|
War
is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength
and Daniel
Pipes, the nation's leading Islamophobe
and a stalwart of the War Party, has been named
to the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of
Peace (USIP). While the Institute a U.S. government
agency first proposed in the 1970s by President Jimmy Carter
is dedicated to "promoting
the peaceful resolution of international conflict,"
Ha'aretz aptly describes the Pipes credo as follows:
"He
espouses a theory of conflict resolution that rests on the
assumption that peace usually is achieved only by one side
defeating the other with military force or other pressure,
and only rarely through reconciliation or negotiation."
The
Pipes view that "Islamists" i.e. American Muslims
all "have the same ambition, which is what they call
"the Islamization of America," hardly seems conducive
to the USIP's "can't we all get along?" message.
This weird anomaly can you believe a Jewish version of David
Duke? – avers that the goal of America's Muslims in
their millions is "no less than saving the U.S. through
transforming it into a Muslim country." Oh really? Does
this mean that "Elimi-date"
is going to go off the air? If so, I wouldn't count on an
Islamist cultural revolution happening any time soon
.
Listening
to Pipes and reading his works one is reminded of nothing
so much as the anti-Semitic literature of the neo-Nazi movement,
which posits a devil theory similarly based on ethnicity and
religion. In the realm of foreign policy, his hateful views
were vented in a call for the razing of Palestinian villages
a logical extension of his declaration that "the Palestinians
are a miserable people...and they deserve to be."
The
very idea of Pipes ensconced, in all his hatefulness, at the
United States Institute of Peace has got to be some
kind of sick joke – the kind of moral inversion that
could only occur in Bizarro
World, where up
is down and wrong is right. But the Coalition
of the Crazed is on the march, and the neoconservative
nutballs who populate
this administration at the highest levels are on a roll
since their great "victory"
in Iraq. With neocon
ideologue Paul Wolfowitz
at the helm of the "rebuilding" project, and JINSA
graduate Gen. Jay Garner faithfully implementing a strategy
of utilizing the country as a forward base for future wars
against Syria, Iran, and beyond the War Party isn't taking
no for an answer. Before they can take Damascus, Teheran,
and Mecca itself, the neocons must first take Washington:
or, at this point, conduct mop-up operations, such as the
purge
conducted by the newly-appointed Elliot Abrams over at
the National Security Council, where Abrams was put in charge
of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle
trinity is really feeling its oats: why, they even had the
nerve to float James
"World War IV" Woolsey as propagandist-in-chief
of the new Iraqi occupation government.
The
Pipes appointment would be funny, if one could overlook its
macabre implications. But it is precisely the sinister Orwellian
aspect of all this that underscores the real problem, which
is not just Pipes but the USIP. What in the name of everything
that's holy is the U.S. government or any government
doing in the "peace" business? A typical mushy-headed
delusion based on liberal naivete about the nature of the
State.
Governments
are all about war that is what they do. It may be
a defensive war against an invading enemy, or more often a
war of aggression against a hapless victim but, in any case,
war, as Randolph
Bourne put it, "is
the health of the State," and ever will it be so.
A government-funded and sponsored "Institute of Peace"
must, by its very nature, turn into an instrument of war propaganda
no matter how good and holy the intent of USIP's founders.
We
need concerted action to flush Pipes and his
hateful rhetoric down the drain. But the antiwar movement
also needs to challenge more than just this single outrageous
appointment. In the process of opposing Pipes, it is imperative
to call attention to the total absurdity of the USIP's existence.
The
Bushies came to Washington pledging to roll back Big Government,
and, like every ostensibly "conservative" administration
before them, took office armed with a long laundry list of
government agencies that needed to be abolished or radically
decimated. These pledges, or intentions, are hardly ever followed
up, but surely thoughtful activists must wonder how the USIP
formally created in 1984 managed to survive the Reagan
years without becoming a sword in the hands of the War Party.
This
oxymoronic government boondoggle is well on its way to becoming
yet another tax-subsidized nest for our war birds to roost
in, along with Richard
Perle's Defense
Policy Board and the National
Endowment for Democracy. Perle's disgraceful
influence-peddling led to his stealth
resignation as chairman of the board, and a
new interest in a formerly
obscure advisory body that apparently plays a key role in
formulating U.S.
policy in the Middle East.
The
USIP has so far escaped such critical scrutiny. Who, after
all, can come out against it without seeming to be against
peace, per se? Perhaps the takeover of this phony government-funded
thinktank by the War Party will clarify the matter in the
minds of befuddled liberals and assorted lefties, formerly
fooled into believing in the inherent beneficence of the State
provided the right people are in charge.
NOTES
IN THE MARGIN
Many
thanks for the numerous messages of condolence on the death
in my family. My father lived to be 85 years old, and died
just as this rotten war ended, a period at the end of a sentence.
Signaling, for me, the end of innocence, the end of an era
in which the concept of preemptive war was something alien
to the American mind, possibly a Japanese invention, and there
was another word for it: treachery.
My
father fought in the war to avenge the treachery of Pearl
Harbor although just
what sort of treachery, and on
whose part, is only now
coming to light and at his funeral service the local
Veterans of Foreign Wars gave a solemn and sincere presentation,
in which they honored their fallen comrade and offered his
memory to the ages. It was a kind and moving gesture, one
that I sincerely appreciate and publicly thank them for.
Yet,
for the sake of foreign wars, my father endured a year in
a hospital run by the Veterans Administration a good one,
by their standards – during which time he developed gangrene
in his foot. My ever-observent sister was the first to notice
it not one of the nurses and when she did she went straight
into the bathroom and vomited.
Now
Medicaid wants some $15,000 out of his estate to pay for the
costs of this neglect. There just aren't enough trained medical
personnel to watch the tens of thousands of oldsters in VA
hospitals. Which is not to fault the kind and generally attentive
staff at the VA hospital my father spent over a year in. But
when I hear that the invasion and subsequent pacification
of Iraq is going to cost in the hundreds of billions
of tax dollars, when I note that Israel is asking for yet
another ten billion, and think of what my father, a
veteran, had to go through, I can only ask: is there something
wrong with this picture? Oh, and don't forget how the
government reneged
on its promise
to pay the lifetime medical costs of World War II and Korean
war vets who served for 20 years. That's real class
for you.
I
want to draw the attention of my readers, again, to Matthew
Barganier's new column, "Collateral Damage." He
knows how to write for the internet: his wit is rapier-light,
on occasion deadly, and chock full of links. Go check him
out if you haven't already Matt is magnificent!
–
Justin Raimondo
| comments
on this article? |
|
|
Please Support Antiwar.com
Antiwar.com
520 S. Murphy Avenue, #202
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
or Contribute Via our Secure
Server
Credit Card Donation Form
Your contributions are
now tax-deductible
|
