|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
Interview :: Imperialism |
|
Interview With Middle East Expert Phyllis Bennis |
Current rating: 0 |
by Tom Klammer
Email: fairtrader2002 (nospam) aol.com (unverified!) |
21 Nov 2004
Modified: 09:08:08 AM |
|
Phyllis Bennis, fellow with the Institute For Policy Studies in Washington DC was in Kansas City in connection with the AFSC Eyes Wide Open Exhibit. I interviewed her for the Heartland Labor Forum. Here is a transcript of a portion of that interview that aired on Heartland Labor Forum on 90.1 FM KKFI on November 18th, 2004. |
HLF: As promised, we now have a portion of an interview I did last month with Phyllis Bennis, who came to Kansas City in connection with the Eyes Wide Open Exhibit about the costs of the Iraq war. Phyllis Bennis, a journalist formerly with the U.N., is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, and a well-known writer and expert on the Middle East.
We aired part of this interview a couple of weeks ago, and now we have another portion that deals with the privatization of Iraq, and also a quick look at some of the work of Alberto Gonzales, heir apparent to Attorney General John Ashcroft.
HLF: I wonder if you can address this- this is shifting gears just a little bit – What are the rules under the Geneva Convention relating to an occupying force, like ours, in a country like Iraq, choosing to privatize water, oil, whatever…
Bennis: This is a complete violation of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Conventions state very clearly that the occupying power has the obligation not to do anything that changes or transforms the territory, the people, the culture or the economy of the country. To whatever degree possible, they are to keep existing laws, existing economic arrangements, all of those things intact. Its understood that even in the conditions of occupation, its not up to the occupiers to determine what should happen in terms of economic development or anything like that. So, for example, the ninety-seven laws that Paul Bremer imposed on the Iraq puppet government before the so-called transition of power remain in place. They were taken on by the new government in Iraq, and they were drafted to make sure that to change them would require an absolutely impossible to achieve level of absolute unity among the various factions of the Iraqi so-called parliament and government. They were designed to be immutable after the U.S. was no longer officially occupying Iraq. Those laws include complete privatization, the willingness to sell off all Iraqi resources to the highest bidder, with all foreign bidders having absolute equal rights with any Iraqi, who of course doesn’t have anywhere near the capital- its like saying some small soda pop manufacturer has the same rights as Coca Cola to buy the local soft drink concession. This is a travesty. The laws include the right of any foreign bidder to repatriate 100 percent of their profits, to purchase 100 percent of the resources in everything other than the oil sector itself – that’s the one that’s exempt. And all of Iraq is to be put up for grabs, essentially, to be put on the auction block. In the report that we did at I.P.S., the Failed Transition Report- the Mounting Costs of the Iraq War, we looked at a whole range of cost of this war, beginning with human costs – the dead, the injuries, the maimed, those who are coming back with severe mental and emotional disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, all of that… but then also the economic costs, the $151 billion that this war has cost so far, the environmental costs which are legion and are being talked about almost not at all.
HLF: depleted uranium for example…
Bennis: Depleted uranium is certainly one of the big ones. The fouling of the Tigris River with a whole host of various kinds of ammunition. There are huge costs that are going to spread, because environmental costs never respect borders. The social costs to our communities. What happens when the National Guard and Reserve are deployed in such huge numbers? Disproportionately those people are among our first responders: police, firefighters, ambulance drivers, emergency lab technicians, all of those kinds of jobs are missing. So our communities are left less safe. Forty-four percent of American police departments have lost personnel to war in Iraq. Forty-four percent. That’s huge.
So we tried to look at all these various kinds of costs- costs for the U.S., costs for Iraq, and costs for the world. Because there are also costs in the erosion of international law, the sidelining of the United Nations by the United States, the diminishing respect in U.S. circles for things like the convention against torture in the Geneva Conventions. The example of Abu Ghraib and what that did for setting a model for anyone around the world who wants to say “hey, look, the Americans do it, why shouldn’t we?”
