Russ Baker Writes:
Russ, while I usually like and agree with most of what you
write, I think you are really off base on Libya (a topic I really know
something about) and Syria and your take on the Arab Spring revolutions. Now I
also usually agree with my friends John Judge, Peter Dale Scott, Cynthia
McKinney and Wayne Madsen, but disagree with their knee-jerk reactionary
response to USA
policy on the Arab Spring revolts. They weren’t interested at all until the USA
and NATO got involved in Libya
and then suddenly took notice and took the typical leftist anti-war position
without putting it into the context of the Arab Spring regional revolutions and
the protests against the police states these people live(d) in. While I
disagree with them and argue with them, they have remained my friends, and I
hope you can take this in the same spirit. But I feel that I have to set you
straight on this issue. -
Russ Baker wrote:
For those versed in the black arts of propaganda, the
hijacking of Arab Spring must be a beauteous thing to behold.
Bill Kelly responds:
Russ, I do consider myself well versed in the black arts of propaganda, and
have written extensively about the black propaganda operations conducted in
league with the assassination of JFK at Dealey Plaza, a covert operation.
I don’t believe the
hijacking of the Arab Spring is beauteous thing to behold, and question whether
it has been hijacked or just temporarily bogged down in Syria , Yeman and Bahrain .
First came evidently spontaneous uprisings in Tunisia
and Egypt . Then
some up-and-comer in Washington
or London or Paris
had a brainstorm, a new twist on a very old idea: if you can’t beat em, join
em. Or even better, co-opt them, and use them for your own purposes.
BK: I think the change in US policy from blind allegiance to dictators
who backed US anti-communist and anti-terrorist policies, to one of support for
democratic revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and hopefully Syria, is a major
change in policy and it wasn’t made by some unknown “up-and-comer” in some
unknown city who had a brainstorm. It was a clear and calculated change to a
long held decades-long policy that was wrong. Supporting these democratic
revolutions is the right thing to do.
The old way of getting rid of “inconvenient” leaders
was so 20th-century — in the case of Saddam Hussein, a monstrous lie
followed by a massive bloodletting on both sides.
BK: Indeed Iraq was a
major misdeed, one that I vocally opposed, just as I had opposed the Vietnam
War, something for which I was beaten and tear gassed and arrested in the Chicago riots at the 1968 Democratic National
convention.
BK: Wait a minute
Russ, what were the lots of lies at Tahrir Square ? The USA , especially the US military supported Mubarak and his regime,
just as they supported the dictators of Tunisa and Bahrain and Gadhafi, they were “Our Guys,”
already, and the CIA and the US military and the State Department and the
oil companies were all honky-dory with the dictators they already had in their
pocket. That the Egyptian students, women, intellectuals, professionals used
non-violent protest techniques and did not have the support of the Muslim
Brothers, is not a lie. They were real and sincere and are still fighting for a
liberal, open, secular democratic society, not something that the CIA or the USA or anyone outside of Egypt wanted or sought. As a victim of police
state violence myself, I object to your insinuation that the Egyptian state’s
violence against the Egyptian people were instigated or baited by anyone as
fake “human rights” violations. Many hundreds of young people in Egypt and thousands in Libya and Syria have died for what they believe in - an
end to the police state and the creation of a free, open, secular, democratic
society.
Muammar Qaddafi, a fiercely independent, quasi-socialistic
African transnationalist, was the guinea pig.
BK: I have been
studying the history of US-Libyan relations for over a decade now, and have
personally dealt with Saif Qaddafi and know people who have personally dealt
with his father, and he was not a “a fiercely independent, quasi-socialist
African transnationalst,” though he may have been a guinea pig. His wealth was
dependent on oil, he was not a socialist but spread the oil money around to
family and cronies, and he wanted to expand his power to all Africa, if that’s
what you call “transnationalist.” He was a sociopath mass murder, who on this
day – June 29, some years ago, killed over a thousand political prisoners,
whose families’ protests in Benghazi began the revolution that ended in his
execution by his own people. I started a blog – http://revolutionaryprogram.blogspot.com
a few weeks after the Tunisia and Egyptian revolutions began and predicated, knowing the history, that the revolution in Libya would begin in Benghazi , as it did, two weeks later.
