The petition invoked the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, a 2005 UN policy shift away from respect for national sovereignty toward green-lighting “humanitarian intervention,” including with military force, anywhere human rights are suspected of being violated.

Bouchuiguir’s petition was designed to tick all the necessary boxes of the R2P criteria. It reported that Libyan leader Gaddafi was deliberately killing peaceful protestors and innocent bystanders. He was using snipers to fire on Libyans at random, using helicopter gunships and fighter jets to attack, and even firing artillery shells into the crowd. The petition was where we first saw the oft-repeated line that the Gaddafi regime was employing foreign mercenaries against his own people.

Speaking in support of his petition before the UN Human Rights Council a few days later, Bouchuiguir claimed that Gaddafi had already killed 6,000 of his own people and was determined to kill many more. Based on his testimony and the petition signed by the 70 NGOs, Libya was suspended from membership in the UN Human Rights Council. On the strength of that suspension the issue was moved along rapidly to the UN Security Council, where teeth would soon be put into the campaign for military intervention.

What is behind this human rights NGO? The Libyan League for Human Rights is a member of the International Federation for Human Rights, which as an organization took up and added the weight of its large membership to Bouchuiguir’s petition. It should not be much of a shock to learn that the International Federation for Human Rights relies heavily on governmental sources for funding. Governmental funding of NGOs has been an increasingly effective tool for mobilizing popular support for governmental policies. A land or resource grab is hardly as compelling to the masses as a claimed human rights crisis when a foreign intervention is planned.

Given this, it should be no surprise that the US government, through its own well-funded “democracy-promotion” NGO, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is a major supporter of the International Federation for Human Rights. In fact, NED’s long-serving president, Carl Gershman, was one of the first signatories to Bouchuiguir’s Libya regime-change petition.

In the powerful film, Lies Behind the Humanitarian War in Libya,” filmmaker Julien Teil asks Bouchuiguir whether it was difficult to gather 70 NGOs behind his petition. He replies, “to tell the truth it’s not very difficult at all, cause all NGOs are acquainted.” That is key: the NGOs are all under the umbrella of US and other government-funded organizations like the International Federation for Human Rights. The seeming diversity of 70 signatures is in fact a Potemkin Village, masking the true uniformity of opinion and sponsors.

Why is the story of Bouchuiguir’s petition turning into a UN Human Rights Council action turning into a UN Security Council action turning into a NATO war on Libya so important? His claims were all lies. They were all made up, as he himself admits in the Teil documentary.

Asked months later by Teil how his claims of the number of deaths, rapes, wounded, and missing could be documented, Bouchuiguir replied, “there is no way.” He added that he got the numbers he used from the Libyan rebels themselves, a fact which was never pointed out when the numbers were first cited. The UN Security Council took up his claims, passing the fateful UNSC Resolution 1973 authorizing force against Libya, without investigating them. Pressed one last time in the film for evidence of his claims, Bouchuiguir answered finally, “there is no evidence!”

For his efforts, Bouchuiguir was made Libyan ambassador to Switzerland once the NATO invasion was over and the rebel government was put in place. The international community gathered its NGOs together and moved on to the next target: Syria. Close to 99 percent of the mainstream media articles on Syria rely on a single source, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It is a one-man operation in London run by Rami Abdulrahman, whose day job is running a small clothing shop. Once again, one man and an NGO have been able to ignite international opinion in favor of “humanitarian” intervention. It would do us well to more closely examine the role of the NGOs in promoting international conflict, particularly the governments behind them.

But to the neoconservatives, American exceptionalism has nothing to do with civil liberties, personal freedom, limited government, free markets, and the like. It is only the exeptionalism of the US sword, going abroad to seek monsters to destroy. It is only the exeptionalism of military might to force the world to follow US dictates.

Putin pushed back against this kind of false and a historic American exceptionalism and, likely because his argument made so much sense to the average American who is sick of war and aggression overseas, the neoconservatives suffered fits of convulsions and intestinal distress. Neoconserative Senator Robert Menendez, who has long dreamed of another Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, felt like he “wanted to vomit” after reading Putin’s words. House Speaker John Boehner felt “insulted” by Putin. John McCain felt his intelligence insulted by Putin’s comments.

What did Putin say that caused Washington such fits? He reminded the US, founded as it was generally on Christian principles, that the Creator did not make exceptional nations, but rather created all men in His own image:

I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Not long ago, Ron Paul was asked to explain his view of American exeptionalism. Why did he seem to disagree with the neoconservatives who would invoke this term as the bloody shirt was once waved in the days of old? Here is Ron Paul’s view of the real American exceptionalism, rooted in a patriotism that seeks not to force our way of life on others at the barrel of a gun, but rather to do our best, acknowledge and work on our shortcomings, and endeavor to set an example of the kind of peace and prosperity that can be achieved in a free society that respects individual liberty:

Here is the latest:

A fourth US warship capable of launching the type of cruise missiles that turned Libya to rubble and paved the way for al-Qaeda affiliates to take control of that country is now rushing to the waters off of Syria, ready to unleash destruction. Chuck Hagel, who some antiwar commentators foolishly believed would put an end to Washington’s military adventurism, is feverishly preparing plans for President Obama to attack. The media worldwide,  interventionist to the core, is pushing willing leaders in the US, France, and the UK to finally treat Syria to another devastating “liberation.”