HLF: Well, wait a minute though, I can’t give a direct quote, but Donald Rumsfeld, when this first broke said something like we can’t be responsible for a couple of bad actors down at the bottom of the food chain…
Bennis: Well, that’s probably true. The problem is that we don’t have just bad actors at the bottom of the food chain, we’ve got a lot of bad actors at the top of the food chain, and they’re giving orders that float down that food chain. There’s no doubt that the … I think it’s nine so far… seven or nine low-ranking military who have been charged so far in the Abu Ghraib scandal should be charged. Whatever orders you are given, you are obligated as a human being not to implement an illegal order to commit torture, and there’s no doubt that this was torture, as defined by the convention against torture. But to say that they should be punished does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that we do not also have the obligation to punish way higher up on the food chain. The notion that these are the only people who will be punished is an absolute travesty.
HLF: I want to read just a little bit from a memorandum for the President, dated January 25th, 2002, (http://msnbc.com/modules/newsweek/pdf/gonzales_memo.pdf) and get your comment on it.
“Subject: Decision re: application of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of War”
Bennis: This is the Gonzales memo?
HLF: Yes.
“On January 18th I advised you that the Department of Justice had issued formal legal opinion concluding that the Geneva Convention III on the treatment of prisoners of war (GPW), does not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda. I also advised you that the Department of Justice opinion concludes that there are reasonable grounds for you to conclude that GPW does not apply with respect to the conflict with the Taliban. I understand that you decided that GPW does not apply and accordingly that Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are not prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. The Secretary of State has requested that you reconsider that decision…” and it goes on. Your comment.
Bennis: Well, it’s quite extraordinary. First of all, I have no doubt that the Attorney General did in fact make such a finding, and that Alberto Gonzales, the President’s top legal advisor agreed with it, and gave it to him and said here’s our new interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. The problem is, the U.S. has no right to rewrite the Geneva Conventions. It’s not up to us, we don’t have that right. So this is a complete denial of the Geneva Conventions. Beyond that, you know, there were all these claims that, well, you know we only even talked about it in the context of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and we never talked about it in the context of Iraq, we always understood that in Iraq they are prisoners of war, and of course the Geneva Conventions apply, etc., etc. But that flies in the face of the propaganda that we heard and hear day after day after day, that the war on Iraq is the centerpiece of the global war on terrorism. It’s, as President Bush said just a couple of months ago, that war in Iraq is taking war to the geographic center where there are those people who attacked us on September 11th. Now if that isn’t a segue way directly to the global war against terrorism, I don’t know what would be. So the notion that somebody might mistake U.S. official opinion on Iraq for what is in fact U.S. official opinion in Afghanistan is ludicrous. This was a way of providing political cover for a domestic audience. This has nothing to do with international law and everything to with providing domestic political cover, so that the notion of anyone being held accountable for these violations is simply taken off the table. Because we will say ‘the Justice Department decided.’ Well that’s fine! The Justice Department can decide that white is black, and the sky is green. That doesn’t make it so.
HLF: Phylliss Bennis, thank you very much for talking with us today. Any final words you want to leave with us?
Bennis: Well, thank you very much. I would just urge people to use this information. Go to the IPS website, it’s www.ips-dc.org to download either the entire report “A Failed Tranistion, the Mounting Cost of the Iraq War”, or the handy little two page cheat sheet that has just the numbers, very convenient facts and figures to use in discussions, all from top-notch sources, and use the information. Don’t just absorb it. Use it, go talk to people. Talk to people who disagree with you. Fight with people. I’ve had the extraordinary privilege of being able to a great deal of travel this year to various events and demonstrations and conferences of the global peace movement. And everywhere I go people say, remember to tell people they are voting for us. And we have to take that seriously. We here in this country are the citizens of empire. We have some rights. They’re being stripped away, through the Patriot Act and other things, but we still have rights. |
See also:
http://msnbc.com/modules/newsweek/pdf/gonzales_memo.pdf
http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/failedtransition/index.htm
|
This work is in the public domain |
