Pre-emptive War: A Dangerous New Definition of 'Freedom'?Pre-emptive War: A Dangerous New Definition of 'Freedom'?
(or...George Orwell's '1984' Revisited)
It is now just over a full year since the awful, shocking reality of terrorism carried to American soil hit our nation with full force. As a nation of innocents, governed by erstwhile 'elected' officials who stand to gain much by keeping Americans in the isolated cloisters of marginal worldly awareness (that perpetual state that so characterises our painfully deficit understanding of the rest of the world), it should come as no surprise to those of us who are still alert and keenly aware of threats to American democracy, that the drums of war are presently being thumped loudly by the nation's ultra right-of center 'moderates' (read: Dubya Bush and his Republican warhawks).
In spite of the fact that less than a clear majority of the American people voted our 'Commander in Chief' into elected office, this simplistic Texan expatriate who unfortunately leads our nation now has the audacity to insinuate that by sole virtue of our preeminence as the world's remaining sole superpower, 'we' (read; the President, exclusive of any consent from the American people) may assume the power to declare any nation or regime we deem an enemy worthy of an unannounced, preemptive military attack! Not only does this defy the most basic laws of international law (in fact the very essence of what the United Nations was intended to protect against), it also defies any understanding, whatsoever, that is based upon basic logic or minimal wisdom.
What is most terrifying about this incredibly insane proposal is the fact that our President wants to incorporate this presumption into the basic standing foreign relations policy of our nation, a nation founded upon the tenets of utmost (nearly sacred) respect for the freedom, dignity, and national rights of all peoples and all nations of the world. To any fiercely insightful, independent thinker (who respects the intellectual traditions and egalitarian founding principles of American democracy), these are little short of the ravings of a madman! In fact, this sort of megalomaniacal raving would be better understood if it were lifted from the annals of past (and present) totalitarian regimes which respected no man or principle, beyond the self-bestowed entitlements of absolute brute power and autocratic whim.
Very recently, Germany's Justice Minister (Herta Daeubler-Gmelin) compared Dubya's proposed resolution to those of Adolf Hitler's---a bravely outspoken perception, in my opinion, that unfortunately severely embarrassed Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Schroeder's reaction was understandable and predictable, due to the complex political understandings and delicate diplomatic protocols that tenuously link present-day Germany to the USA, but it doesn't detract from the fact that Daeubler-Gmelin was entirely correct in her assessment. This is indeed the sort of absolutely shocking proposal one would expect to hear from any of history's most storied and tyrannical despots. In one breath, Dubya has suggested that the very nation that has for the last 50 years grimly condemned the peoples of Japan for their unprovoked raid on Pearl Harbor now wants to grant itself that very same option: an unannounced (and largely unprovoked) attack on the sovereign nation of Iraq! By what twist of logic? By what skewing of reason? And by what, pray tell, reordering interpretation of the sacred principles of this democratic republic that has for close to 300 years stood as the most outspoken and forceful international champion of political freedom and national autonomy?
That having all been said, I hasten to agree that what the United States experienced on the 9th of September of 2001 did indeed constitute a most singularly heinous and contemptible act of international terrorism. Of that, there can be no argument by most standards of reasoning. The tremendous sense of loss and grief thus engendered are genuine and understandable. However, the fact apparently has been overlooked in the midst of all the emoting that this risk of terrorist attack is one of the unavoidable dangers that any truly free society MUST openly face and contend with, in the course of conducting its international and internal affairs. Most regrettably, the American Republican right-wing warhawks have seized upon this egregious act of terrorism as a golden enabling opportunity to redefine our national concepts of freedom as something a lot more akin to totalitarianism, than representative democracy. We are seeing this now, as the movement mounts to tighten up or overtly encroach upon the traditional civil liberties that Americans have taken for granted over the past 375 year. As dangerously right-wing zealots like Attorney General Ashcroft, Vice-President Cheney, and others closely involved in the Republican warhawk circles press for LESS military power constraints and MORE internal scrutiny of American private citizens, we should all be afraid. We should all be VERY AFRAID!
The outrageous nature of Dubya's unbelievable behavior aside, much of the sparse factual underpinning of his arguments to strike hard and without restraint at Iraq is grossly at odds with the facts. While the US military planners (read: the Pentagon) are assuring us that all their studies and intelligence analyses categorically show that Iraq poses an immediate threat to the USA, the intelligence assessments coming from our own CIA and National Security Agency (to name just two) suggest otherwise---that Iraq does not pose an immediate and unacceptably dangerous threat to our country. Thus, to put it more prosaically, it would appear that the Poker deck that the Prez is currently playing with is not only short a few cards, it's also full of extra jokers!
