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In the new book, "Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana," authors Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande use recently declassified documents to expose the secret history of dialogue between the United States and Cuba. Among the revelations are details of how then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger considered launching airstrikes against Cuba after Fidel Castro sent troops to support independence fighters in Angola in 1976. In the years that followed, top-secret U.S. emissaries, including former President Jimmy Carter and Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez, worked to normalize relations with Cuba. The book’s release comes as Cuban leader Raúl Castro is set to participate for the first time in next year’s Summit of the Americas in Panama. Cuba recently denounced the Obama administration for extending the more than 50-year embargo for another year in a little-noticed move in September.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Frank Mankiewicz
Image Courtesy of Frank Mankiewicz. (From right to left: Frank Mankiewicz, Kirby Jones, and Saul Landau deliver a message to Fidel Castro from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, proposing negotiations to normalize U.S.-Cuban relations, July 1974)
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: A declassified document cited in Back Channel to Cuba offers a window into the first formal negotiating session to explore normalized relations between the United States and Cuba. We spend the rest of the hour with the authors of a new book that exposes the secret history of dialogue between the United States and Cuba. Much of the book relies on recently declassified top-secret documents. Among the revelations are details of how then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger considered launching airstrikes against Cuba after Fidel Castro sent troops to support independence fighters in Angola in 1976. In the years that followed, top-secret U.S. emissaries, including former President Jimmy Carter and Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez, worked to normalize relations with Cuba.
The book’s release comes as Cuban leader Raúl Castro is set to participate for the first time in next year’s Summit of the Americas in Panama. Earlier this month, Panama’s foreign minister flew to Havana to personally invite Castro to attend for the first time. President Obama has not said yet if he will attend the talks.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Cuba has denounced the Obama administration for extending the more than 50-year embargo. The White House authorized the trade embargo for another year in a little-noticed move in September. Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said U.S. restrictions on Cuba have worsened under President Obama.
BRUNO RODRÍGUEZ: [translated] The State Department has again included Cuba in its unilateral and arbitrary list of states that sponsor international terrorism. Its true purpose is to increase the persecution of our international financial transactions in the whole world and justify the blockade policy. Under the present administration, there has been an unprecedented tightening of extraterritorial character of the blockade, with a remarkable and unheard-of emphasis on financial transactions through the imposition of multi-million fines on banking institutions of third countries.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande, authors of the new book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. And William LeoGrande is a professor of government at American University. You can read the introduction to their book on our website at democracynow.org. They also wrote an article, which is now on The Nation's website, headlined "Six Lessons for Obama on How to Improve Relations with Cuba: The president knows US policy has been a failure. Here's how he can make a breakthrough, in the little time he has left."
Well, we’ll get to that, but William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, welcome back to Democracy Now! Peter, I want to start with you and your—really, the documents that you’ve got, that have never been revealed before, once again, showing how close the U.S. came, that U.S. leaders were willing to risk world peace in going after Cuba. Talk about Henry Kissinger.
PETER KORNBLUH: Henry Kissinger deserves much credit for actually taking the initiative to reach out to Fidel Castro through a secret emissary, sending him a handwritten note saying, "We should try and improve relations, and let’s set up a secret mechanism to start talks." That was in the summer of 1974. And a series of talks did take place, culminating in an extraordinary three-hour meeting at the Pierre Hotel here in New York City in July of 1975. But, you know, the United States has always wanted Cuba to compromise either its foreign policy or its domestic policy to come to terms with the United States.
And Fidel Castro had a request from Agostinho Neto in Angola for support against CIA-supported right-wing guerrillas challenging his MPLA movement. Castro sent troops into Angola. Kissinger was irate that a "pipsqueak," as he kept calling Fidel Castro in meetings with Gerald Ford, would actually project military power into another continent and thwart Kissinger’s kind of chessboard design of the Cold War on that continent. And he ordered up these contingency plans, which are now in the news and posted on the website of the National Security Archive. Our book, Back Channel to Cuba, broke this story of these documents. And they were pretty powerful contingency plans for airstrikes, mining of the harbors of Cuba, a naval blockade perhaps. In the Oval Office, he said to Gerald Ford, "I think we’re going to have to smash Cuba, get them out of Africa. We might have to wait ’til after the 1976 elections." Of course, Gerald Ford, fortunately, lost the 1976 elections.
AMY GOODMAN: And Carter came in. And talk about what happened to those plans.
PETER KORNBLUH: Well, Carter certainly did not pick up on those plans at all. He had a completely different perspective of dealing with Cuba and all sorts of other countries with which we did not have close relations, with which we had hostile relations. In fact, he told Bill LeoGrande and I, when we interviewed him, that he had a broader approach: Civil dialogue, even relations—positive relations—with enemy states was much preferable to military hostilities. And so he also attempted—picked up on kind of where Kissinger had dropped the issue of trying to normalize relations, and engaged in a series of secret meetings and talks with the Cubans, as well, which are detailed rather extensively in this book.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, William LeoGrande, can you talk about where you got access to these documents? Why were they declassified now? How long did it take for you to get access to them? And how much are we talking about? How many documents did you get access to?
WILLIAM LEOGRANDE: Well, I think over the course of doing the research for this book, we looked literally at hundreds and hundreds of declassified documents. A lot of them were declassified as a result of Peter’s work at the National Security Archive, because the archive has really been a leader in forcing the United States government to declassify things that it’d prefer not to, through the Freedom of Information Act. These particular documents and some ones that really were just released a few weeks ago continued to document this hidden history. We’re all very familiar with the 50 years, 55 years now, of hostility between Cuba and the United States. What most people don’t know is that every president since Eisenhower has negotiated with Cuba about one issue or another. During the Kissinger and Carter years, it was about normalization of relations. In other years, it’s been about smaller issues, but no less important ones, like finding peace in southern Africa. And we were determined to unearth that history, and getting these documents was the key link for being able to do that.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And how many times did the Cuban government take the initiative to open a dialogue with the U.S. in the same period of time that you looked at?
