All these refugees, homeless, destroyed, killed people are Muslims whose lands are attacked by US/NATO/West..
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Showing posts with label Imperialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Imperialism. Show all posts
Who is hosting maximum Refugees ?
Global Struggles for Dominance: Noam Chomsky on ISIS, NATO and Russia
Has ISIS taken a foothold inside Europe? Is Erdogan's Turkey in the process of making a huge geopolitical shift that will change the balance of power in one of the most volatile regions if the world? Are NATO and the US moving toward peace or war with Russia? In this latest exclusive interview for Truthout, Noam Chomsky offers unique insights on these issues, challenging prevailing narratives about what is happening around the world.
C.J. Polychroniou: The rise of ISIS (also known as Daesh or ISIL) is a direct consequence of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and represents today, by far, the most brutal and dangerous terrorist organization we have seen in recent memory. It also appears that its tentacles have reached beyond the "black holes" created by the United States in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan and have now taken hold inside Europe, a fact acknowledged recently by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In fact, it has been estimated that attacks organized or inspired by ISIS have taken place every 48 hours in cities outside the above-mentioned countries since early June 2016. Why have countries like Germany and France become the targets of ISIS?
Noam Chomsky: I think we have to be cautious in interpreting ISIS claims of responsibility for terrorist attacks. Take the worst of the recent ones, in Nice. It was discussed by Akbar Ahmed, one of the most careful and discerning analysts of radical Islam. He concludes from the available evidence that the perpetrator, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was probably "not a devout Muslim. He had a criminal record, drank alcohol, ate pork, did drugs, did not fast, pray or regularly attend a mosque and was not religious in any way. He was cruel to his wife, who left him. This is not what many Muslims would typically consider reflective of their faith, particularly those who consider themselves religiously devout." ISIS did (belatedly) "take credit" for the attack, as they routinely do, whatever the facts, but Ahmed regards the claim as highly dubious in this case. On this and similar attacks, he concludes that "the reality is that while ISIS may influence these Muslims in a general way, their animus is coming from their position as unwanted immigrants in Europe, especially in France, where they are still not treated French, even if they are born there. The community as a whole has a disproportionate population of unemployed youth with poor education and housing and is constantly the butt of cultural humiliation. It is not an integrated community, barring some honorable exceptions. From it come the young men like Lahouaiej Bouhlel. The pattern of [the] petty criminal may be observed in the other recent terrorist attacks in Europe, including those in Paris and Brussels."
Ahmed's analysis corresponds closely to that of others who have done extensive investigation of recruits to ISIS, notably Scott Atran and his research team. And it should, I think, be taken seriously, along with his prescriptions, which also are close to those of other knowledgeable analysts: to "provide the Muslim community educational and employment opportunities, youth programs, and promote acceptance, diversity and understanding. There is much that governments can do to provide language, cultural and religious training for the community, which will help resolve, for example, the problem of foreign imams having difficulty transferring their roles of leadership into local society."
Merely to take one illustration of the problem to be faced, Atran points out that "only 7 to 8 percent of France's population is Muslim, whereas 60 to 70 percent of France's prison population is Muslim." It's also worth taking note of a recent National Research Council report, which found that "with respect to political context, terrorism and its supporting audiences appear to be fostered by policies of extreme political repression and discouraged by policies of incorporating both dissident and moderate groups responsibly into civil society and the political process."
It's easy to say, "Let's strike back with violence" -- police repression, carpet-bomb them to oblivion (Ted Cruz), etc. -- very much what al-Qaeda and ISIS have hoped for, and very likely to intensify the problems, as, indeed, has been happening until now.
What is ISIS's aim, when targeting innocent civilians, such as the attack on the seaside town of Nice in France in which 84 people were killed?
As I mentioned, we should, I think, be cautious about the claims and charges of ISIS initiative, or even involvement. But when they are involved in such atrocities, the strategy is clear enough. Careful and expert analysts of ISIS and violent insurgencies (Scott Atran, William Polk and others) generally tend to take ISIS at its word. Sometimes they cite the "playbook" in which the core strategy used by ISIS is laid out, written a decade ago by the Mesopotamian wing of the al-Qaeda affiliate that morphed into ISIS. Here are the first two axioms (quoting an article by Atran):
[Axiom 1:] Hit soft targets: 'Diversify and widen the vexation strikes against the Crusader-Zionist enemy in every place in the Islamic world, and even outside of it if possible, so as to disperse the efforts of the alliance of the enemy and thus drain it to the greatest extent possible.'
