WHOSE
CRISIS?
Iraq
is a perfect example of the Fantasy Island Syndrome. Here
is a nation which has lost 1.2 million citizens, mostly the
very young and the very old, as a direct result of US-imposed
sanctions. Bombed into a pile of smoking rubble, Iraq
today has no ballistic missile program and no way to pose
a threat to any of its neighbors. Yet the US is supposedly
so concerned about a "possible threat" from Iraq during the
presidential campaign that the Pentagon, on Thursday, sent
an Army Patriot missile to Israel – a move, as
the Washington Post
put it, made "only in times of crisis." But whose
crisis – and where is it occurring . . . ?
LAID
BACK BARAK
Not
in Israel, that's for sure. If Saddam's poison-tipped Scuds
were on their way to pierce the heart of Tel Aviv, Israeli
Prime Minister Barak couldn't have been more relaxed about
it: "I don't know if this Patriot missile battery really needs
to be bothered," he said, when informed of the Patriot's imminent
arrival. The
New York Times
reports that "he did not think Israelis should worry or
be distracted by the reports. Indeed, there is no state of
alert here, no palpable feeling that there is any cause of
concern. The lead story on the evening news was the opening
of the new school year."
THERE'S
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
No,
the "crisis" is right here at home: quadrennial crisis whereby
power is transferred in the US from one ruling clique to another
-- or not transferred, as the case may be, otherwise known
as a presidential election. The race for the White House is
shaping up to be quite a horse-race, and that is precisely
how it is being covered by the US news media. The big issues
are microscopic in their significance: is
Al Gore an "alpha male"? Will Dubya apologize for calling
Adam Clymer, a reporter for the New York Times, an
a*s*o*e?
Since both "major" candidates agree on all the significant
issues – and are especially united in their fulsome support
for an interventionist foreign policy – the campaign
has degenerated into a grown-up version of an election for
class president, high school version, in which the studious
dork is
fighting an uphill campaign against the popular but stupid
captain of the football team. It's all far less interesting
than an episode of Daria.
But don't be fooled. With the rapid dispatch of the Patriot
missile battery to Israel, sending a signal that we may
be in for an "October surprise," it looks like the action
is about to heat up. . . .
BOMBED
TO DISTRACTION
The
politicization of US foreign policy was frankly confessed
by an anonymous administration official, cited in the Washington
Post, who, along with his colleagues in the inner councils
of Clintonia, believes that Saddam Hussein "has miscalculated
in past U.S. elections, thinking we were somehow distracted"
-- and will be sorely tempted to do so again. Here it is necessary
to apply the Inversion Principle, as we always must in trying
to interpret the words of this administration and its Liar-in-chief,
by assuming that the complete opposite is the case. It is
this administration that is doing the calculating, hoping
to distract an American electorate already irked by high
gasoline prices away from the presidential election, and
focus their attention on some manufactured overseas "crisis."
The Iraqis are convenient Arabic villains. With Al Gore in
deep trouble up until very recently, and his wife's New York
Senate campaign up against a tough challenge, the crisis was
and is in the political fortunes of the President's party,
with only one logical way out of it. . . .
THE
ASPIRIN FACTORY SOLUTION
It
looks like what might be called the Aspirin Factory Solution
– after the
bombing of the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in the
Sudan as the other shoe was about to drop in l'affaire Lewinsky
– is in the works. With the deadline for Iraqi compliance
with the UN weapons inspection program fast approaching, Iraq
was bound to be an election year issue – and one in which
Dubya is surprisingly vulnerable. For any GOP attempt to critique
US Iraq policy from a more-interventionist-than-thou perspective
invariably runs up against the need to ask a question that
only George Herbert Walker Bush can answer: why didn't we
take Baghdad at the end of the Gulf war? This is the mantra
of those who want a final solution to the problem of Saddam.
Dubya is hardly going to criticize, or even second-guess,
dear old Dad, and so the Democrats are inoculated against
the charge of being "soft on Saddam" this election year. This
gives them the freedom to launch a not-very-surprising October
Surprise, without necessarily having to go all the way all
at once. . . .
