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As co-author of The
Case for Impeachment, the most common question I get besides
"Why hasn't Bush been impeached yet?" comes from right-wing
critics, who ask some variant (usually laced with profanities)
of: "How can you criticize the president when the country's
at war?"
It's understandable that people
might ask such a thing, given that we have some 140,000 American
troops fighting in Iraq, and another 10,000 or so in Afghanistan,
but the truth is that these conflicts aren't what people have
in mind (most people don't even think about those wars). They're
talking about the so-called "War on Terror."
Let's first dispense with the
Iraq "war" and the Afghanistan "war." Neither
of these is really a war. The first ended when Saddam Hussein's
regime was toppled, in April of 2003--back when Bush told us
"major combat" had ended. Today, Iraq has an elected
government, they tell us, and the U.S. is there at that government's
request, to help police the place. Sure, some Americans are continuing
to die, but you can't call it a war, or even an occupation. Not
when you've been invited there by the local government.
The same is true of Afghanistan,
where the Taliban were defeated way back in 2002. Again there
is now an elected government there, and NATO forces, not US forces,
at the invitation of that government, are conducting operations
against the overthrown government of the Taliban. No way you
can call that a war either, any more than the U.S. efforts in
Bosnia and Kosovo were a war.
As for the "War"
on Terror, the confusion seems to date back to the 1960s, when
Lyndon Johnson, deeply involved in a genuine war in Indochina,
decided to divert public attention with a second "war"--this
one on poverty.
That "war" wasn't
much more successful than the Indochina War. The Vietnamese won
their war in 1975, and poverty won its "war" almost
without firing a shot.
The main legacy of Johnson's
"war" on poverty, really, was not on poverty, but on
political language. It led directly to the subsequent Nixon/Carter/Reagan/Clinton
"war" on drugs.
That deceptively titled policy
initiative had nothing to do with a war, but everything to do
with expanding police power and police tactics within the U.S.,
and with filling prisons with people who didn't belong there.
In that regard, the "war"
on drugs was a model for Bush's subsequent "war" on
terror. Claiming that hordes of dark-skinned "Islamofascist"
terrorists are out to destroy America, Bush and his cronies,
following the 9-11 attacks, declared "war" on the terrorists.
But a strange "war"
this has been. First they attacked Afghanistan, reportedly to
go after the alleged author of those attacks, Osama Bin Ladin
and his Al Qaeda hordes. But then, with Osama reportedly surrounded,
Bush pulled his troops out and attacked Iraq, a bankrupt third-world
state which had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks and which
posed no threat to the U.S. Several hundred thousand US troops,
and a handful of troops from a "coalition" of the "willing"
were dispatched to Iraq where they have remained (well okay,
the "willing allies" have mostly slipped away) since,
while the pursuit of Bin Ladin has languished and, by some accounts,
been called off altogether.
But as for the "war"
on terror? It's going strong, but all along it's been all about
not military, but police activity. In Europe, alleged terror
cells have been efficiently infiltrated and busted. In Britain,
there was the bust of a cell which succeeded in blowing up some
buses and subway cars and another bust of an alleged plot to
blow up multiple airliners. In the U.S., there have been...well,
not much in the way of productive busts of terror actions, but
certainly a lot of police activity.
Thousands of people of Islamic
faith, or of Middle Eastern or South Asian origin, including
American citizens, have been rounded up on the flimsiest of excuses,
and jailed without charge, often to later be deported--sometimes
to the very countries they were given asylum from earlier. An
unknown number have been secretly kidnapped and "renditioned"
to third nations to be tortured in secret gulags, before being
warehoused indefinitely at Guantanamo's detention and torture
center. Massive spying by the high-tech National Security Agency
on hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Americans, all
without benefit of a court order, has been ordered by the president,
in violation of law and Constitution.
A so-called "USA PATRIOT"
Act was pushed through Congress undermining the Bill of Rights,
due process and the right to privacy.
The CIA and Defense Department
Intelligence Agency, and other secret police organizations have
been unleashed against the public, and dossiers are piling up
on thousands of law-abiding citizens.
Critics of all these police-state
tactics are publicly denounced and threatened by government officials
and political leaders, including the president, as being "traitors"
and "abettors of the terrorists."
This is what Bush's phony "War
on Terror" is about in reality: not a war, but an excuse
for a police state. He has even claimed that this fake "war"
makes him "commander in chief" and since this faux
war is global, taking place everywhere including within the U.S.,
he claims that gives him the power of a generalissimo both internationally
and here at home--the power to declare anyone he wants, including
you and me, an "enemy combatant" without rights of
any kind, the power to ignore the courts, the power to ignore
laws passed by Congress, and even the power to ignore the Constitution
itself.
It's important to understand
what is being done in the name of "war". Those who
somehow believe that America's survival as a nation is really
threatened by terrorists, and that thus the president needs absolute
power, need to ask themselves: How many terrorists do there have
to be out there trying to harm America or American interests
to justify calling this a "war" and tossing out the
Constitution? Is 10,000 a good number? 1000? 100? 10?
Are 10 terrorists enough of
a threat that we should suspend the Constitution and let the
president be a dictator, or should we hold out for 1000? And
should we count in that number "terrorists" like the
bozos who were arrested in Miami, who were supposedly planning
to take down the Sears Tower in Chicago but didn't even know
where it was or how to spell TNT? Or the seven and eight-year
olds who were captured in Afghanistan and shipped off to Camp
Iguana in Guantanamo?
Because let's face it: With
America not only the most powerful military power on earth (our
military budget exceeds that of all other nations combined),
there will always be some people out there who feel aggrieved
enough or angry enough at something to want to take violent action.
So do these hyperventilating
critics really want a permanent state of war because some terrorists
want to hijack a plane, bomb a building, or try to bomb some
city? Mt. Rainier near Seattle/Takoma, or the volcanic caldera
in Yellowstone Valley could do much more damage than any terrorist
bomb if either one blew, and nobody thinks America would be finished
if either of those catastrophes struck. Besides, President Bush
destroyed a city all by himself a year ago, and the country's
still here.
Let's get real: There is no
"war" on terror, just a war on the American people
and on our Constitution.
And we know who the enemies
of America are: Not some bunch of loony fanatics in turbans,
but rather people in hand-tailored $6,000 suits in Washington,
eager to turn a two-centuries-old experiment in democracy into
a one-party police state.
CounterPunch
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CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
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