[Axiom 2:] Strike when potential victims have their guard down to maximise fear in general populations and drain their economies: 'If a tourist resort that the Crusaders patronise... is hit, all of the tourist resorts in all of the states of the world will have to be secured by the work of additional forces, which are double the ordinary amount, and a huge increase in spending.'
And the strategy has been quite successful, both in spreading terrorism and imposing great costs on the "Crusaders" with slight expenditure.
It has been reported that tourists in France will be protected by armed forces and soldiers at holiday sites, including beaches. How much of this development is linked to the refugee crisis in Europe, where millions have been arriving in the last couple of years from war-torn regions around the world?
Hard to judge. The crimes in France have not been traced to recent refugees, as far as I have seen. Rather, it seems to be more like the Lahouaiej Bouhlel case. But there is great fear of refugees, far beyond any evidence relating them to crime. Much the same appears to be true in the US, where Trump-style rhetoric about Mexico sending criminals and rapists doubtless frightens people, even though the limited statistical evidence indicates that "first-generation immigrants are predisposed to lower crime rates than native-born Americans," as reported by Michelle Ye Hee Lee in The Washington Post.
To what extent would you say that Brexit was being driven by xenophobia and the massive inflow of immigrants into Europe?
There has been plenty of reporting giving that impression, but I haven't seen any hard data. And it's worth recalling that the inflow of immigrants is from the EU, not those fleeing from conflict. It's also worth recalling that Britain has had a non-trivial role in generating refugees. The invasion of Iraq, to give one example. Many others, if we consider greater historical depth. The burden of dealing with the consequences of US-UK crimes falls mainly on countries that had no responsibility for them, like Lebanon, where about 40 percent of the population are estimated to be refugees.
Are the US and the major western powers really involved in a war against ISIS? This would seem doubtful to an outside observer, given the growing influence of ISIS and the continuing ability of the organization to recruit soldiers for its cause from inside Europe.
Speculations to that effect are rampant in the Middle East, but I don't think they have any credibility. The US is powerful, but not all-powerful. There is a tendency to attribute everything that happens in the world to the CIA or some diabolical Western plan. There is plenty to condemn, sharply. And the US is indeed powerful. But it's nothing like what is often believed.
There seems to be a geopolitical shift underway in Turkey's regional political role, which may have been the ultimate cause behind the failed coup of July 2016. Do you detect such a shift under way?
There certainly has been a shift in regional policy from former [Turkish Prime Minister] Davutoğlu's "Zero Problems Policy," but that's because problems abound. The goal of becoming a regional power, sometimes described as neo-Ottoman, seems to be continuing, if not accelerating. Relations with the West are becoming more tense as Erdogan's government continues its strong drift towards authoritarian rule, with quite extreme repressive measures. That naturally impels Turkey to seek alliances elsewhere, particularly [with] Russia. Erdogan's first post-coup visit was to Moscow, in order to restore "the Moscow-Ankara friendship axis" (in his words) to what it was before Turkey shot down a Russian jet in November 2015 when it allegedly passed across the Turkish border for a few seconds while on a bombing mission in Syria. Very unfortunately, there is very little Western opposition to Erdogan's violent and vicious escalation of atrocities against the Kurdish population in the Southeast, which some observers now describe as approaching the horrors of the 1990s. As for the coup, its background remains obscure, for the time being. I don't know of evidence that shifts in regional policy played a role.
The coup against Erdogan ensured the consolidation of a highly authoritarian regime in Turkey: Erdogan arrested thousands of people and closed down media outlets, schools and universities following the coup. The effects of the coup may, in fact, even strengthen the role of the military in political affairs as it will come under the direct control of the president himself, a move that Erdogan has already initiated. How will this affect Turkey's relations with the US and European powers, given the alleged concerns of the latter about human rights and democracy inside Turkey and about Erdogan's pursuit of closer ties with Putin?
