A month after President Bush's Top-Gun arrival on the USS Abraham Lincoln, and his declaration (premature it now seems) of the end of the Battle of Iraq, American forces continue to take casualties in firefights with Baathist irregulars. Iraq's reconstruction flounders while Afghanistan's is forgotten. Osama and Saddam remain at large, and the weapons of mass destruction, that were the excuse for war with Iraq, undiscovered.
Donald Rumsfeld has dispatched a 2,000-man Iraq Survey Group to find the embarrassingly elusive WMD, but it's becoming clear these weapons were less a reality than an excuse. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz admitted as much last week.
But it gets worse. Reports by the CIA and National Intelligence Council, a group of analysts representing all 12 U.S. intelligence agencies, accuse the Pentagon, or more specifically, its Defense Policy Board Office of Special Plans, of perpetrating an "intelligence hoax" to justify the war. Said one official: "There is no question there was a lot of pressure on analysts to support preconceived judgments."
Not surprisingly, a main source of the Pentagon's intelligence on Iraq's supposed WMD was Iraqi National Congress leader, Ahmad Chalabi, a close personal friend of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle (who until recently chaired the Defense Policy Board), and others of Office of Special Plans who refer to themselves as "the Cabal."
Although the Administration denies accusations that it cooked intelligence reports, evidence suggests otherwise. Such a strategy is consistent with the Cabal's approach to foreign policy, which is based on the political philosophy of the neo-conservative thinker Leo Strauss who holds that governments must deceive their people to practice effective statecraft. In other words, they think it a virtue to lie as a matter of public policy. The members of this self-styled Cabal have something in common-they are all founding members of the Project for the New American Century.
The Project for the New American Century is a think tank founded in 1997 by Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, son of Irving Kristol the so-called "godfather" of the neo-conservative movement. It originated the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption and unilateralism and many of its founders, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, and Elliot Abrams (convicted and pardoned for his role the Iran-Contra scandal) now hold important positions in the Bush Administration.
The PNAC advocated war with Iraq not only to end Saddam's vicious rule, but to provoke regime change in Iran. This hasn't happened. Rather Iraqis who took refuge in Iran from Saddam are returning to organize the new Iraq and are quickly assuming a prominent, possibly preeminent role in that process, much to the dismay of the Bush administration. It is willing to accept only a democracy that produces a pro-American government and has warned Iran not to send its agents to Iraq. These warnings come with complains that Iran is harboring al-Qaeda terrorists.
Iran replies it cannot prevent the return of Iraqis to their homeland any more than the US could (or want) to prevent the return of Iraqi National Congress leader Chalabi. The Iranian government also points out that it has jailed many al-Qaeda operatives and cooperates with the American-supported Afghan President Hamid Karzai to suppress terrorism along their common border.
Yet despite the many geo-political irons it has in the fire, the Bush administration now beats the drums for war with Iran. No doubt we can expect the New American Century cabal to manufacture whatever evidence is necessary to convince the American public of the rightness of its cause.
An old aphorism holds that truth is the first victim of war. What is truly disturbing about the current state of affairs is that Project for the New American Century, a think tank advocating the systematic deception of the American people in matters of war and foreign policy, has achieved so influential a place in government.
Two days after President Bush made his dramatic top-gun tail-hook landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which will certainly be the central image of his re-election campaign ads, nine Democratic presidential hopefuls gathered in Columbia for the South Carolina primary debate. And though it received relatively little airtime, no issue divided them more deeply than the war and how to deal Bush’s wartime popularity, the greatest obstacle to a Democratic presidential victory in 2004.
Democratic Me-Too Hawks Connecticut Senator Joe Senator Lieberman, Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and North Carolina Senator John Edwards back President Bush and his policy of preemption. Waffle-Hawk John Kerry supports the war though he had favored more time for diplomatic efforts. Senator Bob Graham of Florida is a Dovish Hawk who opposed the Iraq war because he believed it would disrupt the war on terrorism. Only former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the Rev. Al Sharpton, former ambassador Carol Moseley Braun and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio are unreserved Doves who, of course, have already been counted out as viable candidates by most political observers.
