Follow
James Bovard, The American Conservative, October 07 2019:… Federal law prohibited taking money from or advocating on behalf of any designated terrorist group. Yet a 2011 Huffington Post headline reported, “Former U.S. Officials Make Millions Advocating For Terrorist Organization.” That didn’t seem to matter much to former FBI boss Louis Freeh, former CIA boss Porter Goss, co-chair of the 9/11 Commission Lee Hamilton, former attorney general Michael B. Mukasey, and former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge, who were pocketing $30,000 or more for brief speeches to pro-MEK events. Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Camp Ashraf 3 Albania . MEK , ISIS , Al Qaeda Joint Terrorist Training Camp
Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy?
Idiocy or Perfidy? How We Get Hooked on Foreign Democracy Crusades
Ted Carpenter’s new book raises important questions about who is wagging who.
For the past 20 years, U.S. foreign policy has been marked by constant lies and unjustified killings, from the 1999 bombing of Serbia and the 2003 invasion of Iraq to Libyan regime change in 2011 and our role in the bloody Syrian war since 2012. What explains this unbroken record of deadly folly?
According to Ted Carpenter, author of the new book Gullible Superpower, Washington policymakers have been deceived by foreign con men who claim to adore freedom and democracy. Carpenter has a far more sagacious foreign policy record over the past 30 years than either the White House or the Washington Post editorial page. His latest work captures, in his own words, “the lengthy, depressing record of U.S. support for bogus freedom fighters and democratic activists.”
Gullible Superpower walks readers through almost 40 years of pro-democracy shams. From Jonas Savimbi’s ludicrous authoritarian pro-freedom movement in Angola to the murderous Kosovo Liberation Army to the boundless rascality of Ahmed Chalabi, Carpenter recounts how the U.S. government bankrolled and supported one fraud after another. He also details how it intervened in Ukraine’s internal affairs, choosing to back the side with neo-Nazi elements in order to topple an elected pro-Russian government. (At least it worked out well for Joe Biden’s son.)
Gullible Superpower swats at some of the biggest connivers of our times. For example, Senator Joe Lieberman claimed that “fighting for the Kosovo Liberation Army is fighting for human rights and American values.” Lieberman did not rescind his endorsement after the former KLA leaders were linked to a scandal involving body snatching and selling human organs. John McCain was canonized as a saint after he died last year, despite or perhaps because of his endless mania for bombing foreign nations. In 2013, Mother Jones tabulated 13 different countries that McCain wanted to bomb, invade, or destabilize.
Carpenter’s book is a blunt call for realism in U.S. foreign policy. But the deck is increasingly stacked against clear assessments of American interests abroad in part because of deluges of foreign funding for Washington advocacy. Oppressive regimes are buying better reputations as think tanks become “a muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington,” the New York Times reported in 2014. The Brookings Institution received a windfall from the government of Qatar to set up a research institute that would devote itself to “reflecting the bright image of Qatar in the international media, especially the American ones”—at least according to the Qatari government. The Atlantic Council, another prominent D.C. think tank, has pocketed cash from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and NATO. Facebook hired the Atlantic Council to help them decide which “extremist” or “hate” speech it should suppress (though it has thus far eschewed attaching an “Arab Dictator-Approved Censorship” label to such deletions).
Considering the perennial foreign debacles, the question arises: are U.S. policymakers fools, liars, or both? Carpenter’s tone in this book and in his articles over the decades has always been civil. Politeness is a virtue when dealing with reasonable people. However, politeness is only a mixed blessing when chronicling the perfidy of scoundrels.
MEK Terrorists in Albania Complicating Edi Rama’s EU Accession Talks
Gullible Superpowers has an excellent chapter on the Iranian group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK). That organization sprang up in the 1960s and proceeded to kill Americans in the 1970s and large numbers of Iranians in subsequent decades. NBC News reported in early 2012 that MEK had carried out killings of Iranian nuclear scientists and that it was “financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service.”
That was the same period during which a stampede of Washington hustlers took huge payoffs to publicly champion de-listing the MEK as a terrorist organization. As Trita Parsi noted in the New York Review of Books, MEK “rented office space in Washington, held fundraisers with lawmakers, or offered US officials speaking fees to appear at their gatherings. But the MEK did this openly for years, despite being on the US government’s terrorist list.”
Federal law prohibited taking money from or advocating on behalf of any designated terrorist group. Yet a 2011 Huffington Post headline reported, “Former U.S. Officials Make Millions Advocating For Terrorist Organization.” That didn’t seem to matter much to former FBI boss Louis Freeh, former CIA boss Porter Goss, co-chair of the 9/11 Commission Lee Hamilton, former attorney general Michael B. Mukasey, and former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge, who were pocketing $30,000 or more for brief speeches to pro-MEK events.
Glenn Greenwald rightly scoffed that the advocacy “reveals the impunity with which political elites commit the most egregious crimes, as well as the special privileges to which they explicitly believe they—and they alone—are entitled.”
The Obama administration was swayed to cancel the MEK’s terrorist designation in 2012 and Trump administration officials are babbling about MEK’s possible role in ruling Iran after the current government is toppled. MEK apologists continue to portray the group as idealistic freedom fighters devoted to democracy. A simple online search shows that the Farsi translation of the group’s name is “holy warriors of the people.” But as long as the MEK serves the purposes of the Saudi and Israeli governments and their American string-pullers, there will be plenty of Washingtonians who pretend that the Iranian people do not loathe MEK.
