There was something almost pathetic about George W. Bush's
attempt to make his fight against terrorism akin to the fight
against the Nazis.
In his State of the Union address, he evoked the comparison
when he said that North Korea, Iran, Iraq, "and their
terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil."
That's a big stretch.
North Korea and Iran have both showed signs of opening up
to the West over the last four years. Diplomatic efforts could
bring them even closer to a rapprochement. Bluster and
stigmatas will only alienate them.
(By the way, Bush could have used a fact-checker. He said
that "an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope
for freedom." Check your almanac, George. Iran's
President Mohammad Khatami, a moderate reformist, was elected
in 1997 and reelected last June.)
What's more, the idea that North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are
somehow working together to take over the world as Germany,
Italy, and Japan did is laughable. Iran and Iraq hate each
other and waged a devastating war against each other in the
1980s--back when the United States was supporting Saddam
Hussein.
There is no evidence today that they are allied together or
with North Korea.
So Bush was falling on his axis when he tried to make that
claim.
He also hyped the threat against the United States when he
said, "Freedom is at risk." As horrific as the
attacks of September 11 were, freedom was never at risk and
the existence of the United States was never in peril. Osama
bin Laden and Al Qaeda did commit an unspeakably grotesque
crime when they killed thousands of Americans, but they never
posed a threat to the survival of this country. During World
War II, the survival of the free world was at stake, as were
the lives of millions of innocent people.
Today, the terrorists may be able to carry out a few
individual acts of horror, but they do not hold the balance of
freedom in their hands.
Bush is exaggerating the risk for several reasons.
First, it solves his existential dilemma. Before September
11, he was the most immature 55-year-old in the country, with
little clear idea of why he became President. The attacks gave
meaning to his life, and the graver he makes them out to be,
the more important his role.
Second, by magnifying the threats, he is able to play to
the traditional Republican strength in the polls, since the
American public has more confidence in the Republicans to
defend the nation.
Third, it allows him to expand the Pentagon budget to
unseen heights. "My budget includes the largest increase
in defense spending in two decades, because while the price of
freedom and security is high, it is never too high," he
said. "Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will
pay it." The enormous Pentagon budget not only satisfies
Pentagon contractors, it blackmails Democrats, who might want
to spend on some urgently needed social programs. Said Bush:
"Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and
short term so long as Congress restrains spending and acts in
a fiscally responsible way."
Note that Bush views himself as unfettered by Congress and
the Constitution to wage his worldwide campaign against
terrorists and regimes that sponsor terrorism. In the first
sentence of his address, he declared, "Our nation is at
war," but he never asked for or received a formal
declaration of war from Congress.
And when Congress gave him authorization to use force in
September, it said that such use of force had to be limited to
individuals, groups, or nations connected to the attacks of
September 11. Congress did not give him carte blanche to wage
war against any and all terrorists everywhere, or against
regimes that seek chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.
He has taken that power unto himself, as he enunciates the
Bush doctrine of permanent war.
It's a war that won't risk global annihilation, like World
War II or the Cold War did. That is some solace. "A
common danger is erasing old rivalries. American is working
with Russia, China, and India in ways we have before to
achieve peace and prosperity," he said. The bouquet to
China was well-thrown, since Bush's missile defense plans,
reiterated in his speech, look ominous to Beijing.
But Bush's permanent war will likely will likely sow seeds
of discord among our European allies and stir pots of
resentment throughout the Islamic world.
It will likely drain our Treasury of much-needed funds for
rebuilding schools, ending poverty and homelessness, and
providing universal health care.And it will likely result in
the U.S. military killing tens of thousands of Third World
civilians, if not more.
-- Matthew Rothschild, The
Progressive, 2/1/02
(Top)
Open Letter from an American to
the World: HELP!
December 28, 2001
By Jeremy Brecher
The Bush Administration is blundering into a global
conflagration. There is currently no force within the
U.S. likely to stop it. It is up to the rest of the
world, and especially America’s friends and allies -- both
governments and their citizens -- to constrain its rush to
disaster.
The Bush administration was warned by its European and Arab
allies and its friends around the world to avoid:
--A long bombing campaign with significant civilian casualties
in Afghanistan.
