Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, the US military's account of activities during the Vietnam War, to The New York Times. The release awakened the American people to how much they had been deceived by their own government about the war.
'On Wed., Dec. 6, Daniel Ellsberg was in Stockholm to receive the
Right Livelihood Award (known as the "alternative Nobel Prize").
He took the occasion to publish, in Swedish, an article in Sweden's
largest-circulation and most prestigious daily, Dagens Nyheter. --
A translation of Ellsberg's article is posted below. -- In it, he
warned that the Bush administration is making plans to strike Iran
with nuclear weapons, and called on those with access to documents
demonstrating this to make them public. -- Ellsberg also called on
NATO countries to threaten to withdraw from the alliance in the event
of such an attack, either by the U.S. or by Israel. -- Thanks to
Aaron Dennis for his translation of this important article. -- It
is surprising that such an important article has not been made
available in English, but as far as we can determine this is the
first English translation that has appeared....
SWEDEN MUST BREAK WITH U.S. SHOULD BUSH BOMB IRAN.
By Daniel Ellsberg.
** Daniel Ellsberg solicits new Pentagon papers concerning the U.S.’s
war plans in the Middle East. The American nuclear agenda is
currently among the most salient concerns regarding the Bush
administration's planning details for a possible assault on Iran.
Should it be so, Bush, under the U.N., will be as guilty as a mafia
don of the worst conceivable crime against humanity. This piece is by
former Pentagon staffer Daniel Ellsberg, who in the early 1970s was
prosecuted for leaking the secret so-called Pentagon Papers on the
Vietnam War. Today it was announced he will receive the Right
Livelihood Award -- the alternative Nobel Prize. **
It has never been true that nuclear war is something “unthinkable.”
So wrote the historian E. P. Thompson a quarter century ago. And he
continued: "Thoughts about nuclear war have been thought, and those
thoughts have been made a reality."
Thompson was referring at that time to the obliteration of
Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s populations in August 1945. What he failed
to say is that the American officials who thought of realizing that
first nuclear weapon thought their actions were an incomparable
success: a decisive key to the victory over Japan that spared many
lives. The thinking of such novel thoughts is now also an aim that
was realized.
President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney have been
thinking such thoughts for at least half a year, and they have
secretly ordered another plan for a possible nuclear assault, against
Iran.
Over a year ago it was reported by a former high-ranking CIA
official, Philip Giraldi, in the magazine The American Conservative,
that Vice President Cheney’s staff had prepared plans for "a large-
scale air assault against Iran employing both conventional bombs and
tactical nuclear weapons." Giraldi also admitted that "several senior
Air Force officers" involved in the planning had become appalled at
the implications of what they were doing -- that the objective for
Iran was an unprovoked nuclear attack -- but that none were prepared
to jeopardize their careers by airing objections.
In several articles this year, Seymour Hersh and other writers
anonymously cited high-level authorities as disclosing information on
detailed military planning for the use of nuclear weapons against
underground Iranian installations, which several American military
officials themselves oppose and for this sake are considering
resigning. Hersh noted that the Joint Chiefs’ opposition to the
project got the White House to shelve “the nuclear weapon
alternative” -- for the moment. But the detailed military planning
continues -- not merely hypothetical war scenarios, but constantly
updated offensive plans for powerful forces deployable on short notice.
According to these reports, many high-ranking officers and officials
are convinced that Bush and Cheney intend to try to effect regime
change in Iran by an air attack and that they maintain their
determination despite the general public's frustration over their
previous and still unfinished war adventure in Iraq -- which
contributed to recent democratic victories in House and Senate
elections.
Assuming that Hersh’s so-far anonymous sources mean what they say --
what one of them called “a juggernaut that must be stopped” -- to me
this means that the day has come for one or more of these sources go
beyond what they have done so far. In other words: they should
publicly disclose the classified war plans before the war becomes a
reality, and support this with unequivocal evidence from inside the
power apparatus. The same applies, I believe, to European diplomats
and military officers with knowledge about such war plans via their
contacts within the American power structure.
I hope that one or more such persons will make the sober decision --
fully aware that such might entail sacrificing one’s career and
risking imprisonment -- to make public documents unambiguously
disclosing official but classified cost-benefit calculations of the
considered war plans, or similar signs indicating the White House's
true intentions. What needs to be disclosed is a comprehensive
account of the concealed debate within the power apparatus, critiques
as well as arguments and claims of the advocates of aggressive
warfare and the “nuclear alternative” -- in other words, a kind of
Pentagon Papers of the Middle East.
