August 2003

Terror and Regime Change City

"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors but as liberators."
Gen. Stanley Maude
British Forces commander as his
troops entered Baghdad, 1917

"All of the misery and suffering in the Middle East has been directly caused by the Americans and the British." former official in the Turkish Consulate,
New York, June 2003

Over the past few months, I have attempted in "Sparks Fly UP" to chronicle the serial failures of the Bush Administration. These columns have detailed how this collection of losers have codified their right-wing agenda into official government policy…on several fronts. Perhaps this is a good time to write a travelogue on this train ride to Hell.

Let's start with the War on Terror and examine exactly what is 'terrorism'. There is a workable definition in the U.S. Code and old Army Manuals…"terrorism is the calculated use of violence to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature…through intimidation, coercion or instilling fear". That sounds reasonable. The problem arises when this definition becomes government policy, and then it is called 'low intensity conflict' or counter terror'. Noam Chomsky offers a better definition-"terrorism is what they do to us and our allies".

So the bound-for-glory American train, with Engineer Bush at the controls, has stopped again at Regime Change City…by way of the Baghdad Express. We have stopped here before- many times-and the place is filthy…teeming with shifty-eyed vermin like the thugs from Halliburton and Bechtel…only in town long enough to scam a quick buck. There's museums to be looted, libraries to be burned, archaeological digs of cultures 3000 years old to be raped and crushed … the fortunes of war…the only rule is to stay the fuck away from the Oil Ministry.

What about the new residents of Regime Change City…how are their newly liberated lives? The summertime temperatures rise to 140s F., they have no electricity and no running water, there are armed thugs roaming the streets and that's not to mention the extremely pissed-off, well-armed American and British soldiers. ("One weekend a month, my ass"-a sign posted on a U.S. military vehicle in Baghdad). They, for the most part, have no jobs and no money…and many have no homes. They have been robbed and raped and murdered…welcome to Regime Change City…land of peace, prosperity and democracy.

Regime Change City…the last half of the 20th century saw some spectacular stopovers by the American train. After the good citizens of Iran elected Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, he fulfilled a promise to his countrymen-he nationalized the holdings of the British/Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum). The Brits, having recently lost India and reelected Winston Churchill, were having none of that. So through the good offices of Ike Eisenhower and the CIA…Iran got a Regime Change. They cooked up a good, old-fashioned coup d'etat at the American Embassy in Tehran, and delivered Shah Reza Pahlavi and his murderous
regime to the people of Iran. SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, were legendary torturers. Amnesty International documented that they routinely shoved broken bottles into the bodily orifices of their 'enemies'. They prowled the planet in search of anyone they deemed a 'threat'. After 25 years of this Brit/U.S. butcher, is it any wonder that the Iranian people threw the bum out, stormed the American embassy from which this reign of terror originated and took American hostages.

CIA operatives assassinated President Diem of S.Vietnam in 1963 and brought us again to Regime Change City….about 10 years later there were 58,000 dead Americans and about 1 million dead Vietnamese. The Vietnamese were firmly in charge of their country and their fates…and yet another stopover at Regime Change City proved disastrous.

In 1973, we stopped again by way of Chile. The CIA organized a general strike after Salvador Allende, a Marxist, won a democratic election for President. Huge bribes were paid to corrupt trade union officials (our tax dollars at work) to participate…hell, even the taxi drivers were involved. It was a brilliant strategy to bring down an 'unfriendly government' … something our spooks do very well. Marxism, communism, socialism, national liberation…these were the mid-20th century version of terrorism that often led us to Regime Change City. In any event, the CIA backed General A. Pinochet, who was firmly in charge of the Chilean Military, whacked Salvador Allende, seized power and unleashed a reign of terror that was unrivalled in Chile's history. Pinochet and his DINA (Chile's version of SAVAK) routinely rounded up 'enemies' by the hundreds…herded them into the soccer stadium in Santiago…and shot them down like rabid dogs in the street. Now that's terror.

The U.S. train stayed away from the stop for a few brief years, but returned in a big way in the mid 1980s. Our Central American neighbors were hauled on board. Thousands were tortured and murdered in Nicaragua and El Salvador to remove a 'cancer from our own hemisphere'- this according to then Secretary of State George Schultz (now a player in Iraq with Bechtel). In fact, our latest stop in Regime Change City features many of the players from the carnage in Central America including Admiral Poindexter and John 'arm the Contras' Negroponte.

Meanwhile at home, unemployment is high, mortgage foreclosures are high…the economy is still in the tank, our schools suck and our military adventure in Iraq is costing us about 4 billion a month. Bush's tax cuts and Greenspan's rosy forecasts have changed nothing.

Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist, mused that the Bush Team was suffering from Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. I agree…whatever happened to Afghanistan?

Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction? Where is the Iraq/al-Qaeda link? Don't we need a Regime Change in North Korea? Wait a minute…they have no oil and they do have a million man army and a nuclear weapon, don't they?

While spinning the notorious '16 words' in the State of the Union speech…Bush administration officials have been hustling to discredit Joseph Wilson-former ambassador and source of the news that the intelligence was cooked in the Niger/Iraq uranium deal. Wilson had been sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate the report that Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of uranium. The Bush spinners now say that Wilson was chosen because of the influence of his wife, a covert CIA operative. This was reported by Evans/Novak and Time Magazine…it is a federal crime to disclose the identity of an intelligence agent…let's go hang the bastards. Meanwhile, Dr. David Kelly, the British Defense Ministry source of the 'sexed intelligence', shows up dead-"oh what tangled webs we weave"…

Regime Change City has been the source of much of the misery and suffering and yes, terror in the world…when will the colonialists who launch preemptive wars against sovereign states and conspire to bring down governments ever fucking get it? How many Irans and Vietnams and Chiles and Central Americas and Iraqs will it take? Terror is the bedrock of our global policy.