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Recent
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April
23, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
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Chris
Floyd
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by Example
Marjorie
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William
Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War
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Nina Simone: Freedom Singer
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Stew
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April
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Dr.
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April 26,
2003
Iraq War: Worse Lies Ahead
A
Policy of Christian and Jewish Fundamentalism
By SAUL LANDAU
"Wars are poor chisels for carving
out peaceful tomorrows."
-- Martin Luther King Jr.
Congratulations to George W. Bush, winner and
still champion after defeating a highly ranked heavyweight contender!
Indeed, the heroic U.S. victory in Iraq should engrave 43's name
in the history books. The Bush Doctrine means fighting "preemptive"
wars with disarmed nations that in the very distant future might
conceivably threaten U.S. interests. In Christian lore, the U.S.
invasion of Iraq will find its justification in the first three
words of the adage: "Do unto others..."
The biblical talk overflowed from the
White House, but military commanders, under orders from their
civilian bosses, dispatched troops to protect the oilfields while
other U.S. soldiers, also under orders, stood by and allowed
if not encouraged the destruction of the very sacred relics to
which the Bible refers. "Praise God and speak reverently
of His works, but watch carefully over your newly acquired treasure,"
the Bible should have said.
The gap between words and deeds should
make people laugh as we already hear threats of the next war.
Those who screamed loudest in Congress about supporting our troops
cut their benefits. No matter! The headlines and lead stories
barely reported that. Instead, we saw on TV the American flag
- flying high and being waved, of course. A good section of the
anxious U.S. public seems eager to accept as truth any nonsense
uttered from the White House and repeated in the media. Use God
early and often in each speech!
"Let the word go forth," George
Bush (43) has chosen war as his (or His) method of forging peace
-- and getting re-elected. Taking his orders from his own special
Christian God and his brilliant political manipulators, Bush
has set out on a divine mission of "liberation." The
billion people who adhere to the Islamic faith - do they share
a collective memory of the Crusades? - should feel rightfully
apprehensive.
With the bodies of Iraqis still unburied
and the once fabled ancient treasures either missing or destroyed,
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld threatens Syria. Nothing new! It's
the old "possessing weapons of mass destruction" and
"harboring terrorists" crap. Syrians should understand
that the President makes rapid decisions. He needs no evidence
to convince him of the righteous course. He acts with an air
of total confidence. Policy depends not on facts or analysis,
but on his trusted gut feeling about good and evil. He explained
to an Oklahoma City audience what distinguishes "us"
from "them."
Last August 29, he said: "See, we
love - we love freedom. That's what they didn't understand. They
hate things; we love things. They act out of hatred; we don't
seek revenge, we seek justice out of love."
To combat evil, to find justice and love,
the best of human nature, Bush of course relies on war - to obtain
peace. And God, for Bush, made us the most powerful military
force. So, as soon as U.S. forces were ready for action after
9/11, Bush ordered them to attack the mighty Taliban in Afghanistan.
When the bombs and missiles exploded, the Afghan losses made
the numbers lost in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon pale.
Explosives rained on the land ruled by the Saudi-backed fundamentalists
where wicked Al Qaeda had training camps.
Few of the cogniscenti saw Afghanistan
as the beginning of a new U.S. imperial order. Whatever Bush
said, they took it as logical "revenge." Surely, the
Republican dominated ruling elite would temper "the youngster's"
overseas behavior. But the young emperor, using terrorism as
his loose metaphor for all evil, continued to pursue war in the
evil region -- against Iraq. Bush (43) made it clear to other
governments that he cared not a Texas hoot what they think.
Wow, says Hans Blix, the former Chief
UN Weapons Inspector. On April 9, Blix told El Pais in Madrid
that "there is evidence that this war was planned well in
advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude to
the (weapons) inspections." Was Blix naive?
Perhaps he didn't take Bush's threats
seriously because they rang with that religious fundamentilist
timbre that seemed, well, inappropriate for modern, sophisticated
U.S. power. But Bush had made his intentions clear. On September
5, 2002, Bush spoke to Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya and others using
a Louisville, Kentucky audience as his medium: "I want to
send the signal to our enemy that you have aroused a compassionate
and decent and mighty nation, and we're going to hunt you down."
