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Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 3, Number 3 February 16 -22, 2003 Quezon City, Philippines |
Inside
Bush's Brain By
WAYNE SAUNDERS Back
to Alternative Reader Index
The
debate over the impending US-led assault on Iraq has often focused on the likely
motivations to oust Saddam Hussein and his regime. There
is the hawkish view. Namely, the motives influencing the United States to attack
Iraq stem from a rational analysis of a set of obvious "truisms": 1)
Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and has been playing games with UN
inspectors for 12 years. 2)
He is linked to terrorists. 3)
He has a history of aggression and thus "threatens peace." 4)
For added effect we are also reminded that he's a really bad guy too, as if evil
leaders automatically threaten the United States. For
these reasons, we are told, he and his regime represent a clear and present
threat to the safety and security of the United States, its "allies,"
the "peace of the world," etc. and that war is the only solution. But
such a conclusion, that this starved and broken nation, is an immanent threat,
is not based upon what the world community thinks. It's not even based upon what
US and British intelligence thinks, or what many of their military planners
think. Nor is it based upon what the actual authors of the so-called Iraq
dossier think, (the British government plagiarized and misrepresented their
work, and in any case the data dates back to 1991). And it's probably not what
chief UN inspector Hans Blix thinks either, not as I write this (though his job
is to describe not to prescribe). Yet
there you have it, in a nutshell, the standard hawkish argument as to what
motivates the US and Britain: Iraq is an immanent threat because the US and
British governments say so, end of story. And if only everyone would hurry up
and get onside, then we could all get on with the business of turning Baghdad,
Basra, Mosul and Tikrit to rubble. Where
to begin? Well, for starters Saddam's only real hope of a "weapon of mass
destruction," his nuclear program, was by any reasonable analysis,
dismantled years ago. Whatever chemical or biological cocktails he may have
hidden beneath the desert sands, in some Syrian village, up his arseā¤"wherever,
these are tactical tools for the battlefield and rather unreliable ones at that.
And on that score, his army is weak, and by all accounts his missiles are short
range and few in number. He has not threatened his neighbours in over a dozen
years. Alleged
links between al Queda and Iraq are dubious at best, and at any rate, would
signal a desperate act of convenience and a stupid one at that. The enemy of my
enemy is my friend only works if you are capable of making friends. Saddam has
no friends. Why would he give a deadly concoction to some loose cannon Islamists
who want him dead, while giving his main enemy, the Americans, the perfect
excuse to blast him to hell? He may prefer to go out with a blast, but by all
accounts he's rather anti-social lately. So
regardless of what scenario emerges at the UN in the next few days or weeks, one
salient fact remains as clear as the driven snow: Iraq poses no clear and
present danger to the safety and security of the United States, or to their
tag-along British puppy. So
what can possibly be the motives? Anti-war
critics offer various conjectures. There is the longstanding Anglo-American
condominium over the supply of mid-east oil, with Iraq straddling atop the
second largest reserves in the world. Having a compliant client in this
"vital region" (to quote Bush) is therefore mandatory. Then there's
the obvious windfall in profits for the arms sector and the naked connections
between both of these industries and various members of the Bush cabinet. There
is the neo-conservative doctrine of pre-emptive warfare, predating Sept. 11 in
which Iraq is only the first target in an ongoing imperial foray. There
is the suggestion that Israel is urging the US to attack in order to solidify
their hegemonic position in the Middle East. Still others suggest that it's just
Bush Junior trying to atone for the sin of Bush the Elder who decided against
capturing or killing the guy the first time round. These
and many other points certainly have merit. Yet none alone, or even in
combination fully account for the Bush administration's monomaniacal fixation
with Iraq. To
look for deeper motives, we must peer into the collective mindset of the War
Party and look for clues. The first thing one notices is that fear mongering has
become the Bush administration's modus operendi. And if fear is the flip side of
anger, then it follows that fear mongering is the flip side of warmongering. But
fear mongering need not always be a case of conscious deception, although such
trickery is always at play among cynical practitioners, (and no doubt they exist
throughout the Bush administration). But it is also true that the mongers
themselves often believe their own fears have validity, no matter how
irrational. Consider
Bush himself. Equipped with only a limited understanding of the world's
complexity, he apparently lives in a dualistic mental world of black and white,
and good and evil, as befits the fundamentalist creed. Such child-like
propensities suggest that he likely believes his own worst fears are warranted,
no matter how absurd they appear from outside these limited mental parameters. A
reasonable analysis from his own CIA labeled Iraq a 7th level threat, Saddam a
boxed-in third-rate thug; but no matter says the boss. Because when you
formulate actions (I dare not say "policy") based upon your worst
delusional nightmares, all rationality goes out the window. So
there's a certain pathology at work here. Of course it makes matters worse if
you're a pathological liar as well. Then you've come to believe your own lies
too, a list too long to get into here but suffice to say, that in more honest
times, the Mother of all Fibbers would have been hung from the nearest telephone
wire, pants ablaze. But apparently Americans have come to expect those in high
office to not only lie, but to steal, cheat and murder as well. It's become
rather ho-hum. So
here we have a set of delusional pathologies at play, lying and fear-mongering,
and quite probably, succumbing to many of these lies and fears as well. It's a
deadly matrix. Especially for the children of Baghdad whose souls and bodies
have the misfortunes of being in the targeting area of the 800 or so cruise
missiles that the Commander in Chief plans to drop on them in the first 48 hours
of his great crusade. In
the highly acclaimed film "Bowling for Columbine", documentary
filmmaker Michael Moore seeks out the reasons for America's propensity for gun
violence. After discarding several standard myths, Moore discovers that it's
really all about fear. Specifically White America has built its edifice of power
on a foundation of fear. Fear of everything from Native Americans, to Black
people, to killer African bees, to mysterious new viruses, to badly functioning
escalators. 9-11 gave fear-mongers their coup de tat. Recall
that Michael Moore was Ralph Nader's campaign manager and in order to get out
the Nader vote, he urged against strategically voting for the Democrats. His
assertion was that when you make a decision based on fear, it never works out. The
principle stands. Something to keep in mind as Bush heads to war. Post
Script: a recent CBC news sound
byte caught the Smirking Chimp making yet another of his signature faux pas.
While referring to Saddam and his henchmen, Dubya almost said "the Iranian
people" but managed to fumble his way into "the Iraqi people."
Now don't you feel safe and secure? Wayne
Saunders is a freelance writer based in Canada. February 11, 2003 Bulatlat.com We want to know what you think of this article.
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