Religions > Atheism > Bush Responds to his Personal Political Crisis by Tryinjg to Scare American Public with More Lies and War Threats
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michelle Malkin" |
| Date: |
09 Oct 2005 05:54:26 AM |
| Object: |
Bush Responds to his Personal Political Crisis by Tryinjg to Scare American Public with More Lies and War Threats |
Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 07:59:27 -0700
From: Zepp <zepp@finestplanet.com>
Subject: #Terrorism speech in Washington Bush responds to political crisis
with lies and new war threats
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/bush-o08.shtml
Bush responds to political crisis with lies and new war threats
By Bill Van Auken
8 October 2005
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President George W. Bush's speech Thursday on "the war on terror"
constitutes a sobering measure of both his government's desperate
political crisis and the threat that it will try to extricate itself
from this crisis through escalating militarism.
The speech was a compendium of lies delivered with the aim of
terrorizing the American people and rallying his extreme right-wing
base. In remarks that at times bordered on lunacy, he invoked the
unlikely bogeyman of an Al Qaeda terrorist network poised to "establish
a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."
Bush delivered his remarks to the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED), the agency created by the Reagan administration in the 1980s to
conduct political propaganda and subversion operations overseas
previously carried out covertly by the CIA.
It was to this same audience that the US president proclaimed nearly two
years ago a "forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East." Then he
was predicting that the successful US imposition of "democracy" in Iraq
would lead to a "global democratic revolution" that would topple regimes
throughout the region.
In Thursday's address, Bush advanced the reverse of this domino theory,
warning that unless the US military achieves unconditional victory, the
result will be "Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq," and the
spread of radical Islamist regimes internationally.
This latest assertion has no more credibility than the one advanced in
2003. It is indicative, however, of the growing desperation within US
ruling circles over the debacle in Iraq and of the administration's
decision to rely on fear as its main means of coercing the American
people into submitting to its policies.
As if on cue Thursday, the authorities in New York City issued a terror
alert for the city's subways, only hours after Bush's speech and just in
time for the evening television news and scare headlines in the next
day's papers. Almost as soon as the alert was announced, however,
intelligence officials acknowledged that the threat was of "doubtful
credibility." Friday saw Pennsylvania Station shut down because of the
discovery of a "suspicious" soda bottle.
The aim of such alerts, like Bush's speech itself, is to instill fear,
thereby keeping the public off balance and suppressing the growth of
political opposition and social unrest.
The Bush administration has returned to the mantra of terrorism that it
utilized in paving the way to the invasion of Iraq, when it claimed that
Baghdad was developing weapons of mass destruction and preparing to hand
them over to Al Qaeda terrorists.
It was lying then, and it is lying now, but under changed political
conditions. The /New York Times/ quoted an unnamed White House official
as saying that Bush had given his speech "to remind Americans after 'a
lot of distractions' in recent months, that the country was still under
threat and had no choice but to remain in Iraq..."
What are these "distractions"? Opposition to the Bush government has
never been greater, with polls showing barely 37 percent of the
population supporting the administration and majorities believing that
the war in Iraq was a mistake and that US troops should be withdrawn.
Moreover, the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe has exposed before millions
the profound social crisis and class polarization that exist in the
United States and the breakdown of governmental and social institutions
under the impact of policies designed solely to advance the accumulation
of wealth by the financial elite.
After all of the hysteria over terrorism and "homeland security" in the
wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the response to this natural
disaster demonstrated that the US government is even less prepared to
deal with a catastrophe than it was four years ago. It did not take its
own terror warnings seriously, except as a means of politically
terrorizing the American people.
Meanwhile, there are signs of growing disaffection and outright
opposition within the military itself.
Seven more American soldiers were killed in Iraq on the day that Bush
delivered his speech, bringing the US military death toll to over 1,950.
There are over 100 armed attacks daily, and the country remains in a
state of economic and social paralysis. Many of those knowledgeable
about Iraq warn that it is either on the brink of an ethno-religious
civil war, or one has already begun. The upcoming referendum on a draft
constitution-touted by Washington as another step toward democracy-is
emerging as yet more fuel for this fire.
Bush disputed the obvious fact that the US occupation of Iraq has fed
support for armed resistance and acts of terrorism both there and
throughout the region. US commanders are not so sanguine, however, and
have publicly suggested the need to reduce a US military presence that
is seen by Iraqis as an oppressive occupation.
Bush's invocation of a supposedly ubiquitous terrorist threat is aimed
at quashing such internal dissension and intimidating popular
opposition. The tone of the speech echoed the kind of "red scare"
hysteria of McCarthyism, though his arguments made even less sense than
those of the fanatical anti-communists 50 years ago.
The speech equated the "global war on terror" with the Cold War against
the Soviet Union and World War II, likening Osama bin Laden to Joseph
Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Such assertions are absurd on their face.
The Soviet Union was a superpower armed with nuclear weapons and
covering one-sixth of the earth's surface.
Al Qaeda consists of at most a couple of thousand fanatics. Osama bin
Laden controls no state and his movement has no credible chance of
coming to power anywhere in the world-including Iraq. By toppling that
country's government and destabilizing its society, Washington has
provided Al Qaeda with a new, previously inaccessible field of
operations as well as a source of recruits drawn from among the masses
of Arabs outraged by the US invasion and occupation.