--Seizure of Kabul by the Northern Alliance.
--Bombing Afghanistan during Ramadan.
--Failure to reestablish the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process.
--Withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.
Each of these warnings was ignored. And the emerging
result of these and similar Bush Administration policies is a
vast global destabilization that is acquiring a momentum going
far beyond the responses to September 11. As The New
York Times reports, "new battlegrounds" have opened
up "from the Palestinian territories to Kashmir."
Whether or not the war in Afghanistan was justified, the issue
is no longer about destroying Al Qaeda, or removing the
repressive Taliban regime, or even whether the U.S. will
attack Iraq.
The issue is now an emerging world crisis provoked by a
superpower administration that is acting without rational
consideration of the effects of its actions. The number
of additional civil and international wars it may stir up is
simply incalculable -- and certainly is not being rationally
calculated by the Bush administration.
This represents a new stage in testing what it means to be the
world’s only superpower. As a German official put it
in The New York Times, in the past Washington determined its
national interest in shaping international rules, behavior,
and institutions.
"Now Washington seems to want to pursue its national
interest in a more narrowly defined way, doing what it wants
and forcing others to adapt."
The Bush Administration has a list of dozens of countries for
possible intervention, and it is presently debating who’s
next. "Pentagon officials have openly agitated to
finish off Mr. [Saddam] Hussein.... Recently an American
delegation from the State Department was in northern Iraq,
discussing activities in that part of Iraq with Kurdish
leaders... [S]ome administration officials say that Pakistan
may be where the next phase of the war must unfold."
Somalia, the Sudan, the Philippines -- the shopping list goes
on and on.
The Bush administration’s global destabilization is not
limited to the war on terrorism. U.S. withdrawal from
the ABM treaty is initiating a new nuclear arms race.
Joseph Biden, Jr., the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign
Relations Committee, cites widely reported U.S. intelligence
community conclusions that "pulling out of ABM would
prompt the Chinese to increase their nuclear arsenal tenfold,
beyond the modernization they are doing anyway.... And
when they build up, so will the Indians, and when the Indians
do, so will the Pakistanis. And for what? A system
no one is convinced will work."
It is an illusion to believe that the U.S. is in any way in
control of events. Consider the mid-East peace process.
Just as Bush and Powell were rolling out a major peace
initiative, the combination of war parties in Israel and
Palestine sabotaged it completely.
The U.S. then tilted wildly toward the very forces in Israel
that had sabotaged the U.S. initiative. The attack on
the Indian parliament -- believed by our new friend India to
have been organized with the connivance of our old friend
Pakistan -- threatens to provoke a war that the U.S. will now
be in the middle of.
The U.S. justification for its attack on Afghanistan as
"harboring terrorists" has already been echoed
almost word for word by India, Israel, Russia, and China for
their own purposes. The use of the "right of
self-defense" as a justification for a unilateral
decision to attack any country one accuses of harboring
terrorists provides a pretext that any national leader can now
use to make war against anyone it chooses in complete
disregard of international law.
Internal constraints?
There is something that peoples and governments around the
world need to understand: There are currently no
effective internal constraints on what the Bush Administration
can or will do. Because of popular response to the
September 11 attacks, the Administration feels --correctly, at
least for a time -- that it can do anything without having to
fear dissent or opposition.
It withdrew from the ABM treaty with barely a ripple of public
questioning. Its endorsement of Sharon’s attacks on
the Palestinian Authority wins overwhelming Congressional
support. Open advocacy of a military attack and
occupation of Iraq causes no stir.
The peace movement that has challenged Bush administration
policies may become a significant restraint in the future, but
it isn’t now.
Nor is there any effective institutional constraint. The
U.S. Congress has almost unanimously given the Administration
a blank check to conduct any military operations it chooses.
Practical concerns of senior military officers at the Pentagon
are apparently ignored by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
and his ubiquitous supporters. Secretary of State Colin
Powell, looked to by many as a source of reason and restraint,
has been unable to make the Administration heed any of the
warnings listed above. It is hard to detect any
indication of a business or foreign policy
"Establishment" putting any constraints on the
unleashing of US power.
