5) submarine-launched nuclear missiles (Council for a Livable World, 2002).
2. Since ‘the wars of the 20th century alone have killed over 100 million’ people (Nester, 2001: 285), the yearly average is about one million. For most years, however, this figure is much lower since the total includes major anomalies, such as the 50 million killed in the Second World War. It should be noted, however, that between 1990 and 2000, around 200,000 children were killed in armed conflicts (CCPA Monitor, 2002b: 3).
3. Or, more subtly, when life-saving drugs are not developed in the first place because those needing them are so poor that there is little effective demand – and little profit to be made.
4. Another major factor, according to James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, was that, ‘as early as 1998, the [US] Central Intelligence Agency, assisted by the British Special Armed Services, were arming and training Kosovo Liberation Army members in Albania to foment armed rebellion in Kosovo’ (Bissett, 2001).
5. Upon closer inspection, many of the development gains since the Second World War were registered in the first three decades. As the global economic system was liberalized, economic growth slowed, and not just in poor countries. For instance, ‘the American economy has actually been declining on a decade-by-decade basis since the 1960s. The trend has been absolutely consistent for four decades, and the direction is down’ (Martin, 2000). As goes the US economy, so goes the world. The ‘annual growth in global business productivity between 1947 and 1973 equaled 2.85%. But from 1973 to 1997, it only amounted to 1.1%’ (Report on Business, 1999). In effect, the greatest promise of neoliberalism, that it will create the conditions for economic growth, is contradicted by the higher growth rates that generally were found under less liberal conditions from 1945 to 1973.
Chapter 18
1. Precisely how long is an issue for case study, and cannot be ascertained a priori. In large part, it concerns the degree to which the state has succeeded in convincing the population as a whole that it is institutionalized and permanent, and thus not likely to disappear anytime soon.
Chapter 19
1. For a closer examination of international citizens’ tribunals, see Klinghoffer and Klinghoffer, 2002.
2. The text of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples appears in Permanent People’s Tribunal, 1981: 282–4.
3. Division within the subcommission became problematic when Carleton Beals walked out prior to the conclusion of the hearings. He had procedural and personal differences with other subcommission members, and also felt that they were too deferential to Trotsky.
4. See the PPT website at www.grisnet.T/filb/tribu.eng.html.
5. See also http://srd.yahoo.com/srst/27768279/japan+sexual+slavery/1/5/http://witness.peacenet.or.
6. For example, the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India was dealt with retroactively by a 1992 tribunal.
7. The judgment of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court can be found at www.mastalk.com.
Chapter 21
1. Chomsky adds: ‘September 11 provided an opportunity and pretext to implement long-standing plans to take control of Iraq’s immense oil wealth, a central component of the Persian Gulf resources that the State Department in 1945 described as a “stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history” ’ (Chomsky, 2002).
2. For a fine overview of the conflict in Afghanistan and its wider role in US imperial expansion, see Mahajan, 2002. He considers that the United States has adopted ‘an overwhelming, overweening unilateralism that has the rest of the world aghast’ (Mahajan, 2002: 143).
3. Cafod further noted: ‘We would remind the international community that international law obliges those who have taken armed action to make sure that civilians have access to humanitarian aid.’
4. Mahajan charges the US with ‘several acts that were highly suggestive of an attempt to impose starvation and suffering selectively as a means of political coercion,’ including the repeated and supposedly ‘accidental’ bombing of the Red Cross warehouse in Kabul, which high-level military sources allegedly considered ‘both deliberate and justified,’ because it was (mistakenly) believed that the Taliban had commandeered the food supply. Mahajan adds: ‘Of course, the first principle of humanitarian relief is that it be impartial, that aid be given on the basis of need without any consideration of political agenda. In fact, tampering with aid on political grounds violates international law. Unfortunately, the United States government has quite a record of doing exactly that’ (Mahajan, 2002: 37–8).
5. ‘Afghanistan: Stop Abuse in Northern Afghanistan,’ Human Rights Watch press release, 7 March 2002.
6. Herold cites Tim Wise’s apt comment: ‘Even though civilian deaths have not been the deliberate goal of the current bombing – as they were for the attackers of 9/11 – the end result has been a distinction without a difference. Dead is dead, and when one’s actions have entirely foreseeable consequences, it is little more than a precious and empty platitude to argue that those consequences were merely accidental.’
7. For PHR’s press release on the prison visit, see Physicians for Human Rights, 2002. See also Leaning and Heffernan, 2002: ‘In our visit to the prison … we found cell blocks designed for 20 prisoners holding up to 100 men; 8 to 10 toilets for each 1,000 men; bathing facilities outdoor in the mud; and grossly inadequate food and medical care. Dysentery is epidemic. The prison’s commander, General Jarobak, told us that “many, many, many men” had already died.’
8. President Bush’s foreign policy advisor Condoleezza Rice, speaking in April 2002, noted: ‘The international system has been in flux since the collapse of Soviet power. Now it is possible – indeed probable – that that transition is coming to an end. If that is right, then … this is a period not just of grave danger, but of enormous opportunity … a period akin to 1945 to 1947, when American leadership expanded the number of free and democratic states – Japan and Germany among the greater powers – to create a new balance of power that favored freedom.’ Cited in FitzGerald, 2002, emphasis added.
9. At first sight anomalously, the present-day Algerian government pays little heed to the renewed debate over the French use of torture on Algerian territory in the dying years of its colonial rule. An influential military figure referred to it as exclusively an ‘internal French affair.’ The reason, according to the dissident historian Mohammed Harbi, that government officials ‘aren’t interested in the debate on torture [is] because they’re doing the very same thing today’ (Shatz, 2002).
10. US Vice-President Dick Cheney stated in February 2002: ‘When America’s great enemy suddenly disappeared, many wondered what new direction our foreign policy would take. We spoke, as always, of long-term problems and regional crises throughout the world, but there was no single, immediate, global threat that any roomful of experts could agree upon. All of that changed five months ago [on 11 September]. The threat is known and our role is clear now.’ Cited in FitzGerald, 2002.
11. Welch notes that ‘In eight of the 50 states, being convicted of any felony is enough to forfeit the very right to vote, for life.’ No such forfeiture or other penalty applies, however, if ‘the criminal is a Republican politician…. The appointments [of Iran–Contra figures] amount to a declaration that the “rule of law” is no more than a political slogan, hardly worth heeding as long as the government believes its crusade is noble’ (Welch, 2002).
12. Robert Scheer has pointed to ‘the absurdity … [of] risk[ing] escalating a worldwide nuclear arms race to nuke a shadow terrorist enemy whose most effective military action to date was begun with box cutters.’ ‘What we need instead,’ Scheer argues, ‘is a US-led world-wide campaign to shun nuclear weapons as inherently genocidal…. It is we who have defined rogue nations as those bent on developing weapons of mass destruction. How then can we so cavalierly entertain the idea of again leading the world down the path to nuclear Armageddon?’ (Scheer, 2002).
13. For the text of all three posts, and the related correspondence referred to here, see Jones, 2002a.