People
often look back in history for help when they are trying to make sense
of current problems. In recent weeks politicians have been comparing
the situation in Iraq with other events in history. Important figures
in the unfolding drama have been compared to past political leaders.
Saddam Hussein has been described as a new Adolf Hitler and George
Bush has been portrayed as acting like Winston Churchill.
(1)
In this activity you are going to be given the chance to compare George
Bush with figures from the past. Read the material and follow the
links. Then explain if you think George Bush is more like Winston
Churchill, Anthony Eden or Adolf Hitler.
(2)
Use the Internet to write a biography of George Bush. Is there any
other character in history that George Bush resembles?
Iraq
Saddam
Hussein
Ba'ath
Party
George
Bush as Winston Churchill
In
the 1930s Winston Churchill constantly complained about the behaviour
of Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany. He argued that it was necessary
for the rest of the world to join together to remove Hitler from power.
Some politicians believe that Saddam Hussein is as bad as Adolf Hitler.
Therefore, by trying to persuade the rest of the world to join with
him to remove Saddam Hussein, George Bush is acting like Winston Churchill
in 1939.
arguments
for:
Saddam
Hussein is like Adolf Hitler because he has invaded neighbouring countries,
gassed his political enemies and tortured his own people.
George
Bush, like Winston Churchill, is trying to form an international coalition
against a dangerous tyrant.
arguments
against:
Adolf
Hitler posed a far greater threat to the world than Saddam Hussein.
In his book, Mein Kamp, published in 1925, he argued "The
external security of a people in largely determined by the size of
its territory." If he won power Hitler promised to occupy neighbouring
land so that would provide protection and lebensraum (living space)
for the German people. Once he gained power Hitler he moved his armed
forces across international borders three times in three years: Rhineland
(March 1936), Austria (March, 1938) and Czechoslovakia (October, 1938).
Saddam
Hussein does not pose the same military threat as Adolf Hitler. In
1938 Germany had one of the most powerful armed forces in the world.
Iraq armed forces are very poor and had great difficulty defeating
its neighbour Iran in the war fought between 1980 and 1988.
Winston
Churchill urged and international coalition (Soviet Union, France,
United States, etc.) against Nazi Germany before the outbreak of the
Second World War. However, unlike George Bush, he did not advocate
a pre-emptive strike.
Winston
Churchill fought in the First World War. George Bush avoiding fighting
in Vietnam by enlisting
in the Texas Air National Guard.
Websites
Winston
Churchill
Adolf
Hitler
Mein
Kampf
Rhineland
Anschluss
Czechoslovakia
Lebensraum
Poland
Military
Career of George Bush
George Bush: AWOL
Mother
Jones: Bush's Military War
George
Bush as Anthony Eden
On
26th July 1956 President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced he intended
to nationalize the Suez Canal. Anthony Eden, the
British prime minister, feared that Nasser intended to form an Arab
Alliance that would cut off oil supplies to the rest of the world.
Secret negotiations took place between Britain,
France and Israel and it was agreed to make a joint attack on Egypt.
It is therefore argued that by trying to overthrow
Saddam Hussein, George Bush is attempting to maintain oil supplies
to the rest of the world.
arguments
for:
Iraq has
the second largest oil reserves in the world. The United States uses
25 per cent of oil consumed and is forced to import 60 per cent of
its needs from foreign countries.
Saddam
Hussein, like Gamal Abdel Nasser, realizes that the
industrialized world needs that oil. Anthoney Eden, like George
Bush, believed that the best way to stop the cutting of oil supplies
was by taking pre-emptive action. That the occupation of Iraq will
enable the United States to take control of the country's oil. Anthony
Eden, like George Bush, also claimed that the attack was an attempt
to remove a dangerous dictator.
Arguments
against:
George
Bush is attempting to persuade the United Nations to support his attack
on Iraq. Anthony Eden took action without consulting the United Nations.
Gamal
Abdel Nasser took
control of the Suez Canal but that was located in his own country.
He did not plan to use weapons of mass destruction against the rest
of the world.
Websites
Gamal
Abdel Nasser
Anthony
Eden
Suez
Canal
Egypt
Israel
United
Nations
John
Foster Dulles
Dwight
Eisenhower
George
Bush as Adolf Hitler
In
his State of the Union Address (29th January, 2002) George Bush told
the world that states such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea "constitute
an axis of evil". In several speeches over the last year Bush
has talked about the need to disarm these countries by force or the
threat of force. Some commentators have argued that Bush's State of
the Union Address was equivalent to the threats made by Adolf Hitler
in Mein Kampf.
Arguments
for:
Germany
in 1938 possessed the armed forces that would have enabled them to
defeat virtually any other country in the world. The same is also
true of the United States in 2003.
Germany's
power in the 1930s was illustrated by its willingness to use armed
force against smaller nations. The United States has in recent years
used its power to try and remove governments from office it did not
like.
As powerful
nations, both Germany in the 1930s and the United States since the
Second World War have tried to remove governments that were hostile
to them (Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada, etc.)
Adolf Hitler
and George Bush were both elected to office. However, afterwards,
opponents accused the victor of using illegal methods to obtain power.
Arguments
against:
Adolf Hitler
had complete control over the mass media in Germany. Those people
who criticized Hitler's government were arrested and imprisoned in
concentration camps. George Bush does not control the mass media in
the United States. People in the United States are allowed to disagree
with Bush plans to invade Iraq.
Hitler's Final Solution
involed the attempt to destroy the Jewish population in Europe. In
contrast, George Bush's policy involves the protection of the Jewish
people living in Israel.
Adolf Hitler
tried to impose his fascist ideology on neighbouring countries. Although
the United States is proud of its capitalist ideology, it has not
attempted to force other countries to share these views.
After Adolf
Hitler gained power he brought an end to democracy in Germany. Since
being elected to office George Bush has not made any attempts to change
to the political system in the United States.
Websites
Adolf
Hitler
Mein
Kampf
1933
Election
Gestapo
German
Fascism
SD
Security Service
Concentration
Camps
Cuba
Military
Coup in Chile
George
Bush
Nicaragua
Grenada
Leaflets
dropped over Iraq by the United States Airforce
SchoolHistory
Quiz on Iraq
(1)
George Bush, State
of the Union Address (29th January, 2002)
Our nation will continue to be steadfast and patient and persistent
in the pursuit of two great objectives. First, we will shut down terrorist
camps, disrupt terrorist plans, and bring terrorists to justice.
Our second
goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America
or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of
these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But
we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles
and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.
Iran aggressively pursues
these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the
Iranian people's hope for freedom.
Iraq continues to flaunt
its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime
has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons
for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas
to murder thousands of its own citizens - leaving the bodies of mothers
huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to
international inspections - then kicked out the inspectors. This is
a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.
