From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Mar 06 2002 - 04:16:48 MST
Bill Christison, former senior CIA officer: 'Why the war on terror won't
work'
Posted on Tuesday, March 05 @ 09:59:34 EST
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Bill Christison, Counterpunch
Bill Christison joined the CIA in 1950, and served on the analysis side of
the Agency for 28 years. From the early 1970s he served as National
Intelligence Officer (principal adviser to the Director of Central
Intelligence on certain areas) for, at various times, Southeast Asia, South
Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979 he was Director of the CIA's
Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person office. These
remarks, which he has made available to CounterPunch, have been recently
delivered to various peace groups in New Mexico. His wife Kathy also worked
in the CIA, retiring in 1979, since then she has been mainly preoccupied by
the issue of Palestine.
On January 15 the Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, held
a press conference in order to describe the initial criminal charges that
the government would make against John Walker, the 20-year-old American
citizen who had joined the Taliban military forces. In his talk, Ascroft
said this - and I quote: "The United States does not casually or
capriciously charge one of its own citizens with providing support to
terrorists. We are impelled to do so today by the inescapable fact of
September the 11th, a day that reminded us in no uncertain terms that we
have enemies in the world and that these enemies seek to destroy us. We
learned on September 11 that our way of life is not immune from attack, and
even from destruction."
The guts of what Ashcroft said is - and I quote again - "We have enemies in
the world and these enemies seek to destroy us." Unquote. I submit to you
that this is simply not a true statement. The evidence I've seen shows that
the real objective of the Muslim extremists led by Osama bin Laden was to
rid the Muslim world itself of American domination and influence. They
wanted NOT to destroy the United States; rather they wanted the U.S. out of
their own land. Bin Laden and his supporters also wanted, and those yet
alive still want, to unite Muslim nations behind an extreme version of
Islam, believing that the Islamic world can thereby better control its own
future. I think they realize full well there is no possibility they can
"destroy " the United States, and their objective, while still pretty
grandiose, is considerably more limited. Their aim, according to one recent
analysis that appeared in the New York Review of Books - and I quote again -
"is to create one Islamic world. .This is a call to purify the Islamic world
of the idolatrous West, exemplified by America. The aim is to strike at
American heathen shrines, and show, in the most spectacular fashion, that
the U.S. is vulnerable, a paper tiger" Unquote.
These Islamic extremists are not nice people. Those still alive, and other
future adherents to their cause, will continue to try to kill innocent
people in the U.S. and elsewhere. But what the extremists see themselves as
trying to do is to stop the United States from continuing its drive for
global hegemony, including hegemony over the Islamic world. I think it's
important to understand this, because if people in the United States believe
that some enemy is trying to "destroy" the U.S. - and actually has some
possibility of doing so - then waging an all-out war against that enemy can
be more easily justified. But what if the U.S. is not trying to prevent its
own destruction, but instead is trying to preserve and extend its global
hegemony? In that case, I think we should all step back and start demanding
of our government a serious public debate over future U.S. foreign policies.
We should be strenuously debating the degree to which the people in this
country, given all of our own domestic problems, want the U.S. government to
continue foreign policies intended to strengthen U.S. hegemony over and
domination of the rest of the world in the political, economic, and
militarily areas.
In short, Ashcroft's claim that enemies are seeking to destroy the United
States makes it easier for the U.S. government to avoid any limits that
might otherwise be imposed on its "war against terrorism" by an informed
public opinion. President George W. Bush's references in his own speeches to
America's enemies as "the evil ones" tend in the same direction. Although
acts of terrorism - which I'm defining here as killings of, or other
violence against, innocent noncombatants - are always inexcusable, simply
labeling perpetrators as "the evil ones" makes it easier for the U.S.
government to avoid any inconvenient discussion of ways in which the U.S.
might modify its foreign policies to reduce the likelihood of future
terrorist acts. But are all Afghans "evil ones?" Or all members of the
Taliban? Or did only a few Taliban leaders know about the planned terrorist
attacks before September 11? In any case, is it clear that all Taliban
members were accomplices of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? And if they were
accomplices, is it not true that the better legal systems of the world do
not punish accomplices to a crime as severely as the criminals themselves?