What has prompted this sudden dramatic move just over the past few days toward a Western invasion of Syria? A pretext. A claimed chemical attack near Damascus that has produced, according to an estimate from Médecins Sans Frontières, perhaps some 300 deaths. It is unclear whether a bona fide chemical attack has taken place, and it is even more unclear who might be responsible should the attack indeed be the work of some chemical agent. Yet all of a sudden another Washington/Paris/London war is to be set in motion. How banal the triggers for war have become. Almost like a video game.

Somehow we are supposed to believe that within 72 hours after the arrival of a UN chemical weapons inspection team to assess — with the Syrian government’s cooperation — the sites of previous claimed chemical weapons attacks, that same Syrian government would launch a chemical weapon attack on civilians just miles from where the UN inspectors are staying. The UN inspectors were there on invitation from the Syrian government and that same government would launch chemicals right into their neighborhood.

Unless Assad is indeed suicidally insane, which he has given no indication of being heretofore, it quite simply makes no sense. Why risk the overt wrath of the entire rest of the world — alienating even your final allies in Iran and Russia — for so measly a gain: killing 300 civilians in a war to the death against US/Saudi/Turk supported jihadists? There is no military justification and no justification at all short of the Assad clan being a Middle Eastern form of the Manson Family. Is that the argument?

As the always thoughtful Moon of Alabama blog points out, the hypocrisy of the West is stunning. Based exclusively on reporting by the Syrian opposition itself, some sort of substance has killed anywhere from 100-360 people outside Damascus, and the West is ready for war. Meanwhile, just over a week ago, the Egyptian military massacred more than a thousand unarmed Muslim Brotherhood protestors in Egypt and the West not only did not condemn the act but has endorsed further crackdowns against supporters of the duly elected government in Egypt — in the name of democracy.

Thousands killed by the US allied Egyptian military is glossed over; dubious unconfirmed reports from highly biased sources, of a hundred or so killed in a war that has claimed by some estimates 100,000 lives, and the warships steam toward a date with destruction. Why are these 100 killed any different than those thousands of Syrians killed with CIA supplied weapons in case after documented case of Syrian insurgent atrocities? No answer.

Credible reports coming from the pro-government press in Syria that the rebels have time and time again — including just yesterday – used crude chemical agents in their fight to overthrow the government are routinely ignored by the same Western media that dutifully reports every utterance from the rebels’ own mouthpiece, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

However, the claims that chemical agents were used has come under very skeptical scrutiny from those who understand such matters. Although the press with its signature lack of curiosity is reporting breathlessly on the preparations for war (it’s good for ratings and for the profits of their military-industrial complex invested corporate owners), there are thankfully still some media outlets willing to consider those odd things called facts.

The Israeli Haaretz newspaper is one of those, and it reports (via Sic Semper Tyrannis blog) that those who know a bit about chemical warfare are unconvinced by Syrian insurgent reports of chemical weapons use.

Western experts on chemical warfare who have examined at least part of the footage are skeptical that weapons-grade chemical substances were used, although they all emphasize that serious conclusions cannot be reached without thorough on-site examination. Dan Kaszeta, a former officer of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps and a leading private consultant, pointed out a number of details absent from the footage so far: “None of the people treating the casualties or photographing them are wearing any sort of chemical-warfare protective gear,” he says, “and despite that, none of them seem to be harmed.” This would seem to rule out most types of military-grade chemical weapons, including the vast majority of nerve gases, since these substances would not evaporate immediately, especially if they were used in sufficient quantities to kill hundreds of people, but rather leave a level of contamination on clothes and bodies which would harm anyone coming in unprotected contact with them in the hours after an attack. In addition, he says that “there are none of the other signs you would expect to see in the aftermath of a chemical attack, such as intermediate levels of casualties, severe visual problems, vomiting and loss of bowel control.”

Steve Johnson, a leading researcher on the effects of hazardous material exposure at England’s Cranfield University who has worked with Britain’s Ministry of Defense on chemical warfare issues, agrees that “from the details we have seen so far, a large number of casualties over a wide area would mean quite a pervasive dispersal. With that level of chemical agent, you would expect to see a lot of contamination on the casualties coming in ,and it would affect those treating them who are not properly protected. We are not seeing that here.” Additional questions also remain unanswered, especially regarding the timing of the attack, being that it occurred on the exact same day that a team of UN inspectors was in Damascus to investigate earlier claims of chemical weapons use. It is also unclear what tactical goal the Syrian army would have been trying to achieve, when over the last few weeks it has managed to push back the rebels who were encroaching on central areas of the capital. But if this was not a chemical weapons attack, what then caused the deaths of so many people without any external signs of trauma?

Tomahawk missiles may be flying by the time you read this article. But do not make the mistake of believing the lies being told to make the case for another war. This is another war based entirely on lies and the result will be the destruction of the people of Syria. Another war crime under cover of “humantiarian intervention.”

Without a doubt in that short half hour he covered more topics than a month’s worth of mainstream media newscasts, which are nothing but fluff anyway. Drones, Yemen, the drug war, Snowden, a Glenn Greenwald interview — it was almost dizzying!