The smart money is on the Hawks-Leiberman, Gephardt, Graham, and Kerry. Their electoral strategies effectively concede foreign and military policy to the Bush administration. They're betting that by being Hawks they will be free to focus on domestic issues and to run Clinton-style "it's the economy, stupid" campaigns. This is the "safe" strategy----the political equivalent of a lay-up shot in golf. They all believe, as Lieberman said, "no Democrat will be elected president in 2004 who is not strong on defense, and this war was a test of that strength."
But what does it mean to be strong on defense? What is the most effective way to employ American power to achieve national security and peace in the world? Democrats are allowing the Administration to define the terms of the debate by default.
This is shortsighted. Particularly given the President’s speech from the Lincoln flight deck down grading our ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq from wars to battles while broadening the scope of the war (and so his wartime powers): "We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide."
But the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are fragile and could quickly go to pieces along with Bush's credibility as Commander in Chief.
In Afghanistan, now forgotten by America, Osama Bin Laden and Mulla Omar both remain at large in the lawless Pakistan border regions, and Taleban fighters launch daily raids in the southern provinces. Meanwhile Hamid Karzai, unable to impose his authority over warlords whose loyalty is bought and sold, is little more than the mayor of Kabul.
In Iraq Saddam remains at-large and low-level conflict continues. Demonstrations provoke responses by US troops producing civilian casualties. No weapons of mass destruction (the ostensive reason for war) have yet been found and, worse, thousands of pounds of enriched uranium (previously accounted for by UN inspectors) have gone missing because the US military delayed entering the facility for weeks after taking control of the area. This exponentially increases the likelihood of it falling into terrorist hands and hardly inspires confidence in the Bush administration.
Instead of yielding national security issues to the President, Democrats should articulate a positive vision. America must accept its global responsibility and exercise leadership by example, persuasion, and consensus building--humane, effective American hegemony.
John F. Kennedy described this vision in a speech at American University:
What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war [but]….the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children. … For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all moral.. top
Humane Effective Hegemony
Commentary 34
As we moved toward inevitable war with Iraq, I took part in the small candlelight peace vigil at the Lincoln Memorial. Peter, Paul, and Mary took the stage took the stage and we sang the old anti-war songs. There were earnest prayers for peace. Speakers called on President Bush to allow the UN inspectors to do their job and decried a war that would trade blood for oil. Not in our name.
As I looked out on thousands of candles of hope for peace and hot wax dripped on my hand, I listened for the speech I hoped to hear. But I didn’t hear it.
What I heard were calls for America to reject power and global responsibility. But this is not the lesson America should take from the current situation. Rather America must accept its global responsibility as the remaining Superpower and exercise leadership by example, persuasion, and consensus building. I even have a bumper sticker version of my vision: humane, effective American hegemony.
My embrace of the word hegemony may seem strange, especially given the criticism of American hegemony by the anti-war movement and the foreign press. It is a concept not well understood by Americans, but there’s a sense that it’s not a compliment. Particularly when it’s linked with another loaded word that Americans understand all too well—imperialism—it’s clear that the United States is being criticized for exercising its preeminent influence by coercion.
President Bush has chosen to rely on coercive political force—or Hard Power— the least important and effective aspect of hegemony. Far more important is Soft Power, the winning of consent of other powers for American goals by persuasion and consultation.
Bush did not take advantage of the sympathy bought the United State at the cost of thousands of lives on 9-11 to build consensus through consultation, as a wise and beneficent hegemonic power should. No.
Rather Bush gave his infamous Axis of Evil speech, promulgated his pernicious doctrine of preemption, ran roughshod over friend and foe alike, and destroyed the unity of NATO, America’s most important alliance system leaving in its place a sad “Coalition of the Willing”—the best friends money can buy. In short, he cast America as an arrogant imperial power.
Historian Paul Schroeder makes this distinction between an imperial power
and a hegemonic power:
A hegemon is first among equals; an imperial power rules over subordinates.
