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CounterPunch
January
31, 2003
The Five Fingers
of Focus
Bush and Company's
Real Motives
by BERNARD WEINER
The Crisis Papers
As we approach the three-month mark following
the midterm election, here are a handful of things that have
come into focus much more clearly. Let's cut to the chase first,
and then elaborate below.
Finger #1. Bush&Co. are going to
attack Iraq. There will be no Declaration of War by the Congress
(as required by the U.S. Constitution), and no authorization
by the United Nations.
Finger #2. The nearly 100-per cent focus
on Iraq means that the Bush Administration has free rein to do
what it wants to do in virtually all other areas of policy, since
hardly anybody is paying attention.
Finger #3. The re-nomination of the controversial
judges rejected by the previous Congress is a feint, designed
to focus attention on those two or three while pushing through
the rest of the batch, who can do even more damage.
Finger #4. Some of the elements of Al
Qaeda may indeed be "on the run," but the overall network
is still capable of carrying out major, 9/11-equivalent mayhem
in this country and abroad, and at this moment are probably in
the planning stages for some big ones.
Finger #5. Whenever Bush officials use
Democrat-sounding phrases in talking about environmental protection,
Medicare, Social Security and so on, be on your guard. Behind
the popular words, the real aims are hidden: to eviscerate such
programs.
So, let's take these one at a time, and
see The Rest of the Story.
1. The war is a go. There will be attempts
to get the U.N. to come on board -- doing so would provide some
fig-leaf cover for the U.S. attack -- but it's clear from everything
Bush has said and done in the past several months, and from his
State of the Union remarks, that we are mere weeks away from
a massive bombardment (hundreds of missiles raining down on Baghdad
in the first wave), with ground invasion to follow.
The only thing that could possibly prevent
the unfolding of this war scenario would be if Saddam Hussein
and his top echelon agreed to exile, with a new government, fully
amenable to U.S. demands, taking over. Bush could then crow that
his scare-'em strategy worked and that he's an effective peacemaker.
But, even if Saddam agreed to go into
exile, I don't think the war would be prevented. Bush and his
handlers seem to want war, especially this war. Not one againstNorth
Korea: The U.S. would have to face someone who can fight back
and unloose missiles on U.S. territory. But weakling Iraq? Of
course!
Why beat them up? It's the Iraq oilfields,
to be sure, but I don't even think that's the major reason. The
U.S. needs to make an example of someone, preferably in the Middle
East; you don't follow our demands, you're wasted. It does no
good to be an imperial, or THE imperial superpower, if smaller
countries don't acknowledge your primacy. Making an example of
Saddam Hussein gets the message across quite plainly: When the
U.S. says jump, snap to it, or risk getting bombed and invaded.
The glory of this approach is that, usually, you only have to
do it once. And, as a result, you get control of ALL the oil,
and anything else, you want.
So, unless something extraordinary happens
-- the Congress interposing its power to declare war against
the presidency, impeachment moves in the House, a U.S.-friendly
regime in Iraq -- expect the bombing to commence within a month.
These Bushistas are rabid when it comes to Iraq; remember, mere
hours after the 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld wanted to go after Iraq,
and has twice ordered the FBI and CIA to come up with something,
anything, that could possibly link Iraq and Al Qaeda.
2. There is one theory out there that
suggests that the Administration's focus on Iraq is a huge smokescreen,
designed to enable Bush&Co. to slide its agenda right through
the public and Congress with anybody making much stink about
it because not much attention is being paid to it. (Under this
theory, the war on Iraq is usable only for domestic reasons,
and can be postponed whenever it's convenient. I don't believe
this, but it's worth mentioning.)
Environmental rules eased for polluters,
rightwing judges nominated for the Appeals Courts, tax cuts for
the wealthy made permanent, trickle-down economics that never
seems to trickle down, federal monies provided to religious organizations,
etc. etc. -- it's all Iraq all the time, and scant focus goes
to these other concerns, which, in the long run, can solidify
the HardRight agenda and do an amazing amount of damage to the
social fabric.
The mass media -- with the exception
of the difficult-to-control Internet -- are largely owned by
conglomerate corporations, and are quite happy to oblige by shifting
the public's focus to war, terror, fear. The corruption, the
scandals, the below-the-radar Bush&Co. policy moves go basically
un- or under-reported.
3. Bush has nominated a whole slew of
conservative/rightwing judges for the federal Appeals Court --
the most important level of the judiciary, since only a relatively
few appeals ever make it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
By renominating the "hot-button" rightists like Pickering
and Owen, et al., the Rove hope was that the Democrats would
have their attention diverted to once again making sure the "patsies"
didn't get approved, and, to demonstrate their willingness to
appear fair, the Democrats would take just a cursory look at
the other nominees, who, in truth, are just as awful as the out-front
ones.
