It's
time for Powell to resign
Forced to do the bidding of Caligula-quoting hawks, Secretary of State
Colin Powell should salvage his honor and -- like his predecessor Cyrus
Vance -- make a principled exit
By William O. Beeman
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/03/06/powellresign/index_np.html
I
was the last of two persons to see President Jimmy Carter's Secretary of
State Cyrus Vance in his office before he resigned over the Carter administration's
handling of American affairs in the wake of the Iranian revolution in 1978-79.
Vance was a man of principle, caught in the gears of an internal ideological
struggle in the White House. It
may now be time for Secretary of State Colin Powell to consider resigning
for much the same reasons. My
companion and I, both Middle East experts, had been called to consult with
Vance concerning the disastrous hostage-rescue mission that had grounded
American helicopters in the Iranian desert. Vance had been on holiday when
the decision to proceed was made in a meeting of the National Security
Council, spearheaded by hawkish Cold Warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski (who,
ironically, is a voice of caution in the current debate about war with
Iraq). Vance asked our opinion of the mission and how it had affected American-Iranian
relations, and we both agreed that it had been an ill-conceived, unmitigated
disaster that would set back the release of the hostages for a very long
time. In fact, they would remain 444 days in captivity. Vance
lowered his head as we talked, shook it from side to side, and said again
and again, "I know! I know!" News
of his resignation reached me an hour or so later. I was sad for Vance,
but proud of his decision to stick by his convictions. Another
resignation that made me proud was that of career diplomat John Brady Kiesling
from the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece, which was recently made public.
His resignation letter is worth quoting: "The
policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American
values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with
Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been
America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days
of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective
web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current
course will bring instability and danger, not security." Kiesling
later asks: "Has oderint dum metuant
really become our motto?" This
phrase, now quoted regularly among the most militant denizens in the White
House, means, "Let them hate us so long as they fear us." It was penned
by Lucius Accius, the Roman poet (170 B.C.), and was said to be a favorite
phrase of the emperor Caligula. It
is no secret that Colin Powell is at odds with the group that Sen. Joseph
Biden of Delaware and others have called the "ideologues" in the White
House. These consist of Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary
of Defense Douglas Feith, and Undersecretary of State for Arms Control
and International Security John R. Bolton. Bolton was reportedly forced
on Powell against his will. Espousing
a pragmatic view favoring diplomacy over violence are Powell and the "uniformed
military," consisting of the generals and field commanders. Powell,
a military man himself who never supported "regime change" in the first
Gulf War, finds himself in a bureaucratic hammerlock. His supporters are
all under the command of people with whom he appears to have serious disagreements.
At the same time, the hawkish Bolton sits in Powell's office undermining
his philosophy. Ever
the good soldier, Secretary Powell was compelled to squander his reputation
for honesty and forthright dealing in a presentation before the United
Nations fraught with questionable information and half-formulated conclusions.
His credibility was used to serve people with whom he has a basic disagreement.
The joy with which his speech was greeted by militants in the White House
and right-wing Republicans had as much to do with his perceived "conversion"
to their side as it did with the content of the speech. Having
done the bidding of the White House warriors, Powell has now been sidelined.
He was sent to East Asia, and the public did not hear from him for several
days. He emerged on March 5 to complain in a speech at the Johns Hopkins
University Center for Strategic and International Studies that the Iraqi
government moves to disarm were "too little too late." However, he showed
that he was still not committed to war, saying, "If Iraq complies and disarms
even at this late hour, it is possible to avoid war." I
fear that Secretary Powell has been used as badly as Cyrus Vance was used
by Brzezinski. Kiesling, the career diplomat in the Athens embassy, has
shown his boss the way. It's time for Powell to show his true mettle and
leave the fray while his honor is still relatively intact. -
- - - - - - - - - - - About
the writer
Regime Change, Literally - Jordan's
King May Rule Post-War Iraq
A recently revealed document suggests
that until recently, regime change in Iraq was considered not as a U.S.
security issue, but as an Israeli one. PNS commentator William O. Beeman
looks at the ill-advised plan.