OK, I will admit I am biased. I have worked for Dr. Paul for more than a decade so it’s no surprise I am enthusiastic about this new venture. But as fun — and triumphant — as it was to see him deliver a statement or speech on the House Floor or even speak at a high-energy political rally, this is nothing like we have seen before. It is a whole new horizon not just for him, but for everyone interested in spreading the ideas of peace and liberty.

For most of us, the mainstream media — be it print or broadcast — just does not work. We struggle to get informed and keep informed and it is mind-numbing to watch and read the dumbed-down pablum fed to the masses. Like me, millions are just turning it all off. So this was made for us.

Infuriatingly, we have seen some whining from what Tom Woods so aptly calls the libertarian moochers over the fact that there is a subscription fee to access the Ron Paul Channel. Do people think that television studios and equipment and producers and researchers, etc. grow on trees? That a news source not beholden to the usual military industrial complex related big advertisers should be sustained by pixie dust somehow? The idea that paying the equivalent of one six-pack of beer — two McValue meals — per month to enjoy and support this unique and valuable venture is just too outrageous? Really? It should be free?

Thankfully this is a loud but tiny minority.

Like me, I am sure most LRC readers are charter subscribers, but those who are not do not know what they are missing. Subscribing is really easy, too. Don’t miss an episode! (And tell a friend).

Turkey is fascinating and confusing. What is happening? A protest over a new shopping mall turns into the spark of a revolution? Is Taksim Square the new Tahrir Square?

As ever it is complicated and there are many lines and strains and competing interest groups. However the smoke is starting to clear a bit.

1) Turkish protestors decide to raise $55,000 for a full page ad in the New York Times? Huh? As Scott Creighton points out:

“Yes folks, it looks like the uprising in Turkey is being directed and marketed from abroad. Hell, they’re taking out ads in the New York Times…

“What kind of revolutionaries start scrapping for their very lives against a tyrannical government and have the where-with-all to start thinking about marketing it to the people of a foreign country?

“I thought they were pissed about how Turkey was in bed with the U.S. with regard to our terrorists in Syria. And they take out an ad in the New York Times looking for support from us? Hmmm……”

2) Humanitarian interventionists Amnesty International fully on board. Amnesty International not long ago hired to head up its US operations Suzanne Nossel, a woman who has spent her career shilling for the use of the US military to impose “democracy” at the barrel of a gun. Her pedigree is soaked in the blood of the most enthusiastic servants of the US empire:

“Nossel would have worked for and with Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, and undoubtedly helped them successfully implement their ‘Right to Protect (R2P)’ – otherwise known as ‘humanitarian intervention’ – as well as the newly created “Atrocity Prevention Board.’”

Amnesty International is an illegitimate and thoroughly compromised organization that true supporters of peace and non-interventionism should avoid like the plague.

It is this same Amnesty International which is now “Calling for urgent action” — i.e. foreign interventionism — in Turkey’s current unrest.

Amnesty is instructing its (duped) foreign supporters in the exact steps they need to take to help ensure the protest in Turkey turns into a full blown color revolution:

1. Continue the actions outlined yesterday. These include:

A. Use of social media:

Please use social media including twitter and facebook to circulate the below suggested messages, tagging @aforgutu for AI Turkey:

.@Valimutlu Police use of force against #direngezipark? protestors is excessive, unacceptable & breaks international HR standards @aforgutu

.@Valimutlu @RT_Erdogan Istanbul authorities must immediately stop police violence against peaceful #direngezipark? protestors @aforgutu

Amnesty International’s issuing international call to its activists to take action over police violence in #Taksim #direngezipark? @aforgutu

B. Voice your concern directly to the Turkish government by writing to the Turkish embassy in your home country (see here for details on text)

Addresses and details for these embassies can be found here: http://www.mfa.gov.tr/turkish-representations.en.mfa

In addition, Amnesty asks that you lobby your own government

Call or e-mail your representative in Congress or Parliament. Let them know that you expect your government to speak out for freedom of expression and against the police violence in Turkey.

Contact your country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry (the State Department in the United States) and ask them to reiterate Amnesty International’s call for:

• Turkey’s Prime Minister to intervene immediately to end the police violence against protestors;
• The authorities to allow the right to peaceful protest of the demonstrators;
• The end of ill-treatment during arrest and in places of detention;
• Unhindered access to health care for all those who need it including in detention;
• An immediate, independent and impartial investigation into allegations of excessive use of force and a clear statement of attrition.

We need your help and, more importantly, the brave protestors in Turkey need your help. The time to act is now.

That’s pretty handy!

It is interesting that this crisis came at a perfect time to obfuscate other developing crises, like the fact that the Turkish government kept uncovering terrorist plots and attacks against Turkish territory planned and carried out by the US-, Israel-, and Gulf State-allied Free Syrian Army and its partners the Al-Nusra Front and other extremist groups. These plots were clearly designed to draw Turkey’s NATO allies into the rapidly imploding insurgency against the Syrian government. The planned “Geneva II” conference scheduled for later this month was rapidly turning into a laughable farce, as it has become all too obvious that there is simply no opposition side to go to the negotiating table.

Erdogan was coming under increasing pressure domestically over his foolish decision to back the US-led plot against his neighbor and certainly these rapidly increasing plots against Turkish soil by his Syrian allies was threatening to stretch his policy to the breaking point. Was he going wobbly?

