By Jack A. Smith
The Bush administration appears to be near completion in its process of transforming the Sept. 11 terror attacks into a gift from the political gods to pursue any right-wing course of action it deems necessary to further the new “war on terrorism.”
Number one on the ultra-conservative agenda is for the U.S. empire to continue striking back at countries throughout the world long after the government of Afghanistan has been dispatched--regardless of whether they had any connection to the September tragedy.
Iraq will be next on President Bush’s retaliatory hit list if the influential far-rightists within the administration, the key Republican think-tanks and the private sector conservatives have their way. After that, targets may include the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or Iran or Syria, Sudan, Lebanon, Somalia, Libya and others of up to 50 countries Vice President Dick Cheney alleges engage in, or support, terrorism. Indeed, even countries such as Cuba or left liberation movements in Colombia or the Philippines may be included in White House designs.
Number two on the agenda of reaction is to utilize the “war on terrorism” as a pretext to impose repressive restrictions on civil liberties and vastly increase police and government surveillance powers, as well as demanding massive increases in war spending for such projects as a missile defense network, the passage of tax breaks and giveaways to big business, and for further destruction of the natural environment. In this article we will concentrate on the Bush administration’s intention to spread its wars to other countries.
>From the first days after the hijacked airliners crashed into the
Pentagon and World Trade Center, President Bush and the right wing
recognized the creation of a unique opportunity to attain geopolitical
objectives heretofore discussed among the initiate only in hushed
tones. “Why not,” they whispered, obviously in effect, “get rid of the
whole damn bunch of ‘em?” All, that is, who cause grief to the most
powerful state in history by disobeying orders, by opposing Washington’s
plans, by acting independently, or like “rogues,” or socialists, or
revolutionaries. “All of ‘em--when we can get away with it.”
And now, suggest the ultra-conservatives, the political constellations are approximating alignment. The citizenry--traumatized, fearful, and misled by a jingoist mass media--at this stage appears to support whatever action the Commander-in-Chief dictates. The abject Democratic Party, draped in the national flag as it kneels before White House, can hardly assume the posture of a political opposition. Some politicians may later join the antiwar forces when the public mood inevitably changes -- but now is when the strategic war decisions are being made.
President Bush evidenced sophisticated political savvy by choosing to interpret the attacks by a small, amorphous private network of fanatical suicide soldiers as an act of war against the United States. That decision automatically transfigured the leader of a weakening administration into an avenging wartime president of the world’s only superpower, with all the prerogatives associated with this elevated status, not the least being a circling of the popular, political and patriotic wagons around his singular leadership.
Since history suggests an act of war can only be perpetrated by another country, the White House decided to incriminate poor and bedraggled Afghanistan. After all, its government--the Taliban, which took power in Kabul as a consequence of U.S. interference in the Afghan civil war--remained friendly with the expatriate Saudi billionaire, Osama bin Laden, a couple of years after Washington decided to excoriate this right-wing former “freedom fighter” as the “Evil One” because of his alleged leadership of the Al Qaeda fundamentalist holy war network. Describing him as the “mastermind” behind the Sept. 11 assault, Washington seeks the capture of the presently cave-dwelling bin Laden “dead or alive,” most preferably dead. A court trial, actually, might prove embarrassing to the prosecution since the U.S. has refused to provide any proof of the suspect’s guilt.
In another example of political acumen in pursuit of his real objectives, Bush announced soon after the terror strike that he was launching a “war against terrorism” that would last several years and involve an undetermined number of countries. He asked for general approval of his plan without ever revealing specific details. The national chauvinist response of a submissive Congress was a hearty “so be it.” The bipartisan congressional authorization Bush received to launch his vague, all-encompassing “war on terrorism” conferred upon the president an authority unparalleled in the nation’s history to wage war when and where he sought fit. The quickly forming antiwar movement and the small political left, immediately comprehending the fearsome political implications of what just transpired, howled warnings that were either suppressed by the corporate media or dismissed as unpatriotic. Even many nominal progressives, after watching the World Trade Center crumble, intimated that it was inappropriate to oppose Bush’s impending wars during this period of remorse and national unity.
Bush may have concealed the details but he was frank about his broad objectives. “From this day forward,” the president postulated in his Sept. 20 address to Congress, “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” He then indicated formally that his war will at first be directed against Al Qaeda, but “it will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” Well before his speech, the State Department had already identified Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Cuba and the DPRK as “countries that support terrorism.” In subsequent weeks, high administration officials added scores more countries to a list of those “where global terrorist networks operate.” Congress (including all our Mid-Hudson representatives) essentially remained mute as the White House publicly planned for a multiplicity of wars intended to crush any remaining opposition to U.S. imperial domination.
