FEBRUARY 1 2003
The 18th Brumaire of George W. Bush
John Maxwell
Only the title is stolen, unashamedly, from Karl Marx. The analysis which follows is not Marxist and depends on Marx solely for his observation, taken from Hegel, that history often repeats itself; Marx added – the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
Marx was analysing the attempt by Louis-Napoleon in the middle of the nineteenth century, to clothe himself in the 50 year old imperial raiment of his uncle, the first Napoleon.
The behaviour of George Bush II may have parallels with the behaviour of his father, but to my mind, and to the mind of many others, it has much more sinister similarities to the behaviour of a European dictator who, sixty or so years ago, brought the world of Metternich crashing down around the ears of humanity.
The Second World War effectively began with Hitler’s assertion, since proven to be an elaborate fabrication, that Polish troops had attacked a German frontier post. The war actually began earlier, with Hitler first taking over Austria and then dismembering Czecho-Slovakia in search of living space – lebensraum – for his Master race.
CzechoSlovakia has again been dismembered and the Czech and the Slovak republics have both signed on to the US adventure in Iraq, An advertisement in the Wall Street Journal (where else?) a few days ago, extols the “bravery and generosity of America” and calls on the international community to take up arms against Iraq. The ad was signed by seven other countries, including Britain, Italy and Spain. This time it is Israel that seeks ‘living space’ while the US seeks control of oil.
General Lee Butler, head (1992-94)of the US Strategic Air Command, regards it as "dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East, one nation [Israel] has armed itself, [with] nuclear weapons, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, and that inspires other nations to do so. An October 1998 "Memorandum of Agreement" between the US and Israel, upgrading their military and strategic relationship, was widely interpreted to mean that the US regards Israel's nuclear arsenal "not only as a positive factor in the regional balance of power, but also as one it should support and enhance" (Foundation for Middle East Peace Special Report, Winter 1999).
After destroying Iraq’s ability to defend itself in the first Gulf war, the United States and Britain have continued to bomb Iraq and its people ever since. That war has never ceased.
As in the thirties, an imperial power is wresting piece by piece, concessions from an unwilling world. When Bush and the Republican party in the US speak of appeasement, it does not occur to them that the real appeasement is in the repeated sacrifices the rest of the world is making to American hegemony.
In a scathing attack last week, the world’s most respected statesman, Nelson Mandela, denounced the US President and the British Prime Minister for their arrogant and predatory behaviour. They have no moral authority to police the world, he said and implied a racist agenda behind their conduct.
Mr Colin Powell, like Mr Mandela, a black man, has been the chief apologist for the United States claiming an hitherto unknown ‘sovereign right’ to go to war against Iraq. The UN charter recognises the right of countries to attack others in self-defence, but there is not a smidgen of proof that Iraq has either attacked or intends to attack the USA. It would be suicide, anyway.
The US is now champing at the bit, eager to blast Iraq back to the Stone Age for no reason discernible to the naked eye. Hans Blix, the Chief Weapons Inspector said Wednesday that his team saw nothing in Iraq to justify a war and he challenged the Bush administration’s allegations that Iraq was cheating.
In December, Dr. Blix attacked the US and UK: "If the UK and the US are convinced and they say they have evidence, then one would expect they would be able to tell us where is this stuff," he said.
One of Blix’ predecessors as Chief Weapons Inspector, Scott Ritter, is convinced the Iraqis have nothing to hide. Ritter, an American, gets very little space or airtime in the US media, now, effectively part of the official propaganda apparatus.
Apart from several instances in which the US has simply ignored International law, and condoned Israel’s habitual ignoring of United Nations resolutions , its behaviour over arms control makes its position on Iraq not simply questionable or suspect, but utterly incredible.
President Bush, has effectively terminated the treaty limiting the development of anti-ballistic missile systems, has refused to endorse the draft protocol to police the ban on biological weapons; and as Noam Chomsky commented last May, “ The 1997 treaty banning chemical weapons is languishing in large measure because the US has not funded inspections and other action, while Washington has "made a mockery" of the treaty by effectively exempting itself, a senior analyst of the Henry Stimson Center observes. Biological weapons bans have been undermined by US insistence on limiting inspections "in order to protect American pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.”
China's arms control chief said two years ago that American muscle “could lead them to conclude that nobody can harm the United States and they can harm anyone they like anywhere in the world “ -- in a reversion to gunboat diplomacy with the "colonial powers – with overwhelming technological advantages, subduing natives and helpless countries that had no ability to defend themselves" – doing as they choose while "cloaked in moralistic righteousness" (Israeli military analyst Amos Gilboa).
World public opinion is overwhelmingly against the United States for the first time since Viet Nam. In Britain, already, more people consider Bush a greater danger to peace than Saddam. As Mandela said, Bush has no foresight, no imagination: he is unable to imagine the wide-ranging structural damage and the backlash his war will bring about in the Middle East, in Europe – particularly in Britain and Italy – and elsewhere. Field Marshal von Rumsfeld speaks aggressively of ‘leaning forward’ toward the enemy, forgetting perhaps, that leaning too far forward is a formula for falling flat on your face.
When the Cubans were accused last year of threatening the US with bio-weapons, a charge necessarily (and embarrassingly) withdrawn, the Cubans commented
“Mr. Bush’s arguments, deceit, tricks, demagogy, lies and slander will be demolished one by one. It does not matter how long this difficult combat in our long struggle goes on. We are deeply involved in a great battle of ideas, an unprecedented struggle between truths and lies, ignorance and political and historic knowledge; between education and barbarism, ethics and a total lack of moral values and principles, honesty and hypocrisy; between oppression and liberation, justice and injustice, equality and inequality, the nightmares of the past and the dreams of the future, the destruction and preservation of nature, the extinction and survival of our species.”
These days, I am certain, a much larger proportion of humanity shares the Cuban view than did six months ago.
Copyright ©2003 John Maxwell
No comments:
Post a Comment