Again Scott Creighton offers a pretty plausible explanation:

If Turkey supports the inclusion of Iran to the Geneva II conference, NATO’s little regime change and neoliberalization operation in Syria is doomed. Turkey is a big player in the Middle East. Their support can truly shift the power structure.

So let’s recap:

car bombing investigation reveals our mercenaries did it.our mercenaries caught red-handed with sarin gas, Obama’s “red line game changer” in the makingTurkey at least appears to support the inclusion of Russia and Iran in next round of talks on Syria.

And suddenly, uprising.

Interesting indeed. The smoke is clearing, but it is not yet clear. These are just preliminary thoughts based on past experience and a nagging skepticism. Stay tuned.

The front desk called called nervously as we closed in on a half hour before the press conference start time on April 17th. Two young men fully dressed in Ron Paul regalia, but unfortunately of the t-shirt and shorts variety, were desperate to get in to the press conference announcing Ron Paul’s new Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Unfortunately the venue had a dress code, and shorts and t-shirts were definitely out, Ron Paul fans or not. The young men were dejected, pleading with the front desk as I arrived downstairs.

“Please please if we can put some better clothes on can we come in to the conference,” they asked desperately. They pointed to a small group going upstairs in only slightly-more-formal-than-shorts jeans and casual button-down shirts, who somehow squeaked through the watchful eyes of the establishment.

I smiled and joked, “surely you can do better than that, but sure come back when you have changed.”

I rushed back upstairs to try and handle the million and one details and forgot about it.

After the conference up to me came two beaming fellows in matching but hilariously goofy khaki pants and pink shirts (one not very well-fitting). Twins of very different races.

“Hey, do you remember us? We were the guys who showed up in shorts! We ran as fast as we could to Union Station, grabbed some decent clothes, told the clerk not to bother to fold them or put them in a bag, dressed in the street as we ran back to the press conference! And here we are!”

I was so impressed with these young men. With their dedication and their determination. These are the types of supporters that Ron Paul has motivated and excited throughout the country and beyond. What a thrill to have people like that interested in Dr. Paul’s new venture. We will strive to live up to their hopes and expectations.

The press conference went off without a hitch, as can be seen in the video. It was standing room only and there were so many friends and colleagues who came out to see us, including a healthy delegation from the former Ron Paul Congressional office. Many of these are spread by the winds to different fields. But as we have all discovered, in a strange way we are all still colleagues and when we get together we still speak very much the same language. Even Dr. Paul has noticed this, remarking the other day how pleased he was that we all seemed to have a shared identity and retained collegiality.

My friend Oleg Kravchenko, acting Ambassador from Belarus, showed up to the event. Regardless of what one may feel about the internal political and economic dynamics of Belarus, my friendship with Oleg dates back to our shared opposition to the constant US intervention in the internal affairs of that country. How many millions of our tax dollars have been wasted trying to overthrow a leader in Belarus who means the US no harm and in fact would love to cultivate better relations? But US foreign policy is a zero sum game – do what we say and we will subsidize you, resist and we will overrthrow you or bomb you. There is simply no place for those who would rather pursue their own economic and political destinies – a phenomenon thhat logic would suggest is a natural development at the end of communist forced conformity.

Even many who call themselves “libertarian” refuse to consider this part of non-interventionism – leaving the other guy alone even if you disagree with how he is doing things. Like a know-it-all neighbor, they demand countries like Cuba and Belarus and China, and so on, do as we say or else. This is the point where they toss the non-aggression theory out the window and become indistinguishable from the neo-conservatives.

Oleg was one of the speakers at Dr. Paul’s regular Thursday luncheon group back in the Congressional office, delivering a message about the millions of dollars in lost trade and business opportunities for Americans in his country because of the wrong-headed US policy of sanctions to force “democratization.” Is it any more moral for the US government to deny its citizens the right to invest and profit from business activity in Belarus than any policy pursued by the government in Minsk?

This will be a focus of the Institute – the unintended consequencess of interventionism. Opposing an interventionist foreign policy is far more than simply being antiwar. US war on a foreign country is most often the last stages of a long policy of interventionism and internal manipulation. Non-interventionism begins with the first stages of attempted manipulation. From the National Endowment for Democracy, a thirty year plus neo-con regime change piggy bank, to cut-out funding of NGOs by USAID, who endeavor to influence elections overseas or to undermine governments who do not do as they are told, interventionism is at its core a violation of the golden rule and as such is to be resisted from its very conception. No more color revolutions in Ukraine, Iran, Moldova, Georgia, Venezuela, and so on. The track record is a disaster. And it is immoral. We must do better.

More on the press conference soon, but in the meantime you can now follow the Institute on Twitter @RonPaulInstitut and on Facebook as well.

Desperation can make people do strange things. Obama’s election was like a neutron bomb to the majority of the antiwar Left, with too many of the former eloquent critics of "W" suddenly twisting themselves into inhuman intellectual contortions to explain why drones in Yemen/Pakistan, targeted killing of American citizens, and arming al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria were both humanitarian and patriotic.

The rest of those opposed to empire were left desperate and grasping. Many initially sung hosannas to Obama claiming he was an antiwar alternative we could get behind. That didn’t turn out too well. To their credit some of those soon realized their mistake, but the intellectually dangerous impulse to seek salvation in a personality lingered – the temptation of a short-cut to the promised land.

