{Demo} {cracy} in Iraq

Reshaping Iraq

The “Right Message” About Democracy in Iraq

By Jo Wilding
Freelance Writer – UK April 07, 2005

	Unemployed Iraqi protestors. 70% of Iraq’s workforce is unemployed (An Nahar photo)
	- Crushed Under the Bremer Orders - The New Iraq - Kidnapped in Iraq - The Not-Quite News About Prisons - Ordinary Iraqis Now: What Has Changes

Is democracy taking hold in Iraq? What does that mean? Democracy literally is government or rule (-cracy) by the people (demos). But still, what does that mean? Any government is run by people, even in a dictatorship. The implication is that power is delegated by the people of the country to a representative group, whatever form of representation is chosen. Through the right to lobby, re-elect, or vote out representatives, the population retains control. It might also be assumed that the representative body, the government, would be sovereign within its territory.

As well as representation, a modern idea of democracy ought also to contain a notion of the rule of law—that all individuals are equal before the law, even the rulers, and that people should have a right to fair trial and not to be punished without a trial.

I don’t want to rehearse again the criticisms of Iraq’s January elections. It would be easy to fill the entire article with that discussion. There can be no doubt that some form of representation now exists in Iraq. Massive demonstrations forced the occupying powers to allow elections. Kurds and Shiites in particular voted in government members, albeit mostly unnamed for security reasons and with few published manifestos to inform voters which set of promises they were selecting.

Finally the new assembly has a speaker but it is already bound by decisions made by people who were not elected, before elections were even held. Legally, former US Civil Administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer and the occupying powers had no right to enact laws for Iraq but the fact is, Bremer ruled, and the interim governing council signed into law, that everything in Iraq is to be privatized, open to 100% foreign ownership or at least foreign leasehold for forty years. That includes resources, amenities, and public services.

The new government is already over a barrel.

Let me explain.

Iraq is the most indebted country in the world in terms of its debt-to-export ratio. Loans to Saddam in the 1980s, mainly used to buy weapons to use against Iran and later Kuwait, gathered a massive amount of interest during the years of sanctions, when none of the debt could be repaid at all. Compensation awards against Iraq, many of them to rich Kuwaiti oil companies and such like, added to the bill—now over $180 billion.

The Paris Club, the International Monetary Fund, creditor countries, and others have announced debt relief which, at a glance, might appear extraordinarily generous. 30% of the debt owed to Paris Club members is to be wiped out unconditionally. Another 30% depends on Iraq’s adopting a “standard IMF policy,” and a final 20% hangs on a three-year review of implementation of the IMF policy. Iraq hasn’t got any bargaining power to resist. It cannot possibly repay the debt, even if it spends every single Dinar of its national income on repayments and none on health, education, infrastructure, and so on.

“We are not against elections, but we are against their timing.”

Two of the IMF’s conditions are the “opening up” (read cheap sell off to foreign companies) of the Iraqi oil industry and the rollback of the food ration, currently the only major social welfare program, presumably because it means people with no money get stuff free instead of paying for it. Even then, the debts left over after the conditional debt relief are more than enough to keep Iraq in servitude for many decades to come.

What it means is that, no matter what their own beliefs, no matter what the wishes of the people who elected them, the new Iraqi National Assembly members are bound by the dictatorship of the International Monetary Fund and the Iraqi people have little influence over their decisions.

As an example of the effect of this corporate control, it was recently announced that Iraqi farmers could no longer save seeds. Instead they must buy them from the multi-national, agri-business giant Monsanto, a company which has been at the forefront of the attempt to foist genetically modified foods on the world. Their seeds are engineered to withstand huge doses of pesticides, specifically the brand manufactured by Monsanto.

We have already seen what happened when the occupying powers gave the most lucrative re-construction contracts to companies close to the US government. Halliburton massively overcharged US taxpayers for meals it never provided to soldiers and contractors. Bechtel took a fortune to do nothing at all apart from subcontract jobs to other companies, and the resulting work, much of it on schools, was of poor quality. Companies with no genuine interest in Iraq’s future simply suck out what they can and leave the people to suffer. It means unlivable wages, high unemployment, poor working conditions, and no trade union rights.

The rollback of the food ration is just as much a part of that control of Iraq’s economy. It is to be replaced with a financial payment to the poorest families; but, given that 70% of Iraq’s workforce is unemployed, the majority are still desperate. A financial payment instead of a ration package allows the government to manipulate food prices and wages, forcing families and small businesses to submit to the will of the big corporations and institutions, which really control Iraq, and accept slave wages.

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Companies with no interest in Iraq’s future simply suck out what they can and leave the people to suffer.

So Iraq’s new government, no matter what its intentions, is not really sovereign; and though nominally represented at last, Iraq’s Kurds and Shiites, like the rest of the population, still lack any meaningful control over the government.