WILLIAM LEOGRANDE: What’s really fascinating is that the Cubans repeatedly took the initiative to try to improve relations. Essentially, every time a new U.S. presidential administration came into office, Fidel Castro would make some sort of initiative. Sometimes it was private, through private emissaries. Sometimes it was very public—in 1964, for example. The Cubans just repeatedly made an effort, which suggested to us that in fact the Cubans were really interested in trying to normalize the relationship with the United States, but not on any terms. As Peter said, Cuba has its own foreign policy, has its own domestic arrangements, and has never been willing to make major concessions in its foreign policy or in its domestic social and political organization for better relations with the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: For your chronicling of the negotiations that were taking place, even people in this country don’t realize the number, the hundreds of attempts on Castro’s life. And you tell this interesting story of a U.S. negotiator for the United States, [James] Donovan, on the one hand negotiating, and then he’s being undermined by the CIA—explain this story—to bring a gift to Castro that will kill him.
PETER KORNBLUH: Yes, we talk about this story literally on the very first page of the book. James Donovan was a New York lawyer, very famous for organizing a prisoner swap with the Soviet Union. And John F. Kennedy picked him to, first, win the liberation of the Bay of Pigs prisoners, over a thousand prisoners and their families, and then the CIA sent him back to kind of win the release of three CIA agents that Fidel had in his jails and arrange a prisoner swap there. And he was doing confidence-building work with Castro. He was doing shuttle diplomacy back and forth from Miami, and he brought him all sorts of little gifts, including a wetsuit, a scuba diving suit, and a watch and a snorkel, etc. And when one branch of the CIA, the executive action branch, which was the euphemism for the assassination branch of the CIA, found out that he was going to be bringing this wetsuit, they concocted this plan to poison it. They had a particular poison for the snorkel, a different poison of—
AMY GOODMAN: They were going to put tuberculosis in the snorkel?
PETER KORNBLUH: Yeah, they were going to put tuberculosis in the snorkel, I believe, and a special fungus in the wet suit. And Donovan had these handlers at the CIA, who liked him and who were positive about his, A, negotiating the release of their fellow CIA guys who were in prison and, B, you know, possibly actually making progress on better relations with Cuba. And they basically said to him, "We are going to keep control of this wetsuit in our possession, so that other people in the CIA never get it and can’t contaminate it." And, you know, that was an opening story to show the tug-of-war between some people over the course of these years in the U.S. government who really were focused on improving relations and the kind of hardliners who all they wanted to do was either assassinate Fidel Castro, start a counterrevolution in Cuba, and, you know, basically bring the force of the United States down upon the Cuban Revolution.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to just a list of the times, the attempts at negotiation, and what was this tremendous force that prevented the opening of relations between Cuba and the United States, and your recommendations for President Obama. We’re speaking with Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande. Their new book is Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. And our guests are the authors of a new book called Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana, Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande. Professor LeoGrande, start with these negotiations that we know so little about. They often take place in secret places, either in—or also very public.
WILLIAM LEOGRANDE: So, even in the Eisenhower administration, there were efforts negotiate to prevent the breakdown in relations.
During the Kennedy administration, as Peter was saying, there were negotiations to release the Bay of Pigs prisoners, the CIA prisoners who were imprisoned. There were communications during the missile crisis. And then at the end of the Kennedy administration, there was a serious effort to try to open a dialogue with Cuba through representatives of the United Nations to normalize relations. Kennedy saw that the Cubans were really angry with the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the missile crisis and thought it might be possible to win Cuba back to the Western orbit.
During the Johnson administration, there was an effort using Spain as an intermediary.
During even the Nixon administration, there were negotiations for an anti-hijacking agreement. As we’ve talked about a little bit already, during the Ford administration, there was this very serious effort, leading to the meeting in the Pierre Hotel, to try to normalize relations, which came to an end because of Angola.
Jimmy Carter, within his first month in office, signed a presidential directive saying, "I want to normalize relations with Cuba," and directing his foreign policy bureaucracy to open negotiations to do that. That broke down as a result of Cuba’s involvement in Ethiopia. But even after the Cubans sent troops to Ethiopia in 1978, for the next several years of the administration there were a whole series of secret meetings in Washington, in New York, in Atlanta, Georgia, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and in, finally, Havana itself.
The Reagan administration, who you would have expected to be the most hostile to Cuba, sent Secretary of State Alexander Haig to Mexico to meet secretly with Carlos Rafael Rodríguez to talk about Central America. Then they entered into a multi-year negotiation with Cuba to sign a migration agreement, to try to resolve the abnormal migration relationship between the two countries. And finally, during the Reagan administration, Cuba was invited to participate in the negotiations that ended the war in southern Africa, leading to Namibian independence and Cuba’s withdrawal from Angola.
During the Bush administration, there wasn’t so much success in terms of reaching agreements, but there was a dialogue around Central America, as well.
And then, during the Clinton administration, there were a whole series of talks, the most important of which normalized, finally, our migration relationship with Cuba, the agreements in 1994, in which President Jimmy Carter and President Salinas of Mexico served as intermediaries between the two governments, and then a migration agreement in 1995 that was held so secretly, for fear of domestic opposition in the United States, that the National Security Agency, the NSA, was directed not to intercept the phone calls of the diplomats, for fear that the word would get out to the wider government that there were negotiations going on.
Even during the Bush administration, the second Bush administration, there was a dialogue around counternarcotics cooperation and counterterrorism cooperation.
And, of course, since President Obama came in, we’ve seen continuing dialogue around a whole range of issues, like counternarcotics, Coast Guard cooperation, oil spill mitigation and so on. So there’s this long, long history of dialogue and of a variety of successes on a number of issues.