THE
LEGACY QUESTION
This
would accomplish two things: it would take the focus of public
attention away from the election, away from Al Gore's glaring
unlikeability, and shift it toward someone even less likable
– Saddam Hussein, the favorite hate object of both parties.
It would also give Bill Clinton his heart's desire –
or, at least, the printable version – and that is a Legacy.
William Jefferson Clinton – the President who took out
Saddam. While not exactly wiping the slate clean – it
took Hercules to clean the Augean stables, a roughly comparable
task – such a Legacy would certainly burnish his image
with the sort of gravitas
likely to impress historians. It would be self-serving,
politically astute, and brazenly immoral to make war on Iraq
for these reasons and under these circumstances. Now ask yourself:
is Clinton capable of it . . .?
THE
HYPERPOWER
I
am fascinated by this concept of America the hyperpower –
a superpower so powerful that it is beyond challenge, or even
reproach. This super-superpower is beyond good and evil, a
Nietzschean nation whose dominance is not only military but
also cultural. History begins with its founding, and ends
with its hegemony. Its rulers are the emperors of a New Rome,
whose centurions guard the far frontiers of the imperial domain
– while at home the people are too narcotized to notice
that their old Republic is gone. The hyperpower plays with
other countries like a cat plays with a cornered mouse. There
is no question as to how it will end, only how long it will
take the cat to pounce and finish off his already half-dead
prey. The whims of a cat are naturally inscrutable, but the
actions of politicians in power are much less opaque –
in this case to the point of absolute transparency. . . .
GET
REAL
Now
we get into the "Fantasy Island" aspect of this whole Patriot
missile affair. For the reality is that it is physically impossible
for the Iraqis to have manufactured ballistic missiles, let
alone tested and developed them, since 1998, when UN weapons
inspectors testified that Iraq's missile capability was nonexistent.
As one of those inspectors, Scott
Ritter, put it in an
interview with CNN:
"I
have to agree totally with the Iraqis. There's absolutely
no substance to any accusation that Iraq continues to possess
a ballistic missile capability that can reach Israel. This
is a fact that's well-known to the United States and to Israel.
Prime Minister Barak has recently just said that there is
no Iraqi missile threat. And he doesn't know what all the
hype is about. This seems to be a purely political move on
the part of the United States to continue to demonize Iraq
by hyping it's perceived capabilities."
US
POLICY – AN ABJECT FAILURE
In
an excellent
op ed piece for the Los Angeles Times, Ritter notes
the Saddam-centric Iraq policy of both major party presidential
candidates and despairingly predicts that "the next four years
will see a continuation of America's decade-long fixation
on the president of Iraq." He then homes in on the essential
issue by not only pointing out the total defeat of the US
effort to oust Saddam, but also accurately depicting an Iraq
politically and diplomatically strengthened:
"Over
the past eight years, the Clinton administration was trapped
in a Saddam-centric policy of regime removal, which dictated
the containment of the Iraqi dictator through economic sanctions
regardless of the reality of Iraq's disarmament obligation
and the horrific humanitarian cost incurred by the people
of Iraq. This policy has been an abject failure, a fact that
has prompted much of the international community to start
viewing Iraq and its leader more sympathetically. Whoever
wins the election in November will face the daunting task
of overcoming the Clinton legacy on Iraq: a hopelessly divided
Security Council, an impasse on weapons inspections, a degenerating
system of economic sanctions, the loss of American credibility
and a resurgent Saddam Hussein."
WHIPPING
BOY
Ah,
but it isn't too late to transform the bitter legacy of abject
failure into a glorious "victory" – the capstone of Clinton's
horrific career as the most militaristic and intervention-prone
president of modern times. There's still time for Clinton
to make his mark as a world leader worth remembering, plenty
of time to come up with a pretext – any pretext –
to take out Saddam the whipping boy and give him a few lashes.
The sadistic aspect of all this – which is usually subsumed
under the general rubric of "war hysteria" and "rallying 'round
the flag" – is an important ingredient in appealing to
the decadent appetites of a depraved populace, or at least
that portion of it that can be counted on as the Clintonian
"base." But the other political benefits due our rulers in
wartime are equally appealing to the Clintonian mindset. .
