[Peace-discuss] What we're up against

[C. G. Estabrook]

[There's been some concern -- largely unnecessary, it seems to me -- that
AWARE lacks focus because its clear mission from last winter -- to oppose
the invasion of Iraq -- no longer exists.  But the policies and interests
that accomplished the deaths of thousands of people in Iraq are still
there and need to be opposed at least as strongly as before.  There's
plenty for us to do.  In the article below, Noam Chomsky puts the invasion
in the context of ongoing US policy.  Regards, Carl]

    Preventive War 'the Supreme Crime'
    Iraq: invasion that will live in infamy
    by NOAM CHOMSKY*; August 11, 2003

        SEPTEMBER 2002 was marked by three events of considerable
importance, closely related. The United States, the most powerful state in
history, announced a new national security strategy asserting that it will
maintain global hegemony permanently. Any challenge will be blocked by
force, the dimension in which the US reigns supreme. At the same time, the
war drums began to beat to mobilise the population for an invasion of
Iraq. And the campaign opened for the mid-term congressional elections,
which would determine whether the administration would be able to carry
forward its radical international and domestic agenda.

        The new "imperial grand strategy", as it was termed at once by
John Ikenberry writing in the leading establishment journal, presents the
US as "a revisionist state seeking to parlay its momentary advantages
into a world order in which it runs the show", a unipolar world in which
"no state or coalition could ever challenge it as global leader,
protector, and enforcer" (1). These policies are fraught with danger even
for the US itself, Ikenberry warned, joining many others in the foreign
policy elite.

        What is to be protected is US power and the interests it
represents, not the world, which vigorously opposed the concept. Within a
few months studies revealed that fear of the US had reached remarkable
heights, along with distrust of the political leadership. An international
Gallup poll in December, which was barely noticed in the US, found almost
no support for Washington's announced plans for a war in Iraq carried out
unilaterally by America and its allies - in effect, the US-United Kingdom
coalition.

        Washington told the United Nations that it could be relevant by
endorsing US plans, or it could be a debating society. The US had the
"sovereign right to take military action", the administration's moderate
Colin Powell told the World Economic Forum, which also vigorously opposed
the war plans: "When we feel strongly about something we will lead, even
if no one is following us" (2).

        President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair
underscored their contempt for international law and institutions at their
Azores summit meeting on the eve of the invasion. They issued an
ultimatum, not to Iraq, but to the Security Council: capitulate, or we
will invade without your meaningless seal of approval. And we will do so
whether or not Saddam Hussein and his family leave the country (3). The
crucial principle is that the US must effectively rule Iraq.

        President Bush declared that the US "has the sovereign authority
to use force in assuring its own national security", threatened by Iraq
with or without Saddam, according to the Bush doctrine. The US will be
happy to establish an Arab facade, to borrow the term of the British
during their days in the sun, while US power is firmly implanted at the
heart of the world's major energy-producing region. Formal democracy will
be fine, but only if it is of a submissive kind accepted in the US's
backyard, at least if history and current practice are any guide.

        The grand strategy authorises the US to carry out preventive war:
preventive, not pre-emptive. Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive
war might be, they do not hold for preventive war, particularly as that
concept is interpreted by its current enthusiasts: the use of military
force to eliminate an invented or imagined threat, so that even the term
"preventive" is too charitable. Preventive war is, very simply, the
supreme crime that was condemned at Nuremberg.

        That was understood by those with some concern for their country.
As the US invaded Iraq, the historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote that Bush's
grand strategy was "alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan
employed at the time of Pearl Harbor, on a date which, as an earlier
American president [Franklin D Roosevelt] said it would, lives in infamy".
It was no surprise, added Schlesinger, that "the global wave of sympathy
that engulfed the US after 9/11 has given way to a global wave of hatred
of American arrogance and militarism" and the belief that Bush was "a
greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein" (4).

        For the political leadership, mostly recycled from the more
reactionary sectors of the Reagan-Bush Senior administrations, the global
wave of hatred is not a particular problem. They want to be feared, not
loved. It is natural for the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, to
quote the words of Chicago gangster Al Capone: "You will get more with a
kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone." They understand just as
well as their establishment critics that their actions increase the risk
of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terror. But that
too is not a major problem. Far higher in the scale of their priorities
are the goals of establishing global hegemony and implementing their
domestic agenda, which is to dismantle the progressive achievements that
have been won by popular struggle over the past century, and to
institutionalise their radical changes so that recovering the achievements
will be no easy task.

        It is not enough for a hegemonic power to declare an official
policy. It must establish it as a new norm of international law by
exemplary action. Distinguished commentators may then explain that the law
is a flexible living instrument, so that the new norm is now available as
a guide to action. It is understood that only those with the guns can
establish norms and modify international law.

