[A-List] Fw: RENSE.COM The United States Of America Has Gone Mad

["Christopher Black" <bar@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 9:24 PM
Subject: RENSE.COM The United States Of America Has Gone Mad


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> RENSE.COM
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>                                               The United States Of
>                                           America Has Gone Mad
>
> Opinion
>
> By John le Carré
>
> Times Online.co.uk
>
> 1-15-3
>
>                                         America has entered one of its
>                                         periods of historical madness,
>                                         but this is the worst I can
>                                         remember: worse than
>                                         McCarthyism, worse than the
>                                         Bay of Pigs and in the long
>                                         term potentially more
>                                         disastrous than the Vietnam
>                                         War.
>                                         The reaction to 9/11 is beyond
>                                         anything Osama bin Laden
>                                         could have hoped for in his
>                                         nastiest dreams. As in
>                                         McCarthy times, the freedoms
>                                         that have made America the envy
> of the world are being
>                                         systematically eroded. The
> combination of compliant US media
>                                         and vested corporate interests
> is once more ensuring that a
>                                         debate that should be ringing
> out in every town square is confined
>                                         to the loftier columns of the
> East Coast press.
>                                         The imminent war was planned
> years before bin Laden struck,
>                                         but it was he who made it
> possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush
>                                         junta would still be trying to
> explain such tricky matters as how it
>                                         came to be elected in the first
> place; Enron; its shameless
>                                         favouring of the
> already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the
>                                         world's poor, the ecology and a
> raft of unilaterally abrogated
>                                         international treaties. They
> might also have to be telling us why
>                                         they support Israel in its
> continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
>                                         But bin Laden conveniently swept
> all that under the carpet. The
>                                         Bushies are riding high. Now 88
> per cent of Americans want the
>                                         war, we are told. The US defence
> budget has been raised by
>                                         another $60 billion to around
> $360 billion. A splendid new
>                                         generation of nuclear weapons is
> in the pipeline, so we can all
>                                         breathe easy. Quite what war 88
> per cent of Americans think
>                                         they are supporting is a lot
> less clear. A war for how long,
>                                         please? At what cost in American
> lives? At what cost to the
>                                         American taxpayer's pocket? At
> what cost - because most of
>                                         those 88 per cent are thoroughly
> decent and humane people - in
>                                         Iraqi lives?
>                                         How Bush and his junta succeeded
> in deflecting America's anger
>                                         from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein
> is one of the great public
>                                         relations conjuring tricks of
> history. But they swung it. A recent
>                                         poll tells us that one in two
> Americans now believe Saddam was
>                                         responsible for the attack on
> the World Trade Centre. But the
>                                         American public is not merely
> being misled. It is being
>                                         browbeaten and kept in a state
> of ignorance and fear. The
>                                         carefully orchestrated neurosis
> should carry Bush and his fellow
>                                         conspirators nicely into the
> next election.
>                                         Those who are not with Mr Bush
> are against him. Worse, they
>                                         are with the enemy. Which is
> odd, because I'm dead against
>                                         Bush, but I would love to see
> Saddam's downfall - just not on
>                                         Bush's terms and not by his
> methods. And not under the banner
>                                         of such outrageous hypocrisy.
>                                         The religious cant that will
> send American troops into battle is
>                                         perhaps the most sickening
> aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush
>                                         has an arm-lock on God. And God
> has very particular political
>                                         opinions. God appointed America
> to save the world in any way
>                                         that suits America. God
> appointed Israel to be the nexus of
>                                         America's Middle Eastern policy,
> and anyone who wants to mess
>                                         with that idea is a)
> anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the
>                                         enemy, and d) a terrorist.
>                                         God also has pretty scary
> connections. In America, where all
>                                         men are equal in His sight, if
> not in one another's, the Bush family
>                                         numbers one President, one
> ex-President, one ex-head of the
>                                         CIA, the Governor of Florida and
> the ex-Governor of Texas.
>                                         Care for a few pointers? George
> W. Bush, 1978-84: senior
>                                         executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush
> Exploration, an oil company;
>                                         1986-90: senior executive of the
> Harken oil company. Dick
>                                         Cheney, 1995-2000: chief
> executive of the Halliburton oil
>                                         company. Condoleezza Rice,
> 1991-2000: senior executive with
>                                         the Chevron oil company, which
> named an oil tanker after her.
>                                         And so on. But none of these
> trifling associations affects the
>                                         integrity of God's work.
>                                         In 1993, while ex-President
> George Bush was visiting the
>                                         ever-democratic Kingdom of
> Kuwait to receive thanks for
>                                         liberating them, somebody tried
> to kill him. The CIA believes that
>                                         "somebody" was Saddam. Hence
> Bush Jr's cry: "That man tried
>                                         to kill my Daddy." But it's
> still not personal, this war. It's still
>                                         necessary. It's still God's
> work. It's still about bringing freedom
>                                         and democracy to oppressed Iraqi
> people.
