Here's the Point

July 4, 2003


The Rat in the Grain
Dan Amstutz and the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

The war on Iraq couldn't have come at a more dire time for Iraq's beleaguered farmers. Spring is harvest time in the barley and wheat fields of the Tigris River valley and planting time in the vast vegetable plantations of southern Iraq.

The war is over, but the situation in the fields of Iraq continues to rapidly deteriorate. The banks, which provide credit and cash, have been looted, irrigation systems destroyed, road travel restricted, markets closed, warehouses and grain silos pillaged.

To harvest the grain before it rots in the fields Iraqi farmers need more than eight million gallons of diesel fuel to power Iraq's corroding armada of combines and harvesters. But most of the fuel depots were incinerated by US bombing strikes. There's no easy way to get the fuel that remains to the farmers who need it most and no desire to do so by the US forces of occupations.

Even if the crops can be harvested, there's no clear way for the grain to get stored, marketed, sold and distributed to hungry Iraqi families. Under the Hussein regime, the crops were bought by the Baghdad government at a fixed priced and then distributed through a rationing system. This system, inefficient as it was, is gone. But nothing has taken its place.

Iraqi farmers are still owed $75 million for this year's crop, with little sign that the money will ever arrive. There's speculation throughout the country that one intent of the current policy is to force many farmers off their farms and into the cities so that their lands can be taken over by favorites of Ahmed Chalabi and his US protectors. The post-Saddam Iraq will almost certainly witness a land redistribution program: more farmland going into fewer and fewer hands.

Grain farmers aren't alone. As in the first Gulf War, US bombing raids targeted cattle feed lots, poultry farms, fertilizer warehouses, pumping stations, irrigation systems and pesticide factories (the closest thing the US has come to finding Weapons of Mass Destruction in the country)-the very infrastructure of Iraqi agriculture. It will take years to restore these operations.

Many fields in southern Iraq lie fallow, as vegetable farmers have been unable to secure seeds for this summer's crops of melons, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers and beans-all mainstays of the Iraqi diet.

"We expect failures," said Abdul Aziz Nejefi, a barley farmer from Mosul, in a dispatch from the Guardian. "We never had this situation before. There is no government."

Meanwhile, millions of Iraqis face starvation this summer. A UN staff report from late May paints a bleak portrait. It notes that Iraq's poultry industry has effectively been decimated. Millions of chickens perished during the war. Millions of others face starvation, since nearly of the chicken feed stored in government warehouses has been looted. Chicken and eggs are staples of the Iraqi, amounting for more than half of the animal protein consumed by the population.

Many other farm animals, including sheep and goats, could be ravaged by disease, since the nation's stockpiles of veterinary medicines and vaccines have been almost totally destroyed or looted.

Some 60% of Iraq's 24 million people depend totally for their food on the food ration system that was established after the Gulf War. Each week, these Iraqis could count on a "food basket" consisting of wheat flour, rice, vegetable oil, lentils beans, milk, sugar and salt. That system is now in shambles and is scorned at by US policymakers. And promised grain imports have yet to materialize.

"Before there is unwarranted military technological triumphalism, let those setting out to manage the peace think mouths," says Tim Land, professor food policy at City University in London. "Grumbling stomachs are bad politics as well as disastrous for the public health. There has to be a food democracy after decades of food totalitarianism."

Into this dire circumstance strides Daniel Amstutz, the Bush administration's choice to oversee the reconstruction of Iraq's agricultural system. Now an international trade lobbyist in DC with a fat roster of big ag clients, Amstutz once served as a top executive at Cargill, the food giant which controls much of the world trade in grain. During Amstutz's tenure at Cargill, the grain company went on a torrid expansion campaign. It is now the largest privately held corporation in the US and controls about 94 percent of the soybean market and more than 50 percent of the corn market in the Upper Midwest. It also has it's hands on the export market controlling 40 percent of all US corn exports, a third of all soybean exports and at least 20 percent of wheat exports.

Al Krebs, who edits the Agribusiness Examiner, a vital publication on US farm policy, unearthed a 1982 questionnaire on food, politics and morality that vividly illustrates the Cargill philosophy. The Joseph Project a public policy research group sponsored by the Senate of Catholic Priests of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St.Paul, asked Cargill executives to explain the company's attitude toward hunger and famine issues. The executives responded as follows:

"The assumption that there are moral priorities that are offended in serving world or domestic markets as economically and efficiently as possible rests on a confusion about economic facts. It is also a highly objectionable characterization of business's role. Before one makes moral judgments and advocates economic actions, one should understand the economic issues that are involved.

"The business of making moral judgments is both hazardous and potentially irresponsible unless one is fully satisfied that all the facts and causal relationships have been explored . . . We are not in a position --- given time and other constraints --- to provide all the relevant background. Nor are we anxious to make moral judgments --- or moral defenses --- of our own."

In 2000, the biggest food companies in the world, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Cenex Harvest States Co-op, DuPont and Louis Dreyfus, got together to form Pradium Inc., a kind of secret, internal grain market that offered real-time, cash commodity exchanges for grains, oilseeds and agricultural by-products as well as global information services. It also offered ways to fix price grain prices on a global scale. Amstutz served as Pradium's chairman.

Amstutz is no stranger to government, either. During the first Bush administration he served as Undersecretary of Agriculture for International Affairs and Commodity programs. He was also the chief US negotiator on agricultural issues for the Uruguay Round of GATT talks, which led to the WTO.

"Daniel Amstutz, an ex-Cargill executive, is there to push the agribusiness agenda, not a democratic agenda," says George Naylor, president of the National Family Farm Coalition. "He will excel in telling the world that his policy is good for farmers, consumers and the environment when just the opposite is true."

The small farmers of the grain belt of the Midwest have a particular loathing for Amstutz. During his stint in the first Bush administration, Amstutz devised the notorious Freedom to Farm Bill, which eliminated tariffs and slashed federal farm price supports-all in an effort to lower grain prices for the benefit of Amstutz's cronies in the big agricultural conglomerates. As a result, thousands of American farmers lost their farms and monopolists like Cargill reaped the benefits.

The contours of Amstutz's plan for Iraq are familiar: a combination of free-market shock therapy and predation by multinational corporations. Gliding over a decade of UN sanctions that have starved the nation and a war that ravaged the nation's infrastructure, Amstutz announced that the real problem facing Iraqi agriculture is, naturally, government subsidies. "Iraqi farmers have had little incentive to increase production because of price controls that have kept food very inexpensive," Amstutz announced. "With a transition to a market economy, we can see health returning to agriculture and incentives to employ good farming practices and modern techniques."

The more likely scenario is that Amstutz will use destitute condition of Iraq's farmlands as a lucrative opportunity to dump cheap grain from American companies like Cargill, all of it paid for by Iraqi oil. If this scenario plays out, it will spell disaster for Iraq's struggling farmers.

Prior to the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq imported more than one million metric ton per year of American wheat. Since then, however, no direct sales of American agricultural products have occurred. Amstutz is anxious to begin flooding Iraq with Cargill grain.

Moreover, Iraq owes the US Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corp. $2 billion on loans that facilitated pre-1991 ag sales and nearly $2 billion in interest on the loans. Amstutz will certainly demand that those loans be recouped through oil sales.

"Someone needs to warn the Iraqi people that other third world countries can already attest that the dependence Amstutz will create surely means that Iraq's sovereignty will be greatly compromised," says Naylor.

And Naylor argues that cash-strapped American farmers won't see any benefits, either. "Even if there will be more exports to Iraq, this little drop in the "Amstutz perpetuates the more exports lie because his agribusiness cronies are encouraging overproduction all over the world, thus being able to sell more genetically-modified seeds and chemicals and buying ever cheaper farm commodities."

Even as millions of Iraqi's face starvation under the stern hand of their food pro consul, Amstutz's appointment has excited little commentary in the US. His most virulent critic has been Kevin Wilkins, Oxfam's policy director in London. Watkins warns that Amstutz is little more than a carpetbagger seeking to advance the interests of the same food titans that his lobbying outfit in DC represents, Cargill, DuPont, Cenex and Archer Daniels Midland.

"This guy is uniquely well-placed to advance the commercial interests of American grain companies and bust open the Iraqi market, but singularly ill-equipped to lead a reconstruction effort in a war torn country," Watkins warns. "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission."

Amstutz was recently spotted in Iowa, pitching his agricultural reconstruction plan to Iowa feedlot owners. He told the farmers that they stood to profit handsomely from his plan to bring modern feedlots to Iraq, those foul-smelling operations that pack thousands of cattle and hogs into tightly confined pens. "They are meat eaters," he brayed. "Iraq is not a vegetarian society."

Iowa doesn't have many cattle or sheep operation. Most of the people in his audience raised hogs. And unless Amstutz has joined in a partnership with Franklin Graham to Christianize Iraq, there won't be a big market for pork products in Baghdad.

African-American Mosaic

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Colonization

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The roots of the colonization movement date back to various plans first proposed in the eighteenth century. From the start, colonization of free blacks in Africa was an issue on which both whites and blacks were divided. Some blacks supported emigration because they thought that black Americans would never receive justice in the United States. Others believed African-Americans should remain in the United States to fight against slavery and for full legal rights as American citizens. Some whites saw colonization as a way of ridding the nation of blacks, while others believed black Americans would be happier in Africa, where they could live free of racial discrimination. Still others believed black American colonists could play a central role in Christianizing and civilizing Africa.

The American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in 1817 to send free African-Americans to Africa as an alternative to emancipation in the United States. In 1822, the society established on the west coast of Africa a colony that in 1847 became the independent nation of Liberia. By 1867, the society had sent more than 13,000 emigrants.

Beginning in the 1830s, the society was harshly attacked by abolitionists, who tried to discredit colonization as a slaveholder's scheme. And, after the Civil War, when many blacks wanted to go to Liberia, financial support for colonization had waned. During its later years the society focussed on educational and missionary efforts in Liberia rather than emigration.