States like these, and
their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten
the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these
regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these
arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They
could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States.
In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.
(2)
William Kristol, The
Washington Post (12th October, 2002)
Has anyone had a
better six weeks than George W. Bush? Just before Labor Day, the American
people were uncertain about the need to act soon to remove Saddam
Hussein. The Bush administration itself seemed to be in disarray.
Senators and House members were objecting to a broad grant of authority
to the president to use force. And our allies were even more unhappy
than usual.
Then the president called
in the congressional leadership, went to the United Nations and made
his case. The country now supports him. His administration is at least
publicly united behind him. He has won large bipartisan majorities
in Congress. And he is likely to prevail in the U.N. Security Council.
What accounts for the president's
success? Primarily it's the clarity, toughness and straightforwardness
with which he has marshaled his arguments. There have been impressively
serious and high-minded speeches, for example to the United Nations
on Sept. 12 and in Cincinnati on Monday. There has been the release
of information and the presentation of arguments, including the national
security strategy in late September. And there have been the informal
comments that have had real political punch, especially the not-so-veiled
threat on Sept. 13 to Democrats standing for reelection that they
could be accused of subordinating American security to the United
Nations.
(3)
Richard Perle, speech in New York on Iraq (13th February, 2003)
Let me say a word
about what you call the new strategy of preemption. There's nothing
new about preemption. If you know that you are about to be attacked,
it is certainly sensible if you can act first and avoid that attack
to do so. I don't think anybody would dispute that. So then the question
is how imminent must the attack be to justify the preemptive response.
Here, we need to think more carefully about the concept of imminence.
In 1981, the Israelis, after a long and, I gather, a heated cabinet
debate, decided to destroy the reactor that Chirac had sent to Osirak,
not because it was about to produce nuclear weapons. It wasn't. It
was about to produce plutonium and it was under IAEA safeguards so
the Iraqis would have had to siphon off small, undetectable quantities
of plutonium and it would have taken them time to build a nuclear
weapon based on what they would get from the Osirak reactor. But,
nevertheless, the Israelis decided to strike some years in advance
of the production of the nuclear weapon that they were concerned about.
Now, why did they do that?
They did it because the Iraqis were about to load fuel into the reactor
and once they did so, they would not have had an opportunity to use
an air strike without doing a lot of unintended damage around the
facility, because radioactive material would have been released into
the atmosphere. So from an Israeli point of view, what was imminent
and what had to be acted against in a preemptive manner was not the
ultimate emergence of the threat but an event that would lead inexorably
to the ultimate emergence of the threat. They had to deal with a threshold
that once crossed, they would no longer have the military option that
could be effective at that moment.
(4)
Ian Kershaw, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, is among those who have looked
to the mistakes of the past to justify the present policy against
Iraq. It would be repeating the disastrous appeasement policy of the
1930s, it is said, if we were not now to act against Saddam Hussain.
But this is no more than a spin on history. The parallels are as good
as non-existent.
The US
was then isolationist, largely uninterested in Europe. Stalinist Russia
was isolated for other reasons. Britain had to take the concerns of
a world empire into account. France was petrified about the growing
danger on the other side of the Rhine. The threat was indeed in the
very heart of Europe, and unmistakably real. Britain's very existence
was at stake. No weapons inspectors were needed to see whether Hitler
was building "weapons of mass destruction". Everybody knew
he was doing this illegally even before he openly announced it. He
then used military might and bullying tactics to force changes to
state borders within Europe. The annexation of what was left of Czechoslovakia
in 1939, without any pretext of uniting ethnic Germans, finally convinced
the government to take a stand, at the risk of a war they did not
want.
Today, there is no self-evident
threat from Iraq. There is no invasion of a sovereign territory (as
in 1991) to repulse. We have to take it on trust that Saddam is building
weapons of mass destruction. Even if he has them, he is unlikely to
use them against Britain or America - seemingly bent on war and towing
Britain in its slipstream.
(5)
Mark Mazower, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
In 1939, the Third Reich was the most powerful and highly armed state
in the world. To defeat it took six years, even though for much of
that time it was fighting on several fronts at once. But although
the Nazi party was destroyed, Germany itself was not: divided and
occupied for half a century, its essential unity re-emerged with the
collapse of the Berlin Wall. Iraq, by contrast, weakened by defeat
in 1991 and sanctions since, is so far from being the most powerful
state in the Middle East that, even now, hostile forces control its
skies and northern territories with impunity.
In 1956, the US opposed
war and forced Israel to withdraw from both Sinai and the Gaza Strip
by threatening to cut off aid to it entirely. Eisenhower's anti-colonialism
is now a distant memory. Today, the US imports half of its total private
consumption of oil, and believes toppling Saddam will help it secure
this.
As for weapons of mass
destruction, this war may get rid of Saddam's. And then? War on North
Korea next? Or Iran? We hear a lot at present about the limits of
diplomacy and the virtues of military force. True statecraft appreciates
that force has its limits, too. Hitler, the messianic leader of a
rising power, never understood this ; Churchill, prime minister of
a waning one, did.
(6)
Andrew Roberts, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
This is not another Suez crisis, for the obvious and straightforward
reasons that the west is not today trying to recapture anything for
itself, that Egypt posed no military threat to the Nato allies in
1956 and that the British government is pursuing its ends openly through
the UN, at least initially, rather than through collusion. Moreover,
the people of Egypt were fully in support of Nasser, whereas the moment
a US-led invasion of Iraq is successful, the full extent of the Iraqi
people's fear and hatred of Saddam will immediately become evident.
No, the
situation is far closer to the late 1930s, when a fascist dictator
stealthily acquired weapons of mass destruction - the Luftwaffe's
bombing arm - and attempted to acquire nuclear weapons, too. That
totalitarian dictator later invaded his neighbour (as Saddam did),
gassed his political and racial enemies (as Saddam has) and brutalized
and tortured his own people (as Saddam does.) The League of Nations,
on the morning after Poland was invaded, had on its urgent agenda
the standardization of European railway gauges. Today's United Nations
is fast shaping up to be equally ineffectual.
(7)
Simon Schama, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
I don't think it's a case either of 1939 or of 1956. I'm allergic
to lazy historical analogies. History never repeats itself, ever.
That's its murderous charm.
It is not 1939 because
Saddam Hussein is not a rolling juggernaut of confident invasion and
annexation (although he would probably like to be). Nor is it 1956
because the US is at the clumsy beginning of an imperial career, not
the pathetic end of one.
