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| February 4, 2005 | ||||
'The Forces of Freedom' vs. 10 Million Martyrs |
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| by Christopher Deliso | ||||
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The American Empire will come to an end as a direct result of its own hubristic warmongering around the globe; that much is certain. It only remains to be seen when, where, and through what agency will the knockout blow be delivered. President Bush's second inaugural speech, which called for toppling tyrants everywhere, is diametrically opposed to the more conservative platform he ran on in 2000, which called for a "more humble" foreign policy. Now, his new secretary of state and dedicated yes-woman, Condoleezza Rice, is enthusiastically talking up a "bold agenda" for unrestrained freedom proliferation, thus accomplishing the triumphant transformation of the State Department from what it had been under her predecessor, the hardheaded realist and not always dishonest Colin Powell. The Great Purge and the Satisfaction of Imperial Bloodlust However, Powell has fled and with him many others from the diplomatic and intelligence communities, disenchanted and disempowered and victims of the president's new purge – one meant to consolidate power in the hands of those few officials who unquestioningly and uncritically fulfill his will in perpetuity. Even if he did not have an enormous army, overflowing coffers, and a vast landmass under his suzerainty – all of which he has – Bush would be deserving of the title "emperor" for this proclivity alone. Indeed, right up there with Bush's Roman belief in his own unfailing divinity is his medieval understanding of a president as someone who is to be contradicted or questioned only on pains of termination. Where Bush helpfully displays a modicum of modern culture here is, of course, in being satisfied with dismissing rather than beheading any naysayers and doubters in his midst. Now, four years since his first inaugural speech, power-drunk and worshipping at the altar of the grand church of neoconservatism, Bush has made his bellicose predecessors in the Clinton administration seem positively tame in comparison. Indeed, in contrast with the latter's numerous foreign misadventures – several of which, most glaringly Kosovo, have had destructive consequences that remain unresolved – his own empire-building endeavors have been executed on a global scale, messy and brutish and waist-deep in the blood of other peoples. From Bush's own words, the next nation to face the block is Iran. State Deceptions and War However, from whatever party the administration happens to be, one clear shared tactic emerges: that of spinning lies in order to justify an intervention. In the case of the Balkans, the paradigm of humanitarian intervention invariably involved fabricating humanitarian atrocities and exaggerating deaths. Canadian journalist Scott Taylor, who has reported often over the years from both Kosovo and Iraq, recently reminded us of how the myths of concentration camps and "100,000 Kosovar dead" was used to galvanize world opinion against the Serbs – just as, four years later in a different place and within a different paradigm, George W. Bush and the neocons mobilized the American population through recourse to WMD that didn't exist and a Saddam-Osama terrorist link that had never existed. However, if the road to Baghdad went through Belgrade, as Taylor puts it, then what of Iran? Will someone hit upon an exit strategy for Iraq before the neocons can build an exit ramp to Tehran? Enter the Martyrs As the Bushies harden their stance on Iran over the Islamic republic's alleged nuclear ambitions, a concomitant belligerence and frustration is also building in Tehran. AFP recently quoted a newspaper there, Kayhan, which relayed a threat from Gen. Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard: "Iran is the biggest military power in the region [with] 10 million volunteers for martyrdom operations ... to turn Iran into a terrible nightmare for the United States." While we don't know to what extent such a high turnout would be likely, there is no doubt that the general will be vindicated, in the eventuality of an American attack. As soon as the invasion begins, and with it the inevitable civilian carnage, the Iranians (far more welcoming toward martyrdom than their Iraqi neighbors, by the way) will resist. The neocon brain trust, of course, disagrees, believing that all those teeming millions now chafing under the rule of those dour old mullahs will immediately join the American side once the bombs start falling and the government loses its ability to wage a conventional defense. It will be just like when we toppled Saddam and all those 25 million Iraqis became grateful, law-abiding Jeffersonian democrats. Yeah … just like it. The neocon miscalculation, of course, lies in confusing reality with their own abstract and grandiose notions of the inherent greatness of the system and solutions they propose for the world's ills. They appear incapable of understanding that war will hinder rather than create democracy, and that when, for example, one sees his entire family massacred by an incoming U.S. missile, revenge tends to trump gratitude. The Bush Achievement: A Terrorist Free-for-All, Forever Since The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh recently made waves with his latest expose – about the marginalization of the CIA and the Pentagon's penetration of Iran with super-secret commando units on target-locating missions – it has become increasingly clear that the Bush administration may just be crazy enough to do it. "[W]e will not welcome war," declared General Zolghadr, "but if the United States commits an error, we will give them such a lesson that they will never recover." There were people who never thought Bush would be crazy enough to invade Iraq. Then again, there were also those – even among the ones defending the place – who thought he would never launch a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan. Thus considering his track record, and the fact that the man clearly believes he has a divine mandate to bring freedom to the entire world, is it too outlandish to believe that Bush might in fact be serious? If Dubya does indeed decide to "larn them" 10 million martyrs, the end of empire will be nigh, and the economic ramifications will not be limited to the U.S. alone. In the end, Bush's great achievement will not have been the installation of democracy, but rather the creation of the world's single biggest terrorist-transfer zone, a vast, borderless land of anarchy stretching from the Syrian border all the way to Pakistan – with U.S. troops trapped within. Anarchistan: it has a certain ring to it, no? |
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Christopher Deliso is an American journalist, travel writer and author concentrating on the Balkans and Southeast Europe, where he has lived and traveled for almost a decade. His criticisms of interventionist foreign policy can be found in his writings for Antiwar.com, and in his recent work on the West's failures to eradicate foreign-funded Muslim extremists in the Balkans, The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West (Praeger Security International, 2007). Mr Deliso directs the Balkan-interest news and analysis website, Balkanalysis.com and is also the author of a travelogue, Hidden Macedonia (Haus Publishing, London). He holds an MPhil with distinction in Byzantine Studies from Oxford University.
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