. .
HILLARY'S
FATE
A
major reason for sending a Patriot missile to Israel, while
it may be mystifying to that nation's Prime Minister, is not
so mysterious to the New York Jewish voters who will in large
part determine Hillary Clinton's political fate. Hillary,
as
you may have heard, has given the New York Jewish community
at least some reason for doubting her professed love
for them. In the event of war with Iraq, the evening news
would amount to the kind of political ad for the Rodhamites
that money couldn't buy: a shot of the First Lady on the tarmac
reviewing our pilots as they prepare another sortie over Iraqi
skies would be worth at least several hundred thousand votes.
AMEN!
Back
in 1991, when Patrick J. Buchanan pointed out that Saddam
represented a threat, not to the US, but to Israel, and that
Israel's "amen corner" in the US was responsible for beating
the drums of war, he was denounced as a vicious "anti-Semite"
– and so began a campaign of vilification that continues
to this day. Yet what are we to make of this? -- Iraq, its
economy destroyed, its military capability reduced beyond
the ability to even keep the country together, is in the end
depicted as a threat exclusively to . . . Israel.
FOR
ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY
That
this alleged threat is a complete fabrication, based on nothing
put the political necessity of preparing the country for war,
is neither here nor there: here on Fantasy Island, any relationship
between the foreign policy of the US and reality is for entertainment
purposes only. The Iraqis are mere spectators in a drama that
is taking place in the United States: their fate will be decided,
not by Saddam Hussein, but by American political consultants,
the pollsters, and the two contestants for the office of America's
number one Alpha Male.
HOW
LONG, OH LORD – HOW LONG?
Isn't
that, after all, what it means to be a hyperpower? To be at
the center of everything – to permanently capture the
world's attention, to excite the world's envy, to provoke
the world's fear, with no need to take reality into account
– and unlimited power to punish. To live like the gods
on Olympus, hurling the occasional thunderbolt at an impertinent
mortal but otherwise governing and presiding over your dominion,
routinely deciding matters of life and death while administering
the natural order of things – such are the benefits of
hyperpower-dom. The ideology of this "natural" order has gone
through many names over the years – "the four freedoms,"
"collective security," "democracy," "humanitarianism," and
especially "globalization" – but nothing has really changed
since medieval times, when conquerors and kings proclaimed
that they ruled by divine
right. The divine right of the Clintons – and their
successors – to use the rest of the world for target
practice: this, in the end, is what the mad dream of global
hegemony comes down to. And we have the ultimate nerve to
label our enemies "terrorists"! No wonder there is a move
afoot to put up a missile defense shield – how long before
the rest of the world gets sick and tired of being treated
like chattel and decides to strike back?
AN
APOLOGY TO HARRY BROWNE
I
want to do something unusual and completely out of character,
and what could fit the bill better than an apology? I'm afraid
that my recent article on Harry Browne's appearance on Bill
Maher's "Politically Incorrect" was a bit, uh, intemperate,
to say the least. Several emailers wondered at the sheer vehemence
of my epithets, and thought I was making a mountain out of
a molehill. I don't agree that this is an unimportant issue,
but the way I expressed my displeasure at this new development
in libertarian thought by engaging in unnecessary (and distracting)
name-calling did nothing to make my case. Many, including
Harry, sought to explain my tone as due to my generally supportive
attitude to Pat Buchanan's candidacy, but the real explanation
is that I reacted with undue emotion due to my own lingering
attachment to the Libertarian Party. This is an emotional,
sentimental attachment, not at all wistful but still a bit
angry – after a good decade of LP activism, and a lot
of scars from the old factional wars of the 1980s that reduced
the party to its present parlous state, what else could you
expect? See? There I go getting angry again, and so I'd better
quit while I'm ahead and get around to the apology: Harry,
I sincerely regret calling you those names, and promise to
be on my best behavior in the future. I will, from this moment
forward, cover your campaign with more objectivity, and give
you what I would give to any fellow libertarian – the
benefit of a doubt.
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