Is it right that in this war the U.S. is punishing the accomplices just as
much the criminals themselves? It seems to me that the use of the term "evil
ones" is intended to avoid discussion of a lot of nuances.
[b]My own view is that the United States is now, almost five months after
September 11, heading into an extraordinarily difficult time, when
substantial changes in our foreign policies will be required. Yet all the
polls seem to show that up to 90 percent of the people in this country still
don't even want to listen to anyone who proposes alternatives to our present
foreign policies. So I guess that shows that only ten percent of Americans
care much about our policies toward the rest of the world. But I'll bet that
in this room right now, a much higher proportion of you do care about the
rest of the world and do want to see changes in our foreign policies.[/b]
The first and most basic belief I have about the current situation is that
[b]military action will never be effective in solving the problem of
terrorism against the United States[/b]. At best it will only prevent
terrorism temporarily. As I've already mentioned, there's little doubt that
the U.S. will somehow kill or capture or otherwise neutralize Osama bin
Laden and most of his lieutenants. The U.S. has already pretty much
pulverized Afghanistan by bombing, and has incidentally killed an unknown
number of innocent noncombatants in the process. The U.S. government, by the
way, seems uninterested in even estimating how many innocent noncombatants
have in fact been killed, but it is possible that the number is as large as
or larger than the 3,000 killed in the U.S. on September 11. Whatever the
military success of the U.S., however, a couple of years hence new
extremists just as clever as bin Laden, and hating the U.S. even more, will
almost certainly arise somewhere else in the world. That's why we need to
understand the root causes behind the terrorism. If I am right that military
action will not prevent future terrorism, but only delay it, we should start
working on these root causes right away. We should not wait until the
military actions are finished before looking at root causes, as some people
would urge us to do.
So let's go. I'm going to list six major root causes of the terrorism that I
think are important. Either Kathy of I will make some comments on each one
and then propose how we should change our foreign policy on each. The
critical thing you should keep in mind on all of these six issues is that
there is a great deal of disagreement in Washington and elsewhere over the
relative importance of one compared to another. With that caveat, here are
the six root causes of terrorism against the U.S. that we've chosen to talk
about. I've arranged them in a rough order that starts with those I think
are most difficult to deal with, but the order does not necessarily reflect
their relative importance. My personal feeling is that all six are of equal
importance.
ONE: My number one root cause is the support by the U.S. over recent years
for the policies of Israel with respect to the Palestinians, and the belief
among Arabs and Muslims that the United States is as much to blame as Israel
itself for the continuing, almost 35-year-long Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
My first comment on this issue is that it is a more controversial root cause
than any of the others on our list. The government of Israel, and many
supporters of Israel in the United States, really did not want to talk about
any root causes immediately after September 11. Top leaders in the United
States, most of whom strongly support Israel, preferred to talk only in
general terms - about how the terrorists were mad and irrational, and how
they had attacked "freedom itself," out of mindless hatred. More recently,
when pressured to talk about root causes at all, the Israelis and their
supporters have gone to great lengths to reject arguments that Israel's
behavior toward the Palestinians, or U.S. support for Israel, are in any way
even a partial cause of the terrorism. When forced to say something positive
about root causes, they tend to allege a broader Islamic religious hatred of
the West and its modern technology than I think exists. They also emphasize
the internal tensions within the Arab world, the lack of democracy and the
dictatorial rulers of Arab nations, who are depicted as trying to distract
their people from their own internal grievances by whipping up hatred of
Israel.
I need to digress for a moment. In a situation where there are clearly
multiple root causes of terrorism, it's in the interest of any person or
nation that might be blamed for one of the root causes to emphasize instead
the other root causes. In the last couple of months, a sizable propaganda
campaign has been launched suggesting that Saudi Arabia is the most
important root cause of the September 11 terrorism. I certainly agree that
the dictatorial and decrepit Saudi government and its support throughout the
Muslim world for a harsh and immoderate version of Islam can be seen as one
- but only one - of the root causes behind the recent terrorism. I'll have
more to say about this later. What I want to point out here is that I
suspect supporters of Israel are aggressively pressing this campaign against
Saudi Arabia, in the hope of persuading other world leaders that the issue
of Palestine is NOT a significant root cause. The New York Times columnist
Thomas Friedman is a leading practitioner of this pro-Israel campaign. Both
Kathy and I believe, however, that the United States' strong support for
Israel and for its occupation and colonization of the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip is indeed is a major root cause of the terrorism against the U.S.
