| Topic: |
Science > Prophecies-Of-Nostradamus |
| User: |
"=?utf-8?B?4pi7SE9PUk9PIOKXmQ==?=" |
| Date: |
01 May 2007 10:16:37 PM |
| Object: |
=?utf-8?q?Paul_Wolfowitz=E2=80=99s_vision_predated_and_set_the_stage_for_Dumbo=E2=80=99s_War_=2E=2E=2E?= |
Hi / Gooday peoplez !
Important - read all including last paragraph - We are now well &
truly on the path to World
War III.
HOOROO
UNCLE WALLY
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/173
Time for change's Journal
Putting George Bush=E2=80=99s =E2=80=9CWar on Terror=E2=80=9D in Perspective
Posted by Time for change in General
Discussion
Sun Apr 29th 2007, 05:16 PM
The United States under George W. Bush and ***** Cheney has opted for
imperialistic conquest and the rules of the jungle in place of the
rule of law. Consequently, we are a pariah nation, and much of the
rest of the world has recognized that and is re
George Bush=E2=80=99s =E2=80=9CWar on Terror=E2=80=9D has been the central =
political fact in
our nation through much of the 21st Century since September 11, 2001.
And it threatens to be a major if not the major political issue
through the 2008 elections. In any event, we know that Republicans are
going to try to make it the central political issue.
I thought that all eight Democratic candidates did a fine job in the
debates in South Carolina a few days ago. But I thought that two of
them =E2=80=93 Gravel and Kucinich =E2=80=93 especially stood out as outsta=
nding in
providing some much needed perspective to George Bush=E2=80=99s so-called =
=E2=80=9CWar
on Terror=E2=80=9D.
Kucinich made it quite clear that he rejected the so-called =E2=80=9CWar on
Terror=E2=80=9D as a pretext for war; that he would make it a major priority
of his as President to make the United States once again a law abiding
member of the international community of nations; that arms reduction
would be a major priority; and that diplomacy would once again become
a major aspect of U.S. policy. Here is an excerpt:
The fact of the matter is that the global war on terror has been a
pretext for aggressive war. As president of the United States, I
intend to take America in a different direction, rejecting war as an
instrument of policy, reconnecting with the nations of the world, so
that we can address the real issues that affect security all over the
globe and affect our security at home: getting rid of all nuclear
weapons, the United States participating in the chemical weapons
convention, the biological weapons convention, the small arms treaty,
the landmine treaty, joining the International Criminal Court, signing
the Kyoto climate change treaty.
The world is waiting for an American president who reaches out in a
hand of friendship; who understands this is a complex world, but
doesn't see the world in terms of enemies.
The minute that we have dichotomous thinking of us versus them, we
lose the opportunity to be able to connect with people=E2=80=A6.
Gravel said something similar in a different way:
We have no important enemies. What we need to do is to begin to deal
with the rest of the world as equals. And we don't do that. We spend
more as a nation on defense than all the rest of the world put
together. Who are we afraid of? Who are you afraid of, Brian? I'm not.
And Iraq has never been a threat to us. We invaded them. I mean, it is
unbelievable. The military industrial complex not only controls our
government, lock, stock and barrel, but they control our culture.
Ok, Gravel=E2=80=99s statement that =E2=80=9Cwe have no important enemies=
=E2=80=9D wasn=E2=80=99t
quite accurate. But more important in my opinion is that attitudes
like that, if properly modulated, can become self-fulfilling
prophecies =E2=80=93 just like George Bush=E2=80=99s belligerent attitudes =
towards his
numerous =E2=80=9Cenemies=E2=80=9D have become self-fulfilling prophecies.