Which leads us to former Senator Chuck Hagel, who far too many in the remnant of the antiwar, anti-empire movement have taken to praising as if with his nomination – expected tomorrow – the war party would be defeated.

It is a trap.

Hagel is the perfect choice for Obama if he wants to actually expand militarism: Hagel’s peace/anti-empire backers will be silenced when Hagel does as he is told (as he must) and continues, possibly expands, the disastrous policies of this administration. Do they really believe that the employee will force his drone-a-holic employer to suspend what has become the centerpiece of his foreign policy? What are Hagel’s backers going to do when he does as he must, as a man who serves at the pleasure of a president who believes he has the Constitutional authority to draw up a "kill list" of Americans? Will they start denouncing the very person they demanded get the job in the first place? How foolish would that look? How ineffective.

Be careful what you ask for. And don’t forget that among the others asking are those like the Podesta Group, who are currently making a killing on all the killing they supported in Serbia under their former boss, former president Clinton.

And if Obama decides to invade Iran (or anywhere else) there are two things a Defense Secretary Hagel can do: 1) be a good soldier and carry out to the best of his abilities the command of his commander in chief (call it the the Colin Powell UN option); or 2) resign in protest, which simply does not happen in these days. What then? Haven’t we been here before?

I think it is a losing proposition to put faith in a Hagel nomination when the real problem is our foreign policy – which is neither set by Hagel nor controlled by him. He is a good man in many ways to be sure. And that the Lindsey Grahams of the world despise him make it all the more tempting to sign those petitions. But in the end it will prove the timeless axiom of the all-time champion of politics, who said "the best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves."

Goncharyk
is being sold in the West as the new breed of politician to finally
put an end to the “authoritarian” rule of current president Alexander
Lukashenka. What his supporters in the Bush administration have
tried to keep under the lid is the fact that Goncharyk, 14 years
Lukaskenka’s senior, is President of the Federation of Trade Unions
and a former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union. Lukashenka, habitually referred to in the Western
press as a “communist hard-liner,” was in fact merely a collective
farm manager during communist rule.

The
US government has nevertheless long condemned Lukashenka as authoritarian
for, in 1996, holding a referendum to expand the powers of the presidency,
which was successful, and for disbanding a hard-line communist parliament
that ignored legislation it was sent. When US-favored Russian president
Boris Yeltsin did the same and more, he was praised in the US government
and media as a “reformer.”

Currently,
the Bush administration and Western media continue to repeat the
unsubstantiated but salacious rumor of “death squads” roaming the
Belarusian countryside producing scores of “disappeared.” In fact,
of the three or four names claimed to be “the disappeared,” one,
Tamara Vinnikava, has already surfaced happy and healthy in London.
Another of the celebrated “disappeared,” Viktor Gonchar, is widely
believed to be living comfortably in the United States. The other
one or two may well have been given a similar welcome in the West.
Nevertheless, the State Department as recently as August 28, repeated
these dubious charges. Spokesperson Richard Boucher said then: “Although
the connection between the disappearance of leading pro-democracy
politicians over the last two years and government-run death squads
has yet to be proven, we do take these charges seriously.” If the
US government has no evidence that there even are “disappeared”
other than the claims of the opposition, on what basis does it “take
these charges seriously”?

The
US government and Western media have also decried Belarusian President
Lukashenka’s hesitation to allow the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and its 14,000 domestic observers to
monitor the election. In last year’s parliamentary elections the
OSCE announced a month before the election that it would not bother
to observe: they had decided in advance that the elections would
be neither free nor fair. The several hundred international observers
who actually did bother to monitor the elections in Belarus told
a different story. The Belarusian president can be forgiven for
questioning the impartiality of this monitoring body.

How
did the West come to line up behind such an unlikely candidate as
Goncharyk? Much of the credit must be given US ambassador Kozak,
who Belarusian Television reported called a meeting last month between
opposition candidates and told them to withdraw in favor of a single
challenger, one Vladimir Goncharyk. This “pro-Western” member of
the Soviet ruling elite even has a communist-sounding campaign slogan:
“Vote for the agreed-upon candidate.” Anything you say, comrade.

In
all fairness to Ambassador Kozak, this kind of meddling in the internal
affairs of sovereign countries has been the norm for post-Cold War
US foreign policy. From Slovakia to Albania to Yugoslavia to Croatia,
US foreign policy in the region has consisted of picking a candidate
and making sure he wins. Anyone wondering why the United States
is no longer widely admired in these former captive nations need
look no further.

Though
Belarusian voters hardly know candidate Goncharyk, he has been given
at least two 30-minute slots on state television to make his case
to the people. Another of the charges against Lukashenka is that
he maintains an iron grip on the state media.

When
a recent article in the London Times pointed out that Ambassador
Kozak was acting in favor of the political opposition in Belarus,
the ambassador denied it, in typical diplomat-speak, insisting that
the millions sent to Belarus to “promote democracy and the civic
sector” were not transferred to any political party. According to
the official figures, the US government has sent some $4 million
yearly for this purpose — a considerable sum in a poor country
— and unofficially millions more have likely been spent. Much
of this money ends up in the accounts of non-governmental organizations
allied with the opposition.

