The Little Empire That Couldn’t

November 19th, 2007

Years from now, the Bush Legacy will be clear and evident — he broke the superpower that was the United States of America; the mythology of our power was even more potent than its actuality … we cruised a long time on the respect shown our might and resources — now we’re an international joke.

Here’s great reads on Bush’s faux-Empire, on oil prices, OPEC and the devalued dollar, on the chaos theory and on the improbable but constant push toward attack in Iran — last bit, Colin Powell redeems himself from his “white vial” performance by telling the truth about Iran’s capabilities … but as crazy as it’s all gotten, will we hear it?

Jude

Tomgram: John Brown, Invading Washington
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
November 18,

Over the last seven years, it’s often been said that George W. Bush exists in a bubble.

When it comes to the cast of characters in his administration — and the Washington Consensus generally — it turns out he isn’t alone. The other night I watched Harvard academic Joseph Nye and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage discuss the crisis in Pakistan with talk-show host Charlie Rose. The two of them had just finished co-chairing a Center for Strategic and International Studies commission that produced a report, clearly meant for the next administration, on wielding American “smart power” in the world.

Nye is an exceedingly conventional American internationalist; Armitage is a former “Vulcan” who, in the first years of the Bush administration, though Colin Powell’s deputy at the State Department, was close to the neocons of the Pentagon, but may now be repositioning himself for a Democratic administration. They could be said to represent the heartland of the present Washington Consensus.

Yet when they talked of Pakistani autocrat Pervez Musharraf (”I mean, Musharraf has been our boy, but we`ve not been able to do much with it…”), of the Pakistani situation more generally (”I mean, after Musharraf, there are other secular generals…”), and of the American role there (”Well, we have to be working with both Benazir Bhutto and also with our contacts in the army to make sure this doesn’t turn into chaos…” “If you do anything to help Benazir, it has to be done very quietly and behind the scenes…”), they might as well have been discussing deploying federal “smart power” to Maryland, or more appropriately, to the U.S. Territory of Guam. Conceptually, they remain deep inside Washington’s Pakistan, Washington’s dream of a controllable world.

The Bush administration, too, had its dreams of a controllable Pax Americana to go along with a Washington-based Pax Republicana; but, as former diplomat John Brown makes clear below, these were the most provincial of global dreams, hatched at think-tanks inside the Washington Bubblesphere. The world was reimagined as a kind of imperial dreamscape for a go-it-alone group of armed imperial isolationists who, unlike most imperialists, couldn’t even imagine a way those elsewhere could join in their imperial project. As Brown indicates, Bush and his top officials were the most bubblicious of non-diplomats. In the language of another era, they were not just Ugly Americans, but the ugliest of all — and proud of it.

But perhaps they were only extremes of the Washington norm. Perhaps Americans, even in their post-World War II high-imperial phase, were never anything but powerful provincials with little grasp of the wider world: a self-contained universe of Joseph Nyes and Richard Armitages. Perhaps if you are singularly wealthy and powerful, as the United States was from 1945 into the 1970s, the provincial blunders you make don’t blow back on you for 20, 30, 40 years. Now, on the downside of hyperpowerdom, they seem to blowback in about the time it takes to play your basic 30-second ad.

We also tend to ignore how much Americans actually take their bubble with them into the world. Consider, for instance, this description from the British Guardian’s David Smith on his arrival at Camp Victory, one of the monstrous “mega-bases” the Bush administration has built in Iraq. American reporters often set foot in places like this, but almost never offer such descriptions, perhaps because finding a Little America in the midst of chaos and mayhem strikes them as nothing out of the ordinary.

“I arrived at Camp Liberty, one of the main US bases, and found breakfast in the ‘morale area’ where food facilities include a Burger King, Cinnabon, Popeye’s Chicken & Biscuits and Seattle’s Best Coffee Iraq. It’s a sort of pre-fab American simulacrum, Disney World meets Platoon in the desert. There’s also Alterations & Embroidery, Barber, Beauty, Electronics, Gift Shop, Jewelery, Magic Island Technologies, Rug Shop, Photo Processing and even New Car Sales. I wandered around the Bazaar, which takes credit cards but is closed on Fridays, and found kitsch mementos, hookah pipes, brass ornaments, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ rugs bearing the US and Iraqi flags and a collection of Saddam portraits and clocks. A difficult purchase to explain at customs, perhaps.”

So consider with Brown just how provincial the Bush imperial moment really was.

Tom

The Bush Administration: Too Parochial for Empire
The Bush Administration Conquers Washington
John Brown, TomDispatch
Monday, November 19, 2007 by TomDispatch.com

As I write, on a cloudy Washington afternoon, my “Bush’s Last Day Countdown Keychain” tells me there are 433 days, 11 hrs, 50 minutes and 41.3 seconds left before our 43rd president leaves office. Like other citizens concerned about the fate of the Republic, I wonder what the Bush legacy will be.

