War
Games: "Old Europe" Confronts Washington
on Iraq
by Mark Weisbrot
Dissident Voice
February 12, 2003
The ink was
barely dry on the headline of USA Today -- "Bush: The Game Is Over"
-- when the response came from French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin:
"It's not a game. It's not over."
For the first
time in decades, the "Old Europe" that Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld so contemptuously dismissed is standing up to Washington. France and
Germany, together with Russia issued a joint statement on Iraq, calling for
increased inspections and a postponement of the war that President Bush wants
so badly. Within NATO, France, Germany, and Belgium have further angered
Washington by announcing they would veto a U.S. request for military equipment
to be used by Turkey in the war against Iraq.
It is too early
to tell whether the European leaders are serious, or merely setting up
political cover for a future capitulation to the Bush Administration. Some
would like to give in to Washington but are under pressure from the voting
public, which in Europe is overwhelmingly against the war.
Secretary of
State Colin Powell's long and boring presentation at the UN convinced only
those who really wanted to be convinced. So Saddam Hussein is a liar and a
cheat -- what else is new? Powell has been lying, too: his claim that UN
inspectors caught Iraq moving and hiding illicit materials was false. So, too,
was President Bush's assertion that the International Atomic Energy Agency had
found Iraq to be six months away from developing a nuclear weapon.
During the first
Gulf War, our government used manufactured evidence of all kinds to deceive the
American public. The Pentagon claimed it had satellite photos showing Iraqi
tanks and 250,000 troops poised to invade Saudi Arabia. Then there was the
horrifying story about Iraqi troops killing 312 babies in a Kuwaiti hospital by
stealing their incubators. Both of these stories played a major role in winning
domestic support for the war; both later turned out to be false.
Now we have
alleged links of Iraq to Al-Qaeda, although denied by our own CIA and British
intelligence. This is a joke. According to the standards adopted by the Bush
administration -- the presence of people associated with Al-Qaeda inside the
country -- "Old Europe" and even the United States would be shown to
have stronger ties than Iraq to Al-Qaeda.
The bottom line
is that this war has nothing to do with our national security. To the Bush
Administration, and its chief political strategist Karl Rove, it is a game.
It's a power grab. Having successfully used the confrontation with Iraq to win
both houses of Congress last November, they intend to ride their "War on
Terrorism" all the way to the White House in 2004.
These people
know how to read the polls. The Republicans have a 54-16 lead on "security"
issues, but would lose badly on the economy, jobs, the budget, Medicare, or any
other set of domestic issues. Not to mention the string of scandals -- Harken
Energy, Haliburton, Enron and other corporate malfeasance, and the September 11
intelligence failures -- that the war talk has allowed them to sidestep.
So they can grab
power at home, and power abroad -- control over Middle Eastern oil has been a
key component of American global dominance since the end of World War II. It's
a win-win situation. If the anger provoked by the mass killing of civilians in
Iraq leads to terrorist attacks on Americans, this will provide further
justification for Dick Cheney's vision of a war without end.
All this is
obvious to most of the world, but here at home it is obscured by the media.
Although most journalists are against the war, they mainly offer the Bush
Administration's point of view -- especially in the broadcast media. Our
journalists follow an unwritten rule: unless the leadership of the opposition
party offers a strong rebuttal, then reporting the news means reporting the
arguments of those who are in power.
And there's the
catch: the Democratic leadership has shamefully abdicated its responsibility to
oppose the war. This leaves tens of millions of Americans who do not want this
war -- a majority in some polls -- with very little representation in the major
news media, allowing the Administration a huge advantage in its daily public
relations campaign. If not for this advantage, Bush's game would certainly be
over.
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic
and Policy Research, a nonpartisan think-tank in
the nation's capital. Readers may write him at CEPR, 1621 Connecticut Ave NW,
Suite 500, Washington, DC 20009-1052 and e-mail him at Weisbrot@cepr.net