[casi] Bush's "Credibility Fixation" on Iraq

[James Parke <jp@DELETETHISmrc-dunn.cam.ac.uk>]

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<http://www.progressive.org/webex/wx073102.html>

Bush's "Credibility Fixation" on Iraq

You know Washington is sinking into quicksand whenever you start hearing
that the U.S. should go through with its militaristic plans because if it
doesn't, we would lose credibility.

I hadn't heard that hoary rationalization since the darkest days of
Vietnam, but there it was again, in the mouth of James Schlesinger, the
former CIA Director, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of Energy and all
around grand-poohbah of the Washington establishment.

Here's what he told The New York Times: "Given all we have said as a
leading world power about the necessity of regime change in Iraq . . . our
credibility would be badly damaged if that regime change did not take
place."

Of all the reasons to go to war against Iraq, that's the worst possible
one. That's like saying, "OK, it may be a stupid idea, but since we've said
it so many times, we've got to do it."

And, anyway, the credibility argument makes little sense. It's not as
though if Bush doesn't level Baghdad, the Mongol hordes will be storming
Washington.

The historian Gabriel Kolko, in his underappreciated book "Century of War,"
examines this "credibility fixation," as he calls it. "Perhaps the single
most recurrent justification that leaders of major powers have evoked for
risking wars evolved from their belief that their credibility, which
allegedly created fear among potential enemies and thereby constrained
their actions, depended on their readiness to use force even when the
short-term rationality for violence was very much in doubt," he writes.
This led to disastrous results for Austria in World War I, Japan in World
War II, and the United States in Vietnam, he argues.

Before Rumsfeld and Bush go off half-cocked, let's assess the short-term
rationality of this planned invasion.

First of all, it would be against international law, since Iraq has not
attacked the United States and is not imminently preparing to do so.

Second, it would be against the U.S. Constitution for Bush to do this
without a declaration of war from Congress.

Third, it would mess up our relations with our allies, and further enrage
the Muslim world, which is the last thing the United States needs right now.

Fourth, it could wreak havoc with our economy, which is already wobbly
enough.

And fifth and foremost, it could kill tens of thousands of people, many of
them innocent civilians.

It is not even inconceivable that the conflict would end with the United
States dropping a nuclear bomb on Baghdad if Saddam is foolish enough to
use any chemical or biological weapons he has lying around.

Ironically, the announced intention of the U.S. government to get rid of
Saddam Hussein increases the likelihood that he would use such weapons if
he has them, since has no incentive not to. He may think if he's going to
go down anyway, he might as well throw whatever he has lying around at U.S.
troops or Israel.

Bush's war-in-the-works is a combustible combination of arrogance and
madness.

We need to do everything in our power nonviolently to stop it.

-- Matthew Rothschild

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<http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/total.html>

Total control, not self-defense, behind US plans to topple Saddam

By Stephen Gowans

"The United States reserves its option to do whatever it believes might be
appropriate to see if there can be a regime change," said US Secretary of
State Colin Powell. He was talking about Iraq, but he could have been
talking about any country. The US not only reserves the right to change
regimes it doesn't like, it has been actively doing so for decades. Saddam
Hussein's regime simply stands at the summit of a long line of nationalist,
socialist and communist regimes the United States has sought to topple, in
favor of installing pro-US, pro-capitalist, quisling governments.

For months after Sept. 11, Washington sought desperately to link Saddam
Hussein to the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, to justify all out
war on the devastated country. But no link could be found.

That, however, didn't stop President George W. Bush from preparing the way
for more devastation by calling Iraq one of the "axis of evil" countries,
along with North Korea and Iran.

Iraq, Bush said, intends the US harm. But in Washington's Orwellian world
of war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength, it is the
opposite that's true.

US and British fighter pilots fly almost daily sorties over Iraq, enforcing
"no fly zones." Dozens, if not hundreds, of Iraqi civilians have been
killed. And the no-fly zones have no basis in international law. They've
been unilaterally imposed by Washington.

During the Gulf War, coalition forces bombed Iraq's eight multipurpose
dams, destroying flood control systems, irrigation, municipal and
industrial water storage, and hydroelectric power. Major pumping stations
were targeted, and municipal water and sewage facilities were destroyed.

Article 54 of the Geneva Convention prohibits attacks on "drinking water
installations and supplies and irrigation works."

The United States knew sanctions would prevent Iraq from rebuilding, and
that epidemics would ensue.

One recently declassified document, brought to light by Thomas Nagy, a
business professor at George Washington University, warned that sanctions
would prevent Iraq from importing "water treatment replacement parts and
some essential chemicals" leading to "increased incidences, if not
epidemics, of disease."

Another document listed the most likely diseases: "diarrheal diseases
(particularly children); acute respiratory illnesses (colds and influenza);
typhoid; hepatitis A (particularly children); measles, diphtheria, and
pertussis (particularly children); meningitis, including meningococcal
(particularly children); cholera (possible, but less likely.)"

