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CounterPunch
January
25, 2003
A Guide to Understanding
Bush's Biopolar Political Disorder:
Don't Get Distracted
by Cameron Diaz, Acne or Talk of War
by SAUL LANDAU
"What's
this Bush Administration really about?"
A frustrated student asked me.
Good question! I suggested that he look
into the clever manipulators--led by Karl Rove -- who have woven
together a novel coalition of voracious looters and naked imperialists.
By employing styles and methods of bullying, secrecy and downright
prevarication, they have developed a unique political mating
process in which the national security mavens bond with religious
zealots, fanatic gun lovers cuddle with anti-abortion and death
penalty advocates and the rest of us get truly f......
Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard
Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz provide
the "full spectral dominance" phrases for the mean
and nasty Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They embody both naked
empire and corporate looting in their worldview. Rumsfeld has
tried to squash dissent from the Pentagon on his Iraqi crusade
and Cheney has signaled Congress that grass will grow on the
Members' palms before he delivers any information to them in
his secret national energy plan negotiations with Enron executives.
On the domestic side Attorney General
John Ashcroft, once the extreme advocate of personal freedom
and states rights in the right wing of the Republican Party,
now leads the charge against American's civil liberties and into
their private affairs. The FBI, whose unique email system challenged
direct communication from other agencies, now slips silently
into other peoples' electronic and snail mail, tap their phones
with skimpy cause and surveil members of their family.
The security state claims preeminence
over all other needs. By routinely predicting terrorist acts,
it keeps the citizens frightened and justifies its intrusion
into business life as well. Once a vociferous states righter,
Ashcroft now wants seemingly unlimited power for his federal
agencies. In religion, however, he apparently favors a church-state
marriage, but would deny homosexuals any marital rights or benefits.
Ashcroft, the unofficial Commissar of Religious Activities, told
a conservative Denver audience on January 13 that the government
has "discriminated" against far right religious groups
by not giving them taxpayers' money.
These officials, known as budget cutting
conservatives did actually slash some spending--that is funds
directed toward the poor, social spending. However, these same
allegedly compassionate conservatives presented wildly extravagant
figures to fund the military. Supposedly to pursue terrorists
and the axis of evil, Rummy and Dick encouraged the military
brass and CIA to demand a $400 billion budget, far higher than
any figure submitted during the Cold War.
If you plan to conquer the world, what's
a stinking $400 billion? The question is: how to carry out this
epic evil without suffering many casualties so that the US public
won't catch on!
After Vietnam, the US political and military
classes understood that we shouldn't fight anyone who could fight
back. After some serious Muslim enemies in Lebanon bombed a US
Marine barracks and killed almost 200 men Reagan, following the
counsel of his wife Nancy's astrologer, refused to send troops
to Central America to defeat the leftist government of Nicaragua.
US casualties would certainly have ensued. Instead, he unleashed
the CIA against the Sandinistas. When he did pick military intervention
spots, like Grenada, he insisted on an overkill number of US
troops to defeat a nonexistent enemy.
It took time for the military and the
White House to understand how to stage aggression and spin it
as heroism. Panama George Bush (41) captured Panama Strong Man
Tough Tony Noriega in 1989, after the spinners built up Noriega's
forces as a serious opposition. They weren't of course, but by
demonizing Noriega, and exaggerating his strength, the White
House fabulists could present Bush 41 as a hard-hitting hero
who had done irreparable damage to the drug trade. (The drug
trade barely felt the Panama invasion, but 52 felons, convicted
on drug charges, testified against Noriega at his Miami trial
and received sentence reductions.)
Then, the White House simulated boxing
promoter Don King who would convert Saddam Hussein, a 50th rated
lightweight once in their corner, into a heavyweight contender
that represented pure evil. In fact, Saddam had no defense against
US power. The Gulf War should have been called a technological
massacre rather than a war.
After Clinton's sporadic bombing of targets
in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan and his ambivalence
toward conquering all by ourselves, the reign of Boy George the
Emperor began.