In September 2002, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Vice
President Dick Cheney reportedly suggested that a post-war Iraq be unified
with Jordan into a "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Iraq." The story was
dismissed by many Middle East experts as a wild rumor. However, the rumor
has surfaced again, and it is given new credence by the revelation of a
document written in 1996 by Bush White House policy makers now associated
with Wolfowitz and Cheney.
The possibility that Iraq could be ruled by the Royal Family of Jordan
in the future gives new meaning to the frequently used term "regime change."
It is admittedly impossible to determine whether the Bush administration
will ever adopt this improbable scheme, but the fact that it is seriously
discussed in the corridors of power in Washington must make thoughtful
Americans seriously question the competence of those conducting the war
effort.
In 1996, incoming Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu solicited
foreign policy advice for his government from a group of U.S. policy-makers.
The document, entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the
Realm," recommended the incoming prime minister make a clean break with
the past. The group saw Syria as the principal threat to Israel. The policy-makers
wrote: "Israel can shape its strategic environment in cooperation with
Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria.
This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq --
an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right -- as a means
of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."
The authors of the report included Richard Perle, now chairman of the
Defense Science Board; Douglas Feith, now U.S. undersecretary of defense
for policy; and David Wurmser, author of "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure
to Defeat Saddam Hussein," and director of Middle East Studies of the conservative
American Enterprise Institute.
The surprise in this report is the almost dismissive manner in which
Saddam Hussein is mentioned. It is as if he poses little danger in comparison
to the Syrian threat. The authors talk of his removal from power in an
almost cavalier manner, and the idea that Iraq could be simply absorbed
into Jordan is an offhand remark: "Since Iraq's future could affect the
strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable
that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts
to redefine Iraq..."
The plan to "redefine" Iraq into a Jordanian province was revised by
Wolfowitz and Cheney last year. After the death of King Hussein in 1999,
they suggested giving Iraq to Hussein's brother, Crown Prince Hassan, who
had been deprived of the throne in Amman on Hussein's deathbed in favor
of his son Abdullah. This was discussed in July 2002 in a meeting between
Hassan and Iraqi opposition leaders. Since King Faisal II of Iraq, who
was deposed in 1958, was a Hashemite and the second cousin of King Abdullah,
this move was seen as having some vague potential legitimacy with the Arab
leadership.
The Hashemite plan has numerous flaws. Most important, the Hashemites
are a family rooted in what is now Saudi Arabia. They are descendents of
the sharif of the holy city of Mecca, who was rewarded by the British for
authorizing Arabs to fight their Muslim brethren in the Ottoman Empire
in World War I by having his son made king of these two completely new
nations, Jordan and Iraq. People in the region, even Jordanians, still
consider them foreign interlopers. Apparently, the plan also paid no attention
to the Kurds, Turkomen and Shiites of Iraq who would certainly reject rule
by King Abdullah or Crown Prince Hassan completely, even if they were allowed
autonomy or even separate states. Such a state would undoubtedly fail in
a paroxysm of civil discord more dangerous than the current state of affairs.
But the most serious political problem with the Hashemite scheme is
how wildly different it is from current strategies used to sell the Iraqi
war to the world. Far from presenting Iraq's destruction as a mere ploy
in a strategy to weaken Syria, the White House team members now present
Saddam Hussein as the chief evil in the region. White House rhetoric noticeably
downplays those things that will not play well with the American public:
nation-building, the creation of new monarchical rule instead of democratic
institutions in the region and the fact that Israel reaps the primary advantages
from Iraq's elimination.
The Bush administration has never revealed or discussed the 1996 document.
Little wonder -- consideration of American interests in the region were
totally left out of it and its subsequent manifestations. This poses the
difficult question as to how seriously those questions are being considered
today.
Beeman (William_beeman@brown.edu) teaches anthropology and is director
of Middle East Studies at Brown University. He has lived and conducted
research in the region for over 30 years.
