SURPRISE! IT'S NOT AS MUCH ABOUT OIL AS YOU THOUGHT!
(It's worse than that!)SURPRISE! IT'S NOT AS MUCH ABOUT OIL AS YOU THOUGHT!
(It's worse than that!)
With the recent declaration of a pre-emptive war on Iraq by the Bush Administration, there has been endless speculation among reflective (but not necessarily astutely informed) individuals, spread across the full spectrum of American public discussion venues, on exactly how anyone could be so colossally stupid as our beloved leader George Dubya Bush has been in lurching into what can only turn into one of the most horrifically expensive and diplomatically embarrassing mistakes this country has made since the 'Vietnam Adventure' went sour. I refer, of course, to the present "War on Iraq" (a war, I need remind no one, that was initiated by a pre-emptive strike against Iraq--an archly aggressive act of reprehensible treachery that Americans have traditionally regarded at best as "infamy", at least when formerly undertaken by a certain East Asian nation...).
Much has been made of the theory that Bush and his arrogant Republican hawks were principally motivated in this war madness by a desire to protect the oil rich heart of the Southwest Asian region for future American energy interests to exploit. What better excuse then, and consistent with this conjecture, than to march into Iraq under the ruse of righteously proclaiming a high-minded campaign to save the 'free' world from Saddam Hussein's (hypothetical) store of (hypothetical) 'weapons of mass destruction'? This theory had, until recent facts emerged that I will explain below, widespread credence among street-corner intellectuals, far left-of-center socialist irregulars, and many others who could not otherwise logically explain why the American Administration was so all fired determined to suddenly drop everything else (such as a floundering economy, grievous domestic problems, etc.) and go clean Saddam's clock. Further, as US gasoline prices continued to soar into the stratosphere (in anticipation of possible oil supply scarcity, so we are told), this popular theory even appeared to make quite a bit of populist knee-jerk sense.
Recently, however, certain very disturbing facts have come to light that offer a vastly more erudite explanation for Bush's war mania. This information first came to my attention in a somewhat obscure article I read in a recent issue of NEWSWEEK, but since then, I have come across far more scholarly examinations of the same theory in a number of respected journals and publications (most recently on the front page of the 21 March 03 Wall Street Journal), lending more and more authority to a disturbing new (at least to me) hypothesis on why Bush has committed the entire nation to a war in Iraq, against all reason, polar to all diplomatic sophistry, contrary to the avowed opposition of the United Nations, and in the flushed face of vehement world-wide condemnation. Defining the matter even more precisely, the Carnegie Endowment recently published "Origins of Regime Change in Iraq", which lays out a complete sketch of how a small, but highly determined and skillfully orchestrated group such as the individuals in reference here may shape policy in a nation as complex and supersized as our own (http://www.ceip.org).
Very simply put, the new hypothesis goes like this: Several years, during the Clinton Administration, a small and not particularly notable right-wing neoconservative think-tank (named the Project for the New American Century) came up with a theory that a solution to the long-festering Israeli/Palestinian conflict could be found in establishing a democratic state in the very heart of what is now a very undemocratic and extremist part of the world--the Islamic Southwest Asian area. The concept, as elucidated by the group's director (former intelligence official Gary Schmitt--sample: Democracy in the Muslim World), would necessarily involve deposing Saddam Hussein's brutal and oppressive regime and then fostering a new and free democratic state in the social, political, and economic vacuum left by his departure. This would cleverly serve to act as a very effective counteractive foil to the present rabid Islamic extremism indigenous to this part of the world, but more importantly, it would likely make the Palestinians far more amenable to a possible mutual agreement with Israel by substantially constraining the very epicenter of the Islamic extremist movement that supports them.
Although the proposed idea fell on deaf ears in the Clinton White House, it gained keen support from 18 noted Republican national security hawks. Iraq became the obsessive focus of these hawks, who felt that Hussein was a dangerously disruptive and unstable element in the region with proven habits of intimidating any and all opposition and imposing his regime's will on other smaller neighboring nations (such as Kuwait). Furthermore, this hawkish Republican enclave that adopted the new theory and strongly backed it, felt that America's lack of resolve in dealing with Iraqi belligerence perfectly epitomised the failings of the weak-willed and morally deficit Clinton Administration, with its vapid foreign policy.