In 1913 and at its dissolution in 1964, the society donated its records to the Library of Congress. The material contains a wealth of information about the foundation of the society, its role in establishing Liberia, efforts to manage and defend the colony, fund-raising, recruitment of settlers, and the way in which black settlers built and led the new nation.

Moreover, opportunities exist for additional research on the collection. For example, map study could reveal new data about settlement patterns, land ownership, and community development in Liberia. Work on the photographs could lead to identification of more of the individuals, locations, and events depicted. From passenger lists and land grants, researchers could glean new knowledge about Liberian genealogy. And, although the early history of the society has been well presented in publications, the post- Civil War period has not been thoroughly examined.


Colonization exhibit checklist:

Beginnings of the American Colonization Society

A Black Colonizationist Paul Cuffee (1759-1817), a successful Quaker shipowner of African- American and Native American ancestry, advocated settling freed American slaves in Africa. He gained support from the British government, free black leaders in the United States, and members of Congress for a plan to take emigrants to the British colony of Sierra Leone. Cuffee intended to make one voyage per year, taking settlers and bringing back valuable cargoes. In 1816, at his own expense, Captain Cuffee took thirty-eight American blacks to Freetown, Sierra Leone, but his death in 1817 ended further ventures.
However, Cuffee had reached a large audience with his pro-colonization arguments and laid the groundwork for later organizations such as the American Colonization Society.

Memoir of Captain Paul Cuffee, A Man of Colour: To Which is Subjoined The Epistle of the Society of Sierra Leone in African & etc., title page York: W. Alexander, 1812 [1817] Rare Book and Special Collections Division (1)

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First American Colonization Society Journal In July 1820, the ACS published The African Intelligencer, edited by Jehudi Ashmun (1794-1828), a young teacher who hoped to become a missionary to Africa. Its thirty-two pages contained articles on the slave trade, African geography, the expedition of the Elizabeth (the ship that carried the first group of colonists to Liberia), and the ACS constitution. Upset by the expense and the lack of public support for the journal, ACS managers canceled the monthly journal after one issue.
Ashmun went to Africa in 1822, where he became an early leader of the Liberian colony before dying from a fever in 1828. This copy belonged to William Thornton, architect of the United States Capitol and a supporter of colonization.

The African Intelligencer, vol. 1, no. 1, July 1820, title page Journal Rare Book and Special Collections Division (2)

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Life-Membership Certificate for ACS Selling life memberships was a standard fund-raising practice of benevolent societies such as the American Colonization Society. At thirty dollars each, the memberships were a popular gift for ministers. In 1825, one of the agents who sold the certificates in New England estimated that "not less than $50,000 have in this way been poured into the treasury of the Lord." This certificate bears a facsimile signature of Henry Clay, a founder of the ACS and its strong advocate in Congress. Clay succeeded former president James Madison as president of the society, serving from 1836 to 1849.
[Life Membership Certificate for American Colonization Society], ca. 1840 Certificate American Colonization Society Papers Manuscript Division (3)

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Treaty between ACS and African Kings Jehudi Ashmun envisioned an American empire in Africa. During 1825 and 1826, Ashmun took steps to lease, annex, or buy tribal lands along the coast and on major rivers leading inland. Like his predecessor Lt. Robert Stockton, who in 1821 persuaded African King Peter to sell Cape Montserado (or Mesurado) by pointing a pistol at his head, Ashmun was prepared to use force to extend the colony's territory. His aggressive actions quickly increased Liberia's power over its neighbors. In this treaty of May 1825, King Peter and other native kings agreed to sell land in return for 500 bars of tobacco, three barrels of rum, five casks of powder, five umbrellas, ten iron posts, and ten pairs of shoes, among other items.
[Treaty between American Colonization Society and African Kings], May 11, 1825 Holograph American Colonization Society Collection Manuscript Division (4)

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Second ACS Journal In March 1825, the ACS began a quarterly, The African Repository and Colonial Journal, edited by Ralph Randolph Gurley (1797-1872), who headed the Society until 1844. Conceived as the society's propaganda organ, the journal promoted both colonization and Liberia. Among the items printed were articles about Africa, letters of praise, official dispatches stressing the prosperity and steady growth of the colony, information about emigrants, and lists of donors. This issue shows the first Liberian settlement at Cape Montserado (or Mesurado), which became the capital city, Monrovia.
The African Repository and Colonial Journal, vol. 1, no. 4, June 1825, p. 129 Journal Rare Book and Special Collections Division (5)


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Virginia Legislature Supports ACS For many years the ACS tried to persuade the United States Congress to appropriate funds to send colonists to Liberia. Although Henry Clay led the campaign, it failed. The society did, however, succeed in its appeals to some state legislatures. In 1850, Virginia set aside $30,000 annually for five years to aid and support emigration. In its Thirty-Fourth Annual Report, the society acclaimed the news as "a great Moral demonstration of the propriety and necessity of state action!" During the 1850s, the society also received several thousand dollars from the New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Maryland legislatures.
[Act by State of Virginia making appropriations for removal of free persons of color to Liberia], 1850 American Colonization Society Papers Manuscript Division (7)

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Information for Emigrants During the 1830s, William Lloyd Garrison's violent condemnations of colonization as a slaveholder's plot to perpetuate slavery created deep hostility between abolitionists and colonizationists. Intended to encourage emigration and answer anti-colonization propaganda, the ACS pamphlet answers questions about household items needed in Liberia, climate, education, health conditions, and other concerns about the new country. Citing abolitionist charges that colonizationists merely wanted "to get clear of the colored people of the United States from their political and social disadvantages . . . to place them in a country where they may enjoy the benefits of free government . . . and to spread civilization, sound morals, and true religion throughout Africa."
Information About Going to Liberia: Things Which Every Emigrant Ought to Know. . ., title page Washington: American Colonization Society, 1848 Rare Book and Special Collections Division (8)

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Map of Liberia By the 1840s, Liberia had become a financial burden on the ACS. In addition, Liberia faced political threats, chiefly from Britain, because it was neither a sovereign power nor a bona fide colony of any sovereign nation. Because the United States refused to claim sovereignty over Liberia, in 1846 the ACS ordered the Liberians to proclaim their independence. This map of the newly independent country shows the dates that the various territories were acquired. Settlements were located primarily along the coast and the many rivers leading inland. Inset maps highlight important areas of the country.
Republic of Liberia. Drawn under superintendence of Com. Lynch, USN, 1853 Map Geography and Map Division (9)




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History Of Liberia: A Time Line
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1815-1817 | 1820-1847 | 1847-1871 | 1900-1997

After the struggle for liberty in the American Revolution, free and enslaved African Americans faced continued hardship and inequality. A number of white Americans, for a variety of reasons, joined them in their efforts to resolve this complex problem. One possible solution (advocated at a time when the assimilation of free blacks into American society seemed out of the question) was the complete separation of white and black Americans. Some voices called for the return of African Americans to the land of their forebears.

1815-1817 Black Colonization
1815- African-American Quaker and maritime entrepreneur Paul Cuffee (or Cuffe) financed and captained a successful voyage to Sierra Leone where he helped a small group of African-American immigrants establish themselves. Cuffee believed that African Americans could more easily "rise to be a people" in Africa than in America with its system of slavery and its legislated limits on black freedom. Cuffee also envisioned a black trade network organized by Westernized blacks who would return to Africa to develop its resources while educating its people in the skills they had gained during captivity. Cuffee died in 1817 without fully realizing his dream.
1817- The partial success of Paul Cuffee's African venture encouraged white proponents of colonization to form an organization to repatriate those free African Americans who would volunteer to settle in Africa. Prominent Americans such as Henry Clay, John Randolph of Roanoke, and Justice Bushrod Washington were members of the American Colonization Society (ACS) during its early years. Many free African-Americans, however, including those who had supported Paul Cuffee's efforts, were wary of this new organization. They were concerned that it was dominated by Southerners and slave holders and that it excluded blacks from membership. Most free African-Americans wanted to stay in the land they had helped to build. They planned to continue the struggle for equality and justice in the new nation. See African-American Mosaic: Colonization.

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1820-1847 From Colony to Republic
1820- The American Colonization Society sent its first group of immigrants to Sherbro Island in Sierra Leone. The island's swampy, unhealthy conditions resulted in a high death rate among the settlers as well as the society's representatives. The British governor allowed the immigrants to relocate to a safer area temporarily while the ACS worked to save its colonization project from complete disaster. See African-American Mosaic: Personal Stories and ACS New Directions. See African-American Mosaic: Personal Stories and ACS New Directions.

1821-The American Colonization Society (ACS) dispatched a representative, Dr. Eli Ayres, to purchase land farther north up the coast from Sierra Leone. With the aid of a U.S. naval officer, Lieutenant Robert F. Stockton, Ayres cruised the coastal waters west of Grand Bassa seeking out appropriate lands for the colony. Stockton took charge of the negotiations with leaders of the Dey and Bassa peoples who lived in the area of Cape Mesurado. At first, the local leaders were reluctant to surrender their peoples' land to the strangers, but were forcefully persuaded -- some accounts say at gun-point -- to part with a "36 mile long and 3 mile wide" strip of coastal land for trade goods, supplies, weapons, and rum worth approximately $300. See "The fourth annual report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States: with an appendix."

See "The fourth annual report (African-American Perspectives) of the American Society for colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States: with an appendix.


1822 - April 25 - The survivors of Sherbro Island arrived at Cape Mesurado and began to build their settlement. With the wavering consent of the new immigrants, the American Colonization Society governed the colony through its representative. In time, however, some colonists objected strenuously to the authoritarian policies instituted by Jehudi Ashmun, a Methodist missionary who replaced Ayres as the ACS governing representative. Such disagreements created tensions within the struggling settlement.