Many commentators have written about how the domestic politics of this administration have left the United States more divided than ever; or perhaps the unsettled illegal immigration issue is what Bush will be most remembered for — with an unfinished barrier across the U.S.-Mexican border as the main monument to his eight years in office.

To some concerned with foreign affairs, the Bush era will be remembered most for the acceleration of America’s putative march to empire. Advocates of such a view highlight the exorbitant sums the U.S. has sunk into its land bases in the Middle East and Afghanistan, its massive sea power, and its all-volunteer professional army; the inordinately expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (the latter being evidence that the U.S. is engaged in a ruthless effort to control the world’s oil resources); the threats of possible military action against Iran (interpreted as a desire to control the Middle East in collaboration with Israel); the growing tensions with Russia, as well as the urge to maintain and expand its foothold in former Soviet areas in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (seen as a reflection of America’s determination to remain the global hegemon); the increasing frictions with China (proof that the U.S. will not tolerate a competitor in Asia); the constant disagreements with the Europeans (a reminder on our part that we — not they — are the boss).

Indeed, there is little doubt that the military, economic, and cultural impact of the United States continues to be enormous. Calling this global footprint “imperial” is certainly tempting. But for a nation to be an empire, its leaders must have a plan or vision for how to deal with the rest of the world — as, arguably, Theodore Roosevelt and his entourage did with their “large policy” for American overseas dominance. Some historians cite these schemes as the beginning of an American-style empire that led to “the American century,” a period that now seems so long ago and so far away. (Are we not now, in fact, living in the Anti-American Century?)

Bush and Visions of Empire

The immense (but declining) global power of the United States notwithstanding, the conceptual baggage required to engage in truly imperial ambitions has simply not been a part of the Bush administration’s mindset. This remains so despite its assembly-line-style production of countless “national security” reports on a vast range of global security matters — committee-written, unreadable documents marked by a total lack of intellectual coherence or clear direction. These can, if anything, be seen as a collective “cover-up” for the administration’s obvious lack of thought beyond the here-and-now.

To be sure, no imperial plan is ever perfectly framed or implemented (as Theodore Roosevelt himself realized), but the Bush administration’s version of such now appears to have been remarkably without rhyme or reason — on, in fact, an automatic pilot, driven by a self-aggrandizing Pentagon budgetary process and “priorities” strikingly determined by shifting domestic politics (what Congressional district or crony corporation had put in the best, or most influential, bid for a base, military-style activity, or war-production plant). True, our generals remain engaged in the fearsome-sounding “Global War on Terror” by order of the White House — but this has proven a helter-skelter example of global confusion, regularly renamed by an administration clueless about what its “war” really is.

Put another way, the Bush administration was never able to define, shape, or direct in an “imperial” fashion the powerful forces, negative and positive, stemming from various segments of American society that do so much to determine the destiny of our planet. (This may have been inevitable, given the contentious nature of American democracy.)

As for the once-dynamic duo who characterized much of this administration — Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (and those clustered around their “offices”) — the only “empire” that really counted for them was the parochial world of Washington, DC, with its lobbyists, bureaucrats, politicians, and assorted supporting think-tankers, all absorbed in their petty turf-wars about who among them would get government money for their minions and projects, overseas or at home. This was the narcissistic province that the Vice President and Secretary of Defense had the urge to dominate with their “unitary executive,” “wartime,” commander-in-chief presidency and the foreign wars that made it all possible. Developments outside the U.S., however, mattered largely to the extent that they helped in the aggrandizement of their own power, their fiefdoms, and those of their cronies, on the banks of the Potomac.

The President and His Diplomats

To make some sense of all this, let’s start at the top. With his utter lack of experience in foreign affairs and complete lack of curiosity about the outside world (with the possible exception of Mexico), George W. Bush was incapable of having a global vision himself, imperial or otherwise. In the words of commentator William Pfaff, “Bush is happy deciding, even though he knows nothing.” The President’s major foreign-policy decision — to invade Iraq — was certainly not based on any understanding of the global implications of what he was doing (including, conceivably, expanding an empire). It was taken for reasons that still remain unclear, but may have ranged from his tortuous relationship with his father to his desire to portray himself as a decisive commander in chief to the American electorate.

Perhaps, to use his words, the former cheerleader frat boy just wanted to “kick ass” overseas to show the media, voters, and possibly even himself, that he was doing something other than sitting in the Oval Office preaching the virtues of compassionate conservatism.

Kicking ass — playing cowboys and Indians with the world, as little boys once did on playroom floors or in backyards — has remarkably little to do, however, with anything that might once have been defined as imperial planning or the knowledge necessary to implement such plans. For example, a year after his “axis of evil” State of the Union Address, when informed by Iraqi exiles that there were both Sunnis and Shiites in their country, “emperor” Bush allegedly responded that he thought “the Iraqis were Muslims.” (No way, after all, that you can tell those Indian tribes apart!) And what better summarizes George W. Bush’s preparation for putative empire building than the following nugget from the 2000 presidential campaign season, as related by Elaine Sciolino of the New York Times:

“When a writer for Glamour Magazine recently uttered the word ‘Taliban’ — the regime in Afghanistan that follows an extreme and repressive version of Islamic law — during a verbal Rorschach test, Mr. Bush could only shake his head in silence. It was only after the writer gave him a hint (’repression of women in Afghanistan’) that Mr. Bush replied, ‘Oh. I thought you said some band. The Taliban in Afghanistan! Absolutely. Repressive.’”

