On This Page
Materials specific to Iraq are on a separate page. Here we address broader issues of U.S. foreign policy.
Resolution on Iran
Passed unanimously at the JVCDC members meeting February 2006
The Jerry Voorhis Claremont Democratic Club urges Congress and our fellow citizens to oppose vigorously U.S. military action against Iran, except in response to an actual and verified attack by Iran on United States territory or the territories of U.S. allies such as Israel. The American people must not allow the Bush-Cheney administration to launch once more a Preventive War on the pretext of some future danger that may or may not materialize.
This document was discussed at the January 21 members' meeting but has not yet been formally adopted by the club.
Resolution on Palestine
Jerry Voorhis Claremont Democratic Club
January 21, 2006
The JVCDC urges the Democratic party and Democratic members of the U.S. Congress to vigorously promote policies designed to bring about equitable and mutually acceptable peace arrangements between Israel and a Palestinian state.
We specifically encourage current and future U.S. administrations to advance the implementation of the 2003 Geneva Accords, an agreement formulated by a group of prominent Palestinian and Israelis, or any other substantially similar arrangement contemplating a secure Israel within its pre-1967 boundaries living side-by-side with a fully sovereign, viable and contiguous Palestinian state, with Jerusalem being the capital of both states.
Presentations on Israel and Palestine
The program at the January 21 meeting, which issued in the draft resolution above, consisted of three extremely good presentations on the problem of Israel and Palestine. The lead paper, by Professor Edward Haley, is not now available though it is hoped that we shall have it soon. The other two, by Andy Winnick and Werner Warmbrunn, are reprinted in an attached Adobe file. Read the papers on Israel and Palestine.
Bush's Foreign Policy
Below are addresses given to the Club at the members meeting on November 19. Andrew Winnick and Werner Warmbrunn are JVCDC members.
The Manipulative Inappropriateness of the Use of the Term
The “WAR” Against Terrorism
By Andrew Winnick
Background
In 1989, the Cold War ended and the US military and the complex of U.S. industrial firms which supply the military had to find a new reason to exist, a new justification to sustain a massive war machine
The first real attempt to define a new mission for the U.S. military was associated with the concept of The New World Order. Within this rubric, the maintenance of a large standing military, and indeed the use of that military would be called for to support three purposes or missions:
1. Deterrence – e.g. - China v Taiwan
2. Military intervention to prevent cross border aggression –
Serbia/Croatia was potentially such a situation – but we did NOT act.
Then Serbia invaded Bosnia, and finally, AFTER Sarajevo and then
Srebrenica, the US did act – modestly and late, but at least we acted.
3. Military Intervention to prevent genocide or at least large scale internal bloodletting even within a given nation, intervention that would not be deterred by claims of national sovereignty. Rwanda was potentially such a place – we did NOT act – but the failure to act made the need to act quite clear; Kosovo – where we did act, late and partially, but at least we acted;
East Timor – where the UN, led by Australia, not the U.S., acted
But none of this provided anything like an adequate case for supporting the massive military establishment and the massive military expenditures on the order needed or wanted by those whose real goal was the use of the U.S. military to support the idea of an American Empire in an American Century.
Then came 9/11 – this was seen as the golden chance to redefine an “adequate” role for the military. So, immediately, the Bush Administration declared a “War on Terrorism” as well as a real war in Afghanistan.
However, when the word ‘war’ was applied to Terrorism that was a metaphor and it was, moreover, a metaphor which did not and does not fit.
To see this, let’s look at the fight against Terrorism.
First, what is Terrorism? It is by its nature a series of relatively isolated acts carried out by small groups of dedicated people who largely target civilians and civil institutions.
A suicide bombing in a cafe in Israel is terrorism, bombing a Mosque in Iraq is terrorism, bombing trains in Madrid or subways in London, or pubs in Ireland is terrorism -- because all of these acts were/are aimed at civilians and civilian institutions.