But the difference from the 7,000 secret documents on the Vietnam war
that I made public in 1971, disclosing the intense secret debates
*during* the American war in the region, also underscores the need to
do so for Iran now, lest the 61-year moratorium on nuclear war should
end in violence -- and so that democracy and world opinion are
afforded a chance to avert both these catastrophes.
It also implies great personal risk. In the midst of my case I came
to terms with the idea of a federal jury sentencing me to 115 years
in prison. But that risk is less than the daily risks to which more
than 140,000 American soldiers, and others still to join them, are
exposed in Iraq, and those that the common Iraqi civilian must
constantly endure. For all countries there is an urgent need that
military and civilian officials display a comparable civic courage
vis-à-vis the possibility, and the necessity, of guarding against an
unjust and hopeless war.
Yet it is not only men and women within the power apparatus,
Americans or otherwise, who bear the responsibility of reacting
against the Bush administration’s politics. Last year, entirely apart
from his classified plans of attack, President Bush and Vice
President Cheney at the last hour availed themselves of American
nuclear weapons in a way lacking precedent and entirely in the open.
The widely held belief that “no nuclear weapons have been used since
Nagasaki” is a misunderstanding. Time after time, most often without
Americans' -- but certainly with the enemy's -- knowledge, America
has employed nuclear weapons in the same way one employs a pistol
when pointing it at someone's head in a direct confrontation.
American weapons are being used in precisely this way at this moment,
before the rest of the world's eyes and ears. Bush, Cheney, and, yes,
even their legislature do exactly this when they assert that
“military initiatives,” including nuclear weapons, constitute
alternatives that cannot be ruled out in the event that Iran refuses
to agree the U.S.’s and other nuclear powers’ demands for
requirements regarding its nuclear energy program and suspected
nuclear weapons aspirations.
It is disturbing that the U.S. Congress, the mass media, and the
general public, like the greater part of the outside world, have
found themselves issuing such threats against Iran, instead of
directing sharp opposition towards the present attitude that an
American president, or Congress, or for that matter NATO or the EU,
should under any circumstances have the right to a “nuclear assault.”
Through its silence, the outside world is acquiescing in just such
imminent, illegitimate threats.
It is almost precisely twenty-five years since the U.N. General
Assembly in plenary meeting adopted, by a strong majority, Resolution
36/100, a Declaration on the Prevention of Nuclear Catastrophe (Dec.
9, 1981). It explained that "Any doctrines allowing the first use of
nuclear weapons . . . are incompatible with human moral standards and
the lofty ideals of the United Nations. . . . States and statemen
that resort first to the use of nuclear weapons will be committing
the gravest crime against humanity."
The issue is not just that a majority of the world's nations (82
voted for the resolution, 49 against it, in order to not displease
the U.S.) made this sober assessment in light of the ongoing Cold
War, but that they acted with so evident a sensibility -- for the
sake of greater human interest -- and the same prudence counts
equally much today. As the vote then went against the position of the
United States and eighteen other States, including a majority of NATO
countries, as dangerously ill-advised, it is now urgent that they
waste no time in correcting their mistakes and coming to accept a
broader global morality and sense of goodwill.
The risk of an air strike and possible nuclear attack against Iran
during the Bush Administration’s two remaining years is a source of
dread outside the USA as well. Thus since October many NATO member
countries have been engaged in extensive military sea and air
maneuvers in order to exercise an embargo again Iran and in
preparation for Iranian retaliation against these American-imposed
embargoes or sanctions.
It is therefore high time to discuss these important questions in
Europe: Whether, with respect to the general public and the
politicians in all these countries, to avert next year's or the
following year’s confrontation with definitive proof in the form of
plans of an American air attack against Iran? And above all, how to
react to an attack using American or Israeli nuclear weapons against
Iranian underground installments?
Certainly, these countries should not permit their airspace or bases
to be used in collaboration with this kind of American aggression.
The general public in these countries should also require that their
elected politicians immediately make clear this position to the U.S.
government.
But this alone will not suffice to deter or react forcefully enough
against a possible nuclear weapons attack by the U.S., or by Israel
with the U.S.'s consent. Given such a war plan, every member state
should do nothing less than promise to withdraw from NATO, as Sweden
has done, in protest -- otherwise, the U.S. would have effectively
invalidated NATO and all other defensive alliances.
What some believe to be unthinkable is that any European (or any
other) state should remain in a military alliance -- or, similarly,
have normal relations -- with a state so committed to the “gravest
crime against humanity." The people of Europe ought to press forward
in making this wholly apparent to Washington -- via petitions,
demonstrations, and organizations of voters and lobbies -- as well as
to their respective governments. That would be the most effective,
and perhaps ultimately the last practical method, of voicing outrage
against such a catastrophic path to war.'
