[Peace-discuss] Reply to Brant Hansen

[David Green]

Guest Commentary submitted to the N-G:

What is the Difference?

David Green

	During last Saturday’s (3/1) weekly peace
demonstration on Prospect, a reporter from WDWS asked
several protestors about the difference between Saddam
Hussein and George Bush. On Monday, several somewhat
inarticulate answers to these questions were used by
Brant Hansen during his afternoon program as a basis
for ridiculing the antiwar movement. The implication
is that the difference is obvious, and therefore those
in touch with reality must support the war.

	Clearly the question was set-up to avoid the
fundamental issues. Was Iraq involved in 9/11? Is it a
threat to the United States? Does a pre-emptive strike
violate international law? Isn’t a “clash of
civilizations” exactly what Osama bin Laden wants?
What will be the human costs of this war? What will
“democracy” in Iraq look like? What is the role of
oil? What is the role of Israel?

	Nevertheless, the original question merits
consideration. Saddam Hussein came to power in
chaotic, post-colonial, oil-rich Iraq through
opportunism, manipulation, coercion, and violence.
George Bush came to power in the democratic, post-Cold
War, militarily unchallenged U.S. through inheritance,
skilled handlers, and a stolen election. In Iraq,
power is dependant on naked coercion. In the U.S.,
power is dependant on the legitimacy afforded by an
apathetic electorate, corporate support, and an
obedient media.

	How do these differences translate into the practice
of foreign policy? In the 1980s, Iraq gained the
support of the U.S. after initiating an 8-year war
against Iran. This support continued as Hussein
“gassed his own people,” in this case the despised
Kurds. That support included the sale of biological
weapons. Meanwhile, U.S. officials encouraged
democratic Israel to sell arms to Iran in order to
lengthen the war and maximize the loss of lives. The
proceeds were channeled to U.S. surrogates fighting a
terrorist war against a popular Sandinista regime in
Nicaragua, one of several Central American countries
in which the U.S. supported systematic violations of
human rights by brutal regimes in the 1980s. Back in
Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam Hussein
over an economic deal, the latter’s regime still in
favor. By late 1990, he was of course out of favor
with the first President Bush--not because of his
dictatorship or his previous atrocities, but following
his invasion of oil-rich Kuwait. This invasion
challenged U.S. geopolitical interests and provided a
golden opportunity for our leaders to demonstrate
their military might in the world’s most strategically
important region.

	So what is the difference? Saddam Hussein’s regional
power ultimately depended not simply on intimidation,
but on consistency with U.S. interests in the region.
George Bush’s global power, like the power of all U.S.
presidents, rests on the use of a dominant
military—essentially unimpeded by Congress—in a series
of demonstration wars to make the world safe for “free
market” corporate globalization—in Southeast Asia,
Latin America, and now the Middle East. Thomas
Friedman has stated it honestly: “The hidden hand is
enforced by the hidden fist” of the U.S. military
services. 

Ironically, Hussein’s domestic power depends partly on
U.S.-enforced sanctions that weaken his subjects and
enforce their dependence on him. Bush’s domestic
support depends on a permanent “war on terrorism” that
distracts us from deteriorating economic and social
realities. Tenuous support for war depends on fear,
misinformation, testosterone-driven racism, and the
promise of mass catharsis in high-tech warfare.

Yes, we are democratic, they are not. The fallacy is
to equate democracy with morality. Programmed consent
in the face of elite interests cannot be compared to
decisions informed by broad participation and the
public interest. We are about to ask ordinary Iraqis
who have been victimized by Hussein and ourselves to
die in the name of a hollow promise of democracy,
while ironically accusing those of us who refuse to
share our leaders’ calculated obsessions and desperate
rationalizations with the charge of disloyalty. How
many Iraqi deaths will it take before the disparity
between electoral democracy and collective morality
becomes plain? At that point, practical differences
between leaders that merely reflect available methods
of coercion will yield to a more profound awareness of
moral differences between Americans who choose not to
be responsible for the consequences of their
government’s actions, and Iraqis who do not have the
luxury of such choice.


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