As for the rule of law, successive scandals have cast an intermittent spotlight over events in Iraq’s prisons—the thousands who have been detained indefinitely without charge or trial, the torture, and impunity for the vast majority of those responsible. We now know that General Ricardo Sanchez, for all his official denials, in fact signed his approval of at least three of the common torture techniques, including use of dogs to intimidate prisoners.

Again, corporations were implicated, employees of private contractors being blamed for some of the worst crimes in Abu Ghraib. Because they were not military personnel, they were not subject to military law. Because there was no effective local legal system, they were not made subject to civilian law either.

In recent days the United Nations has finally empowered the International Criminal Court to begin investigating and prosecuting crimes. The spur was criticism over the organization’s inaction in Darfur, Sudan. What held the process up was the United States’ opposition to the court and its demands for exemption for its own citizens.

That means there is one group of people in Iraq, armed and powerful, which is exempt from the rule of law, and another group, the Iraqi population, which lacks any effective legal rights whatsoever. It is fundamental in a democracy that no person should be punished without trial. That trial should be fair and public. A person must be presumed innocent until proven guilty. I do not think that those basic principles can be made subject to “culture” or to restrictions based on a political desire to frighten the population (as in the UK and US).

Take, for example, Fallujah. This time last year I stayed in my apartment in Baghdad. All my Iraqi friends had begged me to have a few quiet days around the April 9 anniversary, to stay indoors and safe. Four mercenaries had just been killed in Fallujah, because several civilians had been shot dead by US forces a few days earlier.

Instead of exerting political pressure on local authorities in Fallujah to identify the individuals responsible for the killings of the mercenaries (let alone identifying those responsible for killing the Fallujans beforehand), US forces besieged the town, cut off electricity and, with it, the water supply, closed down the main hospital, and largely prevented access of medical supplies.

An Iraqi doctor friend, wounded by US bullets while driving an ambulance in Fallujah, thought that, as foreigners, we might be able to get medical supplies into the town. What we found there were civilians trapped in their homes in US-held areas of the town because marine snipers were firing at anyone who came outdoors, even children. People were trapped without food or water. The only hospital left open was cut off because the access road was controlled by US snipers and it was almost out of supplies.

US forces were firing at ambulances. We were able to move about during daylight by holding up our passports and being visibly foreign but, come dusk, our ambulance also came under fire from marine snipers while we were trying to reach a woman giving birth prematurely without electricity or medical help.

People fled to Baghdad to stay with family members or strangers, in mosques, abandoned buildings or building sites, empty bomb shelters, or the Red Crescent tent camp on a dusty football pitch. The second attack, in November last year, was apparently even worse. It appears there were many more civilians killed, homes destroyed, and people driven out of the town. A huge proportion of the population is still unable to go home, either because home is rubble or because they haven’t been allowed back in.

There were thousands of acts committed by US forces which amount to war crimes; and command-level war crimes were perpetrated throughout the US military hierarchy, but the only individual prosecuted for actions in Fallujah was the one caught on television shooting dead an unarmed man in a mosque.

So there is no rule of law. Iraqis are not able to exercise legal rights, even the basic right to a fair trial, while the occupying forces, unless foolish enough to be caught on film or photograph, have complete impunity. Non-military employees, apparently, are safe even when they are caught on camera.

But what about freedom? Where once it was impossible to publicly criticize Saddam, and risky even privately, even implicitly, now there is freedom to call him all the bad things under the sun. Various media outlets discovered, though, that it was not advisable to criticize interim prime-minister Allawi or his government. Reports were to be favorable to the government’s point of view. Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, and an unknown number of smaller outlets fell foul and were closed down or expelled.

Two years ago on April 9, US soldiers wrapped a US flag around the head of the Saddam statue and were then told to remove it because it sent out the wrong message. The right message was that Iraq was liberated, not conquered.

It seems the same is still going on. Iraq’s economy—and with it, its politics—is all wrapped up by the US, the International Monetary Fund, and the favored corporations. But the right message is liberation from debt and liberation of the market. Freedom, you see: freedom of the market, freedom for foreign corporations, but still no democracy for the Iraqi people.

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Jo Wilding is a British human rights campaigner, writer and trainee lawyer from Bristol, UK. She went to Iraq several times, where she maintained a daily blog and took part in Circus 2 Iraq, “a small group of circus performers … set up to … perform and give circus skills workshops to children [in Iraq] traumatized by sanctions, war and its aftermath.” Her articles about Iraq and ordinary Iraqis were published Guardian, New Zealand Herald, and Counterpunch.

Racism in the Military

Aiden Delgado, an Army Reservist in the 320th Military Police Company, served in Iraq from April 1st , 2003 through April 1st, 2004. After spending six months in Nasiriyah in Southern Iraq, he spent six months helping to run the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.

The handsome 23-year-old mechanic was a witness to widespread, almost daily, U.S. war crimes in Iraq. His story contains new revelations about ongoing brutality at Abu Ghraib, information yet to be reported in national media.