1824 - Believing that the colonial agent had allocated town lots and rationed provisions unfairly, a few of the settlers armed themselves and forced the society's representative to flee the colony. The disagreements were resolved temporarily when an ACS representative came to investigate the colony's problems and persuaded Ashmun to return. Steps were initiated to spell out a system of local administration and to codify the laws. This resulted, a year later, in the Constitution, Government, and Digest of the Laws of Liberia. In this document, sovereign power continued to rest with the ACS's agent but the colony was to operate under common law. Slavery and participation in the slave trade were forbidden. The settlement that had been called Christopolis was renamed Monrovia after the American president, James Monroe, and the colony as a whole was formally called Liberia.

Christopolis was renamed Monrovia after President James Monroe and the colony was formally called Liberia (the free land). (Nelson) See the Map of Liberia with Monrovia.



Town of Monrovia
1827 - Slave states in North America, increasingly interested in getting rid of their free African-American populations, encouraged the formation of colonization societies. These groups organized themselves independently of the ACS and founded their own colonies in Liberia for transplanting free African-Americans. Some of the "volunteers" were emancipated only if they agreed to emigrate. The Maryland State Colonization Society established its colony in Cape Palmas, Liberia. Virginia and Mississippi also established Liberian colonies for former slaves and free blacks.

See "The tenth annual report (African-American Perspectives) of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States: with an appendix." and named after the state. Virginia and Mississippi also founded colonies for former slaves in Liberia. (Liebenow, 17; Nelson, 15).

1838- The colonies established by the Virginia Colonization Society, the Quaker Young Men's Colonization Society of Pennsylvania, and the American Colonization Society merged as the Commonwealth of Liberia and claimed control over all settlements between Cestos River and Cape Mount. The Commonwealth adopted a new constitution and a newly-appointed governor in 1839. See African-American Mosaic: Liberia.

Former Virginian Joseph Jenkins Roberts (America's First Look into the Camera), a trader and successful military commander, was named the first lieutenant governor and became the first African-American governor of the colony after the appointed governor died in office (1841).

Cape Palmas

1842- The Mississippi settlement at the mouth of the Sinoe River joined the commonwealth. (Nelson, 16; Boley, 20)

1846 - The commonwealth received most of its revenue from custom duties which angered the indigenous traders and British merchants on whom they were levied. The British government advised Liberian authorities that it did not recognize the right of the American Colonization Society, a private organization, to levy these taxes. Britain's refusal to recognize Liberian sovereignty convinced many colonists that independence with full taxing authority was necessary for the survival of the colony and its immigrant population.

In October, Americo-Liberian colonists voted in favor of independence.

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1847-1871 Nationhood and Survival
1847- On July 26, The Liberian Declaration of Independence was adopted and signed. In it, Liberians charged their mother country, the United States, with injustices that made it necessary for them to leave and make new lives for themselves in Africa. They called upon the international community to recognize the independence and sovereignty of Liberia. Britain was one of the first nations to recognize the new country. The United States did not recognize Liberia until the American Civil War.
1848- The Liberian Constitution was ratified and the first elections were held in the new republic.

The Liberian colony's former Governor, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, (America's First Look into the Camera), was elected Liberia's first President.

1851- Liberia College was founded.

See the remarks on the colonization of the western coast of Africa by the free blacks of the United States, and the consequent "civilization" of Africa and suppression of the slave trade.

1854- Maryland Colony declared its independence from the Maryland State Colonization Society but did not become part of the Republic of Liberia. It held the land along the coast between the Grand Cess and San Pedro Rivers.
Jane Roberts
Wife of Joseph Jenkins Roberts.

See the "African slave trade in Jamaica, and comparative treatment of slaves" (African-American Perspectives).

1856- The independent state of Maryland (Africa) requested military aid from Liberia in a war with the Grebo and Kru peoples who were resisting the Maryland settlers' efforts to control their trade. President Roberts assisted the Marylanders, and a joint military campaign by both groups of African American colonists resulted in victory. In 1857, Maryland became a county of Liberia. The second president of the Republic of Liberia was Stephen Allen Benson,(1856-1864) (America's First Look into the Camera)

Benson, born free in Maryland, U.S.A., had previously served as the vice-president and had a practical knowledge of the republic's local peoples and social institutions. He spoke several indigenous languages. In 1864, he was succeeded by Daniel B. Warner, who served until 1868.

1862- The American president, Abraham Lincoln, extended official recognition to Liberia. See "The relations and duties of free colored men in America to Africa: A Letter to Charles B. Dunbar."

See "The relations and duties of free colored men in America in Africa: A Letter to Charles B. Dunbar" (African-American Perspectives).

1865- 346 immigrants from Barbados joined the small number of African Americans coming to Liberia after the American Civil War. With overseas immigration slowing to a trickle, the Americo-Liberians (as the settlers and their descendents were starting to be called) depended on immigrants from nearby regions of Africa to increase the republic's population. The Americo-Liberians formed an elite and perpetuated a double-tiered social structure in which local African peoples could not achieve full participation in the nation's social, civic, and political life. The Americo-Liberians replicated many of the exclusions and social differentiations that had so limited their own lives in the United States.

See "The absolute equality of all men before the law, the only true basis of reconstruction." An address by William M. Dickson (African-American Perspectives).

1868- A government official, Benjamin Anderson, journeyed into Liberia's interior to sign a treaty with the king of Musardo. He made careful note of the peoples, the customs, and the natural resources of those areas he passed through, writing a published report of his journey. Using the information from Anderson's report, the Liberian government moved to assert limited control over the inland region.

1869- The True Whig Party was founded. In the late nineteenth century, it became the dominant political party in Liberia and maintained its dominance until the 1980 coup. James Skivring

James Skivring

Edward J. Roye (America's First Look into the Camera) succeeded James Spriggs Payne (1868-70) as president for about one year.

1871- A high-interest British bank loan to the Liberian government contributed to a political crisis that led to President Edward J. Roye's removal from office. He was replaced by Vice President James Skivring Smith for the remainder of his term.

From 1871-72, James Skivring Smith (America's First Look into the Camera) was the interim president of Liberia and was followed by two former presidents: Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1872-76) and James Spriggs Paynes (1876-78). Next, Anthony William Gardiner (1878-83) was elected president for three terms. Gardiner resigned during his third term and was replaced by Alfred Francis Russell (1883-84).

1874- Benjamin Anderson made a second journey into inland Liberia.

1875- A war broke out among a confederation of Grebo peoples. The Liberian government asked the United States to serve as mediator. In response, a United States emissary visited the G'debo kingdom and the Liberian republic and dispatched a naval ship to assist the Liberian government in settling the conflict.

1883- Liberia could not protect its claim to the Gallinas, a northern coastal area between the Mano and Sewa Rivers, from European colonial encroachment. Economically and militarily weak, Liberia was forced to allow the British to annex the area next to Sierra Leone. President Gardiner resigned over the issue, but in 1885, President Hilary Wright Johnson (1884-1892) formally acquiesced in the annexation.

Hilary Johnson, Elijah Johnson's son, was Liberia's first native-born president.

1888- Edward Wilmot Blyden. (America's First Look into the Camera) (1832-1912) published the important study Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. Blyden was Liberia's leading intellectual, a journalist, scholar, diplomat, statesman, and theologian. Born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, he arrived in Liberia in 1850 and was soon deeply involved in its development. From 1855-1856, he edited the Liberia Herald and wrote A Voice From Bleeding Africa. In addition to holding many positions of leadership in politics and diplomacy, he also taught classics at Liberia College (1862-1871) and served as its president (1880-1884). From 1901-06, Blyden directed the education of Muslims in Sierra Leone.

1892- France sent military forces into Liberia to force it to relinquish its claim to lands between the Cavalla River to the northwest and San Pedro River in the southeast.

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1900-1997 One Nation, Many Peoples
1903- The British and Liberian governments came to an agreement about the borders between Sierra Leone and Liberia.
1904- The Liberian government instituted an administrative system that brought indigenous peoples into an indirect political relationship with the central government through their own paid officials.

1919- Liberia was one of the nations to sign the League of Nations covenant after World War I.

1929- An International Commission investigated charges of slavery and forced labor in Liberia. A year later, the committee could not substantiate such charges according to international law. They did find, however, that Liberian officials, including the republic's vice president, profited from indigenous people's forced labor.

1944- William V. S. Tubman was elected to the first of seven terms as Liberian president.

1946- The right to vote and participate in elections was extended to Liberia's indigenous peoples.

1958- Liberian representatives attended the first conference of independent African nations.

1967- Liberian officials served on the Organization of African Unity's Consultation Committee on Nigeria's civil war.

1971- President Tubman died in office.

1972- William R. Tolbert, Jr. was elected to Liberia's presidency after finishing Tubman's unexpired term.

1979- On April 14, a rally protesting the increase of rice prices ended in riot.

1980- A military coup led by Samuel K. Doe, a Liberian of non-American descent, assassinated President Tolbert and overthrew the government that had held sway over Liberia since 1847. This ended Liberia's first republic.

1985- Civilian rule was restored.

1986- A new constitution established the second republic of Liberia. Samuel K. Doe, the 1980 coup leader, retained power as head of state.

1989- Charles Taylor, an Americo-Liberian, and his followers toppled the Doe-led government. This action helped precipitate a civil war. Various ethnic factions fought for control of the nation.

1990- Rebel forces executed Liberia's former head of state, Samuel K. Doe, who had overthrown the first republic a decade before.

The West African Peacekeeping force was formed to maintain order in the region.

1995- The 16-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) brokered a peace treaty between Liberia's warring factions. An interim State Council established a tentative timetable for elections.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) re-negotiated peace.

1997- Charles Taylor was elected president of the third republic of Liberia.