After I go through the rest of the root causes, Kathy is going to talk in
much more detail about the Israel-Palestine issue and its tragic
consequences. Kathy will also give you her thoughts on changes in U.S.
foreign policy that might be necessary if the U.S. does in fact desire a
peaceful resolution of this issue - a resolution that would also help to
reduce the likelihood of future terrorism against the U.S.
TWO: My number two root cause is the present drive of the United States to
spread its hegemony and its version of big-corporation, free enterprise
globalization around the world. At the same time, the massive poverty of
average people, not only in Arab and Muslim nations but also in the whole
third world, has become more important as a global political issue. The gap
between rich and poor nations, and rich and poor people within most of the
nations, has grown wider during the last 20 years of globalization or, more
precisely, the U.S. version of globalization. Animosities against the United
States have grown among the poor of the world, who have watched as the U.S.
has expanded both its hegemony and a type of globalization based on its own
economic system, while they themselves have seen no or very little benefit
from these changes.
This problem of poverty around the world is so immense that it's almost
impossible to grasp. Global statistics are far from perfect, buy they show
that the world's population hit 6 billion last year. 2.8 billion people,
almost half of the world's total, have incomes of less than two dollars a
day. Here's another statistic: the richest one percent of the world's people
receive as much income as the poorest 57 percent. And here's a final
statistic: The richest 25 million people in the United States receive more
income than the 2 billion poorest people of the world - one third of the
world's total population. Can we here, sitting in this room, even comprehend
the magnitude of the injustice that these figures represent? And have no
doubt - we in the United States are, rightly or wrongly, blamed for these
figures.
The catalog of reasons for animosity toward the U.S. throughout the world
includes a number of things in addition to our overbearing assertion of both
economic and political hegemony: our arrogance in insisting that whatever we
say goes, our penchant for abrogating or ignoring international treaties
that we don't happen to like, as well as the influence of U.S. corporations
that exploit cheap labor in third world countries to make consumer goods for
Americans, Take all these things together and you have a wide sense among
the poor people of the world of being oppressed by the United States. This
in turn made it possible for Osama bin Laden and the fundamentalists around
him to instill and spread intense hatred of us, just as a sense of being
oppressed by the Allies after World War I made it possible for Hitler to
arouse the kind of fear and hatred among Germans that led both to the
slaughter of Jews and to World War II.
The pressures arising from the complex and related problems of U.S.
hegemony, globalization and the immense gap in wealth will grow steadily
more explosive. My proposal is that the U.S. should immediately develop and
implement, with active participation of the U.N. and the European Union
(E.U.), a new, very large, and long-term "Marshall Plan" type of aid program
for all of the poor nations of the world. This plan should specifically be
aimed at reducing the size of the income gap between the poorest and richest
nations, and at reducing the income gap between the rich and poor within
nations. This type of plan could contribute significantly to reducing the
likelihood of future terrorism against the United States. It would also show
a far more generous side of the United States to people who at present see
only a U.S. version of globalization that seems to them highly selfish and
beneficial largely to big corporations and the rich of the world.
I've been talking about a massive aid program for the world's poor since
last October, when I spoke to a number of peace groups in Santa Fe. More
recently, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has
proposed a similar plan, in the amount of $100 billion for each of the next
four years. My own suggestion as to the amount is $350 billion spread over
three years. $350 billion is, after all, just about what the U.S. military
budget will probably amount to in the next ONE fiscal year. One would think
that we could find an equal amount to spend over a three-year period for
what I would regard as a better purpose.