While
Ambassador Kozak denies that the US government funds any political
parties in Belarus, one of the government’s cut-out international
assistance organizations, the International Republican Institute
(IRI), makes less effort to hide the political nature of its activities
in Belarus. According to that organization’s website, in Belarus
“IRI’s USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development)-funded
program provides specialized training for democratic youth, assistance
to reform-oriented parties and literature development and distribution.
The training is designed to bring activists into political party
and NGO organizations and help prepare them for leadership roles”
(emphasis added). The political opposition in this election happens
to be Goncharyk, and such foreign support of political parties in
the United States is, rightly, illegal. The USAID’s own website
says of President Lukashenka that he was “elected in 1994 in a vote
judged to be free and fair.” So, one may wonder, why are US tax
dollars being spent to overthrow him in favor of a leading communist?

A
Clinton appointee, Kozak’s undiplomatic biases began before he even
set foot on Belarusian soil. In a crude break with diplomatic protocol,
Kozak pronounced Belarus “worse than Cuba” in advance of his arrival
as ambassador. Some of us may have missed Castro’s political opposition
making its case to the Cuban voter on state television, or in numerous
privately owned independent Cuban newspapers.

Most
Americans should wonder why we are bothering to meddle in the elections
of a sovereign country in the first place. As even rabidly anti-Lukashenka
media like Radio Free Europe report that he is the most popular
candidate in the contest, shouldn’t the greatest democratic nation
on earth allow the good citizens of Belarus to freely choose their
own leader? Isn’t that what the Cold War was about in the first
place?

September
7, 2001

McAdams
has monitored elections throughout the former communist world for
the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, however the views expressed
here are his own.

On the campaign trail, candidate Bush had a simple but effective foreign policy message: no more nation-building. Plain Texas-style talk. It was a promise — and a style – that resonated with the American people, who despite the screeching propaganda of the chatterers have never supported adventures abroad.

So why is it that everywhere we were engaged in under that grand wizard of the nation-builders, President Clinton, we remain engaged today? Particularly in places like the Balkans, which candidate Bush and his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, specifically singled out for disengagement? Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his first foray last month into the Balkan minefield, not only failed to uphold candidate Bush's promise but actually promised the opposite: that we would remain "engaged" in the Balkans for the foreseeable future.

That in itself would be a bitter pill, of course, but what is worse is the manner in which we remain engaged in the Balkans. For, it was not only the fact that the US was dumping its national treasure into an area with little strategic importance, but rather that this money, used to "build democracy" in the post-communist world, has actually been engaged in undermining and destroying what little democracy had managed to seep through cracks in the region's bloody post-communist era history.

Hard as it may be for some Americans to accept, the truth is that Bosnia is further from being a democracy now than it was under Comrade Tito's rule, and the culprits are the very people we are paying enormous amounts of money to "build democracy" in the Balkans. "Nation-building," in fact, is merely a codeword for left-wing social engineering with a little bit of old-fashioned colonialism thrown in for good measure – and profit.

The Joys of Nation-Building in Bosnia

Take Bosnia, for example. Clinton's six-month occupation of post-Dayton Bosnia by Nato "peacekeepers" has now lasted more than five years and cost the US more than $15 billion. What return can we see on our investment? Have we built any democracy? Ask the political parties who have the misfortune of getting elected fairly in the new Bosnian democracy. The Croatian Democratic Union, the Serb Democratic Party, and the Muslim-dominated Party for Democratic Action have campaigned and won election after election in Bosnia only to see results arbitrarily overturned by the dictatorial rule of the UN Office of the High Representative (OHR), which uses Nato's Stabilization Force (SFOR) as its army of enforcement. In one election, the OHR's partner organization in Bosnia, the vile Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) certified with a straight face an election in which 104 percent of the population. One can never have too much democracy, perhaps.

Dayton itself was Clintonian foreign policy at its most grotesque: the warring parties are squeezed until they sign on the dotted line, the ensuing treaty then suddenly takes on a supernatural power that can only — conveniently — be properly interpreted by the Office of the High Representative. Remember the Wye accords? Rambouillet?

Thus millions of dollars have been spent by the OHR to create and fund "multi-ethnic" political parties in Bosnia. The election law jointly authored by the OHC and the OSCE disqualifies any political party that does not include at 33 percent women candidates. Millions more are spent to make sure that only these parties have access to the media. Those radio stations and newspapers that are not sufficiently respectful to the spirit of Dayton are simply shut down by the OHR. Regardless of their ownership. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been created and funded by the U.S. government in Bosnia to spew the U.S. party line.

Yet the terribly backward voter in Bosnia remains ignorant of what is best for him, and keeps voting for the nationalist parties. Not to worry, though, the OHR has a remedy for that as well: Austrian diplomat Wolfgang Petritsch, currently serving as the High Representative, simply dismisses victorious candidates from the wrong parties. In last November's parliamentary elections, for example, the right-wing Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) swept the elections in the ethnic Croat regions of the joint Muslim-Croat Federation. Petritsch responded by disqualifying 13 victorious HDZ candidates. Ante Jelavic, the elected Croat member of the tripartite presidency of Bosnia, vociferously protested both the permanent minority status of the Croats in Bosnia and the heavy-handed OHR approach to his party's victory in the elections. He began the process of pulling out of the Dayton-created Muslim-Croat Federation on behalf of his constituents. Petritsch fired him and barred him from politics.