PETER KORNBLUH: Can I just add that this wonderful list of dialogue and covert-overt, back channel, informal-formal that Bill LeoGrande has just laid out was facilitated over these last 50 years by a who’s who of really colorful intermediaries. The political issues around talking to Cuba are so sensitive that presidents have felt they had to use back-channel intermediaries, many of whom were not actually tied to the U.S. government in any way, to bring messages back and forth. In the Kennedy era, you had a pioneering female journalist, the first correspondent for—the first female correspondent for ABC News, Lisa Howard, setting up her Central Park apartment as command central, communications central, for phone calls and messages between Cuba and the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Did she report them?
PETER KORNBLUH: She didn’t report them. She did actually write for a magazine called The War and Peace Report, that was very positive and famous in New York in the 1960s, about her conversations with Castro, but she never reported these secret communications. You had Gabriel García Márquez, you know, a Nobel Prize-winning, world famous writer, being a secret intermediary between Castro and Clinton. You had the chairman of the board of Coca-Cola, J. Paul Austin, ferrying messages back and forth. We tell that story in the book. And, of course, you had the—
AMY GOODMAN: What was he doing, doing that?
PETER KORNBLUH: Well, Jimmy Carter enlisted him. Carter, of course, was from Atlanta, and they were friends. And Carter didn’t believe the bureaucracy in the State Department, and the White House even, would support him in his efforts to reach out to Castro, see if normal relations were possible, particularly in the wake of the Ethiopia incursion of Cuban troops. And so, he sent in 1978 a private message to Fidel Castro with J. Paul Austin—
AMY GOODMAN: In a Coke bottle?
PETER KORNBLUH: Well, Austin, of course, wanted to bring Coca-Cola back to Cuba.
WILLIAM LEOGRANDE: That’s right.
PETER KORNBLUH: That was his thing. And then they used Austin again in 1980, and only to—as a private emissary, only to find out that he had started suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and couldn’t effectively deliver the message—in fact, had kind of delivered his own message that compromised kind of the way this really needed to play out. And he had to—
AMY GOODMAN: What was his message?
PETER KORNBLUH: Well, he was trying to help—the message was to end the Mariel boatlift crisis, that threatened Jimmy Carter’s re-election, quite frankly. And they sent him down, a two-step process: "You end the Mariel boatlift; after the re-election of Jimmy Carter, we will enter into a broader dialogue of normalizing relations. Everything will be on the table, including the embargo." And instead, Austin went down and said, "Jimmy Carter wants to have a summit with you before the end of the year. He wants you to come to the United States, and he’s going to talk to you face to face, and the United States will lift the embargo before Christmas. And that’s the first—these are the first steps before actual serious negotiations take place." And, of course, this was not at all what the message was supposed to be. And almost immediately, literally, only three or four days later, this high-level State Department official was sent down to tell Castro that that was not the correct message, and, in fact, they wanted a much more kind of drawn-out process for talks. Of course, Carter was not re-elected. And one of, I think, the really compelling things in our book is that he told us, when we interviewed him, that he now regrets that he didn’t normalize relations during the first term, because he never had a chance to do so during the second term.
AMY GOODMAN: Which brings us to President Obama.
PETER KORNBLUH: Yes, exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what you feel he should be doing.
PETER KORNBLUH: Well, we have an article coming out in The Nation magazine—it’s online now, but it’s going to be in the magazine next week—which lists the lessons of all of this history for Barack Obama. You know, Barack Obama now faces an extraordinary window of opportunity. He has been forced, by the pressures of the other Latin American countries, to basically accept the new reality: The United States can’t keep excluding Cuba from regional events without completely isolating itself. In the next Summit of the Americas, which is going to take place in April 2015 in Panama, is going to include Cuba. And Barack Obama, who famously said, when he was running for office in 2008, that he would sit down with Raúl Castro face to face to talk about our differences, now actually is going to have that opportunity. And between now and April really is the time when the lessons of the history, that we’ve put under this one cover of this book, can be applied to a face-to-face meeting between the president of Cuba, the president of the United States, for the first time since the Cuban Revolution.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, William LeoGrande, to what extent do you think what you’ve discovered about this back-channel diplomacy, the use of intermediaries between the U.S. and Cuba, is similar to what the U.S. might also have been doing with other countries with which it has hostile relations—for instance, Iran, North Korea, etc.?
WILLIAM LEOGRANDE: I think presidents always like to use back channels, they like to use private envoys like J. Paul Austin, in part because they don’t entirely trust the layers of bureaucracy, and they don’t the information filtered, so they send down an emissary that they feel they have personal confidence in. And also, it’s less likely to leak than if you go through the regular bureaucracy, where there are always people opposed to your policy who are willing to leak it to Congress or to the press. So I think presidents always use private emissaries in that regard. And they even use secret diplomatic channels to—because you can’t negotiate some of these tough issues in public, because of the kinds of compromises that have to be made.
I think Cuba is different, though. I think there’s been more of this in the case of our relations with Cuba, because we don’t have formal diplomatic relations with Cuba. We still don’t technically recognize the Cuban government, even though we have U.S. diplomats in the interest section in Havana. And because the Cuban issue has been so hot politically in the United States domestically for so long, presidents have had a special incentive not to let their secret dialogues with Cuba get out in public.
AMY GOODMAN: This obsession that the U.S. has had with Cuba, what is the force that is behind—even huge businesses, multinational companies, want to do business with a country that’s 90 miles off of our shore. What has been the most successful force, and how do you think that will be countered? You had Nelson—you had President Obama, at Nelson Mandela’s funeral, shaking hands—a very big deal was made of this—with Raúl Castro, the president of Cuba.
