[A-List] US state: ruling class split

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

I wasn't aware of this guy before, but some negative commentary in the
excellent Counterpunch put me right

See http://www.counterpunch.org/bitar.html

So this makes Kinsley's critique of the Bush administration's current
antics more significant than it might otherwise be, apart from the fact
that the Washington Post is publishing something like this at all.


Decision-makers turn a deaf ear to democracy

Councils of war ignore a citizenry left vulnerable to barrage of
propaganda : Opinion Michael Kinsley

Michael Kinsley, Washington Post

Prime Minister Tony Blair in London last week announced his conviction
that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, is ready to use them
against other nations, and soon will have nukes as well. In Washington,
a reporter asked President Bush why Blair offered no new evidence. Bush
answered, "To protect sources."

That's a good joke on journalists. Much of what our leaders know about
Iraq's military capacities and intentions can't be revealed. So how is a
citizen of a democracy supposed to decide the most important question
any nation must decide: Should we go to war? The government answer is
"Don't worry your pretty little heads about it." Last month the White
House issued a formal statement of the administration's national
security policy, and it is full of rhetoric about democracy. Yet that
policy itself is being imposed entirely without benefit of democracy.

Add it up. You may not agree that the Bush family actually stole the
presidency for George W., but you cannot deny that the other guy got
more votes. Once installed as president, Bush asserted (as they all do)
the right to start any war he wants, with or without congressional
approval. You may not agree that this is unconstitutional, but you
cannot deny that it makes any discussion of the pros and cons outside of
the White House pointless. Finally, it's clear that Bush will copy his
father's innovation of rigorously controlling what journalists covering
the war can see and report. You may not agree that the purpose is to
protect official propaganda and lies, but you cannot deny that such will
be the effect. The absence of democracy is especially disturbing in
combination with Bush's doctrine of "preemption" - attacking other
countries that might attack us, rather than waiting for them to do so.
If future wars are to be chosen a la carte, that's an ominous power to
put in one person's hands. And if the timing is optional, then the
argument that there isn't time in the nuclear age for 18th-century
niceties like a congressional declaration of war seems especially lame.

But let's pretend we actually do have some role in deciding whether our
nation goes to war. We aren't capable of answering the actual questions
at hand: Is Saddam Hussein an imminent threat to our national and
personal security, and is a war to remove him from power the only way to
end that threat? So we must do with a surrogate question: Based on
information we do have and issues we are capable of judging, should we
trust the leaders urging war upon us?

The Bush administration campaign for war on Iraq has been an
extravaganza of disingenuousness. Two concepts - "terrorism" and
"weapons of mass destruction" - are drained of whatever intellectual
validity they may have had and put to work bridging huge gaps in
evidence and logic.
Knocking off Hussein became a top priority shortly after 9/11. It was
part of the "war on terror," though the connection between the events of
9/11 and Hussein's depredations was never explained. According to the
State Department's annual survey, the most enthusiastic state sponsor of
terrorism is Iran - an enemy of Iraq we're now trying to patch things up
with. The administration pounced on suggestions that 9/11 hijacker
Mohamed Atta had met with Iraqi agents in Prague, then dropped the
allegation when it turned out to be made up.

Iraq's use of poison gas in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s is one
example always offered to prove Iraq's ability and willingness to use
"weapons of mass destruction." The other is the gassing of a Kurdish
town called Halabja in 1988. The fact that these episodes happened years
ago does not diminish their horror, but it does raise the question of
why now, years later, they are suddenly a casus belli. America's
attitude was very different while these horrors were actually going on.
There is controversy over whether the United States supplied ingredients
for the gas, or merely supplied helicopters and other useful equipment,
or did nothing more than smother the odd U.N. resolution. But there is
no question that we knew all about it and looked the other way. The
administration of the time included some of the same people as the
current administration.
The fatuous hypocrisy of the Bush case for war is no reason to let
Saddam Hussein drop a nuclear bomb on your head. Iraq may be an imminent
menace to the United States even though George W. Bush says it is. You
would think that, if honest and persuasive arguments were available, the
administration would offer them. But maybe not.

The Guardian Weekly 3-10-2002, page 31