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October 1,
2001
Food as Weapon
No news is bad news
By Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Nearly three weeks have passed since
Sept. 11, and the United States has yet to launch a military
offensive in the new unlimited global war on terrorism that
President Bush declared on Sept. 20.
Combined with news reports
that Secretary of State Colin Powell is battling within the
Administration for a more diplomatic approach, this period of
"calm" has many -- including some in the antiwar movement
-- talking as if a full-scale war has been averted. No news
of war, they say, is good news.
Several considerations suggest
the opposite: no news is most likely bad news.
The first, and most obvious,
point is that military operations on the scale that the Bush
administration has discussed cannot be implemented overnight.
Troops and materiel take time to move into place, especially
when delicate negotiations are needed to establish bases in
countries where such a move can have domestic political costs.
Few countries are eager to become part of the American military
machine; on Sunday, a Saudi Arabian official said no attacks
on Afghanistan would be launched from his nation, an indication
of the political touchiness of this endeavor.
Remember that the buildup to
the Gulf War lasted five months. No matter how tough the talk
in the first weeks after the terror attacks, Pentagon planners
and their civilian chiefs do not make large-scale plans for
military operations based on rhetoric. Words of war are spoken
for public relations, not planning purposes.
In short: The antiwar movement
should not get taken in by a diplomatic and media shell-game.
Again, the Gulf War is the
perfect example. From the August 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait
up until days before the U.S. began bombing Baghdad, officials
from the first Bush administration talked about their commitment
to exploring a diplomatic resolution of the crisis. At the time,
it was clear they weren't serious, since they said publicly
many times that there would be no negotiations; Iraq had to
either accept U.S. conditions or face an attack (that's what
passes for diplomacy in the United States). This was widely
acknowledged; early on, for example, Thomas Friedman wrote in
the New York Times that the "diplomatic track" should
be avoided because it might "defuse the crisis."
In his book Shadow, the Washington
Post's Bob Woodward reported that the Bush administration was
afraid Saddam Hussein might pull his forces out of Kuwait before
the U.S. could strike. If that happened, it would be hard to
justify keeping U.S. military forces in the region, leading
then-President Bush to tell his national security team, "We
have to have a war," according to the book.
In an interview for a PBS
Frontline documentary on the Gulf War, then-Secretary of
State James Baker conceded that his January 9, 1991, meeting
with Iraq's foreign minister was mostly for appearances, to
help to secure the congressional vote for war three days later.
In fact, the whole saga, while
billed as a question of whether Saddam Hussein would come to
his senses and negotiate, was anything but. The numerous plans
presented to give him a face-saving formula, to retreat with
the most minor of gains, were serially shot down by an administration
bent on war.
As we hear talk about the United
States engaging in diplomacy, we must remember this:. the U.S.
conception of diplomacy does not mean seeking to avoid war,
as the U.N. charter requires. It means coupling a "principled"
refusal to negotiate with threats and verbal provocations designed
to stiffen the spine of an enemy, so that situations cannot
be resolved peacefully. It means lining up allies -- sometimes
by naked coercion, sometimes by bribes of debt-restructuring
or trade favors -- so that military actions can begin.
We see the same thing in the
current situation no negotiations with the Taliban, no attempt
to offer evidence linking bin Laden to the crime against humanity
of September 11, but many peremptory demands, not just to turn
over bin Laden but to effectively cede sovereignty to the United
States by opening up training camps and other sensitive areas
to American scrutiny. Plus ca change
Recent history offers another
reason to expect that plans for war have not been shelved: An
empire's need to maintain "credibility."
Credibility in this sense means
the notion that anyone who challenges U.S. domination will pay
the price. The destruction of one country keeps others from
rising up. All empires must maintain this credibility, or they
cease to be empires.
The major conflict of the American
empire in the post-World War II era -- the wars against Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia -- was motivated by a central U.S. doctrine:
Any attempt at independent development in the Third World had
to be destroyed. But by 1967, at the absolute latest, it was
clear to everyone -- including U.S. planners -- that a military
victory was out of reach. From that point on, the war was continued
in large part to further destroy Indochina, so that the United
States was not seen to withdraw in defeat. The million tons
of bombs dropped since that time were done to maintain credibility.
The war planners are going
about the business of planning war. Still, the fact that one
of the Gulf War planners, Colin Powell, now sits as secretary
of state and is arguing for what seems to be a less aggressive
posture has led many to be hopeful that a split in the administration
could derail war. While we can only speculate on discussions
going on inside the White House, again history and common sense
can guide us.
First, the stories in the mainstream
media about the rift between Powell and Rumsfeld, the doves
and the hawks, may or may not have any connection to what is
really happening. Internal policy disputes do break out in any
administration. But just as often officials manipulate the press
to float trial balloons and distract the public (even conservative
columnist George Will has suggested news of this disagreement
might just be "disinformation to confound our enemies").
Even if such a rift exists, it appears that the question for
the Administration isn't whether or not to go to war, but merely
when, where and with what force.
Before we put our hopes in
Powell-the-peacemaker, let us recall that he is the man who
put forth the Powell Doctrine, which he summarized in the Frontline
documentary as: "If this is important enough to go to war
for, we're going to do it in a way that there's no question
what the outcome will be and we're going to do it by putting
the force necessary to take the initiative away from your enemy
and impose your will upon him."
Again, remember that marshaling
the forces to "impose your will" upon an enemy is
not an easy process.
At this point we have little
choice but to base our antiwar work on informed speculation;
it would be foolish to think the administration is going to
tell us forthrightly what it has in store for the world. A reasonable
assumption at this point is that whatever instinct there might
have been for an immediate demonstration bombing to signal the
world that the United States has a "spine of steel"
has been reined in, and that a more careful planning process
is underway.
While this process continues,
a severe human toll is already being exacted.
The administration's bellicose
posture has sparked such fear in Afghanistan that the flight
of refugees has begun, with the accompanying likelihood of mass
starvation. The United States is pressing to ensure that any
food distribution plan is carried out ''in a manner that does
not allow this food to fall into the hands of the Taliban,''
according to deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. Since
the Taliban itself, like most ruling elites, remains well-fed,
this is plainly doublespeak for a plan to selectively starve
the roughly 90% of the country controlled by them.
Translated: The war on the
civilian population of Afghanistan using fear, flight and food
is underway.
Beyond these basic observations,
there is little we can know about what is in the minds of people
gathered in the White House, the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom.
But we can and must use the
time they have given us to step up our organizing and education
efforts, not slow them down.
The polls, like the minds of
most Americans, are full of contradiction. Although over 90%
supposedly favor going to war, 63% think that strikes on Afghanistan
make future terrorist attacks more, not less, likely. Simultaneously,
the natural sympathies of Americans have been touched, resulting
in a spontaneous upwelling of concern for the already starved,
bombed, and brutalized Afghan people a concern that has already
forced a change in rhetoric from the halls of power. Perhaps
most important, people who are normally apolitical are paying
attention to this issue.
Put together, it represents
a mix with heady possibilities. The chance to build a genuine
antiwar movement is greater than it has been in a very long
time as long as, to take a leaf from George W. Bush, we do not
tire and we do not falter. CP
Rahul Mahajan serves on the National Board of Peace
Action. Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at
the University of Texas. Both are members of the Nowar
Collective. They can be reached at rahul@tao.ca
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