PETER KORNBLUH: Yeah, just that handshake seemed so symbolic, because the two presidents of these two countries had never really publicly been together, talked to each other in any way, in all of these decades. And Cuba is really one of the most intractable foreign policy issues in the modern history of U.S. world relations. And part of it is the historic kind of imperial and imperialist kind of attitude of the United States towards Cuba pre-revolution, and towards all of Latin America, quite frankly, smaller countries which we kind of assumed we would be the hegemon and control. And here came Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, and saying, "Hey, guess what. You can’t control us, even if we are a small country. We’re going have a revolution, be independent, have our own political system and our own foreign policy." And then, of course, it has evolved—
AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.
PETER KORNBLUH: It has evolved into a domestic political issue, with hardliners in the Senate and the Congress basically being in a position to challenge any real movement on Cuba policy.
AMY GOODMAN: And do you think President Obama wants to change the policy?
PETER KORNBLUH: I personally do think that he and his team would like to change the policy. The question is whether they have the spine, the courage, to take on the right and do it. This could be Obama’s key legacy, frankly, and he now has this window of opportunity.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Peter Kornbluh, William LeoGrande. Their book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.
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Islamic State militants have reportedly made advances in both Iraq and Syria despite an escalating U.S.-led bombing. In Iraq, militants are said to have seized control of the town of Heet in Anbar province. In Syria, militants have advanced on Kurdish towns near the Turkish border, forcing tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee in recent days. The United Nations says more than 1,100 Iraqis were killed in violence last month. The actual toll is far higher because it does not include deaths in areas controlled by the Islamic State. The United Nations says the Islamic State has carried out mass executions, abducted women and girls as sex slaves, and used children as fighters. The United Nations also says airstrikes by the Iraqi government have caused "significant civilian deaths and injuries." This comes as the White House has confirmed it has relaxed standards aimed at preventing civilian deaths for the U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. We discuss the developing situation with Sinan Antoon, an Iraqi poet, novelist and translator. A professor at New York University, Antoon is co-founder and co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Militants from the Islamic State have reportedly made advances in both Iraq and Syria over the past 24 hours despite the escalating U.S.-led air campaign. In Iraq, militants are said to have seized control of 90 percent of the town of Heet in the province of Anbar. In Syria, militants have advanced on Kurdish towns near the Turkish border, forcing tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee across the border in recent days. The advances by the Islamic State come as British Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged ground troops will be needed to fight the militants in Iraq and Syria.
PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON: These people, they are evil, pure and simple. They kill children, rape women, threaten nonbelievers with genocide, behead journalists and aid workers. Now, some people seem to think we can opt out of this. We can’t. As I speak, British servicemen and women are flying in the skies over Iraq. They saw action yesterday. And there will be troops on the front line, but they will be Iraqis, Kurds and Syrians, fighting for the safe and democratic future that they deserve.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: On Wednesday, the United Nations revealed at least 1,119 Iraqis were killed in violence in September, but the actual toll is far higher because the U.N. figure does not include deaths in areas controlled by the Islamic State. The U.N. report said militants from the Islamic State carried out mass executions, abducted women and girls as sex slaves, and used children as fighters in systematic violations that may amount to war crimes. The U.N. also criticized the Iraqi government for causing, quote, "significant civilian deaths" by carrying out airstrikes on villages, a school and hospitals in violation of international law.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the White House has confirmed it’s relaxed standards aimed at preventing civilian deaths for the U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. According to Yahoo News, the Obama administration has acknowledged a policy announced last year calling for "near certainty" of no civilian casualties in drone strikes will not apply to the current bombing. The admission came in response to queries about a strike that killed up to a dozen civilians in the Syrian village of Kafr Deryan last week.
To talk more about the crisis in Iraq and Syria, we’re joined by Sinan Antoon. He’s an Iraqi poet, novelist and translator, a professor at New York University, where he teaches Arabic literature. His most recent book translated into English is called The Corpse Washer. He is here in our New York studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
SINAN ANTOON: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. Your response to the U.S. bombing—and now expanded to Britain, and they say other allies are supporting the bombing—of Iraq, your home country?
SINAN ANTOON: Well, my response is that this is just more of the same that we’ve been having in this so-called war on terror. So, I fail to see what this is supposed to produce. What is the vision for the region that will emerge, or what will happen on the ground, after all of this bombing? We know from previous experiences that this type of action—military, indiscriminate military bombing—and the approach that the United States and its allies are using, will actually only create more terrorism. It will only create conditions in which groups such as ISIS, that will have different names, will emerge. So, it’s not a solution at all. But sadly, I mean, most of the population seems to be behind this decision. So that’s my response. And it’s the response of a lot of people on the ground in Iraq and Syria who are not with the Assad regime, of course, or against it, but they are against this type of military bombing, that does not, and has not, produced the supposed results that it promised.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But how do you respond to people who say that the brutality of the Islamic State, or ISIL or ISIS, has been such that it warranted some kind of military response?
SINAN ANTOON: Well, is this military response weakening ISIS? I mean, we just heard this morning that they’ve taken over another city in western Iraq. They’re almost a mile away from Baghdad. The way they operate, they are very mobile, they’re more fluid, and the Iraqi army, with all of its problems that have caused this, is really not in a position to fight ISIS. It doesn’t seem so. And it’s not going to change overnight. And these strikes might, you know, change the opinions in London and Washington, but on the ground, it doesn’t seem that they’re making any difference. ISIS will go on beheading. And they’ve taken on—they’ve occupied new towns. So, it is, in a way, similar to what happened in Afghanistan, in a way. There might be a victory here, but the Taliban are still there, aren’t they? I mean, this is—again, the paradoxical thing about this war on terror is that it keeps on producing more terror. And so, it’s an endless war, in a way.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain who ISIS is, who these forces are of the Islamic State.