A hegemonic power is the one without whom no final decision can be reached
within a given system; its responsibility is essentially managerial, to
see that a decision is reached. An imperial power rules the system, imposes
its decision when it wishes.
Hegemony is not stable but a "moving equilibrium" that must be ceaselessly
negotiated, revised, and reconfigured. To be an effective, humane
hegemon, to achieve a global order based on the ideals of the Four Freedoms
[freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom
from fear], America must persuade and cooperate with other nations, something
Bush, an isolationist by nature, is not inclined to do. History will
judge this a tragic failure, not only for Bush’s presidency and America, but
the world entire.
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Scripting Reality
Commentary 33
“This is a scripted,” President Bush chortled at his recent press conference. There was nervous laughter from the press as Bush looked down the list of 17 reporters selected in advance from the Stepford White House press corps. Bush didn't take questions from reporters raising their hands. Nor did he call on Helen Thomas, dean of the White House press corps, who traditionally asks the first question. She had come out in opposition to war with Iraq but more importantly, I suspect she refused to submit her question in advance.
As with Bush’s faux economic conference, nothing here was left to chance. A former baseball team owner, he knows well any batter can get a hit, if he knows what pitcher will be thrown—curve, slider, even a sizzling fastball like Terry Moran’s question, the hardest of the evening.
In the past several weeks, your policy on Iraq has generated opposition from the governments of France, Russia, China, Germany, Turkey, the Arab League and many other countries, opened a rift at NATO and at the U.N., and drawn millions of ordinary citizens around the world into the streets in anti-war protests. May I ask, what went wrong that so many governments and people around the world now not only disagree with you very strongly, but see the U.S. under your leadership as an arrogant power?Had Bush been asked this question cold, he might have tried to answer it—but advance knowledge made this and other apparently tough questions merely platforms to push administration’s only message—Saddam must go.
I believe that when we see totalitarianism, that we must deal with it We don't have to do it always militarily. But this is a unique circumstance, because of 12 years of denial and defiance, because of terrorist connections, because of past history.Bush’s reply perfectly illustrates of the administration’s manipulation of public thinking described in a recent editorial in the Nation:
By relentless repetition, Bush and his team accomplished an audacious feat of propaganda--persuading many Americans to redirect the emotional wounds left by 9/11, their hurt and anger, away from the perpetrators to a different adversary. According to a New York Times-CBS News survey, 42 percent now believe Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In an ABC News poll, 55 percent believe Saddam provides direct support to Al Qaeda.Moran did not get to ask a follow-up question to hold President’s feet to the fire on matters of substance and fact. For example, that Bush’s evidence linking Saddam to Osama was forged; that by his with-us-or-against-us foreign policy he squandered the greatest opportunity in living memory for America to do good in the world, bought at the cost of thousands of innocent lives; that his unilateralism has severely strained NATO, our most important military alliance. No. There were no tough follow-ups. Bush just moved on the next name on list.
There is no reason to expect that the press will be any more aggressive in pursuit of the truth when war comes. For months Pentagon planners have been implementing an audacious wartime media campaign by granting access designed to ensure a blend of news and entertainment. In combat reporters will be “embedded” with military units, unable to follow the action on their own. They but will travel whenever and wherever the Pentagon directs them to cover.
In the Brave New World now emerging, inconvenient truth is valued less
than scripted Presidential certainty. And increasingly it appears the media
has chosen the easy path--to allow itself to be used as megaphone for White
House propaganda, rather than doing the hard work of informing the public.
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In testimony before the Senate last week, Colin Powell announced Al-Jazeera would air a new Osama tape proving Bin Laden and Saddam to be allies: "This nexus between terrorists and states … developing weapons of mass destruction can no longer be … ignored," said Powell.
Three hours later Al-Jazeera broadcast the audio message said to be by bin Laden. Almost simultaneously, MSNBC put up a summary on its website. It reported that bin Laden expressed solidarity with the Iraqi people and urged them to resist the coming US invasion. But MSNBC also reported that bin Laden “called on Iraqis to rise up and oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who is a secular leader."