I first met Delgado in a classroom at Acalanes High School in Lafayette, California, where he presented a slide show on the atrocities that he himself observed in Southern and Northern Iraq. Delgado acknowledged that the U.S. military did some good things in Iraq. “We deposed Saddam, built some schools and hospitals,” he said. But he focused his testimony on the breakdown of moral order within the U.S. military, a pattern of violence and terror that exceeds the bounds of what is legally and morally permissible in time of war.

Delgado says he observed mutilation of the dead, trophy photos of dead Iraqis, mass roundups of innocent noncombatants, positioning of prisoners in the line of fire – all violations of the Geneva conventions. His own buddies – decent, Christian men, as he describes them – shot unarmed prisoners.

In one government class for seniors, Delgado presented graphic images, his own photos of a soldier playing with a skull, the charred remains of children, kids riddled with bullets, a soldier from his unit scooping out the brains of a prisoner. Some students were squeamish, like myself, and turned their heads. Others rubbed tears from their eyes. But at the end of the question period, many expressed appreciation for opening a subject that is almost taboo. “If you are old enough to go to war,” Delgado said, “you are old enough to know what really goes on.”

It is a rare moment when American students, who play video war games more than baseball, are exposed to the realities of occupation. Delgado does not name names. Nor does he want to denigrate soldiers or undermine morale. He seeks to be a conscience for the military, and he wants Americans to take ownership of the war in all its tragic totality.

Aiden Delgado did not grow up in the United States. His father was a U.S. diplomat. Aiden lived in Thailand and Senegal, West Africa. He spent seven years in Cairo, Egypt, where he became fluent in Arabic and developed a deep appreciation of Arab culture.

On September 11th, 2001, completely unaware of the day’s fateful events, Delgado enlisted in the Army, expecting to serve two days a month in the Reserves. When he turned on the television, he realized instantly that his whole world had changed.

After he joined the Army, Delgado began to read the Sutras. He became a Buddhist, a vegetarian, and eventually became a Conscientious Objector. Delgado was honorably discharged when he returned home. Delgado earned four service medals which, he says, are standard awards. He faced criticism from the Army when he began to speak out about military conduct in Iraq. Don Schwartz, spokesman for the Army in Washington, D.C., said that Delgado should have reported any wrongdoing to Army personnel. “He should have reported first to his boss, his commander. That is the standard way the chain of command works.”

When I interviewed Delgado recently, he expressed his deep love of his country, but he also insisted that racism – a major impetus to violence in American history – is driving the occupation, infecting the entire military operation in Iraq.

Delgado’s testimony tends to confirm the message of Chris Hedges, the New York Times war correspondent who wrote prior to the invasion of Iraq: “War forms its own culture. It distorts memory, corrupts language, and infects everything around it.... War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface within all of us. Even as war gives meaning to sterile lives, it also promotes killers and racists.”

Here is Aiden Delgado story.

Q: When did you begin to turn against the military and the war?

DELGADO: From the very earliest time I was in Iraq, I began to see ugly strains of racism among our troops—anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiments.

Q: What are some examples?

DELGADO: There was a Master Sergeant. A Master Sergeant is one of the highest enlisted ranks. He whipped this group of Iraqi children with a steel Humvee antenna. He just lashed them with it because they were crowding around, bothering him, and he was tired of talking. Another time, a Marine, a Lance Corporal – a big guy about six-foot-two – planted a boot on a kid’s chest, when a kid came up to him and asked him for a soda. The First Sergeant said, “That won’t be necessary Lance Corporal.” And that was the end of that. It was a matter of routine for guys in my unit to drive by in a Humvee and shatter bottles over Iraqis heads as they went by. And these were guys I considered friends. And I told them:“ What the hell are you doing? What does that accomplish?” One said back:“ I hate being here. I hate looking at them. I hate being surrounded by all these Hajjis.”

Q: They refer to Iraqis as “Hajjis”?

DELGADO: “Hajji” is the new slur, the new ethnic slur for Arabs and Muslims. It is used extensively in the military. The Arabic word refers to one who has gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca. But it is used in the military with the same kind of connotation as “gook,” “Charlie,” or the n-word. Official Army documents now use it in reference to Iraqis or Arabs. It’s real common. There was really a thick aura of racism.

Q: Were there any significant incidents besides racial slurs and casual violence against civilians?

DELGADO: The last mission I ran in the South before we were redeployed North was strange. I was told to drive way out into the desert, off the road. When we got there, we found Kuwaitis excavating a mass grave site (from the Saddam era). Kuwaiti engineers wanted to identify and repatriate the remains. It was a solemn affair. I was with the First Sergeant. He said: “Give me that skull. I want to hold the skull in my hands.” He picked up the skull, tossing it to himself. Then he turned to me and said: “Take my picture.” It was taken while he was standing by a mass grave. This was a very surreal, dark time for me in Iraq. It was tough for me to see brutality coming out of my own unit. I had lived in the Middle East. I had Egyptian friends. I spent nearly a decade in Cairo. I spoke Arabic, and I was versed in Arab culture and Islamic dress. Most of the guys in my unit were in complete culture shock most of the time. They saw the Iraqis as enemies. They lived in a state of fear. I found the Iraqis enormously friendly as a whole. One time I was walking through Nasiriyah with an armful of money, nadirs that were exchanged for dollars. I was able to walk 300 meters to my convoy – a U.S. soldier walking alone with money. And I thought: I am safer here in Iraq than in the states. I never felt threatened from people in the South.