Given the tabula rasa in Bush’s mind regarding the world outside “the homeland” (a word his administration has regrettably contributed to the American language), it is hardly surprising that he selected as his main foreign policy advisers two people with very limited global visions of their own: Condoleezza Rice as National Security Advisor and, as Secretary of State, Colin Powell. (Rice herself admitted in 2000 that, as a “Europeanist,” “I’ve been pressed to understand parts of the world that have not been part of my scope”; and Powell’s qualifications were based on his military savvy — and loyalty — not his geopolitical perspectives. The general, as Bill Keller of the New York Times reported in 2001, was “a problem solver, not a visionary.”

As became clear after the horror of 9/11 — a foreign policy failure of the first order, if ever there was one, that no “empire” in its right mind would have allowed — Rice and Powell essentially became talking-point briefers on day-to-day events they had not foreseen and did not control. Compare them to Henry Kissinger, who held each of their positions at some point in his White House career. A cynical maneuverer who may not have been to everyone’s liking, he nonetheless worked in the realm of global strategy. In the way he attempted to play off the Soviet Union against China in relation to the Vietnam War, he was an imperial planner of the first order (if not always with the greatest success).

Contrast his meaty books on Metternich and on nuclear weapons to the sole tome that Rice authored by herself — a bland monograph on the relationship between the Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948-1983, excoriated by the scholarly American Historical Review in 1985. What her sad little historical “study” demonstrated, if anything at all, was that Rice was, from scratch, anything but a geopolitician of Soviet — or any other — affairs.

Had Rice and Powell been capable of a global imperial vision — or even of grasping essential global cause and effect — they doubtless would have advised their president that his much-desired Mesopotamian (mis)adventure was bound to be a bloody, costly imperial mess. With certain down-to-earth military smarts, Powell may have sensed this, but evidently he lacked the nerve (or was it intellectual inclination?) to ask the simple questions at White House meetings that would have been the key to any imperial decision-making process: “Why exactly are we doing this?” “Is it really in our interests to invade a third-world country thousands of miles from our shores?” Or, put another way: “How does this invasion preserve or expand the American empire”?

All the President’s Men: Cheney and Rumsfeld

According to some commentators, when it came to the American ascendancy abroad, the real powers behind (or in) the White House were Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who had been collaborators ever since the distant Ford administration. Some argue that they — and their neocon poodle and second-in-command at the Defense Department, Paul Wolfowitz, as well assorted neocons once linked to the Likud party in Israel and the Christian right in the U.S. — were the true framers of a Bush empire.

To be sure, Rumsfeld was an early member of the Project for the New American Century and no doubt had ideas — or perhaps simply fantasies masquerading as ideas — about a more aggressive use of American military strength throughout the world.

Cheney’s former position as CEO of Halliburton and his connections with large corporations certainly made him the prime imperial candidate for considering global energy flows and eyeing Iraq as one vast oil field just waiting to be seized, one more country with must-have natural resources for the American imperium.

Even if the duo were eager indeed to expand U.S. influence and resources overseas, as veterans of countless Washington partisan and personal battles, what really got their aged blood flowing was the sleazy, vindictive inside-the-Beltway world of Washington, DC. Rumsfeld’s utter inability to focus on post-invasion planning in Iraq was in itself strong evidence that what happened there (”events” which he so often simply made up) was of secondary concern. Iraq — or success in that country — was indeed important but mainly to the extent that it heightened his profile as a monster player in Washington.

For both Cheney and Rumsfeld, it was the imperial capital, not the empire itself that really mattered. There, “war” would mean the loosing of a commander-in-chief presidency unchecked by Congress, courts, anything — which meant power in the only world that mattered to them. War in the provinces was their ticket to renewed prominence within DC’s self-absorbed biosphere, a kind of lost space station far removed from Mother Earth, and a place where they had longstanding, unfinished accounts — both personal and political — to settle. “Foreign policy,” in other words, was an excuse for war in a far-off country that 63% of American youth between the ages of 18 and 24 could not, according to a National Geographic survey, find on a map of the Middle East. That, in turn, would make both the Vice President and Secretary of Defense (for a while) little Caesars in the only place that mattered, Washington, DC.

