U.S. Troops Held Hostage to Bush Dream
As President Bush watches his stated motives for invading and occupying Iraq fall and shatter on the ground like dying fruit from a diseased tree, all that manages to cling from the bogus war bough is "the freedom thing." Yet it strains theatric imagination to picture Deputy Secretary of Defense and Iraq II gray eminence Paul Wolfowitz saying to George W., "Mr. President, we have just got to go in and liberate the freedom starved people of Iraq. On the other hand . . . "You're right, Wolf, we got to free those people and make 'em democrats just like us." "Please, Mr. President, you're making me cry."
The country the Wolfowitz elite lead needed hogwash in order to swallow the elite's dream of avarice. That the repeated, bluntly stated pabulum was untrue (Saddam armed to teeth with most lethal weapons known to mankind; ready terrorist supplier of WMD; al-Qaida connection; 9/11 tie; Iraqi freedom) mattered not - the snake oil simply a show for public consumption to get America on the bandwagon.
Iraqi freedom, of course, was the one non-motive for invasion the war planners could always bank on. Liberating the suffering Iraqi people may have been in inverse proportion in the planners' minds to what it was in the president's heart, but for Americans it held star power as a rationale for war.
As if the New World Order wasn't proving omnipotent enough, Americans had to be duped into backing a New Order of super expansion and consolidation of US power for reasons beyond maintaining security; mainly, the governing elite's power lust to dominate an essential energy resource.
Because Americans are nominally anti-imperialistic, domination policy supported by most Americans must come in the guise of spreading democracy and freedom. Because the price for the triumphalism of men such as Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz is above calculation in American blood and the undermining of Constitutionally limited government at home, Iraqi freedom becomes "the good cause" that assuages gambling night at St. Joseph's R.C. Church.
If allies such as Germany, France, Turkey, Russia and dozens more opposed the US invasion of Iraq, it was because none of them seriously believed it was about disarming Iraq or the other bogus reasons listed in the theatrical program. However, to believe the invasion of Iraq was simply about the "O" word misses the point. The US already controls the global oil market, but if the decade long preparation by Wolfowitz & Co. holds, (wear rose colored glasses thick as zoom lenses) the war consolidates US control into blockbuster status, and makes divas of its designers.
The war on Iraq is only the latest US chess move in a great strategy to fence the global range in order to enhance a world order with a single mogul on the chessboard. Any opportunity to fill a power vacuum must be seized by the US president, and any opposition by insubordinates to submit to the US elite must be subordinated to the elite's foreign policy interests. Anyone no longer playing with blocks knows this; the rest bury their dead and sing God Bless America. To contest the administration's smoke and mirrors and challenge their motivation becomes prima-facie evidence of one's enemy status and an excuse for reprisal.
Having said this, it may very well be advantageous for the world economy to have the US sit on the major oil supplies of the earth instead of these being managed by corrupt, undemocratic regimes. But this is not for what the American people believed a war was launched in their name. This was not what Americans were told they would fight an alleged preemptive, defensive action.
The White House's grandiose plan to reshape a Middle East full of diverse interests, desires and values into a formula suiting their strategic economic interests isn't what was presented as demanding military invasion. Taking over Iraq because Saddam was a murdering despot provided perfect cover at home to launch the project. On the war's opening day the catchy title splashed on the playbill heralded the high-minded Iraqi liberation the war with a cast of a quarter million American men and women would bring. It said nothing of a strategy for control and command of coveted US interests.
That is the essential criticism against these moguls - that before sending American troops to face death, the duty of an open, representative and democratic government is to be truthful to their countrymen by placing before them a true scenario so they may weigh the benefits of doing what the elected want. Having done otherwise, the Bush administration's cheap trick of getting into Iraq by any means necessary and let the devil take the hindmost appears to be all that really mattered to them.
Like the side show mountebank whose only job it is to get the suckers into the tent by suggesting that the bearded lady and Sammy The Human Seal are but a hint of the menagerie of freaks awaiting our doubting minds inside, the Bush administration sold the country an easy passage on a street car named desire into a theatre with no exits.
With the enthusiasm for the president's action sinking faster than the mother of all inventions - political viability, the fate of the president and in turn of the world rests on the haplessness of a few million Iraqis. Will they stop seeing 150,000 US occupiers as the Merry Mailmen? Once the thrill of robbing neighbors' property and raping their daughters that liberation has brought Iraqis passes, won't no electricity, no water, jobs or security, inadequately substitute for kneeling at the mosque of their choice on Saddam-free Friday chanting "infidel invaders your meter's running."
As the curtain drew on act I of the Battle of Iraq (as defense Secretary Rumsfeld prefers to call the expedition), the President and his duplicitous men had gotten what they deceived America to get. As the curtain opens on act II, their plot thickens and their shining armor thins. Perhaps it's all part of the pre-crafted script of master stage designer Richard Perle, who exited through the trap door while the getting was good, and perhaps the 150,000 American GI's held hostage to their overseers' stratagem are for real, not just pawns on a chessboard - minus about one per day. Unlike President Reagan, who traded arms for hostages, President Bush trades hostage US Marines for no arms.
The Jekyll & Hyde Bush Doctrine has had a short run. While it lasts, for the players its been gratifying to answer to no one, not even a lickspittle, parasite US Congress; but costs to the stage crew in blood, and to the studio in reputation on its franchise beg justification. Because leaving Iraq now is unthinkable, as the drapes close on another American soldier we can watch the sequence of a preemptive war lacking preemption, a firm middle, or ending. Pass the popcorn.
July 26, 2003