24 September 2003

Bush the smaller’s speech at the UN on 23/09/03 finally spells out the conditions the imperialists want in exchange for recognising the UN’s role in the world, namely for the UN to alter its charter to recognise the right of the US to invade whoever the hell it feels like and under whatever pretext.

The right to so-called pre-emptive strikes against ‘rogue states’ was first formally articulated by former Clinton advisor on nuclear strategy, Philip Bobbitt in his book, “The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History”. Bush’s speech is almost a verbatim version of the argument advanced by Bobbitt, containing all the predictable phrases we’ve come to know and despise so well.

Bear in mind that Bobbitt’s writing pre-empted the invasion and occupation of Iraq and that all of the argument advanced in his writings, especially that of Iraq’s possession of WMDs (including nuclear weapons) has proved to be a complete fiction. Bobbitt’s rationale for pre-emption rings particularly hollow in the light of subsequent events and points to just how desperate the imperium is to justify the use of the ‘war on terror’ as a rationale for its onslaught on the planet’s hapless population of largely poor and defenseless citizens.

The Iraq Survey Group’s interim report on the search for Iraq’s WMDs has not found even a microgramme of anything resembling a WMD. Incredibly, the report tells us that instead Iraq tried to fool the world into thinking that it had WMDs! So now, the rationale for the invasion was that Iraq fooled the US into invading because it (the US) thought Iraq possessed WMDs! The mind boggles at the lengths the USUK will go in order to justify the unjustifiable.

Here’s an edited version of a piece I wrote back in May 2003 about Bobbitt’s appalling logic and I think it’s well worth revisiting in the light of Bush’s UN speech and that of the UK’s foreign minister Jack Straw’s complete endorsement of this attempt to rewrite the international order. Those who felt that the UK was somehow a ‘moderating’ influence on the Bush clique, must surely now reconsider.

Bobbitt’s book, ‘The Shield of Achiles’ consists of a (lengthy) theoretical advocacy of the right of the US to intervene ‘pre-emptively’ wherever it feels its hegemony is threatened. And although cloaked in high moral terms eg, “[against those states that] spurn parliamentary institutions and human rights protections”, it is in effect, a complete rewrite of the international order, but with a de jure rather than de facto basis.”…international law which outlawed war except for self-defence, and implicitly gave to every sovereign state the right to develop whatever weapons it wished. Pre-emption to prevent the mere acquisition of weapons would not only have been unwise, it would have been illegal.” – Times of London January 23, 2003

But not any more thanks to the likes of people like Bobbitt. This is because,”Two developments render this strategic and legal paradigm redundant today… [because a] shadowy global terrorist network has emerged against which threats of retaliation are pointless.”

Furthermore if:

“Iraq, armed with WMD which, if that happens, will deter the US from interfering in the Gulf and enable Saddam to press his luck again.”

So getting as good as you give worries the US power elite? But according to Bobbitt, we now live in an age where almost any fool can build a nuclear bomb and hence the old rules of deterrence or ‘containment’ as Bobbitt calls it, no longer apply.

Bobbitt goes on to tell us that:

“We must recognise that the demand for conclusive evidence of weapons acquisition is an inadequate requirement in the world we are entering.”

The world we are entering? I thought it was a world made by Bobbitt and co? This is an ingenious argument that only a lawyer could dream up. How can one deter what Bobbitt calls “the virtual state”? Using this argument, the US can do virtually whatever it likes. However, Bobbitt is not very happy with this rather laissez faire attitude to ‘law’ so he proposes that a:

“Profound change in international law responds to equally profound changes in the strategic environment. But it would be wrong to conclude, as some in Washington seem to, that our efforts to cope with a new international situation must rely on “might makes right” rather than a new legal order.”

Why Indeed? Why rule by might when a sleight of legal hand will do the job much better and furthermore, legitimize the might is right approach by dressing it up in legalese? And of course, a legal sleight of hand works much better if first, you bomb the hell of a country just to make sure they get the message. Nothing like a 2000 pounder to set a precedent for a legal nicety.

And just in case the argument advanced by Bobbitt above, leaves you feeling somewhat dazed and confused by his ‘imperial logic’, then he has at least one fallback argument, namely that:

“…what happens to Iraq’s WMD when the Iraqi regime finally changes [?] Then, if not before, whatever WMD Iraq accumulates will find the lucrative black market, selling to well-financed non-state actors that have money but lack the facilities to develop nuclear weapons.”

This then, is the theoretical underpinning for the USUK’s ‘new world order’, a world where the US can invade any country not merely on the ‘proof’ of the possession of WMDs, but on the suspicion that they have them or intend to obtain them. If Bush succeeds in forcing this policy on the world, it amounts to giving a complete carte blanche to the imperium to carry out its policy of annexing the planet and its resources.

Bobbitt’s views have been peddled by official US government websites including its embassy in Pakistan, where an article by Bobbitt, first published in The Times of London on January 23 2003 was reprinted and which contains an explicit justification for Bush’s speech at the UN. View this piece of pornography at http://usembassy.state.gov/islamabad/wwwh03012902.html.

However, now that Bush has spelt it out for the world to see, there can be no mistake about the imperium’s real intentions and given the icy reception the speech received, it may well be that this will be the final nail in the coffin of the ‘Project for the New American Century’ and for Blah’s craven complicity in the entire obscenity of the ‘war on terror’.