By Nov. 21, wearing the Screaming Eagles jacket of the 101st Airborne Division, Bush was telling the assembled troops in Fort Campbell, Ky., “Afghanistan is just the beginning of the war against terror. There are other terrorists who threaten America and our friends, and there are other nations willing to sponsor them. We will not be secure as a nation until all of these threats are defeated. Across the world, and across the years, we will fight these evil ones, and we will win....America has a message for the nations of the world. If you harbor terrorists, you are terrorists. If you train or arm a terrorist, you are a terrorist. If you feed a terrorist or fund a terrorist, you’re a terrorist, and you will be held accountable by the United States and our friends.”
This was later termed by the White House the “Bush Doctrine.” Bush named no particular country, or time when the U.S. would attack, or precisely what he meant by a terrorist. The definition keeps expanding. By Nov. 26, in a harsh warning to both Iraq and the DPRK, Bush was saying that “If they develop weapons of mass destruction that will be used to terrorize nations, they will be held accountable.” The next day the New York Times reported, “Mr. Bush insisted that he had not widened the definition of what his administration considers terrorism, even though he did not mention weapons of mass destruction in his speech to Congress. ‘Have I expanded the definition?’ Mr. Bush said [in answer to a question]. ‘I’ve always had that definition, as far as I’m concerned.” His obvious contempt of Congress virtually passed unnoticed.
The Bush administration, as had the earlier Clinton regime, maintains that that the Iraqi government is bent on developing weapons of mass destruction, even though former UN Special Commission chief inspector Scott Ritter disclosed two years ago that “Iraq today possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction,” nor has it the means to produce or deploy such weapons. On Oct. 19, Ritter--once a staunch critic of Iraq--wrote in the Guardian (UK) that “Fears that the hidden hand of [Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein lies behind these attacks are based on rumor and speculation that...fail to support the weight of the charge.... Iraq’s biological weapons programs were dismantled, destroyed, or rendered harmless during the course of hundreds of no-notice inspections.”
Bush also declared that “I made it very clear to North Korea that, in order for us to have relations with them, that we want to know, are they developing weapons of mass destruction and they ought to stop proliferating.” Under a previous agreement with the U.S. the DPRK agreed to inspections in 2005, but Bush appears to be demanding immediate compliance -- or else. Pyongyang, which emphatically denies constructing such weapons, has never retreated after previous U.S. threats and--poor as it is these days--is hardly expected to do so now.
A day after Bush’s comments about the DPRK, Under-Secretary of State John Bolton declared in Geneva at a conference convened to strengthen the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (see Nov. 17 newsletter for background) that five countries, all so-called “Rogue States,” are developing germ weapons--Iraq, the DPRK, Iran, Libya and Syria. He offered absolutely no proof for his vague accusations. The New York Times reported, the allegations “are intended to deflect criticism of the Bush administration from those who say it is Washington that has undermined the treaty...for rejecting an agreement that was meant to strengthen compliance by establishing an inspection system.”
The White House has thus set the stage for attacking both countries, among others. Whether it does so is a matter that has been under discussion within the administration since the concept of an open-ended, several-year war against various countries was broached. A division on this question within the ruling class is reflected in a factional struggle between moderate warhawks, evidently led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, and extreme warhawks led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Powell’s main concern is that an attack on Iraq will result in the collapse of his carefully constructed diplomatic house-of-cards, the “Partnership of Nations” coalition supporting the “war on terrorism.” Powell is reported to be of the opinion that the coalition will disintegrate if its Moslem members withdraw. For example, Saudi Arabia--which is hardly a friend of the Baghdad government--has made it publicly known that its intelligence operatives in the Middle East have found absolutely no link between Iraq and the terror attacks or bin Laden and his apparatus. Several other Arab and Muslim countries have hinted that they would not support an attack on Iraq. To the charge made by the anti-Iraq faction that Iraq is the source of the anthrax traces found in the U.S., Powell points out that no evidence has been uncovered to substantiate the charge. Indeed, scientists, the Justice Department and FBI all seem to think the anthrax spores that killed a handful of Americans were produced in the United States and were probably disseminated by the extreme right.