After more than a decade of sanctions, well over a million Iraqis are dead
from preventable causes. Over 4,000 Iraqi children die every month from
typhoid, hepatitis, pertusis and other sanctions-related diseases, just as
Washington predicted.

And yet, despite a decade of unremitting US hostility, aggression, and a
near-genocide, George W. Bush wants to escalate the aggression, create more
suffering, and usher more children into graves.

Why?

Bush says he needs to put a stop to Saddam Hussein's weapons program, but
that's mendacious.

American Scott Ritter, a former U.N. arms inspector, claims that Iraq is
effectively disarmed, and has been for some time. And it's difficult to
imagine how a country that's been besieged and under attack for over 10
years, could be building weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, Israel, a US ally in the region, is widely believed to have an
arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons. A recent report claims Israel may have as
many as 500 warheads. While in violation of countless U.N. Resolutions
ordering its withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, Israel faces no
sanctions and no order to disarm. Amnesty International, which has warned
that Israel's crackdown on the latest Palestinian uprising, or Intifada,
borders on war crimes, condemned Tel Aviv for its "utter disregard for
human life in the Occupied Territories" and for its violations of
international law. And yet even calls for intervention as mild as placing
international observers in the Occupied Territories have been rebuffed.

The Gulf War erupted after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait. After the war,
the United Nations imposed sanctions, ordering Iraq to disarm. Iraq's
violation of international law in invading its neighbor was cited for the
harsh treatment. But critics of the policy say that punishment for
violations of international law are being meted out unevenly and
hypocritically. Israel's innumerable transgressions go unpunished, while
governments that have fallen out with Washington, often over investment or
debt repayment issues, are treated severely.

Moreover, the United States itself has a long track record of violating
international law. Washington's undermining of Iraq's water treatment and
sanitation facilities in violation of the Geneva Convention is just one of
many recent transgressions, including the bombing of Yugoslavia, Sudan,
Afghanistan, and the continued bombing of Iraq. And the imprisonment of
Afghan soldiers at Guantanamo Bay flagrantly violates the Geneva
Convention. Never has the designation "rogue nation" been more deserved
than in the case of the US.

US-led NATO forces also targeted civilian infrastructure in Yugoslavia. At
one point, US Air Force General Michael Short explained that NATO's bombing
campaign was aimed at causing misery in the civilian population. "If you
wake up in the morning," said Short, "and you have no power to your house
and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will
be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask,
'Hey, Slobo, what's this all about? How much more of this do we have to
withstand?"

Short's explanation of US strategy pretty much adds up to a dictionary
definition of terrorism. So, which is the terrorist state -- the US or
Iraq?

And Powell has exposed Bush's lie. Even if UN arms inspectors are allowed
back into the country to dismantle whatever weapons of mass destruction
might be laying around (of which there are likely to be none,) Washington
has no intention of backing off plans to change the Iraqi regime. Powell
said,  "'US policy is that, regardless of what the inspectors do, the
people of Iraq and the people of the region would be better off with a
different regime in Baghdad."

Ritter says that when he was UNSCOM's chief inspector, dozens of US Special
Forces and CIA operatives masqueraded as arms inspectors. When Baghdad
learned UNSCOM was being used as a cover for US intelligence, it stopped
fully co-operating with arms inspectors. At that point, former US president
Bill Clinton decided to launch a new round of bombing, and the UN withdrew
its inspectors (and the American spies.)

Last month Bush directed the CIA to topple Hussein's government, using
whatever means necessary, including assassination. 'Now that Bush has
specifically authorized American covert-operations forces to remove
Hussein," remarked Ritter, "the Iraqis will never trust an inspection
regime that has already shown itself susceptible to infiltration and
manipulation by intelligence services hostile to Iraq, regardless of any
assurances the U.N. secretary-general might give."

Washington doesn't really care whether Iraq allows inspectors back into the
country or not. It simply wants to exercise its "right" to control any
country it -- and the corporate interests it represents -- deem to be of
commercial or geostrategic interest. And Iraq, having the world's second
largest reserves of oil, is of immense importance. The same, however,
cannot be said of Iraqis,  tens of thousands of whom will die if Bush
launches all out war. But then, the US government has had over a decade to
demonstrate that the wholesale death of ordinary Iraqis is of little
moment. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright even said the deaths of
thousands of Iraqi children every month was "worth it."

For that, the US government deserves to be called what it is. Not only the
world's greatest rogue, but also the world's greatest killing machine;
ugly, vicious, violent, a country that has slaughtered millions upon
millions of the world's poor and wretched for the crime of sitting atop
coveted resources, for seeking to live free from subordination by colonial
masters, for trying to achieve a measure of economic independence. There is
no force in the world today more thoroughly corrupted by greed and lust for
power, more capable of mass destruction, more inhumane, and few more
retrograde, than the US government, the corporate interests it serves, and
the cabal of political appointees who've decided that now is the moment to
secure total control of the planet in the name of American dictatorship.


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