The correct word is "alleged." During the 1990s, the Turkish government was carrying out horrifying atrocities, targeting its Kurdish population -- tens of thousands killed, thousands of villages and towns destroyed, hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) driven from their homes, every imaginable form of torture. Eighty percent of the arms were coming from Washington, increasing as atrocities increased. In the single year, 1997, when atrocities were peaking, Clinton sent more arms than the sum total [sent to Turkey] throughout the entire post-war era until the onset of the counterinsurgency campaign. The media virtually ignored all of this. The [New York] Times has a bureau in Ankara, but it reported almost nothing. The facts were, of course, widely known in Turkey -- and elsewhere, to those who took the trouble to look. Now that atrocities are peaking again, as I mentioned, the West prefers to look elsewhere.
Nevertheless, relations between Erdogan's regime and the West are becoming more tense and there is great anger against the West among Erdogan supporters because of Western attitudes toward the coup (mildly critical, but not enough for the regime) and toward the increased authoritarianism and sharp repression (mild criticism, but too much for the regime). In fact, it is widely believed that the US initiated the coup.
The US is also condemned for asking for evidence before extraditing Gulen, who Erdogan blames for the coup. Not a little irony here. One may recall that the US bombed Afghanistan because the Taliban refused to turn Osama bin Laden over without evidence. Or take the case of [Emmanuel "Toto"] Constant, the leader of the terrorist force FRAPH [Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti] that ran wild in Haiti under the military dictatorship of the early '90s. When the junta was overthrown by a Marine invasion, he escaped to New York, where he was living comfortably. Haiti wanted him extradited and had more than enough evidence. But Clinton refused, very likely because he would have exposed Clinton's ties to the murderous military junta.
The recent migration deal between Turkey and the EU seems to be falling apart, with Erdogan having gone so far as to say publicly that "European leaders are not being honest." What could be the consequences for Turkey-EU relations, and for the refugees themselves, if the deal were to fall apart?
Basically, Europe bribed Turkey to keep the miserable refugees -- many fleeing from crimes for which the West bears no slight responsibility -- from reaching Europe. It is similar to Obama's efforts to enlist Mexican support in keeping Central American refugees -- often very definitely victims of US policies, including those of the Obama administration -- from reaching the US border. Morally grotesque, but better than letting them drown in the Mediterranean. The deterioration of relations will probably make their travail even worse.
NATO, still a US-dominated military alliance, has increased its presence in Eastern Europe lately, as it is bent on stopping Russia's revival by creating divisions between Europe and Russia. Is the US looking for a military conflict with Russia, or are such moves driven by the need to keep the military-industrial complex intact in a post-Cold War world?
NATO is surely a US-dominated military alliance. As the USSR collapsed, Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a continent-wide security system, which the US rejected, insisting on preserving NATO -- and expanding it. Gorbachev agreed to allow a unified Germany to join NATO, a remarkable concession in the light of history. There was, however, a quid pro quo: that NATO not expand "one inch to the East," meaning to East Germany. That was promised by President Bush I and Secretary of State James Baker, but not on paper; it was a verbal commitment, and the US later claimed that [that] means it was not binding.
Careful archival research by Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, published last spring in the prestigious Harvard-MIT journal International Security, reveals very plausibly that this was intentional deceit, a very significant discovery that substantially resolves, I think, scholarly dispute about the matter. NATO did expand to East Germany; in later years to the Russian border. Those plans were sharply condemned by George Kennan and other highly respected commentators because they were very likely to lead to a new Cold War, as Russia naturally felt threatened. The threat became more severe when NATO invited Ukraine to join in 2008 and 2013. As Western analysts recognize, that extends the threat to the core of Russian strategic concerns, a matter discussed, for example, by John Mearsheimer in the lead article in the major establishment journal, Foreign Affairs.
However, I do not think the goal is to stop Russia's revival or to keep the military-industrial complex intact. And the US certainly doesn't want a military conflict, which would destroy both sides (and the world). Rather, I think it's the normal effort of a great power to extend its global dominance. But it does increase the threat of war, if only by accident, as Kennan and others presciently warned.
In your view, does a nuclear war between the US and Russia remain a very real possibility in today's world?
A very real possibility, and in fact, an increasing one. That's not just my judgment. It's also the judgment of the experts who set the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists; of former Defense Secretary William Perry, one of the most experienced and respected experts on these matters; and of numerous others who are by no means scaremongers. The record of near accidents, which could have been terminal, is shocking, not to speak of very dangerous adventurism. It is almost miraculous that we have survived the nuclear weapons era, and playing with fire is irresponsible in the extreme. In fact, these weapons should be removed from the Earth, as even many of the most conservative analysts recognize -- Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and others.