Q: What happened when you moved North, before you reached Abu Ghraib?

DELGADO: We were a company of 141 Military Police. We gave combat support, followed behind units to take and hold prisoners. I was a mechanic. I fixed Humvees. We followed behind the Third Infantry division. It was heavily mechanized with lots of tanks and scout vehicles. We could trace their path by all the burned-out vehicles and devastation they left behind. The Third pretty much annihilated the Iraqi forces. Iraqis did not have much of an organized military. They had civilian vehicles, and they resisted pretty valiantly, given how much we outclassed them. The Third Infantry slaughtered them wholesale. We took so many prisoners, we couldn’t carry them all. Large numbers of civilians were caught in the crossfire.

Q: How were the civilians killed?

DELGADO: It was common practice to set up blockades. The Third Infantry would block off a road. In advance of the assault, civilians would flee the city in a panic. As they approached us, someone would yell: “Stop, stop!” In English. Of course they couldn’t understand. Their cars were blown up with cannons, or crushed with tanks. Killing noncombatants at checkpoints happened routinely, not only with the Third Infantry, but the First Marines. And it is still going on today. If you check last week’s MSNBC, they dug out a father and mother and her six children. We were constantly getting reports of vehicles that were destroyed (with people in them) at checkpoints.

Q: Your unit, the 320th Military Police, was stationed at Abu Ghraib for six months. Who were the prisoners at Abu Ghraib? Where did they come from? Do you have any new information not yet reported in the media?

DELGADO: There were 4,000 to 6,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib. I got to work with a lot of officers, so I got to see the paperwork. I found out that a lot of prisoners were imprisoned for no crime at all. They were not insurgents. Some were inside for petty theft or drunkenness. But the majority – over sixty percent – were not imprisoned for crimes committed against the coalition.

Q: How did so many noncombatants get imprisoned?

DELGADO: Every time our base came under attack, we sent out teams to sweep up all men between the ages of 17 and 50. There were random sweeps. The paperwork to get them out of prison took six months or a year. It was hellish inside. A lot of completely innocent civilians were in prison camp for no offense. It sounds completely outrageous. But look at the 2005 Department of Defense Report, where it talks about prisoners.

Q: When you arrived at Abu Ghraib, what did you see, beyond what we all learned from the scandal in the news? And how were you affected?

DELGADO: I was becoming disillusioned. I expected brutality from the enemy. That was a given. But to see brutality from our own side, that was really tough for me. It was hard to see the army fall so much in my esteem. The prisoners were housed outside in tents, 60 to 80 prisoners per tent. It rained a lot. The detainees lived in the mud. It was freezing cold outside, and the prisoners had no cold-weather clothing. Our soldiers lived inside in cells, with four walls that protected us from the bombardment. The Military Police used the cold weather to control the prisoners. If there was an infraction, detainees would be removed from their tents. Next, their blankets were confiscated. Then even their clothing was taken away. Almost naked, in underwear, the POWs would huddle together on a platform outside to keep warm. There was overcrowding, and almost everyone got TB. Eighteen members of our unit who worked closely with the prisoners got TB too. The food was rotten and prisoners got dysentery. The unsanitary conditions, the debris and muck everywhere, the overcrowding in cold weather, led to disease, an epidemic, pandemic conditions. The attitude of the guards was brutal. To
them Iraqis were the scum of the earth. Detainees were beaten within inches of their life.

Q: Were any detainees killed?

DELGADO: More than 50 prisoners were killed.

Q: What happened?

DELGADO: The enemy around Baghdad randomly shelled our base. Under the Geneva Conventions, an occupying power cannot place protected persons in areas exposed to the hazards of war. More than 50 detainees were killed because they were housed outside in tents, directly in the line of fire, with no protection, nowhere to run. They were hemmed in by barbed wire. They were trapped, and they had to sit and wait and hope they would survive. I know what it was like because a single mortar round would flatten a whole line of tires on the Humvees, a whole line of windshields. That’s how I thought about the damage because I was the mechanic who had to replace the windshields. So the mortar bombardments killed and wounded many prisoners.

Q: So your commanders knowingly kept your prisoners in the line of fire? How many U.S. soldiers were killed during the shellings?

DELGADO: There were two U.S. soldiers killed during my stay.

Q: Were there any other incidents?