A brilliant
disinformation campaign isolated him, authentic domestic grievances
were encouraged, and a whole
war was conducted on
behalf of the West with nary a Western soldier putting boots to
ground.
BK: If it was a “brilliant disinformation
campaign” then someone must have been the “brilliant” person, but you can’t identify
the person just as you don’t identify who had the “brainstorm” to “join” the
revolution (I believe it was Chris Stevens) or what the lies of Tahrir Square
are. The US had at least two boots on the ground, those worn by Chris Stevens,
the US State Dept. liaison to the rebels who was sent to Benghazi to evaluate
the situation, and his reports led to the switch in U.S. policy from support of
the government to support to the rebels. Stevens is now the new US ambassador to Libya , though that has been kept quiet for some
reason. For photos of Stevens as Ambassador see my blog: http://remembertheintrepid.blogspot.com
Next up: Syria’s Bashar
al-Assad. So began, again, the covert arming of real domestic opponents,
and an extensive and variegated propaganda campaign.
As with Libya ,
Western countries were covertly overthrowing a Middle East
regime, just as they have done over the decades. And, as before, the media
said not
a word about what was really going on. So the public did not really
understand, and there was practically no debate at all.
BK: What’s to debate?
Assad, like Qaddafi, is a psychopathic mass murder responsible for the death of
thousands through his artillery barrages, a tactic he borrowed from Qaddafi,
and will hopefully suffer the same fate. He’s a barbaric tyrant who will
someday meet his fate, but clings to power in the false belief that he owns the
country, and doesn’t care if he totally destroys it to maintain his power.
Death to tyrants! Was what the US military officers said in 1804 when they
fought the Barbary Pirates and that holds true today.
A Diverse Media, But a Single Message
Thanks to the Internet, we have what appears to be a more
diverse range of media offerings than ever before.
BK: Including my
blogs and the blogs of those on the scene, two of whom won Nobel Peace prizes
and Youtube videos of the action that aren’t filtered through the mainstream
media.
We know the corporate-owned American media won’t take any
kind of risks to warn us about what is going on. We are lucky we have
alternatives: easy access to high quality foreign media (BBC ,
Guardian, Al Jazeera and the like). And we have a plethora of “alternative”
media, from Left to Right to Other.
With this cornucopia of competing entities, we have every
reason to expect that we will get good, hard-hitting, tough-minded reporting
and analysis. Right? Wrong. Almost no news organization of any note, of any
kind, has called Libya
and Syria for
what they really are.
The reasons may be various, but perhaps the most decisive
one is this: All have seemingly fallen victim to a superb propaganda strategy
that associates critical reporting and critical thinking on Syria
with defending a regime (that is of course dictatorial and brutal) against “the
people.”
When almost no media anymore question these barely disguised
coups against uncooperative standing governments, we are in very deep trouble.
BK: These revolutions
aren’t “barely disguised coups” like the JFK assassination was, as the Diem
coup was, as the Chile coup was, as the Valkyrie plot against Hitler was, these
are revolutions by the people, mainly young people, many women involved, and
their purpose isn’t to assume power, but to strip those with the power of it,
and install some sort of democracy. That’s not a “barely disguised coup.” And Tunisia , Libya and Egypt were not “uncooperative standing
governments,” they were all cooperative with the US and received much money and military
support, supplies and training.
Because if we can’t count on the media to tell us what is
going on in far-off places, what may we expect of them closer to home? We
are witnessing a crisis for journalism that is nothing less than a crisis for
democracy itself.
BK: I don’t count on
the media to tell me anything. Why are you surprised at the mainstream media?
They still don’t have the JFK assassination right, and I don’t depend on them
for anything. I have personal friends on the ground in Libya and Turkey and have many sources for my information.
The “Limited Hangout”
Yet one more example of how this debilitating game is played
was on display the other day in the New York Times, just one of many
news organizations that have essentially acquiesced in this sophisticated
Western power propaganda operation.
BK: I don’t read the
NY Times, but they read my blogs, as a NY Times photo editor tracked me down
after reading one of my articles that identified a photo they had posted on
their web site as being a fabrication. They contacted me to confirm it was a
composite, thanked me and removed it. So they at least strive for accuracy on
some counts.
The paper, whose reporting on Syria
has been lackluster at best, finally provided us with a peek at what is
actually going on. But the revelations were spun so as to benefit those seeking
to depose Assad—and bury the matter of foreign sponsorship in plain sight.
