Room for a View
NEWS & VIEWS Short Takes, Updates & Calls to Action

Behind the Airline Industry Bailout

Less than two weeks after the attacks of September 11, Congress rushed through a $15 billion bailout package for the airline industry. While no one can doubt the logic behind the compensation to the airline industry for the losses suffered since September 11, a closer look at the bailout raises some interesting questions. How did the airlines get to the front of the bailout line? And how did they get compensated for more than the losses they suffered for the three days our country’s airports were closed?

The army of lobbyists the airline industry employs on Capitol Hill might know the answer. According to a recent report by Public Citizen, current or recent lobbyists for the airline industry include: Linda Hall Daschle (wife of Senate majority leader Tom Daschle); Haley Barbour (former Republican Committee chair), Nick Calio (President Bush’s current congressional liaison) and former senators Bob Packwood and Dale Bumpers. These Washington insiders, combined with the $65 million in campaign contributions from the industry over the last 11 years, might explain some of the haste with which Congress acted.

Senator Peter Fitzgerald, an Illinois Republican, was the only senator to oppose the airline bailout. “Other industries don’t have the raw political clout the airlines have,” Sen. Fitzgerald told a group of travel and tourism executives gathered in Washington in early October. “The payouts to the airline industry were grossly excessive. The only people to get bailed out were the shareholders. The one million airline employees were left twisting in the wind.”

The airline industry is still reeling from Americans’ skittishness about flying and the increasing desire to stay home. Tens of thousands of airline employees have been laid off and another 100,000 jobs are imperiled. Yet nothing has been done with the $15 billion bailout to address worker needs, while airline shareholders are assured that their investments are safe thanks to an infusion of federal cash.

Other critics have noted that there was also no way of telling how much of the $15 billion would go to prop up faltering airlines like Northwest, America West and US Airways which were on the brink of bankruptcy before September 11.
It also should be noted that Amtrak, the federally subsidized passenger rail carrier, highly criticized by certain members of Congress as an example of “creeping socialism,” receives $540 million dollars a year, an annual stipend representing one-thirtieth of the airline industry bailout.

—Brian K. Mahoney

Backdating the War

The US-led war on Afghan-istan, which now appears to be
aimed at toppling the Taliban and installing a friend-lier government, is a response to the terrorist attacks that began Sep-tember 11. Right?

Maybe. But according to sources including the BBC, Jane’s Security and Indiareacts.com, the US had warned other countries as early as July that it would attack Afghanistan no later than October of this year, and had built military alliances toward that goal.
According to a BBC report, “Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.” The message from the US, delivered at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan that took place in Berlin, was that, “unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly, America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.

“The wider objective, according to Mr. Naik, would be to topple the Taliban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place—possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah.” Other details of the plan: the US would launch its offensive from bases in Tajikistan; Uzbekistan would participate; and 17,000 Russian troops would be on standby.

The military action was to “take place... by the middle of October at the latest.”
Indiareacts.com reported, in an article dated June 26, that “India and Iran will ‘facilitate’ US and Russian plans for ‘limited military action’ against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don’t bend Afghanistan’s fundamentalist regime.” And, as early as March 15, Jane’s had reported that “India is believed to have joined Russia, the USA and Iran in a concerted front against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime,” aiding the Northern Alliance in its attempt to remove the Taliban from power.

The reasons? Chechnya, terrorism and oil. According to Indiareacts.com, “Russia says it has evidence that the Taliban aims to create “liberated zones” all across Central Asia and Russia and links its Chechnya problem to the rise of Taliban fundamentalism. The US is directly hit by the anti-US thrust of Islamic groups who use Afghanistan as their base for terrorism and is demanding extradition of Osama Bin Laden to face trial in the embassy bombing case... [and] Central Asian countries Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are threatened by the Taliban that is aiming to control their vast oil, gas and other resources by bringing Islamic fundamentalists into power.”

Read the full stories at the following Internet addresses:
www.news.bbc.co.uk • www.indiareacts.com • www.janes.com

—Todd Paul

US: Choose Allies Carefully

This article first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor on September 25, 2001 and is reproduced with permission. © 2001 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. Online at www.csmonitor.com.