Bank Robbers for Democracy

Furious over the continued popularity of the HDZ and its gall in challenging the immeasurable wisdom of the Dayton Accords, Petritsch determined to break the party once and for all. On 18 April, on his orders, some 400 Nato troops, backed up by 80 tanks and armored fighting vehicles, 20 helicopters, and two jet aircraft blew up and robbed a private bank in the town of Mostar. The contents of the Hercegovacka Banka, one of the largest in Bosnia, were then loaded into six trucks by Nato's Stabilization Force (SFOR) troops and carted away. They left the bank in ruins, its 150,000 account-holders out of luck. The purpose of the bank robbery was to seek proof that the HDZ was a corrupt party.

That's right: the bank was not raided because there was indeed evidence of wrongdoing by the HDZ; rather, it was looted in the hopes of finding evidence of wrongdoing. In fact, little if any evidence was offered to support any claims against the bank — and certainly none against accountholders unaffiliated with the HDZ. In the US, where that little inconvenience called due process still carries some weight, a search warrant request would likely have been denied on the scant evidence provided. Never mind, Petritsch was sure something was going on there even if he had to blow up the bank to find it. The thousands of pensioners who relied on the bank for their monthly checks were told that until the audit is completed — which could take a year — their money could not be released. You have to crack a few eggs to cook a democracy omelet.

And President Bush Really Supports This?

The Bush Administration has given every indication that it supports Petritsch's raiders. As the people took to the streets to protest SFOR's theft of their assets, U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina Thomas Miller barked that the HDZ "uses political power to cover its criminal activities, which are extensive." In Miller's world of absolute power, there little need for such superfluities as evidence, trials, judges. Bush's Ambassador further pronounced, with elegant Marxian flourish, "All you have to do is drive around Herzegovina, see the companies that these people own, the houses they live in, the cars they are driving, and ask yourself a simple question: where did all this come from?" How dare these people own businesses and nice houses — something untoward must be going on.

Difficult as it may be for the Bush Administration to understand, the solution to Balkan woes is not heavy-handed "nation-building," or social-engineering, or open-ended occupation by foreign troops. Democracy cannot be taught using undemocratic means. Autocratic "Decisions" from on high do not teach citizens respect for the rule of law. Seizure of their assets without probable cause does not teach respect for private property. Creating artificial and foreign-funded political parties does not teach civic responsibility and the democratic process. Massive foreign assistance does not teach self-reliance and market economy.

The Bush Administration is going to have to demand some new thinking from the State Department. The president can jump-start the entrenched apparatchiks there by announcing a pull-out of our troops the Balkans. It really is that simple. Ignoring the reasons for Clinton's foreign policy debacles is a recipe for repeating them again and again. Americans clearly voted for something different.

McAdams has monitored elections throughout Central and Eastern Europe with the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. He is Senior Research Associate at the Center for Security Policy.

To
this end, in Kosovo, he is allowing the same Yugoslav military that
NATO not long ago vilified as a gang of genocidal Nazis into the
Albanian-populated “buffer zone” on the border of Kosovo; and in
Macedonia he supports that government’s promise to “neutralize and
eliminate” the Albanian rebels.

Not
to worry, though, Lord Robertson assured the NATO allies that the
Yugoslav military — which incidentally is headed by the same General
who led it during what NATO called the "ethnic cleansing"
of Kosovo — would show “moderation and sensitivity” as it moves
back into Kosovo. Which is it, NATO, is the Yugoslav Army "serial
ethnic cleansers" or models of "moderation and sensitivity"?

Indeed,
the NATO Secretary General is speaking in the exact same terms regarding
Macedonia's reaction to the Albanian insurgency as did former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic when faced with the same insurgency
in his own country — just before he was bombed for it.

Lord
Robertson said Monday that, “The objective is a united Macedonia,
a Macedonia united against those who use violence to try to achieve
political objectives.” Substitute Serbia for Macedonia and you have
the standard Milosevic speech while the Kosovo Liberation Army was
busy attacking Serb police and military forces in attempt to break
Kosovo away from Yugoslavia. It seems, as Orwell would report it,
that NATO is no longer at war with Eurasia after all; NATO is at
war with Eastasia and Eurasia is an ally. Eurasia had always been
an ally.

Meanwhile,
Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski goes further than Milosevic
at his meanest, vowing that his country's policy was to "liquidate
terrorists." This time, however, it is a policy that NATO openly
supports. Said Robertson Monday, "The Macedonian government
has acted with commendable restraint and determined firmness and
they have said they intend to continue with this policy which has
been so successful to date.”

For
those confused about how yesterday’s “freedom fighters” can become
today’s “terrorists,” one lesson is that this is no longer your
father’s NATO. Once the impenetrable defensive line against Communism’s
determined advance, NATO has been adrift since the end of the Cold
War. Seeking a raison d’etre, and in the hands of many who
had spent their early careers opposed to its very existence, NATO
was transformed at the Washington Summit of 1999 into an organization
that no longer merely defends members against attack. There, the
organization declared that it would concern itself with “economic,
social and political difficulties…ethnic and religious rivalries,
territorial disputes, inadequate or failed efforts at reform, the
abuse of human rights, and the dissolution of states.” Now that's
a tall order.