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Selected Readings on Liberia

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Boley, G.E. Saigbe, Liberia: The Rise and Fall of the First Republic. New York:
MacMillan Publishers, 1983
Cassell, C. Abayomi, Liberia: The History of the First African Republic. New
York: Fountainhead Publishers', Inc, 1970.
Dunn, Elwood D., and Hails, Svend E., Historical Dictionary of Liberia.
African Historical Dictionaries Series. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1985.
Johnston, Harry, Liberia. London: Hutchinson, 1906.
Liebenow, J. Gus, Liberia: the Quest for Democracy. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987.
Nelson, Harold D., ed., Liberia: A Country Study. Washington D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1985.
Shick, Tom W., Behold the Promised Land: The History of Afro-American
Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1980
Smith, James Wesley, Sojourners in Search of Freedom: The Settlement of
Liberia of Black Americans. Lanham: University Press of America, 1987.
Staudenraus, P.J., The African Colonization Movement, 1816 - 1865. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1961; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1980.

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Maps of Liberia Home Page
am Mar-12-98

July 6, 2003
U.S. falling into bin Laden's trap

Bogged down in a guerrilla war, Iraq may be George Bush's Little Big Horn

By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor

VANCOUVER -- Here in Canada's "make love, not war" capital, I am reminded of a French reader who asked me last week, "Why was Bill Clinton impeached for making love, while George Bush goes unpunished for making a war over fake weapons?"

Excellent question, monsieur.

Asked on TV this week about steadily mounting attacks on U.S. occupation forces in Iraq, President Bush narrowed his eyes, and hunched forward aggressively - thrilling his ardent fans from Biloxi to Paducah - and growled, "Bring 'em on!" - a call to battle worthy of the famously dimwitted American general, George Armstrong Custer who, like Bush, knew what he knew and didn't need advice.

Listening to such adolescent boasting from a man who never heard a shot fired in anger outside of downtown Washington, D.C. made me gag. Bush, let's recall, dodged real military service during the Vietnam war by making occasional appearances at the Texas Air National Guard. Watching him play John Wayne at Iwo Jima for the benefit of his adoring core voters, some of whom believe Elvis is still alive, made me realize how much American politics has been debased by the double whammy of catch-me-if-you can Bill Clinton and truth-deprived George Bush.

I know a real Marine when I see one. My father served in the Pacific in the renowned 5th Marine Amphibious Division, and fought at hellish Iwo Jima.

I mention these points because I am appalled watching Bush and his neo-conservative handlers pursue an imperial war in Iraq that will kill or wound growing numbers of American GIs and turn Iraq into the ugly twin of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Decent, honest, good-natured American soldiers are now being turned into a colonial occupation army. All colonial wars - Algeria, Chechnya, Kashmir, Aceh, Palestine - are similar. Occupying forces in these dirty wars become brutalized, sadistic and cynical. Look back at Vietnam.

I shudder watching American GIs kicking down doors of civilian homes in the dead of night, threatening screaming children with their weapons, hooding suspects, firing into crowds of demonstrators, and calling air strikes on villages.

As night follows day, this nasty war will lead, as all colonial wars do, to torture, masked informers, reprisals against civilians, secret executions. That's what happened in Indochina. Just last week, Amnesty International sharply rebuked the U.S. for brutalizing and humiliating captives.

White House propaganda

Bush's claims that mounting attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq are the work of Saddam Hussein loyalists and "terrorists" belong in the same trash bin as White House propaganda about weapons of mass destruction. Yes, there are some Baath party loyalists fighting U.S. occupation, but so are many more ordinary Iraqis who are reacting as would any other proud people to an invasion of their country.

George Bush has well and truly stuck the U.S. into twin quagmires in both Afghanistan and Iraq. These ongoing guerrilla wars, and their logistical support, now tie down some 175,000 men, fully one third of total U.S. ground forces. Back in the 1980s, Osama bin Laden preached that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world was to bleed it in a score of small guerrilla wars. Bush, who now threatens to attack Iran, is falling right into bin Laden's strategic trap. Bravo, Mr. President.

Iraq is not Vietnam, but we see disturbing reminders of America's Indochina debacle. The U.S. pro-consul for Iraq, Paul Bremer, just requested more troops - shades of Gen. William Westmoreland.

Political chaos

Roads in Iraq are increasingly unsafe. Attacks against U.S. military forces are both of the spontaneous amateur kind, and organized assaults by former military men. Corruption, civic collapse and political chaos hang over everything. The Iraqi oil that was supposed to pay for this Bush colonial adventure, and enrich powerful Republican corporate political donors, is barely being pumped due to sabotage.

Faced by the growing messes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration is trying to emulate its role model, the late, unlamented British Empire, by hiring mercenaries to do the dirty work in Iraq. Washington is offering billions to India and Pakistan to send 15,000 troops each to pacify Iraq's unruly natives.

No one in the West will care if Indian or Pak mercenaries kill Iraqis or burn down their homes.

Other nations like Poland, Italy and Bulgaria are being pressured or bribed to send token forces to help pull Bush's chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq. Canada has been browbeaten into sending troops to increasingly dangerous Afghanistan where they have no useful mission other than protecting the widely detested regime of U.S.-installed puppet ruler, Hamid Karzai.

The longer U.S. forces stay in Iraq, the uglier the guerrilla war will get. And the more Americans will realize they were led into this needless conflict by a second George Custer manipulated by a cabal of neo-conservatives whose primary loyalty is not to the United States.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com or visit his home page.


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The Demise of the Roadmap, Part II: Israeli Political Parties

Wednesday, July 02 2003 @ 03:18 PM GMT


By Brian Wood,
For PalestineChronicle.com

It is common to wonder why the latest diplomatic initiative to resolve the Zionist-Palestinian problem, called the Roadmap, was doused in blood shortly after its release.

The central interpretation of these events, like other initiatives, is that the extremists don’t want peace and whose only wish in life is to kill. Others see that the Palestinians really do want to drive the Israelis into the sea. Hamas specifically, but all Palestinian factions in general, are credited with the title “extremists” and increasingly, “terrorists.”

Below is another interpretation of events and their significance. Listed are quotes from the official sites of the Israeli political parties, or from sympathetic sources, with representation in the current government.

As the Roadmap has as its central goal the creation of a Palestinian state in undetermined areas West of the Jordan River and in the Gaza Strip, and the cessation of Israeli settlement construction, including ‘natural growth’, the following political platforms are essential, primary source material on both the creation of a Palestinian state and settlements in Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

Roadmap, Preface to Phase One: Palestinian Statehood: “Israeli leadership issues unequivocal statement affirming its commitment to the two-state vision of an independent, viable, sovereign Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside Israel.”(1)

Phase One: Settlements and Outposts: “Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI (Government of Israel) freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).(2)

Likud party (3), (Including Yisrael Ba'Aliya(4) 40 of 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament (5)

“The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river."

"The Jordan Valley and the territories that dominate it shall be under Israeli sovereignty. The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel."

"Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. . . . The Likud government will act with vigor to continue Jewish habitation and strengthen Israeli sovereignty in the eastern parts of [Jerusalem]."(6)

"The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria (7) and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting."

National Religious Party (8), 6 of 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament (9)

"There will only be one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – the State of Israel."

"Settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel is the realization of the Divine precept of the return of the nation from exile to its homeland. The N.R.P. supports, strengthens, and works actively on behalf of the settlements of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Golan (10) and the Jordan Valley, and the moshavim and kibbutzim."

National Union (Moledet, Yisrael Beitenu, Tkuma) (11), 7 of 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament (12)

"'The National Union' pledges that another political entity will not rise between Jordan and the sea."

"Within the framework of any agreement, it is necessary to solve the Palestinian refugee problem-- refugees who have spent the past 55 years in refugee camps. The proposed solution is transfer (ethnic cleansing)."

"'The National Union' supports the continuity of settlement of all parts of Jerusalem in order to ensure the unity of the city. This will require transferring all government offices, organizations and public bodies to Jerusalem, ensuring free access to the holy places by every Jew, including the right to ascend, and pray on the Temple Mount."

"'The National Union' appreciates the security, economic, and social benefits of settling Israel, and will create a minister’s committee on settlement, which will oversee the founding and expansion of settlements throughout the land of Israel. Settlement and development must be ongoing in the Negev, Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights, the Galil (Galilee), and the development towns."

"The State of Israel belongs to the Jewish people." (13)

Moledet (14), part of the National Union Party

"[Transfer](15) is, in fact, the very tool that is the key to peace in the Middle East."

"Acceptance of two countries for two people on two sides of the Jordan. The Jordanian/Palestinian state with Amman as its capital, and the Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital."

"Today, Israel (including Judea, Samaria & Gaza) constitutes 24% of the area designated for the Jewish homeland. Jordan comprises [the other] 76%."

"Moledet ("homeland" in Hebrew) is an ideological political party in Israel that embraces the idea of population transfer as an integral part of comprehensive plan to achieve real peace between the Jews and the Arabs Living in the Land of Israel."

United Torah (16), 5 of 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament (17)

Opposes negotiations with the Palestinians, the formation of a Palestinian state, and supports increasing settlements [between the Jordan and the Mediterranean].

Shinui (18), 15 of 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament (19)

"As part of the peace arrangements, Israel will also have to leave settlements scattered in the heart of Palestinian populations, but Israel will not evacuate settlement blocs, and these will be integrated within Israel's borders. There are also large settlements, which will be subject to negotiation."

Meretz(20), 6 of 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament (21)

"A comprehensive program to end the occupation: erecting an effective border fence, compensating settlers to move within adjusted 1967 frontiers."

Labor (22), 19 of 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament (23)

"United Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty."

"Israel extends its sovereignty over areas that are major Jewish settlement blocs. . . . Existing settlements on the Golan will be strengthened."

"The Jordan river will be Israel's eastern security border and there will be no other army stationed to the west of it."

"The Labor Party recognizes the Palestinians' right to self-determination, and does not rule out in this connection the establishment of a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty."

"Jerusalem is, and will remain, the undivided capital of Israel and the Jewish people."

