Iraq War: A Policy of Christian and Jewish Fundamentalism; Worse LiesAhead

Iraq War: A Policy of Christian and Jewish Fundamentalism; Worse Lies
Ahead
Saul Landau
Progreso Weekly, 24 April 2003

"Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows".
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Congratulations to George W. Bush, winner and still champion after
defeating a highly ranked heavyweight contender! Indeed, the heroic US
victory in Iraq should engrave 43’s name in the history books. The Bush
Doctrine means fighting "preemptive" wars with disarmed nations that in
the very distant future might conceivably threaten US interests. In
Christian lore, the US invasion of Iraq will find its justification in
the first three words of the adage: "Do unto others..."

The biblical talk overflowed from the White House, but military
commanders, under orders from their civilian bosses, dispatched troops
to protect the oilfields while other US soldiers, also under orders,
stood by and allowed if not encouraged the destruction of the very
sacred relics to which the Bible refers. "Praise God and speak
reverently of His works, but watch carefully over your newly acquired
treasure", the Bible should have said.

The gap between words and deeds should make people laugh as we already
hear threats of the next war. Those who screamed loudest in Congress
about supporting our troops cut their benefits. No matter! The headlines
and lead stories barely reported that. Instead, we saw on TV the
American flag – flying high and being waved, of course. A good section
of the anxious US public seems eager to accept as truth any nonsense
uttered from the White House and repeated in the media. Use God early
and often in each speech!

"Let the word go forth", George Bush (43) has chosen war as his (or His)
method of forging peace - and getting re-elected. Taking his orders
from his own special Christian God and his brilliant political
manipulators, Bush has set out on a divine mission of "liberation". The
billion people who adhere to the Islamic faith – do they share a
collective memory of the Crusades? – should feel rightfully
apprehensive.

With the bodies of Iraqis still unburied and the once fabled ancient
treasures either missing or destroyed, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
threatens Syria. Nothing new! It’s the old "possessing weapons of mass
destruction" and "harboring terrorists" crap. Syrians should understand
that the President makes rapid decisions. He needs no evidence to
convince him of the righteous course. He acts with an air of total
confidence. Policy depends not on facts or analysis, but on his trusted
gut feeling about good and evil. He explained to an Oklahoma City
audience what distinguishes "us" from "them".

Last August 29, he said: "See, we love - we love freedom. That's what
they didn't understand. They hate things; we love things. They act out
of hatred; we don't seek revenge, we seek justice out of love".

To combat evil, to find justice and love, the best of human nature, Bush
of course relies on war – to obtain peace. And God, for Bush, made us
the most powerful military force. So, as soon as US forces were ready
for action after 9/11, Bush ordered them to attack the mighty Taliban in
Afghanistan. When the bombs and missiles exploded, the Afghan losses
made the numbers lost in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon pale.
Explosives rained on the land ruled by the Saudi-backed fundamentalists
where wicked Al Qaeda had training camps.

Few of the cogniscenti saw Afghanistan as the beginning of a new US
imperial order. Whatever Bush said, they took it as logical "revenge".
Surely, the Republican dominated ruling elite would temper "the
youngster’s" overseas behavior. But the young emperor, using terrorism
as his loose metaphor for all evil, continued to pursue war in the evil
region - against Iraq. Bush (43) made it clear to other governments
that he cared not a Texas hoot what they think.

Wow, says Hans Blix, the former Chief UN Weapons Inspector. On April 9,
Blix told El Pais in Madrid that "there is evidence that this war was
planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their
attitude to the (weapons) inspections". Was Blix naïve?

Perhaps he didn’t take Bush’s threats seriously because they rang with
that religious fundamentilist timbre that seemed, well, inappropriate
for modern, sophisticated US power. But Bush had made his intentions
clear. On September 5, 2002, Bush spoke to Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya and
others using a Louisville, Kentucky audience as his medium: "I want to
send the signal to our enemy that you have aroused a compassionate and
decent and mighty nation, and we're going to hunt you down".

A war to bring about his deepest religious desires! "You need to tell
your loved ones, the little ones in particular, that when they hear the
President talking about al Qaeda, Iraq and other places, I do so because
I long for peace".

For Bush - ignorant of Orwell’s 1984 - peace meant war. "When we need
to be plenty tough, we're going to be plenty tough. And they're [the
terrorists] learning another thing about America. When we need to be
compassionate and loving, we can be compassionate and loving, too".

Most pundits and politicians apparently missed the sea change in world
affairs that resulted from the 9/11 events. What many saw as a temporary
shift – the revenge cycle – has turned into a long-term alteration in
the geo-political order. 9/11 served as a US equivalent of Hitler’s
1933 Reichstrag fire in which "fighting terrorism" became the pretext
for radical new forms of control at home and abroad.

Look at the changes. In place of law, the UN, NATO and other treaties,
Bush substituted naked US power, which he and his minions justify
either with biblical jibberish or neo-Metternichean jargon. (Prince
Klemens von Metternich led Austria on its imperial path during the first
half of the 19th century. Metternich stressed that heads of state must
make policies including war to secure peace. He saw revolution and
rebellious or non-complaint behavior as diseases and tried to suppress
them everywhere.)

To wage war, Bush needed sufficient backing at home – to Hell with the
rest of the world. So, he used the tried and true demonization method,
insinuating that the devilish Saddam had somehow directed the 9/11
attacks. In his speeches and press conferences, he demonized a truly bad
man without presenting any evidence of actual links that Saddam had to
terrorists or weapons of mass destruction. These same accusatory
speeches came replete with multiple references to God and peace.