And with regard to Iraq, Bush=E2=80=99s so-called =E2=80=9Cfront on our War=
on
Terror=E2=80=9D, Gravel made it quite clear that the war is a sham; it is u=
n-
winnable; the use of nuclear weapons against Iran should be =E2=80=9Coff the
table=E2=80=9D; and that another important reason why we should leave Iraq =
is
that the Iraqis don=E2=80=99t want us there =E2=80=93 a critically importan=
t point
that I don=E2=80=99t recall hearing a U.S. politician make up until then. H=
ere
are some excerpts:
Well, first off, understand that this war was lost the day that George
Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis. Understand that. Now with
respect to what's going on in the Congress, I'm really embarrassed. So
we passed -- and the media's in a frenzy right today with what has
been passed. What has been passed? George Bush communicated over a
year ago that he would not get out of Iraq until he left office. Do we
not believe him?...
And I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these
people frighten me -- they frighten me. When you have mainline
candidates that turn around and say that there's nothing off the table
with respect to Iran, that's code for using nukes, nuclear devices. I
got to tell you, I'm president of the United States, there will be no
preemptive wars with nuclear devices. To my mind, it's immoral, and
it's been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign
policy=E2=80=A6
(To Biden) You want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country. I got
to tell you, we should just plain get out -- just plain get out. It's
their country. They're asking us to leave. And we insist on staying
there. And why not get out? What harm is it going to do? Oh, you hear
the statement, "Well, my God, these soldiers will have died in vain."
The entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain. And they're dying in vain
right this very second. And you know what's worse than a soldier dying
in vain? It's more soldiers dying in vain. That's what's worse.
So, Kucinich and Gravel simply did an excellent job of providing some
perspective to Bush=E2=80=99s =E2=80=9CWar on Terror=E2=80=9D. But they did=
n=E2=80=99t have much time.
The best summary of the =E2=80=9CWar on Terror=E2=80=9D that I=E2=80=99ve s=
een was written by
James Carroll in =E2=80=9CHouse of War =E2=80=93 The Pentagon and the Disas=
trous Rise
of American Power=E2=80=9D. Here are some selected excerpts from the last
couple of chapters in his book, which he wrote in response to the 9/11
attacks:
Paul Wolfowitz=E2=80=99s vision predated and set the stage for Bush=E2=80=
=99s War on
Terror
In 1992 =E2=80=A6 Wolfowitz wrote a document called =E2=80=9CDefense Planni=
ng
Guidance=E2=80=9D, which amounted to the first articulation of a new post-C=
old
War military strategy. The Pentagon=E2=80=99s =E2=80=9Cfirst objective=E2=
=80=9D now was =E2=80=9Cto
prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.=E2=80=9D The United States would
become the world=E2=80=99s permanent and preeminent military overseer,
maintaining armed forces of such overwhelming superiority as to be
beyond challenge=E2=80=A6 It was a vision that assumed not only the
maintenance of America=E2=80=99s global array of bases but the expansion of
it. Not only the maintenance of America=E2=80=99s huge defense budget but t=
he
expansion of it. Not only the maintenance of the nuclear arsenal, but
the expansion of it. The defense industry would continue to boom.
Wofowitz foresaw the need for a new doctrine of =E2=80=9Cpreventive war=E2=
=80=9D,
interventions aimed at removing the capacity of other nations to
develop, much less use, weapons of mass destruction. Rather than allow
other nations to compete with us in our capacity to wreak havoc on the
world =E2=80=93 or even to deter us from exercising our will =E2=80=93 we w=
ould simply
act preemptively. Instead of depending on treaties and international
law to establish and protect order, the United States would impose
that order on its own.
