Endgame
by
Sadu Nanjundiah
Dissident Voice
March 8, 2003
As the Bush/Blair/Sharon Project (BBSP) enters its final phase,
there is only one of two possibilities of stopping the U.S–led war on Iraq:
either through the concerted power of world public opinion (and significantly
in the U.S and U.K) or a natural disaster that hits the U.S. The Bush
administration has made it clear that it will embark on this war with a
“coalition of the willing” or alone if necessary. From the President’s press
conference (March 6), it is all a matter of protecting American lives and
property and his constitutional responsibility as president to do everything
necessary to guard them from harm. The leaders of countries that have jumped on
his bandwagon include Australia, Japan, Spain and Italy, besides some others in
Eastern Europe. None of the countries (leaders and overwhelming majorities of
the people) in Asia (except Japan), Africa or Latin America has expressed
support for the Bush doctrine. In the Middle East, other than Israel (which is
a hard-core planner of the project), the people in Arab countries are
overwhelmingly opposed to the impending invasion of Iraq even as some of their
leaders have bemoaned the inevitability of war because of Saddam Hussein’s
“intransigence”. They are reluctant to alienate the U.S. leadership for a
variety of selfish reasons. Interestingly, some of the largest, broad-based
demonstrations against the war have taken place in the very nations whose
leaders support war on Iraq (as also the U.S and U.K). A majority of the people
polled in these countries is opposed to any war on Iraq. In the United States
also, polls indicate that most people would not support a unilateral U.S.
campaign against Iraq without widespread international support and an
unequivocal United Nations mandate. Which brings up the question, what sort of
“democracies” are these countries that support the Bush doctrine of “regime
change” in Iraq, replacing it’s dictator with a “democracy” that will serve as
a template for the other countries (save Israel) in the region?
The arguments
for war on Iraq have shifted as quickly as the sands of the Middle East – from
Iraqi defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions to Iraqi links with
al-Qaeda to possible Iraq - or Iraqi-supported terrorist groups - attacking
U.S/allies with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to the Iraqi government’s
repression of its own people (who need to be "liberated" from their
everyday suffering at the hands of the most tyrannical regime on earth). It
cannot escape even a cursory examination that several other countries are
“guilty” of violating U.N. resolutions similar to those Iraq is charged with
flouting but escape any scrutiny or sanction from the U.S – most notably
Israel. Israel has stocked large
quantities of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and has not signed any
of the conventions regulating their inspection or prohibiting their use.
Incredibly Israel routinely denies even possessing them. The first country to
have used nuclear weapons in war was the U.S.
It has used bombs plated with radioactive depleted Uranium in the Gulf
War of 1991 and in Yugoslavia a few years ago. The Pentagon has not forsworn
the use of low-yield nuclear weapons Iraq as “bunker busters” in the war on
Iraq.
U.N weapons
inspectors who operated in Iraq until 1998, before being withdrawn by the U.N
preceding the Clinton bombing spree, certified that 95% of Iraq’s WMD was
destroyed. Iraq has been subjected to the most severe sanctions in history
imposed on any country with every item it imports screened by a special committee
that included American representatives (with veto power). As Iraqi leaders have
said many times, the U.S./British alliance is asking their country to prove a
negative. If Iraqi does not display its stocks of "unaccounted" WMD
or provide the detailed chronology of when and how it destroyed them, it means
it must be “hiding” them. If it somehow produces them for inspection, it proves
what the Bush administration has been saying all along. No credible evidence
has been produced to demonstrate that Iraq is in possession of WMD and is
hiding them and continuing to produce them. Also, the matter of Iraq’s ability
to manufacture nuclear weapons within a matter of “months” as asserted by the
Bush/Blair administrations has been shown to be a concoction by none other than
Dr. ElBaradei of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission. The U.S. media, acting as shills to the administration’s plans,
peddled this lie to a gullible public. In the meantime, whatever Iraq does by
way of disarmament, such as destroying the al-Samoud missiles and providing its
scientists for personal interviews, is dismissed as “diversionary tactics” and
totally insufficient to warrant halting the U.S. military juggernaut massed on
Iraq’s borders.
There is no
legitimacy under international law for a pre-emptive war against a country that
poses no demonstrable threat to its neighbors or to the U.S. and its allies. So
it all comes down to cooking-up an excuse for the bombing to start. In 1991,
there were the cut & paste satellite pictures provided by the Pentagon to
the mass media that “showed” Iraqi troops massed on the Saudi Arabian border,
ready to " invade" that country. This was proved to be a shameless
fabrication by an intrepid reporter from Florida newspaper after the war was
over using commercial satellite pictures of the same area taken at the same
time as the Pentagon ostensibly obtained its images. And of course, there was
the inflammatory allegation made by the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter to the
U.S. Congress, alleging that she “witnessed” Iraqi occupation troops throwing
babies out of incubators in a Kuwait City hospital (from the comforts of her
Washington mansion no less), that helped sway Congress to providing a bare
majority support for Bush pere's war.