The spin worked. By March 19, 2003, when US forces invaded Iraq, a
substantial percentage of the public had become convinced that Saddam
had not only "gassed his own people" but had inflicted the 9/11 damage
on "us". Thus, Bush was right to invade.

Most of our allies – except for England, Spain and Australia – had
watched with an air of disbelief the belligerent foreplay before the
aggressive penetration. Bush really wouldn’t make war without Security
Council backing! Then, when he made war, they protested and wrung their
hands.

They had expected the civilized Colin Powell to stall the war machine.
After all, important sectors of the ruling elite, including Daddy Bush
(41) and his consigliere James Baker and Brent Scowcroft had evinced
serious reservations about going ahead without UN support.

But the supposedly prudent Secretary of State demonstrated that his
servility outweighed his caution. When the crucial debate occurred in
the United Nations Security Council, the opponents of war had
insufficient cojones to stand dramatically against Bush’s war of naked,
unprovoked aggression. Nor did the leading Democrats – there were a few
exceptions like Senator Robert Byrd (W-WV) and Congressman Dennis
Kucinic (D-OH) - have the courage to warn him and the nefarious chicken
hawks that planned the attack that they were about to commit war crimes.

The Bushies laughed at the wussy-like Democrats, scoffed at the
weak-willed European opposition, sneered at the once-powerful Russians
and commercially addicted Chinese. They occasionally patted Blair,
America’s pet poodle on the head and scorned those Cassandras warned
about the reaction of "the angry Arab street" and "world public
opinion".

"How many divisions do they have?" Bush might well have asked,
paraphrasing Stalin’s mocking of the Pope who disapproved of his
policies as his administration practiced the politics of raw power.

They took what had been peripheral issues at best – like Iraq having
weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda as imminent threats to
US security – and made them central. Simultaneously, they deftly
distorted facts that the media predictably lacked the curiosity to
check. But they knew they could count on the media to present memory
eroding volleys of changing "Reality TV in Iraq" images.

When the ruling elite leaned on him to get UN backing before going to
war, the Bushies took spinning to a new level. Saddam, they charged, had
violated UN Security Council resolutions. The very organization that
Bush had routinely disparaged as worthless, now took on holy status.
Saddam’s sin of sins was his violation of UN resolutions.

So, repetition of charges: weapons of mass destruction, links to Al
Qaeda, violation of UN resolutions and "he tried to kill Daddy" –
referring to an ambiguous assassination attempt in Kuwait in 1993 –
became the Administration mantra. At no time, did the President present
evidence. He simply repeated the accusations. Hey, who are you going to
believe, your president or the guy who gassed his own people?

Instead of telling him "go sleep it off", the cowardly Democrats, ever
fearful that someone will expose them as "weak", wrung their hands,
publicly accepted Bush’s claptrap and in October 2002 awarded him
special wartime powers. (The Senate vote was 77-23.)

The Bush planners had already decided to fight this war without concern
for law (a fig leaf at best) or international opinion. It surprised few
people that the immense superiority of US weaponry defeated a far
weaker military force – especially one like Iraq’s, which had basically
disarmed before the invasion. The Americans didn’t even really need the
British.

The lesson: circumvent international law, the UN and world public
opinion and substitute brute force and the world will grasp the
essentials of the US order in the 21st Century. Hail America, America
waives the rules!

Of course, it helped to target a universally despised villain and fool.
But Saddam didn’t use mass destruction weapons against the invading
Americans and British. Perhaps he didn’t have any such lethal arms. Time
will tell.

The historical record shows US Administrations in the 1970s and 80s
cooperating with this ogre when it suited their interests. Documents
show Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam’s hand in 1983 as
President Reagan’s envoy. Rummy helped facilitate Iraq’s acquisition of
chemical and biological weapons and US logistical help to deploy them.

Coincidentally, several administration officials have close ties to
companies that will materially benefit from the war, like Vice President
Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton that will make billions on the
rebuilding of Iraq. In the March 17, 2003 New Yorker, Seymour Hersh
offers substantial evidence to show that US Defense Policy Board
Chairman Richard Perle used his inside position to make substantial
fees. No reason not to do well while doing good!

These Jewish neo-cons and Christian fundamentalists have made a marriage
of bellicose convenience, in which the rest of the world gets screwed.
They see the world as theirs to win – unless something untoward occurs
in the 2004 election or the economy continues its downward spiral.

Consequences? Bush hasn’t talked about them. He dismissed the appearance
of up to 20 million people demonstrating in the streets of cities
throughout the world this winter as comparable to a "focus group".

But as Seumas Milne reports in the April 10 Guardian, the North Koreans
are paying close attention to both Bush’s policies and the reaction to
them. "As anti-war and anti-American demonstrations erupt throughout the
world", he writes, "North Korea's foreign ministry dramatized one
sobering lesson drawn from this four week war".

A North Korean government official said: "The Iraqi war shows that to
allow disarmament through inspections does not help avert a war, but
rather sparks it". The North Koreans concluded that to prevent attacks
on nations the United States has placed in the axis of evil, requires "a
tremendous military deterrent force".

As the sounds of prayer emanate from the White House, Milne sees the
chicken hawk planners of the Iraq war circling "around Syria and Iran".
They have provided "a powerful boost to nuclear proliferation". He
concludes that "anti western terror attacks seem inevitable, offset only
by the likelihood of a growing international mobilization against the
new messianic imperialism".

Amen, I say, in my non-religious way. I, like tens of millions of
others, will continue to resist.

Copyright 2003 Progreso Weekly