If Saddam and assorted terrorists were enemies, they weren’t the ones who really mattered. In the realest war of all, the one on the banks of the Potomac, Cheney and Rumsfeld were, above all, targeting those symbols of American internationalism that they had grown to despise in their previous Washington stays — the State Department and the CIA — perhaps because those organizations, at their best, aspired to see how the world looked at the United States, and not just how the United States could dismiss the world. Just as Bush “kicked ass” in Iraq, so Cheney and Rumsfeld used Iraq to “kick ass” among the striped-pants weenies at Foggy Bottom and the eggheads in the Intelligence Community. (Consider Cheney’s treatment of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who questioned the validity of the administration’s claim about Saddam Hussein’s search for uranium yellowcake in Niger in the late 1990s.) In toppling Iraq, the “imperial” aim of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, their foreign policy “experts” and their acolytes was to raise the flag of their own power high above Washington, DC, while discrediting and humiliating those in the foreign-policy profession interested in the outside world for itself, those willing to consider how it related to actual U.S. national interests, not fantasy ones, and who therefore dared to question the goals and intentions of the dynamic duo.

To see how Washington-centered this cast of characters actually was, just recall the Secretary of Defense’s self-glorifying press conferences in his post-invasion heyday, when he played the strutting comedian. In that period, Rumsfeld, venerated by, among others, aging neocon Midge Decter in a swooning biography, was the king of the heap and visibly loving every second of it. Front-page headlines in the imperial capital were what counted, never the reality of Iraq — any more than it did when George W. Bush strutted that aircraft-carrier deck in his military get-up for his “mission accomplished” moment, launching (against a picturesque backdrop of sailors and war) Campaign 2004 at home. Poor Iraq. It was the butt of the imperial joke, as was — for a while — the rest of the outside world.

Political theorist Benjamin Barber caught the Bush foreign-policy moment perfectly. The U.S., he wrote, made “foreign policy to indulge a host of domestic concerns and self-celebratory varieties of hide-bound insularity. The United States remains a hegemonic global superpower sporting the narrow outlook of mini-states like Monaco and Lichtenstein.”

In the end, the Bush administration is likely to be remembered not for a failed imperialism, but a failed parochialism, an inability to perceive a world beyond the Washington of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, beyond George W. Bush’s national security “homeland.” That may be the President’s ultimate legacy. ++

John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer who resigned from the State Department over the planned war in Iraq, compiles a near-daily Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review, available free by requesting it at johnhbrown30@hotmail.com.

Critics Assail Weak Dollar at OPEC Event
“The Fall of the Dollar is Not the Fall of the Dollar — It’s the Fall of the American Empire.”
JAD MOUAWAD, New York Times
November 19, 2007

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 18 — A rare meeting of the heads of state of the OPEC countries ended here today on a political note, with two leaders — President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran — blaming the weakness of the United States dollar for high oil prices.

Despite the best efforts of the host country, Saudi Arabia, to steer the meeting away from politics and promote OPEC’s environmental concerns, the leaders of Venezuela and Iran let loose some show-stealing statements.

“The dollar is in free fall, everyone should be worried about it,” Mr. Chávez told reporters here. “The fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar — it’s the fall of the American empire.”

During a news conference after the meeting, Mr. Ahmadinejad added: “The U.S. dollar has no economic value.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad said that oil, which was hovering last week at close to $100 a barrel, was being sold currently for a “paltry sum.” And Mr. Chávez predicted that prices would rise to $200 a barrel if the United States were “crazy enough” to strike at Iran, or even at his own country.

Normally, meetings of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are tepid affairs where ministers leave politics at the door and talk about oil inventory and supply and demand. This unusual meeting, held amid the pomp and glitter of the Saudi royal court, had been planned since last December but happened to fall at a time of renewed concern over record oil prices and the shrinking value of the dollar.

At the summit’s opening ceremony on Saturday, Mr. Chávez sought to bring OPEC back to its militant and revolutionary roots.

“OPEC should set itself up as an active political agent,” Mr. Chávez said, addressing about 1,000 guests in a conference center by the royal quarters.

While Mr. Chávez’s 23-minute statement was brief by his own standards, it drew a gentle rebuke from King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch, who chided him for talking longer than the time allotted by royal protocol. He also turned down Mr. Chávez’s plea, saying:
“Those who want OPEC to take advantage of its position are forgetting that OPEC has always acted moderately and wisely.”

It is only the third time in OPEC’s 47-year history that such a high-level meeting has taken place. The first was in Algiers, in 1975, at the height of OPEC’s nationalist period; the second was in 2000, when the oil cartel met in Venezuela to devise a strategy to increase prices after they had collapsed to about $10 a barrel in the late 1990s.
This meeting, which lasted less than 24 hours, was supposed to focus on long-term issues like the security of supplies and environmental policy. The Saudis in particular sought to reassure the world that OPEC was a reliable oil supplier.

“OPEC has made a point, from its establishment, to work for the stability of the oil markets,” said the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal, at a news conference after the close of the summit on Sunday. “Oil should be a tool of construction and development, not one of dispute.”

Saudi Arabia also wanted to highlight a new emphasis on protecting the environment by announcing the establishment of a $750 million fund to reduce carbon emissions. The kingdom will contribute $300 million for research into technology that captures carbon spewed by power plants or refineries and stores it underground. In addition, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar will provide $150 million each.

