A war on two fronts
Bush is waging war on two fronts, and on both fronts the American people figure to be the big losers. On front No. 1, Iraq, Bush has done everything possible to validate al-Qaida’s vision of the United States as an international bully captive to Israeli foreign policy. In the absence of nuclear weapons, a nuclear program, poison gas, biological weapons, al-Qaida connections or any other evidence that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States, Bush has transformed Iraq into the “destination” battleground for Islamic terrorists the world over. Ironically, the site Bush has chosen for his showdown is precisely the one that fits best with al-Qaida ideology. Restoration of the Caliphate, based in Bagdad, is central to the Islamic fundamentalists’ vision of the millennial Muslim state. Now that weapons of mass destruction cannot be found, administration ideologues, for whom Bush is merely an inarticulate mouthpiece, have busied themselves concocting new justifications. For the past few weeks the line has been that we invaded Iraq to save the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein and his murderous thugs. Now, as Iraq appears more and more like Vietnam with sand dunes, a new theory is emerging. We are fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we won’t have to fight them on American soil.
Ignoring the fact that there have been no terrorist attacks here since 9/11 and that John Ashcroft’s total harvest of bona fide terrorists now adds up to a sum total of one (two, if you count the shoe bomber who was captured by his fellow passengers), the domestic threat seems miniscule compared to the cost now being paid in American blood in Iraq. If Bush wants to fight al-Qaida on its own turf, why not go after the terrorists where they are? Even the CIA seems to have figured out that Osama and his minions are holed up on the Afghan-Pakistani border. Instead of going after them, Bush has actually shifted assets away from Afghanistan and moved them to Iraq.
Before the invasion, Iraq was a stable secular state. Iraq’s military had been degraded to the point where it posed little threat to its neighbors while still providing a balance against the ambitions of the theocrats of Iran. It was contained and could have remained so. By destroying Saddam Hussein, rather than transforming Iraq into a model for Middle Eastern democracy, Bush has created a geopolitical black hole in a region vital to the economic and political future of the planet. In the process, he has managed to pretty well exhaust what remained of America’s dwindling stock of credibility and good will with the rest of the world.
In an asymmetrical conflict, i.e. a guerrilla or terrorist war, America’s size and expensive high-tech military power becomes its greatest liability. Throwing money and troops into Iraq only helps al-Qaida achieve its aim: to bleed the United States to death by killing Americans and destroying its economy. So far, the plan seems to be working. We would be far better off keeping our money and troops at home and making selective strikes against al-Qaida leadership and infrastructure whenever and wherever they are. Our greatest successes to date have been achieved in this way, by simple police work and at very low cost in lives or dollars. Sure, it would take time, and occasionally al-Qaida would score a hit, but at least they would be shown to be who they are — a small group of murderous fanatics. Bush has chosen, however, to play the role Osama wrote for him, the heavy-handed imperialist subjugating Muslim peoples. As day by day, Bush proves him right, Osama collects hundreds, if not thousands, of new recruits to his cause while more Americans lose their lives and billions of dollars continue to flow down the Iraqi rat hole.
And this brings us to the second front — the front where Bush and the neo-cons are winning — the war against the American people.
In every way possible Bush and his buddies have striven to dismantle and destroy every institution and advancement made by the American people since the promulgation of the Constitution. Constitutional safeguards have been weakened. Religion has been brought into the government. Environmental laws have been gutted. Shareholder lawsuits against corporations have been limited. Tax laws have been changed to favor dividends over wages. Campaign-financing laws are on the verge of being overturned. Public education has been attacked. Whole government agencies have been taken over by the industries they were supposed to oversee. A budget surplus was turned into the biggest deficit in history. The electoral process itself was destroyed in Florida and is under attack in Texas and California. The list goes on and on.
The neo-con philosophy, “Privatize the benefit; socialize the cost,” is the order of the day. A raid of $150 billion was made on the treasury, and 40 percent of it found its way into the pockets of the richest 1 percent of the population. All pretense of fairness and equity has been abandoned while the corporations and the super-rich scramble to grab up the assets, tangible and intangible, of the American people. Anyone who dares criticize this massive assault is vilified by right-wing media goons and Republican propagandists dispatched from intellectual brothels with high-sounding names like the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute or the Cato Institute.
If Bush needs $134 billion to fight in Iraq ($47 billion already allocated and $87 billion recently requested), let him take it out of his tax cut. The American people are willing to sacrifice to preserve their freedom, but let’s make sure all Americans share in this sacrifice. Let’s make sure there will be something left to sacrifice for.
President accidentally speaks the truth; no one notices
Finally. There is something the Bush administration and I can agree on.
In the first couple of months following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as guerrillas repeatedly struck indefensible oil pipelines, Secretary of State Colin Powell admonished the rebels, demanding that they cease their attacks. The words that he used to condemn the attacks were notable.
“The oil of Iraq,” Powell insisted, “belongs to the people of Iraq ... The oilfields are the property of the Iraqi people.”
I can imagine a roomful of gray-suited businessmen somewhere down at Halliburton headquarters looking up from their adding machines as those words came over the radio, and wondering what the hell he meant by them. This wasn’t Castro or Quadaffi, but an employee of the man. Their man.
In the days following, Bush would echo this somewhat socialist-sounding assertion. But the boys at Halliburton needn’t have worried — Powell and Bush were just speaking rhetorically. Dubya doesn’t doubt the transcendent idol of private-property rights any more than he questions the holy goodness of the U S of A.
Still, the idea is compelling and raises other questions. Who owns the land of Zimbabwe? Who owns the diamonds of South Africa? Who owns the natural gas of Russia, the coal of the Appalachians or the forests of Washington state? Answers to those questions may differ, but I think the current situation in Iraq (or any country that goes through a complete breakdown of its political system) has shone a light on the innate artificiality of private property.
Individual claims to large amounts of private property can only be defended by a regime that recognizes the claim and has the force to protect it. Once a regime collapses (by revolution or war, for example), all bets are off, and to what extent the new regime will support concentrations of private wealth depends on its power base and how representative it is of the citizens.
As far as I know, there has never been a mass movement to restore private wealth, only common wealth. When common people have the opportunity to act politically, they tear down private- property “rights,” they don’t build them up. This seems to contradict the American ideal that the pursuit of property is natural and blessed by God.
Of course, under corrupt government control, common ownership may just be a brief stop on the way to a redistribution of wealth to private interests (such as what happened in Russia in the early 1990s and might very well happen in Iraq).
Nonetheless, we leftists can always gloat about the fact that, at least occasionally, even ultra conservatives like our president must acknowledge that the principle of common ownership is a more basic and more enduring one than the modern construction of private property.