SINAN ANTOON: Well, ISIS is the later iteration of, you know, the Islamic State in Iraq, which was operating four or five years ago. But it is, in a way—I mean, if we go back to 2003, it’s the descendent of one of those groups that left Afghanistan and came to Iraq after 2003. But it’s the product of, in one way, the situation created in Iraq because of the U.S. invasion, of dismantling the Iraqi state and then creating a state that is so weak and corrupt that it cannot really deliver services, nor can it protect the borders and its citizens. So, Iraq, like Afghanistan early on, way before, became a place where, you know, the borders are porous and permeable, so a lot of angry young men, a lot of potential terrorists, can then go to Iraq and do whatever they want. And, of course, the crisis in Syria in the last two, three years also made more chaos possible, and the Iraq-Syria border was very easy to cross in both directions, so that gave ISIS free rein in the areas. In addition to that, of course, we cannot forget nor underestimate the way the Maliki government dealt with its own political problems in certain parts of the country by not responding to the demands of a lot of protesters, by labeling all opposition as terrorist. And, I mean, early on, before Mosul, large parts of western Iraq had fallen to ISIS already. So, this is all just more of the same.
AMY GOODMAN: Maliki, of course, got billions from the United States in his years as prime minister.
SINAN ANTOON: Yes, of course, he did. But, I mean, it’s—all of this—all of these symptoms were all there. We know, in the past five, six years, the Iraqi regime is always in the top five of the most corrupt regimes in the entire world. And the military itself, the Iraqi army, is very, very corrupt and very inefficient. There are all these names of soldiers who never show up, actually, and their officers take their salaries.
AMY GOODMAN: Maliki seriously antagonized the Sunnis, keeping them out of office and serving in the military, etc. Do you think, if the U.S. had not shored him up to the extent that they did, he would have fallen earlier?
SINAN ANTOON: I really don’t know, and I don’t think it matters right now. I mean, the problem is now we’re dealing with the consequences not just of Maliki’s politics—of course, primarily his politics—but everything that has been happening for the last eight years and never really having a—really, a vision or a strategy.
And I just want to point out that it’s important to remember the timing of the U.S. intervention. You know, ISIS took over Mosul and took over all of these villages, and it’s only when ISIS was close to Erbil, where there is a CIA office and where there are corporate oil interests, that then the United States moved much faster. So, again, please, we always have to repeat that. This has nothing to do with humanitarian issues. Nothing at all. I mean, we, I think, citizens, have to learn after all these years, and especially the last 10 years, that humanitarian issues are not—are not the reason why there is any intervention. We always have to look at geopolitics, and maybe, of course, dealing with some opposition or rising voices of criticism in the metropolis.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, over the weekend, President Obama spoke on CBS’s 60 Minutes and said the U.S. did not foresee the rise of the Islamic State. Let’s go to a clip.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria. Essentially, what happened with ISIL was that you had al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was a vicious group, but our Marines were able to quash with the help of Sunni tribes. They went back underground. But over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Could you respond, Sinan Antoon? That was President Obama speaking to CBS over the weekend. Could you respond to what he said?
SINAN ANTOON: I mean, this is a very simplistic narrative about how—and the Marines were not able, actually, to quash al-Qaeda. That’s not the case. And I just have to say also again that al-Qaeda in Iraq is the product of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. We did not have al-Qaeda before. But so, he says the chaos because of the Syrian crisis. Well, precisely, what was the United States’ position or strategy during the Syrian crisis? And it’s not true. You know, there were so many voices and so many observers and critics pointing out that not doing anything, and that doesn’t mean military intervention, but that the situation in Syria was going to produce all of this chaos and this massive violence. So it’s not like we did not know of the dangers involved. And it’s amazing that after everything that has happened in this country, here we go again. It’s interesting. It’s the same scenario, in a way. It’s "Oh, well, intelligence failure, we underestimated, and we didn’t know." I mean, this is quite, quite sad, actually, and it’s tragic.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: What do you think the main failures of U.S. policy with respect to Syria have been? What should they have done differently?
SINAN ANTOON: Well, they never really had a strategy. OK, so, you know, I’m not one for military intervention necessarily or bombing, but there was never really a strategy. And frankly, whether it’s Syria or Iraq, the United States’ allies, namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Turkey, are all responsible for fueling this and for—you know, Turkey for allowing all of these foreign fighters, terrorists, to go into Syria; and Saudi Arabia and Qatar for financing these groups and ISIS; and Saudi Arabia for shipping, amongst many other countries, so many of its young angry men, who become terrorists, to Iraq. I mean, that was happening all the way from 2003. And nothing was done really to—at least for Iraq, to make sure that the country’s borders are protected.
AMY GOODMAN: So explain the politics now of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, all joining with the United States and now Britain. And can you respond to the Iraqi prime minister, the current one, Haider al-Abadi, saying he totally opposes Arab nations joining in airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq?
SINAN ANTOON: Well, I think—I don’t know—he’s catering to his own constituents inside Iraq, because, frankly, I mean, again, there’s a paradox here. We know that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are financing and were supporting ISIS and all of these other factions in order, of course, to gain influence on the ground in Syria and Iraq. So now they are participating in a bombing campaign against these groups that they, we know, had financed. And, I mean, but once again, it’s this broad coalition that everyone is going in, because that’s—so, the war on terror also allows all of these regimes themselves to exploit the war on terror for their own, you know, internal agendas. But I would understand why Iraqis and the prime minister, you know, has problems with these countries coming in. And there’s the other issue of sovereignty. I mean, it’s terrible because the Iraqi state doesn’t have control over large swaths of the country, but it’s also, as one blogger said, that Iraqi airspace now is just open for bombing.
AMY GOODMAN: Is Iraq over as we know it?