Shas (24), 11 of 120 seats in Parliament (25)

Party chairman Eli Yishai told Israeli daily Ma'ariv in November 2002, "I want everyone who is not Jewish not to be in this land. . . . Immigrants are coming who are gentiles, foreign workers are coming, and with the Arabs, they will make this state multicultural. The immigrants who are not Jewish come and build churches. They should stay in their own countries."

On Wednesday 25 June 2003 when Israeli-Arab MK Ahmed Tibi denounced the Israeli military killing of Sheik Saleh Shehada's wife and child in July of 2002, Tibi was ejected from the Parliamentary debate. Shas MK Nissim Ze'ev said it would take an assassination to get him off of the Parliament floor: "It will take an Apache [attack helicopter] to get him down." (26)

One Nation, 3 of 120 seats in Parliament (27)

Conclusion

Of all the parties listed, only Meretz is officially opposed to Israeli settlements built on Palestinian territory. Even the left-leaning party of Shinui, who implies favor towards limited Palestinian autonomy or even statehood built on isolated cantons, supports the settlements (most settlers live in what is called ‘settlement blocs’, which the Shinui party platform states they will not remove).

The majority of the members of the Israeli parliament, whether they are rooted in parties of the left, center, or right, are outright opposed to a Palestinian state. As is noted, some advocate openly for the expulsion of Palestinians from the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

From the platforms listed above, it is clear that several Israeli parties elevate their own nationalism, culture, and rights above the nationalism, culture, and rights of the Palestinians. Little room is left for discussion or negotiation with Palestinians. The elevation of one’s own ethnic group over against another is a common problem in human history. It is called racism.

Any questions?

(1)http://www.un.org/media//main/roadmap122002.html, page 2

(2)Ibid., 4

(3) http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm

(4) http://info.jpost.com/C002/Supplements/Elections2003/pp_yisraelbaliyah.html

(5) http://www.knesset.gov.il/parties/eng/sia_eng.asp?partyid=13

(6) There are approximately 200,000 Israeli settlers living in 10 major settlements in East Jerusalem. See "Israeli Settlement Policies in East Jerusalem, American Committee on Jerusalem, http://www.acj.org/articles/article.php?article_id=9

(7 )Judea and Samaria are place names designated by the Zionists. In public discourse, the common terminology for the two is the West Bank.

(8) http://www.mafdal.org.il/nconfigout.asp?psn=9

(9) http://www.knesset.gov.il/parties/eng/sia_eng.asp?partyid=3

(10) The Golan Heights is an area 1158 Square kilometers of land adjoining the Sea of Galilee to the east and circling north. It was taken by force from Syria in the war in 1967 and annexed by Israel in 1981. 18,000 Israeli settlers live on 33 settlements. See http://english.golan.org.il/golan/efacts.asp. Israeli Bureau of Central Statistics figures (2001) show nearly 16,000 Israeli settlers in 32 settlements. See http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton53/st02_08.pdf

(11) http://www.leumi.org.il/en/index.html

(12) http://www.knesset.gov.il/parties/eng/sia_eng.asp?partyid=107

(13) Approximately one in five holders of Israeli citizenship is Arab. See the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton53/st02_01.pdf

(14) http://www.moledet.org/moledet.html

(15) "Transfer" is a Zionist euphemism for ethnic cleansing. See Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Nur Masalha. Washington: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1992

(16) http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Politics/UTJ.html

(17) http://www.knesset.gov.il/parties/eng/sia_eng.asp?partyid=8

(18) http://info.jpost.com/C002/Supplements/Elections2003/pp_shinui.html

(19) http://www.knesset.gov.il/parties/eng/sia_eng.asp?partyid=32

(20) http://info.jpost.com/C002/Supplements/Elections2003/pp_meretz.html

(21) http://www.knesset.gov.il/parties/eng/sia_eng.asp?partyid=4

(22) http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Politics/labor.html

(23) http://www.knesset.gov.il/parties/eng/sia_eng.asp?partyid=122

(24) http://info.jpost.com/C002/Supplements/Elections2003/pp_shas.html. Shas does not have official positions on a Palestinian state or settlements. Their main concerns are Israeli society operating according to “Torah-Judaism” and the acquisition of government funds for their separate school system. As noted by the above quote, they tend towards a nationalistic ethno-centrism.

(25) http://www.knesset.gov.il/parties/eng/sia_eng.asp?partyid=2

(26) "Shas MK: Use Apache to get Tibi off Rostrum", Gideon Alon, Ha'aretz, 26 June 2003

(27) http://www.knesset.gov.il/parties/eng/sia_eng.asp?partyid=99. No further information available.



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July 4, 2003


Freedom, Race and Democracy in America
What is the 4th of July to a Slave?
By FREDERICK DOUGLASS

[A Speech to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society on July 5, 1852]

Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice, embodies in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.

This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?

FELLOW CITIZENS, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions!--whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.

My subject, then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery--the great sin and shame of America!

"I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgement is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed.

But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are 72 crimes in the state of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment.

What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write.

When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery?...To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! Had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHAT TO the American slave is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Fellow citizens, the murderous traffic [the slave trade] is today in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.

Fellow citizens! The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a byword to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes.

Oh be warned! Be warned! A horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation's bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!

Website turns tables on government officials
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 7/4/2003

Annoyed by the prospect of a massive new federal surveillance system, two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are celebrating the Fourth of July with a new Internet service that will let citizens create dossiers on government officials.

The system will start by offering standard background information on politicians, but then go one bold step further, by asking Internet users to submit their own intelligence reports on government officials -- reports that will be published with no effort to verify their accuracy.

"It's sort of a citizen's intelligence agency," said Chris Csikszentmihalyi, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab.

He and graduate student Ryan McKinley created the Government Information Awareness (GIA) project as a response to the US government's Total Information Awareness program (TIA).

Revealed last year, TIA seeks to track possible terrorist activity by analyzing vast amounts of information stored in government and private databases, such as credit card data. The system would use this information to analyze the actions of millions of people, in an effort to spot patterns that could indicate a terrorist threat.

News of the plan outraged civil libertarians and prompted Congress to set limits on the scope of such activity. The Defense Department then renamed the program Terrorist Information Awareness, to ease public concern.

But the controversy gave McKinley the idea for the GIA project. "If total information exists," he said, "really the same effort should be spent to make the same information at the leadership level at least as transparent -- in my opinion, more transparent."

McKinley worked with Csikszentmihalyi to design the GIA system. It's partly based on technology used to create Internet indexes such as Google. Software crawls around Internet sites that store large amounts of information about politicians. These include independent political sites like opensecrets.org, as well as sites run by government agencies. McKinley created software that ferrets out the useful data from these sites, and loads it into the GIA database. The result is a one-stop research site for basic information on key officials.

The site also takes advantage of round-the-clock political coverage provided by cable TV's C-Span networks. McKinley and Csikszentmihalyi use video cameras to capture images of people appearing on C-Span, which generally includes the names of people shown on screen. A computer program "reads" each name, and links it to any information about that person stored in the database. By clicking on the picture, a GIA user instantly gets a complete rundown on all available data about that person.

The GIA site constantly displays snapshots of the people appearing on C-Span at that moment. If there's a dossier on a particular person, clicking on the picture brings it up. A C-Span viewer watching a live government hearing could learn which companies have contributed to a member of Congress's reelection campaign, before the politician had even finished speaking.

All of the information currently on the site is available from public sources. But GIA will go one step further. Starting today, the site will allow the public to submit information about government officials, and this information will be made available to anyone visiting the site. No effort will be made to verify the accuracy of the data.

This approach to Internet publishing isn't new. It resembles a method known as Wiki, in which a website is constantly amended by visitors who contribute new information. The best known Wiki site, www.wikipedia.org, is an online encyclopedia created entirely by visitors who have voluntarily written nearly 140,000 articles, on subjects ranging from astronomy to Roman mythology. Any Wikipedia user who thinks he has spotted an error or wants to add information can modify the article. Unlike at a standard encyclopedia operation, there is no central authority to edit or reject articles.

The GIA approach, though, raises the possibility that people could post libelous information, or data that unreasonably compromises a person's privacy.

That troubles Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology & Liberty Program of the American Civil Liberties Union. "We think that there should be some restrictions on the publishing of personally identifiable information, whether it involves government officials or not," he said.

But he noted that the public has a right to know some things about a politician that would be properly kept private about an ordinary citizen. For instance, voters have a right to know where a politician sends his children to school, if that politician has taken a strong stand on school vouchers.

"Do they have the right to publish every piece of data they're going to publish?" Steinhardt asked. "It's going to depend on what they publish."

In any case, Steinhardt said, McKinley and Csikszentmihalyi have a First Amendment right to set up the GIA project. And he said that it's a valuable response to the government's TIA surveillance. "I assume the point of this is, turnabout is fair play."

On a page of the GIA website, at opengov.media.mit.edu, McKinley and Csikszentmihalyi give their answer to questions about the legitimacy of their actions.

"Is it legal?" the site reads. "It should be."

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.

Was Liberia Founded By Freed U.S. Slaves?

By Mary Kay Ricks

07/05/03: (Slate) In Tuesday's Washington Post, an editorial urging President Bush to send peacekeepers to civil war-wracked Liberia noted that the country was "founded by freed U.S. slaves." Is that true?

Not quite. Although some freed American slaves did settle there, Liberia was actually founded by the American Colonization Society, a group of white Americans—including some slaveholders—that had what certainly can be described as mixed motives. In 1817, in Washington, D.C., the ACS established the new colony (on a tract of land in West Africa purchased from local tribes) in hopes that slaves, once emancipated, would move there. The society preferred this option to the alternative: a growing number of free black Americans demanding rights, jobs, and resources at home.