To illustrate this vision, and to define its corollary, the permanent
need for a massive American military, the Wolfowitz vision of 1992
described in detail an imagined war against, yes, Iraq. And the
justification for such a war was blatantly identified: the protection
of U.S. access to =E2=80=9Cthe region=E2=80=99s oil=E2=80=9D=E2=80=A6
The miracle that made Bush=E2=80=99s War on Terror Possible
All that Cheney and company needed to begin to realize their vision of
world domination through overwhelming military superiority, with
special emphasis on unfettered access to oil, was an overt
justification for it. On {September 11, 2001}, like a gift from the
gods, that justification fell from the heavens=E2=80=A6
The abandonment of international law after 9/11
It was often said that everything had changed in 2001, but the
terrorist attacks laid bare what the United States was already
becoming. That Washington swatted aside the structures of
international law as a way to respond to Osama bin Laden was prepared
for by its habit, begun in the Reagan years, of dismissing
international courts, ignoring treaties, and refusing to meet
obligations to the United Nations and other transnational bodies=E2=80=A6
The International Criminal Court, just coming into existence as
America=E2=80=99s war on terrorism was mobilized, was an institutionalizing=
of
ad hoc entities that had brought to justice genocidal culprits=E2=80=A6 The
ICC, fulfilling the desire to replace revenge with adjudication, had
its origin in the America-sponsored Nuremberg trials after World War
II. Nothing embodied the genius of postwar American statesmanship more
completely than this new court, and it would have been the best place
to make world-historic cases against Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, and
anyone else who defied the norms of international order. George W.
Bush, in one of his first acts as president, =E2=80=9Cunsigned=E2=80=9D the=
ICC
Treaty=E2=80=A6
That the Pentagon regarded itself as a ready target of ICC prosecution
seemed paranoid until revelations that American soldiers routinely
abused prisoners in Iraq and that high Pentagon officials unilaterally
rejected norms for the treatment of prisoners of war that had been set
by the Geneva Convention. The jails of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were
emblems of a new Pentagon lawlessness, but those revelations barely
scratched the surface of a system of legally dubious incarcerations
that involved more than eleven thousand detainees held in mostly
secret locations around the world, places referred to in classified
documents as =E2=80=9Cblack sites=E2=80=9D=E2=80=A6
The incompetent handling of our war in Afghanistan
After 9/11=E2=80=A6 there were plausible reasons for targeted attacks again=
st
Al Qaeda training sites in Afghanistan, but they were superseded by
the need for a bigger response=E2=80=A6 Instead of going after bin Laden=E2=
=80=99s
cabal with an internationally coordinated law enforcement effort,
nothing would do but a large-scale act of war=E2=80=A6 American bombers beg=
an
raining destruction on the villages and towns of the most primitive
country on the globe. Meanwhile, the elusive Al Qaeda slipped away=E2=80=A6
The demonized bin Laden himself disappeared. George W. Bush, with a
sledgehammer the only tool in his bag, had brought it down on the
table, aiming at the mosquito. The mosquito got away, but the table
was destroyed=E2=80=A6
Our war in Iraq is nothing but a gigantic scam and tragedy
Each of the reasons offered for the subsequent war against Iraq turned
out, in succession, to be false. No weapons of mass destruction. No
link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. No authentic U.S. concern for
democracy=E2=80=A6 the ongoing American refusal to seriously reconsider its
action, even as the justifications for the war were exposed, one after
the other, as lies.