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Iraq war: after Blair and Bush met, the tempo changed

Tuesday 2 April 2002 was a warm spring day, the first after the Easter weekend. The country was coming to terms with the death of the Queen Mother, a young singer called Gareth Gates had shot to No 1 and Admiral Lord Boyce, chief of the defence staff, was heading to Buckinghamshire for a meeting with the prime minister at Chequers.
A submariner in his early career, colleagues thought Boyce rather prickly, a trait cabinet minister Clare Short attributed to the long periods he had spent underwater.
Certainly, his summons to see Tony Blair seemed to have left him a little nonplussed. British forces were already deployed in Afghanistan, which was his priority. And though he had heard talk in the press and around Whitehall about a shift in interest towards Iraq, he wasn’t one for gossip or small talk.
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Blair, however, wanted to chat about Saddam Hussein. “I guess my presence at Chequers on that particular occasion was simply … if there were questions coming up about what could be done militarily; what was our capability should we be asked to do something,” Boyce explained to the Chilcot inquiry.
If there had been a significant hardening of thinking in Downing Street, Boyce appeared to have left Chequers none the wiser. As far as he was concerned, attacking Iraq just wasn’t on the cards.
“There was no discussion on the detail of military action or military options,” he said. “Of course, Iraq wasn’t off our plot entirely. It was something which the MoD was keeping a watching eye on, if you like.
“At the meeting … no particular preparations were made. It was a scoping opportunity … we were certainly not doing any thinking about any sort of military adventure.”
The meeting was rather casual – and very Blairish. Others in the room included Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, and Sir John Scarlett, head of the joint intelligence committee (JIC).
But the cabinet secretary, Lord Wilson, hadn’t known it had taken place; the foreign and defence secretaries weren’t there either – and no minutes were taken. The discussion, it seemed, had been organised to help Blair prepare his thoughts for an important trip to the US at the end of the week.

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush greet British Prime Minister Tony Blair on his arrival at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, Saturday, April 5, 2002. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP
What exactly happened on 6 and 7 April in Crawford, Texas, between the US president, George W Bush, and the man who was determined to be his best friend, not even Chilcot’s 2.6m-word report has been able to entirely unravel.
But if there was one event that changed the conversation about Iraq, it was this. Because while Blair insisted no deal was done and no hands shaken on military action, Chilcot’s report describes how the mood changed thereafter and how the Whitehall machine, at different speeds in different departments, reacting to different voices, began to hum; the tempo changed.
And little wonder.
We now know that Boyce was not fully in the loop. He had not been told that months earlier, in December 2001, there had been “quite substantive exchanges between No 10 and the White House” about the possibility of military action against Iraq.
“They weren’t ones which we were apprised of,” Boyce told Chilcot. Nor would he have known that in the days before Crawford, Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, had sent a secret memo to Bush saying that “Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary” in Iraq. “He is convinced the threat is real … and success against Saddam will yield more regional success.”
In the weeks after Crawford, there were more obvious indications that Iraq was about to become Britain’s problem. Richard Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state, told Sir David Manning, Blair’s foreign policy adviser, that the US and the UK were already discussing the idea of Britain sending a 20,000-strong armoured division to Iraq. This was news to Manning – and he was miffed.
In a terse letter sent on 21 May, the Ministry of Defence was ordered to find out who was saying what to whom, seeing as “no options have yet been presented to ministers”.
Ten days later the MoD had got nowhere. In a return letter, a senior officer concluded the talk was just speculation and the Americans must have “misinterpreted” what they had been told.
It did not matter. Whether through accident or design, Chilcot noted that “by mid–May, the perception the UK might provide an armoured division for military operations had already gained currency in the US”. The idea “had got into the American bloodstream”.
Though Boyce doesn’t appear to have been privy to Blair’s thinking, the military had reason to be getting twitchy. We now know that shortly after Crawford, the MoD set up a small informal working group under Lt Gen Sir Anthony Pigott to “brainstorm” the possible options for and repercussions of British involvement in a military effort.
Pigott told Chilcot that he was trying to prevent the UK setting off on an “off the cuff … let’s go and do that” campaign. “We need to do some scoping work … What could we be dealing with here? What might be the big issues?”
But as work began, it became abundantly clear to senior military officials that the Americans had already decided to pursue regime change and that the push could come before the end of the year.
