The
Role of Lebanon
in the Bush Administration's Crusade for Empire
By
Chris Floyd
Global Outlook, No. 5 2003
www.globalresearch.ca
In September 2000, the Project for the New American
Century, proudly published their blueprint for the direct imposition
of US forward bases throughout Central Asia and the Middle East. The
reasons for this program were stated quite openly: to ensure US political
and economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential rival
or any viable alternative to America's vision of a free market economy.
This insightful article by Chris Floyd was written barely
two weeks after the military occupation of Iraq in April 2003.
Chris Floyd was among the first writers to examine with
foresight the next phase of the US led war.
Syria is identified as a target of the Bush administration.
Chris Floyd examines in this article, the role of the
United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL), which had demanded in
2000 for the US to intervene militarily in Lebanon.
The PNAC stated quite clearly in its military blueprint
entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources
for a New Century" that its strategic agenda extended to the entire
Middle East region:
"The
United States has
for decades sought to play a more prominent role in Gulf regional
security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate
justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the
Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein ..."
Recent developments in Lebanon suggest that this US
military intervention is a distinct possibility. The underlying
consequences are farreaching since they would also imply a more direct
role of Israel in military operations.
The invasion of Iraq (or as future historians will
doubtless call it, "The Dawn of the Shiite Empire") was planned openly
several years ago by a hard-right agitprop1 cell led by Dick
Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Now it turns out that the recent big-monkey
chest-beating aimed at Syria -- threats of sanctions, surgical strikes,
and regime change -- was also carefully planned, by many of the same
people, long before the Bush Regime seized power.
In September 2000, the Project for the New American Century
(PNAC), proudly published their blueprint for the direct imposition of US
forward bases throughout Central Asia and the Middle East. They even
foresaw the need for what they called a "Pearl Harbor-type event" to
galvanize the American public into supporting their ambitious program.
Their reasons for this program were also stated quite openly-- to ensure
US political and economic domination of the world, while strangling any
potential rival-- or any viable alternative to the rapacious crony
capitalism favored by the PNAC extremists. This dominance would be
enforced by the ever-present threat -- and frequent application -- of
violence. (A tactic known elsewhere as “terrorism”.)
The PNAC was also very honest about the role of Iraq in
this crusade for empire, stating plainly that the need for a US military
presence in the area superseded the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.
There was no sanctimonious posturing about "liberation", weapons of mass
destruction or terrorist connections. To dominate the oil wealth centered
in that region -- and hence the economic/political development of the
world in the coming decades -- they needed a military presence in Iraq;
it's as simple as that.
And now they've got it. Again, it's all quite open -- for
anyone who cares to look. According to the New York Times, the
Pentagon has already announced that it "expects" (i.e., 'demands") to have
"long-term access" to at least four major military bases in Iraq. Rumsfeld
later issued a weasel-worded non-denial denial. Although the hundreds of
thousands of armed and angry Shiite Muslims currently clamoring for an
Islamic state in Bush's new satrapy2 may yet cause a spot of
bother for the sahibs, for now the generals and arms dealers installed as
Iraq's new rulers believe they will still be sitting pretty in Fort
Pretzel and Carlyle Air Base throughout the "new American century." This
was, after all, the purpose of the recent slaughter -- as Cheney and
Rumsfeld told us plainly years ago.
A few months before PNAC's prophetic 2000 report, an allied
group with an overlapping membership published a similar document
outlining steps to be taken against Syria --first "tightening the screws"
with denunciations and economic sanctions, then escalating to military
action, as Jim Lobe of Inter-Press Agency reports. The architects of this
document included Elliot Abrams, the convicted perjurer now running Bush's
Middle East policy; Douglas Feith, one of Rumsfeld.s top aides; Paula
Dobriansky, undersecretary to Colin Powell, and influential Pentagon
advisors such as David Wurmser, Michael Leeden and everyone's sweetheart,
Richard "Influence-Peddler" Perle.
The report sprang largely from the loins of the United
States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL), a curious grouping of
right-wing American Christians, right-wing American Jews, and a sprinkling
of Lebanese exiles.
The USCFL also provides highly insightful and very nearly
literate analyses of vital regional issues, such as its seminal paper,
"Even Arabs Don't Like Arabs." But the mind-set of the group -- whose
members now stalk the corridors of power in Imperial Washington -- is
perhaps best displayed in its thoughtful 2001 treatise, "A Petition
Demanding War Against Governments that Sponsor Terrorism" (Except, of
course, for governments who enforce their will by the ever-present threat
and use of violence -- i.e. terrorism -- but are run by nice white men
educated at Yale and Oxford.)
Here, the proto-Bushist group demands that six "rogue
nations" -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya and Sudan -- "turn over
their governments to the United States" on pain of massive military
response. The United States will then "occupy these territories until
proper governments" -- ones that allow "long-term access" to major
military bases, no doubt -- "can be established." And just how massive
should that threatened US military response be? The USCFL is, as always,
admirably -- and brutally --- forthright:
"America must set a clear example-identical to that of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you tread on me, I will wipe you off the face
of the earth."
Is this what the Bushists are really talking about in their
fear-mongering diatribes about seeing "terrorism's smoking gun in a
mushroom cloud"?
16 February 2005
Notes
1. agitprop - the dissemination of political propaganda,
especially in plays, films, books, etc. From the Russian, as in >Agitation
+ Propaganda=.
2. satrapy - a province ruled over by a colonial governor
as in the ancient Persian empire.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times.
Editor's note : The title of the article has been modified.
© Copyright belongs to the author 2005.
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