A good number of Democrats seem to be
aware of the feint, but some aren't; being in the minority, it's
not clear that the Democrats can stop these judicial appointments
anyway, unless a handful of moderate Republicans join in to stop
the appointments of the most egregious nominees.
4. In his State of the Union speech,
Bush made it seem like the U.S. is engaged in a mopping-up operation
with regard to Al Qaeda terrorists. All this had to be voiced
in order to make rational the move toward Iraq, otherwise it
makes no sense to the American citizenry to constantly scare
us all the time about coming Al Qaeda attacks if there are no
attackers worth bothering with.
But, in point of fact, even though the
terrorist network has been profoundly disrupted, there are enough
of the bad guys out there to do major harm to U.S. interests,
within our own country and abroad, and no real way of stopping
them at present. Al Qaeda, whether bin Laden is alive or dead,
takes a long time to plan and mount its major attacks (the 9/11
ones took three years), and there are reports that new major
attacks are in the works, for a year or two out, or perhaps sooner.
But so much of the intelligence/military/diplomatic effort is
aimed at Iraq that it's possible that the U.S. will miss the
signs. Well OK, Bush&Co. might reason, some Americans will
be wiped out by such an attack, but the fear-factor will still
be in place and, so this amoral reasoning goes, will redound
to their favor.}
In Afghanistan, U.S. and allied forces
are consistently being hit by Al Qaeda/Taliban guerrilla forces,
and the U.S. promise to "nation-build" after kicking
out the Taliban is largely missing in action.
In short, the "war on terrorism"
is being waged in a somewhat lackadaisical manner -- whether
deliberately (to keep the bogeyman in place as a justification
for the civil-liberties crackdown in our own country, and as
a fear-device to centralize loyalty toward the central government)
or because of the Iraq focus. I won't even mention the billions
being spent on waging these multi-front wars, the effect of which
is to ensure that there's not enough money for social programs
for the citizenry.
And, of course, Bush&Co. want nothing
to do with re-examining policies that make the U.S. so hated
in so much of the world, especially in the Middle East, where
Sharon has been given carte blanche by the Bush Administration
to deal with the Palestinians as he sees fit.
5. Rove is a master of inventing warm
and fuzzy buzzwords ("compassionate conservatism,"
"a uniter, not a divider") which sound good to a large
share of the voting population, but which in practice usually
mean just the opposite. During his State of the Union address,
Bush trotted out all the positive buzzwords about the Medicare
and Social Security programs, punishing corporate criminals,
toughening environmental protections, etc. -- but, in practice,
the executive actions he takes and the bills he sponsors usually
do just the opposite.
Environmental polluters are given special
breaks, Medicare and Social Security are hacked away-at by privatization
schemes, Kenneth Lay remains at large, money goes to beefing
up religious organizations (in violation of church/state separation
decisions), etc. If the public only hears the buzzwords, or reads
the headlines, or gets taken in by the homey photo-ops, there
is little outcry for actions to match the popular verbiage.
In this, and the other four areas above,
those of us incensed by all the double-talk -- by the move toward
imperial adventurism abroad and shredding of the Constitution
here in this country, by the horrific damage being done to the
economy -- have to make our elected officials aware of our knowledge
of what's really going on, and warn them in no uncertain terms
that unless they provide genuine and strong Oppositional leadership,
they will face our wrath at the polls.
In the meantime, we build the Oppositional
base, start our own investigations and institutions, get out
in the street, leaflet, talk to our neighbors and colleagues,
get politically active, write letters to the editors, reach out
on the Internet, organize, organize, organize -- in short, anything
we can to turn this country away from its dark shadow nature
and back toward the light.
Bernard Weiner,
Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught
at Western Washington University, San Diego State and San Francisoc
State Universities; he is co-editor of The
Crisis Papers, and was with the San Francisco Chronicle for
nearly 20 years.
Yesterday's
Features
Muqtedar Khan
Heavy
Rhetoric, Wistful Thinking and Hydrogen Cars: a response to Bush's
State of the Union
William Hughes
An
Open Letter to France:
Justice is On Your Side
David Wilson
Meet
the Gloucester Weapons Inspectors: the Protest at the Fairford
Stealth Bomber Base
Anthony Gancarski
Free
Press? "There's No Damn Thing"
Josh Frank
Who Would Jesus Bomb?: 10 Reasons to Oppose War on Iraq
Abu Spinoza
Iraq: Web Resources
Dr. Gerry Lower
Class Warfare Against the Poor
Natalie Johnson Lee
Green
Party Response to Bush's State of the Union
Russell Mokhiber and
Robert Weissman
Stealing Money from Kids
Maria Tomchick
Bush's Smallpox Boondoggle
Paul di Rooij
War: It's Already Started
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January 25
/ 26, 2003
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Iraq
War as Football Game
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Too Many Smoking Guns: Israel, American Jews and the War on Iraq
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Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
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by Alexander
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and Jeffrey St. Clair
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