The Americans, it seemed, were determined to remove Saddam. And they had also assumed, for reasons that were not entirely clear to military chiefs, that Britain would be alongside them.
Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, was worried about what he was hearing from his officials, and in early June sought guidance from Blair ahead of a meeting with his opposite number, Donald Rumsfeld.

Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and defence secretary Geoff Hoon, attend an informal NATO ministers meeting in Poiana Brasov, Romania in 2004. Photograph: Vadim Ghirda/AP
The UK appeared to be in a tricky situation. In his note to the prime minister, Hoon said: “If we discuss the detail and timescales of a potential UK military contribution to a US‑led coalition, it could send a misleading signal that we have decided to support a specific line of military action.
“Equally, if we are not clear with the US at this stage about our military constraints, we face the danger of our not being able to bring anything meaningful to the table at the right time and the consequent loss of influence that would bring.”
Hoon wanted the Americans to know that the British needed “plenty of warning in order to be able to contribute to military action”. But Blair wasn’t happy. “That will send a wobbly message,” he wrote.
As the military tried to reconcile the mixed signals from Whitehall and Washington, the US formally invited the British to join a military planning team based at Central Command in Tampa, Florida.
Boyce said this early military planning was taking place in a “political void” and he says he stressed to the Americans that joining the team should not imply “a political commitment to contribute to an actual operation”.
But while he said he kept reiterating this to his American counterparts – “I can’t remember how many times I must have said … that our policy was not regime change” – they seemed to know better. “The reaction of the Americans was always: ‘Yes, I hear what you say but come the day, we know you will be there’,” he told Chilcot.
Elsewhere in Whitehall, there were others attempting to read the runes from Downing Street over exactly what was going on, and what Britain was being drawn into. The attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, was one. He had been watching events unfold and didn’t like what he was seeing. It irritated him when he heard ministers talking loosely about whether there was a clear basis for military action against Iraq, and he wanted the Americans to know that whatever conclusions they had drawn about the use of force, he did not share them.
He had steeled himself to report this to William Taft IV, legal adviser to the Department of State, at a meeting on 22 May. But in the end the two men somehow avoided the subject and just chatted.
Lord Goldsmith evidently thought it was more important to inform the prime minister of his misgivings, even though his advice was unsolicited and not “terribly welcome” by Downing Street.
Knowing that Blair was due to meet Bush again at the end of July, Goldsmith set about drawing up legal advice, which he presented to the prime minister on 23 July. He told Blair that, to his mind, the Americans were plain wrong to think they could take military action against Iraq to remove Saddam without going back to the UN.
“I had looked at whether there was a self-defence argument and didn’t believe there was. That was because I didn’t see any evidence of an imminent threat, and you need an imminent threat,” he told Chilcot. “I didn’t want there to be any doubt.”
The legalities, however, were not going to upset the special, increasingly intimate relationship between Blair and Bush. As the Chilcot report has now shown, any concerns about the legality of a conflict had not prevented Blair from offering unwavering support to the president, as set out in that now notorious memo, dated 28 July. “I will be with you, whatever,” Blair wrote.
Goldsmith did not see the prime minister again for three months, but in the meantime, he decided he needed to know more about the threat posed by Saddam, in case this changed his thinking. He asked for a briefing from the man who would know – Scarlett.

Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
Scarlett, though, was a busy man, who was having difficulties of his own. The JIC had already compiled one report on Iraq in May 2001 and had undertaken another assessment in March 2002, which had been drawn up ahead of Blair’s trip to Crawford. It had reached many of the same conclusions.
Iraq was assessed to retain some stocks of chemical weapons, but there were no details on locations or quantities; it was stated that there was clear evidence of continuing biological warfare activity – and intelligence about the likelihood of mobile production laboratories was being taken seriously.
But the Chilcot inquiry heard that intelligence gathered on Iraq was far from an exact science. It needed to be treated with great care, as Sir Mark Allen, former head of MI6’s counter-intelligence branch and one of its more maverick voices, was keen to stress. “Actually our knowledge of Iraq was very, very superficial,” he told Chilcot. “We were small animals in a dark wood with the wind getting up and changing direction the whole time. These were very, very difficult days.”
Scarlett knew this all too well and had been working on the basis that the March analysis could be filleted for publication. Instead, this dossier was put in cold storage until the autumn, when things suddenly gathered pace.