A war to bring about his deepest religious
desires! "You need to tell your loved ones, the little ones
in particular, that when they hear the President talking about
al Qaeda, Iraq and other places, I do so because I long for peace."
For Bush -- ignorant of Orwell's 1984
-- peace meant war. "When we need to be plenty tough, we're
going to be plenty tough. And they're [the terrorists] learning
another thing about America. When we need to be compassionate
and loving, we can be compassionate and loving, too."
Most pundits and politicians apparently
missed the sea change in world affairs that resulted from the
9/11 events. What many saw as a temporary shift - the revenge
cycle - has turned into a long-term alteration in the geo-political
order. 9/11 served as a U.S. equivalent of Hitler's 1933 Reichstrag
fire in which "fighting terrorism" became the pretext
for radical new forms of control at home and abroad.
Look at the changes. In place of law,
the UN, NATO and other treaties, Bush substituted naked U.S.
power, which he and his minions justify either with biblical
jibberish or neo-Metternichean jargon. (Prince Klemens von Metternich
led Austria on its imperial path during the first half of the
19th century. Metternich stressed that heads of state must make
policies including war to secure peace. He saw revolution and
rebellious or non-complaint behavior as diseases and tried to
suppress them everywhere.)
To wage war, Bush needed sufficient backing
at home - to Hell with the rest of the world. So, he used the
tried and true demonization method, insinuating that the devilish
Saddam had somehow directed the 9/11 attacks. In his speeches
and press conferences, he demonized a truly bad man without presenting
any evidence of actual links that Saddam had to terrorists or
weapons of mass destruction. These same accusatory speeches came
replete with multiple references to God and peace.
The spin worked. By March 19, 2003, when
U.S. forces invaded Iraq, a substantial percentage of the public
had become convinced that Saddam had not only "gassed his
own people" but had inflicted the 9/11 damage on "us."
Thus, Bush was right to invade.
Most of our allies - except for England,
Spain and Australia - had watched with an air of disbelief the
belligerent foreplay before the aggressive penetration. Bush
really wouldn't make war without Security Council backing! Then,
when he made war, they protested and wrung their hands.
They had expected the civilized Colin
Powell to stall the war machine. After all, important sectors
of the ruling elite, including Daddy Bush (41) and his consigliere
James Baker and Brent Scowcroft had evinced serious reservations
about going ahead without UN support.
But the supposedly prudent Secretary
of State demonstrated that his servility outweighed his caution.
When the crucial debate occurred in the United Nations Security
Council, the opponents of war had insufficient cojones to stand
dramatically against Bush's war of naked, unprovoked aggression.
Nor did the leading Democrats - there were a few exceptions like
Senator Robert Byrd (W-WV) and Congressman Dennis Kucinic (D-OH)
-- have the courage to warn him and the nefarious chicken hawks
that planned the attack that they were about to commit war crimes.
The Bushies laughed at the wussy-like
Democrats, scoffed at the weak-willed European opposition, sneered
at the once-powerful Russians and commercially addicted Chinese.
They occasionally patted Blair, America's pet poodle on the head
and scorned those Cassandras warned about the reaction of "the
angry Arab street" and "world public opinion."
"How many divisions do they have?"
Bush might well have asked, paraphrasing Stalin's mocking of
the Pope who disapproved of his policies as his administration
practiced the politics of raw power.
They took what had been peripheral issues
at best - like Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and links
to Al Qaeda as imminent threats to U.S. security - and made them
central. Simultaneously, they deftly distorted facts that the
media predictably lacked the curiosity to check. But they knew
they could count on the media to present memory eroding volleys
of changing "Reality TV in Iraq" images.
When the ruling elite leaned on him to
get UN backing before going to war, the Bushies took spinning
to a new level. Saddam, they charged, had violated UN Security
Council resolutions. The very organization that Bush had routinely
disparaged as worthless, now took on holy status. Saddam's sin
of sins was his violation of UN resolutions.
