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WHY WAR WITH IRAQ? WHY NOW?
PHANTOM REASONS AND REAL ONES
By Bertell Ollman
WAR
Has America ever gone to war with less public understanding
of what the war is about? Why is our Government so determined to attack Iraq?
And why the rush to do it now? WWar is a very serious
business. So I am not going to insult your intelligence by spending any
time on the half dozen changing reasonscharges that our Government has offered made against Iraq as
a justification for starting this war. As anyone who is not addicted to Fox News knows,
they are either false, grossly exaggerated, irrelevant or simply
silly (I don't know whether to place the charge that Saddam is an evil man
under irrelevant or silly).
But - and this is of crucial importance
- even if all the Government'sthese
charges were true, not exaggerated and relevant, this would still not justify
a war if there were other ways of dealing with them and/or if a war would
make Americans more liable to attack by our enemies than we already are.
The U.N. inspections are working and if we increased the number of inspectors
and gave them more time, they would work better still.
Along with frequent overflights, some of the U.N. imposed sanctions and the
threat of massive retaliation should Saddam attack one of his neighbors,
they have already achieved most of the aims for which almost-elected President
Bush says he intends to go to war. That is, given the Government's own terms
of debate, the war would appear to be unnecessary. And if anyone had any
doubts about the effect of such a war on our safety here in the U.S., Ossama
Bin Laden's most recent tape (if genuine)recording should
have made it clear that this war will bring us more terrorist attacks and
not less.
Critics who see this far and no further are content to condemn
the Government for its stupidity - easy to do with Bush at the helm - and
craziness. Our leaders seem to be making a terrible
mistake. General Zinni, a leading U.S.military figure and diplomat, has said
that he doesn't know on
whichat
planet the hawks in Washington are living one. And many
others, including ex-President Carter, General Schwartzkopff
and even officials in the intelligence (sic) community, have expressed similarthe same
sentiments.
But the leaders of our Government are not that stupid or crazy,
and war is too important a matter to go forward without good reasons. They
have their reasons. They just don't want to give them to us, because they
suspectknow
that most Americans wouldn't accept them as a justification for war. If we
examine who our leaders are, their background and interests, some of what
they've done and said before coming to power, and what they would gain from
a war, it is not too hard to arrive at what these men and their one woman
are thinking.
In my opinion, here are the real reasons that our Government
is about to engage in its second massacre of Muslims in as many years:
l) Oil. The
Bush oiligarchy wants direct control over a country whose proven oil reserves
are second only to those of Saudi Arabia. American oil giants own none of this oil now.
How much do you think they will own one year after the war? Direct U.S. control over Iraqui
oil will not only put the profits of selling the oil and servicing the oil
fields into American hands, but will also also put the U.S. Government in
a position to effect
the price of oil by determining how much of it is put onto the market at
any one time and
to secure the dollar's position as the currency of choice in the purchase
of oil by other countries (since 2000, Iraq has tried to undermine the hegemony
of the dollar in world trade - with all its implications for U.S. financial
domination - by selling its oil for Euros). And, as the availablility of this non-renewable source of
energy begins to decline (it has been estimated that the world has about
fifty years worth of oil left), the U.S. will be in a position to decide,
almost unilaterally, which countries will grow and develop and which will
not.
2) Secure the
water supplies - not often mentioned - with which Iraq is blessed and
all surrounding countries are to some degree dependent.
3) Establish American
military and political power - if not direct colonial control - of a
major Arab country in the heart of the middle-east for an indefinite period
to help ensure the existence of friendly governments and market economies
throughout the region.
4) Provide a rationale
to expand the military budget and with it the profits of the arms industry,
which includes the oil industry.
5) Help make Americans
forget that we lost the war in Afghanistan, whose main objective was
not to remove the Taliban but to destroy Al Queda and capture Ossama Bin
Laden.
6) Upstage the
media attention given to the failure of the Government's economic policies
(unemployment up 35%, stock market down 34 %, etc. and etc. since Bush took
office) as well as the high level financial scandals in which both Bush
and Cheney have been implicated.
7) Create an atmosphere
of permanent crisis with its side-bars of fear and patriotism
that will helpallow
the GOP to push through the rest of itstheir ultra-conservative
political agenda and win the next presidential election.