>                                         To be a member of the team you
> must also believe in Absolute
>                                         Good and Absolute Evil, and
> Bush, with a lot of help from his
>                                         friends, family and God, is
> there to tell us which is which. What
>                                         Bush won't tell us is the truth
> about why we're going to war. What
>                                         is at stake is not an Axis of
> Evil - but oil, money and people's
>                                         lives. Saddam's misfortune is to
> sit on the second biggest oilfield
>                                         in the world. Bush wants it, and
> who helps him get it will receive a
>                                         piece of the cake. And who
> doesn't, won't.
>                                         If Saddam didn't have the oil,
> he could torture his citizens to his
>                                         heart's content. Other leaders
> do it every day - think Saudi
>                                         Arabia, think Pakistan, think
> Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
>                                         Baghdad represents no clear and
> present danger to its
>                                         neighbours, and none to the US
> or Britain. Saddam's weapons of
>                                         mass destruction, if he's still
> got them, will be peanuts by
>                                         comparison with the stuff Israel
> or America could hurl at him at
>                                         five minutes' notice. What is at
> stake is not an imminent military or
>                                         terrorist threat, but the
> economic imperative of US growth. What
>                                         is at stake is America's need to
> demonstrate its military power to
>                                         all of us - to Europe and Russia
> and China, and poor mad little
>                                         North Korea, as well as the
> Middle East; to show who rules
>                                         America at home, and who is to
> be ruled by America abroad.
>                                         The most charitable
> interpretation of Tony Blair's part in all this is
>                                         that he believed that, by riding
> the tiger, he could steer it. He
>                                         can't. Instead, he gave it a
> phoney legitimacy, and a smooth
>                                         voice. Now I fear, the same
> tiger has him penned into a corner,
>                                         and he can't get out.
>                                         It is utterly laughable that, at
> a time when Blair has talked himself
>                                         against the ropes, neither of
> Britain's opposition leaders can lay a
>                                         glove on him. But that's
> Britain's tragedy, as it is America's: as
>                                         our Governments spin, lie and
> lose their credibility, the electorate
>                                         simply shrugs and looks the
> other way. Blair's best chance of
>                                         personal survival must be that,
> at the eleventh hour, world protest
>                                         and an improbably emboldened UN
> will force Bush to put his gun
>                                         back in his holster unfired. But
> what happens when the world's
>                                         greatest cowboy rides back into
> town without a tyrant's head to
>                                         wave at the boys?
>                                         Blair's worst chance is that,
> with or without the UN, he will drag
>                                         us into a war that, if the will
> to negotiate energetically had ever
>                                         been there, could have been
> avoided; a war that has been no
>                                         more democratically debated in
> Britain than it has in America or
>                                         at the UN. By doing so, Blair
> will have set back our relations with
>                                         Europe and the Middle East for
> decades to come. He will have
>                                         helped to provoke unforeseeable
> retaliation, great domestic
>                                         unrest, and regional chaos in
> the Middle East. Welcome to the
>                                         party of the ethical foreign
> policy.
>                                         There is a middle way, but it's
> a tough one: Bush dives in without
>                                         UN approval and Blair stays on
> the bank. Goodbye to the special
>                                         relationship.
>                                         I cringe when I hear my Prime
> Minister lend his head prefect's
>                                         sophistries to this colonialist
> adventure. His very real anxieties
>                                         about terror are shared by all
> sane men. What he can't explain is
>                                         how he reconciles a global
> assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial
>                                         assault on Iraq. We are in this
> war, if it takes place, to secure the
>                                         fig leaf of our special
> relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot,
>                                         and because, after all the
> public hand-holding in Washington and
>                                         Camp David, Blair has to show up
> at the altar.
>                                         "But will we win, Daddy?"
>                                         "Of course, child. It will all
> be over while you're still in bed."
>                                         "Why?"
>                                         "Because otherwise Mr Bush's
> voters will get terribly impatient
>                                         and may decide not to vote for
> him."
>                                         "But will people be killed,
> Daddy?"
>                                         "Nobody you know, darling. Just
> foreign people."
>                                         "Can I watch it on television?"
>                                         "Only if Mr Bush says you can."
>                                         "And afterwards, will everything
> be normal again? Nobody will do
>                                         anything horrid any more?"
>                                         "Hush child, and go to sleep."
>                                         Last Friday a friend of mine in
> California drove to his local
>                                         supermarket with a sticker on
> his car saying: "Peace is also
>                                         Patriotic". It was gone by the
> time he'd finished shopping.
>                                         The author has also contributed
> to an openDemocracy debate on
>                                         Iraq at www.openDemocracy.net
>
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-543296,00.html
>
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