So, repetition of charges: weapons of
mass destruction, links to Al Qaeda, violation of UN resolutions
and "he tried to kill Daddy" - referring to an ambiguous
assassination attempt in Kuwait in 1993 - became the Administration
mantra. At no time, did the President present evidence. He simply
repeated the accusations. Hey, who are you going to believe,
your president or the guy who gassed his own people?
Instead of telling him "go sleep
it off," the cowardly Democrats, ever fearful that someone
will expose them as "weak," wrung their hands, publicly
accepted Bush's claptrap and in October 2002 awarded him special
wartime powers. (The Senate vote was 77-23.)
The Bush planners had already decided
to fight this war without concern for law (a fig leaf at best)
or international opinion. It surprised few people that the immense
superiority of U.S. weaponry defeated a far weaker military force
- especially one like Iraq's, which had basically disarmed before
the invasion. The Americans didn't even really need the British.
The lesson: circumvent international
law, the UN and world public opinion and substitute brute force
and the world will grasp the essentials of the U.S. order in
the 21st Century. Hail America, America waives the rules!
Of course, it helped to target a universally
despised villain and fool. But Saddam didn't use mass destruction
weapons against the invading Americans and British. Perhaps he
didn't have any such lethal arms. Time will tell.
The historical record shows U.S. Administrations
in the 1970s and 80s cooperating with this ogre when it suited
their interests. Documents show Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
shaking Saddam's hand in 1983 as President Reagan's envoy. Rummy
helped facilitate Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological
weapons and U.S. logistical help to deploy them.
Coincidentally, several administration
officials have close ties to companies that will materially benefit
from the war, like Vice President Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton
that will make billions on the rebuilding of Iraq. In the March
17, 2003 New Yorker, Seymour Hersh offers substantial evidence
to show that U.S. Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle
used his inside position to make substantial fees. No reason
not to do well while doing good!
These Jewish neo-cons and Christian fundamentalists
have made a marriage of bellicose convenience, in which the rest
of the world gets screwed. They see the world as theirs to win
- unless something untoward occurs in the 2004 election or the
economy continues its downward spiral.
Consequences? Bush hasn't talked about
them. He dismissed the appearance of up to 20 million people
demonstrating in the streets of cities throughout the world this
winter as comparable to a "focus group."
But as Seumas Milne reports in the April
10 Guardian, the North Koreans are paying close attention to
both Bush's policies and the reaction to them. "As anti-war
and anti-American demonstrations erupt throughout the world,"
he writes, "North Korea's foreign ministry dramatized one
sobering lesson drawn from this four week war."
A North Korean government official said:
"The Iraqi war shows that to allow disarmament through inspections
does not help avert a war, but rather sparks it." The North
Koreans concluded that to prevent attacks on nations the United
States has placed in the axis of evil, requires "a tremendous
military deterrent force."
As the sounds of prayer emanate from
the White House, Milne sees the chicken hawk planners of the
Iraq war circling "around Syria and Iran." They have
provided "a powerful boost to nuclear proliferation."
He concludes that "anti western terror attacks seem inevitable,
offset only by the likelihood of a growing international mobilization
against the new messianic imperialism."
Amen, I say, in my non-religious way.
I, like tens of millions of others, will continue to resist.
Saul Landau's
film IRAQ: VOICES FROM THE STREETS is distributed by Cinema Guild,
800-723-5522. Find him on the web at www.rprogreso.com He teaches
at Cal Poly Pomona University and is a fellow of the Institute
for Policy Studies. He can be reached at:
landau@counterpunch.org
Today's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat
Chris
Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach
by Example
Marjorie
Cohn
Tax the War Profiteers
William
Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War
Dave Marsh
Nina Simone: Freedom Singer
Binoy
Kampmark
Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq
David Vest
Who's Looting Whom?
Standard
Shaefer
Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Andrew
Rodman
Lawn Poem
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/23
Website
of the Day
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East
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