Oh, Gawd! Another Margolis article. A true mental lightweight...
By Eric Margolis
The year 2003 dramatically and dolefully illustrated Lord Acton’s famous dictum that absolute power corrupts absolutely. An almighty United States, unrestrained by any rival, international body, or world opinion, bestrode the globe, a belligerent colossus determined to monopolize global oil reserves and use its vast military power to crush lesser nations or malefactors that disturbed the Pax Americana.
| And all for no reason! They just started doing that stuff, out of the blue! |
For America’s hard right - a curious farrago of Armageddon-seeking southern Protestants; neo-conservative supporters of Israel’s right-wing Likud party; and the military-industrial-petroleum complex -the Bush administration’s aggressive foreign policy of world domination, and utter contempt for international laws and old allies, marks a new era of national greatness. President George Bush, who vowed his foreign policy would be "humble" and "compassionate," has turned out to be the most radical president in modern U.S. history.
| The humility and the compassion got us 9-11... |
But for those Americans whose primary loyalty was to their country, rather than to religious cultism, foreign nations, or financial profit, the rapid emergence of the U. S. as an imperial power waging two hugely expensive colonial wars in Asia was a disaster, both for America’s democratic system and for the rest of the world. Bush’s vow to bring "democracy" to the Mideast rang as hollow as pious assurances by 19th century European colonialists they were gobbling up Africa and Asia to bring the blessings of Christianity and civilization to benighted savages. Pillaging resources, not enlightenment, were - and remain - the true colonial motivation.
| The effort to bring democracy to Third World dictatorships like Iraq and Afghanistan may well be doomed. Leaving them alone had its own downside. Bush got to pick his evil: the filth that was in place, or the probably hopeless task of civilizing primitives... |
Bush’s claims to hold the mandate of heaven to wage global warfare against the nebulous forces of "terrorism" sounded as dangerous and nonsensical as old Chairman Leonid Brezhnev’s drunken claims it was the Soviet Union’s "sacred internationalist duty" to launch military adventures anywhere on Earth where socialism was threatened.
| It's the President of the United States' "sacred" national duty to protect the nation from foreign aggression. Have you read the declaration of war against us recently? Really, you should. |
Columnist Georgie Anne Gayer put it perfectly when she recently wrote that whereas America used to lead the world as champion of democracy, personal freedom and human rights, today, under Bush, it instead seeks to dominate the world through raw military and monetary power.
| There's a time for the projection of power, there's a time for diplomacy and there's a time for other persuasion. What Georgie Anne seems to miss is the fact that we're in a war. If Bush did the things Georgie Anne thinks he should be doing he'd lose the support of those of us who believe in an active defense and in carrying the war to the enemy. And I suspect Georgie Anne and her friends would find other reasons not to support him. |
In 2003, we saw an abject, cowardly Congress violate its duty as the republic’s premier political organ by disgracefully handing the barely elected president carte blanche to wage an unprovoked war against Iraq that was justified by a torrent of ludicrous lies worthy of Dr. Goebbels.
| Ho hum. Another Nazi allusion. |
Lies and propaganda that were packaged in the best tradition of Soviet agitprop as news, then force-fed by a servile media to an ill-informed public shockingly deficient in any sense of history, geography, or foreign affairs.
| Actually, most of us here have a very good sense of history, georgraphy, and foreign affairs. And what we don't know, we find out. I don't see an awfully servile media out there, either. There's one network that usually supports the administration, and... ummm... at least a half dozen that don't. That's not counting BBC, the Toronto Sun, Toronto Star, and probably the Toronto Moon as well. We get lots of our news here from the foreign press, preferably those belonging to the other side. When did they become servile to Bush? |
The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and sundry military adventures around the globe, were made possible by a steady drumbeat of warnings from the White House and its neo-con trumpets that the U.S. was in dire national peril from "terrorists" and "rogue states."
| Like "al-Qaeda," and "al-Tawhid," and "Ansar al-Islam," and "Lashkar e-Taiba," and "Jemaah Islamiya," and... Nope. It's all mythology. And rogue states? What do we have to fear from Iran? Aside from potential nuclear weapons and a terror network that extends throughout the Middle East? And North Korea? Aside from a Sea of Fire, that is... |
Paranoia again swept America during the holiday season as planes were grounded and orange alerts flashed at a populace that responded to these synthetic alarms with well-trained Pavlovian reflexes.
| Baseless panic, we're sure. Nothing to indicate any danger at all... |
Though the mighty United States, with only 5% of world population, accounts for nearly 50% of total global military spending, the continuing Orwellian message from Washington was of fear and vulnerability. Vague threats of terrorist attack and menacing Muslims were used to curtail American civil liberties, and expand the government’s powers of repression and intrusion. The public barely noticed this sinister, proto-totalitarian campaign.
