Admittedly, America has
always devised creative means to execute its vast array of crimes against other
nations – coups, wars, occupation, exploitation, terrorism, genocide, and so
forth. One crime often neglected is America’s
creative extortion. America has made a
legal judgment to rob Iran of $1.75 billion.
According
to Courthouse News
Service,
a U.S. court has awarded this money to families of victims killed in the 1983
marine barracks bombing. This judgment
is devilish in design; not only is this an elaborate scheme to justify
extortion, but the judgment also lays the blame of what happened in Beirut in
1983 on Hezbollah and Iran. America can
disguise thievery as law, but it cannot conceal the truth of what happened in
1983 – which as follows.
Upon taking office, Ronald
Regan decided to launch a ‘second Cold War’ in the Middle East. He moved combat forces into the region and
armed ‘allies’ while initiating a strategic cooperation agreement with
Israel. Soviets invasions of
Afghanistan, the Iranian Revolution and the assassination of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat
had made the U.S. jittery prompting Reagan to reward those Middle Eastern
governments that joined the ‘Strategic Consensus” against the Soviet Union.
This did not sit well with
Israel who had enjoyed the status of being the predominant ally of the
U.S. The November 30, 1981 Memorandum of Understanding
on Strategic Cooperation signed by Weinberger
and Ariel Sharon set the stage for a joint military collaboration between
Israel and the U.S. The Reagan administration’s campaign against
“international terrorism” and Saddam Hossein’s actions provided the excuse for
Israeli strikes into Lebanon.
In May 1982, Saddam
was looking for a way out of the war he had initiated with Iran. According to a report, on June 3, three men
led by an Iraqi intelligence officer made an assassination attempt against the Israeli
ambassador to Britain with the hope of provoking Israel to invade Lebanon so
that Iran and Iraq would end their hostilities and join forces against Israel[i]. The plan worked in as far as giving Israel
the excuse to march into Lebanon.
The Israeli occupation of
Lebanon under false pretexts met with a wave of protests from within
Israel. In a June 25, 1982 Haaretz editorial, Professor Yehoshwar Porat openly challenged
the rationale for the Israel’s attack on Lebanon.
“[I]t did not even result from the need to retaliate against Palestinian
shellings of the Galilee, because there was no such shelling since and
agreement [cease fire agreement between the Palestinians and the Israeli
government]. So what was the reason? I think the Israeli government’s {or more precisely,
its two leaders’) decision resulted from that cease fire.”[ii]
Regardless, soon after the
Israeli invasion, on August 20, U.S. Marines landed in Beirut with a clearly
defined mission - to supervise the evacuation of the PLO ‘guerillas’. This was accomplished at the end of the
first week of September. There was no
longer a need for a peacekeeping force.
Yet, 19 days later, after the
Israeli invasion and occupation of West Beirut, and the brutal Sabra – Sahtila
massacres under the supervision of Ariel Sharon, a larger US force returned to
Beirut – this was with a very different mission in mind. Theirs was not only to secure the airport,
but to help the new Gemayel regime ‘consolidate’ power .
In line with the Reagan
strategy, the additional forces were showing a permanent US presence in the
Middle with some 100 field grade US Army and Special Forces officers training
“the most highly motivated” Lebanese brigades, that is, those with strong
Phalangist militia components[iii]. According
to the ‘Britannica Concise Encyclopedia’, these were the same militias who
under Sharon’s supervision had massacred 800- several thousand women, children
and elderly at Sabra and Sahtila.[iv] In short, the US Special Forces were
training terrorists.
By September 1983, U.S.
warships were shelling Syrian and Druze militia positions outside Beirut, and
Marine ground forces were trading artillery and sniper fire with Shi’a (Hezbollah)
and Druze fighters[v]. On October 23, 1983, two trucks hit a
building housing US Marines killing most “peace-keepers”.
Immoral and bankrupt, the
United States is holding Iran responsible for what ensued after the occupation
of Lebanon, the butchering of innocent civilians, and resistance to shelling
from American warships by Lebanese defending their lives and their soil. William Shakespeare must have been
looking to the future and to America when he said: “Lawless are they that make
their wills their law.”
[i][i] Stephen Shalom, “The Iran-Iraq War”, (Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle”, Boston:
South End Press, 1983, 197n).
[ii] Journal
of Palestine Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, [Also Vol. 12, no. 1]. Special Issue:
The War in Lebanon. (Summer - Autumn, 1982), pp. 214-221.
[iii]
Lawson, Fred. MERIP, No128, The Deadly
Connection; Reagan and the Middle East 9Nov. Dec. 1984) pp 27-34
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6985808.stm
[v] Lawson,
Fred.
No comments:
Post a Comment