(8)
Linda Colley, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
Saddam may in essence be as evil and megalomaniac a man as Adolf Hitler
(how would one judge?). He is certainly a dictator who has killed
large numbers of people. But, as a determinedly secular ruler, he
lacks the international ideological underpinning fascism gave Hitler.
And, crucially, he lacks comparable hardware. In 1939, Germany had
the strongest, most modern army, navy and air force in the world.
In 2003, it is Iraq's primary enemy, the US, that unquestionably possesses
the world's greatest stock of weapons of mass destruction.
(9)
Richard Evans, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
History never repeats itself, so anyone looking for parallels between
the present situation and past events is likely to be disappointed.
Not that there has been any shortage of such parallels drawn in the
past few weeks by politicians seeking to encourage their supporters
or discredit their opponents. But all of them are specious in one
way or another.
It is easy
enough to brand the opponents of an invasion of Iraq as "appeasers",
but this is another specious parallel with the past. Britain and France
did not declare war on Germany in 1939 because Hitler was maltreating
his own people, but because Hitler invaded Poland, and because his
invasion of Poland followed his invasion of Czechoslovakia earlier
the same year. Even so, the allies did not invade Germany in 1939.
Instead, it was Hitler who ended the "phoney war" in 1940
by invading France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway.
(10)
Avi Shlaim, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
Eden thought that he was applying the lessons of the 1930s in dealing
with Gamal Abdel Nasser and the result was a fiasco that brought his
own career crashing down. Eden demonized Nasser, personalized the
issues, and went to the length of colluding with France and Israel
with the aim of knocking Nasser off his perch. The chiefs of staff
had deep misgivings about the war. One senior officer exclaimed: "The
prime minister has gone bananas. He has ordered us to attack Egypt!"
Britain attacked Egypt without the authority of the UN and it was
roundly condemned for its aggression.
(11)
Norman Davies, historian, The
Guardian (19th February, 2003)
It is fascinating to see how many politicians, from Rumsfeld upwards,
are using their views on history to justify policies towards Iraq.
Rumsfeld seems to think that Churchill advocated a preemptive war
against Germany. And no doubt some Iraqi professor, at this very minute,
is polishing his thesis about Iraq being the "poor little Poland"
waiting to be attacked by the new Hitler and Mussolini.
I don't like the comparisons
with 1939. The Third Reich was potentially a top-class industrial
and military power, that was in a phase of dynamic expansion. If it
had defeated the Soviet Union it would have been the strongest state
in the world. Iraq is incapable of mounting a comparable threat. It
is a third-rate power which has already been badly defeated and which
does not possess the means to attack Europe or the US.
(12)
Robert Dreyfuss, Mother
Jones (March, 2003)
If you were to spin
the globe and look for real estate critical to building an American
empire, your first stop would have to be the Persian Gulf. The desert
sands of this region hold two of every three barrels of oil in the
world - Iraq's reserves alone are equal, by some estimates, to those
of Russia, the United States, China, and Mexico combined. For the
past 30 years, the Gulf has been in the crosshairs of an influential
group of Washington foreign-policy strategists, who believe that in
order to ensure its global dominance, the United States must seize
control of the region and its oil. Born during the energy crisis of
the 1970s and refined since then by a generation of policymakers,
this approach is finding its boldest expression yet in the Bush administration
- which, with its plan to invade Iraq and install a regime beholden
to Washington, has moved closer than any of its predecessors to transforming
the Gulf into an American protectorate.
In the geopolitical vision
driving current U.S. policy toward Iraq, the key to national security
is global hegemony - dominance over any and all potential rivals.
To that end, the United States must not only be able to project its
military forces anywhere, at any time. It must also control key resources,
chief among them oil - and especially Gulf oil. To the hawks who now
set the tone at the White House and the Pentagon, the region is crucial
not simply for its share of the U.S. oil supply (other sources have
become more important over the years), but because it would allow
the United States to maintain a lock on the world's energy lifeline
and potentially deny access to its global competitors. The administration
"believes you have to control resources in order to have access
to them," says Chas Freeman, who served as U.S. ambassador to
Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. "They are taken
with the idea that the end of the Cold War left the United States
able to impose its will globally - and that those who have the ability
to shape events with power have the duty to do so. It's ideology."
Iraq, in this view, is
a strategic prize of unparalleled importance. Unlike the oil beneath
Alaska's frozen tundra, locked away in the steppes of central Asia,
or buried under stormy seas, Iraq's crude is readily accessible and,
at less than $1.50 a barrel, some of the cheapest in the world to
produce. Already, over the past several months, Western companies
have been meeting with Iraqi exiles to try to stake a claim to that
bonanza.
But while the companies
hope to cash in on an American-controlled Iraq, the push to remove
Saddam Hussein hasn't been driven by oil executives, many of whom
are worried about the consequences of war. Nor are Vice President
Cheney and President Bush, both former oilmen, looking at the Gulf
simply for the profits that can be earned there. The administration
is thinking bigger, much bigger, than that.
"Controlling Iraq
is about oil as power, rather than oil as fuel," says Michael
Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire
College and author of Resource Wars. "Control over the Persian
Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan, and China. It's having
our hand on the spigot."
(13)
International Institute for Strategic Studies (25th October, 2002)
According to testimony given to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, while half of Iraqi divisions are 8,000 strong (and in a
"fair state of readiness") out of average authorized strengths
of 10,000 men, at least half of the regular army is at 70 percent
or less of its authorized strength, with some infantry units badly
undermanned and very dependent on conscripts. He also notes that Republican
Guards divisions average at least 80 percent of an authorized strength
of 8,000-10,000, with brigades averaging the size of a large U.S.
battalion of 2,500 men. IISS reports that all Iraqi divisions (except
those of the Republican Guard) are at 50 percent combat effectiveness,
with half of all army equipment lacking spare parts. IISS also cites
the serviceability of the Iraqi fixed wing aircraft at around 55 percent,
with serviceability of helicopters 'poor,' and lists senior pilots
as having 90-120 flying hours, with junior pilots having as little
as 20 hours of flight time.
(14)
Military Analysis Network, Iran-Iraq War (2002)
The Iran-Iraq War
permanently altered the course of Iraqi history. It strained Iraqi
political and social life, and led to severe economic dislocations.
Viewed from a historical perspective, the outbreak of hostilities
in 1980 was, in part, just another phase of the ancient Persian-Arab
conflict that had been fueled by twentieth-century border disputes.
Many observers, however, believe that Saddam Hussein's decision to
invade Iran was a personal miscalculation based on ambition and a
sense of vulnerability. Saddam Hussein, despite having made significant
strides in forging an Iraqi nation-state, feared that Iran's new revolutionary
leadership would threaten Iraq's delicate SunniShia balance and would
exploit Iraq's geostrategic vulnerabilities.