Most serious of all is a lack of constraint based on rational
evaluation of long-term consequences. As an
"exuberant senior aide" put it recently, the Bush
administration is "on a roll"; its "biggest
concern" is "how to make maximum use of the military
as well as the diplomatic momentum he has built up abroad and
the political capital he has accumulated at home."
As an article in The Guardian entitled "Washington hawks
get power boost: Rumsfeld is winning the debate" puts it,
"For the time being, at least, there is little in
Washington to stop Mr. Rumsfeld chasing America’s foes all
the way to Baghdad."
A time for friends to help friends
The U.S. in the Cold War era at least purported to be
protecting its allies. But today, as the U.S. projects
its power unilaterally, it friends and allies are the ones
most likely to feel the blowback from destabilization in the
form of terrorism, refugees, recession, and war.
It is up to governments and civil society outside the U.S. to
put constraints on what it does -- both for their own sake and
for America’s.
In the Suez Crisis of 1956, the armies of Britain, France, and
Israel invaded Egypt and began advancing on the Suez Canal.
The U.S. under President Eisenhower intervened -- not to
support the invaders but to restrain them. It is time
for the world to return the favor. For example:
* A "coalition" in which the U.S. Goliath cuts
a separate deal with each "coalition partner" is a
formula for U.S. dictation. U.S. coalition partners must
insist that the U.S. spell out its intentions for open world
discussion before they agree to provide any support.
* U.S. coalition partners with few exceptions oppose
U.S. attacks on Iraq, Somalia, the Sudan, or anywhere else.
Yet it is no secret that planning for such attacks is under
way in Washington. Coalition partners must move from
private grumbling to a concerted public united front against
such actions.
* The U.N. can serve as an arena for challenging and
providing alternatives to superpower supremacy. At the
least, the U.S. can be forced to isolate itself by vetoing
resolutions that run counter to its unilateralism.
(The Security Council recently voted 12 to 1, with Britain and
Norway abstaining, for a resolution calling for international
monitors in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The U.S.
vetoed the resolution -- thereby isolating itself from many of
its own "coalition partners.")
Strong, unified, public endorsement of Secretary-General Kofi
Annan’s campaign against an attack on Iraq would have a big
impact in the U.S. at this point.
* It has been widely reported in the U.S. that foreign
critics of the war in Afghanistan have now concluded that they
were wrong because the war was short and because it freed
Afghans, especially women, from the tyranny of the Taliban.
This is being used in Washington to argue that popular opinion
abroad need not be regarded as an impediment to further U.S.
attacks elsewhere. Washington needs to hear a clear
message that that is not the case.
* There are concrete ways in which people and
governments can begin putting the brakes on Washington.
The refusal of European countries to extradite suspects who
may be subject to military tribunals or the death penalty
provides an excellent example.
This is going to be a long struggle, not just about one
policy, but about a basic historical tendency of the world’s
only superpower. It is sad but true that the rest of the
world may not have enough leverage in the short run to stop
the U.S. from attacking whomever it chooses to target next.
But it is time to begin laying the groundwork for a long-term
strategy of containment.
Such international pressure can serve as a deterrent to the
craziest actions the Bush administration is considering.
For example, press reports suggest that opposition from
Russia, Europe, and Arab countries may be leading Bush’s
advisors at least to delay an attack on Iraq on the grounds
that "there is insufficient international backing."
If U.S. friends and coalition partners toll the alarm bell, it
will begin to evoke different responses in Congress, the
Pentagon, corporate elites, and the American public as well,
especially as the untoward consequences of the Bush
administration juggernaut become apparent.
Without an outside wake-up call, these forces are currently
prepared to plunge into the abyss in an empty-minded trance.
Restraining the Bush Administration is anything but
anti-American. It is the best thing America’s friends
can do for us right now.
We have a slogan here: "Friends don’t let friends
drive drunk."
PLEASE: America’s friends need to take the car keys away
until this power-drunk superpower sobers up.
Jeremy Brecher is an historian and the author of twelve books,
including GLOBALIZATION FROM BELOW, and producer of the video
documentary GLOBAL VILLAGE OR GLOBAL PILLAGE? (website:
www.villageorpillage.org
Anyone is welcome to forward or reprint this piece.
Anthony Lewis' Farewell Column in the New York Times