The so-called "war on terrorism" was a hoax used to mask and justify the long-planned expansion of U.S. military power around the globe.
| Lemme get this straight. I must not be very smart. The vague threats of terrorist attack and the menacing Muslims, with turbans and automatic weapons, were just a ploy to expand the government's powers of repression and intrusion. And the public barely noticed this sinisteer, proto-totalitarian campaign? If it's such a danger, howcome nobody noticed? Are we somehow groaning under repression so subtle it can't be seen with the naked eye? |
What were in reality a series of police actions waged against tiny anti-American groups was no more a war than the farcical "war on drugs." But invoking war trumped criticism and dissent - and justified a real war of aggression against oil-rich Iraq.
Yup. Sure. It's all about oil. We're pumping all the oil out of Iraq even as we speak blog. We're not paying anything at all for it, and we're gonna keep pumping until it's all gone. That makes sense. Not a lot of sense, but sense. |
The very term "terrorism" is a nonsense designed for propaganda effect; a damning label applied by the administration to groups or states strongly opposing U.S. policy. A "war on terrorism" makes no more sense than waging war on evil.
| Actually, terrorism has a very distinct meaning. It involves the targeting of civilians to induce terror (hence the name) as a means of achieving political — or in this case religious — ends. Guerrilla warfare is a different critter, though it may sometimes cross over into terrorism. There are in fact a significant number of organizations in this world which are devoted to using terrorism as a mechanism for achieving their ends, which include the establishment of a caliphate and the imposition of tribute on non-Muslim countries. A "war on terrorism" makes much more sense than waging war on only a single state, since terrorism is a trans-national phenomenon. There are, however, groups within states that don't ostensibly support terrorism, which do support it. They provide money and muscle. To deny the existence of terrorism is either a sign the speaker is stupid — in the case of Margolis this may actually be true — or a member of the other side. Being a generous lot, we can also posit that the deniers may be viewing the world through a set of ideological blinders that hides the obvious, though it doesn't make them look particularly bright. |
Those who opposed Washington’s surging imperial and totalitarian impulses were branded "leftists" and "anti-Americans." The French thinker Regis Debray, writing about past colonial powers, answers thus: "The free man is not anti-American, but anti-imperial. America (now) revisits the time of colonizers drunk on their superiority, convinced of their liberating mission, and counting on reimbursing themselves directly."
Criticizing U.S. foreign policy run-amok and George Bush does not equal anti-Americanism. It is the citizen’s birthright, and the friend’s duty.
| Dissent for the sake of dissent is mental masturbation. There are times when the majority is right. |
This writer has witnessed nine colonial wars and saw how they corrupted the armies, and then the nations, that waged them, brutalizing conquered and conqueror alike. Iraq is the latest. Mankind’s three worst scourges are religious fanaticism, nationalism and imperialism. Each of these three evils has been whipped up by the Bush administration to justify domination abroad, repression of dissidence at home and, of course, re-election.
| Any (Christian) religious fanaticism found in the United States doesn't envision a caliphate. Or is the writer suggesting that Muslim fanaticism is being whipped up by Bush? Nationalism? Americans aren't particularly nationalistic. They're patriotic, but because we're the product of the rest of the world, we recognize the existence and the validity of the cultures that are blended into our own. Imperialism? It's a charge that's bandied about without much justification and less proof. If the U.S. was an imperialist nation, we'd have satraps sitting in Germany and Japan. We'd still own the Philippines, and we'd have absorbed Haiti, Cuba, Grenada, Panama, and large parts of Mexico. |
Those who truly love and respect the United States, like this writer, a conservative and U.S. Army veteran, see the very qualities that made America a beacon to the world - its very soul - now under heavy assault by a cabal of religious fanatics, foreign-leaning ideological extremists, and self-enriching Enron-Republicans. That is a danger considerably greater than al-Qaida.
| Hmmmm... This commentor, a conservative and a U.S. Army veteran, sees it quite a bit differently. |
|