The Iran-Iraq war lasted
nearly eight years, from September of 1980 until August of 1988. It
ended when Iran accepted United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution
598, leading to a 20 August 1988 cease-fire.
Casualty figures are highly
uncertain, though estimates suggest more than one and a half million
war and war-related casualties -- perhaps as many as a million people
died, many more were wounded, and millions were made refugees. Iraq's
victory was not without cost. The Iraqis suffered an estimated 375,000
casualties, the equivalent of 5.6 million for a population the size
of the United States. Another 60,000 were taken prisoner by the Iranians.
(15)
Tony Blair, interviewed by Jackie Ashley of The
Guardian (February)
He doesn't want to
make glib comparisons with the 1930s, but suggests that despite many
obvious differences, there are some similarities.
One is that "although
with hindsight the decision that this was a real threat we had to
confront was obvious, at the time it wasn't so obvious".
"A majority of decent
and well-meaning people said there was no need to confront Hitler
and that those who did were war-mongers. When people decided not to
confront fascism, they were doing the popular thing, they were doing
it for good reasons, and they were good people ... but they made the
wrong decision."
Hitler's appeasers, he
suggests, were also saying, like today's anti-war protesters: "Well
look, this is ridiculous. OK, this is a long way from us, why on earth
should we be involved in it."
Yet, history had proved
them wrong, and clearly, in this case too, Mr Blair believes history
will judge him right.
(16)
Kenneth Morgan, historian, The
Guardian (1st March, 2003)
As a historian, I
worry about the crude use of history, particularly our old friend
the 1930s. Time and again we hear that this crisis is the 1930s come
again - what nonsense. Saddam is not another Hitler. Where is his
Mein Kampf? Where is his dream of universal conquest? George Bush
is certainly no Churchill; it would be a calumny on the reputation
of that great man to suggest it. It is a facile argument, and it disturbs
me that Downing Street produces it, all the more because I taught
one or two of them. My efforts were clearly in vain.
Tony Blair is a brave man
who prides himself on being another Churchill. He must be wary of
being another Ramsay MacDonald. This is said to be a listening government;
one that listens to the people. They should listen - not to transatlantic
ideologues but to the wisdom, humanity and decency of the British
people.
(17)
Robert Kagan, Paradise & Power: America and Europe in the New
World Order (2003)
The Iraq crisis has
cast transatlantic differences in an especially harsh light, but the
gulf had been opening for some time. After the cold war, Europeans
and Americans no longer share a common view of the world. On the all-important
question of power - the utility of power, the morality of power -
they have parted ways. Europeans believe they are moving beyond power
into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation
and cooperation. Europe itself has entered a post-historical paradise,
the realisation of Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace. The US, meanwhile,
remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian
world where international rules are unreliable and where security
and the promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession
and use of military might.
Europe's relatively pacific
strategic culture is the product of its relative weakness in military
terms, but it is also the product of its profound and admirable aspiration
to escape its war-like past. Who knows the dangers of Machtpolitik
better than a French or German or British citizen? The EU is a monument
to Europe's rejection of the old power politics. As the British diplomat
and senior EU official Robert Cooper has noted, Europe today lives
in a "postmodern system" that does not rest on a balance
of power but on "the rejection of force" and on "self-enforced
rules of behaviour". Raison d'état has been "replaced
by a moral consciousness". The new Europe has succeeded not by
balancing power but by transcending power. And now Europeans have
become evangelists for their "postmodern" gospel of international
relations. The application of the European miracle to the rest of
the world has become Europe's new mission civilisatrice. If Germany
can be tamed through gentle rapprochement, why not Iraq?
This has put Europeans
and Americans on a collision course. Americans have not lived the
European miracle. They have no experience of promoting ideals and
order successfully without power. Their memory of the past 60 years
is of a world saved from Nazism chiefly by American power and of a
cold war struggle that was eventually won by strength and determination,
not by the spontaneous triumph of "moral consciousness".
As good children of the Enlightenment, Americans believe in human
perfectibility. But Americans from Donald Rumsfeld to Colin Powell
to Madeleine Albright also believe that global security and a liberal
order depend on the US - that "indispensable nation" - wielding
its power in the dangerous, Hobbesian world that still flourishes,
at least outside Europe. Especially after September 11, most Americans
remember Munich, not Maastricht.
Can the gap be bridged
or at least narrowed? Tony Blair has long believed it can, and he
is probably the only person on either side of the Atlantic with a
strategy for bringing the one-time transatlantic partners back on
to common ground.
The theoretical basis for
Blair's approach to Europe has been set forth most powerfully by Robert
Cooper, once a top official in the Foreign Office. A year ago, Cooper
wrote that although "within the postmodern world [ie, today's
Europe], there are no security threats in the traditional sense,"
nevertheless, throughout the rest of the world - what Cooper calls
the "modern and pre-modern zones" - threats abound.
If the postmodern world
does not protect itself, it can be destroyed. But how does Europe
protect itself without discarding the very ideals and principles that
undergird its pacific system? "The challenge to the postmodern
world," Cooper has argued, "is to get used to the idea of
double standards." Among themselves, Europeans may "operate
on the basis of laws and open cooperative security." But when
dealing with the world outside Europe, "we need to revert to
the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, preemptive attack,
deception, whatever is necessary". This is Cooper's principle
for safeguarding society: "Among ourselves, we keep the law,
but when operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the
jungle."
Cooper's notion of an international
double standard for power would seem to lie at the heart of Blair's
global strategy. On the one hand, he has tried to lead Britain into
the rule-based, Kantian world of the EU. And he has pursed the European
interest in trying to convince the US, which stands outside that Kantian
world, to respect its norms. But Blair has also tried to lead Europe
back out into the Hobbesian world, where military power remains a
key feature of international relations.
America
did not change on September 11. It only became more itself. The myth
of America's 'isolationist' tradition is remarkably resilient. But
it is a myth. Expansion of territory and influence has been the inescapable
reality of American history.
(18)
Martin Amis, The
Guardian (4th March, 2003)
The notion of the
"axis of evil" has an interesting provenance. In early drafts
of the President's speech the "axis of evil" was the "axis
of hatred", "axis" having been settled on for its associations
with the enemy in the second world war. The "axis of hatred"
at this point consisted of only two countries, Iran and Iraq. whereas
of course the original axis consisted of three (Germany, Italy, Japan).
It was additionally noticed that Iran and Iraq, while not both Arab,
were both Muslim. So they brought in North Korea.
We may notice, in this
embarras of the inapposite, that the Axis was an alliance, whereas
Iran and Iraq are blood-bespattered enemies, and the zombie nation
of North Korea is, in truth, so mortally ashamed of itself that it
can hardly bear to show its face. Still, "axis of hatred"
it was going to be, until the tide turned towards "axis of evil".