Notable supporters of transporting freed blacks to Liberia included Henry Clay, Francis Scott Key, Bushrod Washington, and the architect of the U.S. Capitol, William Thornton—all slave owners. These "moderates" thought slavery was unsustainable and should eventually end but did not consider integrating slaves into society a viable option. So, the ACS encouraged slaveholders to offer freedom on the condition that those accepting it would move to Liberia at the society's expense. A number of slave owners did just that.

When the first settlers were relocated to Liberia in 1822, the plan drew immediate criticism on several fronts. Many leaders in the black community publicly attacked it, asking why free blacks should have to emigrate from the country where they, their parents, and even their grandparents were born. Meanwhile, slave owners in the South vigorously denounced the plan as an assault on their slave economy.

Abolitionist resistance to colonization grew steadily. In 1832, as the ACS began to send agents to England to raise funds for what they touted as a benevolent plan, William Lloyd Garrison revved up the opposition with a 236-page book on the evils of colonization and sent abolitionists to England to track down and counter ACS supporters.

But the scheme had some fans. Slave states like Maryland and Virginia were already home to a significant number of free blacks, and whites there—still reeling from Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion, which emancipated slaves had a hand in—formed local colonization societies. Thus encouraged, Maryland legislators passed a law in 1832 that required any slave freed after that date to leave the state and specifically offered passage to a part of Liberia administered by the Maryland State Colonization Society. However, enforcement provisions lacked teeth, and many Marylanders forgot their antipathy to free blacks when they needed extra hands at harvest time. There is no evidence that any freed African-American was forcibly sent to Liberia from Maryland or anywhere else.

By the 1840s, the American Colonization Society was largely bankrupt, and the transported Liberians were demoralized by hostile local tribes, bad management, and deadly diseases. The U.S. government would not claim sovereignty over the colony, so in 1846 the ACS demanded that Liberians declare their independence. In the end, around 13,000 emigrants had sailed to Liberia. Today, vestiges of the emigration can be seen in Liberia's Maryland County, in the American-sounding names we read in the papers, and, as reported on National Public Radio, in one Liberian restaurant's offer of Maryland-style fried chicken.

Mary Kay Ricks is a lawyer and free-lance writer who specializes in history.


© Copyright 2003 Slate








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Fisk And Pilger On Iraq : The Real Danger Lies Within

by Gurill Hus and Guri Wiggen

07/03/03: (Inter Press Service) OSLO - If the reality in Iraq is one thing and the reporting of it remains another, it is because much of the media wants it that way, say two leading journalists who have been reporting the 'other' side of the Iraq story.

The level of self-censorship in the media has risen not just during the Iraq war but also since 9/11, says Robert Fisk from The Independent newspaper published in Britain and John Pilger, Australian broadcaster and film-maker.

Pilger and Fisk both spoke to IPS on visits to Oslo. Pilger came to receive the $100,000 Sophie Prize for 30 years of work to expose deception and war against humanity. Fisk came to give a lecture at Fritt Ord, a Norwegian media foundation.

”Propaganda is not found just in totalitarian states,” Pilger says. ”There at least they know they are being lied to. We tend to assume it is the truth. In the U.S., censorship is rampant.”

Self-censorship, that is. This kind of self-censorship is an increasing problem, and leads to one-dimensional coverage that journalists must learn to transcend, Pilger says.

”The most important soldiers in the Iraq war were not the troops, but the journalists and the broadcasters,” Pilger says. ”Lies were transformed into themes for public debate. The true reason was of course--as we all now know--not to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and remove their alleged weapons of mass destruction, but to achieve the real Anglo-American aim; to capture an oil rich country and to control the Middle East.”

Self-censorship is a particular problem because of the ”myth of neutrality” around western media. ”When you declare yourself neutral, everybody else seems biased,” Pilger says. ”But as seen in the Iraq coverage and elsewhere, journalists very often assume the culture of the media institution and all its unwritten restrictions.”

But even the term self-censorship is not quite right, Pilger says, ”because many journalists are unaware that they are censoring themselves.”

Media organizations are now under tight control, Pilger says. Just five corporations rule the broadcasters in the United States. In Australia Rupert Murdoch controls 70 percent of the media. ”We live in an age of information,” he says. ”Yet the media is not attacking the ruling system. The media has never before been so controlled, and propaganda is all around. Most of us don't even see it.”

The three main dangers facing the world, he says, are silence, betrayal and power--and journalists can make silence dangerous.

Fisk says the story in Iraq most correspondents chose not to report was the ”bomb now, die later” policy through use of depleted uranium (DU). Since the Gulf war of 1991 the number of cancer patients had risen, and ”strange vegetables” had begun to appear on the market. The distortions were most likely to have been caused by use of DU, he says.

”I told my colleagues that this was an interesting story that should be reported,” Fisk says. ”But most of them said, honestly Bob, we do not want to write home about sick children. An official American military document states that DU dust can indeed be spread in battles and lead to serious illness in humans, but this is not reported.”

The public and civil society opposed the Iraq war because they understood the hidden agenda, but ”editors have a tendency to underestimate their readership,” he says. Readers are seen as ignorant or disinterested.

Self-censorship continues in Iraq after the war, and elsewhere, Fisk says. ”Many more people have died so far in the war against terrorism than on September 11 2001,” Fisk says. ”That is the story of our time, and very few are writing it.”

Twenty thousand people have died just in the Afghanistan war, seven times more than on September 11, Fisk says. This is just one example of the ”great power of silence that is threatening to dominate us all.”

Coupled with the self-censorship is the censorship being imposed on the Iraqi media, Fisk says. This too is not being reported adequately in the United States. The U.S. administration has set up a committee for press censorship in Iraq, which means the Iraqi press can publish anything to remind people about the terror of Saddam, but is not allowed to write freely about current events crucial to them and their future.

Pilger sees reason for optimism. ”There is a movement of resistance globally from the landless peoples movement in Brazil to the huge anti-war movement,” he says. ”Nothing like this has ever happened before in my lifetime.” The superpower in Washington is being challenged by the other superpower, he says; the superpower of public opinion.

Israel : A Costly Friendship to the US ?

Patrick Seale wrote an article entitled Costly Friendshipin The Nation, and posed the question:

It is now widely suspected that the (Iraq) war was a fraud, but who perpetuated the fraud and on whom ?

He answered his own question:

An important part of the story is the special relationship between the United States and Israel. The US-Israel alliance is officially and routinely celebrated in both countries, but its legacy is troubling.

An inescapable conclusion is that the intimate alliance, and the policies that flowed from it, have caused America and Israel to be reviled and detested in a large part of the world --and to be exposed, as never before, to terrorist attack."

Read HERE the full article by Patrick Seale.

Excerpt from Patrick Seale's article:

Much of the talk in Europe these days--in newspaper offices, at dinner parties, in foreign ministries--is about how the United States and Britain were conned into going to war against Iraq, or perhaps how they conned the rest of us into believing that they had good reasons for doing so.

It is now widely suspected that the war was a fraud, but who perpetuated the fraud and on whom?

An important part of the story is the special relationship between the United States and Israel.

It is in effect the story of how Israel and its American friends came to exercise a profound influence on American policy toward the Arab and Muslim world.

Right-wing Jewish neocons--and most prominent neocons are right-wing Jews--tend to be pro-Israel zealots who believe that American and Israeli interests are inseparable.

Friends of Ariel Sharon's Likud, they (right-wing Jewish neocons) tend to loathe Arabs and Muslims. What they wished for was an improvement in Israel's military and strategic environment.

The Iraq crisis has made their names and organizations familiar to every newspaper and magazine reader:

• Wolfowitz and Feith, numbers 2 and 3 at the Pentagon;
  
  
• Richard Perle, former chairman and still a member of the influential Defense Policy Board, sometimes known as the neocons' political godfather and around whom a cloud of financial impropriety hangs;
  
  
• Elliott Abrams, senior director of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, with a controversial background in Latin America and in the Iran/contra affair;
  
  
• and their many friends, relations and kindred spirits in the media,such as William Kristol and Robert Kagan of The Weekly Standard, and
  
  
• in the numerous pro-Israel think tanks, such as Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, the American Enterprise Institute, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Project for the New American Century, the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (born out of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and many others.

9/11 provided the neocons with a unique chance to harness (some would say hijack) America's Middle East policy--and America's military power--in Israel's interest by succeeding in getting the United States to apply the doctrine of pre-emptive war to Israel's enemies.

Concerned to insure Israel's continued regional supremacy, the neocons argued that the aim of US policy in the Middle East should be the thorough political and ideological "restructuring" of the region.

Immediately after 9/11, Wolfowitz clamored for the destruction of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. This was a cause he had advocated unsuccessfully throughout much of the 1990s. It would tilt the balance of power decisively in Israel's favor, allowing it to impose on the hapless Palestinians the harsh terms of its choice.

But what made the attack possible was one overriding fact of American political life: the US-Israel alliance, as close a relationship between two states as any in the world today. The Iraq war was in fact the high-water mark of that alliance.

President Kennedy was totally opposed to Israel's getting the (nuclear) bomb and was prepared to disregard the views of the American Jewish community on the matter. Kennedy was preparing to force a showdown. Had he not been assassinated on November 22, 1963, he was on course for a confrontation with Israel.

President Lyndon Johnson was the true father of the US-Israel alliance. It was he who "set the precedent that ultimately created the US-Israel strategic relationship: a multimillion-dollar annual business in cutting-edge weaponry, supplemented by extensive military-to-military dialogues, security consultations, extensive joint training exercises, and cooperative research-and-development ventures."

From 1967 onward there was no stopping the extravagant blossoming of the US-Israel relationship. If Johnson had been the father of the alliance, Henry Kissinger was to be its sugar daddy.

Kissinger adopted as America's own, the main theses of Israeli policy:

that Israel had to be stronger than any possible combination of Arab states;

that the Arabs' aspiration to recover territories lost in 1967 was "unrealistic";

that the PLO should never be considered a peace partner.