Delenda est IraqóBush Calls
for Iraqís Destruction, but Fails to Make His Case. William O. Beeman The Roman senator and orator, Cato the Elder (234-159
BCE), ended every speech with the phrase Delenda
est Carthago! ìCarthage must be destroyed!î It seems that President
Bush has adopted the same rhetorical strategy with regard to Iraq. President Bush made a number of provocative charges
regarding Iraq in his State of the Union address. These charges included
a renewal of the accusation that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. They
were capped by a lurid doomsday scenarioóin Bushís words a ìday of horror
like none we have ever knownîóin which the United States is painted as
being under a bio-terrorist attack. However, it is unlikely that these charges will convince
anyone. They consist of a series of innuendos combined with old information,
recycled from failed arguments advanced over the past year. Despite the
rhetoric, Bushís charges remain unproved and speculative. They certainly
do not amount to an emergency requiring all-out unilateral war. In criminal trials there must be three elements to
a prosecutorial case: means, motive and opportunity. Examined one by one,
the Presidentís charges fail to meet this simple test. With regard to means, President Bush has only been
able to demonstrate the weakest circumstantial evidence. His first claim of means is singularly insubstantial:
ìThe British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa.î Aside from the fact that
this is undocumented and unconfirmed, it is clear from the Presidentís
own statement that even if the accusation is true, the Iraqiís didnít actually
obtain the uranium. The second claim is that Saddam ìhas attempted to
purchase high strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.î
Americans have all seen Iraqi aluminum tubes on television. The Iraqis
have made no attempt to hide them. Americans have also by now have heard
dozens of nuclear experts testify that while they might be used for nuclear
weapons production, they could also be used for a multitude of other industrial
purposes. The other claims, particularly those involving chemical
and biological weapons attacks against the United States are the purest
speculation. It is no doubt aggravating that biological and chemical weapons
that existed twelve years ago have not been found or accounted for, but
this evidence is insubstantialóarguing from an absence of material rather
than from its presence. With regard to motive, the Presidentís case is even
weaker. He paints the Iraqi leader as an evil individual on course to ìdominate,
intimidate or attack.î However, beyond name calling, he has never given
any plausible reason why Saddam would launch a first attack on the United
States. The President also conveniently neglects to mention Americaís own
complicity in directly aiding Saddamís earlier aggression against Iranóa
complicity that encouraged Saddam to proceed with his invasion of Kuwait. One speculation regarding motive ties Saddam to the
terrorists who perpetrated the tragedy of September 11, 2001. In his address
President Bush stooped to fear mongering by invoking this image: ìimagine
those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plansóthis time armed by
Saddam Hussein.î However, there is no proven connection between the September
11 attackers and Saddam Hussein, despite fantastic efforts on the part
of U.S. intelligence agencies to find such a link. The best the President
could do was to state that Saddam ìaids and protects terrorists, including
members of al-Qaida.î Since there is no ìmembershipî criterion for al-Qaida,
this claim could include anyone who claims sympathy with the aims of Osama
bin Laden. Finally, the President makes no case at all for opportunity.
