[Peace-discuss] A good summary...

[C. G. Estabrook]

[...of where we are now, from Noam Chomsky.  --CGE]

	Understanding the Bush Doctrine
	Noam Chomsky
	Information Clearing House, October 2, 2004

Perhaps the most threatening document of our time is the U.S. National
Security Strategy of September 2002. Its implementation in Iraq has
already taken countless lives and shaken the international system to the
core.

In the fallout from the war on terror is a revived Cold War, with more
nuclear players than ever, across even more dry-tinder landscapes around
the world.

As Colin Powell explained, the NSS declared that Washington has a
"sovereign right to use force to defend ourselves" from nations that
possess weapons of mass destruction and cooperate with terrorists, the
official pretexts for invading Iraq.

The obvious reason for invading Iraq is still conspicuously evaded:
establishing the first secure US military bases in a client state at the
heart of the world’s major energy resources.

As old pretexts collapsed, President Bush and his colleagues adaptively
revised the doctrine of the NSS to enable them to resort to force even if
a country does not have WMD or programmes to develop them. The "intent and
ability" to do so is sufficient.

Just about every country has the ability, and intent is in the eye of the
beholder. The official doctrine, then, is that anyone is subject to
attack.

In September 2003, Bush assured Americans that "the world is safer today
because our coalition ended an Iraqi regime that cultivated ties to terror
while it built weapons of mass destruction." The president’s handlers
know that lies can become Truth, if repeated insistently enough.

The war in Iraq incited terror worldwide. In November 2003, Middle East
expert Fawaz Gerges found it "simply unbelievable how the war has revived
the appeal of a global jihadi Islam that was in real decline after 9-11."
Iraq itself became a "terrorist haven" for the first time, and suffered
its first suicide attacks since the 13th century CK assassins.

Recruitment for Al Qaeda networks has risen. "Every use of force is
another small victory for bin Laden," who "is winning," writes British
journalist Jason Burke in Al-Qaida, his 2003 study of this loose array of
radical Islamists, now mostly independent.

For them, bin Laden is hardly more than a symbol. He may be even more
dangerous after he is killed, becoming a martyr who will inspire others to
join his cause. Burke sees the creation of "a whole new cadre of
terrorists," enlisted in what they see as a "cosmic struggle between good
and evil," a vision shared by bin Laden and Bush.

The proper reaction to terrorism is two-pronged: directed at the
terrorists themselves, and at the reservoir of potential support. The
terrorists see themselves as a vanguard, seeking to mobilise others.
Police work, an appropriate response, has been successful worldwide. More
important is the broad constituency that the terrorists seek to reach,
including many who hate and fear them but nevertheless see them as
fighting for a just cause.

We can help the terrorist vanguard mobilise this reservoir of support, by
violence. Or we can address the "myriad grievances," many legitimate, that
are "the root causes of modern Islamic militancy," Burke writes.

That basic effort can significantly reduce the threat of terror, and
should be undertaken independently of this goal.

Violent actions provoke reactions that risk catastrophe. US analysts
estimate that Russian military expenditures have tripled during the
Bush-Putin years, in large measure a predicted response to Bush
administration bellicosity. On both sides, nuclear warheads remain on
hair-trigger alert. The Russian control systems, however, have
deteriorated. The dangers ratchet up with the threat and use of force.

As anticipated, US military plans have provoked a Chinese reaction as
well. China has announced plans to "transform its military into a
technology-driven force capable of projecting power globally by 2010,"
Boston Globe correspondent Jehangir Pocha reported last month, "replacing
its land-based nuclear arsenal of about 20 1970s-era intercontinental
ballistic missiles with 60 new multiple-warhead missiles capable of
reaching the United States."

China’s actions are likely to touch off a ripple effect through India,
Pakistan and beyond. Nuclear developments in Iran and North Korea, also in
part at least a response to US threats, are exceedingly ominous. The
unthinkable becomes thinkable.

In 2003, at the UN General Assembly, the United States voted alone against
implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and alone with its new
ally India against steps toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.

The United States also voted alone against "observance of environmental
norms" in disarmament and arms control agreements, and alone with Israel
and Micronesia against steps to prevent nuclear proliferation in the
Middle East -- the pretext for invading Iraq. Presidents commonly have
"doctrines," but Bush II is the first to have "visions" as well, possibly
because his handlers recall the criticism of his father as lacking "the
vision thing."

The most exalted of these, conjured up after all pretexts for invasion of
Iraq had to be abandoned, was the vision of bringing democracy to Iraq and
the Middle East. By November 2003, this vision was taken to be the real
motive for the war.

The evidence for faith in the vision consists of little more than
declarations of virtuous intent. To take the declarations seriously, we
would have to assume that our leaders are accomplished liars: While
mobilising their countries for war, they were declaring that the reasons
were entirely different. Mere sanity dictates scepticism about what they
produce to replace pretexts that have collapsed.

chomsky.info