How, then, does one fight terrorism if that is what it is? The technique for fighting terrorism is actually well studied and well understood. It involves two essential elements:
1. Intelligence gathering : there must be an organizational effort to determine who are the terrorists and how they are getting funds and weapons and what their plans might be.
2. Police work: this involves forensic analysis, crime prevention tactics and efforts to arrest, procedure needing at most a good SWAT team.
What is immediately clear is that none of the efforts needed to fight terrorism warrant the description of a WAR and none requires large scale involvement of the military, except occasionally as a surrogate police force.
So to make the concept of a WAR on Terrorism seem believable or reasonable, the rhetoric had to be ratcheted up – the War on Terrorism had to be tied to a traditional struggle against nation states. Hence was created the terminology of the Axis of Evil, comprising the nation states of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
The term “axis” was borrowed from the 2nd World War context and the use of the word “evil” from Reagan’s description of the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War as “The Evil Empire.” By marrying these two terms in one new catchy phrase, the neo-cons successfully touched cultural memories in the U.S. that made this term have almost immediate resonance with much of the U.S. public.
The fact is that these nations had little to do with terrorism. But the Axis of Evil propaganda was needed to create a justification for a real War Effort and hence to make reasonable the sustenance of a massive military and its industrial suppliers. So we, the American people, had to be convinced that fighting this Axis of Evil was somehow a part of a “War” Against Terrorism, even if there was no such connection.
But in the aftermath of 9/11 and the too short and easy war in Afghanistan, to make these absurd phrases (Axis of Evil and War on Terrorism) believable and meaningful, a real shooting war was needed,. For this Iraq, with all its oil, and with a truly despotic leader, was perfect. Even if that leader and that country had little or nothing to do with the struggle against terrorism, such a war would have everything to do with sustaining the complex of a large military and the industries that depend on supplying and re-supplying it. Therefore a war against a member of the “Axis of Evil” had to be cloaked in the mantle of the “War Against Terrorism” – even if the truth was that the war against Iraq increased the intensity and extent of terrorism and raised its tactics to new more sophisticated levels with the introduction of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) used so effectively by the insurgency in Iraq.
In view of this history, it is essential that progressives now see that to use the term “WAR on Terrorism” is to fall into the trap of being complicit in this Machiavellian effort. We who understand the falseness of this term must talk of the effort to deter and block Terrorism, or the “Struggle to End Terrorism.” But we should never slip into the use of the term “WAR” on Terrorism – for to do so is not to deter terrorism, but instead to support the maintenance of a large U.S. military establishment and its industrial suppliers, a military industrial complex that has little to do with the real struggle against terrorism.
There is a related matter that needs to be discussed – the issue of Suicide Bombers. There was recently a major study of why people commit the specific act of becoming a suicide bomber. After extensive interviews in many nations with those who tried and did not succeed and with the families and friends of those who died in the act, a clear pattern emerged. The most essential common element was the desire to either drive a foreign occupier out of one’s nation, or to bring down a government that was seen as not representative of major elements of a population who feels powerless to effect change through other means. The presence of foreign troops or of foreign support for a non-representative government becomes a key lightning rod that attracts and, in the minds of the suicide bomber, justifies the act.
Thus, the maintenance of a US military occupying presence in Iraq or of an Israeli military occupying presence in Palestine are not only ineffective in fighting or deterring terrorism, but instead actually become catalysts for attracting and “justifying” terrorism.
Nevertheless, even in the case of a suicide bomber, if the target is the occupying foreign army or the army or police forces of the non-representative government, then even this act is NOT properly viewed as “terrorism”. It is a part of an insurgency, a rebellion, a revolution, an act of war – but not terrorism. To qualify as terrorism, the target must be non-uniformed, civilian populations.