"Axis of evil" echoed Reagan's "evil empire".
It was more alliterative. It was also, according to President Bush,
"more theological".
This is a vital question.
Why, in our current delirium of faith and fear, would Bush want things
to become more theological rather than less theological? The answer
is clear enough, in human terms: to put it crudely, it makes him feel
easier about being intellectually null. He wants geopolitics to be
less about intellect and more about gut-instincts and beliefs - because
he knows he's got them. One thinks here of Bob Woodward's serialised
anecdote: asked by Woodward about North Korea, Bush jerked forward
saying, "I loathe Kim Jong II!" Bush went on to say that
the execration sprang from his instincts, adding, apparently in surprised
gratification, that it might be to do with his religion. Whatever
else happens, we can infallibly expect Bush to get more religious:
more theological.
(19)
Richard Dawkins, The
Guardian (6th March, 2003)
The distorting mirror
of Munich and appeasement is held up with irritating regularity George
Bush is said to admire Churchill, but the comparison is vain. Bush's
zig-zagging around the US on September 11th 2001 has been defended,
somewhat lamely, against the obvious charges of cowardice and panic.
Well, maybe. But can you imagine Churchill doing it?
Turn it round. Who is the
petulant bully, the "bloodthirsty guttersnipe" today? On
February 16, the Observer reported that the Pentagon had been ordered
by Donald Rumsfeld to impose sanctions to punish Germany for leading
international opposition to a war against Iraq. "We are doing
this for one reason only: to harm the German economy." Yesterday
you quoted Colin Powell as warning that time is running out: "Either
the international community's will has meaning or does not have meaning."
One might have hoped that the will of the international community
would mean whatever emerges from the deliberations of the UN. Apparently
it means the unilateral will of the current US government. Most chilling
of all, you report that Bush himself has warned Chirac "he will
neither forgive nor forget if France continues to oppose the resolution".
Where should we look for
our Chamberlain? Jack Straw warns that Washington would abandon the
UN and Nato if Europe refuses to fall into line: "What I say
to France and Germany and all my other EU colleagues is take care,
because just as America helps to define and influence our politics,
so what we do in Europe helps to define and influence American politics
... And we will reap a whirlwind if we push the Americans into a unilateralist
position in which they are the centre of this unipolar world."
If that is not appeasement, I'd like to know what you call it.
(20)
William Kristol, The
Washington Post (12th October, 2002)
Has anyone had a
better six weeks than George W. Bush? Just before Labor Day, the American
people were uncertain about the need to act soon to remove Saddam
Hussein. The Bush administration itself seemed to be in disarray.
Senators and House members were objecting to a broad grant of authority
to the president to use force. And our allies were even more unhappy
than usual.
Then the president called
in the congressional leadership, went to the United Nations and made
his case. The country now supports him. His administration is at least
publicly united behind him. He has won large bipartisan majorities
in Congress. And he is likely to prevail in the U.N. Security Council.
What accounts for the president's
success? Primarily it's the clarity, toughness and straightforwardness
with which he has marshaled his arguments. There have been impressively
serious and high-minded speeches, for example to the United Nations
on Sept. 12 and in Cincinnati on Monday. There has been the release
of information and the presentation of arguments, including the national
security strategy in late September. And there have been the informal
comments that have had real political punch, especially the not-so-veiled
threat on Sept. 13 to Democrats standing for reelection that they
could be accused of subordinating American security to the United
Nations.
(21)
Rupert
Murdoch owns more than
175 newspapers and magazines on three continents. He publishes 40
million newspapers a week and dominates the newspaper markets in Britain,
Australia and New Zealand. In an interview published in the
Sydney Daily Telegraph in March, 2003, he explained why his
175 editors around the
world were backing the war with Iraq.
We can't back down
now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam...
I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he
is going to go on with it... I think Tony (Blair) is being extraordinarily
courageous and strong... It's not easy to do that living in a party
which is largely composed of people who have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism
and are sort of pacifist. But he's shown great guts as he did, I think,
in Kosovo and various problems in the old Yugoslavia.
The greatest thing to come
out of this for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil.
That's bigger than any tax cut in any country. Once it (the Iraq War)
is behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which
will be a bigger stimulus than anything else.
(22)
Jimmy
Carter, New
York Times (9th March, 2003)
For a war to be just,
it must meet several clearly defined criteria.
(1) The war can be waged
only as a last resort, with all nonviolent opinions exhausted.
(2) The war's weapons must
discriminate between combatants and non-combatants.
(3) Its violence must be
proportional to the injury we have suffered.
(4) The attackers must
have legitimate authority sanctioned by the society they profess to
represent.
(5) The peace it establishes
must be a clear improvement over what exists.
In the case of Iraq, it
is obvious that clear alternatives to war exist. These options - previously
proposed by our own leaders and approved by the UN - were outlined
again by the security council on Friday. But now, with our own national
security not directly threatened and despite the overwhelming opposition
of most people and governments in the world, the US seems determined
to carry out military and diplomatic action that is almost unprecedented
in the history of civilised nations. The first stage of our widely
publicised war plan is to launch 3,000 bombs and missiles on a relatively
defenceless Iraq population within the first few hours of an invasion,
with the purpose of so damaging and demoralising the people that they
will change their obnoxious leader, who will most likely be hidden
and safe during the bombardment.
(23)
Correlli Barnett, The Guardian (15th March, 2003)
We must not let ourselves
be deceived by Downing Street's false argument that UN resolution
1441 justifies an Anglo-American attack on Iraq without the need for
a further resolution. Last October, Washington originally put forward
a resolution specifying that failure by Saddam Hussein to fulfil UN
demands for his disarmament should be dealt with "by all possible
means" - code for automatic use of armed force. This was totally
rejected by France, Russia and China. In November, after six weeks
of haggling, the present resolution 1441 was passed, stating that
a material breach by Iraq would entail "serious consequences"
- not code for automatic war. Moreover, France, Russia and China,
in accepting resolution 1441, formally stated that they did so only
on the clear understanding that it did not carry with it any automatic
recourse to war without a further security council decision.
Therefore, Bush and Blair's
war will be contrary to resolution 1441. It will also breach the UN
charter itself, which reserves decisions over peace and war to the
security council except in cases of self-defence against attack. But
neither America nor Britain has been attacked, or even threatened
with attack, by Iraq.
Of course, the cold-eyed
warmongers of Bush's Washington don't give a damn about any of this.
But we might have hoped that Tony Blair would have felt some scruples
about embarking on a war which will be illegal, as well as opposed
by a majority of the British nation.
