Eric Margolis

THE LAST LATIN DINOSAUR

MIAMI - Here in the world’s second largest Cuban city after Havana, the fiercely anti-Castro Cuban exile community is eagerly anticipating the death of their bete noire, Cuba’s `Maximo leader,’ Fidel Castro. He just turned 80 but was too ill to attend his gala birthday bash.

The death last week of Chile’s former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, leaves the gravely ailing Castro as Latin America’s last surviving Cold War dinosaur. The widely demonized Pinochet was the bete noire of leftists everywhere, the dictator they loved to hate. However, Pinochet left Chile with a democratic government and Latin America’s most vibrant economy. By contrast, Fidel Castro will leave behind a dreary, threadbare totalitarian state that has become a land that time forgot.

Gen. Pinochet was condemned as a brutal tyrant for killing some 2,300 leftists and jailing thousands more. His brutal tactics occurred during a time of virtual civil war when Latin Marxists were waging a campaign of assassinations, murders and kidnappings.

Now compare Pinochet’s `crimes’ to today’s US-backed military dictators like Egypt’s Mubarak and Pakistan’s Musharraf. Their regimes have killed and tortured considerably more opponents

than did Pinochet, yet they are hailed as valuable and honored US allies. One is reminded of Henry Kissinger’s quip that it’s more dangerous being an ally than an enemy of the USA. Washington has a long, ignoble record of abandoning or turning on old allies.

Castro, who is hospitalized, handed over power to his 75-year old brother, Raul. But as I reported on my last trip to Havana, there will probably be no major political changes in Cuba until Fidel leaves the scene. He is Cuba’s national father figure, who, in spite of many mistakes and severe repression, is still regarded with deep respect, affection and pride by many of his people.

But as much as many may admire Fidel as a macho leader who stood up to the Yankee `gringos’ after a century of bullying and exploitation, and who brought them high standards of medicine and education, we should also recall that Castro had a darker side. Recently-opened KGB files and statements by former high Soviet officials have revealed that during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Castro begged Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to launch nuclear-armed missiles against the United States. The Kremlin wisely refused Castro’s crazy request.

KGB archives also document extensive Soviet intelligence links with and support for Chile’s late Marxist president, the by now sainted Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by Gen. Pinochet. The Soviets planned to turn Marxist Chile into a second Cuba and major base for subversion in Latin and Central America.

Cuba may be a rusty Marxist relic, but it’s important to recall that it has always been the most advanced, sophisticated and cultured nation in the West Indies. Havana is older than New York City. I still vividly recall glittering pre-Castro Havana, and sitting at its famed `Floridita Bar’ with my parents and Ernest Hemingway, who inscribed a book to me, `To Eric, the painter, Havana, 1952.’ I liked drawing in those days.

In recent weeks, Raul Castro has offered to open talks with Washington, which has kept Cuba under a punishing embargo since the 1950’s. Washington should seize this opportunity to end its utterly daft sanctions regime that has bankrupted Cuba, and move to normalize relations. If Raul really wants to begin serious talks with Washington, he should immediately begin releasing all of Cuba’s political prisoners and cease arresting citizens who call for democracy and free speech. Washington could reciprocate by closing down its Guantanamo gulag and immediately easing sanctions.

Engagement with Cuba is urgent. Fidel’s death may set off internal power struggles in Cuba’s security forces and military or ignite social turmoil. A small army of Miami Cubans is ready to descend on their former homeland, among them numerous wealthy businessmen who see themselves as Cuba’s next leader – not necessarily democratic ones.

Cuba’s long-suffering people deserve to escape poverty and totalitarian rule. But they also need to retain the dignity and social advances they achieved under Castro’s regime – his sole accomplishment in half a century. It would be a serious mistake for Washington to treat post-Castro Cuba like just another banana republic. Or for the US to try to brusquely impose its dictates on prickly Cubans. Diplomatic finesse and tact are called for.

Unfortunately, the Bush-Cheney Administration has so far rebuffed Raul Castro’s overtures. Miami’s large, noisy Cuban community votes Republican and is dead set against political engagement with Cuba until the Castros are gone. There even seems to be a US law on the books to this effect.

Just as Ronald Reagan famously called for the hated Berlin Wall to be torn down, it’s now time for another ugly Cold War relic, the US embargo of Cuba, to be scrapped.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2006

REBELLION IN WASHINGTON

This week’s Iraq Study Group report on Iraq turned out to be a bombshell that is shaking official and political Washington.