Though we
can't know which reasons are most important for any given official, I think
it is pretty clear that they all play a role and that, taken together, they are enough to account
for the trigger-happy behavior of the Government.For our
current leaders - who, we must remember - were never democratically elected,
these are probably enough reasons to start a war, but
Tthere
happens to be one other major reason for their actions, however, that deserves
to be mentioned, if only because it is usually passed over, even by the strongest
critics of the war. And this is that the war with Iraq will serve some of
Israel's most important national interests, at least as interpreted by its
current right wing Government. The reason iIt is seldom mentioned,
of course, is that because anyone
who does soraises
it risks being denounced as an anti-semite, next to which being
called a mass murderor today seems rather tame. So before developing this
point, let me just say that I am'm Jewish. This
way I can only be condemned as a "self-hating Jew".
What, then, are the main interests of the Israeli Government
that will be served by this war?
1)
The war will provide Israel some relief from
the growing sentiment among the American public that the U.S. Government
should cut off or
drastically reduce both economic and military aid to Israel until it vacates
all Arab lands (a little publicized Times/CNN poll this fall showed
that 60% of Americans supported such a call).
2)
Under the cover of war, Sharon will be able
to put into effect his version of the "final solution" to the Palestinian
problem, the expulsion of all West Bank Arabs into the surrounding countries.
3)
Destroying what's left of Iraq's military power
neutralizes Israel's most important rival in the
region.
4)
Establishing a semi-permanent American military
presence in Iraq puts U.S. troops in a position to police the whole area
for Israel. If Mohammed can't go to the mountain - you have all heard this
one - it is said that the mountain will go to Mohammed. Given their problems
with the Arabs, some Israelis have joked that it would be nice if they could
pick up the whole of Israel, the land as well as its people,
and move it to Long Island. Well, Mohammed couldn't
geto
to this particular mountain. But now with the U.S. about to move into Israel'sthe
neighborhood, one can say that the mountain has
come to Mohammed. Talk
about miracles.
5)
U.S. control of Iraqui oil and water resources
will allow Israel, its best friend in the middle-east, to gain a share of
both.
When you add all this up, it seems that war against Iraq is
even more in the interests of the Israeli Government than it is in the interests
of the American Government. It is no surprise then that among our Government's
top foreign politicy advisors some of the biggest hawks are right
wing Zionists like - Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Defense Secretary, who earlier in life wanted to immigrate to Israel and who wrote his first official paper calling
for an invasion of Iraq back in 1992), Douglas Feith (Under Secretary
for Policy in the Dept. of Defense), Elliot Abrams
(National Security Council), Lewis Libby (Chief of
Staff for Vice President Cheney), Eric Edelman (Libby's top assistant), and Richard Perle (Chairman of the Pentagon's
Defense Policy Board, who the F.B.I. found passing classified information
from the National
Security Council to the Israeli Embassy when he was a Senate staffer
in 1970 and
who has worked as an election advisor
for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu between 1996-'99) . Can you imagine the ruckus
there would be if this number of communists or Free Masons or black nationalists
were found in the higher reaches of our foreign policy establishment? Let me repeat that
I am not speaking of Jews here but of right wing Zionists, or those who subscribe to an extreme version of a
nationalist ideology that is currently in power in another country, a country that has a crucial
stake in how the American Government
acts in its region. Now, I don't believe that U.S. policy on Iraq has
been made by these Zionists advisors, but neither do I believe that they
are without influence in the matter or that their right wing Zionism
does not affect what they tell Bush, or Cheney, or Rumsfeld. Rather,in my view, what we have here
is a convergence of two imperialisms. It is Bush's and Sharon's complementary interests
that have put them in bed together. The bevy of right wing Zionist advisors that surround Bush
would have
encouraged this tryst and perhaps served as match-maker.
They
have probably also helped to convince Bush - assuming he needed any convincing
- that if he served
Israel's interests in this manner he would garner the support of enough
American Jews, most of whom have become Zionists (soft or hard) in recent years, to put him over the top in
the next election. (No one should suppose that Karl Rove, Bush's
exceptionally
savvy political
advisor, hasn't carefully taken note of this opportunity, or that his man in the White House is indifferent to it. Hence, the otherwise surprising
decision to hold the GOP 2004 Nominating Convention in New York City) I suppose this
deserves being listed as the Bush crowd's eighth major reason for going to war with Iraq.