DELGADO: The worst incident that I was privy to was in late November. The prisoners were protesting nightly because of their living conditions. They protested the cold, the lack of clothing, the rotting food that was causing dysentery. And they wanted cigarettes. They tore up pieces of clothing, made banners and signs. One demonstration became intense and got unruly. The prisoners picked up stones, pieces of wood, and threw them at the guards. One of my buddies got hit in the face. He got a bloody nose. But he wasn’t hurt. The guards asked permission to use lethal force. They got it. They opened fire on the prisoners with the machine guns. They shot twelve and killed three. I know because I talked to the guy who did the killing. He showed me these grisly photographs, and he bragged about the results. “Oh,” he said, “I shot this guy in the face. See, his head is split open.” He talked like the Terminator. ‘I shot this guy in the groin, he took three days to bleed to death.” I was shocked. This was the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. He was a family man, a really courteous guy, a devout Christian. I was stunned and said to him: “You shot an unarmed man behind barbed wire for throwing a stone.” He said, “Well, I knelt down. I said a prayer, stood up and gunned them all down.” There was a complete disconnect between what he had done and his own morality.

Q: Commanders permitted use of lethal force against unarmed detainees. What was their response to the carnage?

DELGADO: Our Command took the grisly photos and posted them up in the headquarters. It was a big, macho thing for our company to shoot more prisoners than any other unit.

Q: When did all this happen?

DELGADO: November 24th. The event was actually mentioned in the Taguba Report, under Protocol Golden Spike. And there’s more. Before our company transported the bodies, the soldiers stopped and posed with the bodies and mutilated them further. I got photos from the guy who was there, my friend. I have a photo of a member of my unit, scooping out the prisoner’s brains with an MRE [meals-ready-to-eat] spoon. Four people are looking on, two are taking photographs. If you remember the Abu Ghraib stuff that came out on CNN, this kind of stuff was common. You see guys posing with bodies, or toying with corpses. It was a real common thing in the military, all because the guys thought Arabs are terrorists, the scum of the earth. Anything we do to them is all right.

Q: So far as I know, no commanders have been held accountable for events at Abu Ghraib. Your story implicates commanders in ongoing brutality. In one of your presentations, you said: “Our command definitely knew about the prisoners being shot. They posted the photos in their headquarters. They knew all about prisoners being beaten.” Did your commanders try to prevent information from reaching the public?

DELGADO: After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke on CNN and TV, commanders came out to us and said: “We are all family here. We don’t wash our dirty linen in public. This story doesn’t need to go on CNN. Nobody needs to find out about this.” There was a sort of informal gag order.

Q: You enlisted in the Army Reserve in good faith. Now you are a conscientious objector. Once in the Army Reserve, how did you become a C.O.?

DELGADO: After advanced training, I became serious about Buddhism. I read translations of the Sutras. I became a vegetarian. Later, when I met Iraqi prisoners firsthand, I saw the people who were supposed to be our enemies. I did not feel any hatred for them. They were young, poor guys without an education, like us. They had to fight us. And our guys were the same; they had to fight them. And I said: “What am I doing here, fighting poor people?” I went to my commander, turned in my rifle, and said; “Look, I will stay in Iraq. I will finish my tour as a mechanic. I will do my job, but I am not going to kill anyone.”

Q: You still served the whole tour in Iraq. How did your command respond to your request to become a C.O.?

DELGADO: As soon as I told them, they became hostile. They first took away my hard, ballistic plates that go into my vest. They said: “You are not going to fight, so you won’t need body armor.”

Q: The plates protect you from bullets and mortars. They are needed for safety, right? Were you still vulnerable?

DELGADO: Yes I was. They also took away my home leave, saying: “You won’t come back.” I was supposed to be promoted, but they said we can’t promote you. The command tried a lot of things to get me to recant. I was ostracized. But the more they did to me, the more obstinate I became. I made trouble for my command. I didn’t shave. I threatened to get my Congressman involved. I called Buddhist organizations and the ACLU. They finally relented.

Q: I would like to review your observations. Your account does not focus on one or two bad individuals. Essentially, you are describing the brutality of a group, a collective loss of restraint, a complete breakdown of moral order within the military. I am sure that your Christian buddy, a typical American youth, would never shoot an unarmed person in private life. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr tells us that, with the sanction of the state, driven by nationalism, moral, decent individuals become killers and torturers in groups. You attribute the breakdown of restraint to racism. When did the process of dehumanization of Arabs begin? Did basic training influence the consciousness of our soldiers?

DELGADO: I went to Fort Knox for basic training. It was known to be harsher than other bases. The training was mentally taxing, and there was already some anti-Arab sentiment.

Q: Like what?

DELGADO: In the early stages I remember Army chants. We sang in cadences. And the chants had anti-Arab themes. Like burning turbans, killing ragheads, killing the Taliban.

Q: What did the chants say?

DELGADO: It was three years ago. I can’t tell the exact words, but the sentiment was to burn turbans and kill ragheads. That was the phraseology. Our drill sergeants would give us motivational talks to pump up our fighting spirit. The theme was the need to get revenge, to go to the Middle East to fight Arabs.

Q: All this was before you even went to Iraq?