About now some of you are probably thinking, how unrealistic can this guy
get! He of all people - meaning me - should be aware of how corrupt the
governments of most third-world nations are, and you can just see all this
money simply going down the drain. My answer is that solving the problem of
massive income inequalities around the world is absolutely critical to the
future stability of the world, and so far the U.S. version of globalization
has not improved the situation at all. I think there are enough intelligent
people in the U.N., U.S., Europe, and the underdeveloped countries
themselves that we could set up a planning and monitoring group to oversee
the wise use of such large funds and to hold the level of corruption to a
minimum. The United States should not run such a program unilaterally, and
the institutions set up to manage it should not be used to perpetuate and
strengthen U.S. global hegemony, as the case now with the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank. When you hear charges of unrealism before
some new program is even in the detailed planning stages, I think you're
entitled to ask if those making the charges aren't really opposing the new
program for some other reason. My own feeling is that the world is in such a
mess, and the inequality problem is so severe, that maybe we should worry
less about alleged "unrealism" and more about getting on with the business
of planning, followed by real action, to do something about the problem.
THREE: The number three root cause I want to discuss is the continuing
sanctions and lack of food and medicines for the people of Iraq, deaths of
Iraqi children, and the almost daily bombing of Iraq by the U.S. and Great
Britain. Right or wrong, the Arab and Muslim "street" blames this on the
U.S., not on Saddam Hussein.
I don't have much to comment about on this one. The sanctions and the
bombings have been in effect for ten years, and have neither brought about
the ouster of Saddam Hussein nor significantly weakened him. And they have
caused the deaths of children variously estimated at up to or over a
million. The U.S. government's position is that Saddam himself is to blame
for the troubles of the Iraqi people, but the fact remains that after all
these years, the Iraqi people are the ones hurt by U.S. actions, not Saddam.
My view is that simple justice argues for an end to both the sanctions and
the bombings. My proposal is that we do precisely that.
FOUR: My number four root cause is the continued presence of U.S. troops in
Saudi Arabia.
Ten years ago this was the principal cause of Osama bin Laden's hostility
toward the United States. (His hostility on account of U.S. actions against
Iraq and then the massive U.S. support for Israel came later and in both
cases may be tactical - an effort to broaden his own popularity in the Arab
world.) Today the thousands of U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia are a
constant irritant in Saudi-U.S. relations. The Saudi people clearly do not
want them there. Unless we plan to invade Iraq again, I doubt there is any
longer a vital reason to keep men and U.S. ground-based military facilities
there.
My proposal? The obvious one - that we remove the troops. I understand, of
course - you'd have to be blind and deaf not to know this - that some people
at high levels in the U.S. government do want to invade Iraq again. All I
can say is, I hope such people do not carry the day. I can't think of a
thing that would do more to broaden this "war on terrorism" into a
Judeo-Christian war against Islam - despite any U.S. governmental
protestations to the contrary.
FIVE: The fifth root cause on my list is the dissatisfaction and anger of
many average and even elite Arabs and Muslims over their own authoritarian,
undemocratic, and often corrupt governments, which are supported by the
United States.
My first comment here is that Osama bin Laden is a good example of this
particular root cause. His extremist wrath was directed as much against the
Saudi government, for example, as it was against the United States. His
opposition to what used to be his own government was probably the main
reason why he had the support of a majority of the young men under 25 in
Saudi Arabia. He received similar support from many young men in other Arab
and Muslim states as well. Right now these groups of angry young men
obviously no longer have a viable leader in Osama bin Laden, but other
extremist leaders are almost sure to arise. In addition, the next generation
of leaders in at least some of these states may well emerge from among these
young men. If any of them do come into power, their future governments will
likely be more anti-American than the present governments, which Washington
likes to call "moderate," but which are really nothing of the sort. If we
have not reduced our energy dependence on oil in the meantime, we may face
serious trouble.
In my view, this IS a truly difficult problem. My proposal is that we should
adopt draconian measures immediately to reduce our overall energy usage,
including but not limited to cutting our dependence on Mideast oil. We
should, for example, change our tax structure to make energy as expensive to
consumers in the United States as it is in Europe and Japan. This will
require significant life-style changes in the U.S. I think we kid ourselves
if we believe that we can solve any coming energy crunch by expanding
alternative power sources or by increasing "clean coal" usage, nuclear power
usage, and Alaskan oil usage. The shortages will be too great; so will the
long-term environmental costs; and so will the political costs in our
relationships with other nations that have already accepted higher energy
prices for consumers as a necessary burden of 21st Century life.