The report, prepared by a blue-ribbon panel of Republican and Democrat moderates, found the security situation in Iraq `grave and deteriorating.’ US Iraq policy has failed. The panel flatly contradicted claims by President George Bush and VP Dick Cheney the war was going well.

The Study Group sensibly called for total withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq by March, 2008. Less sensibly, it urged US `advisors’ be left behind to train and stiffen Iraqi forces. The US tried the same thing in the Vietnam war. It didn’t work then; it won’t work now.

The ISG estimated the Iraq war’s total cost at over $1 trillion- twice the cost of the Vietnam War. The administration has labored to conceal the mammoth costs of this absurd misadventure. In 2003, the Bush Administration’s original cost estimate was $20-40 billion!

The Iraq Study Group achieved three important goals. First, it told Americans what they have not heard for the past six years: the truth. The war in Iraq is lost. It’s time to retreat from this debacle.

Second, the ISG provided protective cover for legislators to oppose powerful special interests advocating continued occupation of Iraq, and war against Iran. Third, it made clear a fair solution must be found to the festering Israel-Palestine dispute which lies at the heart of Mideast tensions and terrorism.

The ISG report revived a politically explosive proposal: an Arab-Israeli settlement based on the 1967 UN Resolution 242. This historic resolution calls for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace based on Israel’s withdrawal to its pre-war 1967 borders. Which means Israel’s sharing Jerusalem and removing settlements from the West Bank, which, with Gaza, would become a new Palestinian state, and returning the Golan Heights to Syria.

Israel’s expansionist rightwing parties and their American neoconservative allies, long and bitterly opposed 242. They found firm backing from George Bush, Dick Cheney, and America’s evangelical Christian far right.

In 2002, the Arab League adopted a long overdue Saudi-initiated plan to recognize Israel, end hostilities, and normalize relations based on 242. Israel’s rightwing government rebuffed the plan, though the proposal received cautious support from Israel’s center and left.

The panel urged Washington to engage with Syria and Iran. Since the Bush Administration has been threatening war against both nations, one wonders why they would help Bush out of the hole he dug in Iraq and free up his bogged-down troops.

The ISG report is coming under intense fire from neocons who still yearn for war against Iran, even though the war they engineered against Iraq is the worst disaster in modern US history. Its ill-effects will be felt for a generation.

This sensible, balanced report is America’s logical exit strategy from the raging inferno neocon arsonists ignited in Iraq. It gives Bush political cover – if he is wise enough to use it - to reverse his ruinous Iraq policies before Republicans again pay the price in 2008 presidential elections.

As for wretched Iraq, it must be left to sort out its own problems. A US pullout would worsen the current bloodbath in the short term, but at least the US will no longer be part of problem and prisoner of Iraq’s run amok factions. The world should demand Iran use its growing power in Iraq to halt ethnic cleansing and murderous rampages by Shia militias and death squads.

The best solution: short-term security mission by troops from the Arab League, Pakistan and India to replace American troops and try to maintain some sort of order until Iraq’s mind-numbing problems can be sorted out. In the end, Iraqis, not the White House or congressmen from Alabama, must determine Iraq’s destiny.

Left alone, Iraqis – and also Afghans – will eventually work out a modus vivendi. But their wounds will not begin to heal until foreign occupation troops depart.
30 MARGOLIS

copyright Eric S. Margolis 2006

THE WHITE HOUSE CAN’T PUT OUT THE MIDEAST FIRES IT IGNITED

Remember when narrow-minded Republican know-nothings launched a hate campaign against French President Jacques Chirac and everything French because Paris would not go along with George Bush’s jolly little war in Iraq?

Well, it turns out that Chirac’s warnings in 2003 that a US invasion of Iraq would set the Mideast on fire, encourage terrorism, and produce a disaster have been tragically born out by events.

Iraq is falling ever deeper into chaos and sectarian conflict. Outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan calls it `worse than a civil war.’ Lebanon is teetering on the brink of civil war. The agonies of Palestine – now the world’s largest outdoor prison - continue without relent. Iran’s power and influence are surging, scaring the daylights out of Washington’s sunni clients in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf.