The best he can do is to point out that ìchemical agents and lethal viruses
and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained.î This is surely
an indictment of the weakness of the United States as the worldís sole
superpower rather than Saddam Hussein. Catoís exhortations had an effect. In his day, Carthage
had endured two Punic Wars and was no longer a danger to Rome. In the Third
Punic War, Rome destroyed it anyway, and sowed the land with salt. In the
words of historian Richard Hooker, the Roman Army ìwent from house to house
slaughtering the inhabitants in what is perhaps the greatest systematic
execution of non-combatants before World War II.î Delenda est Iraq! William O. Beeman is an anthropologist and Director
of Middle East Studies at Brown University. He has lived and conducted
research in the Middle East for over 30 years. General Powellís al-Qaida-Iraq Connection is Tenuous at Best William O. Beeman The Bush administration wants above all to prove a
connection between the Al-Qaida terrorist network and Saddam Hussein. Secretary
of State Colin Powell tried to do just that in his argument before the
United Nations on February 5. Despite his claim that his words were based
on ìsolid sources,î Mr. Powellís argument was specious and based on deceptive
rhetoric. Mr. Powell stated ìIraq
today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi,
an collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.î He further
claimed, ìWhen our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqaqi network helped
establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp
is located in northeastern Iraq.î Proving the link between
Mr. Al-Zarqawi and the Iraqi regime has thus far been impossible for the
American Intelligence community, as reported widely in the U.S. and foreign
press. Mr. Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian
of Palestinian descent, is a shadowy figure who has been associated with
the assassination of Laurence Foley, an American diplomatic officer in
Jordan last October. Mr. Zarqawiís alleged connection with the murder came
through an intelligence break reported on February 6 by the New York Times
involving a putative deputy of Mr. Al-Zarqawi. Mr. Al-Zarqawi is likely
associated with Al-Qaida. He did visit Iraq, but only to be hospitalized
in Baghdad for wounds suffered in Afghanistan in the fighting after September
11, 2001. Thus far no information has been revealed that would show that
Mr. Al-Zarqawi ever met with Iraqi officials. The idea that Al-Zarqawi
runs a ìterrorist networkî of his own or that he is the Number Three figure
in Al-Qaida is hyperbole. There is no information available that shows
that he is anything other than a foot soldier operating in connection with
known al-Qaida operatives. The Bush administrationís hypothesis is essentially
ìproof by proximity.î They claim that Al-Zarqawi had a group with whom
he was operating, and that group could not be functioning in Baghdad without
the complicity of Saddam Husseinís government. Washington officials also
acknowledge that Al-Zarqawi had support from a member of the Qatari Royal
family, Abdul Karim Al-Thani, who hosted him in Qatar itself. However,
Washington officials do not claim that, therefore, the Qatari court is
connected with Al-Qaidaóparticularly since the U.S. depends on Qatar to
provide staging support for the U.S. Central Command. Even if Al-Zarqawi had been
in touch with Iraqi officials, the idea that he is operating a terrorist
training center in Northern Iraq is completely unproved. The training center
does exist, and it does have connections to Al-Qaida, but it is run by
a dissident Kurdish Islamic militant group, Ansar al-Islam. This group
is utterly opposed to the Iraqi regime and has no connection to it. Thus all the pieces in Mr.
Powellís accusationóAl-Zarqawi, Al-Ansar al-Islam, Al-Qaida and the Iraqi
regime do exist, but the crucial connection between Saddam and Al-Zarqawi
is based on supposition, and all the rhetoric in the world can not create
a true link between them. It is worth asking why the
White House is so desperate to link Al-Qaida to Saddam that they would
resort to deception and lies. The reason may lie in the slipping U. S.
support for the projected Iraqi war. When examined carefully, the Iraqi
violations of U.N. resolution 1441 seem to amount to scurrying around to
hide questionable vehicles, along with a few furtive phone calls wondering
if inspectors will find something questionable in the facilities under
scrutiny. The violations are so petty, so weak that it is hard to imagine
sending 200,000 troops into Iraq to correct them. Revenge is a powerful motivator,
however. Americans are desperate to punish someone for the horrible September
11 tragedy. In their grief, they are primed to believe any tenuous accusation.
A recent poll shows that more than 80% believe that Saddam was responsible.
. However, the international
community has been more measured in their judgment and more skeptical. The arrogance of the Bush
White House should now be well known to most thinking Americans, but it
is disappointing that one of our most trusted public officials would go
before the United Nations and essentially lie about a matter so essential
as this connection. Moreover, the Bush administration must be truly contemptuous
of the world body, since the U.N delegates could have read about the tenuousness
of the al-Zarqawi connection in The New York Times
on February 2, just three days before Mr. Powell addressed them. _______________________________ William O. Beeman teaches
anthropology, and is Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University.
He has conducted research in the Middle East for more than 30 years.
Pacific News Service contributor William O.Beeman teaches anthropology,
and is director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. He has lived
and conducted research in the region for more than 30 years.
Commentary, William
O. Beeman,
Pacific News Service, Feb 19, 2003