https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bMFXHHEcBG0vsc77HNZW2yG5Y68Pupxkgnk7H_RAO7I/edit

It may be comforting to pretend our enemies hate our freedoms, but it is hardly wise to ignore the real world, which conveys different lessons. Eisenhower described the “campaign of hatred against us in :Arab world) not by govts., but by the people. His national security council outlined the basic reasons: The US supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is “opposing political or economic progress” because of its interest in controlling the oil resources in the region. Post 9/11 surveys in the Arab world reveal that the same reasons hold today, compounded with resentment over specific policies. Attitudes are of people who like Americans and admire much of the U.S. including its freedoms. What they hate is official policies that deny them the freedoms to which they aspire. We should be aware that much of the world regards Washington as a terrorist regime. In recent years, the United States has taken or backed actions in Colombia, Central America, Panama, Sudan, and Turkey, to name only  few, that meet official U.S. definitions of “terrorism”- or worse- that is, when Americans apply the term to enemies.  In Foreign Affairs, Samuel Huntingon wrote, “While the United States regularly denounces various countries as ‘rogue states,’ in the eyes of many countries it is becoming the rogue superpower… the single greatest external threat to their societies.”

Although 9/11 brought sympathy to U.S., an international gallup poll in late September 2001 found little support for military attack by the U.S. in Afghanistan. The least support came from Latin America, the region with the most experience of U.S. intervention. 2% in Mexico for example.. Current “campaign of hatred” in Arab world is, of course, also fueled by U.S. policies toward Israel-Palestine and Iraq. U.S. provided crucial support for Israel’s harsh military occupation, now in its thirty-fifth year. 

In Iraq, a decade of harsh sanctions under U.S. pressure has strengthened Saddam Hussein while leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. After Saddam’s worse crimes Bush I welcomed him has an ally and trading partner. 

Bush admin didn’t want to turn leadership over to radicals in Iraq. Functioning democracy in middle east would be inconsistent with U.S. goal of reinforcing dominance there.   Before waging war against Iraq, the United tried to force the world to accept its position and it could not. Usually the world succumbs. Take the First Gulf war. There the United States applied considerable pressure to induce the Security Council to agree to its war plan, though much of the world opposed it. In any legal system that you take seriously, coerced judgements are considered invalid. But in the international affairs conducted by the powerful, coerced judgements are fine. They are called diplomacy. 

Israel has virtually no alternative to serving as a U.S. military base in the region and complying with U.S demands.   Israel could accept peace and integration into the region, or insist on expansion and confrontation, hence inevitable dependency on the United States. Israeli settlements now control 42% of the West Bank.

Saddam’s atrocities include his gassing of kurds in 1988 and his massacre of Shiite rebels who might have overthrown him in 1991. At the time Washington and its allies held the strikingly unanimous view (that) whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country’s stability than did those who have suffered his repression,” reported Alan Cowell in the New York Times. The term “stability” is a codename for subordination to U.S. interests. For example, The Nixon Kissinger administration justified their efforts to destabilize a freely elected Marxist government in Chile by saying, “we were determined to seek stability.” 

The Bush admin’s original reason for going to war with Iraq was to save the world from a tyrant developing weapons of mass destruction and cultivating links to terror…After the earlier claims collapsed, a new reason for the war took center stage: we invaded Iraq to establish a democracy there and, in fact to democratize the whole Middle East. Wolfowitz who worked for Bush supported Suharo in Indonesia who was a horrible mass murderer and aggressor. This is when he was ambassador under Reagan. He also worked with Chun the dictator of South Korea and Marcos in Phillipinnes. Wolfowitz was credited with his heart bleeding for victims of oppression.

British created Iraq for their own interests. They set up what they called Arab facades – weak, pliable governments, parliamentary if possible, so long as the British effectively ruled. If U.S.- U.K support for Saddam was mentioned at all, which was rare, it was excused on the grounds that Iraq was fighting with Iran, a more dangerous enemy… Both U.S. and U.K. continued their support for Saddam without notable change, including provisions of means to develop weapons of mass destruction after the end of the war with Iran. In 1989 Iraqi nuclear engineers were invited to the U.S. for advanced training. In April 199o, four months before Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, a high level senatorial delegation, led by Bob Dole (1996 Republican presidential candidate) went to Iraq to convey Bush’s good wishes to Saddam and to assure him that he need not be concerned with the criticisms he hears from some maverick commentators in the U.S. Support continued until the Kuwait invasion… Wolfowitz’s appointment as president of the World Bank in 2005 was accompanied by laudatory articles on his dedication to democracy and development, and his struggle against corruption. Ignored was his atrocious record in undermining human rights and democracy in Indonesia, which was bitterly condemned by activists there at the same time, his role in the collapse of the economy, and the report that his friend Suharto was by far the world champion for corruption. 

Israel creates wall to keep dividing up Palestinan settlements The U.S. gives Israel money for this.  – Israel rejected a peace offer from Egypt in 1971. In 1976, U.S. vetoed a security council resolution calling for a 2-state settlement in accord with overwhelming international consensus. A lot of U.S. population doesn’t want aid for Israel. 

People in Baghdad received a survey on why the U.S. invaded Iraq. 1% said it was to establish democracy, 5% said to help Iraqis. A plurality of the rest took Washington’s motive to be to control Iraq’s resources and to reorganize the Middle East in U.S. interests.

Most Americans believe that countries should have the right to go to war on their own only if they have strong evidence that they are in imminent danger of being attacked. Bush and his admin are internationally calling for dominating the world by military force.

Law Professor at University of Texas- Sanford Levinson writes- “In the post-9/11 world, the administration behaves as if constitutional and other norms are suspended. 

The invasion of Iraq was initially justified as an act of so-called anticipatory self-defense. The attack violated the principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, a basis for the UN Charter, which declared the initiation of a war of aggression is “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh told Financial Times, “The notion that the president has the constitutional power to permit torture is like saying he has the constitutional power to commit genocide.”  

When Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and other worthies in government and commentary lament over Saddam’s terrible crimes, they always bravely omit the words: “with our help, because we did not care.” Efforts are being made for a tribunal that seems independent, but whose handlers U.S. can control. Dewey wrote we will remain in industrial feudalism until it is replaced by industrial democracy. Until then politics will remain the shadow cast by big business over society. 

A government’s use of force is almost always accompanied by professions of benign intent. An independent Iraq would be likely to get weapons of mass destruction to use against Israel… The words atomic or nuclear do not appear in UN Charter. A war of aggression was seen as the supreme international crime. The consensus remains. It was not rejected, but it was ignored. Retraction of consensus took place in 1990s when US arrogated itself the freedom to resort to force, irrespective of attack. Book on John Quincy Adams – America is unique morally and can’t be constrained  

When Democracy fits well with U.S. interests it is promoted. Otherwise it is ignored. Grand Ayatollah encouraged elections