As Robert Greenberger and Karby Leggett of the Wall Street Journal have pointed out (WSJ, 21 Mar 03, page one) in researching this subject, ideas such as this are usually lost in the noisy intellectual din that characterises the plethora of Washington DC think-tanks. In this case, however, the idea was injected into the body of the Republican Presidential campaign that supported George Dubya's candidacy, as these hawks clustered around him in his bid for the nation's highest office.
A bit of further background research, interestingly, shows that even prior to the Project for the New American Century's proposal, this new neoconservative theory already had some limited circulation. In a 1996 letter to Israel's new PM (Benjamin Netanyahu), Reagan conservative Richard Perle proposed replacing Saddam Hussein with Jordan's Hashemite ruler, King Hussein--an action, he pointed out, that would strengthen Israel's tenuous position in an otherwise extremely hostile (to Jews) and wholly Arab region. Similar conclusions were arrived at by certain Israeli intellectuals at about this time, one of whom was Uzi Arad, Director of Israel's Institute of Policy and Strategy, whose "Theory of Democratic Peace" mirrored the other neoconservative views on replacing Saddam with a western-style democracy for the same purpose. Elements of both groups (Israeli and American) interfused and the idea gained further strength & theoretical momentum.
Further, the radical rightist conservative view that the presence of democracies in this mostly tribal & monarchical Islamic region would increase stability in Egypt and Saudi Arabia (and have similar effects in other adjacent centers of extremist Islamic radical sentiment), also gained some popularity among many other US officials--although this is not a much publicised or even widely known fact. The diffusion of similar convictions continued as the idea percolated within the conservative right-wing enclaves.
Clinton's Administration meanwhile ended with rather half-hearted maintenance of limited sanctions against Iraq--a circumstance that was highly unsatisfactory to these Republican right wing hawks, who greatly missed the regular, mighty flexing of American military muscle that characterised Ronald Reagan's years in office. To the neoconservatives, it appeared as if the Bush Administration was destined to follow much the same course as Clinton had and that appalling prospect was totally unsatisfactory by their determinations, since America needed to resume its 'rightful' destiny as champion of world freedom (with or without brute force), and the world's policeman.
As the Bush candidacy for President gained strength and finally succeeded (rightfully or wrongly), many of the original conservative Republican hawks who had signed the Project for the New American Century manifesto had since moved firmly into the Bush camp, taking a number of important positions within the new administration. Included were Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, State Department policy wonks Richard Armitage and John Bolton, and Elliott Abrams, now the National Security Council's top Mideast Advisor.
Initially, there were indications that this neoconservative and strongly Israeli-influenced theory didn't have much impact on George Dubya. That is, until the events of 11 September occurred, strangely prompting Bush and his people to think of Iraq in terms of being somehow inextricably associated with the new terrorist threat. Suddenly, the theory took serious hold in many military and political circles, aided and strongly pushed by these same Republican hawks AND the very strong and highly influential pro-Israeli lobbies that haunt Washington like an unseen, but powerfully felt specter. It wasn't long thereafter that this theory of replacing Saddam with an American installed democracy became the core of a new Administrative philosophy towards the Southwest Asian region, and it appears to be this tremendous political steamroller of a theory that now lies at the hidden center of the Bush Administration's manic determination to remove Saddam Hussein, once and for all.
Of course, we are at this time (as this is being written at the end of March 03) about a week into what was supposed to be a veritable blitzkrieg of an invasion of Iraq, having been told that Iraq would crumble into abject acquiescence upon initially encountering the first waves of US troops. Saddam, we were told by our smug, calmly self-assured, and camera-smirking Chief Executive, would quickly capitulate when his people rose up to overthrow him, welcoming US troops as 'liberators'. It would all be over quickly, almost bloodlessly, thanks to our superior technological wizardry, our precise ability to 'surgically' cauterise enemy targets, and, I suppose, the awesome Christian purity of our nation's high-minded moral purpose...
