US Policy
Document: “American Reactions Are a Little Primitive”
In early November 1986, just as the Iran arms story was breaking, Washington Times editor Arnaud de Borchgrave interviewed French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. On November 7, de Borchgrave published a front-page story based on the interview highlighting Chirac’s suspicion, which the prime minister also attributed to West German leaders, that the well-publicized Syrian bomb plot against an Israeli jetliner was concocted by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Israeli and American officials and media were then playing up the London trial of suspect Nizar Hindawi in order to distract attention from the Iran arms scandal and the capture of American mercenary Eugene Hasenfus in Nicaragua.
Low-Intensity Warfare
The US Navy calls it “violent peace.” One of its foremost academic boosters says it means “to fight without appearing to fight.” They are talking about low-intensity conflict. This is the term the US government uses to describe a strategy of fighting small, relatively cheap wars. Few US troops are involved, so there are few American casualties and there is no need for a draft. The US people may not even be aware of — let alone oppose — US involvement. The goal is to destabilize or overthrow “undesirable” Third World governments or to underpin the stability of “friendly” governments. As Col. John D.
From the Editors (January/February 1987)
The scheme began to unravel last October 7. In Managua, the sole survivor of a downed American C-123 cargo plane full of weapons for the contras told a crowded press conference, “My name is Eugene Hasenfus.” In Washington, businessman Roy Furmark called on his old friend William Casey at CIA director’s hideaway office next to the White House. Furmark had been sent by Adnan Khashoggi; the Saudi tycoon said he had not been repaid more than $10 million he advanced for arms shipped to Iran. When Furmark returned to Washington on November 24, Casey phoned Lt. Col. Oliver North at the White House. “There’s a guy here who says you owe him $10 million on the Iran thing,” Casey said. Casey hung up and turned to Furmark.
Nuclear Shadow Over the Middle East
In the summer of 1984, Newsweek published the results of a Gallup poll of hundreds of top-ranking American military officers. Among the questions was this: where did they see the greatest threat of a conflict situation which might escalate to nuclear war? The majority responded clearly: the Middle East. [1]
From the Editors (November/December 1986)
Top Reagan aides from the National Security Council and the CIA fly secretly to Iran atop crates of missiles, Bible in one hand and cake in the other. The image aptly captures the bizarre and dangerous character of Washington’s policies in the Middle East and Central America. Two of the men on the Tehran mission — Robert McFarlane and Oliver North — played central roles in earlier military interventions in both regions. McFarlane was the chief strategist on the ground in Beirut in September 1983, calling in the big guns of the USS New Jersey to save the beleaguered Phalange regime of Amin Gemayel Some 241 US Marines paid for McFarlane’s swagger with their lives a month later when a Lebanese suicide attack demolished their barracks. Fellow Marine Lt.Col.
From the Editors (September/October 1986)
The US Federal Reserve Bank recently reported that over one third of the wealth in the United States is currently held by only 1 percent of all families. And in recent years, it seems, concentration has actually been increasing. Wealth, and the power that goes with it, is in the hands of the very few, though largely invisible in everyday existence.
The CIA in Afghanistan
President Reagan’s campaign to fund the Nicaraguan contras has distracted public attention from the much larger covert war operation in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan funding is currently at least $275 million per year but it may be double that—the exact sums are discreetly hidden as “other procurement” lines in military appropriations bills. The absence of Congressional controversy over the US role in Afghanistan has kept the sum secret. “As the Nicaraguan operation became the bad war,” said one administration official, “the one in Afghanistan became the good war.”
US Raid Haunts Libya
Tripoli, June 1986—Two months after US warplanes bombed Tripoli, piles of rubble lie virtually untouched in the comfortable tree-lined neighborhood of Ben Ashour. An arch has been erected to commemorate the raid, displaying a gaudy painting of war planes on fire as they swoop down on innocent residents. The state radio rarely lets an hour pass without a reference to April 15, the night of “barbaric Atlanticist aggression.” Neither Libya nor its leadership has yet been able to put the raid behind them.