        The selected target must meet several conditions. It must be
defenceless, important enough to be worth the trouble, an imminent threat
to our survival and an ultimate evil. Iraq qualified on all counts. The
first two conditions are obvious. For the third, it suffices to repeat the
orations of Bush, Blair, and their colleagues: the dictator "is assembling
the world's most dangerous weapons [in order to] dominate, intimidate or
attack"; and he "has already used them on whole villages leaving thousands
of his own citizens dead, blind or transfigured. If this is not evil then
evil has no meaning." Bush's eloquent denunciation surely rings true. And
those who contributed to enhancing evil should certainly not enjoy
impunity: among them, the speaker of these lofty words and his current
associates, and all those who joined them in the years when they were
supporting that man of ultimate evil, Saddam Hussein, long after he had
committed these terrible crimes, and after the first war with Iraq.
Supported him because of our duty to help US exporters, the Bush Senior
administration explained.

        It is impressive to see how easy it is for political  leaders,
while recounting Saddam the monster's worst crimes, to suppress the
crucial words "with our help, because we don't care about such matters".
Support shifted to denunciation as soon as their friend Saddam committed
his first authentic crime, which was disobeying (or perhaps
misunderstanding) orders, by invading Kuwait. Punishment was severe - for
his subjects. The tyrant escaped unscathed, and was further strengthened
by the sanctions regime then imposed by his former allies.

        Also easy to suppress are the reasons why the US returned to
support Saddam immediately after the Gulf war, as he crushed rebellions
that might have overthrown him. The chief diplomatic correspondent of the
New York Times, Thomas Friedman, explained that the best of all worlds for
the US would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein", but
since that goal seemed unattainable, we would have to be satisfied with
second best (5). The rebels failed because the US and its allies held the
"strikingly unanimous view [that] whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader,
he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country's
stability than did those who have suffered his repression" (6).

        All of this was suppressed in the commentary on the mass graves of
the victims of the US-authorised paroxysm of terror of Saddam Hussein,
which commentary was offered as a justification for the war on "moral
grounds". It was all known in 1991, but ignored for reasons of state.

        A reluctant US population had to be whipped to a proper mood of
war fever. From September grim warnings were issued about the dire threat
that Saddam posed to the US and his links to al-Qaida, with broad hints
that he had been involved in the 9/11 attacks. Many of the charges that
had been "dangled in front of [the media] failed the laugh test,"
commented the editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, "but the more
ridiculous [they were,] the more the media strove to make whole-hearted
swallowing of them a test of patriotism" (7). The propaganda assault had
its effects. Within weeks, a majority of Americans came to regard Saddam
Hussein as an imminent threat to the US. Soon almost half believed that
Iraq was behind the 9/11 terror. Support for the war correlated with these
beliefs. The propaganda campaign was just enough to give the
administration a bare majority in the mid-term elections, as voters put
aside their immediate concerns and huddled under the umbrella of power in
fear of a demonic enemy.

        The brilliant success of public diplomacy was revealed when Bush,
in the words of one commentator, "provided a powerful Reaganesque finale
to a six-week war on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on 1
May". This reference is presumably to President Ronald Reagan's proud
declaration that America was "standing tall" after conquering Grenada, the
nutmeg capital of the world, in 1983, preventing the Russians from using
it to bomb the US. Bush, as Reagan's mimic, was free to declare - without
concern for sceptical comment at home - that he had won a "victory in a
war on terror [by having] removed an ally of al-Qaida" (8). It has been
immaterial that no credible evidence was provided for the alleged link
between Saddam Hussein and his bitter enemy Osama bin Laden and that the
charge was dismissed by competent observers. Also immaterial was the only
known connection between the victory and terror: the invasion appears to
have been "a huge setback in the war on terror" by sharply increasing
al-Qaida recruitment, as US officials concede (9).

        The Wall Street Journal recognised that Bush's carefully staged
aircraft carrier extravaganza "marks the beginning of his 2004 re-election
campaign" which the White House hopes "will be built as much as possible
around national-security themes". The electoral campaign will focus on
"the battle of Iraq, not the war", chief Republican political strategist
Karl Rove explained : the war must continue, if only to control the
population at home (10).

        Before the 2002 elections Rove had instructed party activists to
stress security issues, diverting attention from unpopular Republican
domestic policies. All of this is second-nature to the re cycled
Reaganites now in office. That is how they held on to political power
during their first tenure in office. They regularly pushed the panic
button to avoid public opposition to the policies that had left Reagan as
the most disliked living president by 1992, by which time he may have
ranked even lower than Richard Nixon.