MEK Killed Americans – U.S. Secretary of State Should Not Meet Them
Foreign policy experts have become Washington’s preeminent con men. This is a playing field that will likely always be slanted against opponents of foolhardy interventions like Ted Carpenter. Vigorous criticism of foreign policy follies will always be needed. But don’t forget the ridicule.
James Bovard is the author of Lost Rights, Attention Deficit Democracy, and Public Policy Hooligan. He is also a USA Today columnist. Follow him on Twitter @JimBovard.
Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy?
***
Michael Mukasey MEK Terrorist Cult Official Lobbyist
Wondering at those Americans who stand under the flag of Mojahedin Khalq (MKO, MEK, NCRI, Rajavi cult) only to LOBBY for the murderers of their servicemen
US-Backed MEK In Albania Akin To Dumping Toxic Waste Without A Decontamination Plan
Also read:
Amil Imani, PipeLineNews, August 15 2019:… OIAC or MEK is an Islamist-Marxist cultish group headed by Maryam Rajavi, the wife of the deceased co-founder of MEK, Massoud Rajavi. During the 1970’s they rebelled against the Shah and were involved in bombing and shooting American and Iranian targets . The MEK or (OIAC) executed U.S. Army Lt. Col. Lewis Hawkins in 1973 as… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Nejat Society, August 13 2019:… This year’s so-called “grand gathering” of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi) was held in Albania, instead of holding it near the group’s headquarters in Paris. The group held a five day ceremony to inaugurate its lavish headquarters in a rural region in Albania. The newly built camp is… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Iranian Oral History, August 13 2019:… According to the Iranian Oral History website, the 304th ‘Night of Memorials of Holy Defense’ was held on Thursday evening, July 25, 2019 at the Sureh Hall of the Hozeh Honari. In this meeting, Bakhshali Alizadeh, Ibrahim Khodabandeh and Mohammad Mosaheb, related some of their memories of Mujahidin Khalq Organization and Mersad… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Fars News, August 12 2019:… An ex-member of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as the MEK, PMOI and NCRI) said the terrorist group moves in line with the White House policies and is now seeking to empty the Iranian society from hope. Khodabandeh, a former high-ranking MKO element, made the revelations in an interview with FNA on Saturday.… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Iran Interlink, August 09 2019:… John Bolton has become like Brexit for the British – impossible to ignore. Another article featuring him is published by the Daily Beast. Written by Lachlan Markay and Adam Rawnsley, this focuses on the response of American intelligence officials to a social media disinformation “that attempted to falsely implicate the White House National Security Adviser… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Balkans Post, August 10, 2019:… If you ask in private any Albanian politicians – including those who attend the MEK meetings with Maryam Rajavi – as to how much democratic MEK is, they will laugh. The most enthusiastic supporters of the MEK will tell you in private “we know that they are terrorists. But America has told us to support… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Bakhshali Alizadeh, Iranian Oral History, August 09 2019:… In this meeting, Bakhshali Alizadeh, Ibrahim Khodabandeh and Mohammad Mosaheb, related some of their memories of Mujahidin Khalq Organization and Mersad Operation. Bakhshali Alizadeh was the first narrator. ‘I was captured by the Ba’athist forces in the Musian zone at the front of the Iraq war against Iran in the March of… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Lachlan Markay, Daily Beast, August 09 2019:… “John Bolton,” the “exclusive” article added, “is a fervent supporter of MKO terror group,” using one of several acronyms for the Mujahideen-e-Khalq organization, or MEK. Bolton has earned tens of thousands of dollars in speaking fees for appearances at MEK conferences. The MEK participated in the 1979 revolution which installed Iran’s theocratic government,… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Zeng Ziyi, CGTN, August 07 2019:… Over the years, the self-described “pro-American” John Bolton has fostered a close relationship with the MEK, which the U.S. designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization partially for assassinating six American citizens during the Iranian Revolution. For the uber-hawk, almost any means is justified for waging war. John Bolton MEK Desperate Attempt to Awaken the U.S.… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Catherine Shakdam, Citizen truth, August 03 2019:… In an interview for Al Bawaba in 2018 Masoud Khodabandeh, a former high-ranking MKO/MEK official, shed light on Saudi Arabia’s financial support for the group, explaining how Riyadh regime has funneled, gold bars, cash and other valuables worth hundreds of millions of dollars through various third parties. Among other revelations, Khodabandeh described how after the… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Iran Front Page, August 01 2019:… Rouhani has denounced the United States’ imposition of sanctions on Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, saying the move ran counter to Washington’s claim it is ready for unconditional talks. On the other hand, it seems that a visit by Maryam Rajavi, leader of the MKO terrorist group, and the launch of the recent… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
Eli Lake, Bloomberg, August 01 2019:… Milani recommends for example that Trump make clear that the relationship between his personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, and the People’s Mujahedin, or the MEK, does not reflect U.S. government policy. This exiled opposition was once designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department and is largely reviled by Iranians because it sided… Lobbying for MEK Terrorists . Idiocy or Perfidy