What a surprise, then, to suddenly find a strong and almost passionate resistance by the Iraqi people to our acts of 'liberation'! What a surprise to find Iraqi 'Fedayeen' irregulars and guerillas substantially impeding our progress towards Baghdad with tough resistance! And most of all...what a surprise to find that we are sustaining greater and greater numbers of casualties and losses, as the sandstorms and desert conditions found in Iraq bog our invasion down appreciably...especially after it having been unceasingly insinuated by virtually all our national leraders (except Colin Powell, who has the benefit of experience in this particular arena--unlike the 'Chickenhawks' who are ironically the most vociferous instigators of this war) that we could win this war without taking losses or even substantial casualties. "Why, the whole country will simply roll up before our armed might and Americans will all be welcomed as liberators!" In a pig's eye! If anything, the United States from here on in shall be looked upon as one of the most dangerously aggressive imperialist powers the modern world has ever seen.
All this tells me is that once again, the USA has demonstrated its invariable and complete failure to understand the rest of the world that lies beyond its continental borders, for the simplistic idea that this part of the world is ready to adopt the complex political and cultural intricacies of 'Western Style Democracy' is absolutely daft, bonkers, ludicrous to the extreme, and serious evidence (in my opinion) of rampant epidemic mental instability in Washington DC. Such ideas clearly have more to do with Walt Disney's Fantasyland productions than they do with extant achievable socio-economic realities.
As a person who has spent many years living among the various Arab peoples of this part of the world, I know from first hand observation and experience that virtually all of the present Arab speaking countries in Southwest Asia are extremely poor candidates for any adoption of 'Western Style Democracy' as envisioned by the hopelessly deluded right wing neoconservatives in their reality-detached little monastic enclaves. Arab society is, first of all, an exclusively tribal-based culture, that shares very little similarity with present western systems of government. The vast list of political, social, economic, and cultural characteristics that are at polar odds with what would be typified as conventional western qualities begins there and continues to infinity, so dissimilar are these regions of the world from each other. The prospect of an orderly democratic Arab republic (wherein all citizens vote and share equal responsibilities for sustaining a 'free and representative society') taking root and thriving in the Middle East is simply and completely laughable! For those who would point to the State of Israel as proof that such a concept can work, I hasten to point out that the controlling cultural element of the Israeli State is comprised exclusively of Ashkenaz Jews (European and western derived) and not the indigenous Semitic peoples of that nation. Therefore, to think that an American style (or at least American supported) government will work in Iraq (presupposing Saddam's overthrow) verges on total insanity.
The sad truth of this whole mess we are embroiled in is that we are now irretrievably committed to what promises to be one of the very worst and most costly military misadventures ever undertaken by the United States of America. Whether you consider the possible outcomes from a political, diplomatic, economic, religious, or cultural basis, the United States of America can only come out a complete loser (yet still a very dangerous one) in the eyes of the rest of the world.
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[I have a strong feeling that after all this is over, even the tragedy of Vietnam will start to look good in retrospect. The good news, of course (I'm being ironic), is that we can put all the massive costs of this unnecessary war and the immense expenses associated with mopping up after the last bullet is fired on a sort of national charge card and defer all thoughts of coping with the mind-boggling bill until some happy day in the future (an unending future of deficit spending?). That is, is it not, the great American solution to all things? If you can't afford to buy something outright, charge it!
I am not a conventionally religious person, least of all a person of the 'Christian' religious persuasion, but if I were, I'd get down on my knees and utter a fervently sincere prayer to the heavens, right now...."God help us all"! Unfortunately, whatever gods may in fact exist seem to have left humanity to settle its own silly squabbles, so someone in Washington had better get a grip on sanity before our nation implodes and collapses upon itself in one great melt-down of strained credibility and impossibly distorted perceptions of achievable reality! One of the greatest tragedies associated with this vastly ignorant war that Bush and his administration' neoconservative clique have launched is that if we had had more voting American citizens with half a functioning brain cell left to reflect on things in depth, Bush would never have been elected to begin with.]
Ides of May 2003...........................................................................................................................
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Some useful links: The Carnegie Endowment ; Project for a New American Century