For the latter, thank George Bush. He overthrew two of Iran’s bitterest enemies, Taliban and Saddam Hussein, then stuck US ground forces in the $2 billion per week Iraq quagmire that is now estimated to cost at least $1 trillion before the United States admits defeat and pulls out.

As Iraq turns into a nightmare of carnage and hate, President Bush and mentor Dick Cheney rushed to Jordan and Saudi Arabia to urge their local allies to pull America’s bacon out of the fire.

But Iraq’s hapless `prime minister,’ Nuri al-Maliki, presides only over Baghdad’s US-protected Green Zone. The US controls what pass for Iraq’s police and armed forces. How can Bush expect a powerless figurehead to do what the mighty US cannot?

At least Malliki had the pluck to make a symbolic protest after humiliating reports leaked in Washington the US intended to dump him. So much for Iraq `democracy.’ Washington may be headed towards installing a ruthless Saddam clone, either the brutal CIA `asset,’ Iyad Allawi, or some iron-fisted general.

Iraq has no real government or army. What western reporters and Pentagon spinners term the Iraqi Army is really a collection of Shia militias, death squads and mercenaries, many former convicts. The US occupation’s extensive use of Shia death squads to fight the Sunni resistance has played a key role in igniting Iraq’s current sectarian bloodbath. This little-known story is a major scandal.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Jordan warn they may send troops into Iraq to protect its Sunni minority from ethnic cleansing by the Shia majority. Such a move could provoke the powerful Turkish Army to invade independence-seeking Kurdish regions of northern Iraq. Iran would be quickly drawn into the melee.

Iraq’s neighbors deeply fear its chaos will spread across their borders, with dangerous, unpredictable consequences for all concerned, particularly Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

The long-awaited Iraq Study Group’s report comes out this week. It is expected to call for a phased withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq, and retention of some `intervention units’ in neighboring countries. France ruled its West African empire for a half a century this way: installing compliant puppet rulers kept in power by strategically located French Foreign Legion and Air Force units ready to swiftly intervene at signs of unrest.

The Iraq Study Group will also likely call for direct talks with `axis of evil’ members, Iran and Syria. Their cooperation is essential to stabilizing Iraq.

But a furious, behind- the- scenes battle is raging in Washington between advocates of diplomatic engagement with Damascus and Tehran, and the powerful Israel lobby, which has successfully blocked for decades all attempts to open such badly needed dialogue or press Israel over Palestinian rights. Israel, its American supporters, and so-called `Christian Zionist’ evangelicals are pushing hard for US attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

In another welcome sign of the expanding purge of neocon extremists from the administration, the odious John Bolton just resigned as UN Ambassador, producing sighs of relief in the world organization. His main role there was to promote neocon causes, punish the UN for rebuking Israel, and sabotage UN collective undertakings. Bolton jumped before the new Democratic-controlled Congress made him walk the plank.

A second important neocon, senior Pentagon official Stephen Cambon, was also purged this week. He played a key role in producing faked intelligence over Iraq for his boss, Paul Wolfowitz, and in engineering the war. The Pentagon brass is delighted by what they are gleefully terming `ethnic cleansing’ of the pro-war neocon ideologues from the Pentagon.

So far, so good. But if and when Washington announces `phased withdrawals’ of US forces from Iraq, the already shaky morale of American troops there will plummet. Who wants to risk life or limb for a phased withdrawal?

This is exactly what I saw happen to US forces in Vietnam after President Lyndon Johnson announced military victory was no longer his goal. No GI wanted to be the last soldier killed in a lost war started by bungling politicians. I organized a protest in officers’ school over Johnson’s `no-win’ policy that ended up getting 200 of us sent to `death units.’ (see my column on Gen. Ware in my `Archives’ for more on this interesting story).

Once Washington utters the dreaded `w’ word - withdrawal’ - Iraqis working for the US occupation will decamp to the Sunni or Shia opposition. Iran’s influence in Iraq will soar. America’s Arab allies – nastily described as `fat women’ by a jihadist web site – will panic.

Actually, they are panicking already, and with good reason. America’s defeat in Iraq by a bunch of rag-tag Sunni guerillas is going to electrify the Muslim World and jeopardize the continued rule of all the US-backed despots, generals and feudal monarchs who so badly misgovern the Mideast. Wherever he is, Osama bin Laden must be smiling broadly. His master plan is working right on schedule.

But President Bush keeps insisting `no retreat.’ He still seems unable to see the writing on the wall in Babylon.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2006