Oil producers see climate policies that focus on oil consumption as an unfair way to curb the use of fossil fuels worldwide. By financing research into carbon emissions, Saudi Arabia says it is seeking ways to extend the use of petroleum resources at a time when global warming could lead to changes in consumer behavior in Western countries.

“We want to continue using fossil fuels while protecting the environment,” said Mohammad al-Sabban, a senior Saudi government adviser on climate change. “What we are worried about is for industrialized countries to use climate policy as a pretext to discriminate against oil.”

Other ministers also expressed the more moderate views that typically emerge from an OPEC meeting. Despite Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statement about oil prices being paltry, officials from several other countries — including the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia — said that prices were too high.

“We are going down uncharted territory, and everyone should be cautious,” said Odein Ajumogobia, Nigeria’s oil minister, referring to the current prices.

The weakness of the dollar proved to be even more controversial here and created frictions among members of the group. Iran — with the backing of Venezuela and OPEC’s newest member, Ecuador — worked hard to persuade the group that it should mention the falling dollar in the summit’s final declaration.

But Saudi Arabia rejected Iran’s proposal, saying that such a move might provoke a “collapse” of the dollar. During a closed session on Friday that was mistakenly broadcast on an internal television circuit, Prince Saud al-Faisal said the issue was too delicate to be included in a statement.

In the end, the Saudis were forced to yield a little. The final statement, while making no mention of the dollar, said OPEC would “study ways and means of enhancing financial cooperation among OPEC member countries.”

According to Iran, OPEC will also look for ways to establish a currency basket to offset the declining value of the dollar. But Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries are opposed to this old idea, and few analysts believe it has any chance of succeeding.

It is too early to say whether the views expressed by Mr. Chávez and Mr. Ahmadinejad signaled a rift in the exceptional consensus that has sustained OPEC’s success in recent years, or whether they were merely an example of conference theatrics by countries at odds with the American government. In the end, it fell to Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, and the main architect of OPEC’s focus on business fundamentals in recent years, to underline the conference’s main message.

“Everyone knows that OPEC has renounced the principle of controlling oil prices since the 1980s,” Mr. Naimi said at a news conference on Sunday. “Since then, the price has been determined by the market. The fluctuations you are witnessing today have nothing to do with OPEC actions.”

The meeting was held in a conference center that was a gaudy mix of the palace at Versailles and Greek Revival style, with some rococo touches. It also displayed the whole range of Saudi extravagance: blue marble floors, gold-plated fixtures, and dozens of crystal chandeliers, some bigger than trucks.

Vera de Ladoucette, an energy analyst with the Cambridge Energy Research Associates who was here to observe the summit, said: “This shows a new dimension to OPEC, which is the environment. This could be a defensive stance to improve their image. But also, a way of acting against anything that might reduce demand for oil.” ++

American empire, going, going …
Great empires were extraordinarily pluralistic, argues Amy Chua, until they frayed into xenophobia and decline. Can the U.S. steer another course?
Andrew O’Hehir, Salon Book Review
Nov. 19, 2007

Say it isn’t so!
Wagenvoord, Smirking Chimp
Nov 19 2007

I am not a conspiracy buff. I have yet to meet a conspiracy that I have not greeted with skepticism and disbelief. It has to do with my understanding of human nature. Although successful conspiracies need absolute secrecy, self-inflation remains a basic human need. So I am sure some underling somewhere blabbing to his wife or mistress just to impress her would eventually compromise any conspiracy. Or, there might be one of those rare individuals with the ethics and morality to deliberately leak details of the conspiracy to the press. Between these two, no conspiracy stands a chance.

At least, that is what I believed until now. Not that I am buying into any conspiracies, but I am getting a little nervous.

The cause of my unrest is Naomi Klein’s book, Shock Doctrine. The key passage in the book is a quote by Milton Friedman who said, “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our [The Chicago School of Economics] basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

Klein uses the overthrow of Chile’s Allende to illustrate how this philosophy works.

Beginning in the 1950s, bright, young Chilean students were brought to the University of Chicago where they were thoroughly indoctrinated in the Friedman Doctrine of Utopian Free Markets. When Pinochet overthrew Allende, he gave these Chicago graduates the responsibility of converting Chile to a free-market economy, which they did brutally. The idea of shock therapy is to wait until a major crisis, such as a coup or a natural disaster occurs, and under the cover of the chaos the disaster creates, institute brutal and draconian changes all at once while the public is still in shock.

After reading about that, I had a rather frightening epiphany. For years, sane people have been carrying on about how insane the Bush administration is. Their every policy flies in the face of common sense and never fails to produce a negative feedback that makes the situation even worse. Their policies all seemed bizarre on the surface, from gutting the Iraqi army that morphed into the insurgency, to ignoring Afghanistan and allowing the Taliban to reassert control, to allowing to deficit to reach an astronomical high.