Twenty minutes later, that sentence was gone. Overruling its own Arabic-speaking analyst who protested that Osama had characterized Saddam as an apostate, a traitor, a usurper worthy of death and his regime as “abhorrent to Islam,” MSNBC altered its reportage to conform to Powell’s testimony.
What is most disturbing about this is not the Bush administration’s intentional
misrepresentation of the evidence. We’ve come to expect this.
No. What is most disturbing is that the news media suppressed information merely because the White House found the truth inconvenient. CNBC’s compliance is perhaps understandable. It’s well to the right of the political center. What IS surprising, however, is how readily the rest of the media fell in line, including the politically moderate CNN which reported that the tape “undeniably links Iraq with al-Qaeda."
What is it that has turned the media, in the words of CBS anchor Dan Rather, from a “watch dog” into “lapdog?” Why does the coverage of our military build-up to war with Iraq more resemble a Top Gun movie trailer than responsible journalism? The answer is that concentration of media ownership has created a symbiosis of self-interest between the megamedia corporations and the White House.
Media ownership has never been so concentrated—just 10 companies effectively control all 45000 media outlets (press, radio, TV, publishing houses) in this country. Megamedia self censors in return for political favors embodied in tax and regulatory legislation. It might be coincidence that FCC chairman Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin, is offering to ease restrictions allowing even more consolidation just as the industry is going through financial hard times, particularly in music and CD sales. It is any wonder that the corporate suits pressured their recording stars to lay-off any mention of the coming Iraq war at the Grammies? And, though most of the artists oppose war, most of them complied.
In time of war, the ability of the White House to manage news coverage increases exponentially. A lesson learned in Vietnam was never again to allow the media free access to cover a conflict. It was former CIA director (then president) George Bush senior who introduced the current formula of disinformation to justify war, combined with close management of the press during combat in Operation Just Cause against Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. The system was perfected during the First Gulf War and presumably will be in place when Operation Enduring Freedom goes hot.
Today, as the increasing concentration media ownership and war exacerbate
the incestuous relationship between the White House and press, narrowing
the range of debate when it is most important for the people to know, we
would do well to recall the words of James Madison: 'A popular government
without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue
to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.'
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As President Bush is preparing to go to war with Iraq, at a projected cost of 100 to 200 billion dollars, his administration is dispatching its minions across the country (pardon me, homeland) to peddle its version of economic tax-cut snake-oil described as a “jobs and growth package.”
John Snow, the new Secretary of the Treasury, will hit the road with his 26-slide PowerPoint presentation "Real Jobs That Last” while Commerce Secretary Don Evans will explain against the backdrop of Atlanta’s Heavenly Cheesecake Company how Dubya’s plan for additional tax-cuts will provide economic stimulus even if almost every economist worth their salt, liberal and conservative, including the current and former Federal Reserve Chairmen, say it will not.
Why the public relations push now? Because Dubya botched the introduction of his economic program in his State of the Union speech, that’s why. His massive tax-cut proposals caught the Republican leadership by surprise. Go-it-alone-George was no more willing to consult with own party on domestic affairs than with our allies on foreign policy. "Bush has lost his luster," an aide to a Senate Republican leader admitted in the Washington Post. "There are difficulties for him on the entire domestic agenda."
To win popular support, Dubya and his minions promise the proposed 10-year 665 billion dollar tax cut would lower the average tax bill by over 1000 dollars and that subsequent economic growth will offset lost revenue. This is a gross misrepresentation of the sort we’ve come to expect when this administration speaks on economic matters. The wealthiest 1% of taxpayers would get an average 24,000-dollar tax reduction; the middle 20% about 250 while 31% of Americans would get nothing. According to the White House’s own figures, if the President’s plan passes, we will see 611 billion dollars in new budget deficits in two years and 1.3 trillion in five.
There is no way the economy will grow us out of this anytime soon,
if ever—just ask Alan Greenspan. In his testimony before the Senate
this week the Federal Reserve Chairman called updated budget projections
sobering:
"Faster economic growth, doubtless, would make deficits far easier to
contain. But faster economic growth alone is not likely to be the full solution
to currently projected long-term deficit."