SINAN ANTOON: Well, you know, Iraq has been changing, and Iraq is disintegrating, whether we like it or not. And a lot of observers think that it’s on its way to some type of division. But, I mean, the Iraq, when did we know it, or as we’ve known it, I mean, it’s been disintegrating since 2003, and even before. The invasion and the occupation and the system that the United States put in place perhaps accelerated all of these divisions and all of these forces on the ground. But, of course, you have a country in which, you know, a major city is under the control of a terrorist organization. We have, just recently, a million-and-a-half people who are displaced, who don’t have any services. Cities are falling as we speak. After all of these months of knowing what the danger of ISIS is, they are an hour away from the capital. So, I mean, no one knows what will happen to Iraq exactly, but disintegration is more likely.
But once again, I just—it’s important to pose the question: What is this campaign supposed to produce? What kind of region is going to be in five or 10 years? Obama and the others never tell us. What do they envision? Just endless wars in this region? Because this is going to help, you know, create more disintegration and chaos—
AMY GOODMAN: What is—
SINAN ANTOON: —and destroying the social fabric, sorry, and killing all of these civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what an alternative is. In the corporate media, the response is always, "What are we supposed to do? Nothing?" as if diplomacy is doing nothing. But talk about what you think would be an approach for your country, for Iraq, and for Syria, as well.
SINAN ANTOON: Well, I don’t know, because, I mean, for whom—this would assume that those in power have good intentions in regards to Iraq and Syria. But I would say that a true regional conference that brings in all the states that are involved and that have influence on the ground—Syria, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar—and basically a revision of all of these—a revising and a reconsideration of all of these policies, because obviously they will only produce more of the same.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, you’ve also said in a recent piece that you wrote for The Washington Post that in order to understand why Iraq is in the state that it’s in, we have to look far before the U.S. invasion of 2003. So could you elaborate on what’s been happening in Iraq since the 1980s that’s led to the situation that we’re in now?
SINAN ANTOON: Yes, the piece I co-wrote with a colleague, Zaid Al-Ali, was in response to the usual way in Washington, in the mainstream media, Iraq is dealt with. And just going back to 2003 and speaking of mistakes is what I call the corporate approach, which is very ahistorical. So, not to attribute it all to the U.S. and its sanctions and wars, but to understand how a country could disintegrate like that, one has to understand the effects of dictatorship and the militarization of society in the '80s under the Saddam Hussein regime. But, frankly, and I've said this many times before, one has to take into consideration that in 1991 the United States of America bombed Iraq, to quote James Baker, "back to the pre-industrial age." It destroyed the infrastructure of the country, which was very developed. And then the economic sanctions, which are the most severe in the 20th century, were maintained on Iraq until 2003, and those economic sanctions really changed everything about the country. It drove its economy to near collapse, drove at least three million mostly of its middle class and intelligentsia to leave the country, killed a lot of innocent civilians. I mean, we all know, and the viewers know—
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Could you explain, specifically, what were the range and the extent of the sanctions that Iraq faced at that time?
SINAN ANTOON: Well, the sanctions did not allow Iraq to export oil, and it also barred it from importing many of the necessities. And they had this evil list that was supposed to call dual-use items, so any item that could be interpreted to be of dual use for military purposes was banned. And the most egregious example is lead pencils, for example, because the lead inside them could somehow be used to produce weapons, or ambulance cars, because then they could have a gun attached to their top, and then... So, it was really—I mean, early on, it was very obvious that these sanctions were not weakening the regime; they were strengthening the regime, and they were just hurting the innocent civilians. A lot of U.N. officials resigned early on, because they—you know, it was unconscionable to be party to this kind of policy.
AMY GOODMAN: Of course, Madeleine Albright, then secretary of state, was asked the famous question on 60 Minutes, that 500,000 children have died as result of sanctions, "Do you think the price is worth it?" And she said yes.
SINAN ANTOON: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: She later said, when she was out of office, she regretted her answer.
SINAN ANTOON: Yes, but it’s always these short-term solutions that end up in long-term disasters. It’s the myopia of U.S. foreign policy. But also that, you know, others—let’s face it—others, non-Europeans, are disposable. I mean, their lives are not as worthy as other lives, and you can sacrifice them.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what is Iraq like today?
SINAN ANTOON: What is Iraq like today? You know, it’s—
AMY GOODMAN: Everyday life, when you call back to your family.
SINAN ANTOON: Everyday life is unimaginable for any of us, because, you know, if you speak of services, people don’t have electricity, is still very problematic. Everyone needs a generator. But public safety—there are bombings every day almost, everywhere. So, the normal life that we all take for granted is not available to Iraqis. They live in fear. They live under the threat of death at any moment. The services are not provided in Baghdad or even other places. And they don’t know what type of future they have. They are always living under the threat. And now even Baghdad is living under the threat of ISIS and its supposed sleeper cells that are there.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in his own words. On Wednesday, he spoke to the BBC’s Lyse Doucet.
PRIME MINISTER HAIDER AL-ABADI: This threat is a threat to Iraq, a threat to the international coalition, a threat to Iran. So let us work together in Iraq to push that threat, to eliminate that threat. And I think there’s interest for everybody. I feel comfortable in this, because I’m sure now the Gulf states, the regional, Iran, the international community coalition, they feel this threat is on them, so there is a common interest, which help me to work with all of these together to get rid of the threat. I think—
LYSE DOUCET: But the Arab states are not helping you. They’re bombing in Syria. They’re not bombing in Iraq.