In prosecuting the "war on terror" and the "struggle for freedom" Bush
declares that the enemy "extremists want to end American and Western
influence in the broader Middle East.... Their tactic to meet this goal
has been consistent for a quarter century: They hit us and expect us to
run."
Why stop at a quarter century? Wasn't the struggle to "end Western
influence in the broader Middle East" what the anti-colonial movement
that emerged in the region in the aftermath of World War II was all
about? Were not those the goals and tactics of the nationalist movements
that drove the French out of Algeria and ejected the British from Egypt?
The US war in Iraq has nothing to do with democracy or terrorism; it is
an attempt to recolonize the region in order to seize control of its oil
resources and establish the strategic hegemony of US imperialism.
In making his case for the terror war, Bush strung together a series of
disparate movements and presented them as all part of a global "Islamic
radical" movement that the US military is supposedly confronting in Iraq.
He claimed that the US is threatened by "paramilitary insurgencies and
separatist movements in places like Somalia, and the Philippines, and
Pakistan, and Chechnya, and Kashmir, and Algeria."
Lumped together are clan warfare in Somalia, a small local gang in the
Philippines, the more than half-century dispute over Kashmir and an
Islamist political movement in Algeria that has been brutally repressed,
at the cost of 150,000 lives. None of these movements-with widely
different social bases and political objectives-have been linked to any
acts of international terrorism.
To the extent Islamist fundamentalism has grown, it is largely with the
support of the US government, which provided billions of dollars in arms
and aid to Osama bin Laden and his Mujahedin allies to overthrow the
Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Washington likewise backed Islamist elements in Indonesia, where they
led anticommunist pogroms that claimed one million lives in 1965, as
well as in Chechnya and Bosnia, where they were seen as counterbalances
to Russian and Serbian influence. Wherever such movements could be used
as instruments in the pursuit of US strategic aims, they have gotten
either overt or covert US support.
Bush's speech was characterized by his usual messianic tone, referring
to the "war on terror" as a "calling" and declaring, "We will confront
this mortal danger to all humanity." This type of language is directed
to the administration's base among the evangelical Christian right and
is part and parcel of an attempt to sell the war in Iraq as some kind of
new crusade against Islam.
The great bulk of humanity, however, sees US imperialism itself as the
greatest danger. After the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis, the words that
Bush used to describe those the US is supposedly fighting would widely
be accepted as applying to the American president himself: "Throughout
history, tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that murder is
justified to serve their grand vision. And they end up alienating decent
people across the globe."
Among the more ominous and seemingly irrational sections of Bush's
speech was an open threat against Syria and Iran, which he described as
terrorism's "allies of convenience."
"State sponsors like Syria and Iran have a long history of collaboration
with terrorists and they deserve no patience from the victims of
terror," declared Bush. "The United States makes no distinction between
those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them,
because they're equally guilty of murder."
This is an open justification for launching military attacks on both
countries. Indeed, it is the same phony pretext used in the invasion of
Iraq two-and-a-half years ago.
The regime in Damascus is secular and has ruthlessly repressed Syria's
Islamic movement. It provided substantial intelligence assistance to
Washington in the wake of September 11, and US intelligence agencies
have sent suspects to be tortured in Syria under Washington's so-called
extraordinary rendition program.
As for Iran, the government there has established close political ties
with the Shia majority which dominates the Iraqi regime that the US is
supporting. Teheran has backed the elections in Iraq as well as the
draft constitution and is virulently opposed to the Al Qaeda movement,
which has conducted sectarian terrorist attacks on the Iraqi Shia
population.
Why the saber-rattling now against these two regimes? First of all, it
makes clear that the US war in Iraq has nothing to do with combating
terrorism. It is an attempt to impose US neo-colonial control. Leading
elements within the administration and the ruling establishment have
concluded from the deepening debacle in Iraq that this will prove
impossible without widening the war.
Intensified militarism is, in the final analysis, the product of the
deep crisis of American society itself, characterized by vast social
inequality and an increasingly corrupt and parasitic corporate ruling
stratum.
Bush's speech is a warning that this ruling elite is preparing even
greater crimes and bloodshed. His diatribe provoked little critical
analysis either from the Democratic Party or the mass media, neither of
which provide any political expression to the growing popular opposition
to the war and the administration's domestic policies.
--
If you're poor and steal during a national crisis, you're a looter.
If you're rich and steal during a national crisis, you're a Republican.
Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!
Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com
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--
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
Michelle Malkin (Mickey) aa list#1
BAAWA Knight & Bible Thumper Thumper
^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Bush Responds to his Personal Political Crisis by Tryinjg to Scare American Public with More Lies and War Threats |
09 Oct 2005 05:58:54 AM |
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Michelle Malkin wrote:
Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 07:59:27 -0700
From: Zepp <zepp@finestplanet.com>
Subject: #Terrorism speech in Washington Bush responds to political crisis
with lies and new war threats
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/bush-o08.shtml
Bush responds to political crisis with lies and new war threats
The damn commies are already copying my words from Friday.
Bob Dog
Atheist #153 = 1^3 + 5^3 + 3^3
EAC's chief cook and brainwasher
-----
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work
within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
- Claire Wolfe
"I disagree with the second part."
- Detective Somerset of "Se7en", paraphrased
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