Now, I wonder if they are that stupid. The idea of an attack on Iran is insane. If we did so, Iran would block the Straits of Hormuz, oil would spike to $200 a barrel, we would be saddled with a worldwide depression, and we could well be looking at World Ware III or IV, bur who in the hell is counting anymore.

What if this is what they want?

What if their every move is carefully calculated? What if they are making a deliberate attempt to generate a crisis of such proportions that Bush could use the chaos that ensued to declare martial law and assume dictatorial powers over the country? Think of the possibilities. While Americans were reeling from the shock of total war and another Great Depression, the administration could eliminate Social Security and Medicare, along with whatever remains of our shredded social net. With the stroke of a pen, America would become a totalized Corporatist State and her citizens would be mere employees of the State with all of the rights that corporate employees lack.

The would explain why Bush does things other politicians would consider suicidal, like vetoing a health and education bill because it was too expensive and, in the same breath, approving an increase in military spending. Bush can get away with it because he is not a politician, he is a CEO.

Many people believe that another Great Depression would usher in another New Deal. I had always thought so too. However, we forget that when the Great Depression struck, the only ideas lying around were those of John Maynard Keynes. Today, the only ideas lying around are those of Milton Friedman.

Do the math.

You see, my usual distrust of conspiracies has always been the inability of people to keep a secret. What frightens me about this one is that it is not a secret. All the details are out there for anyone to see; the lines connecting the dots are penciled in, but nobody seems to be looking at the page.

I hope to hell that I am wrong about this. However, if I am not, then the only antidote to this pending shock therapy is the immediate impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. Without that, we may be lost.

It is too bad our congress is a corporate employee. ++

Bush-Cheney Really Are Planning to Attack Iran!
Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, demonizing another Muslim nation — and the Dems are supporting it. We’ve got to shut them down.
Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
November 17, 2007

Look out — here they come again! Bush & Buckshot are riding their little stick horses, waving the bloody flag of 9/11, demonizing another Muslim nation, shouting warnings about weapons of mass destruction, bellowing for regime change, and generally trying to whoop up a new war. Having done so well in Iraq, George W and Cheney are pushing feverishly to hype up a national-security threat and commit our nation, our bedraggled military, our depleted treasury, and our country’s already-tarnished name to another of their fantasyland, neocon, preemptive invasions of a sovereign people who are doing no harm to us. Their target this time: Iran.

You might be thinking, oh, come on, Hightower, surely not. You’re paranoid — even the Bushites aren’t that crazy. I wish.

The drums of war

For such leading neocon zealots as Norman Podhoretz, bombing and even invading Iran are about protecting “our” Mideastern oil, strengthening Israel’s regional power, and continuing Western control of the restive Muslim majority in the Middle East. Podhoretz and other true believers assert that there’s an urgent need for Israel and the West to crush Iran’s Muslim government now, frantically wailing that it intends to destroy America and control the world. Even though Iran has made no threats to the U.S., the neocons see regime change there as the key to winning “World War IV” (they insist that the Cold War was World War III) against what they have dubbed “Islamofacism.”

How nutty are they? Podhoretz concedes that by attacking such an influential Islamic nation, Bush would “unleash a wave of anti-Americanism all over the world that will make the anti-Americanism we’ve experienced so far look like a lovefest.” Yet this Dr. Strangelove maniacally declares, “I pray with all my heart that he will.” Now there’s a prayer to a truly fiendish god!

George W, who is so besotted by Podhoretz that he has bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him, has bought into this guy’s insanity. Adopting Podhoretz’s inflamed doomsday stance, Bush recently accused Iran of preparing for global war (though W only ranks it as WW III), and Bush’s bombastic sidekick, Cheney, has now threatened that Tehran will suffer “serious consequences” if it doesn’t do what Washington wants. Just as they did in the run-up to their 2003 Iraq attack, the Bushites are now pounding out a drumbeat of propaganda to soften up the public, enlist the compliant media, and cow soft-spined Democratic leaders. You’ll recognize some familiar themes (a.k.a. lies) in BushCheney’s rationale for a “preventive” war of aggression against Iran:

Claim: Iran is in cahoots with al Qaeda, the demons who crashbombed America on 9/11. Actually, no. Iran is a Shiite nation that has long been in opposition to the Sunni-exclusive Islam preached by al Qaeda. Indeed, even before al Qaeda’s attacks on America, Iran’s leaders vehemently opposed the terrorist group’s presence in neighboring Afghanistan, and Iran was one of the first Muslim countries to condemn the 9/11 assault. Iran also has willingly turned over al Qaeda suspects to the U.S.