PRIME MINISTER HAIDER AL-ABADI: But that is a benefit to us. That’s a bonus, because without that, I cannot defeat ISIS in Iraq. In able to defeat ISIS, ISIS bases must be destroyed in Syria, and they must be eliminated. And that is a part of the process. I cannot, as an Iraqi prime minister, to launch an attack on Syria or to be seen as being the [inaudible] of that attack against Syria, because this is a neighboring country to us. But I welcome any international effort to remove that threat from Syrian territory, which is threatening Iraq.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was prime minister—Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi speaking to the BBC on Wednesday. So, Sinan Antoon, can you respond to what he said and specifically also elaborate on the point you made earlier about the internal agendas of some of these regional states—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.?
SINAN ANTOON: I mean, Saudi Arabia, since 2003, has always been supporting certain factions and political forces in Iraq that were at times working against any, you know, resolution to all of its crises. So, I mean, obviously, they don’t have the interest of the Iraqi population in mind. So they are implicated in what was happening in Iraq, because since 2003, but also before, Iraq was very weak. So all of these countries began to have more influence on the Iraqi internal politics. Most of Iraqi politicians are beholden to, more or less, foreign powers. That’s a problem. Many of them, the ones that lean to Iran, because they belong to the pro-Iranian parties and militias, and a lot of the Sunni politicians also have been somehow drawn into either Turkey or Saudi Arabia and Qatar. So, that’s the situation that we live in, as I said before. The Iraqi regime—but the Iraqi political class is very, very, very corrupt. And frankly, most of them are not patriotic. And that’s how most Iraqis feel. They’re very corrupt.
AMY GOODMAN: Sinan Antoon, we want to thank you for being with us, Iraqi poet, novelist, translator, professor at New York University, where he teaches Arabic literature. His most recent book is called The Corpse Washer. He translated it into English himself.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Stay with us.
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Islamic State Seizes Iraqi Town in Anbar Province
Islamic State militants have reportedly made advances in both Iraq and Syria despite an escalating U.S.-led bombing. In Iraq, militants are said to have seized control of the town of Heet in Anbar province. In Syria, militants have advanced on Kurdish towns near the Turkish border, forcing tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee in recent days.
U.N.: Islamic State Committing Mass Killings; Iraqi Airstrikes Cause "Significant Deaths"
The United Nations says more than 1,100 Iraqis were killed in violence last month. The actual toll is far higher because it does not include deaths in areas controlled by the Islamic State. The United Nations says insurgents from the Islamic State have carried out mass executions, abducted women and girls as sex slaves, and used children as fighters. The United Nations also says airstrikes by the Iraqi government have caused "significant civilian deaths and injuries."
Dozens of Syrian Children Killed in Homs School Bombing
In the Syrian city of Homs, at least 45 people, including 41 children, have died in twin blasts outside an elementary school. The blasts were apparently timed to coincide with the students leaving class for the day. The attack hit a neighborhood mostly inhabited by members of the Alawite sect that President Bashar al-Assad belongs to.
Hong Kong Protesters Issue Midnight Deadline
In Hong Kong, protest leaders have issued a midnight deadline for the city’s top official to resign or face the occupation of government buildings. Thousands of people remain in the streets in the fifth day of protests against China’s plan to select candidates in Hong Kong’s 2017 elections. The demonstrations mark the biggest challenge to China’s control of Hong Kong since it retook authority from Britain in 1997.
Secret Service Directly Resigns over Security Lapses
The head of the Secret Service has resigned after major lapses in the protection of President Obama and his family. Julia Pierson’s departure comes after an armed intruder made it inside the White House after scaling a fence, running across the lawn, and entering through an unlocked door. The Secret Service later admitted an armed security guard with a criminal record was allowed to ride in an elevator with President Obama in Atlanta earlier this month. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest announced Pierson’s resignation.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest: "Director Pierson offered her resignation today because she believed that it was in the best interest of the agency to which she has dedicated her career. The secretary agreed with that assessment. The president did, as well. Over the last several days, we have seen recent and accumulating reports raising questions about the performance of the agency, and the president concluded that new leadership of that agency was required."
The White House says it was only informed of the elevator incident shortly before it was revealed in a news report this week. Pierson had initially been appointed after a 2012 scandal when a dozen Secret Service agents solicited prostitutes in Colombia.
Florida Man Convicted of 1st Degree Murder in Retrial for Killing Unarmed Black Teen
A Florida jury has convicted Michael Dunn of first-degree murder for killing 17-year-old Jordan Davis in an argument over loud music at a gas station in Jacksonville. It was Dunn’s second trial after a jury deadlocked on the first-degree charge earlier this year. Dunn, who is white, shot at the vehicle carrying Davis and his friends 10 times. He then fled the scene, went to a hotel with his fiancée and ordered pizza. He never called the police. The first jury had convicted Dunn of three counts of attempted murder for shooting at Jordan Davis’ friends, who survived. After the new verdict on Wednesday, Davis’ mother, Lucy McBath, said the conviction marks a victory for all black victims of racial profiling.
Lucy McBath: "We are very grateful that justice has been served, justice not only for Jordan, but justice for Trayvon and justice for all the nameless faces and children and people that will never have a voice."
Dunn faces up to life in prison without parole.
Children with Potential Ebola Exposure Monitored in Texas
Health officials say up to 18 people may have been exposed to the Ebola virus carried by the first known patient diagnosed in the United States. On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said five children have been identified and are being monitored.
Gov. Rick Perry: "Today we learned that some school-age children have been identified as having had contact with the patient and are now being monitored at home for any signs of the disease. I know that parents are being extremely concerned about that development, but let me assure, these children have been identified, and they are being monitored, and the disease cannot be transmitted before having any symptoms."
The patient, identified as Thomas Eric Duncan, apparently contracted the virus in Liberia when he escorted an Ebola victim to the hospital. After arriving in the United States, Duncan first visited a Dallas hospital last week, complaining of health issues. But he was sent home despite informing staff he was recently in Liberia.