“I suppose the person who opened the freezer was the prime minister,” Scarlett told Chilcot. “He made a public announcement that the government assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities would be published in the coming weeks.”
The pressure was on. But MI6, known formally as the Secret Intelligence Service, appeared to have new and potentially important information that was passed to the prime minister on 12 September. A new source had provided intelligence that appeared to support claims that Iraq had “continued to produce chemical and biological agents” and had “military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons”.
This was used by Scarlett to help underpin key judgments in the government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which was published to much fanfare, and a fair degree of ridicule, on 24 September.
Though too late to be included in the document, MI6 privately disseminated a second report from the same sourcing chain, which stated VX, Sarin and Soman toxic chemicals had been produced by Iraq and had been loaded into a variety of containers, including “linked hollow glass spheres”. The source said there had been “accelerated production of substances for several years”.
But within weeks, senior officers at MI6’s HQ in Vauxhall, central London, were beginning to sweat; doubts had begun to emerge about the reliability of this information.
To the layman, the details the source had provided sounded like something from a Hollywood movie. And that’s because they were. More precisely, they had come from a film called The Rock, starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery.
As Chilcot noted: “In early October, questions were raised with SIS about the mention of glass containers. It was pointed out that: glass containers were not typically used in chemical munitions; and that a popular movie (The Rock) had inaccurately depicted nerve agents being carried in glass beads or spheres.” SIS began to realise it had been duped and eventually concluded the source had been lying. But, remarkably, it decided not to tell anyone who might need to know – such as the prime minister.
Another intelligence source that had been heavily relied upon by the JIC was codenamed Curve Ball, but this information also had health warnings. For a start, it had not come to British intelligence directly – it had been channelled through the German spy agencies.
And as Chilcot reported, SIS didn’t get to meet Curve Ball until much later, and when it did, agents didn’t like the look of him. They were forced to conclude the information he provided – specifically that Iraq had developed mobile facilities for the production of biological agent – was wholly unreliable.
Asked by Chilcot to summarise the unpalatable and chastening lessons that MI6 had had to learn, a senior officer told him: “It’s not so much a lesson. It’s an observation that we based a lot on not enough.”
While MI6 kept quiet about the doubts over the authenticity of some of the intelligence, the military and Goldsmith were simultaneously grappling with different, if intertwined, problems of their own. Having had a personal briefing from Scarlett, the attorney general remained unconvinced about the threat posed by Saddam, and hadn’t changed his mind about needing to go back to the UN to seek authority for military action.
But a new resolution that was being proposed did not go far enough, as far as he was concerned. Goldsmith met Blair on 22 October to outline his concerns that resolution 1441 – which stated that Iraq was in material breach of its UN obligations – still did not provide a sound basis for military action.
He gave the same gloomy prognosis to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, on 7 November, the day before the resolution was passed.
“My provisional view was that there wasn’t enough there,” Goldsmith told Chilcot. “As I have consistently said, from the legal point of view it would have been safer to have had a second resolution because it would have put the matter beyond doubt. Nobody could have then challenged the legality.”
Goldsmith was also angered by “Chinese whispers” across Whitehall that appeared to be putting a much more positive gloss on his advice. As far as he was concerned, even with resolution 1441, everything “would not be all right on the night”.
He told Chilcot that the gossip appeared to be coming from the “undergrowth, if I can say, beneath ministers. Sometimes people who are least involved in issues pick up things and they then come out. That is just the way government seems to work.

Lord Goldsmith arrives at Number 10. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
As Goldsmith told Downing Street what it didn’t want to hear, so the MoD was still seeking clarity from No 10 about the scale of Britain’s potential military commitment to any US-led invasion.
Declassified papers show Hoon presented the prime minister with a UK military options paper on 15 October – and said that an urgent decision had to be taken. “We need to decide this week,” the paper began. “US military planning for an operation in Iraq is gathering pace.”
Three basic packages were outlined, with the third being the most ambitious: it included more than 300 tanks and armoured vehicles and 28,000 personnel. It would be “a major element of the northern line of attack which the US now judge as essential”.
A memo dated 31 October sets out how Blair offered support for the more expensive and risky third option and concluded that we “should now tell the US … for planning purposes”.
Of all the scenarios, this seemed to be the one favoured by the MoD. If the UK were to attack Iraq, coming in from the north had clear advantages; the area was more stable than the south and contained many of the oil fields that needed to be protected and secured.
