By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – March 21, 2007
The United States enters the fifth year of its war with
Iraqi with no end in sight. Despite the much-trumpeted so-called “Baghdad surge,” things seem to be
getting worse in that formerly cosmopolitan Middle East capital, not
better. The state of affairs is
highlighted by the bombing of the so-called Iraqi “parliament building” (a
former sports stadium), inside the so-called “Green Zone” on April 12. The Bush Administration continues to
trumpet the occupation as the “front line of the war on terrorism,” and that
“we need to fight them over there so that they will not be attacking us over
here.” This despite the fact that
official US documents now tell us what most of the world has known for years,
that there never was any connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. And official US documents also document
that one of the principal results of the Iraq occupation, and how it is being
carried out, is the creation, not the elimination, of
terrorists.
At this point then, the question must be asked: Is the Bush
administration really seeking to fight terrorism? Or is it all about
something else? For example, might
they be seeking to perpetuate conditions, say the creation of Permanent War,
that will drive American voters to maintain the Neocons and their overseas
allies in power, a la Orwell? And in that context, just how far would
Bush/Cheney go to assure they maintain power in the US? For
the CheneyBush War Policy is becoming curiouser and curiouser. "Things are getting better in
Iraq," they say, when they are clearly getting worse, as noted. "We
must fight on to 'victory' " they say, without ever defining what they
mean by "victory." Of course, virtually all military
authorities other than those in the CheneyBush hip pocket for one reason or
another say that no matter how you define it, "victory" is
impossible.
Virtually all political authorities (which given their track
records excludes any pro-war Republicans, neocons, or other Rightists, who
cannot be characterized as “authorities” on the Iraq matter) agree.
CheneyBush and their surrogates in the Congress and the Privatized Ministry of
Propaganda label any critics of their policies as traitors. Indeed, "aiding
and abetting the enemy" is one of the components of
"treason." Some such surrogates, like Mark Levin, an
attorney and President of the far-right wing Landmark Legal Foundation, who has
a talk show on New York City’s WABC-AM (Disney Corp.) radio call liberal
opponents of the Georgites “cockroaches, who need to be squashed underfoot.”
But the reality of Iraq for most observers is such that, traitors,
cockroaches, left-wing, right-wing (like Paul Craig Roberts) or no, they have
come to the conclusion that the Georgites and their followers are in la-la
land, that they are totally delusional, that they are getting wrong
intelligence, that (before the bombing of the parliament building) they are
Green Zone-centric, that when they talk about “achieving victory” they cannot
actually believe what they are saying.
Well, there is another possible explanation for CheneyBush
policy: things in Iraq are going exactly the way they planned them to go. I
have written about this possibility before, briefly, and am revisiting the
topic here in a bit more detail. Now it is possible that they are all
collectively delusional, just as Hitler was in the winter of 1945 when he
apparently really believed Goebbels’ propaganda that he was going to pull
victory from the jaws of defeat, even as the Red Army was making its final
drive across northeastern Europe in the dead of a very bad winter. But if
that’s not it, of “collective delusion” is not the answer, it appears that by a
process of elimination there is only one possible conclusion left: what’s
happening in Iraq is exactly what they have planned for all along. Let's
connect the dots.
As is known, CheneyBush lied the U.S. into war. There were
no WMD and they knew it. Hans Blix was inspecting the heck out of Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq and finding no evidence of WMD. He was sharing his
findings with the US and asked the US to share any contradictory intelligence
that they had with him. None, niente, nada.
There was no Hussein/al-Qaeda link, and they knew it. The
famous "Prague meeting" between representatives of Saddam Hussein and
Osama bin Laden might well have taken place. However, if it did, it is
most likely that Hussein's man told bin Laden's man "no" very firmly
(and likely in language not quite so polite). For a variety of reasons,
from Hussein's secularism to his strong desire not to give the Georgites any
real excuse to invade his country again, an excuse that they eventually did
make up, Hussein would have rejected any bin Laden overtures.
As is well known, there was no DOD post-war planning. The
U.S. State Department had a very detailed plan for Iraqi re-construction.
All 2,200 pages of it were just ignored. There is the much-traveled story that
Rumsfeld threatened to fire anyone on his staff who even talked about post-war
planning.
The looting of museums that could easily have been prevented
could, in fact, have been part of “a plan” (well a different kind of plan) to
develop permanent chaos: delete to the extent possible 5000 years of history
which gave at least parts of Iraq an historical identity. A
purposeful enterprise to destroy the civil infrastructure to the extent
possible would explain the staffing of Bremer's ‘pro-consulate’ by totally
unqualified, very young, Republican political operatives. Maybe it was
indeed not accidental or careless, but rather “let's do whatever we can to gum
up the infrastructure even further than it is already gummed up by Saddam and
our invasion.”