Scale back, he said, expressing an approach
to foreign policy that coincided with his ignorance on the subject.
Then came 9/11. The world changed and the naked imperialists
emerged from their closets--or Cabinets. Some, like the influential
Perle who sits on the Defense Policy Board, have shrouded their
shadowy organizations in secrecy. Wow, they must be really important!
Within months we had a war against terrorism
and an axis of evil. Subsequently, Administration officials declared
that they would engage in "pre-emptive" strikes and
deploy nuclear weapons if necessary against their foes.
North Korea took this rhetoric at face
value. Having been put into the axis of evil and having a loathed
leader, the Koreans logically deduced that having nuclear weapons
would be their only defense When North Korea revealed that it
might have a few nukes and that it would withdraw from the Nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty, thus imitating Bush's example of withdrawing
from treaties, they won respect. Although W personally "loathes"
North Korean leader Kim Jong Ill -- W said he didn't like leaders
who starve their people -- he has agreed to "talk"
with him, but not "negotiate." For Bush, talking means
offering the hated Kim oil and money in return for Korea's stopping
nuclear weapons development. I'm trying to figure out what negotiation
could mean.
Iraq has no nukes and therefore merits
no respect. We can invade with probable impunity--maybe some
chemical; and biological weapons, but after the inspectors do
their job and get rid of them, Iraq is a piece of cake.
I conclude this after sifting through
countless articles and reports. But it's not easy to discern
reality from the news sources. On January 15, I perused the MSN
headlines looking for help in defining the difference between
talking and negotiating with North Korea,.
I learned that Nicole Kidman coped with
her divorce by working out her emotional problems through making
millions filming "The Hours." Equally important, Cameron
Diaz had to miss the premieres of "Gangs of New York"
in several European hot spots because of an outbreak of acne
and Kate Winslet suffered the humiliation of getting her curves
(read a trace of real human fat?) air-brushed out to make her
look more beautiful (emaciated) in some GQ photos.
Further into the news, I discover that
the White House spinsters are trying to air-brush the fat that
would go to the rich under Bush's tax plan. Under the guise of
helping the little guy with a tax rebate, the looters have already
begun filling their pockets while the naked imperialists under
the umbrella of fighting terrorism have begun to conquer the
world.
And practically no one in Congress objected
to piratical agenda. The protestations from the Democratic leadership
amounted to a wimpy plea to carry out aggression against Iraq
with our allies, not alone, and a whine to spend a little money
on social stuff. Tom Daschle did fly into a rage, but only when
he felt that Bush had impugned his and his colleagues' patriotism;
he didn't care about innocent Iraqis dying.
The rest of the public, the Rove gang
hoped, would remain consumed with the ever more intense pressures
of surviving daily work and home life and the idiosyncrasies
and travails of actors and athletes.
So, I told my student, the Bush Administration
defies traditional policy analysis. It is more like a bipolar
disorder in which policy is directed by the compulsion to pillage
at home and the obsession to conquer abroad. To undertake such
behavior, the controllers of policy in the White House have created
the permanent insecurity state, which they disguise under the
label "security." Security, a far cry from Peanuts'
thumb and blanket, means taking off your shoes and undoing your
belt at airports, undergoing "wanding" and a variety
of other meaningless procedures that supposedly will thwart the
terrorists. If you're a Muslim or Arab American, life has become
anxiety ridden. You can expect a police raid at any time. The
security state thrives on insecurity. Under the banners of urgency,
federal police look into your personal business. It also means
that at many airports certain shops have become inaccessible
to non-passengers and that "security" checks at borders
have grown longer. This hurts business, a symptom of this bipolar
criminal madness. Let's see if the "security" state
can coexist with the shopping culture. If not, goodbye Bush.
Saul Landau
teaches at Cal Poly Pomona University and is a fellow at the
Institute for Policy Studies. His new film, IRAQ: VOICES FROM
THE STREETS, is available through The Cinema Guild. 1-800-723-5522.
He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
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