Even less likely should war with Iraq lead to a further softening of the
economy (a best case scenario) or send the entire world economy into a
tailspin (which is at least as is likely).
Greenspan also issued dire warnings about the coming increases in Social Security and Medicare spending with the mass retirement of the baby-boomers in the next ten years. Congressional Budget Office projections are that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid costs will double over the next 25 years to 14 percent of our gross domestic product. And that's without Medicare drug benefits.
Bush could care less. In fact, as I have predicted here many times, he is pushing forward with his plan to “reform” social security by allowing individual to invest a portion of their social security taxes in private accounts. But there’s no money in the Bush smoke-and-mirrors budget to replace those revenues that now go to pay retirees. But not to worry. Dubya plans to make up the difference with the most regressive of all taxes—a national sales tax. This would place the burden of the Bush tax cut for the rich right where he and his ideologues think it belongs, squarely on the shoulders of the working class.
Long story short—by taking us into a war that we don’t need to fight (at
least not now) while cutting taxes for the rich, Bush is putting the burden
of fighting and paying for that war on those of us who work for a living
and try to get by. We can only hope that responsible Republican and
Democratic deficit hawks have more sense than to let President Bush—a product
of the Yale business school affirmative action program for mediocrity—drive
the country’s economy into a ditch.
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President Bush’s State of the Union provided much grist for pundits’ mills. Before Bush delivered it, political commentators assured us that it would not be a war speech. Typical was George Stephanophoulos who said that Bush had to appear prepared for war without being preoccupied with it. After all, ABC polls reported 64 percent of Americans want to give the UN inspections more time. Thus, of course, Bush would focus on domestic issues.
Now, the morning after, the chattering classes are unanimous—again. It was a war speech. "This may not necessarily have been a formal declaration of war against the Iraqis," said CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "but it was getting very, very close to that." While promising to “consult” with the United Nations, Bush was really laying the groundwork for war and justifying his doctrine of selective preemption.
“The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others,” declared the President. “America's purpose is more than to follow a process it is to achieve a result: the end of terrible threats to the civilized world.”
This phrase is key to recognizing the President Bush’s larger foreign policy goal. It references the universal commitment made by President Truman in his doctrine of 1947, eloquently restated by President Kennedy in his inaugural promise to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Invoking previous struggles against Hitlerism, militarism and Communism, President Bush has recast America’s Cold War commitment for the post-9/11 era of terrorism:
The American flag stands for more than our power and our interests. Our founders dedicated this country to the cause of human dignity, the rights of every person and the possibilities of every life.And as Truman did with the Marshall Plan and JFK did with the Peace Corps, Bush includes promises humanitarian assistance in his new-found global activism by asking Congress to commit 15 billion dollars over 5 years to combat AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.We go forward with confidence, because this call of history has come to the right country. America is a strong nation and honorable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers. Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity.
But make no mistake about it. Bush’s reinvention of America’s previous
opened-ended Cold War commitments, though idealistic sounding, have the
same potential for harm that led America into war in Southeast Asia. No
one nation can carry the burden and responsibility for achieving world peace.
In the end, eliminating terrorism and achieving a stable and safe international
order depends on winning hearts and minds by consultation and consensus—something
that we have seen doesn’t come naturally to this president.
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The dance has begun. President Bush says he is ready to offer food and fuel aid if North Korea agrees to destroy all its nukes and close down its nuclear weapons program. Construction of light water reactors would presumably resume. Bush claims he had been ready to make the offer months ago. Some how I doubt it.
The North Korean experience shows why lesser nations and ambitious regional bullies want nuclear weapons. North Korea pretends that it’s not blackmailing Washington and Washington pretends it’s not being blackmailed. Face is saved in the nuclear club.
But no one is fooled. Of course it’s blackmail. What else are nukes good for? Saddam knows that Washington would not be threatening invasion if he had nuclear weapons. That’s why he wants them. For weak nations there is no better insurance policy against infringements on national sovereignty than a nuke. Or three. Or four. Or more.
