How many children died?
Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes asked Madeleine Albright, is the death of more than half a million children as a result of these sanctions justified? And Albright replied, yes, “we think the price is worth it.” Now when you have leaders with this mentality trying to teach lessons on morality to the rest of the world, it doesn’t quite wash.
You said there were other reasons for picking Iraq.
Another reason for targeting Iraq after 9/11 was that the Israelis didn’t like the existence of Iraq as an independent state, with an independent army. Even though Iraq didn’t have nuclear weapons, the Israelis felt it was always possible that this army would be used against them in the future, failing to see that the reason for Arab hostility to Israel is linked to their failure to do what they should have done regarding the Palestinians. So there was a lot of pressure from the Israelis as well, and I think that pressure played a much more important part than it should have in impelling the Bush administration to take Iraq.
The Pentagon would also have known that as they knew that the Iraqi army was quite diminished, that Iraq barely had any armaments left to wage a real struggle, that the Iraqi air force had been destroyed. Iraq was already a defeated country, defeated by sanctions, wrecked by the years of US bombings in the “no-fly zones” in the northern parts of the country.
So we were looking for a weakling?
A weakling to demonstrate American power. And, you know, a number of US spokesmen, in their arrogance at the time, said, we did it because we could.
Could you talk about the doctrine of preemptive war?
The doctrine of preemptive war is totally against the UN Charter. The UN Charter was meant to guard nations against so-called preemptive wars. The only condition for waging a war is if there is real evidence that you’re about to be attacked. And the reason that was written into the UN Charter is because the biggest defender of preemptive wars was Adolph Hitler. Every time he invaded a nation, whether it was Poland, Czechoslovakia, or Austria, he would say, our interests are under threat. Or in the case of Czechoslovakia, the minority German population in the Sudetenland is under threat from the majority Czechs. Or in Poland, they threatened our security. We want Danzig back. Why should we have a Polish corridor? All these things were perfected, which is why the UN Charter was written to prevent that. And Wolfowitz, Cheney,—
And Perle—
—Perle, all these guys, with the journalists supporting them, and egging them on. Christopher Hitchens, Kanan Makiya, and the House Arabs, as I’ve referred to them. Trained to bark loyally when the United States goes to war, “you will be welcomed, you will be greeted with sweets and flowers, yes, come and liberate, liberate us, liberate us.” All these people were braying away. And so, Bush made the jump, and the result is what we see. More than a million Iraqis have died since the occupation of that country by the United States. It’s no good saying, “But we haven’t killed all of them,” as some are prone to do. You may not have killed all of them, but you created the conditions in which they could be killed by occupying that country.
And Afghanistan now?
Afghanistan now is a total and complete mess. Everyone knows it. President Obama knows it. His advisers know it.
Is the United States in another Vietnam-style quagmire in Afghanistan?
I think the only way it could become a Vietnam is if they sent in at least a quarter of a million more troops. I think then they would be in a quagmire. There would be heavy US causalities. They would kill a lot of people. They would wreck that country. The war would spill over into Pakistan, involve large segments of the Pakistani population and military on both sides, and there would be hell to pay. Afghanistan is a mess because the government the United States put in is a totally corrupt government, which is feathering its own nest, stealing massive amounts of money from the foreign aid coming in, not doing anything for the people.
Then, on top of corruption, there are too many civilian causalities, too many deaths. You become dependant on air power, as in Vietnam. And the drones come and bomb villages, they bomb innocents, and that is creating a situation that is unwinnable. The British couldn’t defeat the Afghanis, the Russians couldn’t, and the United States is not going to defeat them either, unless they wipe out half the population and occupy that country permanently with half a million US troops, which I think won’t wash. The region wouldn’t bear it, and the US population would have something to say.
You know, it’s a mystery to me why Obama didn’t use his election victory to say we’re going to end that mess. We’ve got to pull out. Some of his advisers know that situation better than anyone else. So an exit strategy to get the United States and NATO out of Afghanistan is needed before the situation gets only worse.
What about women’s rights in Afghanistan?
It was shameful when Cherie Blair and Laura Bush went on television to justify the Afghan intervention by saying it’s a war to liberate women. I pointed out at the time that, if this was the case, it would be the first time in history that an imperial power had waged war to liberate women. It wasn’t going to happen, and it didn’t happen. The condition of women is as bad as ever, and these are reports from women’s groups in Afghanistan.
So what would you do?
I don’t think anything can be done from the outside. I think in order to change these conditions, change has to come from the inside. There was a very interesting development when pro-Taliban groups in Pakistan publicly flogged a poor woman. Pakistani television showed a video of the flogging, and there were protests in large cities in Pakistan. Women’s groups denounced it. The chief justice summoned the attorney general to a court and said our laws are being violated, what on earth are you doing about this? Then the Taliban retreated, and said it wasn’t us, we didn’t do it. So people in Pakistan are now saying, no, these are not “outside values.” It was never the case that we liked anyone being flogged. Public floggings and all that is something that started in Pakistan during the Zia-ul-Haq military dictatorship. We never had it before, and you’re now doing it to women. That’s not part of our law, either.
And Sharia law?
This is a Wahabi version of Sharia law, which is not accepted by many Shias or an overwhelming majority of Sunni legal scholars. It is a sectarian Wahabi interpretation. And why has this now suddenly landed in Pakistan? Why should women suffer? I mean, you know, women under control of these wretched Wahabists suffer more than Muslim women did in the medieval period in Islam. And that is something they don’t even realize. And honor killings, which are going on in different parts of the world. I mean, I know that it’s not exclusively Islam. We had honor killings in South America, But the point I’m trying to make is that in a world without any positive values, in a world totally obsessed with money and celebrity culture and all this, people are becoming slightly crazy.
Do you think that’s new?