Claim: WMDs! Iran is on the brink of making a nuclear bomb, thus posing an imminent threat to America and to our national interests. Not so. Iran has no nuclear weapons and is nowhere near having the ability to build one. As a signer of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium to make electrical power (something our own country does every day). The Iranian government regularly allows inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency access to its nuclear facilities, and this UN agency (which is the one that turned out to be right about the lack of WMDs in Iraq) has found no evidence that Iran is trying to make a bomb. Even if it were, it would be years away from having one. There certainly is no imminent threat of an Iranian nuclear assault on any country, including our own, which is 7,000 miles away. Plus, Bush’s own former top commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, points out that the U.S. lived with a nuclear Soviet Union throughout the Cold War and now lives with a number of nuclear nations, including China and Pakistan, so “there are ways to live with a nuclear Iran.” It’s simply a lie that the Bushites must rush to war to keep us from being nuked.

Claim: Those dastardly Iranians are meddling in our war in Iraq by supplying weapons to our enemies and by sending intelligence agents to undermine Iraq’s government. Not likely. While some Iranianmade weapons have turned up in Iraq, there’ve been no findings of a large or regular influx and no evidence that the Iranian government itself is even tacitly behind it. Remember that Iran’s leaders are Shiites who do not like al Qaeda and do not support the Sunni insurgency, so the only Iraqi force that Tehran would want to help is the Shiite majority that Bush himself has put in charge. As for Iranian “operatives” in Iraq, the two countries share long familial and cultural relationships, so there are a lot of Iranians in Iraq all the time. In fact, Iraq’s Shiite-led government is pro-Iranian and has many economic and even military agreements with Tehran. Indeed, when U.S. troops “captured” a group of Iranians in a Baghdad hotel this summer, they turned out to be energy experts invited to Iraq by Prime Minister Maliki, who had them released.

On the warpath

Not that Iran’s military/political/ theocratic leaders are a bunch of sweethearts, by any means. That country’s loudmouth, Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, makes himself an easy target for Bushite demonization, and all peace-seeking governments must be vigilant toward Iran’s potential for belligerence. This requires steady engagement, smart diplomacy, military subtlety, and careful consideration of the complexities embodied within Iran’s rich, proud, 6,000-year-old culture.

Unfortunately, BushCheney doesn’t do engagement, diplomacy, subtlety, or complexity. If there’s an international need to shell a pecan, the Bushites go at it with a sledgehammer, blissfully ignorant of their own ignorance. Do you think, for example, that George W is even aware that President Ahmadinejad can rant and rave all he wants, but he is not in charge of his country’s foreign policy, which is in the firm grip of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei?

But realities did not deter Bush and the neocons from miring our country in Iraq, and now they are aggressively putting us on a path to war with Iran.

In August, Bush announced, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Teheran’s murderous activities.”

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed last month that Cheney has instructed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up plans for attacking Iran.

Hersh added that the bombing would be accompanied by selected “incursions” into Iran by U.S. Special Forces units.

The London Telegraph reported in September that the Pentagon has developed a list of some 2,000 bombing targets in Iran.

There are plans for both a limited “surgical” bombing of the Iranian military’s training sites and a broad bombing that would include nuclear-power facilities and other targets.

Two aircraft carriers, a flotilla of U.S. Navy warships, and numerous cruise missiles have been put in place at the Strait of Hormuz, on Iran’s southern shore. In fact, half of our navy’s warships now sit within striking distance of Iran.

The Pentagon has suddenly started building a new U.S. military base near the Iraqi town of Badrah, right up against Iran’s border.

In September, Israel launched a preemptive raid in Syria to destroy a construction site that Israelis claim might have been the beginning of a nuclear reactor — even though Syria has no nuclear-weapons program and could legally build a reactor for electric power. Cheney gave U.S. approval for Israel’s strike only after leaders there refused his pleas that they bomb Iran’s nuclear-power plant instead.

Yes, the U.S. Air Force and Navy have the razzle-dazzle firepower to destroy 2,000 Iranian targets in short order (not to mention thousands of Iranian civilians, for many of the targets are in populated places). But what happens the next day? Remember those neocon promises, just before the bombing of Iraq in 2003, that our troops would be showered with rose petals by a grateful public? Here we go again. Still intoxicated with the same ideological delusions, the neocons offer nothing but vague assurances that the Iranian masses will greet our forces as liberators and spontaneously overthrow the Tehran regime. In fact, opposition leaders inside Iran say that even the talk of a U.S. military attack is disastrous for their movement, for such reports strengthen hardliners in Iran and weaken those who want to reach out to the West. Iranians are Iranians first, and when a foreign power threatens to bomb or invade their country, they unite.

On Day Two (as well as on Days Three, Four, and so on), Iran most certainly will respond, and the results could be truly hellish for America. That furious wave of anti-Americanism that Podhoretz gleefully predicts would have explosive results in Iraq (further endangering our besieged troops), in such neighboring countries as Saudi Arabia, in the cities of Europe, and right here in the States, where our own citizens could become retaliatory targets.

Then there’s oil. Iran and its allies could block the narrow Strait of Hormuz, which connects all of the oil-producing Persian Gulf states to their foreign markets. Up to twenty-five percent of the world’s oil must pass through this strategic waterway, and shutting it down would cause prices to zoom astronomically, creating havoc for our oil-soaked economy.