In 1970 Israel received $30 million in US aid; in 1971, after the Jordan crisis, the aid rose to $545 million. During the October war Kissinger called for a $3 billion aid bill, and it has remained in the several billions ever since.

In due course Congress was captured by AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) -- "the purring, powerful lobbying machine of the 1980s and 1990s"/

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), founded in 1985 by Martin Indyk, an Australian-born lobbyist for Israel, set about carefully shaping opinion and placing its men inside the Administration.

Dennis Ross, Indyk's colleague at WINEP and a high-level negotiator for Bush I, became Clinton's long-serving coordinator of the Arab-Israeli peace process; he rarely failed to defer to Israel's interests, which is one reason the peace process got nowhere. He has now returned to WINEP as its director and continued advocate.

But nothing in the history of the US-Israel alliance has equaled the accession by "friends of Israel" to key posts in the current Bush Administration, and their determined and successful struggle to shape America's foreign policy, especially in the Middle East--including the destruction of Iraq.

The US-Israel alliance is officially and routinely celebrated in both countries, but its legacy is troubling. Without it, Israel might not have succumbed to the madness of invading Lebanon and staying there twenty-two years; or to the senseless brutality of its treatment of the Palestinians; or to the shortsighted folly of settling 400,000 Jews in Jerusalem and the West Bank, who are now able to hold successive Israeli governments to ransom.

A Costly Friendship
by PATRICK SEALE

Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the US-Israel Alliance
by Warren Bass


This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030721&s=seale


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



[from the July 21, 2003 issue]

Much of the talk in Europe these days--in newspaper offices, at dinner parties, in foreign ministries--is about how the United States and Britain were conned into going to war against Iraq, or perhaps how they conned the rest of us into believing that they had good reasons for doing so. It is now widely suspected that the war was a fraud, but who perpetuated the fraud and on whom? Were Bush and Blair fed fabricated intelligence, or did they knowingly massage and doctor the intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq so as to justify an attack? Everyone agrees that Saddam Hussein was a monster, but the military invasion to depose him is seen by many, and certainly on this side of the Atlantic, as illegitimate and unprovoked, and a blatant violation of the UN Charter, setting an unfortunate precedent in international relations. Henceforth, in the jungle, only might is right.

Various intelligence and foreign affairs committees of the British Parliament and the US Congress have started inquiries into how the decision to go to war was taken--when, why and on what basis. But it will require a superhuman effort to penetrate the murky thicket of competing government bureaucracies, spooks, exiles, defectors and other self-serving sources, pro-Israeli lobbyists, magazine editors, think-tank gurus and assorted ideologues who, in Washington at least, have a massive say in the shaping of foreign policy.

How did it all begin? An important part of the story, though not the whole of it, is the special relationship between the United States and Israel. Warren Bass's important and timely book Support Any Friend, written with candor and firmly rooted in primary sources, takes us back to the diplomacy of the 1960s, and to what he argues were the beginnings of today's extraordinarily intimate alliance between the two countries. It is in effect the story of how Israel and its American friends came to exercise a profound influence on American policy toward the Arab and Muslim world. Bass believes it all began with JFK. It is an interesting thesis and he argues it well, although in my view the US-Israeli entente actually began with LBJ, after Kennedy's assassination.

The neocons--a powerful group at the heart of the Bush Administration--wanted war against Iraq and pressed for it with great determination, overriding and intimidating all those who expressed doubts, advised caution, urged the need for allies and for UN legitimacy, or recommended sticking with the well-tried cold war instruments of containment and deterrence. War it had to be, the neocons said, to deal with the imminent threat from Saddam's fearsome weapons, which, as Tony Blair was rash enough to claim in his tragicomic role as Bush's "poodle," could be fired within forty-five minutes of a launch order. This flight of blood-curdling rhetoric has now come home to haunt him, earning him a headline (in The Economist, no less) of "Prime Minister Bliar."

Where did the information for his remarkable statement come from? How reliable was the prewar intelligence reaching Bush and Blair? The finger is increasingly being pointed at a special Pentagon intelligence cell, known as the Office of Special Plans, headed by Abram Shulsky. The office was created after 9/11 by two of the most fervent and determined neocons, Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary, and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, to probe into Saddam's WMD programs and his links with Al Qaeda because, it is alleged, they did not trust other intelligence agencies of the US government to come up with the goods. It has been suggested that this special Pentagon intelligence cell relied heavily on the shifty Ahmad Chalabi's network of exiled informants. If evidence was indeed fabricated, this may well have been where it was done.

One way of looking at the decision-making process in Washington is to see it as the convergence of two currents or trends. The first was clearly the child of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which both traumatized and enraged America, shattering its sense of invulnerability but also rousing it to "total war" against its enemies in the manner of a Hollywood blockbuster. Perhaps because they had more experience of wars and terrorist violence, Europeans were slow to comprehend the visceral impact of these events on the American psyche. Suddenly mighty America was afraid--afraid of mass-casualty terrorism; afraid of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; afraid that "rogue states" might pass on such weapons to nebulous, elusive, fanatical, transnational terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, enabling them perhaps to strike again with even more devastating effect.

The aggressive National Security Strategy of September 2002 sprang from these fears. It proclaimed that containment and deterrence were now stone dead; that the United States had to achieve and maintain total military supremacy over all possible challengers; that any "rogue states" that might be tempted to acquire WMDs would be treated without mercy by means of preventive or pre-emptive war. Under this "Bush Doctrine," the United States gave itself the right to project its overwhelming power wherever and whenever it pleased, to invade countries it disliked, to overthrow their regimes and to transform hostile "tyrannies" into friendly--read pro-American--"democracies." It was a program for global dominance, driven by the perceived threat to America but also by a modern version of imperial ambition.

The second, overlapping trend--overlapping because it involved many of the same people--was more narrowly focused on Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors. Right-wing Jewish neocons--and most prominent neocons are right-wing Jews--tend to be pro-Israel zealots who believe that American and Israeli interests are inseparable (much to the alarm of liberal, pro-peace Jews, whether in America, Europe or Israel itself). Friends of Ariel Sharon's Likud, they tend to loathe Arabs and Muslims. For them, the cause of "liberating" Iraq had little to do with the well-being of Iraqis, just as the cause of "liberating" Iran and ending its nuclear program--recently advocated by Shimon Peres in a Wall Street Journal editorial--has little to do with the well-being of Iranians. What they wished for was an improvement in Israel's military and strategic environment.

The Iraq crisis has made their names and organizations familiar to every newspaper and magazine reader: Wolfowitz and Feith, numbers 2 and 3 at the Pentagon; Richard Perle, former chairman and still a member of the influential Defense Policy Board, sometimes known as the neocons' political godfather and around whom a cloud of financial impropriety hangs; Elliott Abrams, senior director of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, with a controversial background in Latin America and in the Iran/contra affair; and their many friends, relations and kindred spirits in the media, such as William Kristol and Robert Kagan of The Weekly Standard, and in the numerous pro-Israel think tanks, such as Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, the American Enterprise Institute, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Project for the New American Century, the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (born out of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and many others. As has been observed by several commentators, 9/11 provided the neocons with a unique chance to harness (some would say hijack) America's Middle East policy--and America's military power--in Israel's interest by succeeding in getting the United States to apply the doctrine of pre-emptive war to Israel's enemies.

This trend rested on a mistaken, indeed willfully tendentious, analysis of the attacks that the United States had suffered--not just the body blow of 9/11 but also the numerous earlier wake-up calls such as the bombing of two US embassies in East Africa and the attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbor. The basic neocon argument was that terrorist attacks should not in any way be read as the response of angry, desperate men to what America and Israel were doing to the Arab and Muslim world, and especially to the Palestinians. Quite the contrary; America was attacked because the terrorists envied the American way of life. America was virtuous, America was "good." The real problem, the neocons argued, lay not with American policies but with the "sick" and "failed" Islamic societies from which the terrorists sprang, with their hate-driven educational system, with their inherently "violent" and "fanatical" religion. So, rather than correcting or changing its misguided policies, the United States was urged to "reform" and "democratize" Arab and Muslim societies--by force if necessary--so as to insure its own security and that of its allies. Wars of choice became official American policy.

Concerned to insure Israel's continued regional supremacy, and at odds with what they saw as distasteful opponents, such as Islamic militancy, Arab nationalism and Palestinian radicalism, the neocons argued that the aim of US policy in the Middle East should be the thorough political and ideological "restructuring" of the region. Exporting "democracy" would serve the interests of defending both the United States and Israel. A "reformed" Middle East could be made pro-American and pro-Israeli. All this seems to have amounted to an ambitious--perhaps over-reaching--program for Israeli regional dominance, driven by Israel's far right and its way-out American friends.

Iraq was the first candidate for a "democratic" cure, but the need for this doubtful medicine could just as well justify an assault on Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or wherever a "threat" is detected or America's reforming zeal directed. Immediately after 9/11, Wolfowitz clamored for the destruction of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. This was a cause he had advocated unsuccessfully throughout much of the 1990s. But the accession of the neocons to positions of power, the fear of more terrorist attacks and the President's combative instincts now made what had been a Dr. Strangelove scenario appear quite doable. No scrap of evidence, however, could be found linking Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden. Nor did Iraq pose an imminent threat to anyone, least of all to the United States or Britain. Exhausted by two wars, it had been starved by a dozen years of the most punitive sanctions in modern history. Hans Blix's UN arms inspectors had roamed all over the country and acquired a good grasp of its entire industrial capability. They had found no evidence that Saddam had rebuilt his WMD programs. They would have certainly liked more time to look further and make quite sure. This was the view of most European experts. Meanwhile, Arab leaders had buried the hatchet with Iraq at the Arab summit in Beirut in March 2002. All Iraq's neighbors wanted to trade with it, not make war on it. In the atmosphere of reconciliation that then prevailed, even Kuwait did not think it seemly to admit that it still longed for revenge for Saddam's 1990 invasion.