        Despite its narrow successes, the intensive propaganda campaign
left the public unswayed in fundamental respects. Most continue to prefer
UN rather than US leadership in international crises, and by two to one
prefer that the UN, rather than the US, should direct reconstruction in
Iraq (11).

        When the occupying coalition army failed to discover WMD, the US
administration's stance shifted from absolute certainty that Iraq
possessed WMD to the position that the accusations were "justified by the
discovery of equipment that potentially could be used to produce weapons"
(12). Senior officials then suggested a refinement in the concept of
preventive war, to entitle the US to attack a country that has "deadly
weapons in mass quantities". The revision "suggests that the
administration will act against a hostile regime that has nothing more
than the intent and ability to develop WMD" (13). Lowering the criteria
for a resort to force is the most significant consequence of the collapse
of the proclaimed argument for the invasion.

        Perhaps the most spectacular propaganda achievement was the
praising of Bush's vision to bring democracy to the Middle East in the
midst of an extraordinary display of hatred and contempt for democracy.
This was illustrated by the distinction that was made by Washington
between Old and New Europe, the former being reviled and the latter hailed
for its courage. The criterion was sharp: Old Europe consists of
governments that took the same position over the war on Iraq as most of
their populations; while the heroes of New Europe followed orders from
Crawford, Texas, disregarding, in most cases, an even larger majority of
citizens who were against the war. Political commentators ranted about
disobedient Old Europe and its psychic maladies, while Congress descended
to low comedy.

        At the liberal end of the spectrum, the former US ambassador to
the UN, Richard Holbrooke, stressed the "very important point" that the
population of the eight original members of New Europe is larger than that
of Old Europe, which proves that France and Germany are "isolated". So it
does, unless we succumb to the radical-left heresy that the public might
have some role in a democracy. Thomas Friedman then urged that France be
removed from the permanent members of the Security Council, because it is
"in kindergarten, and does not play well with others". It follows that the
population of New Europe must still be in nursery school, at least judging
by the polls (14).

        Turkey was a particularly instructive case. Its government
resisted the heavy pressure from the US to prove its democratic
credentials by following US orders and overruling 95% of its population.
Turkey did not cooperate. US commentators were infuriated by this lesson
in democracy, so much so that some even reported Turkey's crimes against
the Kurds in the 1990s, previously a taboo topic because of the crucial US
role in what happened, although that was still carefully concealed in the
lamentations.

        The crucial point was expressed by the deputy Secretary of
Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, who condemned the Turkish military because they
"did not play the strong leadership role that we would have expected" -
that is they did not intervene to prevent the Turkish government from
honouring near-unanimous public opinion. Turkey had therefore to step up
and say, "We made a mistake - let's figure out how we can be as helpful as
possible to the Americans" (15). Wolfowitz's stand was particularly
informative because he had been portrayed as the leading figure in the
administration's crusade to democratise the Middle East.

        Anger at Old Europe has much deeper roots than just contempt for
democracy. The US has always regarded European unification with some
ambivalence. In his Year of Europe address 30 years ago, Henry Kissinger
advised Europeans to keep to their regional responsibilities within the
"overall framework of order managed by the US". Europe must not pursue its
own independent course, based on its Franco-German industrial and
financial heartland.

        The US administration's concerns now extend as well to Northeast
Asia, the world's most dynamic economic region, with ample resources and
advanced industrial economies, a potentially integrated region that might
also flirt with challenging the overall framework of world order, which is
to be maintained permanently, by force if necessary, Washington has
declared.

________________________________________________________

* Noam Chomsky is professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

        (1) John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, Sept.-Oct. 2002.

        (2) Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2003.

        (3) Michael Gordon, The New York Times, 18 March 2003.

        (4) Los Angeles Times, 23 March 2003.

        (5) The New York Times, 7 June 1991. Alan Cowell, The New York
Times, 11 April 1991.

        (6) The New York Times, 4 June 2003.

        (7) Linda Rothstein, editor, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, July
2003.

        (8) Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, 2 May 2003;
transcript, 2 May 2003.

        (9) Jason Burke, The Observer, London 18 May 2003.

        (10) Jeanne Cummings and Greg Hite, Wall Street Journal, 2 May
2003. Francis Clines, The New York Times, 10 May 2003.

        (11) Program on International Policy Attitudes, University of
Maryland, April 18-22.

        (12) Dana Milbank, Washington Post, 1 June 2003

        (13) Guy Dinmore and James Harding, Financial Times, 3/4 May 2003.

        (14) Lee Michael Katz, National Journal, 8 February 2003;
Friedman, The New York Times, 9 February 2003.

        (15) Marc Lacey, The New York Times, 7/8 May 2003.

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