In
this new game of NATO poker, it seems that a West-installed leader
in Serbia trumps a pair of KLA thugs in Kosovo. Therefore a Serbia
headed by Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who polite voices never
mention made his career attacking Milosevic for not being nationalistic
enough in Bosnia, is a much better ally than that old drug-running
Marxist KLA. The royal flush, of course, will be the hand that allows
the Serbs back into Kosovo to clean up the mess that NATO created
in the first place trying to secure the province for KLA rule, while
giving the green light to Macedonia to do the same. Round and round
we go. Unfortunately for the innocents, that hand will also bring
more suffering for a people who have already had to live through
being "rescued" once by NATO. Perhaps the remaining hope
is that heretofore poker-faced President Bush will call the bluff:
ending U.S. participation in a failed mission and taking a good,
hard look at what NATO has become under Clinton and his left-wing
friends in Europe.

March
30, 2001

McAdams
has monitored elections throughout Central and Eastern Europe with
the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. He is Senior Research Associate
at the Center for Security Policy.

Here's the scenario: 3,500 participants from 12 countries are given 30 days to collect 3,000 weapons from a remote corner of the Balkans. No, it's not the story-line for a new reality-based television program. It is "Operation Essential Harvest," NATO's weirdest mission to date.

Consider this: Essential Harvest is said to be a follow-up to a peace deal negotiated between the Macedonian government and ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. The only problem is that the group which has been doing the shooting, the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army, didn't bother to show up to the negotiations. They were represented by? NATO itself, apparently without a hint of irony.

The Macedonian side, which agreed to the long list of Albanian demands without much fuss, warned that the agreement wouldn't even be presented to parliament for approval until Albanian violence halted. And it hasn't. The Albanians have warned, at the same time, that they would not hand in weapons until the Macedonian government begins implementing the agreement. Round and round we go.

It appears that the highly politicized atmosphere in which the "agreement "was forced – the document was prepared elsewhere by French and American diplomats and presented to the Macedonian government as a fait accompli – likewise forced a Western political decision to "do something" to support the "agreement." If NATO really hoped to see the insurgents disarm in any kind of substantive manner, the Alliance at the very least intervened much to soon.

As for the weapons themselves, though Macedonian officials estimate the ethnic Albanian insurgents have something on the order of 80,000 weapons, the Albanians claim to have only 2,000. NATO figures the truth to be somewhere in-between, but has announced that it will only seek to collect 3,000 weapons. Even if the Macedonian government has grossly inflated the numbers, which considering the strength of rebel offensives in western Macedonia is not likely the case, NATO's determined low-balling of the mission goals only serves to bolster Macedonian government arguments that the Alliance favors the Albanian insurgents.

The Essential Harvesters are themselves hamstrung by elaborate guidelines set by the political leadership. They will have no peacekeeping role and a very restricted ability to engage any challenge. They are not permitted to seek out weapons, as the collection is to be entirely voluntary. The rebels bring in what they wish, and NATO packs it into trucks for shipment to Greece. If the post-Kosovo weapons collection is any indication, the majority of the 3,000 Albanian weapons will be of World War II vintage. Sufficient evidence of this is the ease with which the KLA trans-shipped supposedly turned-in weapons to the fighters in Macedonia. With the porous borders and Albanian control of Kosovo-Macedonia supply lines, even the weapons turned in can be replaced in short order.

Though citizens who foot the bill for NATO's Balkan adventures were promised that this time would be different – 30 days and 3,500 troops, period – this mission began to creep practically before it started. Britain, which heads up the operation, announced last week that if would need to double its level of troop participation – the European allies were apparently reluctant to put their troops where their mouths were. So much for the vaunted "Euro Army." Then Germany, which has set aside 500 troops and 55 million dollars for the mission, hinted soon after approval that the mission may well go over the promised 30 days. German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder said that Germany must be prepared for the operation taking longer than promised. Like Kosovo and Bosnia before it.

To his credit, President Bush appears to have appreciated the inadvisability of this mission from the start: thus far the United States has only pledged technical and intelligence support, though U.S. troops have been in Macedonia for nearly a decade and could conceivably be brought in. The president is to be commended.

NATO's strangest mission will likely have one of two outcomes, neither of which should reassure those wary of the Cold War alliance's expanding role in the post Cold War world. If the 3,000 or 4,000 troops in Operation Essential Harvest actually mean to do any harvesting, and attempt to actively divest the armed Albanian insurgents of their means to grab Macedonian land, there will likely be bloodshed on NATO's side – avoidance of which has been the Alliance's primary concern. NATO's fresh young peacekeepers will face a battle-hardened and well-armed force with no single chain of command and nothing to lose. A force which has gained all it demanded through the use of arms is highly unlikely to relinquish those arms.

If, on the other hand – and this appears most likely – the entire exercise is for show, when the CNN cameras go home and the fighting begins again in earnest, taxpayers in NATO member countries should begin to ask themselves exactly why they are being forced to pay for this kind of theatre-posing-as-policy.

Considering the real danger to the participants in Operation Essential Harvest – the murder of a British soldier this week should remind us all of this – and the very questionable benefits of even a "success," "Operation Survivor" may indeed be a more appropriate name for the mission. And that's a shame.

August 29, 2001

McAdams has served as an elections and human rights monitor in the Balkans for the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, though the views here are his own. He writes from Northern Virginia.