What to do?

You might hope that cooler heads will prevail. Republican political operatives, for example, are aghast at the possible ‘08 fallout (”Every Republican is going to be defeated,” cried one). Also, the generals don’t want this — they know that they don’t have the manpower for a real war with Iran. Nor will Bush have a “coalition of the willing” this time — even the doggishly loyal British government thinks attacking Iran is madness.

Then there’s Putin of Russia, who pointedly traveled to Iran last month to declare that no one should “even think of making use of force in this region.”

However, as a former Bush official told Hersh, “Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass” about any of that, “and neither does the president.” The chickenhawks are screeching for war, and they are immune to sanity.

Well, surely, you say, the Democrats will finally stand up to these knuckleheads. After all, Congress has all the power it needs to say no [see last month's Lowdown], and the time for saying it is now, before the shooting starts, before the Bushites start hiding behind the rhetorical cloak of “support the troops.”

But the Democrats’ congressional leadership is already waffling, and some of their presidential candidates are joining Bush in rattling our sabers at Iran, hoping to appear commander-in-chiefish. Astonishingly, the Senate passed a resolution on September 26 by a 76-22 vote that endorses Bush’s confrontation with Tehran! The Kyl-Lieberman amendment buys into the Bushite myths about Iran, calls for the entire Iranian military to be designated “Global Terrorists” under a Bush executive order, and states that it should be U.S. policy to use all instruments of our national power (specifically including “military instruments”) to confront the “destabilizing influence” of Iran.

Democrats — especially Sen. Hillary Clinton — are now trying to deny that their vote for this resolution gave Bush a free pass to go after Iran, claiming that the resolution was only meant to apply to Iranian interference in Iraq. Intentions are nice, but Bush is not.

The amendment’s language plainly allows plenty of wiggle room, and the Bushites have shown that they will interpret even an errant sneeze as permission to do whatever they want. Besides, why the hell would Democrats pass anything involving the expansion of this horrible war? Voters put them in charge of Congress to go the opposite way, not to buck up Bush with a new piece of warmongering that Sen. Jim Webb has called “Cheney’s fondest pipe dream.”

We the People have to be the leaders. More than ever, we have to get noisy. We can’t just wring our hands — there are things we can do:

First, connect with our allies in Congress, including the 22 senators who voted against the Kyl-Lieberman surrender to Bush (list available here). Let antiwar lawmakers know you’re behind them, ask them to get still noisier on this, and ask that they develop an inside-outside strategy to rally and focus our national outrage against expanding Bush’s Iraq disaster into Iran.

Second, demand that your Congress critters (whatever their stripe) use all their congressional powers (to control spending, launch investigations, declare war, etc.) to say that the president can take no preemptive military action against Iran without a full, constitutionally mandated declaration of war by Congress.

Third, connect with any and all of the savvy grassroots groups in this issue’s “Do Something” box. Use their information, sign all of their petitions, spread their materials, and join their actions.

Fourth, talk, talk, talk, and talk some more — in church, at school, with your neighbors and coworkers, at town hall meetings, in family phone calls or visits, on talk radio, at candidate forums, in supermarket check-out lines… wherever you can find an ear. The vast majority of Americans have not heard what Bush is up to, and they won’t like it. The most effective way to reach them and activate them is by personal contact — i.e., you. Talk to someone about it every day.

Fifth, don’t let Democrats waffle. Iraq was Bush’s war (and his political debacle), but Iran would be a product of a Democratic-controlled Congress, and they will be responsible either for allowing it…or for stopping it.

Sixth, come up with your own action idea, and let the rest of us know how we can support and spread it.

Be brave. Be loud. Your country needs you. ++

Powell: Iran Far From Nuclear Weapon
DIANA ELIAS, AP
November 19, 2007

KUWAIT CITY — Iran is far from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and despite U.S. fears about its atomic intentions, an American military strike against the Islamic Republic is unlikely, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.

Tehran rejects claims by the United States and some European Union countries that its nuclear program is aimed at secretly producing weapons, insisting it is for peaceful purposes only.

“I think Iran is a long way from having anything that could be anything like a nuclear weapon,” said Powell, who was invited by the National Bank of Kuwait to speak on economic opportunity and crisis in the Middle East.

A recent report by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog found Iran has been generally truthful in the information it has provided the agency about aspects of its past nuclear activities.

But the International Atomic Energy Agency said it could not rule out that Iran had a secret weapons program because of restrictions Tehran placed on its inspectors two years ago.

Asked if he sees a U.S. war on Iran coming, the retired U.S. general said although no American official will say the option was “off the table,” he did not see prospects of a military conflict.

There is no base of support among Americans for such an action, Powell said, adding that the U.S. military already has enough on its hands in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Powell was the secretary of state under President Bush from 2001 to 2005. In September 2004, Powell said Iran’s nuclear program was a growing threat and he called for international sanctions. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.” ~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves