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06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable Health & Environment
06.29 Thinking about Climate 06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN 06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare 06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All 06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate 06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex 06.22 Thinking about Recoveries 06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo 06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform 06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers 06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care 06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations Media Watching
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform 06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage 06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right 06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess US Politics, Policy & Culture
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy 06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity 06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail 06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission? 06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership 06.25 America's "Bases of Empire" 06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town 06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins 06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program 06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black 06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix 06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran? 06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program? 06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory 06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed High Crimes?
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement" 07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure 06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq 06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release 06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War 06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future 06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record 06.14 Fear Rules Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America 06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control 06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney International
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean 06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New 06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise' 06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil 06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?” 06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran 06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections 06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters 06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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OPINION:Selling the FearWhat happened to the glorious post-Cold-War future we were envisioning?The neo-cons did not like the Bush Sr. New World Order. They thought that since America was now unrivaled in its military might, it should take the opportunity to... well, rule the world.
In the recent debate among Democratic candidates for the presidency, moderator Brian Williams asked them, 'Who are the three worst enemies of America?"The truth is, America has no "enemies" but those we make ourselves. A little recent history is in order. After the collapse of the Soviet Empire, it looked like giant arms budgets, nuclear standoffs, and cruel proxy wars would be things of the past. We would now turn to quality-of-life issues like education, ameliorating poverty, breakthroughs in medicine and health care services, and dealing with pollution and global warming. We had the visions of Hubble and the promise of space exploration, the birth of the Web, and dreams of tele-operation and virtual reality, and a dizzying acceleration in scientific advances that would bring us magical gadgets and startling discoveries.
Remember what Georgi Arbatov, Gorbachev's close aide and top Kremlin 'Americanologist,' told the U.S. as the Soviet Union was disintegrating?: "We will do a terrible thing to you; we will deprive you of an enemy."
Remember what Georgi Arbatov, Gorbachev's close aide and top Kremlin 'Americanologist,' told the U.S. as the Soviet Union was disintegrating?: "We will do a terrible thing to you; we will deprive you of an enemy." That was in March of 1990. By the summer of that year, then-president George Bush had a plan to keep the military/industrial complex in profitable business well into the future, in spite of the loss of our enemy. The U.S. would instigate and lead ad-hoc coalitions of friendly states to discipline, punish, and, if necessary, destroy dangerous "rogue states." This would be the New World Order. Of course, 'rogue states' could mean any state which resisted the "Washington Consensus" and had the audacity to arm itself in defense. But these subtle details were not for the public. For the public, an example was needed, one which could be puffed up into a frightening 'enemy,' then dealt with militarily by the righteous fury of a U.S.