But there was a problem: Turkey. Britain needed to use it as a base.
In early discussions with his opposite number in Ankara, Boyce thought the Turks would allow the British to pitch camp. “Certainly when I spoke to the chief of the Turkish general staff, Gen [Hilmi] Ozkuk, in the very early days, there didn’t appear – well, he didn’t seem to think it would be a particular problem.”
Even after the Americans warned the MoD that “we were probably pushing against a closed door”, Boyce held out hope. “I was talking to Ozkuk and he was giving me, sort of, not exactly bright green lights but certainly not saying: ‘Don’t bother to darken my door again.’”

Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce leaves Downing Street February 6, 2003. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
The red light came at the turn of the year, which stopped British planning for an invasion from the north.
So, at the start of 2003, the situation looked bleak; the British military was scrabbling to find a new role, the attorney general was warning there was no basis for the use of force, and some of the intelligence that had been used to support claims of Saddam’s military capabilities was falling apart. Yet within weeks, UK forces would invade.
Never an organisation to shirk a challenge, Boyce and the other chiefs of staff assured Blair in early January that the UK still had enough time to prepare for an invasion from the south, through Kuwait. But with time running out, he conceded there was inevitably going to be “some equipment shortfall … though none which were being advised as showstoppers or of critical importance to mission accomplishment.”
The MoD was also concerned about what was happening with postwar planning and was attempting to seek assurances from the Americans that they had a robust blueprint – because Britain didn’t have one. A memo dated 16 January 2003 said: “The prime minister agrees … that much greater clarity about the US intentions is required.”
Boyce also warned Blair he was still worried about the legalities. “I made it clear to the prime minister in January 2003 that I would require an assurance of the legal base of the conflict. This was reiterated more than once in the following weeks.”
The prime minister, however, was to get a break from an unlikely source. The attorney general had given Blair his draft advice on the legality of any conflict on 14 January – and it was much the same as months before. But over the coming weeks, Goldsmith had an unexpected and quite sudden change of heart.
The process began on 23 January when he had a private meeting with Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s ambassador to the UN, who had evidently been sent to soften him up. “Sir Jeremy had made some good points and he had made some headway with me, but, frankly, there was still work for me to do and he hadn’t got me there, if you like, yet,” Goldsmith told Chilcot.
On 10 February the attorney general flew to Washington and had a number of meetings with top legal advisers who had all concluded that the use of force did not require a further UN resolution. “The US were convincing,” Goldsmith admitted. They told him that even the French didn’t think a new resolution was required – so why did he?
If it wasn’t quite an epiphany, Goldsmith nonetheless changed tack. He told the inquiry that he had asked himself: “Which side of the argument would you prefer to be on? And I took the view I would prefer to be on the side of the argument that said a second resolution wasn’t necessary.”
When he flew home, he informed Downing Street, though he did not give his advice in writing. It was the green light Blair had doubtless been praying for.
In his evidence to the inquiry, Hans Blix, head of the UN’s weapons inspectors, said that by the end of February, with almost 250,000 coalition forces on the border of Iraq, the momentum for war “was almost unstoppable”. “As I have said, sometimes perhaps a little roughly, the UK remained a prisoner on that train.”
If Downing Street didn’t quite see it that way, Wilson, the cabinet secretary, admitted to Chilcot that “everything was done at a rush … it did make it a tight-run thing.”
Perhaps inevitably, perhaps deliberately, certain things – and certain people – got overlooked. One of them was Clare Short, secretary of state at the Department for International Development. She had expected to be involved in discussions about the aftermath of any conflict, but had been kept out of any conversations until the last moment.
“Suddenly, there is a flurry of correspondence,” she told Chilcot. “There is all of this: ‘Keep Clare and DfID out of it,’ and then, just at the last minute, they are suddenly writing letters saying: ‘We must make preparations.’ And I’m saying to our military: ‘You’re going to have to feed people’, and they suddenly, in the last week, they ordered food. I mean, it was mad. But they did it, and they wanted to get closer to us suddenly at the last minute, and we didn’t sulk. The situation was too serious.”
She added: “But the chaos had its consequences. I think the British military should have said to Blair: ‘We are not ready.’ I think that was their duty and they failed in that duty.”
Chilcot revealed that by the time the war started, nobody in government appeared to have overall responsibility for postwar planning; and nobody in the military was taking responsibility for the shortfalls in vital equipment.