To make this point clear, if the insurgents in a country found a way to drop bombs from the air, as the U.S. does regularly, or to stand off and fire massive explosive shells from tanks or to aim rockets or artillery or mortar-fire at buildings, most observers would consider these unfortunate but legitimate acts of war. Certainly, the U.S. considers such acts legitimate when our forces do so. But to drive a car loaded with explosives or to walk into a building with a belt of explosives wrapped around one’s waist -- those acts the U.S. would like to characterize as unacceptable acts of terrorism without regard to the target. But in any of these cases, if the targets are the fighters or uniformed representatives of the other side, or their bases of operation, then these are acts of war, not of terrorism. Whereas, if the targets, of the U.S. or of the insurgents attacks, are civilians and civilian institutions, then these are indeed acts of terrorism regardless of which side executes them.
So 9/11 was indeed an act of terrorism. It was largely an attack by Saudi Arabians to get the U.S. military out of their country, to prevent U.S. support for their non-representative government, and to attack the single country which is seen as the supporter and supplier of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Once the US invaded and occupied Iraq, the U.S., became a far more legitimate target of suicide bombing. But the attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, whether by roadside bomb or suicide bombers, are acts of insurrection, not terrorism. The same is true for the attacks on the new government’s police and military forces and its recruits. On the other hand, the fratricidal attacks on civilian Iraqi targets clearly are acts of terrorism, whether designed by the Sunnis to prevent a Shiite government or by the Shiites to prevent the re-emergence of Sunni power.
It is important not to allow all suicide bombings to be classified as terrorism, not to confuse insurrections and wars of resistance with terrorism. It may take an army to fight a large scale insurgency. On the other hand, it takes intelligence operations and police efforts, and the proverbial winning of hearts and minds, but not warfare, to fight terrorism. These are distinctions we must keep clear if we are to avoid the very intentional manipulations aimed at justifying the maintenance of a massive military apparatus in support of the building of a new American Empire, an Empire focused on the pursuit of “freedom,” especially economic freedom for U.S. corporations, far more than on the pursuit of justice.
By Werner Warmbrunn
Our analysis of current U.S. foreign policy is based on the September 2002 White House document The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.
The document is required reading for anyone interested in understanding US foreign policy since September 11. While it is conceivable that second thoughts have occurred to Washington policy makers as a result of the disaster of the Iraq occupation, nothing in Bush’s rhetoric up to the present suggests a change in the basic course outlined in the 2002 document.
The strategy is based on two main contentions. First, the United States is committed to a WAR ON TERRORISM which is a war of a war of GOOD (us of course) against EVIL (them) and so a war without end. Because it is a war against evil, all means are justified, including Preventive War (see Iraq) and Nuclear Warfare (not yet.) Also justified on that conception of our enemies, are, as we have seen lately, is the practice of TORTURE.
Andrew Winnick has convincingly demonstrated the error of using the war metaphor to designate our struggle with Islamic fundamentalism, which is a political and religious movement. Our failure in Iraq demonstrates the uselessness of the military in the face of a guerilla movement (as Napoleon discovered in Spain in 1812.)
The second key contention of the White House policy position is that the United States is committed to a crusade to bring FREEDOM to every country in the world, to the farthest corners of the globe. This too is a crusade of the GOOD (democracy) versus EVIL (all forms of government which don’t look like our own.) All means at our disposal must be used in this crusade, from persuasion to military might (e.g. naval vessels in every port around the world.)
What is wrong with that vision? After all FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY are GOOD. But, alas, the institutions that have evolved in Europe and North America over the last two centuries are the products of a particular place and stage of social and economic development, and of a particular political culture. They cannot be imposed from thee outside on societies with very different traditions and cultures.
The parody of the designation of our military campaign as OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM contrasts with the reality of the self-same troops battling with a national resistance movement intent on driving out the foreign invader. That contrast must serve as a reminder that the CRUSADE FOR FREEDOM is a flawed and counter-productive concept and that others by no means see us as we would like to see ourselves.
Therefore, as Democrats and Patriots, as people who love our country and care for the people of the world, we must say to the Bush Administration: “Enough is enough. Look at the reality you have created in the Middle East: hatred and violence without end, one hundred thousand people injured, maimed or killed. Come to your senses. Let us live in peace with the rest of the world, and deal with Muslim fundamentalism as a political movement, an outlook which requires trying to understand and cope with the roots of Islamic discontent.”
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