-led coalition, thus establishing the paradigm for the New World Order, and ensuring decades of further prosperity for the military-industrial complex.So our old buddy Saddam, fresh from warring on Iran with our help, was lured into an invasion of neighboring Kuwait. Now Saddam was a new Hitler, his armies were ferocious and threatened even our ally and principal oil-source, Saudi Arabia... or so we told them, and we got those bases we wanted there, in the Holy Land of Islam, and we rolled back the dictator with little loss of life or treasure on our side. Success—the New World Order was now clear and confirmed, and along the way, America massively expanded its military presence in the region. Everyone was happy. Except Osama bin Laden, who had petitioned the Saudi King to allow him to lead his warriors (fresh from victory over the Soviet Empire in Afghanistan) to drive the godless aggressor Saddam from Kuwait. The King went with the Americans instead. Bin Laden considered the monarchy a colluder from that point on, and the removal of the American military bases in Iraq would later become his principal demand as he turned his guns on America. And there was a faction of the ruling regime in Washington that was unhappy, too. The 'realists' who held sway through Bush the First called them 'the crazies'. These were the men who later in the decade signed on to the "Project for the New American Century," now known as the "neo-cons," who entered en masse the administration of George W. Bush. These men had been discredited in the eighties for hyping an imminent Soviet threat; since the CIA found their allegations doubtful, they ran an alternative "intelligence" assessment called "Plan B" to push their war-mongering fantasies and claims that Gorbachev was tricking us with his end-of-the-Cold-War talk, and was actually preparing a surprise attack; this nonsense continued right up until the collapse of the Soviet Union. The neo-cons did not like the Bush Sr. New World Order. They thought that since America was now unrivaled in its military might, it should take the opportunity to... well, rule the world. They wanted Bush Sr. to go all the way to Baghdad, depose Saddam, and take over Iraq as an object lesson to anyone who dared oppose us, and as a base from which to better impose our will on the region. During the Clinton interlude, these men plotted in the comfort of various right-wing think-tanks, notably the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute; their mouthpieces in the mainstream press, Safire, Kristol, Perle, Krauthammer, Will, et a.l, continued to press their talking points, and in 2001 they came to power under Mr. Cheney and the ignorant and pliant Bush Jr. This background helps us understand why, after the attacks of 911, the Taliban's offer to turn over Bin Laden to a third country for trial was spurned in favor of military action. We didn't ever get Bin Laden, of course, but we did get Afghanistan and the oil pipelines from the trans-Caucasus region the neo-cons and their oil-industry allies wanted. And we showed the world; we kicked butt. It helps explain why, rather than treating Al Quaeda as a criminal enterprise best destroyed by determined intelligence and police work, they declared a 'War": a "War on Terror." It helps explain why, when Saddam gave free rein to the weapons inspectors in 2002, turned over a mountain of documents as demanded, and even offered through a back-channel to retire and go into exile, we insisted on invading Iraq, destroying the Iraqi state, and occupying that country, thus enormously boosting the appeal of Bin Ladenism and anti-American attitudes in general. We had a chance to solve the problem multilaterally and the neocons preferred to wage a war of conquest. We had a chance to play a crucial part in the more gradual emergence of good governance in that already secular state, thus developing a bulwark against the kind of Islamic extremism which underlay Al Quaeda. But no, they wanted to use the war machine, to have an "enemy," to show the world that messing with America was suicidal. That was more important than being smart about solving whatever problems there were. In spite of the utter disaster this mindset has wrought in Iraq, their efforts continue in the same vein today—now with Iran. Mr. Cheney and his ilk have been threatening Iran with a nuclear attack for over a year now. We have in fact three aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf as I write this, and while massive domestic and international resistance seems to have temporarily postponed an assault, the danger is still very much there. Now we find out that the Iranians had made a concerted effort in 2002 to offer a grand bargain of peaceful resolution of disputes with the U.S., only to be spurned, once again, by Cheney and his war-mongering cohort.
The Neocons aspire to rule the world the way the Republicans ruled Congress until this year—by brute force in service of corrupt selfish interest.
By now it should be clear that these people have no interest in the peaceful resolution of disputes, but rather look for opportunities to unilaterally exert American military dominance as a matter of principle. It should be clear that they have no interest in participating in an enlightened world community, but rather aspire to rule the world the way the Republicans ruled Congress until this year—by brute force in service of corrupt selfish interest. It should be clear that this mentality is disastrous for our nation and the world. Those who have promoted this pathology and aided and abetted these conspiracies bear much of the blame for the mess that's occurred, and should be outed and discredited, retired from their pulpits in the mainstream media, and set out to pasture once and for all.Which brings us back to the beginning of this essay, with Brian Williams' question to the Democratic candidates. "Who are the three worst enemies of America?" (The rest of his questions, if you read the transcript, were just as tendentious.) Williams works for NBC, and NBC is owned by General Electric, a top defense contractor and founding member of the military/industrial complex. Yes, the very ones who need "enemies" to prosper.
Brian Williams: "Senator Gravel, same question: Other than Iraq, the three most important enemies to the United States?"
Stephen Miller writes from Santa Fe, NM. He may be reached at Dvmx.com.
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Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on May 5, 2007. |
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