That still leaves unexplained
why the rush to war, why the Government's insistence on starting the war now. If
Israel needs a war now to resolve the explosive and worsening
problems that have resulted from the failure of its policies in the West
Bank, this is not - or at least should not be - a problem for the U.S. But
if I'm right in my list of the American and Israeli Governments' real reasons
for going to war, THE GREAT
DANGER THAT BOTH OF THESE GOVERNMENTS FEAR IS NOT THAT THE U.N. INSPECTIONS WON'T WORK,
BUT THAT THEY WILL. the
danger
that both of these governments fear is not that the U.N. inspections won't
work, but that they will. For if the inspections
work, or show that they are working or can work, then both Ggovernments
are denied their ideological cover for going to war. At this point, the U.S. would
either have to pull back from the brink, or admit to having other, hitertoo
secret reasons, for going to war. However, tThe great majority
of the American people would never accept the real reasons for this war,
and without their support the American and Israeli Governments could not reap
the many economic and political benefits they are hoping for, benefits they can only attain through a
full scale war. .Well, to Too bad for them,
but not for the hundreds of thousands of people who are certain to die in
any war.
The
great crusading journalist, Izzy Stone, said he could summarize most of what
aspiring young reporters need to learn in two words: "Governments lie".
If he had
extended his lesson
just three
more words, he might have added - "especially in war". The American Government
has a long history of such lies; the sinking of the battleship "Maine"
in the Spanish American War, the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident in the Vietnam
war, and the invasion of Granada to protect U.S. medical students are but the most notorious
examples. Given this history, the Bush team's consistent
disregard for the truth (both in getting (s)elected and in pursuing its unpopular policies
in virtually every domain), and the collection of dated, confused and irrelevant
charges that make
up the official case against Iraq, it is hard
to believe that anyone could take what the Administration is saying seriously. Sadly, this
is not the case.
This
is also very dangerous, because even most of Bush's critics, in the U.S.
and around the world, refer to his position on Iraq as a "mistake" rather than
a "lie" and treat their differences with him as a "disagreement" over what means are best suited to attain a common end. "Give
the inspections a chance" and "No war without a U.N. resolution" were the most popular slogans
in the world-wide demonstrations against the war that took place on February
15th. In short, though Bush has
been unable to convince most doubters of his interpretation of events, with his domination over the
public stage, he
has succeeded in setting the terms of the debate, and in politics as in war
being able to choose the terrain on which a battle
will be fought is
often the decisive
step toward winning it. What will happen, in other words, if/when the Government - either
under pressure or because they are more intelligent than we give them credit
for - accepts the scenario urged by the majority of their critics: a couple months more of inspections
and a vague U.N. resolution that even France and Germany can agree on and
the U.S. can interpret as an okay to begin its war in Iraq?
I am reminded of an incident that occurred in Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s, where a jurist - I can't
recall his name - objected to some Nazi
practises that were not covered by the law. Once Hitler's controlled legislature
passed laws that made these practises legal,
the jurist said he was now satisfied and fell
in behind the Fuhrer. Could the same thing happen to most of our politicians, public intellectuals and even movement partisans
who are now demanding that Bush act through the U.N. and give the inspections a chance to work? I consider
such a turnabout not only possible but even likely, unless more of Bush's critics
begin treating his phantom reasons for attacking Iraq with the contempt that they
deserve and do a much better job educating the public on the real reasons
for war, ALL OF THEM. People who understand these reasons will not let themselves
be snookered into supporting the war through any combination of Congressional,
NATO or U.N. resolutions.
What
is the role of 9/11 in all this? It is now clear that there were two kinds
of hijacking on Sept. 11th, 2001, the first by free lance
terrorists who took over four airplanes and bombed the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, and the second by U.S. state terrorists who used the
events of
the day to push through their right wing
political
agenda and to beat whomever dared criticize them over the head. By prefacing all proposals
with the words "In the names of those who died", Bush seems to have appropriated 9/11 in ways very similar to how Israel's right wing Government has
appropriated the Holocaust. Sadly, but all too effectively, 9/11 functions politically today as Bush's Holocaust. Perhaps his right
wing Zionist advisors also instructed him on how to bring this off. The tragic victims of 9/11 - and of the Holocaust - deserve a better historical
fate than this
self-interested
manipulation by regimes that share many of the worst features of their butchers.
Well, what's to be done? Besides urging that we replace the effort
to provide the
Government with a "better" means to reach our common end (where we accept their terms
and framework for the debate) with an even greater effort to expose them (where the real reasons for the war become the main
subject for discussion), I can
summarize most of what else I have to offer on this subject by
passing on an e-mail I got a couple weeks ago. Apparently,It said a recent
study at the University.
of Sussex in England
showed that demonstrating for a cause in which you believe is not only good
for your conscience, it's also good for your health. No wonder participating in the big demonstration on February 15th felt so good. So, in the interest of good health - your's, the Iraquis', our troops' and the world's - keep it up.
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