(24)
Vladimir Slipchenko,
Russian military analyst, interviewed by Aleksander Khokhlov (March,
2003)
Aleksander
Khokhlov: Vladimir
Slipchenko, so much has already been said about the reasons and causes
of the new war in Iraq, but I cannot get rid of the feeling that they
are either talking about something entirely different, or not telling
the full story.
Vladimir
Slipchenko: The main
purpose of the war is indeed being left out of the picture and nobody
is saying anything about it. I see the main purpose of the war as
being the large-scale real-life testing by the United States of sophisticated
models of precision weapons. That is the objective that they place
first. All the other aims are either incidental, or outright disinformation.
For more than 10 years
now the United States has conducted exclusively no-contact wars. In
May 2001 George Bush Jr., delivering his first presidential speech
to students at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, spoke of the need for
accelerated preparation of the US Armed Forces for future wars. He
emphasized that they should be high-tech Armed Forces capable of conducting
hostilities throughout the world by the no-contact method. This task
is now being carried out very consistently.
It should be observed that
the Pentagon buys from the military-industrial complex only those
weapons that have been tested in conditions of real warfare and received
a certificate of quality on the battlefield. After a series of live
experiments - the wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan - many
corporations in the US military industrial complex have been granted
the right to sell their precision weapons to the Pentagon. They include
Martin Lockheed, General Electric, and Loral. But many other well-known
companies are as yet without orders from the military department.
The bottom line is $50-60 billion a year. Who would want to miss out
on that kind of money? But the present suppliers of precision weapons
to the Pentagon are also constantly developing new types of arms and
they must also be tested The US military-industrial complex demands
test-bed wars from its country's political leadership. And it gets
them. And that is
the main aim of the new war in Iraq.
Aleksander
Khokhlov:
How will this war differ from the no-contact wars previously waged
by the United States?
Vladimir
Slipchenko:
First, in terms of its
political objectives. For the first time since 1991 the United States
sets the goal of changing the political system in the enemy state
and removing or physically eliminating the country's leadership. They
have not previously succeeded in this. Remember, the Americans did
not previously try to remove Saddam
Hussein from politics,
and even Milosevic was not removed from the post of Yugoslav leader
by military means. The US Armed Forces carried out their required
tests of new weapons and then packed up their guns and went home.
Now they face a very difficult mission.
Therefore, second, because
of the change of objective the strategy of the war also changes radically.
For the first time the war aims mean that the United States must without
fail achieve total victory. To that end it is necessary to achieve
three objectives: rout the enemy's Armed Forces, destroy his economy,
and change the political system.
The Iraqi army will be
subjected to very powerful blows. It will be physically annihilated.
In order to impose a new puppet government in the country (and I am
sure the Americans have already formed that government) and to give
that government the opportunity to get on with its work, the United
States will be forced actually to occupy Iraq. The occupation of territory
within which seats of organized resistance could persist would lead
to large losses among US Army personnel. Guerrillas, and in the context
of the Arab world also Shahid martyrs wearing explosive belts - naturally
the Americans do not need this Therefore they will totally annihilate
the Iraqi army. Practically all Iraq servicemen will die. There will
be terrible carnage.
Aleksander
Khokhlov: Does Iraq
have any chance of offering resistance to the United States?
Vladimir
Slipchenko: In Iraq
we will once again see a situation where two generations of warfare
meet. Iraq is strong and prepared for a war of the last generation
- on land and for land, for every target. But 600,000 soldiers, 220
military aircraft, something like 2,200 tanks, 1,900 artillery guns,
around 500 multiple rocket launchers, 6 SCUD missile launchers, 110
surface-to-air missile systems, and 700 anti-aircraft installations
will prove useless when they meet the aggressor.
In fact, there will not
be a meeting on the battlefield as such. The Americans, waging a no-contact
war, will methodically use precision missile strikes to destroy all
the key facilities of Iraq's state and military infrastructure, and
will then wipe out enemy manpower with missile and bombing raids.
Aleksander
Khokhlov: How will
the Americans begin hostilities?
Vladimir
Slipchenko:
First of all there will
be precision strikes against bunkers and command posts where Saddam
Hussein and the Iraqi leaders might be hiding, against Army headquarters
and troop positions, and against components of the air defence system.
Sophisticated ground-penetrating vacuum-type precision munitions will
be used to destroy buried targets. Even if one of these weapons explodes
not exactly inside, say, an underground bunker, in any case the exits
from the shelter will be blocked. The bunker will become a mass grave
for everyone who is unfortunate enough to be in it.
To destroy armoured equipment,
in the very first days the Americans will use cluster aviation bombs
with self-guided munitions. The "mother"-cluster bomb gives
"birth" to several tens or hundreds of "baby"
bombs, each of which independently chooses its own target to destroy
on the ground.
I am confident that in
the very first hours of the war the United States will also use new
pulse bombs. They are also called microwave bombs. The principle by
which these weapons operate is as follows: an instantaneous discharge
of electromagnetic radiation on the order of two megawatts. At a distance
of 2-2.5 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion the "microwaves"
instantly put out of action all radio electronic systems, communications
and radar systems, all computers, radio receivers, and even hearing
aids and heart pacemakers. All these things are destroyed by the meltdown
method. Just imagine, a person's
heart explodes
As a result of the use
of these weapons Iraqi systems for command and control of the state
and troops will be destroyed practically instantaneously.
Aleksander
Khokhlov: What other
new types of arms could be tested?
Vladimir
Slipchenko:
Since this war will be experimental
for the United States, several new types of precision cruise missiles
will be tested with a view to obtaining quality certificates. I believe
attention will be devoted first and foremost to missile launches from
submarines. The Americans are planning to make their submarine fleet
the main launchpad.
The Pentagon will continue
to perfect the mechanism for targeting precision weapons. In 2000
with the help of the space shuttle Endeavour the United States scanned
around 80% of the surface of the Earth and created an electronic map
of the planet in three-dimensional coordinates. The level of detail
of objects on this map is down to the size of a window. That is to
say, you could train a lens - installed in a military satellite -
first on Baghdad, then on the city center, then on Saddam's palace,
and on his bedroom window. You give the command - and in a few minutes'
time a targeted cruise missile flies into that window.
Aleksander
Khokhlov: How long
will this war go on?
Vladimir
Slipchenko:
I predict that Operation
Shock And Awe will last not more than six weeks. The first period
of the war - the "shock" - will last around 30 days. Some
400-500 sea- and air-based precision cruise missiles will be launched
against targets in Iraq every 24 hours. During that month Iraq's troops
and its economic potential will be annihilated. Anything that survives
for any reason will be guaranteed destruction in the next two weeks.
