"SEVEN DAYS IN OCTOBER"

[jacdon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

The following article will be printed in the Oct. 15, 2002, email issue
of the Mid-Hudson Activist Newsletter/Calendar, published in New Paltz,
NY,   by the Mid-Hudson National People's Campaign/IAC, via
jacdon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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"SEVEN DAYS IN OCTOBER"

By Jack A. Smith

If the grotesque steps toward a war of aggression that took place in the
United States this past week were the subject of a fiction writer's
novel instead of dreadful fact, reviewers undoubtedly would scorn such a
book -- with its flagrant implications of government duplicity in the
service of imperial objectives -- as "unbelievable trash" or worse.  We
can see it now....

....The plot of "Seven Days in October" begins Oct. 7, when the
fictional president of a country called the United States declares that
"a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction" is
threatening the most powerful military state in history with "horrible
poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons."

The novelist, however, refuses to demonstrate that the "tyrant" actually
possesses such weapons or explains how a small nation -- crippled from a
previous conflict and strangled by sanctions -- could conceivably cause
grave harm to the world's only superpower a far distant ocean away.   Up
to this point, the weak, smaller country, called Iraq in the book, has
made no threat or taken any action against the larger country.  Its
armed forces, saddled with outmoded weapons, comprise in number less
than a third of effective combat strength.

The next day, the story continues, U.S. newspapers report the
president's principal intelligence agency -- with eyes capable of
photographing every square inch of the "enemy" country from spy
satellites and ears sufficient to monitor every telephone call or
broadcast within Iraq, among many other surveillance capabilities -- is
revealed to entertain the opinion that the "despot" has no intention "of
conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW
[chemical-biological-warfare] against the United States."

Indeed, the agency declares, the only act that might convince the
"dictator" to consider "adopting terrorist methods" is if  "a U.S.-led
[preemptive] attack could no longer be deterred."

In reality, of course, this would expose the president's entire case as
a dangerous fraud compromising the security of the American people --
but this is fiction.  All it takes for the presidential spokesman to
conceal such obvious duplicity is informing the press with a straight
face that there was no contradiction between the intelligence assessment
and the president's comments of the day before. "If [the 'dictator']
holds a gun to someone's head," the spokesman parried without stooping
to the pretense of logic, "while he denies he even owns a gun, do you
really want to take a chance that he'll never use it?"  Oddly, the news
media doesn't probe this assertion -- as though such journalistic
refusal to question authority would happen in real life.  Such episodes
drove several critics to charge the novel is an insult to the United
States and its democratic form of government.

The following day, Oct. 9, other high government officials announce that
after the "tyrant's" country is invaded, U.S. troops will occupy the
defeated nation for a long time, installing a government of its own
choosing and obviously putting itself in a position to control the
world's second largest reserves of oil pooling below Iraq's land.  At
the same time, the fictional president assures the legislative bodies
debating whether to grant him authority to launch an invasion that
peace, of course, is his preferred option.  As patriots seeking
reelection, they pretend to believe him, rejecting Bertolt Brecht's
elementary observation in the early years of Hitler's rule (no
comparison intended!) that "When the leaders speak of peace/The common
folk know/That war is coming."

A day later, the superpower House and Senate, thanks to collaboration
between the country's political party in power and party in
"opposition," vote overwhelmingly to provide the president with
authority to deploy that nation's armed forces "as he determines
necessary and appropriate" in defense against "the continuing threat
posed by" the smaller country.   Spokespersons for the "opposition"
party who supported the resolution say they trusted the president would
not abuse the authority just granted to him.  One such "liberal" Senator
from an important Eastern state even declares  that despite qualms she
"will take the president at his word that he... will seek to avoid war
if at all possible." Since the troops were being moved into place as she
made her statement, one reviewer fumed, "this would be okay in a comedy,
but it doesn't belong in a serious work of fiction."

In the early morning hours of Oct. 11, just after the final votes,
"administration officials asserted that the bipartisan endorsement would
force the hand of the [United Nations] Security Council because the
United States now had all the legal authority for the war it needed,"
according to a report in the country's "newspaper of record." "Right
now," the newspaper quotes a "senior administration official" as saying,
"we have accomplished what we had to do to take the action we need to
take, and we don't need the Security Council.  So if the Security
Council wants to stay relevant, then it has to give us similar
authority."  Reviewers generally panned this part of the novel as
surreal, arguing that no nation could possibly display such hubris and
jingoism in this modern age of enlightened, worldwide capitalist
governance.

The fictional president then declares in the early morning hours, "With
tonight's vote... America speaks with one voice," ignoring antiwar
protests throughout the country.  Hours later, the president's aides
tell the press that "even if the United States military were to take
over the administration of  Iraq after an invasion, it would be as a
liberation force, not an occupation force."  One academic reviewer said
she slammed the book shut at this point, refusing to go on.  "This  has
been lifted straight out of '1984' by George Orwell," she expostulated.
"The author is a plagiarist!"

The next day, in a radio address to a public by now totally distracted
by intense media concentration on so contrived a plot device as a serial
sniper in Washington, the fictional president declares that the "tyrant"
must swiftly disarm and comply with all existing United Nations
resolutions to his satisfaction  or the United States would act
unilaterally.  Given the many particulars and the brief time period
allowed, it is clear that a pretext will easily be discovered to invade
the smaller country.  "If the author is suggesting this kind of ruse can
really happen in America, he should have his word processor
confiscated," declared another reviewer.

As "Seven Days in October" nears the end, a newspaper in a town called
Kingston, N.Y., quotes a man described as a Coast Guard veteran as
saying, "If I was back in the service, I would go in and bomb [Iraq]
myself.  Anybody who kills 3,000 people or helps support terrorism
should not be allowed to live."  The man is mistaken, of course.  He
obviously has been taken in by the president's latest fabrication
vaguely connecting the "tyrant" to the Sept. 11 tragedy -- an allegation
uncritically purveyed by virtually the entire free press.  Indeed, the
newspaper goes on to quote a "homemaker" in her 60s: "We really haven't
punished them for what they did on 9/11.  It's time to take action."

Reviewers uniformly dismissed the book being too absurdly unconvincing
to appeal to an educated, literate American audience serviced by the
best educational system and democratic media money can buy.  Despite
the poor reviews, the author says he plans a sequel in late winter or
early spring -- "Seven Days Over Baghdad." It is understood that he
intends to produce a series of "Seven Days" books over the next four
years.

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