Since the famous “major combat operations have ended” moment
there have been numerous missed opportunities for declaring victory and
leaving, from the holding of elections, to the forming of a government, to the
swearing in of the Parliament. All opportunities were ignored.
The Iraq Study Group Report provided a perfect rationale and
cover for withdrawal to begin now. CheneyBush attempted to dispose of it before
its ink was dry. Bush famously did not ask one question during the 45
minutes (!) that he met with the Group, although when he went on to his next
meeting, with military commanders at the Pentagon, he was full of questions,
about the details of military strategy and tactics for Iraq.
Most of us on the Left thought the true goals of the
invasion were oil and bases. If that were true, they were achieved, as
confirmed last month with the news that the Iraqi cabinet has come to an
agreement over the distribution of oil exploration and operational rights and
revenues, which will most likely be approved by the Parliament. And Bush is
escalating militarily.
At various times, most recently with the re-emergence of the
“Saudi initiative,” the major Muslim countries have offered to provide cover
for an American departure, especially if it were attached to a real settlement
of the Palestine/Israel problem. They were not taken up on those offers.
Then came the bombshell report by Seymour Hersh in the Feb.
28, 2007, issue of The New Yorker.
As summarized by our European Editor, Michael Carmichael, on The Planetary
Movement (Blog) of March 4, 2007:
“The New Yorker’s ace investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, ha[s] done it again with his latest
earth-shattering exposé. Hersh revealed Dick Cheney and his henchmen had
deliberately set about inciting chain reactions of sectarian violence and civil
wars across the Middle East via a massive covert operation disguised as a shift
of geopolitical strategy. . . . Now, instead of launching a war
against Iran, Cheney with Bush’s complicity has pulled the trigger on a covert
war of global proportions pitting Sunnis against Shias.
“According to Hersh, Cheney’s covert plan involves massive US
financial backing for militant Sunni groups that are known to be inimical to
the Shia militias of the Badr Brigades, the Mahdi Army, Hamas, and Hezbollah,
all of whom support the revolutionary government of Iran. The US-backed
Sunnis include the Muslim Brotherhood, a vast and powerful multinational
organization, who are definitely on friendly terms with Al-Qaeda and its
allies, including the Taliban. . . . Hersh reveals presidential
involvement in the massive covert operation to ignite a religious war in the
Middle East . . . [I]nstead of rebuilding the damaged cities and broken
infrastructure of Iraq, the mega-billions in US cash are now being subverted to
the bank accounts of radical Sunni groups known to be in league with Al Qaeda
and their patrons – the Taliban.
“Hersh quotes well-known regional authorities who are
confidently predicting a US and Israel-backed confrontation between Shia and
Sunni forces. The covert American-Israeli plan to expand the Iraq Civil
War to engulf the entire region in a blazing arc of atrocities and
ultra-violence that will extend from Lebanon to Afghanistan is the brainchild
of the neoconservative cell remaining in power in the Bush White House.”
Sure sounds like a recipe for Orwellian Permanent War,
doesn’t it?
And finally there is the constant sabre-rattling on
Iran. As my readers already know, I think that the "Iran thing"
is all about sabre-rattling and scaring the American people and nothing else. I
do not believe that CheneyBush are about to invade and/or bomb. They have very
limited military resources, and as noted in The Sunday Times of London
(a Murdoch [!] newspaper) of February 25, 2007, they might even face a revolt
of the generals over it. The "evidence of Iranian intervention in
Iraq" consists primarily of some very sophisticated roadside bombs. They
might be supplied by the Iranian military with full government knowledge. On
the other hand, they might be forgeries. Or they might be stolen from
Iranian munitions dumps and then sold on the black market. But even for
CheneyBush, it is hardly likely (never say never when dealing with these guys)
that they would/could use them as a justification to carpet bomb Iran, perhaps
with nuclear weapons. Both options would go down very well with Kristol,
O'RHannibaugh and their most brain-washed acolytes, but with nobody else in the
world. However, CheneyBush are saber-rattling, although Cheney does most
of the rattling while Bush, Gates, and Snow say "nothing to worry
about." Thus it would appear that all the Sturm und Drang is
primarily for U.S. domestic political consumption.
I believe that the time has come to raise the questions that
I asked at the beginning of this column: Is the Bush administration really seeking to fight terrorism? Or
is it all about something else? For example, might they be seeking to perpetuate conditions, say the
creation of Permanent War, that will drive American voters to maintain their
come what else may, a la Orwell’s prediction? And in that context, just
how far would Bush/Cheney go to assure they maintain power in the
US? Dangerous questions, but not beginning to come to grips with
them could prove even more dangerous for the future of our great Constitutional
Democracy.