Come March 17,
the Bush administration will embark on an aerial slaughter of Iraqi people like
never before, dropping thousands of bombs and missiles daily on a beleaguered,
hapless people. The U.S. military will be doing again in Iraq what it did in
Vietnam, following its mission of “killing people to save people”, portraying
itself as “liberator” of Iraq from the evil clutches of Saddam Hussein. The coming war has all the inevitability and
appearance of an armed gang, short of cash, addicted to looting and committing
mayhem, desperately looking to satiate its craving for a “hit” after waiting so
long, going in for the kill into the neighborhood store. It is being presented
by Bush as a combination (or pick one from the smorgasbord ) of “war against
terror”, “elimination of WMD”, “removal of a cruel regime”, “liberation of a
repressed people”, and “prevention of a future attack on the U.S/its allies”.
The U.S. blitzkrieg will be presented as a reality TV show
("improving" upon Gulf War I which was "war as
entertainment" ). The devastating “smart” bombs that will hit the people
of Iraq will be like nothing else in the history of war. Already, TV news shows
have adopted the crusading, cowboy jargon of the fundamentalist President, with
captions proclaiming the coming “Showdown with Saddam”. People who question the
need for war, its justification or morality, are branded “traitors” or “anti
Americans”. Even wearing a Peace shirt in public will get one arrested. The
entire ruling class kleptocracy and its corporate/media supporters have been
afflicted with the mad cowboy disease. Saddam Hussein dancing naked on the
streets of Baghdad will not get Bush to call of his high-testosterone troops,
poised and salivating for the kill.
The terrorist
attacks on New York and Washington of September 11, 2001 were godsends to the
Reagan retreads that infest the Bush White House. Attorney General Ashcroft and
Homeland Security Chief Ridge are periodically trotted out to trumpet the
capture of yet another “terrorist” or the break-up of another “al-Qaeda cell”,
raising the anxiety levels of Americans even higher on the ridiculous color
code scale, especially around Islamic religious days. The continued ethnic
stereotyping and harassment of Arabs and Muslims could not be done more
blatantly and viciously. They come-up
with recommendations (duct tape and plastic sheet) that are tailor made for
comedy shows and the profit margins of companies contributing to the Bush war
chest. The climate of uncertainty and
fear that is constantly created by the right-wing media distorts and hides
reality from the public, lending the latter to offer some sort of qualified, if
confused, support for the administration’s agenda abroad and at home, even if
it means violating accepted norms of international law and morality as defined
by all the United Nations, various religions and the U.S. constitution itself.
Perpetual war and "regrettable" restrictions on civil liberties are
promoted as necessary “evils” in fighting “terrorism”.
The U.S. plutocracy
has cobbled together an exploitative socio-economic system together with a
concomitant set of beliefs and ideas to undergird it. People have been made to
accept, even to internalize, it. This rapacious class has honed a
self-sustaining system of political leadership that is largely interchangeable
between the two parties permitted to operate the machinery of capitalism. It
has consolidated the instruments of control – institutions of production,
commerce, service, social relations and culture. The broad masses of people are
made to think of the entire enterprise as just, fair, democratic, rational,
moral and entirely commonsensical. J. Sevan states (in Michael Foucault’s
“Discipline and Punish”), “A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron
chains but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of
their own ideas…this link is all the stronger in that we do not know of what it
is made and we believe it to be our own work; despair and time eat away the
bonds of iron …and on the soft fibers of the brain is founded the unshakable
base of the soundest Empires.”
We might heed
the warning of three notorious figures from the past before Bush embarks on his
imperial crusade (with Blair as equerry),
“When fascism
comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag” (Huey Long,
Louisiana, 1893-1935)
“Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is
easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the
pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works
the same in any country.” (Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering, 1946, Nuremberg
trials).
"Let them
hate, as long as they fear" (Roman emperor Caligula, as quoted recently by
U.S career foreign service officer, John Brady Kiesling, who resigned in
disgust at the Bush administration's war plans on Iraq)
Sadu Nanjundiah teaches physics at Central Connecticut State University in New
Britain, Connecticut, and works with the Coalition for Social Justice, a group
of faculty and students at CCSU that discusses and acts on issues of peace and
justice, locally and internationally. Email: sadanand@ccsu.edu