Obama Hosts Netanyahu as Israel Advances "Troubling" Settlements; Palestinians Seek 2016 Deadline
President Obama has hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. The meeting comes days after Netanyahu gave a U.N. General Assembly speech attempting to link the militant group Islamic State to Hamas, as well as liken it to Iran. In his comments, Obama said he hoped to revive stagnant U.S.-backed peace talks.
President Obama: "We have to find ways to change the status quo so that both Israeli citizens are safe in their own homes and schoolchildren in their schools from the possibility of rocket fire, but also that we don’t have the tragedy of Palestinian children being killed, as well. And so, we’ll discuss extensively both the situation of rebuilding Gaza, but also how can we find a more sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians."
Netanyahu’s visit comes just as Israel moved ahead with the building of new settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the takeover of around 25 Palestinian homes in the neighborhood of Silwan. Obama did not issue any public criticism but reportedly raised the issue with Netanyahu in private. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest called Israel’s latest actions "very troubling."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest: "The United States is deeply concerned by reports that the Israeli government has moved forward with the planning process in the sensitive area — or in a sensitive area of East Jerusalem. This step is contrary to Israel’s stated goal of negotiating a permanent status agreement with the Palestinians, and it would send a very troubling message if they were to proceed with tenders or construction in that area."
In response to the White House, Netanyahu said: "It is better to know the material before deciding to take such a stance." The news comes as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has confirmed he has submitted a proposal asking the U.N. Security Council to set a deadline of November 2016 for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied West Bank.
Climate Change Displaces 35,000 Walruses in Alaska
An estimated 35,000 walruses have gathered on a beach in northwest Alaska as their natural resting grounds vanish due to climate change. Walruses usually gather to rest on sea ice offshore. But as Earth warms, they have begun appearing on beaches in recent years. The discovery of 35,000 walruses marks the largest number ever recorded on land. The Federal Aviation Authority has re-routed flights to avoid scaring the walruses amidst fears of a massive and deadly stampede.
Los Angeles City Council Approves Minimum Wage for Hotel Workers
The Los Angeles City Council has given final approval to a minimum wage increase for workers at the city’s large hotels. The bill would increase pay to $15.37 an hour. Hotel industry trade groups vocally opposed the bill and are preparing a legal challenge if Mayor Eric Garcetti signs it into law.
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"A Force More Powerful in Jefferson County, Colo." by Amy Goodman“Don’t make history a mystery” read one of the signs at a rally in Jefferson County, Colo. High-school students in this suburban district, referred to locally as “JeffCo,” have been walking out of class en masse this past week, protesting the planned censorship of the district’s Advanced Placement (AP) United States history curriculum by the local school board. The board proposed a committee that would review the course, and others, adding material to “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free-market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights,” as well as eliminating anything the board thought could “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.” The student walkout coincided with several days of “sick-outs” by teachers. Ironically, the school board’s attempts to stifle teaching about the history of protest in the United States has provoked a growing protest movement.
School boards have long been an electoral target of the right wing in the U.S. In JeffCo, the current conservative majority won a narrow victory in November 2013, an off-year election with low voter turnout. “About 33 percent of the total population that could vote voted. Elections matter, and especially school-board elections,” John Ford said on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. He’s a social-studies teacher at Moore Middle School and the president of the Jefferson County Education Association, representing more than 5,000 teachers, librarians, counselors and other employees of the district.
The power of school boards is often underestimated. “I’ve been paying attention to the school board for the past year, and I have been increasingly concerned about what’s been going on,” Ashlyn Maher told me. She is a senior at Chatfield High School who helped organize the student walkouts. Civil disobedience has a long and storied role in U.S. history. The Declaration of Independence itself, so cherished by conservatives and progressives alike, instructs “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ... That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” Maher says that disobedience is “the foundation of our country. I took AP U.S. history myself, and all I was presented with were the facts. And then I made the opinions based on those facts. I was never told what to think.”
The teachers also have been battling the board majority since it took power. “We’ve had a long history of collaboration with the school board and the superintendent. And that’s all coming to an end,” Ford said.
A national, right-wing political group, Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, celebrated the conservative victory in the JeffCo school-board elections. Dustin Zvonek, the Colorado state director for the group, wrote last April that the election marked “an exciting and hopeful moment for the county and school district.” Exhorting the three-member majority “to strike while the iron is hot,” Zvonek may not be the best adviser, though. “Board members can and should begin exploring and debating such options with little fear of alienating the public at large,” he wrote.
Well, the public is largely alienated. High-school students continue to organize, and were just recently joined by local middle-school students, who also walked out. Local college and university professors have formed a solidarity group. On Wednesday, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the American Civil Liberties Union and eight other national groups sent a letter to the school board condemning the proposed curriculum review: “It would be nearly impossible to teach U.S. history without reference to ‘civil disorder,’ which is appropriately discussed in connection with the American Revolution, the labor movement, civil rights and gay rights activism, U.S. entry into World War I, voting rights protests, public demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, opposition to abortion, government surveillance, and countless other significant events in U.S. history. Telling schools that they cannot use materials that ‘encourage or condone civil disorder’ in addressing these and other historical events is tantamount to telling them to abandon the teaching of history.”
It’s not only advocacy groups weighing in. The College Board, which runs the both the SAT college exams and the Advanced Placement program, issued a statement supporting the students’ protests, adding, “If a school or district censors essential concepts from an Advanced Placement course, that course can no longer bear the ‘AP’ designation.”
Ashlyn Maher, undeterred by a Fox News Channel anchor who labeled the student protesters “pawns” and “punks,” reflected before heading off to school: “This issue does not stop affecting me when I graduate. I have a little brother and a little sister who will grow up in the JeffCo community, and I want them to have the best education possible.”
And an education is certainly what the new school-board majority has given the community. The students are getting—and giving—a first-class lesson in the power of protest and civil disobedience.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2014 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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