In one of Chilcot’s coldest and most damning conclusions, he said: “When Mr Blair set out the UK’s vision for the future of Iraq in the House of Commons on 18 March 2003, no assessment had been made of whether that vision was achievable, no agreement had been reached with the US on a workable post-conflict plan, UN authorisation had not yet been secured, and there was no decision on the UN’s role in post-conflict Iraq.”
A conflict that began in haste and endures today did not have to start when it did, nor in the way it did, Chilcot said. “The evidence is there for all to see. It is an account of an intervention which went badly wrong with consequences to this day.”
Iraq war: after Blair and Bush met, the tempo changed
by Nick Hopkins, theguardian.com
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/09/iraq-war-after-blair-and-bush-met-the-tempo-changed
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Islamic Extremism is a Product of Western Imperialism
As we struggle to come to terms with the latest terrorist attacks in Brussels, it is important that we understand the causes of such extremism. After all, Islamic extremism was virtually unknown fifty years ago and suicide bombings were inconceivable. And yet today it seems that we are confronted with both on a daily basis. Keep reading >>>>>
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Imperialism justifications
Whether old or new, imperialism will always find some moral justification for its expansion, occupation, loot and plunder and enslaving of defeated people. Modern European imperialism traced its legitimacy not only in its ideology of the civilising nations but also to the past. In this capacity, they justified the colonisation of North African countries, which in the ancient period were a part of the Roman Empire. David John Mattingly in his book Imperialism, Power and Identity points out that in the 19th century, when the French and the Italians invaded North African countries and annexed them as colonics, they claimed their right to rule over these territories as inheritors of the Roman Empire. They asserted that after the fall of the Romans, North Africa was conquered and ruled by the Arabs and the Turks. As a result it relegated the local civilisation to backwardness.
The European arrivals made attempts to connect the past with the present and renew the Roman mission to `civilise` the `barbarians. Historians and archaeologists reconstructed the history of the Roman Empire and revived its grandeur. The archaeological sites of the Roman period were excavated and set as reminders of the past when the Romans developed their territories as colonies. They rediscovered the achievement and contribution of the Romans to the civilisation and culture of the colonised societies. T
hey pointed out that the Romans built aqueducts, improved the irrigation system, set up factories for pressing olive oil and laid down the foundation of cities and maintained law and order. According to them, the Roman imperialism was benevolent and enlightened which converted North Africa to a civilised society.
Both the French and Italians wanted to revisit the old power and glory of the Roman Empire. They emulated most of the coercive methods and applied them during their rule. The French forced the people of Algeria to abandon their culture and assimilate into French civilisation. Claiming to be the inheritors of the Roman Empire, the Italians dominated Libya under the Fascist rule of Mussolini and quelled all resistance movements that broke out against their rule. European imperialism was not enlightened and benign but exploitative and despotic for the colonised people. After the independence of North African countries from European imperialism, post colonial historians critically examined imperialism of the past and the present and their impact on the society. Responding to the argument that the Roman rule was enlightening, they proved that during this period, the colonies suffered immensely.
The colonised people did not accept Roman domination and continued to resist it. A number of resistance movements were brutally crushed by the Roman generals. They also established that the Romans annexed the agricultural land and allotted it to their aristocracy, extracted taxes from people, forced peasants and workers to build roads and public buildings without any remuneration. They exploited the natural resources of the colonies, enslaved people and sexually abused women. Postcolonial intellectuals also condemned modern European imperialism for emulating the Romans. Europeans too ruled over their colonies with an iron hand, committed genocide and massacred the colonised people. They made attempts to wipe out the locals` religious and cultural identity in order to make them history-less. This response created historical consciousness among the colonised people and provided them an opportunity to understand the impact of old and new imperialism. Interestingly, when the British started to rule over India, they also claimed to be relatives of Indians as both belong to the Aryan race. Max Muller, the Sanskrit scholar, while addressing selected Indian Civil Service officers, told them that they were going to serve their brothers in India. The reason for this relationship was that the British were not foreigners or strangers therefore they should be accepted as new-found relatives. However, it was said that although the Indians belong to the Aryan race, as a result of mixing with other races they had lost the purity and characteristics of the Aryan race. The British as pure Aryan had the right to rule over India. This is how British imperialists used hi.story to justify imperialism.
"Imperial intent" by Mubarak Ali, dawn.com
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