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Empire Notes
"We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic. We never have been. I
can't imagine why you'd even ask the question." Donald Rumsfeld,
questioned by an al-Jazeera correspondent, April 29, 2003.
"No one can now doubt the word of America," George W. Bush, State of
the Union, January 20, 2004.
March 14, 2005 Radio Commentary -- Iraq: "We Seek no
Wider War"
On February 17, 1965, several months after the partly fictitious Gulf
of Tonkin incident and passage of the wholly real Gulf of Tonkin
resolution, Lyndon Johnson famously said of Vietnam, “We have no
ambition there for ourselves, we seek no wider war,” the last half of
that phrase immortalized by songwriter Phil Ochs.
Those words signaled the almost immediate escalation of U.S.
involvement in Vietnam from support for a murderous counterinsurgency
carried out by the South Vietnamese government to all-out war and a
massive U.S. troop presence.
By the end of the 1960’s, as most people believed the United States
could not win outright, Nixon’s response was to expand the unwinnable
war, resuming bombing of North Vietnam and also spreading the war to
Laos and Cambodia. The primary reason given was that Laos and Cambodia,
as uncontrolled neutral territories, were a base of operations for the
Vietnamese resistance.
All the signs indicate that the Bush administration is planning
expansion of the hitherto unsuccessful but still far from lost war in
Iraq.
We have known for some time that the abstract, theoretical plans of the
neoconservatives involve “regime change,” removal of governments,
especially in the Middle East, designated as enemies, and the spreading
of some form of U.S. domination, usually designated by the code word
“democracy.” What we didn’t know, especially with the occupation of
Iraq bogging down, was whether those at the top felt they could act on
those plans.
Over the last few months, we’ve seen all the signs we need; widening
the war is the background for all the administration’s foreign policy
thinking.
The neoconservatives, Rumsfeld, and Cheney have developed the absolute
conviction that Syria and Iran are helping the Iraqi resistance. This
makes little sense; the Syrian Ba’ath and Iraqi Ba’ath have opposed
each other for almost 40 years; Syria is run by the minority Alawites –
Shi’a -- and can’t be interested in fuelling an insurgency that is
increasingly Wahhabized and attacks Shi’a more often than occupying
troops; and Syria just turned over Saddam’s half-brother Sabawi to the
Americans. Iran is in contact with major Shi’a groups in Iraq, but the
main groups close to Iran just won the elections and have no intention
of armed resistance.
But we already know that our war planners are not part of what one Bush
aide termed the “reality-based community.”
They also know, this time correctly, that they haven’t gotten very far
in fighting global jihadism. Put these ingredients together and you get
a wider war.
So far, we’ve seen Seymour Hersh saying that the United States
currently has numerous teams inside Iran looking for hidden nuclear
facilities and that some planners are thinking about “regime change”
through the unlikely mechanism of bombing Iran and hoping the
pro-democracy movement there overthrows the government.
We’ve seen an opportunistic attempt to use the Hariri assassination to
push Syria out of Lebanon preparatory to regime change in Syria -- the
ground having been prepared months ago by passage of U.N. Security
Council resolution 1559.
Finally, we’ve seen the new “democracy offensive” coming out of
Washington. On the one hand, they’re using democratization or some
facsimile thereof as a tool to destabilize governments the Bush
administration doesn’t like; on the other, infinitesimal reforms in
countries like Egypt, supposedly imposed by U.S. action, are used as
rhetorical points in a whole new “war of position” in the Middle East
that complements their expanding “war of maneuver.”
This strategy is explicit – indeed, Friday’s Wall Street Journal
details a massive new review led by Rumsfeld designed to create “a
military that is far more proactive, focused on changing the world
instead of just responding to conflicts” and that will make
counterinsurgency the primary strategy.
It’s too early to see what will come of this. Cooler heads even in this
administration know how absurd the plans for Iranian regime change in a
quick strike are. Hezbollah’s massive demonstration has counteracted
the rhetoric about the Lebanese “opposition” – the administration is in
the odd position of celebrating popular participation by Iraqi Shi’a
while opposing that done by Lebanese Shi’a. And, although not in active
opposition, the American public is growing tired of the war and sees no
benefits coming to it – certainly not lower oil prices.
Even with these caveats, we can no longer ignore the possibility of a
wider war.
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"Report
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on Terrorism" Makes Us All Less Safe Bush
-- Is the Tide Turning?Perle and
FrumIntelligence
Failure Kerry
vs. Dean SOU
2004: Myth and
Reality |