Column No. 199
by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – July 16, 2008
This column is the introduction to a new series of re-visits to
columns of mine that will be appearing in the is space on an occasional basis
through the election campaign and possibly, depending upon which way the winner
goes with the issue after the election, right up to Inauguration Day.
(Don’t worry. There will also be Bush re-runs appearing from
time-to-time. For August, as of now, I am planning to re-run my 2004
two-parter on the ugly duckling who just refuses to grow up and become a swan,
Ralph Nader.) But anyway, here we turn back, and forward, to Iraq.
George W. Bush, as many observers have told us,
came into office with seven major goals:
1. Invade
Iraq to take over its oil production and establish permanent bases there so as
to project American military power into the oil-producing Middle East region an
on a permanent basis, with an independent operation status for the bases not
provided by the existing bases in Saudi Arabia. (It is unclear whether
the goal of creating Permanent War in Iraq, which became quite apparent after
the US was about two years into the war, was a goal from the beginning.
It surely is now.)
2. To the
extent possible, destroy the separation of power between the three branches of
the Federal government. Under the Constitution they are to be
more or les co-equal. The unique concept of the “Unitary Executive,”
(which most observers would call “dictatorship,”) is nowhere to be found in
either Article II, which describes and defines the powers of the Presidency, or
anywhere else in the document.
3. Shift an
increasing amount of the wealth of the country further to the wealthy, who were
already pretty wealthy when they got together to put Bush into power.
4. To the
extent possible destroy or seriously limit the power/efficiency of the several
Federal government departments other than those devoted to the military and
domestic repression.
5. Secure
the power of the petroleum industry in the domestic economy and increase its
profitability to the extent possible. (This all likely being spelled out
in the minutes of that energy policy meeting that Cheney has so jealously
guarded.)
6. Destroy
the Social Security System, which Bush in particular has hated ever since
before he was a student at the Harvard Business School.
7. Create
Permanent Republican Governance, and failing that a Permanent Republican
Presidency.
There were others, of course, but these were the main
ones. He has succeeded in achieving the first five. Six he didn’t
make. Seven is still open.
So why list the War on Iraq as first on the
list? Because it is central either causally or symbolically, directly or
indirectly, to the achievement of the other major goals. At the beginning, in
order to do for the Georgites what they wanted it to do; it had to be very
visible. And it was, in the way that the Regime wanted it
presented. Then, once the Georgites achieved their primary goals,
especially on the domestic side (e.g., establishing their national security
apparatus against us the citizens of the United States, not against the
“terrorists,” and providing the false basis for establishing the Unitary
Presidency), they needed to tamp it down, to get it out of public view.
(They also needed to do for political reasons for it has become so unpopular.)
And thus the war has become rather invisible. The “Surge” has indeed
worked, for the Georgites. They have gotten the Main Stream Media to say
that. What the Government Accountability Office has had to say about its
broad-based failure to achieve most of the supposed primary goals of the
“Surge” for Iraq itself came and went as quickly as you could say “raising
McCain” (USGAO: “Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq,” GAO-08-837, June,
2008).
Further, significant progress has been made in
negotiations between the Bush Regime and its hand-picked Iraqi government on
the non-treaty treaty that would ensure the permanent US presence in Iraq,
including those permanent bases, that was one of the original PNAC/Georgite
goals. These are (and apparently numbers of them are under construction
and some completed) within striking distance of Iran, although not Eastern
Afghanistan or Pakistan where al Qaeda is based. They could be reached
only by flying either over or around Iranian and Pakistani airspace
(geographical facts unknown to a former Republican candidate for President and
possible future McCain cabinet member, the jokester Mike Huckabee). So
there is lots of “stuff” actually going on that involves Iraq, but it is
generally off the front pages and off both network and cable TV.
Politically, for the Georgites, the “Surge” has worked.
But since it is and has been at the heart of
Georgite political, governmental, and electoral policy, and it is politically
so unpopular with the vast majority of the American electorate, it should be
central to the Obama Campaign. Whether it will be or not remains to be
seen. However, the more “DLC” Obama becomes, the less it will be (see
Paul Krugman, New York Times, June 30, 2008, and my upcoming “No
Obamallusions I and II,” right here on TPJ, on July 2 and 9. By the way,
I wrote my columns before Krugman’s appeared. I am delighted that he and
I are talking the same position.)
So, how is the Iraq War central to virtually
everything the Georgites have done in office? Well, first he did manage
to invade Iraq using whatever justifications, true or false, and whatever
diplomatic initiatives (the UN was ignored) that could be ginned up.
Second, it was the invasion of Iraq, not the response to the direct al Qaeda
threat coming from Afghanistan, that permitted
Bush to, among other things, create the domestic spying/repression so-called
“national security” apparatus that he wanted all along. He has used Iraq
as the excuse for every attack that he has made on the Constitution, all of
them, one can be sure, contemplated all along. For example, Article VI,
among other things, makes treaties part of the “supreme law of the land.”
The invasion itself violated Article 51 of the UN Charter, which prohibits “preventive
war.”
The adoption of torture as national policy
violates the Geneva Conventions, to which the US is bound by treaty (Article VI
again). Bush has essentially used the War on Iraq to justify torture, and
on a larger scale get the Congress to pass legislation, such as the Patriot Act
and the Military Commissions Act, which already give him the power to declare
the establishment of a dictatorship in circumstances which he would declare as
justifying such an act, on his own initiative. And, just as Hitler did
when he declared his dictatorship, Bush could declare that he was doing
everything constitutionally. The “Signing Statements” that he has invoked
to over-ride a variety of Congressional actions and passed bills, violate
Article II, which defines Presidential power, and Article I which defines
Congresses’. Again, he has justified them on the “grounds of national
security,” all related back to the War on Iraq. Just watch out for the
October or December surprise: and attempted coup d’etat under Presidential
powers that are already on the books.
The continual and monstrous borrowing to pay
for the war has saddled all future Administrations, Democratic and Republican
alike, with a monstrous national debt from which the US is unlikely to ever be
able to dig out from under. This will severely limit national domestic
spending (which the Republicans just love to label “social spending,” as in
“socialism,” dontchaknow). This Iraq-related national debt is one part of
the Grover Norquistian campaign to “reduce the size of the Federal government”
(that is those parts of it ol’ Grover doesn’t like) “to the size of a bathtub
and then drown it in the bathtub.” The continual borrowing is also a
major factor in the rise of the price of oil because oil sales are denominated
in dollars, and the oil producers want to make sure that they still are getting
proper value for their product. Since the US oil companies make their
money by charging a percentage of the price they pass on to consumers, that is
a major factor in fueling the monstrous oil company profits we have observed
over the past four years or so.
And so, many Georgite initiatives and many
Georgite goals can be connected with and to the War on Iraq. As I said at
the outset of this one, in future TPJ issues between now and the election, I
will be revisiting columns on Iraq that I have published over the last four
years. I hope that they will be useful in helping you to understand what
is going on, and not going on, this time around.