The recent implied threats against Iraq and the DPRK are evidence that the far-right pressure on the Bush administration is beginning to produce dividends. Soon after Bush announced his “war on terrorism,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz emerged as the front-man for his boss, Rumsfeld, in leading a coterie of high-ranking ultra-conservative Pentagon officials in a crusade to crush a virtually crippled Iraq and destroy the Saddam Hussein government. They were quickly joined by an impressive conglomeration of conservatives from right-wing think tanks, publications and organizations. A Wall St. Journal editorial in October suggested Iraq should be attacked because of alleged involvement in the anthrax scare. Writers such as William Safire of the New York Times have devoted several columns to insisting on extending the war to Baghdad. He also suggests that the Palestine Liberation Organization is a terrorist group that should become a Bush target. Leading conservatives, including such luminaries as Midge Decter, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, William Kristol and Norman Podhoretz distributed an open letter in late September insisting that “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [Sept. 11] attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power.” Conservative Democrats, such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman, his party’s candidate for vice president in last year’s election, are demanding that Iraq become the target after Afghanistan. They are joined by old war-horses from previous Republican regimes such as former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger who announced Sept. 29 that after Afghanistan, “you have to be ready to proceed against Saddam Hussein.”
Obviously speaking for the president, White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN Nov. 18 that “We didn’t need Sept. 11 to tell us that he [Hussein] is a threat to our interests. We’ll deal with that situation eventually.” A day earlier, Reuters reported that the Pentagon “will send an extra 2,000 troops to Kuwait as a deterrent to Iraq.” Some 5,000 U.S. soldiers have been stationed in Kuwait, a former province wrenched from Iraq by British imperialism, for a decade. In recent days a number of administration officials have been identifying possible targets for “phase 2” of the “war on terrorism.” The CIA indicated that terror cells exist in Syria, Yemen and the Sudan. Others have pinpointed Lebanon for harboring Hezbollah, one of 22 alleged “terrorist organizations” on the White House target list. The Beirut government maintained that Hezbollah is waging a legitimate campaign against the Israeli occupation of Arab land, arguing that a distinction must be made “between terrorism, which we condemn, and people’s right to struggle for the liberation of their occupied territories.”
Rumsfeld evidently has selected the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a target in the “war on terrorism” if extreme warhawks get their way. After a recent Washington news conference, the Associated Press reported that Rumsfeld said “North Korea poses a ‘very real’ threat to the United States through its missile development, export policies and attempts to produce weapons of mass destruction.”
Exceptionally few U.S. newspapers have taken a stance in opposition to Bush’s war proliferation plans. The New York Times, which appears to support the moderate warhawk faction led by Powell, cautioned the White House that it would “make a serious mistake by moving to wage war in Iraq,” principally because this would “almost certainly shatter” the Partnership of Nations coalition.
At this stage, the Bush administration simply refuses to reveal the location of its next targets. Since the faction fighting over Iraq is evidently continuing, an interim enemy may be attacked first. Asked at a press conference Nov. 19 whether the U.S. would be waging war on another country after Afghanistan, Rumsfeld stated unambiguously, “I have no doubt in my mind.”
Meanwhile, the war against Afghanistan continues apace. At this writing, U.S. warplanes are carpet-bombing alleged Taliban strongholds while Washington’s surrogate rightist army, the Northern Alliance, occupies the cities as they fall, often massacring government soldiers and foreign volunteers even when they surrender. An intense manhunt is underway for bin Laden and operatives of the Al Qaeda network said to reside in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, the Bush administration is attempting to construct a client puppet government in Kabul to replace the Taliban, relying on the elderly, discredited monarch deposed in 1973 to function as the symbolic ruler. Only the incredibly naive believe such a coalition--composed of competing right-wing factions and war lords--will long exist before the resumption of internecine warfare. The White House has made certain to exclude any of the remaining progressive forces which supported the besieged 1978-92 left-wing government which the U.S. played a major part in eradicating.
The despicable terror attacks of September, and the grief and pain thus engendered, now appear to be on the brink of transmutation into a dream-come-true for the far right, the militarists and all who support U.S. world hegemony. This is precisely what peace advocates were opposing at the Sept. 29 demonstration in Washington when they chanted, “Our Grief Is Not A Cry For War!” There’s still time in the next weeks and months for sufficient public pressure to force the Bush administration to alter and perhaps reverse course, but this will require a large migration of public sentiment into the antiwar camp, supported by at least a substantial minority in Congress. Considering that most liberals and too many progressives still remain lashed to their flagpoles, along with virtually all members of Congress and just about the entire mass media, this is obviously a tall order. In time, however, when the scabrous reality of Bush’s “war on terrorism” overpowers the jingoism and confusion of the moment, the antiwar movement may once again be presented with an opportunity it hasn’t enjoyed since the ‘70s--to oblige the government to end its wars and bring the troops home where they belong.
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