DELGADO: Yes. My own commander was infamous for anti-Arab speeches. Before we were deployed to the Middle East, he said, “Now don’t go tell the media that you’re going over there to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.” Everybody laughed, and he laughed with them. I remember standing there in formation, having grown up in Egypt. And I was thinking: “Oh, my God, this is going to be a disaster. Our commander has this anti-Arab attitude even before we go over.” The commander would give lectures about Islam. He said that Muslims advocate a holy war against us, that Islam promotes perpetual war. I’ve been surrounded by Muslims for a decade, exposed to their culture. He is wrong.

Q: In the 1980s the U.S. military made a lot of reforms. It is widely believed that racism in the military is now a thing of the past.

DELGADO: I have two answers. First, have we overcome racism in the sense that blacks and whites are banded together in the hatred of Arabs? That’s not progress. Second, we had an incident in our unit with a black specialist. He was a nice guy, really popular in the unit. There was no physical fight, but there was a dispute over him dating this white girl, having a relationship with a white girl. Two white guys took a piece of rope, tied a noose, and put a hangman’s noose on his bed. He found out who it was and went to his black sergeant. They went to the equal opportunity representative. The issue was effectively stifled.

Q: After your long ordeal, how do you feel about your country, and what do you want from the American people?

DELGADO: I still love my country. I love the idea of America. But I became disillusioned. Now I want to let the American people know what they’re signing on for when they say they support the war in Iraq. And I want Americans to recognize the racial undertones of the occupation and to understand the human costs of war.

Interview with Ricardo Alarcon

ZNet
April 10, 2005
By Saul Landau

Landau: How do you compare Bush's discourse with that of past presidents? And how do you compare them with his deeds?

Alarcon: Words are not his strongest quality. I think that there are discrepancies in his second inaugural address. He talked about carrying the fire of freedom throughout the world. Without sounding rude, I'd say this is, at the very least, an over statement. He isn't going to carry anything much further. He's already having difficulty in maintaining this fire in Iraq. If he wants to do that around the world he will not succeed. Indeed, he's not succeeding in Iraq.

Cuba is one of the places mentioned, not by him but by [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice the day before. I advise them not to try. It will cost a lot of lives if the Americans would attack us, more than those dying in Iraq, because this is not a divided country or society that has been suffering under a dictatorial regime. The opposite is true. You will find here a free society, finally emancipated from half a century of oppression and corruption imposed by the US. We attainted our independence in 1959 -- from US domination. That is a fact of history. From an ethnic or cultural point of view we are a unified country, an island on which a common culture and common identity has evolved. We are prepared to make life impossible for an invader.

But more important, what is the meaning of this policy? It is not just irrational, a product of arrogance or impulse, not just the product of a person that doesn't read many books. That explains only his strange selection of words.

Consider Bush's simplistic view of the world; or better, take the more analytical and conscious way the CIA views it. A CIA document published a couple months ago and another in December 2000, forecasts based on research and analysis, consider scenarios of war, peace, turmoil and catastrophes. But there is a common denominator expressed in one sentence: “US influence will continue to decline.” By the way the CIA does not call for a change of policy, but simply states as a fact that US influence is less today than 20 or 40 years ago.

The US is not going to rise above the rest of the world. It is the sole superpower in cold war terms. But the US cannot exercise complete power over the rest of the world. Russia continues to have nuclear weapons. Economically, for example, China has emerged as a power. Recently the Chinese president toured Latin America and discussed granting Argentina a credit line of $20 billion. 40 years ago, at time of the Alliance for Progress, Kennedy offered the entire continent $20 billion -- over ten year period. Cuba criticized this modest offer at the time because it was too little.

Remember, at that time this little island had established relations with that big country China. The other countries in the Latin America followed the US line and refused to recognize the existence of China. Now, 40 years later, that once non-recognized country's head of state travels throughout the region and offers much more than the US could when it was at its peak. And the US must accept that China plays that role in the world. The Vice President of China was doing a similar same thing in Africa.

Although the US remains the biggest military power, it has trouble controlling a rather small country like Iraq, which it almost destroyed by bombing and an economic embargo before the war. The reality is that US is only the most powerful entity in one area: information and communication.

It was the only dominant force at end of the Second World War, the only nuclear power. Nagasaki and Hiroshima, by the way, are the only cases in which nuclear power has been used destructively. They were not employed by a terrorist state, but by the US democracy - allegedly to defeat Japan. At that time and later, during the Marshall Plan, the US was at the top. Since then it has been declining. That does not mean it is a country in disarray, but it is going downward.

To answer this downhill slide, in my opinion, came the neo-cons who believe that by using the United States' comparatively limited economic and large military resources, but especially by exploiting their advantage in terms of communication technology and near monopoly of information media, they can reverse the trend. That is impossible. The US cannot turn the world back to 1945 and reappear as the only power in the world. The US needs to learn to live in a diverse world with different players, different ideologies and interests and not to pretend to be the owner of the planet.

