The Benghazi-Botch And No Retreat Now

A few unresolved old questions have once again been raised by the tragic incident in Benghazi.

Pankaj Mishra in his article “America’s Inevitable Retreat From the Middle East” in the September 24, 2012 issue of The New York Times said: “The drama of waning American power is being re-enacted in the Middle East and South Asia after two futile wars and the collapse or weakening of pro-American regimes.”

Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, continued with his dissection: “[T]he United States […] missed the central event of the 20th century: the steady, and often violent, political awakening of peoples […] This strange oversight explains why American policy makers kept missing their chances for peaceful post-imperial settlements in Asia.”

He pinpoints a few embarrassing facts: “[President Woodrow Wilson], a Southerner fond of jokes about ‘darkies’, believed in maintaining ‘white civilization and its domination over the world’. Franklin D. Roosevelt was only slightly more conciliatory when, in 1940, he proposed mollifying dispossessed Palestinian Arabs with a ‘little baksheesh’.” Roosevelt changed his mind after meeting the Saudi leader Ibn Saud and learning of oil’s importance to the postwar American economy.”

A practical problem is identified by Mishra: “Given its long history of complicity with dictators in the region […] the United States faces a huge deficit of trust”.

He mentions another embarrassing incident that expresses a dilemma also: “It is not just extremist Salafis who think Americans always have malevolent intentions: the Egyptian anti-Islamist demonstrators who pelted Hillary Rodham Clinton’s motorcade in Alexandria with rotten eggs in July were convinced that America was making shady deals with the Muslim Brotherhood.”

On the basis of a trend Mishra assumes “a strategic American retreat from the Middle East” as he observes, “the limits of both American firepower and diplomacy have been exposed. Financial leverage, or baksheesh, can work only up to a point […]”

This leads Mishra to conclude: “It is the world’s newly ascendant nations and awakened peoples that will increasingly shape events in the post-Western era. America’s retrenchment is inevitable. The only question is whether it will be as protracted and violent as Europe’s mid-20th century retreat from a newly assertive Asia and Africa.”

The opinion is accompanied by a report in the September 24, 2012 issue of The New York Times: “Attack in Libya Was Major Blow to C.I.A. Efforts”. The report said: The attack in Benghazi “has dealt the CIA a major setback […] at a time of increasing instability in the North African nation.”

It informed: “Among the more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from the city after the assault […] were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors, who played a crucial role in conducting surveillance and collecting information […]” The CIA’s surveillance targets include Ansar al-Sharia and suspected members of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa. “Eastern Libya is also being buffeted by strong crosscurrents that intelligence operatives are trying to monitor closely”, said the report.

Quoting an American official the report said: “It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss. We got our eyes poked out.” “Senior American officials acknowledged the intelligence setback, but insisted that information was still being collected using a variety of informants on the ground, systems that intercept electronic communications like cell phone conversations and satellite imagery. ‘The U.S. isn’t close to being blind in Benghazi and eastern Libya’, said an American official.”

The NYT report informed: Within months of the start of Libyan upheaval in February 2011, the CIA began building a meaningful but covert presence in Benghazi. American intelligence operatives helped train Libya’s new intelligence service. Though the agency has been cooperating with the new post-Qaddafi Libyan intelligence service, the size of the CIA’s presence in Benghazi apparently surprised some Libyan leaders. The deputy prime minister, Mustafa Abushagour, was quoted in The Wall Street Journal last week saying that he learned about some of the delicate American operations in Benghazi only after the attack on the mission, in large part because a surprisingly large number of Americans showed up at the Benghazi airport to be evacuated. The CIA personnel carried out their missions. The New York Times agreed to withhold locations and details of these operations at the request of Obama administration officials, who said that disclosing such information could jeopardize future sensitive government activities and put at risk American personnel working in dangerous settings.

Mishra will appear logical if one listens to Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s president, and Barack Obama, US president, along with the NYT’s Benghazi-report and recent incidents in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

On the eve of his first visit to the US as Egypt’s president, Mohammed Morsi said he will demonstrate more independence from the US in decision-making. He told Washington not to expect Egypt to live by its rules. Morsi’s message was through an interview with The New York Times. The NYT asked Morsi if the US was an ally, “to which he replied with a laugh by saying: ‘That depends on your definition of ally.’ However, he quickly followed by saying he wants a real friendship with the US, ‘real friends’.”

On the other hand, President Obama responded at Mitt Romney’s criticisms of his handling of Syria and Iran, saying that if the Republican standard-bearer “is suggesting that we should start another war, he should say so.”

The tones of two presidents, one of independence and another of conciliation, may sound strange. Further developments in New York and Libya followed.

Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, offered Libya more help stressing that Washington will remain a firm partner. Mrs. Clinton met Mohammed Magarief, the interim Libyan leader, in New York, and received his personal apology for the Benghazi attack. Citing a senior US official media report informed: Clinton reviewed US assistance to Libya and crack down on armed militia groups. “The secretary offered to intensify our support and help for the Libyan government in all of those areas”, the official said following the meeting. Despite a temporary drawdown in US personnel following the Benghazi attack, the official said security cooperation and training was ongoing and would expand.
In Libya, the country’s army has removed the heads of two of Benghazi's main militia groups, The February 17 Brigade’s Bukatif and Rafallah al-Sahati’s Ismail. The Ansar al-Sharia group was driven out of Benghazi. Two militant groups based in Derna were disbanded on Sunday. Magarief, on Sunday, issued a 48-hour deadline for militias to vacate state property. Magarief asserted: “[We want to] dissolve all militias and military camps which are not under the control of the state.”

In the Middle East, days of disorder lie ahead as competing capitals are trying to gain control. Africa, actually, is being re-conquered by the same competing interests. Interference, covert war and secret backing to bands are parts of regular activities by powerful players. Possessions are changing hands, and positions are being strengthened and widened in the continent. Business and investment reports, trade agreements and contracts, and political, diplomatic and military maneuvers in the region reveal the fact. Incidents in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan are not isolated developments.

A single example: Hollande, the French leader, in his first appearance at the UN general assembly, is expected to call for backing for an international force to be sent to Mali to help dislodge Islamist militants who have taken over the north of the country. Examples of maneuver, to deepen involvement and extend hands, are abundant in the region and the continent. The continent carries lucrative promises for capital.

Neither the competition nor the contradiction is with the militants. Interests are there, who arm and train bands. The interests are competing, and competition is accelerating and intensifying.

In a time of compounded competition, the question of retreat is difficult to consider, at least now. Decline within doesn’t always lead to retreat. Arrangements, deals and agreements, widening area of operation, being done by competing interests don’t signal: It’s time to retreat.

The Benghazi-botch, the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi and murder of four Americans there, is not equal to the Tehran-thorn, seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. The situation is not also equal to the fall of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, in 1975. These are neither in terms of local condition nor in terms of international array of forces.

The latest one, Benghazi incident, shows a number of limitations that may appear strange but not strange in real perspective. Is the incident a mere technical, security and intelligence, failure or assumption and management mistake? Are there shadow players, deeply entrenched, in the “game” with a long term agenda? Is there any trace of factionalism, not only in Libya and Egypt, elsewhere also? Unattended questions related to involvement, contradictions, imbalance of power, decline and aggressiveness move around while instigations are made and lives are lost.

Murdoch’s Iraq War

“Mysteries” of the Iraq War are getting exposed: Rupert Murdoch, the media Moghul, pressed Tony Blair, the British prime minister, to hasten joining the Iraq War. Murdoch did it on behalf of the US Republicans. And, the war took over 100,000 lives.

It is not only the interests behind waging the war, but also the principles and interests bourgeois press uphold, and the secretive and conspiratorial way bourgeois democracy works, lies are fabricated, readers are informed, and mass psychology is manipulated are being divulged.

The Guardian, British newspaper and AFP, news agency, reported the facts. The news reports said:

“Rupert Murdoch took part in an ‘over-crude’ attempt by US Republicans to push Tony Blair into action before the invasion of Iraq, the former British prime minister’s ex-media chief claimed [Alastair Campbell…].

“Alastair Campbell said the News Corporation media baron warned Blair in a phone call of the dangers in delaying signing up to the March 19, 2003 invasion, as part of an attempt to speed up Britain joining the military campaign.”

Campbell’s assertions were made in The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq, diaries from his years at Blair’s side.

The news reports said:

“Campbell suggested Murdoch made moves to help the right-wing Republican Party of then US president George W. Bush before the March 18 vote in the […] House of Commons on deploying troops to Iraq, which was passed.”

Citing Campbell the news reports said:

On March 11, 2003, Blair “took a call from Murdoch who was pressing on timings, saying how News International would support us […]”

The reports said:

“‘Both TB [Tony Blair] and I felt it was prompted by Washington, and another example of their over-crude diplomacy. Murdoch was pushing all the Republican buttons, how the longer we waited the harder it got.’

“Campbell said Murdoch’s intervention came ‘out of the blue’.

“‘On one level (Murdoch) was trying to be supportive, saying ‘I know this is a very difficult place, my papers are going to support you on this’. Fine.
“‘But I think Tony did feel that there was something a bit crude about it. It was another very right-wing voice saying to him: ‘Look, isn’t it about time you got on with this?’”
The news reports said:

“Gordon Brown agitated so aggressively against Tony Blair – demanding a departure date soon after the 9/11 attacks – that Downing Street concluded in 2002 that the then chancellor was ‘hell-bent on TB’s destruction’.

Murdoch’s “worldwide contacts through the businesses that” he operated should not be missed while going through the news items.