In the second stage - "awe" - the Americans will conduct
a piloted version of a total clean-up of the territory. To this end
the United States will use B-52 and B-2 Stealth bombers. In four hours
of flight one Stealth is capable of detecting and destroying as many
as 200 stationary or moving targets on the ground. The United States
intends to use at least 16 B-2 bombers The Stealths will be in the
air constantly, one replacing the other.
Aleksander
Khokhlov: Will the
Iraqi air defence system be able to counter the American planes and
cruise missiles?
Vladimir
Slipchenko: Iraq
already has no air defence facilities in the north and south of the
country - US aviation is constantly bombing these areas. What remains
in the center of the country will be destroyed in the first 10 minutes
of the war. Iraq's antiaircraft system is based on the classical active
radar detection system: emit - detect - illuminate - destroy. The
Americans will exploit this for their own purposes. As soon as an
Iraqi radar reveals itself by emitting electromagnetic energy, a precision
cruise missile will be dispatched against the "revealed"
air defence facility using this same beam. Iraq has no chance of countering
this.
Aleksander
Khokhlov: How much
will this war cost?
Vladimir
Slipchenko:
According to my estimates,
$80 billion. But the total sum spent could rise to 100 billion. We
will never know the exact figure of expenditure, if only because the
war will be partly funded by private companies offering the Pentagon
their experimental models of precision weapons for free in the hope
of future dividends. The program for rearming the US Armed Forces
is about $600 billion Therefore today the military-industrial complex
need not stint, it can give weapons to the Army for free.
Aleksander
Khokhlov: What human
losses could Iraq suffer?
Vladimir
Slipchenko:
Very considerable ones.
Since the Americans are planning to physically annihilate the Iraqi
army, I reckon that at least 500,000 people will be killed. This will
be a very bloody war.
Aleksander
Khokhlov: What will
come after the war?
Vladimir
Slipchenko:
The Americans will have
to occupy Iraq. The occupation corps will apparently consist of four
mechanised and armoured divisions, one parachute division, and one
division of the British Armed Forces. All these troops will not fight.
There will be no ground operations in Iraq! The US Army will enter
a burning desert - the Iraqis will certainly set fire to the oilfields
- without a single shot being fired. There will simply be nobody to
shoot at them.
Aleksander
Khokhlov: How long
will the direct occupation last? Will the Americans stay in Iraq forever?
Vladimir
Slipchenko:
They will certainly leave
Iraq. There is no point in their staying there. The occupation will
last one and a half, two, or at the most three years and will cost
American taxpayers a further $80-100 billion to maintain the troops
in Iraq. Then the United States may enlist in an operation that they
will undoubtedly call "peacekeeping" the Poles, Czechs,
and other "new recruits" to NATO, the Esthonians, but they
themselves will leave. The "peacekeepers"
will stay a further one to one and a half years in Iraq.
During this time major
investments will be made in the country with a regime friendly to
the United States, and in two years' time Iraq's oil sector will reach
a level of oil extraction of 2-2.4 million barrels a day. In five
years they will be extracting up to 5 million barrels of oil a day.
The world oil price will fall to $12-15 a barrel. The currently stagnant
US economy will soar.
(25)
J.
Scott Lyman, The
Question of War (March, 2003)
If a public opinion poll
were taken today asking the question, do you favor war with Iraq,
I would hazzard to guess that as much as 90% of the those responding,
on principal, would be opposed to war. In its horror, inhumanity and
revulsion, war stands alone as the most tragic flaw of mankind. Indeed,
who would dispute that few, if any endeavors of man, can account for
such carnage, waste and devastation. Yet for all its horror and ruiniation,
who among the thoughtful and informed would deny the necessity of
deadly force (and war), under certain conditions and circumstances.
Perhaps an equal plurality? The question then becomes, what conditions
and what circumstances make for a just and necessary war?
Many contemporary students
of history will cite the Second World War as an example of a just
war. Hitler was a psychopath, pure and simple. He was without conscience
or empathy. He was brutal and maniacal, and turned a blind eye to
the Treaty of Versailles in his pursuit of Nazism and the lebensraum
he sought for a resurgent militaristic Germany.
In 1936, Hitler moved his
troops into the Rhineland and was appeased. In 1938 he invaded Austria
and declared Anschluss and was appeased. In 1938, Hitler conspired
with the Sudeten Nazis to instigate conflict, then demanded union
and was appeased. Ultimately, Chamberlain decided that Hitler was
"a man who can be relied upon," and assured the world, "My
good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime
Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe
it is peace for our time... Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."
But a quiet night's sleep was not what Hitler had in mind. By 1939,
as the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe introduced Europe to the Blitzkrieg,
everyone knew that consummate evil was at hand. Yet Americans by a
vast majority wanted nothing to do with "Europe's war."
Gallup polls in the U.S.
in 1939 showed that 96% opposed "joining the European war"
and declaring war on Germany. When asked if they wanted the United
States to keep out of the war even if it would mean Germany would
conquer England and France, 77% still said "stay out." To
help ensure this, 69% favored "stricter neutrality laws"
and 73% liked the idea of requiring the government to call a "national
referendum" before a war could be declared. In 1940, on the general
question of entry into the war, 86% were in opposition. In the presidential
campaign of 1940, in fear of the isolationist policies promoted by
Wendell Wilke, FDR promised American mothers and fathers, "Your
boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." And, as
late as July 1941, an overwhelming 79% still opposed American involvement
in the war. But fortunately, in Franklin D. Roosevelt, the United
States had a president that was not the captive of public opinion
polls.
Today the world is confronted
with another psychopath like Hitler in the person of Saddam Hussain.
For the past 11 years, Iraq, like the Germany of the 1930s, has been
subject to the strictures imposed on an aggressor nation after defeat
in a war of its own making. Saddam Hussain, however, like Hitler,
has viewed those strictures with utter disdain and contempt. Like
Hitler, Saddam Hussain has flouted and ignored the terms of the surrender
he accepted after his attack on Kuwait. He has thrown the UN inspectors
out. He has failed to account for his chemical and biological weapons.
He has continued to develop long range missiles. And, most alarming,
he has continued to threaten a chemical and biological response to
any attack, while at the same time, denying the existence of any such
weapons. Of course, the contradiction is too patent for even the likes
of Neville Chamberlain appeasers to ignore.
"Peace in our time,"
is a noble aspiration. But appeasement of a psychopath with delusions
of grandeur, bent on domination of a strategic part of the world that
would give him the power, at his whim, to collapse the Western industrialized
economies, is no different from the "peace in our time"
declared by Neville Chamberlain in 1938. The paradox is this: The
path toward peace, i.e., the reintroduction of inspectors into Iraq,
compliance with U.N. resolutions, and Iraq acquiescing to the demands
of the world community only started when the U.S. and the U.K. began
to exert their military might, and this continues to be the best engine
of hope for a peaceful solution to the threat of Saddam Hussain. In
contrast, the world-wide protests over the February 14th weekend,
were extolled by the Iraqi press as vindication of their intransigence,
which is the surest path to war.