There were, however, plenty of reasons why Israel and its friends in Washington wanted Iraq "restructured." Saddam had dared fire Scuds at Israel during the 1991 war and, more recently, he had been bold enough to send money to the bereaved families of Palestinian suicide bombers, whose homes had been flattened by Israeli reprisals. These "crimes" had gone unpunished. Moreover, in spite of its evident weakness, Saddam's Iraq was the only Arab country that might in the long run pose a strategic challenge to Israel. Egypt's government had been neutralized and corrupted by American subsidies and by its peace treaty with Israel, while Syria was enfeebled by internal security squabbles, a faltering economy and a fossilized political system. The Iraqi leader had to be brought down. His fall, the neocons calculated, would change the political dynamics of the entire region. It would intimidate Teheran and Damascus, even Riyadh and Cairo, and tilt the balance of power decisively in Israel's favor, allowing it to impose on the hapless Palestinians the harsh terms of its choice. Some neocons were already envisioning an Israel-Iraq peace treaty as a bonus byproduct of the war.

These concerns, in addition to control of Iraq's oil resources, rather than Saddam's alleged WMDs, were the real aims of the war against Iraq. They were embraced by the United States to assuage its own fears and restore its sense of absolute power. But what made the attack possible--the motor behind it--was one overriding fact of American political life: the US-Israel alliance, as close a relationship between two states as any in the world today. The Iraq war was in fact the high-water mark of that alliance.

Warren Bass seeks to establish that the foundations of the US-Israel alliance were laid by the Kennedy Administration. He even gives a precise date--August 19, 1962--for the start of the military relationship as we know it. On that day in Tel Aviv, Mike Feldman, the deputy White House counsel and Kennedy's indefatigable contact man with Israel and American Jews, met secretly with David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir and told them that "the President had determined that the Hawk missile should be made available to Israel." The Israelis were ecstatic. The Kennedy decision destroyed the Eisenhower embargo on the sale of major weapons systems to Israel. "What began with the Hawk in 1962," Bass writes, "has become one of the most expensive and extensive military relationships of the postwar era, with a price tag in the billions of dollars and diplomatic consequences to match."

The Hawk sale is therefore the first pillar of Bass's case for saying that Kennedy was the father of the US-Israel alliance. The second is what he describes as Kennedy's "fudge" over America's inspections of Israel's secret nuclear weapons plant at Dimona in the Negev. Although ingeniously and entertainingly argued with a wealth of detail, the thesis is not conclusively proven. As a matter of fact, the Kennedy team, with the exception of Feldman and his friends, did not want a special military relationship with Israel, fearing that it would trigger a regional arms race. Kennedy was not taken in by Ben-Gurion's histrionic description of Nasser, the Egyptian leader, as a cruel aggressor bent on Hitlerian genocide. He knew Israel was strong enough to deal with any Arab threat. He didn't believe it needed the advanced weapons and the formal American security guarantee Ben-Gurion requested. He told Ben-Gurion firmly that he did not want to be the US President who brought the Middle East into the missile age. Kennedy was in fact attempting to reach out to Nasser, whom he recognized as a nationalist, not a Communist. He feared that giving Israel preferential treatment might push the Arabs into the arms of the Soviets. In turn, the State Department's Middle East experts saw no good reason for the United States to change its arms policy toward Israel. As an internal memo put it, "To undertake, in effect, a military alliance with Israel would destroy the delicate balance we seek to maintain in our Near East relations."

Nevertheless, Kennedy finally approved the Hawk sale, which Eisenhower had rejected two years earlier. But he seems to have done so against his better judgment. He was eventually worn down by Israel's persistent and systematic exaggeration of the Egyptian menace, and more particularly by Shimon Peres's ability, based on chillingly detailed knowledge of internal Administration debates, to play off the Pentagon and the NSC against the State Department.

Bass's case is also arguable regarding Dimona. Far from turning a blind eye to what was evidently going on there, JFK was totally opposed to Israel's getting the bomb and was prepared to disregard the views of the American Jewish community on the matter. In the spring of 1963 he warned Ben-Gurion that (in Bass's words) "an Israeli refusal to permit real Dimona inspections would have the gravest consequences for the budding US-Israel friendship." He wrote Ben-Gurion two scorching letters, on May 18 and June 15, threatening that "this Government's commitment to and support of Israel would be seriously jeopardized" if Israel did not permit thorough inspections to all areas of the Dimona site. Ben-Gurion and his successor, Levi Eshkol, lied through their teeth to Kennedy about Dimona but, as Bass writes, Kennedy was preparing to force a showdown. Had he not been assassinated on November 22, 1963, he was on course for a confrontation with Israel.

The fudge came later, with Lyndon Johnson, who was far less concerned than Kennedy with nuclear proliferation. Skirting the issue of Israel's nuclear ambitions, Johnson approved the sale to Israel of large numbers of American tanks and warplanes even before the 1967 war, which propelled the Jewish state to stardom, pumping a large segment of the American Jewish community full of confidence, ambition and even arrogance. Johnson was the true father of the US-Israel alliance. It was he, rather than Kennedy, who "set the precedent that ultimately created the US-Israel strategic relationship: a multimillion-dollar annual business in cutting-edge weaponry, supplemented by extensive military-to-military dialogues, security consultations, extensive joint training exercises, and cooperative research-and-development ventures."

Bass raises the intriguing possibility that the Hawks were never really intended, as Ben-Gurion pleaded, to defend Israel's air bases from a knockout blow by Nasser's MIGs, but rather as a perimeter defense to protect the Dimona nuclear weapons plant. Some indirect corroboration of this thesis was later to emerge. In delivering its own knockout blow to Egypt's air force on the first day of the 1967 war, Israel lost eight jets in the first wave of attack. One wounded plane came limping back to base in radio silence. It wandered into Dimona's air space, and was promptly shot down by an Israeli Hawk missile.

From 1967 onward there was no stopping the extravagant blossoming of the US-Israel relationship. If Johnson had been the father of the alliance, Henry Kissinger was to be its sugar daddy. In 1970, he invited Israel to intervene in Jordan when a beleaguered King Hussein asked for US protection. Syrian troops had entered the country in support of militant Palestinians then engaged in a trial of strength with the little King. Israel was only too happy to comply with this most irregular request. It made some much-publicized military deployments in the direction of Jordan. Emboldened by this support, Hussein's own forces then engaged the Syrians, who quickly withdrew. Hussein's army was thus left free to slaughter the Palestinians.

Rather than seeing Black September as the local tiff that it actually was, Kissinger blew it up into an "East-West" contest in which Israel had successfully faced down not just the Syrians but the Russians as well. This was the real launch of the US-Israel "strategic relationship," in which Israel was entrusted with "keeping the peace" in the Middle East on America's behalf--and was lavishly rewarded with arms, aid and a cupboard-full of secret commitments directed against Arab interests.

Kissinger adopted as America's own the main theses of Israeli policy: that Israel had to be stronger than any possible combination of Arab states; that the Arabs' aspiration to recover territories lost in 1967 was "unrealistic"; that the PLO should never be considered a peace partner. His step-by-step machinations after the October war of 1973 were directed at removing Egypt from the Arab lineup, exposing Palestinians and other Arabs to the full brunt of Israeli military power. Ariel Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982--in which some 17,000 Palestinians and Lebanese were killed, triggering the birth of the Hezbollah resistance movement--was a direct consequence of Kissinger's scheming. In 1970 Israel received $30 million in US aid; in 1971, after the Jordan crisis, the aid rose to $545 million. During the October war Kissinger called for a $3 billion aid bill, and it has remained in the several billions ever since.

In due course Congress was captured by AIPAC--in Bass's phrase, "the purring, powerful lobbying machine of the 1980s and 1990s"--while the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, founded in 1985 by Martin Indyk, an Australian-born lobbyist for Israel, set about carefully shaping opinion and placing its men inside the Administration. Dennis Ross, Indyk's colleague at WINEP and a high-level negotiator for Bush I, became Clinton's long-serving coordinator of the Arab-Israeli peace process; he rarely failed to defer to Israel's interests, which is one reason the peace process got nowhere. He has now returned to WINEP as its director and continued advocate.

But nothing in the history of the US-Israel alliance has equaled the accession by "friends of Israel" to key posts in the current Bush Administration, and their determined and successful struggle to shape America's foreign policy, especially in the Middle East--including the destruction of Iraq.

The nagging question remains as to what the special friendship has achieved. Have the wars, security intrigues and political showdowns of the past decades really served Israel's interest? A student of the region cannot but ponder these questions: What if the dovish Moshe Sharett had prevailed over the hawkish Ben-Gurion in the 1950s? Sharett sought coexistence with the Arabs, whereas Ben-Gurion's policy was to dominate them by naked military force, with the aid of a great-power patron--ideas that have shaped Israeli thinking ever since. What if the occupied territories had truly been traded for peace after 1967 (as Ben-Gurion himself advised, with rare prescience), or after 1973, or after the Madrid conference of 1991, or even after the Oslo Accords of 1993? Would it not have spared Israelis and Palestinians the pain of the intifada, with its miserable legacy of hatred and broken lives? Has the triumphalist dream of a "Greater Israel" (which James Baker, for one, warned Israel against) proved anything other than a hideous nightmare, infecting Israeli society with a poisonous dose of fascism? The US-Israel alliance is officially and routinely celebrated in both countries, but its legacy is troubling. Without it, Israel might not have succumbed to the madness of invading Lebanon and staying there twenty-two years; or to the senseless brutality of its treatment of the Palestinians; or to the shortsighted folly of settling 400,000 Jews in Jerusalem and the West Bank, who are now able to hold successive Israeli governments to ransom.

An inescapable conclusion is that the intimate alliance, and the policies that flowed from it, have caused America and Israel to be reviled and detested in a large part of the world--and to be exposed as never before to terrorist attack.