http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0311-04.htm
Published on Tuesday,
March 11, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
A Willful Blindness
Why Can't Liberal Interventionists See That Iraq
is Part of a Bid to Cement US Global Power?
by George Monbiot
The war in Afghanistan has plainly brought certain benefits
to that country: thousands of girls have gone to school for
the first time, for example, and in some parts of the country
women have been able to go back to work. While more than
3,000 civilians were killed by the bombing, while much of
the country is still controlled by predatory warlords,
while most of the promised assistance has not materialized,
while torture is widespread and women are still beaten
in the streets, it would be wrong to minimize gains that
have flowed from the defeat of the Taliban. But, and
I realize that it might sound callous to say it, this
does not mean that the Afghan war was a good thing.
What almost all those
who supported that war and are now
calling for a new one have forgotten is that there are
two sides to every conflict, and therefore two sets of
outcomes to every victory. The Afghan regime changed,
but so, in subtler ways, did the government of the US.
It was empowered not only by its demonstration of military
superiority but also by the widespread support it enjoyed.
It has used the licence it was granted in Afghanistan as a
licence to take its war wherever it wants.
Those of us who oppose
the impending conquest of Iraq must
recognize that there's a possibility that, if it goes according
to plan, it could improve the lives of many Iraqi people. But
to pretend that this battle begins and ends in Iraq requires
a wilful denial of the context in which it occurs. That context
is a blunt attempt by the superpower to reshape the world to
suit itself.
In this week's Observer,
David Aaronovitch suggested that,
before September 11, the Bush administration was "relatively
indifferent to the nature of the regimes in the Middle East".
Only after America was attacked was it forced to start taking
an interest in the rest of the world.
If Aaronovitch believes
this, he would be well-advised to examine
the website of the Project for the New American Century, the
pressure group established by, among others, Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby,
Elliott Abrams and Zalmay Khalilzad, all of whom (except
the president's brother) are now senior officials in the
US government.
Its statement of principles,
signed by those men on June 3 1997,
asserts that the key challenge for the US is "to shape a
new
century favorable to American principles and interests".
This requires "a military that is strong and ready to meet
both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that
boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad;
and national leadership that accepts the United States' global
responsibilities".
On January 26 1998,
these men wrote to President Clinton,
urging him "to enunciate a new strategy", namely "the
removal
of Saddam Hussein's regime from power". If Clinton failed
to act,
"the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends
and
allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant
portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard".
They acknowledged that this doctrine would be opposed, but
"American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided
insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council".
Last year, the Sunday
Herald obtained a copy of a confidential
report produced by the Project in September 2000, which suggested
that blatting Saddam was the beginning, not the end of its strategy.
"While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate
justification, the need for a substantial American force presence
in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The wider strategic aim, it insisted, was "maintaining global
US pre-eminence".
Another document obtained
by the Herald, written by Paul
Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, called upon the US to "discourage
advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership
or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role".
On taking power, the
Bush administration was careful not
to alarm its allies. The new president spoke only of the
need "to project our strength with purpose and with humility"
and "to find new ways to keep the peace". From his first
week in office, however, he began to engage not so much
in nation-building as in planet-building.
The ostensible purpose
of Bush's missile defense program
is to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles. The real purpose
is to provide a justification for the extraordinarily ambitious
plans - contained in a Pentagon document entitled Vision for
2020 - to turn space into a new theatre of war, developing
orbiting weapons systems that can instantly destroy any target
anywhere on Earth. By creating the impression that his program
is merely defensive, Bush could justify a terrifying new means
of acquiring what he calls "full spectrum dominance"
over
planetary security.
Immediately after the
attack on New York, the US government
began establishing "forward bases" in Asia. As the assistant
secretary of state, Elizabeth Jones, noted: "When the Afghan
conflict is over we will not leave Central Asia. We have
long-term plans and interests in this region." The US now
has bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Georgia. Their presence
has, in effect, destroyed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
which Russia and China had established in an attempt to develop
a regional alternative to US power.
In January, the US
moved into Djibouti, ostensibly to widen
its war against terror, while accidentally gaining strategic
control over the Bab al-Mandab - one of the world's two most
important oil shipping lanes. It already controls the other
one, the straits of Hormuz. Two weeks ago, under the same pretext,
it sent 3,000 soldiers to the Philippines. Last year it began
negotiations to establish a military base in Sao Tome and Principe,
from which it can, if it chooses, dominate West Africa's principal
oilfields. By pure good fortune, the US government now exercises
strategic control over almost all the world's major oil producing
regions and oil transport corridors.
It has also used its
national tragedy as an excuse for developing
new nuclear and biological weapons, while ripping up the global
treaties designed to contain them. All this is as the project
prescribed. Among other policies, it has called for the development
of a new generation of biological agents, which will attack people
with particular genetic characteristics.
Why do the supporters
of this war find it so hard to see what is
happening? Why do the conservatives who go berserk when the European
Union tries to change the content of our chocolate bars look the
other way when the US seeks to reduce us to a vassal state?
Why do the liberal interventionists who fear that Saddam Hussein
might one day deploy a weapon of mass destruction refuse to see
that George Bush is threatening to do just this against an
ever-growing number of states? Is it because they cannot face
the scale of the threat, and the scale of the resistance necessary
to confront it? Is it because these brave troopers cannot look
the real terror in the eye?
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