Here it is ten years after
the Gulf war, and the lies told by the US government are still
pouring in. Most recently,
Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker that a two-star general
ordered a massacre against
a five-mile line of retreating Iraqi soldiers, and did so two days
after a ceasefire went into
effect. Hundreds of soldiers were murdered, men and boys who
posed no threat and didn’t
know the war was still on. Many civilians, including children,
were also shot. The numbers
are still unclear because the corpses were buried quickly by
the tank-bulldozers.
This is no speculative piece.
Hersh quotes many eye-witnesses to the attack and the carnage
on the record, one of whom
was very close to the general, and musters irrefutable evidence,
gleaned from more than three
hundred interviews, of war crimes (a phrase used by an
anonymous leaker inside
the military). American soldiers called it a "turkey shoot" that
ended up destroying 700
tanks, armored cars, and trucks. The allegations have been made
before and examined in four
separate government reports. But Hersh goes through them
and, in the course of an
exhaustive and terrifying 25,000-word article, shows that each one
is a whitewash.
Why was this bloodshed not
reported at the time? There were no media around to witness
it. They were operating
under the military’s rules – accepted by a press said to be jealous of
its liberties – against
any unsupervised reporting in post-war Iraq. The general, meanwhile,
told journalists about the
incident and spoon-fed them tales about dangerous Iraqis
attempting suicidal post-ceasefire
attacks. He said it was a proportional retaliation, a claim
that Hersh completely demolishes
with the help of people inside the military who could be
silent no longer.
Is it any wonder that the
US is hated in huge swaths of the Gulf region? So much for George
Washington's ideal of being
a beacon of liberty to the world. To many, the US is nothing but
a torrent of helicopter
gunships unleashing Hell on retreating soldiers and innocent civilians.
This is not only a repudiation
of America's founding principles; it is a flagrant violation of
every rule of warfare agreed
upon by every civilized country from the Middle Ages to the
present day. This is the
behavior of a murderous rogue state, not an indispensable nation.
And who is the two-star,
now four-star, general responsible for the war crimes? None other
than Clinton drug czar Barry
McCaffrey, the man charged with using government power to
keep drugs from besotting
American society. It is an interesting change of jobs: from one hot
war to another. Just as
he was careless with the rules of war during battle, he has been
careless with liberties
in the drug war. And just as the Iraq war did not achieve its objective
of ousting Saddam, but has
resulted in the deaths of millions of civilians, the drug war has
not achieved its objective,
but has resulted in the jailing and looting of innocents.
The lasting effect of the
Gulf war has been to spread disease and death all over Iraq via a
cruel policy of sanctions
punctuated by periodic bombings. The final domestic effect was to
prop up military spending
at home at a time when it should have and could have been cut.
"It's still a dangerous
world out there," we are constantly told, so we need the firepower to
blow away retreating soldiers
anytime we wish. Then there's the Oklahoma bombing:
Timothy McVeigh learned
how to devalue life during his stint as a tank operator in the Iraq
war.
But here's what really interests
me. This is only the latest report of lies. For ten years, we've
had streams of reports that
together show that the US lied about nearly every aspect of that
war. We were told about
the effectiveness of US "smart" bombs, when in fact most didn't
work or didn't hit their
targets. We were told that civilians weren't targeted, when they
were. We were told that
Iraq had nukes but none have been found. We were told that Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait was a
surprise, but it turned out the US had effectively given the go
ahead.
And it's not only the Iraq
war. The same pattern repeats itself on Kosovo. A recent report
from Newsweek showed that
the US did very little damage to the Serbian military and
instead smashed the civilian
sector (another war crime). Other reports have shown that US
atrocity stories were trumped
up, that the mass graves were mostly filled with Serbs whom
we declared to be the enemy,
that the most dangerous element in the postwar period has
proven to be the KLA – our
ally in the war.
Again and again, the truth
about US wars has turned out to be exactly the opposite of
Pentagon press releases.
And yet, these credible revisionist accounts don't make interesting
reading for the masses.
The American public long ago lost interest in Iraq and Kosovo. Once
the propaganda engines were
turned off, most people stopped paying attention. Hence, the
version of events that continues
to survive in the popular mind is one of a heroic and
spotless US laying waste
to a demonic enemy.
If we were to develop an
axiom about war informed by the last several, it would be this:
believe nothing (nothing!)
that the government tells you while the war is going on. Assume
that it is all a lie, that
the enemy is not nearly as evil as the Pentagon says, and that the US
is behaving a darn-sight
worse than the evening news claims. Go ahead and believe the
worst about the US while
the battle is going on and, ten years hence, you won't be far off the
mark.
That the US is lying after
the war must also be presumed. But the tendency is exactly the
opposite. During and after
war, government controls the news. The media echo government
reports because those are
the only kind of reports there are, because they know that any
questioning of the Official
Line of the day will lead to a loss of access, and because they are
fundamentally pro-state.
Of course there will always
be debunkers during war, a handful of people who will say
outrageous things like:
"Mass graves? I don't believe it"; "Milosevic is no Hitler"; "The
Kosovars are ruled by a
criminal band of drug runners." During the war, these debunkers
are denounced as unpatriotic
and told to produce their sources. But sometimes they cannot.
They doubt the Official
Line because they have developed an instinct for spotting the
wartime lie.
The evidence to back their
claims only starts pouring in a year and ten years after
discussion about the war
has been closed down. Fair? Certainly not. But it is the reality. And
tragically, the feds can
count on this holding true for any war they start.
There is, however, something
that can be done about it. Hold McCaffrey responsible for the
massacre, and don’t let
the man who employs him off the hook either. Bone up on past wars
and acquaint yourself with
the lies and the new truths about those wars. Stand up for
journalists who dare to
stand up to the power elite; Lord knows it doesn't happen very often.
Examine the history of warfare
to understand how the state uses it to destroy liberty.
And when the next war breaks
out, prepare to discount every bit of information you hear
about it. Read Antiwar.com.
Speak out on behalf of writers and commentators who take an
independent stand. Oppose
US military intervention in any foreign conflict. Above all,
ascribe no decent motives
to the federal government. Always and everywhere, it is the
enemy of truth.
May 18, 2000
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.,
is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn,
Alabama. He also edits a
daily news site, LewRockwell.com.