We also should not count on new oil supplies from Central Asia allowing us
to forget about the need for conservation and to stop being concerned about
the stability of Saudi Arabia or other areas of the Middle East. Even
assuming that massive supplies of oil from Central Asia become available
quickly, all we'll be doing is transferring our support from the
dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to the dictatorships of
Central Asia. That is not a prospect that we should blithely accept. In my
view, conservation is the route we must follow.
I think we should, at the same time, gradually reduce the closeness of our
ties with the present authoritarian governments in Arab and Muslim states,
and try to develop a better understanding of and improved relations with
groups in these states that oppose their own present governments. We should
seek out groups that appear to be democratically inclined and "moderate" in
the true meaning of the word. Difficult? Of course it will be. But it is the
best shot we've got, in my opinion, to have a decent relationship with many
Muslim states in the future. It's also the best shot we've got if we wish to
diminish, over time, the support for future Osama bin Ladens that arises
from the anger of Arabs and Muslims with their own governments.
SIX. The sixth and last root cause on my list arises directly from the U.S.
"war on terrorism." It has to do with the kind of war the U.S. is now able
to fight. On three recent occasions - the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the Kosovo
war of 1999 against Yugoslavia, and the current war against Afghanistan -
the United States has easily achieved victories by relying almost
exclusively on air power, on missiles launched from a great distance, and
now even on drone aircraft with no humans on board. The U.S. has won these
wars with practically no casualties among its own forces. But while few
Americans get killed, sizable numbers of other nationalities do.
Most people in the United States are proud both of these victories and of
the low U.S. casualties in these three wars. From the viewpoint of anyone
who supports the wars, this prowess of U.S. armed forces deserves to be
honored. But elsewhere in much of the world, especially the underdeveloped
world, this overwhelming invincibility of the U.S. military intensifies the
frustrations about and hatred of the United States. This in turn makes
future terrorist acts against the U.S. - or what is now called by U.S.
strategic thinkers asymmetrical warfare - even more likely. Those in
underdeveloped lands who oppose the U.S. drive for worldwide hegemony are
increasingly coming to see no means other than terrorism as an effective
method of opposing the United States.
I think this is an issue that demands a lot more discussion than it's been
getting, and I think it goes to the heart of our future foreign policies.
For the immediate future, perhaps the next five or ten years, I think it's
going to be tempting for any government of the United States to implement
and enforce whatever foreign policies it chooses by going to war, because it
will be confident - even overconfident - that it won't lose a military
confrontation and won't suffer many casualties. In this same five to ten
year period, the readily available military option will also encourage the
U.S. to avoid facing up to the hard decisions necessary for a peaceful
resolution of our more intractable foreign policy problems. Among these
intractable problems will be the already-mentioned gross income inequalities
around the world and the Israel-Palestine issue. Without a peaceful
settlement of these issues, long-term productive relations between the
United States and the whole underdeveloped world are likely to be
impossible.
This leads me to a very important conclusion. Since hatred of the U.S. is
markedly intensified by the very way in which the U.S. can now fight wars, I
think that the U.S. should, in the future, voluntarily stop employing
warfare based on airpower and bombing as a means of combating future acts of
terrorism. The fact that U.S. bombs and missiles have already killed
innocent civilians is tragic and puts us on a par with the extremists who
committed the September 11 acts. We should stop, right now, all further
military action that risks killing more civilians.
At the same time, I want to emphasize that I am quite sure there is enough
evidence of Osama bin Laden's complicity in the September 11 terrorist
actions to arrest and indict him. Assuming he is still alive, I would
therefore support covert or Green-Beret-type operations to capture, but not
assassinate, him. Maximum precautions should be taken, however, to prevent
such operations from killing or injuring any more innocent civilians. Once
captured, bin Laden should be prosecuted and tried in an international
court.
I fully understand that compared to most views you hear concerning the U.S.
"war on terrorism," my views are RADICAL. But I believe that unless the U.S.
moves in the directions I've been suggesting throughout this talk, in five
or ten years the terrorism against the United States will become so intense
that our global relationships with other nations will be in shambles. On the
other hand, if the U.S. government voluntarily moves toward the kind of
foreign policy changes I've been talking about, I think that its actions
might start a trend toward a considerably more peaceful, and stable, 21st
Century than now seems likely.
Reprinted from Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/
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