Pakistan and the Central Command
Congress this fall will begin reviewing a new six-year US aid package to Pakistan totaling more than $4 billion. Crucial to the outcome is Pakistan’s military role in the Gulf. Pakistan’s military missions in 22 countries in the Middle East and Africa make it the largest exporter of military manpower in the Third World. Its role in the Gulf has a direct bearing on Washington’s strategy in the region, on the future security role of the Gulf Cooperation Council and on Pakistan’s own internal political dynamic.
Moscow’s Kabul Campaign
Six years after they invaded Afghanistan and were condemned by virtually the entire international community, Soviet troops with their Afghan government allies have slowly begun to win the war.
Most of the reports received in the West over the last six years have come from journalists travelling with the rebels or from Western embassies in Kabul. It has been a mixed picture of heroism and incompetence, determination and disunity, courage and corruption, but the general tone has usually been upbeat. The mujahidin, it is argued, have right on their side and will ultimately prevail, even though no one knows what kind of government—reactionary, progressive, or Islamic fundamentalist—they would put in place.
Klare, American Arms Supermarket
Michael Klare, American Arms Supermarket (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1984).
Findley, They Dare to Speak Out
Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill and Company, 1985).
Iran and the Reagan Doctrine
Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York: Random House, 1985).
Warren Christopher et al, American Hostages in Iran: The Conduct of a Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
“The First Prime-Time Bombing in History”
Noam Chomsky has been active in the movement against US military intervention for many years. His most recent book on the Middle East is The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (South End, 1986). His latest book, Turning the Tide (South End, 1986), is on US policy toward Central America. Joan Mandell and Zachary Lockman spoke with him in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in late April.
Why Libya and why right now?
Mad Dogs and Presidents
When Ronald Reagan ordered US warplanes to attack Libya on April 15, terrorism was the occasion rather than the cause. Like the electronic confetti spewed out to muddle Libyan radar screens, the terrorism issue was snow to disarm and deflect critics of American military intervention. Such intervention is an essential part of the Reagan Administration’s regimen for restoring Washington’s command of global politics.
George Bush in Khartoum
Khartoum. The hand-painted sign on Nile Avenue here best captured the attitude of urban Sudanese toward the visit of Vice President George Bush to their country in early March, just four weeks before the popular overthrow of President Ja‘far Numairi. “Vice-President and Mrs. Bush,” read the sign, “are mostly welcome.” The millions of Sudanese starving in the countryside would have been much less hospitable.
Kwitny, Endless Enemies
Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies(New York: Congdon and Weed, 1984).
This book canvasses the record of US government intervention in every corner of the Third World (Europe, Canada and Australia are omitted), and concludes with an essay entitled “On Capitalism, Communism and Freedom.” That's a good many bangs and a whimper.
Prospects for the Gulf
All of the small Arab states of the Persian Gulf are now well into their second decade as independent political entities. Bahrain, Qatar and the seven principalities making up the United Arab Emirates became independent in 1971. Kuwait’s independence goes back another decade. Oman, though never a colony, traces its present regime to the British-induced palace coup of 1970. Whether because of or in spite of the startling explosion of wealth in the 1970s, because of or in spite of the fall of the shah and the war between Iran and Iraq, they have survived as states and their regimes have displayed unanticipated continuity. The turbulence of the 1970s roared around them, as around the eye of a storm.
From the Editors (May/June 1985)
Ten years ago this April, the United States finally ended its military intervention in Vietnam. This marked a great victory for the Vietnamese national liberation movement and for the broad popular opposition movement in the US and around the world. MERIP’s own beginnings came out of that movement, and we noted that the sudden burst of media attention, after years of amnesia, reviewed those bloody years of intervention in Indochina exclusively in terms of what they meant to Americans. No Vietnamese was invited to reflect on the consequences of the war and its ending. Our friend David Truong worked long and hard in this country to bring the war to an end, and after April 1975 he was among the most tireless advocates of American and Vietnamese reconciliation.
The Gulf Between the Superpowers
Anthony Cordesman, The Gulf and the Search for Strategic Stability: Saudi Arabia, the Military Balance in the Gulf, and Trends in the Arab-Israeli Military Balance (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984).
Occasionally, when an important head of state arrives in Washington for consultation without a previously announced agenda, he is greeted by an embarrassing series of articles and commentaries exposing the cumulative ignorance of American foreign policy analysts. Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd recently visited with President Ronald Reagan and provided just such an example.