Right Livelihood Award (known as the "alternative Nobel Prize").
He took the occasion to publish, in Swedish, an article in Sweden's
largest-circulation and most prestigious daily, Dagens Nyheter. --
A translation of Ellsberg's article is posted below. -- In it, he
warned that the Bush administration is making plans to strike Iran
with nuclear weapons, and called on those with access to documents
demonstrating this to make them public. -- Ellsberg also called on
NATO countries to threaten to withdraw from the alliance in the event
of such an attack, either by the U.S. or by Israel. -- Thanks to
Aaron Dennis for his translation of this important article. -- It
is surprising that such an important article has not been made
available in English, but as far as we can determine this is the
first English translation that has appeared....
SWEDEN MUST BREAK WITH U.S. SHOULD BUSH BOMB IRAN.
By Daniel Ellsberg.
** Daniel Ellsberg solicits new Pentagon papers concerning the U.S.’s
war plans in the Middle East. The American nuclear agenda is
currently among the most salient concerns regarding the Bush
administration's planning details for a possible assault on Iran.
Should it be so, Bush, under the U.N., will be as guilty as a mafia
don of the worst conceivable crime against humanity. This piece is by
former Pentagon staffer Daniel Ellsberg, who in the early 1970s was
prosecuted for leaking the secret so-called Pentagon Papers on the
Vietnam War. Today it was announced he will receive the Right
Livelihood Award -- the alternative Nobel Prize. **
It has never been true that nuclear war is something “unthinkable.”
So wrote the historian E. P. Thompson a quarter century ago. And he
continued: "Thoughts about nuclear war have been thought, and those
thoughts have been made a reality."
Thompson was referring at that time to the obliteration of
Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s populations in August 1945. What he failed
to say is that the American officials who thought of realizing that
first nuclear weapon thought their actions were an incomparable
success: a decisive key to the victory over Japan that spared many
lives. The thinking of such novel thoughts is now also an aim that
was realized.
President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney have been
thinking such thoughts for at least half a year, and they have
secretly ordered another plan for a possible nuclear assault, against
Iran.
Over a year ago it was reported by a former high-ranking CIA
official, Philip Giraldi, in the magazine The American Conservative,
that Vice President Cheney’s staff had prepared plans for "a large-
scale air assault against Iran employing both conventional bombs and
tactical nuclear weapons." Giraldi also admitted that "several senior
Air Force officers" involved in the planning had become appalled at
the implications of what they were doing -- that the objective for
Iran was an unprovoked nuclear attack -- but that none were prepared
to jeopardize their careers by airing objections.
In several articles this year, Seymour Hersh and other writers
anonymously cited high-level authorities as disclosing information on
detailed military planning for the use of nuclear weapons against
underground Iranian installations, which several American military
officials themselves oppose and for this sake are considering
resigning. Hersh noted that the Joint Chiefs’ opposition to the
project got the White House to shelve “the nuclear weapon
alternative” -- for the moment. But the detailed military planning
continues -- not merely hypothetical war scenarios, but constantly
updated offensive plans for powerful forces deployable on short notice.
According to these reports, many high-ranking officers and officials
are convinced that Bush and Cheney intend to try to effect regime
change in Iran by an air attack and that they maintain their
determination despite the general public's frustration over their
previous and still unfinished war adventure in Iraq -- which
contributed to recent democratic victories in House and Senate
elections.
Assuming that Hersh’s so-far anonymous sources mean what they say --
what one of them called “a juggernaut that must be stopped” -- to me
this means that the day has come for one or more of these sources go
beyond what they have done so far. In other words: they should
publicly disclose the classified war plans before the war becomes a
reality, and support this with unequivocal evidence from inside the
power apparatus. The same applies, I believe, to European diplomats
and military officers with knowledge about such war plans via their
contacts within the American power structure.
I hope that one or more such persons will make the sober decision --
fully aware that such might entail sacrificing one’s career and
risking imprisonment -- to make public documents unambiguously
disclosing official but classified cost-benefit calculations of the
considered war plans, or similar signs indicating the White House's
true intentions. What needs to be disclosed is a comprehensive
account of the concealed debate within the power apparatus, critiques
as well as arguments and claims of the advocates of aggressive
warfare and the “nuclear alternative” -- in other words, a kind of
Pentagon Papers of the Middle East.
But the difference from the 7,000 secret documents on the Vietnam war
that I made public in 1971, disclosing the intense secret debates
*during* the American war in the region, also underscores the need to
do so for Iran now, lest the 61-year moratorium on nuclear war should
end in violence -- and so that democracy and world opinion are
afforded a chance to avert both these catastrophes.