The Times piece,
under the headline, “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition,”
begins:
A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in
southern Turkey ,
helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will
receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials
and Arab intelligence officers.
Let’s stop and consider what is being said here. If the CIA
is “operating secretly,” then what are “American officials and Arab
intelligence officers” doing publicizing their efforts? Are these leakers
courageous whistleblowers, risking a nice visit to the Bradley Manning Hall of
Detention? Don’t bet on it.
The reason we are being told about this, in all likelihood,
is that they want us to know.Why? Because this is, in spy jargon, a
“limited hangout” that hides the real truth.
By “leaking” potentially controversial material, they get
ahead of the curve, and by framing it in the most benign possible way, they
control any discussion. Read on, please:
The C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey
for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters
allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official
said. The Obama administration has said it is not providing arms to the rebels,
but it has also acknowledged that Syria ’s
neighbors would do so.
So there’s another soft spin: covert American operatives are
helping keep weapons “out of the hands” of terrorist groups. Or, to be precise,
out of the hands of terrorist groups opposed to American interests, while
channeling them to terrorist groups more amenable to our policies in that
region. The identity of these friendly “opposition fighters” is not stated, but
they are presumably groups the CIA approves
of — perhaps because they were originally created or at least co-opted by these
very same CIA people. Of course, the history
of Western support for selected terrorist groups in this region is not
encouraging; recall the extensive CIA
funding of anti-Soviet mujahedeen who morphed into anti-American fighters
(including Taliban and Al-Qaeda) after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
ended in 1989.
The Times article goes on to say that the US is
not providing arms but that US allies—particularly Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and
Qatar—are. What it neglects to mention is that the US
provides arms to these allies, and all but tells these countries what to do
with those arms. The trick: Washington
uses these intermediaries in order for the US
to say that it is not involved in overthrowing the Assad regime.
That’s why the US
government can hypocritically chastise Russia
for sending
in helicopters to the beleaguered Assad government. Perhaps Russia
should, Western-style, simply look the other way (wink, wink) while its own
allies send in weapons?
BK: But you are not
hypocritically chastising the USA for providing arms yet saying its okay for
Russia to give Assad weapons to kill his own
people? The USA , NATO and the UN are trying to allow the Syrians to resolve their own
political situation without foreign military intervention, but its okay for Russia to intervene? Whose the hypocrite again?
Unfortunately for Russia ,
it is increasingly isolated, and, since the end of the Soviet bloc, has nothing
comparable to the Western alliance. All it can do is provide direct aid to the
regime and raise objections at the UN to those arming the opposition.
BK: Unfortunate for
the people of Syria who being shelled by Assad’s Russian artillery and tanks,
as they have nothing comparable to what Assad has amassed, thanks to the
Ruskies. Edward Lutwak, in his book Coup d’etat – A Practical Handbook (1968),
wrongly wrote that such popular insurrections and revolutions are obsolete
because of the modern mechanized army that is arrayed against it, but the Arab
Spring has proven this analysis false. Lightly armed civilians can defeat a
mechanized army, though it would help if a no-fly zone was established and the
revolutionaries had an air force like they did in Libya .
The fact that the United
States government, and notably a Democratic
administration, is waging war against another government through surrogates is
a really, really big deal.
BK: What is really,
really a big deal is that the USA administration has ended the long standing
policy of supporting foreign dictators who backed their anti-Communist
anti-terrorist policies, and instead is supporting fledgling, democratic
revolutionaries who oppose those tyrants that are propped up by US military
machines and money. How come nobody wants to talk about that?
Yet our media—almost all of it, Left, Right and
Other—walks in lockstep with a shared dubious narrative of an essentially
spontaneous uprising being crushed by a ruthless government and of a West
helping “the people” purely for humanitarian purposes.
BK: It’s not “purely
for humanitarian purposes,” it’s supporting the right side for a change, not
the fascist police states but ordinary
people fighting for what they want – freedom from tyranny.
It turns out that the US
government really did learn a lesson from Vietnam .
Win those hearts and minds. But not in foreign jungles or deserts. The real
battle is right here at home.
BK: I don’t think
most American give a damn what happens in Syria, Tunisia, Libya or Egypt, as
long as their gas prices keep going down.