The role of leaders is
to lead, not to follow the emotional gyrations of public opinion polls
or protesters in the streets, feeling good about doing it. The Anglo-American
alliance is fortunate today to have two such principled leaders. They
both understand the axiom that those that ignore the lessons of history
are doomed to repeat them.
(26)
Thom
Hartmann, When
Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History (March,
2003)
February 27, 2003, was
the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful
firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist
act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution.
By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in
which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved
and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the
world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."
We also remember that the
Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named
"lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating
civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and
awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of
the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National
Defense University Press.
Reflecting on that time,
The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983)
left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy
had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German
corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power:
"fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises
a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging
of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Today, as we face financial
and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of
the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through
the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses
to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.
Germany's response was
to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's
richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent,
strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity
through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage
laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish
the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the
wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer
of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure,
promote the arts, and replant forests.
To the extent that our
Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.
(27)
William Shawcross, Wall Street Journal (10th April, 2003)
April 9 - Liberation
Day! What a wonderful, magnificent, emotional occasion - one that
will live in legend ... Once again the US, together with the British,
thank goodness, has shown itself to be on the side of freedom. All
those smart Europeans who ridiculed George Bush and denigrated his
idea that there was actually a better future for the Iraqi people
- they will have to think again...
"What this whole Iraq
story shows is how extraordinarily selfish and inward looking the
EU has become ... The much derided 'neocons' in Washington have been
shown to be far more correct than all the sneering sophisticates of
the EU."
(28)
Editorial in the Daily Telegraph
(10th April, 2003)
Tony Blair ... has
restored Britain's standing in the world to a position that it has
not held since the Berlin wall came down, and he has won the right,
which should be denied to all other major European leaders except
for Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, to help create the new world order
that George Bush Sr promised, but that George Bush Jr is delivering.
In the past month, Britain
has proved its political and military independence, its global reach
and its capacity for decisive action. These are huge benefits, not
to be squandered on 'multilateralism' and assuaging the hurt feelings
of the EU and the UN."
(29)
Editorial in Pravda (10th April,
2003)
Although there are
celebrations on some streets, albeit by limited numbers of people,
there were other, legal ways to bring about this change ... Mr Bush
and Mr Blair should go down in history as the duo that flouted the
norms of international law, setting in action a process in which civilians
were murdered by their armed forces. This has not been a heroic military
campaign, it has been a massacre, the school bully picking on the
weakest boy and setting upon him with a viciousness ... as horrific
as the savaging of a poodle puppy by a pack of famished and enraged
rottweilers.
(30)
Editorial in the Al-Quds newspaper (10th April, 2003)
With the fall of
the capital of Arab capitals, the hopes the (Palestinian) nation pinned
on Baghdad's steadfastness and fight against the aggressors have been
shattered ... The fall of Baghdad is a catastrophe, but it will not
be the last one. The Anglo-American victory will encourage the colonialists
to swallow more Arab capitals and shape the Arab world politically,
culturally and socially in a way that satisfies Washington and London.
They will thus manipulate Arab and Islamic culture into a distorted
image of the west's materialist culture.
(31)
Al-Jazeera website (13th April, 2003)
For a long time now, the
US government has been hostile toward the al-Jazeera television network.
Widely watched in the Arab world, al-Jazeera's coverage of the war
on Iraq has been in sharp contrast to the coverage on American television
... This year, during the lead-up to the war in Iraq, al-Jazeera repeatedly
informed the US military of the exact coordinates of the network's
office in downtown Baghdad. On April 8, a US missile hit that al-Jazeera
office, taking the life of Tareq Ayub, a 34-year-old Jordanian journalist.
A coincidence? A mere accident? I don't think so ... Decoding the
Pentagon's message to journalists isn't too difficult: if you don't
play by our rules, you're much more likely to find yourself on a stretcher
- or dead.
(32)
Zev Chafets, New York Daily News (11th April, 2003)
I personally doubt the
United States blew up the al-Jazeera office on purpose. But I don't
doubt that the network - and other Arab satellite channels and news
papers - have turned themselves into combatants ... Al-Jazeera is
the great enabler of Arab hatred and self-deception. It propagates
the views of Osama bin Laden. It cheerleads for Palestinian suicide
bombers. It has become Saddam's voice ...
Meanwhile, real journalists
are dying in Iraq. On Tuesday, two European cameramen were killed
when an American shell hit the Palestine Hotel ... Obviously, the
United States didn't hit these cameramen on purpose, any more than
it has intentionally killed its own troops with friendly fire. A State
Department spokesman called the incident - and the bombing of al-Jazeera
- 'grave mistakes'. He can save his breath because no one in the Arab
world will believe him. Al-Jazeera will see to that.
(33)
Press Gazette (11th April, 2003)
By the end of the first
week [of the war], the death toll of journalists already looked terrible.
Now it looks nothing short of appaling. As this column goes to press,
11 journalists and one translator have been confirmed killed ... In
the first Gulf war, not one journalist was killed during the span
of the fighting. Since then we might have thought we had learnt more,
not less, about the safety of journalists covering conflict. Certainly
more money has been spent on training, greater awareness has been
raised of the dangers, better equipment has been issued for those
going out into the field to bring back the reality of war. Yet that
ever-lengthening list of dead makes a mockery of all that ... In looking
for the truth, did we let them get too close?
(34)
Naomi Klein, The Nation (14th April, 2003)
It's no surprise that so
many multinationals are lunging for Iraq's untapped market. It's not
just that the reconstruction will be worth as much as $100bn; it's
also that "free trade" by less violent means hasn't been
going that well lately. More and more developing countries are rejecting
privatisation, while the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Bush's top
trade priority, is wildly unpopular across Latin America. World Trade
Organisation talks on intellectual property, agriculture and services
have all got bogged down amid accusations that the US and Europe have
yet to make good on past promises.
So what is a recessionary,
growth-addicted superpower to do? How about upgrading from Free Trade
Lite, which wrestles market access through backroom bullying at the
WTO, to Free Trade Supercharged, which seizes new markets on the battlefields
of pre-emptive wars? After all, negotiations with sovereign countries
can be hard. Far easier to just tear up the country, occupy it, then
rebuild it the way you want. Bush hasn't abandoned free trade, as
some have claimed, he just has a new doctrine: "Bomb before you
buy".