Those times are gone forever. That is the way history moves. But the new conservative trend departs form traditional conservatism and tries to reverse the world's movement by being interventionist, by sending troops here and there. It is an irrational approach. It's obvious that they will not succeed but their missionary and mythological approach could lead to mistakes even more grave than Iraq.

Landau: In 1945, the US wrote the Nuremburg laws prohibiting aggressive war and also drafted the UN and OAS charters that prohibit intervention. How do you explain US behavior, initiating those laws and then violating them?

Alarcon: The US wrote all those important documents that became the foundation of the international order when it was the most important power in the world. Now that the world has been undergoing change those documents have become obstacles to US interests. At the same time, US officials try to manipulate these documents, like the Human Rights Covenants. If you listen to US officials, they are fulfilling a mission of spreading human rights throughout the world.

The ideas of freedom and democracy are in the UN charter, but together with the principle of nonintervention, prohibition of war. The only thing the UN Charter recognizes as a legitimate reason for war is self defense, a nation subjected to external aggression. Even in those circumstances you have to ask the UN to intervene. Nobody else can intervene. It's a peaceful ideal. The Charter lacks some important points. It doesn't mention colonialism, nor recognize the right of colonial people to self-determination and independence.

But the UN was transformed because after WW II, no one could stop the emancipation of those countries. People became independent and then UN members. It was one of the factors that helped transform the world. How to explain how the US changed its mind after essentially drafting these documents?

Those exercising power were not happy with what happened. The reality problem is a serious one. Psychiatrists help those who have trouble dealing with reality. If you do not acknowledge reality you may be suffering from a serious disturbance. I sometimes feel that some American politicians need professional help to remember that they conceived the UN and its structure. Some American politicians now refer to the UN as something to ignore or despise. Do they forget that it was a US creation? To weaken or break this organization, which is what Bush did, was a terrible thing. The UN does not exist any more because of what happened in Iraq. This is a very serious problem. It is not true that it will reconstruct itself on new bases.

I don't want to sound rude, but that is exactly what Hitler did. He was angry with the League of Nations, with reality, after WWI. During the period between the two world wars, Germany became the European superpower, economically, technologically, militarily.

When Hitler set the goal of conquering Europe in the mid 1930s, his dream matched the reality of Europe more than who Bush seeks to conquer the entire world with the current level of US power. Hitler's irrational dream was more rational than the discourse you hear now from American leaders. Hitler made a very big mistake, trying to conquer the USSR. Stalin committed many crimes. He was a dictator, but the Soviet people stopped Hitler. It was the same mistake that Napoleon made, to try to conquer the East. If he had remained the master of western and central Europe maybe he would have continued to hold power. But he overextended himself.

But fascism was rejected by most people. And resistance to Nazism arose in many places. Our Yugoslav brothers and sisters offered heroic resistance in that period. The Nazis never conquered that country. Later on it was made to explode, not by the Nazis but by western democracies.

Landau: You use history as a guide.

Alarcon: History is important. Those who believe they can turn history back should remember the origin of previous wars. The Germans didn't accept Versailles and that was the origin of Fascism.

** Ricardo Alarcon Quesada is Cuba's Vice President and President of its National Assembly

Landau directs digital media at Cal Poly Pomona University. He is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. His new book: THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA: HOW CONSUMERS HAVE REPLACED CITIZENS AND HOW WE CAN REVERSE THE TREND

Next step: April 16 conference

Youth around the country protest the war, draft

wo years after the Bush administration launched its colonial war against the people of Iraq, a national popular uprising against the occupation has stretched the U.S. military to the breaking point. The Pentagon is struggling to find new recruits, prompting many to fear the return of the draft.

Buffalo, N.Y. WW photo: Ellie Dorritie

The Army reported on April 1 that it had missed its March recruiting goal by 32 percent. The Marine Corps also came up short. The Army Reserve missed its March goal by 46 percent.

The Army National Guard has not yet released its numbers for March, but has missed its recruiting goal in every month of the current fiscal year through February.

Boston WW photo: Peter Cook

The ongoing strain on the Pentagon and its failure to recruit new cannon fodder has led senior military officials, lawmakers and defense experts to question the viability of the “all volunteer force.”

In the Washington Monthly March cover story Phillip Carter and Paul Gastric wrote: “America can remain the world’s superpower. Or it can maintain its current all-volunteer military. It can’t do both.”

New York Photo: Jamey O’Quinn

Meanwhile, the Selective Service Sys tem, the agency responsible for conducting a draft, is busy fine-tuning the conscription machinery. Accord ing to its 2004 Perform ance Plan, the agency is staffing local draft boards, purchasing new software, training local volunteer registrars, and practicing with the draft lottery process.

All of this is in order to “ensure a mobilization infrastructure of 56 State Head quarters, 442 Area Offices and 1,980 Local Boards [is] operational within 75 days of an authorized return to conscription.”

The agency filed a report with Congress on March 31, summarizing its progress in meeting this goal.

On the same day, youth and activists across the country issued their own report: They will refuse to be cannon fodder for the empire.