In the discussion about Osama bin Laden, a key point is often omitted: that Mr. bin Laden began his career as a US ally. Indeed, he has followed in the tradition of Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein—unsavory leaders who began as America’s “friends”, and later became archenemies.

Bin Laden’s military career began with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Bin Laden, a Saudi exile, moved to the Afghan frontier to join the guerrillas, or mujahideen. During this time, the US launched a vast effort to support the guerrillas. This effort, carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency in cooperation with Pakistani intelligence, was the largest operation in CIA history, involving billions of dollars of weapons, training, and other support.
The mujahideen had great publicity; after all, they were fighting communism. But their image concealed an exceptional brutality by key leaders. Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, a mujahideen leader and recipient of US aid, began his political career as a student who threw acid in the faces of women who did not wear veils. Several guerrilla leaders participated in the international heroin trade, and Afghanistan became a major source of heroin entering the United States.

The US continued aiding the mujahideen, even though the Reagan administration had declared war on drugs. US officials believed that winning the cold war outweighed concerns about human rights and narcotics.

One of our Afghan allies was Bin Laden. Accounts differ on whether Bin Laden had direct ties to the Central Intelligence Agency.

But there is little doubt that many men in Bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist organization received CIA arms, training, or other support, either directly or through the CIA’s intermediary in Pakistan. al-Qaida has US-supplied weapons, including Stinger missiles. At least one al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan—which was targeted during the 1998 US cruise missile attack—was constructed with CIA assistance.

Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which supports Bin Laden, is the successor to the mujahideen. From 1994 to 1996, the US encouraged Pakistani aid to the Taliban, which seemed the best bet for protecting Western interests in the region. In backing the mujahideen, US officials knew the risks.

The CIA was well aware that the mujahideen were involved in drug trafficking; they ignored it, and discouraged efforts to investigate the “Afghan connection” in the world heroin trade. The Islamic extremism that prevailed among mujahideen leaders also was well known.

The grim story of US involvement in Afghanistan serves as a cautionary note: US interventions can and often do go awry. Let us hope that in responding to September 11, the Bush administration will choose its allies more carefully than previous administrations did—and will avoid supporting future terrorists.

—David N. Gibbs

David N. Gibbs is associate professor of political science at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

The Wages of the Cold War . Edited by Lorna Tychostup

The following is a translation of a 1998 interview of then-National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, with the French political and cultural weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. Escaping notice in the English-speaking world, this interview surfaced in late October during an NPR interview with Professor David Gibbs, who translated it for publication in the academic journal International Politics.

While much thinking about US covert activity is based on people’s illusory knowledge, memories from some college political science classes, or the last book (both fiction or nonfiction) they might have read, this interview bespeaks a certainty of US covert action and political under-handedness. It also depicts a certain shortsightedness and blind bravado driving the people in power of our country, not to mention stupidity.

An uncomfortable forewarning can be heard in Brzezinski’s words. If the Soviet Union could not sustain a war in Afghanistan, and if their involvement so weakened their political system, why should the US be so confident that the same won’t happen to its ambitions in Afghanistan?

—Lorna Tychostup

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the mujahideen in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention [emphasis added].

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked for a way to provoke it?

B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would [emphasis added].

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan, nobody believed them. However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?

 B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war” [emphasis added]. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: “Some agitated Moslems”? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today…

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West has a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid: There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner, without demagoguery or emotionalism. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among fundamentalist Saudi Arabia, moderate Morocco, militarist Pakistan, pro-Western Egypt or secularist Central Asia? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries…

The News You Aren’t Getting

Many important news stories have been pushed off the front page in the wake of September 11. One is the question of what exactly happened in the most recent presidential election. In their patriotic rush to hail the chief, our watchdogs of democracy seem to have forgotten that G.W. Bush might not, in fact, be the chief.

