Gość: Sydney
IP: *.NYCMNY83.covad.net
15.10.03, 19:48
Bush's War Plan Is Scarier Than He's Saying: The Widening Crusade
by Sydney H. Schanberg
October 15 - 21, 2003: (Village Voice) f some wishful Americans are still
hoping President Bush will acknowledge that his imperial foreign policy has
stumbled in Iraq and needs fixing or reining in, they should put aside those
reveries. He's going all the way—and taking us with him.
The Israeli bombing raid on Syria October 5 was an expansion of the Bush
policy, carried out by the Sharon government but with the implicit approval
of Washington. The government in Iran, said to be seeking to develop a
nuclear weapon, reportedly expects to be the next target.
No one who believes in democracy need feel any empathy toward the governments
of Syria and Iran, for they assist the terrorist movement, yet if the Bush
White House is going to use its preeminent military force to subdue and
neutralize all "evildoers" and adversaries everywhere in the world, the
American public should be told now. Such an undertaking would be virtually
endless and would require the sacrifice of enormous blood and treasure.
With no guarantee of success. And no precedent in history for such a crusade
having lasting effect.
People close to the president say that his conversion to evangelical
Methodism, after a life of aimless carousing, markedly informs his policies,
both foreign and domestic. In the soon-to-be-published The Faith of George W.
Bush (Tarcher/Penguin), a sympathetic account of this religious journey,
author Stephen Mansfield writes (in the advance proofs) that in the election
year 2000, Bush told Texas preacher James Robison, one of his spiritual
mentors: "I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it,
but I sense my country is going to need me. . . . I know it won't be easy on
me or my family, but God wants me to do it."
Mansfield also reports: "Aides found him face down on the floor in prayer in
the Oval Office. It became known that he refused to eat sweets while American
troops were in Iraq, a partial fast seldom reported of an American president.
And he framed America's challenges in nearly biblical language. Saddam
Hussein is an evildoer. He has to go." The author concludes: " . . . the Bush
administration does deeply reflect its leader, and this means that policy,
even in military matters, will be processed in terms of the personal, in
terms of the moral, and in terms of a sense of divine purpose that propels
the present to meet the challenges of its time."
Some who read this article may choose to view it as the partisan perspective
of a political liberal. But I have experienced wars—in India and Indochina—
and have measured their results. And most of the men and women who are
advocating the Bush Doctrine have not. You will find few generals among them.
They are, instead, academics and think-tank people and born-again
missionaries. One must not entertain any illusion that they are only
opportunists in search of power, for most of them truly believe in their
vision of a world crusade under the serious, and they now have power at the
top.
I believe that last week's blitz of aggressive speeches and spin by the
president and his chief counselors removed all doubt of his intentions.
"As long as George W. Bush is president of the United States," Vice President
Cheney told the friendly Heritage Foundation, "this country will not permit
gathering threats to become certain tragedies." The president himself must
tell us now what this vow entails.
The public relations deluge by Bush, Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell,
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld seemed to be aimed at denying any policy fumbles and insisting that
the liberal press was ignoring the positive developments in Iraq.
Mr. Cheney, the president's usual attack dog, aimed his sharpest and most
sneering words at those who offer dissent about the administration's foreign
and economic policies. Perhaps seeking to stifle such criticism, he raised
the specter of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction that "could
bring devastation to our country on a scale we have never experienced.
Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even
hundreds of thousands of lives in a single day of horror." His implication
was that Saddam Hussein in particular had presented this threat—when
virtually all the available intelligence shows that Iraq's weapons programs
had been crippled or drastically diminished by UN inspections and economic
sanctions imposed after the first Gulf war in 1991.
But beyond all the distortions and exaggerations and falsehoods the Bush
people engaged in to rally public support for the Iraq war, what I have never
understood, from the 9-11 day of tragedy onward, is why this White House has
not called on the American people to be part of the war effort, to make the
sacrifices civilians have always made when this country is at war.
There has been no call for rationing or conservation of critical supplies,
such as gasoline. There has been no call for obligatory national service in
community aid projects or emergency services. As he sent 150,000 soldiers
into battle and now asks them to remain in harm's way longer than expected,
the president never raised even the possibility of reinstating the military
draft, perhaps the most democratizing influence in the nation's history.
Instead, he has cut taxes hugely, mostly for affluent Americans, saying this
would put money into circulation and create jobs. Since Bush began the tax
cutting two and a half years ago, 2.7 million jobs have disappeared.
All this I don't understand. If it's a crisis—and global terrorism surely is—
then why hasn't the president acted accordingly? What he did do, when he sent
out those first tax rebate checks, was to tell us to go shopping. Buy clothes
for the kids, tires for the car—this would get the economy humming. How does
that measure up as a thoughtful, farsighted fiscal plan?
In effect, George Bush says, believe in me and I will lead you out of
darkness. But he doesn't tell us any details. And it's in the details where
the true costs are buried—human costs and the cost to our notion of ourselves
as helpers and sharers, not slayers. No one seems to be asking themselves: If
in the end the crusade is victorious, what is it we will have won? The White
House never asked that question in Vietnam either.
For those who would dispute the assertion that the Bush Doctrine is a global
military-based policy and is not just about liberating the Iraqi people, it's
crucial to look back to the policy's origins and examine its founding
documents.
The Bush Doctrine did get its birth push from Iraq—specifically from the
outcome of the 1991 Gulf war, when the U.S.-led military coalition forced
Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait but stopped short of toppling the
dictator and his oppressive government. The president then was a different
George Bush, the father of the current president. The father ordered the
military not to move on Baghdad, saying that the UN resolution underpinning
the allied coalition did not authorize a regime change. Dick Cheney was the
first George Bush's Pentagon chief. He said nothing critical at the time, but
apparently he came to regret the failure to get rid of the Baghdad dictator.
A few years later, in June 1997, a group of neoconservatives formed an entity
called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and issued a Statement
of Principles. "The history of the 20th Century," the statement said, "should
have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises
emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire."
