Bloody
footprints to Baghdad and Basra mark the first tentative steps
in the Bush men's apocalyptic adventure. They have embarked
on a project to bring to heel a world that they hold in great
contempt, but of which they have no understanding whatsoever.
Products of a white American cultural bubble that glories
in its transparency to the globe but sees only its own illusions
staring back, the Pirates play at psychological warfare and
succeed in psyching out only themselves.
Let
us be lucid, above the din of corporate media that serve only
to further embed the 
fantasies
that have inspired the mad and hopeless American lunge at
global domination. There is only one fact that has
been affirmed since American tanks crossed the Kuwaiti border
in late March - and it is a redundant fact, already known
to the people of the world: The U.S. military is awesomely
powerful. It can destroy a developing nation's military and
state structures. So, then what?
In
the minds and plans of the Pirates, the then follows
as naturally as night follows day. Having seen the alternative
in the wreckage of Saddam Hussein's army and capital, the
international community will accommodate itself to American
fiat. Like the Borg on the Star Trek Voyager television series,
the Americans will have made their point to the rest of the
planet: "Resistance is futile." Iraq quiets down
for a smooth and profitable occupation, Iran and Syria become
instantly supine, the European community accepts second class
status in a region in which it has been the dominant trading
partner, and regimes everywhere prepare to change of their
own accord in any manner that the U.S. might suggest.
If
the fantasy scenario does not unfold, the Bush men have no
other cards to play - except to lash out again with
their only real asset, the war machine. They will then face
the limits of even that singular power - a high-tech, low
manpower building-and-bunker-destroyer that cannot occupy
anyplace unfriendly for very long.
For
Bush's New American Century in-a-can to work, the world's
people and nations would be required to stand still, transfixed
in shock and awe of the U.S. military. That, in fact, was
and remains the extent of The Plan. The incestuous corporate
cabal revolving around Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul
Wolfowitz and Richard Perle have bet everything on their own,
shared fantasy. Although National War College professor Lani
Kass had other people in mind at the time, she could have
been speaking of the Bush men when she warned of getting caught
in situations where "you don't know how somebody operating
from a different culture, a different mind-set, might react
to stressful circumstances."
The
world is certainly distressed with the United States, and
is busily conspiring against the rogue nation. As we wrote
in last week's 
,
"In self-defense, the world will be forced to reorganize
itself, to create new mechanisms of trade and security in
place of the institutions that the Bush men are deliberately
savaging. The Americans will be left out of these arrangements."
In lashing out at international order, the U.S. has destroyed
the foundations of the special status it has enjoyed since
the end of World War II.
Henry
C. K. Liu concludes that the U.S. has initiated its own decline.
In an April 5 Asia Times commentary, "The
war that may end the age of superpower", Liu wrote:
This
war has succeeded in pushing Russia, France, Germany and
China closer, in contrast if not in opposition to US interests
worldwide, a significant development with long term implications
that are difficult to assess at present. Globalization is
dealt a final blow by this war. The airlines are dead and
without air travel, globalization is merely a slogan. The
freezing of Iraq foreign assets is destroying the image
of the US as a financial safe haven. The revival of Arab
nationalism will change the dynamics in Middle East politics.
The myth of US power has been punctured. The geopolitical
costs of this war to the US are enormous and the benefits
are hard to see.
This
war will end from its own inevitable evolution, even without
anti-war demonstrations. It will not be a happy end. There
is yet no discernible exit strategy for the US. After this
war, the world will have no superpower, albeit the US will
remain strong both economically and militarily.
Mr.
Liu is no radical - he's chairman of the New York-based Liu
Investment Group. Liu notes that the British military has
notified Prime Minister Blair that his forces "cannot
sustain a high level of combat for indefinite periods."
Liu could have added that the U.S. military is not configured
to an occupation of Iraq under circumstances other than absolute
quiet in the region.
Yet
the Bush Pirates insist that they will hold and exploit the
country all by themselves, and with enough ready forces to
fend off the "evil ones" in Tehran and Damascus
and... well, wherever. They cannot. American military reserves
have already become a de facto draft force, subject
to interminable, disruptive call-ups. The real thing is only
a conflict - or rough occupation - away, a politically unacceptable
non-alternative.
The
entanglement in Iraq with the current U.S. force structure
is the end result of the Pirates' way of doing business. They
are the spawn of military industry, speculative finance and
the most rapacious elements of the energy sector - Enron in
arms. They sold the U.S. government the kind of high-tech
military that would produce the most profits, and now seek
to profit further by outright international plunder. Thus,
Richard Perle sits on the Defense Planning Board while telling
Goldman Sachs that an American invasion can be accomplished
with 40,000 men with lightning speed, opening up first the
Iraqi oil fields and soon leading to the capitulation of Iran
and a regime change in Saudi Arabia. Voila. But it is all
based on the illusion that the world thinks as speculative
finance capitalist Pirates do. Nobody believes that but the
delusional white American public.
Thirty
five years ago, Black people rose up as grown men and women
to confront a U.S. ruling structure that had, at its center,
titans of manufacturing and commerce in the world's most dynamic
market. Dr. Martin Luther King's words at a Memphis church
on the eve of his assassination speak to an America that has,
in fundamental ways, disappeared.
[W]e
are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors
not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not
to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy - what is the
other bread? - Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread
company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse
Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been
feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain.
We are choosing these companies because they haven't been
fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them
because they can begin the process of saying, they are going
to support the needs and the rights of these men who are
on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor
Loeb to do what is right.
George
Bush and his Pirates don't care if Black people or anybody
else in the U.S. buys Wonder Bread, or if the general public
has disposable income to buy anything at all. Big city Mayors
are more than likely Black, these days, starved like the rest
of urban America by the Pirates ensconced in Washington with
their eyes on global plunder. The Bush men have accelerated
the decline of the American economy with the same delusional
disdain that they mangle the world order - and with no more
concern for the consequences.
They
have made enemies of everyone. That's why their defeat is
certain, although, to paraphrase Dr. King, not all of us will
get to the Promised Land.