But this is more a sin of suppression than of forgetfulness.
Now it appears there is evidence that Al Gore actually won the Florida vote by a wide margin-evidence that is being suppressed by the very media conglomerates that uncovered it.
Eight major media corporations—the New York Times, the Washington Post, Dow Jones and Company, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, the Tribune Company (the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, among others), the Palm Beach Post, the St. Petersburg Times and CNN (which later dropped out)—formed a commission early this year to count the more than 170,000 Florida votes rejected as “unreadable” in November, at a cost of over $1 million. Results of the count were complete at the end of August.

But they are not being released.

“Our belief is that the priorities of the country have changed, and our priorities have changed,” said Steven Goldstein, vice-president of corporate communications at Dow Jones.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for the New York Times, explained it this way: “The consortium agreed that because of the war, because of our lack of resources, we were postponing the vote-count investigation. But this is not final. The intention is to go forward.”

But David Podvin, an investigative journalist who runs the Web site “Make Them Accountable,” has another explanation. Podvin, in a series of four articles, lays out evidence that the media consortium squelched the recount results because they showed a clear, wide margin of victory for Gore.
Consortium members, Podvin says, were “shocked” to find that, in a blind count by an impartial third party, Gore won at least two-thirds of the disputed ballots. The terrorist attacks and subsequent war, Podvin argues, merely presented a convenient excuse for hiding results the consortium had not predicted and wished to cover up.

Podvin quotes a former media executive as saying the consortium “is deliberately hiding the results of its recount because Gore was the indisputable winner.” He also claims that a New York Times journalist involved in the recount project said the Gore victory margin was big enough to create “major trouble for the Bush presidency if this ever gets out.” Why the cover-up? Prior to September 11, Podvin says, “The de facto majority shareholders in the publicly traded New York Times Company reportedly intervened on the side of quashing the recount results and convinced the other participants to shelve the story....most important decisions at the Times are made by the influential money center banks that exercise actual voting control of a majority of stock. These banks are extremely pro-Bush. In addition to their control of the Times, they have substantial financial clout with the Washington Post Company, Dow Jones and Company, and the Tribune Company. As a result, the banks exert tremendous influence on a majority of the consortium.”

The consortium also reportedly received intense pressure from members of the Bush inner circle.

To read Podvin’s articles, visit his Web site at www.makethemaccountable.com.

—Todd Paul

Department of Peace . Edited by Lorna Tychostup

A higher evolutionary thought appeared in our nation’s capital on July 11, 2001. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced legislation (HR 2459) in the US House of Representatives to create a Department of Peace—a cabinet-level agency dedicated to peacemaking and the study of conditions conducive to both domestic and international peace. A Secretary of Peace would be appointed by the President, and Americans would celebrate an annual Peace Day.

According to Kucinich’s bill, over 100,000,000 people died in wars during the 20th century, and violence seems to have become an accepted worldwide theme in these early years of the 21st century, “encompassing personal, group, national, and international conflict, extending to the production of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction which have been developed for use on land, air, sea, and in space.”

Acting on behalf of our founding fathers’ recognition of “peace as one of the highest duties of the new organization of free and independent States” and calling on the “sacred duty of the people of the United States...to think anew to develop institutions that permit the unfolding of the highest moral principles in this Nation and around the world,” HR 2459 says we can no longer accept violence as simply reflective of the human condition.

With already 38 congressional co-sponsors (all of them Democrats), the bill calls for a higher level of consciousness while challenging the accepted same-old-same-old approaches to conflict. “The time has come to review age-old challenges with new thinking wherein we can conceive of peace as not simply being the absence of violence, but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of the human awareness, of respect, trust, and integrity; wherein we all may tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness and conditions which impel or compel violence at a personal, group, or national level toward developing a new understanding of, and a commitment to, compassion and love, in order to create a `shining city on a hill,’ the light of which is the light of nations.”

The full text of HR 2459 is posted at: www.nukewatch.org/Congresswatch/housebills/HR2459.html. To contact your representative to support HR 2459, call the national Capitol switchboard at (202) 225-3121. Or e-mail your representative from www.house.gov/writerep. Although the Senate version of HR 2459 has not yet been introduced, you can also contact your senators (www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm) and urge them to become familiar with and support this legislation.

—Lorna Tychostup