It also implies great personal risk. In the midst of my case I came
to terms with the idea of a federal jury sentencing me to 115 years
in prison. But that risk is less than the daily risks to which more
than 140,000 American soldiers, and others still to join them, are
exposed in Iraq, and those that the common Iraqi civilian must
constantly endure. For all countries there is an urgent need that
military and civilian officials display a comparable civic courage
vis-à-vis the possibility, and the necessity, of guarding against an
unjust and hopeless war.
Yet it is not only men and women within the power apparatus,
Americans or otherwise, who bear the responsibility of reacting
against the Bush administration’s politics. Last year, entirely apart
from his classified plans of attack, President Bush and Vice
President Cheney at the last hour availed themselves of American
nuclear weapons in a way lacking precedent and entirely in the open.
The widely held belief that “no nuclear weapons have been used since
Nagasaki” is a misunderstanding. Time after time, most often without
Americans' -- but certainly with the enemy's -- knowledge, America
has employed nuclear weapons in the same way one employs a pistol
when pointing it at someone's head in a direct confrontation.
American weapons are being used in precisely this way at this moment,
before the rest of the world's eyes and ears. Bush, Cheney, and, yes,
even their legislature do exactly this when they assert that
“military initiatives,” including nuclear weapons, constitute
alternatives that cannot be ruled out in the event that Iran refuses
to agree the U.S.’s and other nuclear powers’ demands for
requirements regarding its nuclear energy program and suspected
nuclear weapons aspirations.
It is disturbing that the U.S. Congress, the mass media, and the
general public, like the greater part of the outside world, have
found themselves issuing such threats against Iran, instead of
directing sharp opposition towards the present attitude that an
American president, or Congress, or for that matter NATO or the EU,
should under any circumstances have the right to a “nuclear assault.”
Through its silence, the outside world is acquiescing in just such
imminent, illegitimate threats.
It is almost precisely twenty-five years since the U.N. General
Assembly in plenary meeting adopted, by a strong majority, Resolution
36/100, a Declaration on the Prevention of Nuclear Catastrophe (Dec.
9, 1981). It explained that "Any doctrines allowing the first use of
nuclear weapons . . . are incompatible with human moral standards and
the lofty ideals of the United Nations. . . . States and statemen
that resort first to the use of nuclear weapons will be committing
the gravest crime against humanity."
The issue is not just that a majority of the world's nations (82
voted for the resolution, 49 against it, in order to not displease
the U.S.) made this sober assessment in light of the ongoing Cold
War, but that they acted with so evident a sensibility -- for the
sake of greater human interest -- and the same prudence counts
equally much today. As the vote then went against the position of the
United States and eighteen other States, including a majority of NATO
countries, as dangerously ill-advised, it is now urgent that they
waste no time in correcting their mistakes and coming to accept a
broader global morality and sense of goodwill.
The risk of an air strike and possible nuclear attack against Iran
during the Bush Administration’s two remaining years is a source of
dread outside the USA as well. Thus since October many NATO member
countries have been engaged in extensive military sea and air
maneuvers in order to exercise an embargo again Iran and in
preparation for Iranian retaliation against these American-imposed
embargoes or sanctions.
It is therefore high time to discuss these important questions in
Europe: Whether, with respect to the general public and the
politicians in all these countries, to avert next year's or the
following year’s confrontation with definitive proof in the form of
plans of an American air attack against Iran? And above all, how to
react to an attack using American or Israeli nuclear weapons against
Iranian underground installments?
Certainly, these countries should not permit their airspace or bases
to be used in collaboration with this kind of American aggression.
The general public in these countries should also require that their
elected politicians immediately make clear this position to the U.S.
government.
But this alone will not suffice to deter or react forcefully enough
against a possible nuclear weapons attack by the U.S., or by Israel
with the U.S.'s consent. Given such a war plan, every member state
should do nothing less than promise to withdraw from NATO, as Sweden
has done, in protest -- otherwise, the U.S. would have effectively
invalidated NATO and all other defensive alliances.
What some believe to be unthinkable is that any European (or any
other) state should remain in a military alliance -- or, similarly,
have normal relations -- with a state so committed to the “gravest
crime against humanity." The people of Europe ought to press forward
in making this wholly apparent to Washington -- via petitions,
demonstrations, and organizations of voters and lobbies -- as well as
to their respective governments. That would be the most effective,
and perhaps ultimately the last practical method, of voicing outrage
against such a catastrophic path to war.'
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