[Dryerase] The Alarm!--War Notes 10-18-02

[The Alarm!Newswire]

War Notes

By sasha k
The Alarm! Newspaper Columnist

An argument for everyone
The Bush administration’s two pronged approach for selling an attack on 
Iraq underscores the fact that they want to attack Iraq and remove 
Saddam Hussein—no matter the objection of critics and allies alike—and 
that its statements are pure rhetoric for public relations.  In front 
of the UN, the United States is seeking a resolution calling for a 
tough inspection regime backed up by the threat of military force.  At 
the same time, to a home audience, the administration has openly stated 
that inspections are not enough and that only a regime change will 
satisfy the US government.  For other countries on the UN Security 
Council to go along with such a resolution, of course, demands that 
they willfully deny the blatantly cynical nature of this double talk.  
That the Bush administration can utilize such an obviously duplicitous 
maneuver is a sad comment on the state of our critical abilities.

President Bush has already received a blank check from the US Congress 
to proceed with any military venture in Iraq that he sees fit.  The 
Security Council is less likely to give the president a similar rubber 
stamp.  The French proposal keeps the Security Council in control by 
first setting up a tough inspection regime and only later, if Iraq does 
not comply with it, authorizing military action.  The question remains, 
however, whether the inspection regime set up by the UN will both allow 
Iraq a way to disarm without a regime change and satisfy the US 
government.  When one looks at the actual conditions that the US wants 
to impose on Iraq, it is quite clear that the US is not interested in 
disarmament alone.

Military hegemony
Critics of the administration’s policy on Iraq all attempt to name the 
“real” objective behind its machinations, and I have mentioned several 
in this column: control of oil; distraction from the very real economic 
problems the country is facing before the upcoming elections; hegemonic 
control over the Mideast region, especially Saudi Arabia; and 
world-wide military hegemony.  Of course, none of these goals 
contradict; in fact, they reinforce each other.  It is crises such as 
Iraq and Yugoslavia that offer the US an opportunity to reproduce its 
hegemonic position in the world.  And we do well to remember that that 
position is produced in two ways: both in the actual military 
operations themselves and through the transformation of international 
norms and institutions governing such actions.  Thus President Bush 
continually stresses that the fight to pass a UN resolution on Iraq is 
a fight for the true identity of the UN.

In this week’s Al-Ahram, Mohamed Sid-Ahmed offers an interesting 
analysis of America’s drive to war with Iraq.  Sid-Ahmed suggests that 
Iraq provides the US with a site to link its war on terrorism with its 
attempt to limit membership to the nuclear club.  Terrorism has been a 
weapon of the world’s weak, and nuclear weapons have been a weapon of 
the world’s dominant powers.  Yet, with the “progress” of technology, 
nuclear weapons are becoming easier to produce or procure.  This means, 
at the very moment the US has lost its traditional enemy—the Soviet 
Union—the US has to worry more and more about the proliferation of 
nuclear weapons.

Iraq is a test site for US military hegemony.  The Bush Doctrine, a 
document on national security published a couple of weeks ago, states 
that it is US policy to never again allow another state or group of 
states military parity with America.  The US hopes to demand and 
produce its hegemony.  Thus the Bush administration has given itself 
the right to preemptively intervene in countries that might be 
producing weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons.  
In other words, the US has given itself a unilateral right to be the 
world’s policeman, and its enemies are now termed “rogue states.”  
Under the Clinton administration, US hegemony as the world’s policeman 
was built through projects defined as humanitarian; the Bush 
administration’s argument for military hegemony is national security.

But this is also an awkward moment for the US.  Its attempts to change 
international norms allowing for preemptive strikes—its attempt to 
institutionalize itself as the worlds sole policeman—has collided with 
the multilateral world that many nations believed was coming into 
existence after the fall of the Soviet Union.  The US has to sell its 
unilateralist policy under the guise of international respectability by 
strong-arming the UN Security Council into passing a resolution giving 
the US the pretext for attacking Iraq.

Ironically, the US has had to argue that the doctrine of preemptive 
strike should be a new international norm.  Other states have already 
threatened used this doctrine.  I mentioned Russia’s attacks on Chechen 
rebels in Georgia in a previous column.  And, thus, the doctrine has 
the potential to spread further, increasing the insecurity of states 
around the world, and increasing their desire to procure nuclear 
weapons.

Moreover, US military hegemony has as its primary project the 
maintenance of US economic hegemony.  Under the US-driven capitalist 
system, rich nations have continued to get richer, and poor nations 
poorer.  This disparity creates the very precarious conditions—in which 
people resort to desperate attacks on Americans—that the Bush Doctrine 
purports to defend us against.

Israel and war preparations
Unlike the first Gulf War, when most Arab nations supported the 
coalition forces, Arab support is almost nonexistent this time around.  
Yet a few of the smaller states, including Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, the 
United Arab Emirates and even Kuwait, are offering their territory to 
the US war effort.  So recent revelations in the Israeli newspaper 
Maariv that the US has been stockpiling weapons in Israel for the 
coming war comes as a surprise.  Israel has also been an active 
participant in the US and British mission to persuade Russia to vote 
for the US resolution to the UN, with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel 
Sharon even travelling to Moscow.

According to Amr Moussa, the secretary General of the Arab League, such 
participation would “open the Gates of Hell.”  The first Bush 
administration was careful to avoid any involvement by Israel in order 
to hold the coalition together.  This time the administration seems 
much less interested in maintaining good relations with Arab nations, 
and Arab nations are taking note.

In the Arab world, the US drive to war is increasingly being seen as a 
regional strategy and not simply a policy on Iraq.  This perception has 
many of them, especially traditional allies such as Egypt and Saudi 
Arabia, worried.  The participation of Israel in the war effort and the 
one-sided US support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians 
is being taken as a sign by many of a new US strategy for the region: 
to build US and Israeli hegemony over the region and to let Arab 
regimes disintegrate, opening a new period of imperialism and 
occupation.

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