At the height of the Cold War, Tom Lehrer, wayward math professor and satirist
wrote:
First we got the bomb and that was good,
'Cause we love peace and motherhood.
Then Russia got the bomb, but that's O.K.,
'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way!
Who's next?
Almost from the beginning of the Colf War, both Superpowers sought to keep the nuclear club exclusive and pursued nonproliferation policies to control the spread. Yet despite their best efforts Israel, France, India, Pakistan, and China all acquired the bomb and the means to deliver it, never intending to. Of Course.
The purpose of nuclear weapons remains, as during the Cold War, deterrence. Not to use them. Nations with nukes respect other nations with nukes. Nuclear weapons are the equivalent of the Colt Peacemaker in the wild west which may the equivalent of today’s multipolar post-Cold War world. Gun rights advocates point to studies that show societies where everyone is armed are politer, safer, and suffer less violent crime than those where gun ownership is restricted.
A global extension of this logic suggests that we should abandon the policy of non-proliferation allow all nations to acquire nuclear capability freely and openly. This would be the universal application of MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction, which provided stability during the Cold War. After all, the goal is deterrence, the preservation of national sovereignty. Not use. No. That would be madness. Unfortunately the world seems to be full of unstable and unpredictable rulers.
And then there’s also the Oppps factor. You know. Human error. Sloppy command
and control. A Cuban Missile Crisis gone wrong. The failure of Fail
Safe. Slim Pickens in Dr Strangelove riding the bomb, waving his Stetson
cowboy hat
Yeeeehhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
down to the Mushroom Cloud. And lax security at storage sites leading
to sales to ruthless groups with political agendas. Why did the former
Soviet General offer to sell to bombers to an undercover news crew? He wanted
capital to start a disco in Moscow.
Ultimately the non-proliferation is the only rational option. But it would
be productive for Washington to treat all nations as though they were nuclear
powers. Then they wouldn’t feel they needed a nuke to get respect in Mr.
Rogers Nuclear Neighborhood.
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As the New Year begins, the build up of US forces in the Persian Gulf continues, as Washington prepares to topple Iraq’s Saddam Hussein before he acquires nuclear weapons. Meanwhile Kim Jong Il has restarted North Korea’s nuclear program and expelled the international inspectors. Yet the Bush administration has not blustered about waging preemptive war on Korea. Rather it has declared its intention to work for a solution with the UN Security Council, China, Japan, and South Korea. This is an acknowledgment that nuclear weapons still possess considerable deterrent value in this post-Cold War age. Does anyone even remember that in June India and Pakistan went to full nuclear alert over disputed Kashmir?
It’s often said that Americans lack a sense of history. So perhaps as a historian I should recall some of that year already passing from memory and into history.
In many ways 2002 was a year of reckoning—a settling of accounts.
The US had a reckoning with the Taliban. Its forces disbursed al-Qaeda and brought bout regime change in Afghanistan. But with his Axis of Evil speech, President Bush’s focus shifted to toppling Saddam, dissipating by his unilateralism, the global good will gained after 9/11, and leaving the new President Hamid Karzai in the lurch as Operation Enduring Freedom came to be about protecting US bases in Afghanistan rather than nation building.
Everywhere the world is paying the price of failure to deal with thwarted nationalism. At its root, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about nation building. The Chechens who took 800 hostages in a Moscow theatre saw themselves as freedom fighters and the Russian police as agents of state terror. Throughout the world, nationalist movements struggle for independence. But, as these struggles are swept up into the war on terror, their underlying political and ethnic causes will not be addressed.
In a dramatic reckoning on Wall Street, irrational exuberance died as the Bear slew the Bull, as the dot-com meltdown spread to ERON, Tyco, Imclone, WorldCom. The failure of these giants exposed their incestuous relationships with accounting firms, stock analysts, and banks as the stock markets plummeted, CEO’s went to jail, and investors’ retirements evaporated along with public confidence in the system.
Parallel reckonings came for past sins as well. Frank Cherry, a 71 year-old ex-Klansman, was convicted of the 1963 bombing of a the 16th street Birmingham Baptist church that killed four little girls, while at Strom Thurman’s 100th birthday Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott ended his political career by fondly recalling the good old days of segregation as he had often done before. This time, however, he had a national audience.
And what review of 2002 would be complete without mentioning the report that Clonaid, a company whose founders believe that extraterrestrials created life on Earth through genetic engineering, has produced the first human clone. Can the creation of a genetically engineered race of cloned sub-human workers and soldiers be far behind? The evil of this is greater than whatever weapons Axis of Evil members may possess.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. So much happening. It’s all interrelated
and the relationships are hard to see. But we can count on the Bush Administrations
to keep things simple for us by directing our national attention to the
designated evildoer of the day—no matter what else may be going on. And at
some point there will be a price to pay for over-simplification. Rather sooner
than later I think.
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In this week before Christmas, the celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace, it might be appropriate to consider whether military action is the most effective response to evil in the world. Certainly the human rights abuses emanating from those nations designated the Axis of Evil by President Bush cry out for redress.
In Iraq Saddam Hussein arbitrarily imprisons, routinely murders, tortures, rapes, and terrorizes the Iraqi people; he makes war on his neighbors. In Kim Jong Il’s North Korea, the litany of horrors includes human experimentation and forced labor. Like Saddam, he is criminally insane. Unlike Saddam, he actually has nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Things are only a little better in Iran where fundamentalists have thwarted reform efforts by President Mohammed Khatami, where the so-called Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah (the Party of God) continue to flog, amputate, threaten, assault, and assassinate enemies of the state.
But evil is not restricted to an axis of three. Rather it’s pervasive in the world. War and want, intolerance and indifference, abuse and neglect are everywhere found, a crowd of orphans beneath the dark robes of the Ghost Christmas Future. In security-speak jargon, Evil is an asymmetrical threat.
In post-Taliban Afghanistan, presumably in the process of nation-building, Hamid Karzai tries persuade the warlords to disarm while US forces continue to conduct military operations and to take casualties, and outside Kabul morals police continue to impose strict Islamic law on women.
Bangladesh, courted by Washington as a moderate Muslim state, is facing a total breakdown in the rule of law wracked by politically motivated assassinations, bombings, acid attacks against women, and even the pillaging of entire villages.
AIDS, civil war, and famine continue to ravage Africa. In Sudan, some 2 million people have died since 1983, mainly by war-induced famine. Thousands continue to starve in Somalia, eight years after Operation Restore Hope and Blackhawk Down. There is no government and al Qaeda is active there.
In Bethlehem, Israeli Defense Forces halted the destruction of a row of Palestinian houses after realizing it was a school known for promoting cooperation between Jews and Arabs. Israel has barred Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, from visiting Bethlehem for Christmas and will continue its occupation of the town. No doubt we can expect another suicide bombing before the holidays are over.
And let’s not forget the civil war grinding on in Colombia. Colombia is the third-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid—almost 2 billion dollars since 2000. Yet this effort seems fruitless. Bombings occur monthly and more of Latin America is becoming “Columbianized” as rival gangs of drug trafficers in Brazil and Mexico fight turf wars and buy politicians.
I am not arguing that force and threat of force are not necessary elements of foreign policy. They are. But it seems the art of war receives far more study than the more difficult and neglected art of peace.
Evil doesn’t exist incarnate. There is no Satan Almighty Prince of Darkness. A wise man once told me that the line dividing Good and Evil runs through every human heart. In the same it way, it runs through the heart of every nation. In the past, America has compromised its ideals for reasons of state. We have supported dictators who were the enemies of our enemies, as we supported Saddam in his war on Iran in the 1980s and anti-Communist generals in Latin America. We can no longer afford such expediencies.
It is not enough for the US to be against terrorism. We must be FOR something—FOR
justice and human rights FOR everyone on this planet. If we are not, then
we will not have the moral authority necessary to prevail in this struggle
that, at bottom, is the struggle of people everywhere for justice and freedom
in their own lives.
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