8 September 2003

Bush the smaller made his pitch to the nation over the weekend to “save civilisation” from terrorism and told us that the “frontline” was now Iraq. So Saddam disappears not only literally but also figuratively to be replaced by the generic ‘threat’ that has been the real core of the propaganda since 9/11. And in a complete volte face, Bush the smaller now wants the UN to take on its “responsibility” to pay for the war unleashed on the world by the USUK imperium.

And indeed, as with everything else that’s happened in the past months, the media daren’t utter the truth about the situation, namely that it’s unraveling faster than anyone dared predict. Of course, we get hints such as the following, unusually candid admission on the front page of the Independent (08/09/03):

“His [Bush’s] administration has recently characterised Iraq as the central battleground in the war on terrorism…if this is the case, the US invasion itself has been largely responsible for making it so.”

But does it draw the appropriate lesson from this observation? You wish! Instead all the Independent is worried about is the cost of the war and the fear that it may turn into a Middle Eastern Vietnam.

“[M]aking the case [for involving the rest of us] will be complicated by growing dismay over the casualty in Iraq and fears that the Middle East could turn into another Vietnam.”

And as the ‘road map’ long falsely touted as Blah’s ‘payment’ for supporting Bush the smaller’s war on terror is shown up as a complete fake, the PNAC, the US’s own ‘road map’ for global dominance is also suffering the same fate.

What is going on? In only a few short months, it would seem that the imperialist project is falling apart through a combination of factors, not the least of which is reliance on simple wish fulfillment (aka self-delusion) on the part of the US political class and its puppets in the UK.

Of course, for many of us, raised in a world where imperialist planners had some sense of how to achieve objectives in the real world, it has come as something of a shock that the political class is actually clueless. But common sense resists such an analysis. We like to kid ourselves that the people ‘in charge’ regardless of what we think of their policies are at least in touch with events. We argue that there is so much at stake that allowing the inmates to run the asylum is unthinkable.

Yet events tell the tale. With costs running at around $5 billion a month just for Iraq and with troops in 137 countries around the world, the US is caught up in its own self-fulfilling prophecy. In inventing the war against ‘terror’ so ‘terror’ has arisen. In polarising the world yet again into two camps even as only a short time ago they celebrated the end of the Cold War, we find ourselves on yet another treadmill of terror toward a different kind of Armageddon, only the ‘enemy’ this time is unashamedly the poor of the planet (or the ‘uncivilised’ portion that Bush the smaller’s speech refers to).

Let’s not beat about the Bush, the ‘war on terror’ is in actuality a war on the poor of the planet, who without a genuine leadership, have been forced into the arms of their own reaction, the messianic bin Ladens of the world, who are themselves the creation of the US in the first place! It seems that what goes around comes around.

Yet there is something really desperate about the words being put about by the likes of ideologues like Condoleeza Rice who tells us that, “The cost of freedom and the cost of peace cannot be measured.” Tell that to the US taxpayer Ms Rice, or perhaps a personal note tucked into the bodybags?

Critically, the issue of whether or not the USUK can bribe, blackmail and threaten those on the UN Security Council to climb onboard the New American Century bandwagon is the major threat that now confronts us. But with each passing day, the likelyhood grows fainter as the insanity of the imperialist project grows ever more apparent. The issue is now whether the world community can act collectively to force the USUK to relinquish its chokehold on Iraq and open up the possibility for the Iraqis to decide on their own destiny.

In the world of if only…

And one searches in vain for any kind of good sense in the Western media, who caught up in maintaining the status quo, protest to the end that, ‘if only…’

The insistence for example, that the Palestinian and Israeli sides are somehow equal, that ‘if only’ the Palestinians would ‘rein in their terrorists’, sanity will prevail. That ‘if only’ Arafat had ‘allowed’ Abu Massen to sellout to the US, the ‘road map’ stood a chance of success.

Yet reluctantly, they have to admit that the ‘road map’ never stood a cat in hell’s chance of success from the very beginning. The Independent’s editorial (08/09/03) tells us as much when it says:

“His [Mazen’s] resignation is not so much a setback for the peace process as an acceptance that this route petered out some weeks ago.’

Interesting choice of phrase, ‘petered out’. Sufficiently vague as to be meaningless but sufficiently loaded as to suggest that it never stood a chance. The editorial goes on to say that:

“The priority surely, ought to be to restrain the Israeli government.’

But of course, aside from a plea to the US government, there are no suggestions as to how exactly the Israeli government is to be restrained. Any idea that everything that Sharon has done has been designed to make sure that there will be no resolution is presented to us as:

“Arial Sharon…seems determined to make a settlement more difficult.”

Seems determined? A wonderful turn of phrase don’t you think. This has surely got to rank as the understatement of the year. But just in case you get the wrong-headed idea that the Independent actually backs the idea of a Palestinian state it also tells us that:

“It will be protested that these demands are one-sided, demanding action of Israel and nothing of the Palestinians. True.”

And amazingly the Independent ends its two-faced editorial with the following:

“Until a situation is created in which Palestinian leadership is possible, no leader will emerge who is capable of reconciling the Palestinian people to peaceful coexistence with Israel.”

One has to ask what kind of Palestinian leadership will be acceptable to the Palestinian people that will accept what the Independent calls “peaceful coexistence”? Where did this phrase come from and what does it really mean?

That the fundamental issue is not the legal and moral right of the Palestinian people to a state but instead it’s their failure to live in ‘peaceful coexistence’ with an imperialist country that murders them and steals their land one piece at a time and then forces them to cue all day just to travel from one tiny bit to another.

Of course, ‘peaceful coexistence’ is just a code word for capitulation, but the editor of the Independent can’t tell us that. As ever with so-called liberals, calling a spade a spade in the world of the white liberal is just not on.

If only the Palestinians would just roll over and play dead. If only Muslims would act just like us. If only the poor of the world would accept their lot. If only Ariel Sharon would really make a deal. If only the Iraqis would accept being a captive people and let us steal their oil. It’s pointless to resist…it’s pointless to resist…it’s pointless to resist…