However, in his witness statement to the Leveson inquiry Murdoch said: “As for the three telephone calls with the then prime minister, Tony Blair, in 2003, I cannot recall what I discussed with him now, […] or indeed even if I spoke with him at all. I understand that published reports indicate that calls were placed by him to me. What I am sure about is that I would not in any telephone call have conveyed a secret message of support for the war; the NI titles’ position on Iraq was a matter of public record before 11 March 2003.” His famous declaration: “I’ve never asked a prime minister for anything.” He cited “four articles from the Sun and the News of the World which illustrated their ‘pro-war stance’ before 11 March 2003 when the main phone call took place.”

The media Moghul’s company termed the assertion that he lobbied Blair over the Iraq War on behalf of the US Republicans as “complete rubbish”. It said: “Furthermore, there isn’t even any evidence in Alastair Campbell’s diaries to support such a ridiculous claim.”

It should be mentioned that News International is News Corp.’s British newspaper arm, publishing The Times, The Sun and The Sunday Times. Blair faced a challenge getting his Labour Party lawmakers to back UK’s involvement. Many of them rebelled. (“Murdoch pushed Blair on Iraq: ex-media chief” and “Rupert Murdoch pressured Tony Blair over Iraq, says Alastair Campbell”, June 16, 2012)

Already known is the Bush – Blair 2003 Iraq memo or Manning memo, a secret memo of a meeting between Bush and Blair. The historic meeting took place on January 31, 2003 in the White House. The memo, written by David Manning, Blair’s chief foreign adviser, showed that the US had already decided on the invasion of Iraq at that point. Manning participated at the meeting.

The memo showed Bush and Blair made a secret deal to carry out the invasion regardless of whether WMD were discovered by UN inspectors. The fact contradicts statements Blair made to the British parliament that Saddam Hussein would be given a final chance to disarm.

Existence of the memo was made by Philippe Sands in his book Lawless World. The New York Times collected the memo and confirmed its authenticity.

Then, there is the Colin Powell case. While arguing for invading Iraq Powel claimed that Saddam was hiding a secret biological weapons program. Powell dramatically and confidently held up a vial he said could contain anthrax during his presentation of the Iraq case at the UN in 2003. But, later, the claim proved bogus.

Powel relied on information provided by an Iraqi defector. The defector was code-named “Curveball”. CBS News identified Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi as “Curveball”. Rafid made the false claims to German intelligence officials. The US used the claim that ultimately turned a lie. But the Empire used the false information to start the war. The UN inspectors found no evidence of a biological weapons program, which was claimed.

In interviews with The Guardian, Rafid told the way he sought asylum in Germany and wanted to see an end to Saddam’s regime. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that […]”

The “story” of falsehood and fabrication doesn’t end there.

Citing Britain’s The Independent, Thomas Ferguson, Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, wrote: The Independent news report “buries forever all claims that the US, the UK, and other governments did not have oil on their minds as they prepared to invade Iraq.” He referred to a book that drew on more than a thousand secret government documents. These show meetings between the UK government and British oil companies in the run up to the war. “These demonstrate that all the denials in London and Washington that policymakers were not concerned about oil as they invaded were as false as the famous cover story about weapons of mass destruction.” These also show that all the governments were negotiating over rights to oil long before the invasion and that they were working closely with their companies. Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force was reviewing documents on Iraqi oil well before the attack on 9/11. (“Oil-Soaked Politics: Secret U.K. Docs on Iraq”)

So, the profit issue emerges. The Iraq war brought profit to all interested: weaponeer, supplier, infrastructureer, defense contractor, mercenary companies, and a section of media and politicians.

According to MSN Money, Halliburton’s KBR, Inc. division made $17.2 bn in the desert war in the 2003-2006 period, which was one-fifth of KBR’s total revenue for the 2006 fiscal year. Halliburton was involved with construction and maintenance of military bases, oil field repairs, and infrastructure rebuilding projects in the country.
Veritas Capital Fund/DynCorp, the private equity fund, gathered $1.44 bn through its DynCorp subsidiary by imparting training to new Iraqi police forces. The company is termed by many as a ‘state within a state’.

Through repair, maintenance, etc. work in Iraqi oil fields the Washington Group International gathered $931 mn in the period 2003-2006. Through the work of munitions disposal the Environmental Chemical got $878 mn by the end of fiscal 2006. The Aegis of the UK made $430 mn. (“25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers”)
And, after the Bush Blair, Murdoch, Halliburton war business where Iraq stood?

Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Pentagon correspondent quoted Mohammed Abdullah, an Iraqi in his Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq: “They said they came to liberate us. Liberate us from what? They came and said they would free us. Free us from what? We have traditions, morals, and customs. We are Arabs. We’re different from the West. Baghdad is the mother of Arab culture, and they want to wipe out our culture, absolutely.”

Iraq now stands devastated, a bold sign of Naked Imperialism (title of a book by John Bellamy Foster). Parts of life in the land have been wiped out. Does imperialism have the power to restore what has been lost in Iraq? It’s incapable. Imperialism’s devastating power lacks power to create and nourish life and nature. Iraq is one of the monuments of destruction imperialism has constructed in many parts of the world.