Yes, Iraq is a bad regime("Bad dog, Iraq, bad, bad, bad!...") and yes, Saddam Hussein is a vicious and remorseless dictator of the worst sort; this does not, however, justify our taking direct action to single-handedly fly off to that part of the world to clean his clock once and for all! Not only that, but virtually the entire rest of the world has stated loudly and clearly that it does not support the United States in this ambition. The Arab nations themselves have stated the case even more carefully: to attempt this sort of unilateral aggression against Iraq would likely result in a powerful reaction on the part of all Islamic nations against the United States, thereby even further widening the now perilously wide chasm that yawns between the USA and the Arab nations of the Southwest Asian region. The instability that would ensue in that region, following a major US strike against Baghdad, would be immense and troublesome for many years, undoubtedly further increasing the chances of even more terrorism of the sort we were painfully exposed to a year ago.
Further, the Presidential 'Wild-West Show' presently focusing all of our attention on the idea of mounting up the national posse to ride out after Saddam, obfuscates the real core issue implicit in all of this emotional rattling of war sabres by the warhawks. That chief issue remains, has always been, and is likely to remain, the still unresolved Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Simultaneous with his efforts to roust the entire nation into a fighting frenzy against the Iraqi boogeyman, Dubya continues to dither and embroider ineffectually about the genuine need to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue first. Unfortunately, the American military and intelligence communities have committed so completely over the past decades to murky intelligence sharing cooperations with Israel's Mosad, that that, plus the substantial and relentless Jewish-American lobbying on Israel's behalf, has resulted in a very, very difficult and potentially embarrassing situation for the USA that the present administration is loath to jeopardise. Thus, while Israel brutally escalates its repression of the Palestinians (ostensibly as an unavoidably necessary 'measured response') every week, the Dubya Administration continues to hem and haw nervously, coughing apologetically and ineffectually in the bloody background as Israeli troops continue their organised slaughter of any and all Arabs they deem 'terrorists'. (Sound familiar?)
For all of these reasons cited above, the latest Dubya campaign to petition the Congress of the United States to grant the President the power to dash off on a whim to bomb the living daylights out of any nation or group of partisan (non-national) people he deems a threat is simply scandalously and egregiously outrageous! I am of the personal opinion that if the average American individual had enough undamaged brain-cells left over each day, after being spoon-fed another 24 hours of mindlessly diverting American pop-culture trash, to think things through logically, he'd be onto Dubya faster than a nervous Chihuahua goes after his fleas. Most regrettably, a great number of Americans are either right-wing knee-jerk reactionary patriots (the kind that automatically waggle the American flag whenever they are uncertain, threatened, or simply confused--which is most of the time) or simple-minded morons who are more concerned with the size of their Sport Utility Vehicles than they are with the rectitude of national policy, and by virtue of this unhappy fact of American life, Dubya will probably end up getting his way, after all (and drag us all off to hell in his own inimitable, short-sighted manner). Hooray!
One last little aside to all of the internal surveillance analysts now set about the task, by our intel agencies, of keeping an eye on little ten-cent tirades like this one (and who are doubtless visiting this website at least once a week...or do I flatter myself needlessly?): Stop wasting your time and my time, friends. Stop questioning the honest motives of insightful Americans such as myself and others who dare to point out these latest threats to American civil rights and start focusing instead on the likely lads in the halls of our Congress and the White House who appear so certain that they may now safely complete the virtual cultural imprisonment of American citizens (through commercial media and infotainment conditioning) into legitimately enforced political imprisonment (through internal surveillance and domestic spying policies, focusing on the 'suspicious' activities of concerned private citizens). Otherwise stated: GET A LIFE! THIS IS YOUR NATION THAT IS PROGRESSIVELY GOING DOWN THE TUBES, AS MUCH AS IT IS MINE!
And now, please excuse me for another month. I have to go beat the wife, kick the dog, and carry on all those small but immensely fulfilling symbolic activities that perpetually remind me of what an absolute joy it is to be a citizen of the most powerful (and philosophically capricious) self-actualised military super-power left in the world!
Be well citizens (really)! C2
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(Image credit: ALTERNATIVE PRESS REVIEW, Vol. 7, No.1, Spring 2002)
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