Youth answer: ‘Hell no!’

The anti-war group No Draft, No Way had issued a call for a March 31 National Day of Action against the draft and military recruiting. Youth, students and activists across the country took to the streets that day.

In Boston, demonstrators included GI resister Carl Webb, students who walked out of Somerville High School to protest the war, representatives from Steel Workers Local 8751-Boston School Bus Drivers, and HERE/UNITE Local 26. They picketed in front of the downtown Military Recruiting Center. The protest, called by the International Action Center-Boston, received a lot of support from passersby, including a group of students who joined the protest.

In New York City, activists from the youth group Fight Imperialism, Stand Together—FIST—were joined by students, parents, clergy, veterans, and anti-war activists for a demonstration at the Board of Education. They occupied the steps of the building and unfurled a banner that read, “Resist the war, stop the draft!”

In Raleigh, N.C., the local FIST chapter demonstrated in front of a military recruiting station. While more than 30 people protested, several of them blocked the entrance. Meanwhile they read a statement denouncing the war, the draft and military recruiting.

In Bloomington, Ind., people turned out at the newly opened office of the Indiana National Guard for a spirited protest against the draft and military recruiting. Protesters carried big banners reading, “End the occupation of Iraq,” and, “Stop recruiting for the war machine,” and signs that said, “No recruiting on Kirkwood” and, “You shouldn’t have to kill to pay for an education!” The demonstration was publicized by local media for several days prior to the event and was carried live on local radio.

In Buffalo, N.Y., the International Action Center and the Troops Out Now Coalition held a protest in front of the federal office building downtown. Activists carried signs that proclaimed, “Hell no, we won’t go” and, “No draft, no way!”

In Worcester, Penn., 60 Methacton High School students walked out of class, voicing their opposition to the war and a potential draft reinstatement. The students convened near the school’s flagpole holding anti-draft signs.

No Draft, No Way held a protest in Charlotte, N.C., in front of the military recruiting station.

In Nashville, Tenn., students held a No Draft, No Way rally across from Vanderbilt University.

In Santa Rosa, Calif., the Sonoma County Peace & Justice Center held a rally at the courthouse featuring anti-draft speakers and music. Students joined in and signed a Conscientious Objectors Pledge of Resistance.

In Ames, Iowa, students walked out of campus at Iowa State University and rallied against the draft.

Next step: April 16 conference

The next steps for the struggle against the draft will include a conference on youth and resistance on April 16. This conference will address the return of the draft, economic conscription and youth organizing.

The conference will focus on concrete actions to shut down recruiting and fight the draft—including a campaign to get United States Army’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps out of schools. These actions will include implementing an opt-out program so that information about students is not given to military recruiters, and an educators’ petition demanding that time be given in schools to talk about the truth behind military recruiting and to educate about the draft.

Speakers at the conference will include Gulf War era veteran and activist Monique Code, Pam Africa, Vietnam-era military resister Larry Holmes, and young people involved in counter-recruiting work on high school and college campuses.

For information about the conference, or to register, go to www. NoDraftNoway.org.

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By Dustin Langley

Published Apr 6, 2005 5:36 PM

This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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dao homecoming

Where was Tao when I was gone? Wasn’t I following it where I went? Do you think that there are two? After traveling awhile, we come home to a familiar place, only we often look at it in a new light. Were things different while we weren’t here? We experienced so many new and different things while we were gone—wasn’t that Tao too? How can there be so many differences? You might argue that a mountain is a mountain, but our attitudes toward it are changeable. If we mistake our subjective viewpoints as something that is solid, permanent, and never relative to circumstances, then we will have no end to our problems. However, if we always remember that everything is comparative, then we can move through life in a much more dynamic way. There are not two ways. There is only one, It is so vast that we can experience widely diverging aspects of it and imagine that we are in different realities. This is a misconception. We cannot outrun Tao, cannot be outside of it. It is only our viewpoints that change to the degree that we think we are in differing dimensions. In the river of Tao, we are like minnows that can never plumb the length and breadth of the water. homecoming 365 Tao Daily Meditations Deng Ming-Dao ISBN 0-06-250223-9 today’s art is by Surya Kala Shah T A O t e C H I N G S E V E N T Y - O N E Knowing ignorance is strength. Ignoring knowledge is sickness. If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick. The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness. Therefore he is not sick. — translation by GIA-FU FENG Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; then you can move toward health. The Master is her own physician. She has healed herself of all knowing. Thus she is truly whole. — translation by STEVEN MITCHELL To acknowledge one’s ignorance shows strength of personality, but to ignore wisdom is a sign of weakness. To be sick of sickness is a sign of good health, therefore the wise man grows sick of sickness, and sick of being sick of sickness, ’til he is sick no more. — translated by STAN ROSENTHAL a reading list of books and interpretations of the Daodejing is available at http://www.duckdaotsu.org/dao_books.html for a meditation sent to your email address each day, please write ’subscribe tao’ in the subject line and send to lisbeth at duckdaotsu