Ironically, U.S. military actions, including the invasion of Iraq,
were justified with the language of human rights=E2=80=A6 The true measure =
of
humane treatment, of course, is taken by what happens on the ground in
the countries at issue. In Afghanistan and Iraq, new levels of
sectarianism, ethnic conflict, warlordism, drug trafficking, and
radical Islamism were all evident in the broader context of destroyed
infrastructure, widespread malnourishment, and obliterated civil
society. Bush administration officials crowed that girls could at last
attend schools ad equals, without acknowledging that, with rare
exceptions=E2=80=A6 there were no schools for anyone to attend. The much
touted elections in both countries were shams carefully managed by
Washington=E2=80=A6 The two countries had been human rights nightmares befo=
re
Bush=E2=80=99s wars, but the wars themselves =E2=80=93 destroying cities an=
d villages
in order to save them =E2=80=93 hardly represented improvements in the lives
of ordinary people. Even under the best of outcomes =E2=80=93 if, say, civil
war could be avoided =E2=80=93 Afghanistan and Iraq were going to be decades
in recovering=E2=80=A6
In Iraq, despite America=E2=80=99s overwhelming military might, there will =
be
no winning, ever. Whether the U.S. occupation is terminated abruptly
or is maintained for years, violence and mayhem will define Iraq
indefinitely, while the rest of the Middle East copes with Iraqi-
spawned waves of chaos. Radical Muslim holy warriors, meanwhile, have
been multiplied by the American war, empowered by it, trained by it,
and dispatched around the globe. When bombs went off in London in July
2005, subways and buses represented only another front in the
unnecessary war George W. Bush began=E2=80=A6 Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and t=
he
rest have on their hands the blood of those Londoners, the blood of
each young American killed, and the blood of many thousands of Iraqis
=E2=80=93 all those who have died and will die in that misbegotten war=E2=
=80=A6
The WOT, presumably undertaken to make us more secure, has made us
much less secure
Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons=E2=80=A6 was the primary reason gi=
ven
for the Bush invasion of Iraq=E2=80=A6 Yet the concerns about weapons of ma=
ss
destruction that justified the attack on Iraq, and may yet do so on
Iran, are absurdly misplaced. When it comes to nuclear danger,
Washington is by far the graver problem, beginning with its post-Cold
War refusal to significantly downsize its own nuclear arsenal=E2=80=A6 to t=
he
Bush administration=E2=80=99s 2003 repudiation of the Antiballistic Missile
Treaty and the 2004 deployment of missile defense, which motivated
Russia and China to add =E2=80=9Chair=E2=80=9D to the hair trigger; to the =
Bush
administration=E2=80=99s stated =E2=80=93 and unprecedented =E2=80=93 readi=
ness to use nuclear
weapons against non-nuclear states.
Under Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon embarked in 2002 on the stunning
project of developing a new generation of nuclear weapons=E2=80=A6 The Bush
administration=E2=80=99s attack dog, in charge of reviling the U.S. traditi=
on
of arms control as =E2=80=9Cdecades of stillborn plans, wishful thinking, a=
nd
irresponsible passivity, was the right wing ideologue John Bolton,
whom Bush appointed (without Senate approval) ambassador to the United
Nations in mid-2005=E2=80=A6
The effect of all this=E2=80=A6 is to legitimize nuclear-based politics,
giving other nations, friend and foe alike, compelling reasons to
acquire a nuclear capacity, if only for deterrence, and prompting them
to behave in similar ways. That pattern was fully evident in Iran and
North Korea, beginning almost immediately after the launching of the
Global War on Terror, and the pattern promises to show itself in
=E2=80=9Cnuclear-capable states=E2=80=9D like Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Aus=
tralia,
South Africa, and others that long ago renounced nuclear ambitions.
Meanwhile, Russia, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan are all
furiously adding to their nuclear arsenal. The Pentagon has become the
engine of proliferation.
We come to what amounts to an ultimate betrayal by the national
security establishment of its most solemn obligation, which is to
provide for national security. The probing of questions about
government failures before September 11, 2001, is meaningless when
measured against the new jeopardy into which America was plunged by
the war that Bush embarked upon=E2=80=A6 In late 2003, Donald Rumsfeld said,
in an internal Pentagon memo, =E2=80=9CWe lack the metrics to know if we are
winning or losing the Global War on Terror.=E2=80=9D This odd assessment fr=
om
a secretary of defense=E2=80=A6 actually reflects the Pentagon=E2=80=99s in=
terest in
an open-ended war. Permanent war means permanent martial dominance=E2=80=A6
The story of the Islamist Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan is the great
cautionary tale=E2=80=A6 Abdul Qadeer Kahn went from being hailed as the
father of Pakistan=E2=80=99s nuclear bomb to being revealed, in 2003, as a
trader in nuclear secrets, with such clients as North Korea, Iran,
Libya, and perhaps Saudi Arabia=E2=80=A6 Yet=E2=80=A6 the Bush administrati=
on could do
little because it had held itself hostage to Pervez Musharraf, the
military dictator of Pakistan and Bush=E2=80=99s putative all. Musharraf was
disinclined to discipline Khan because, as the creator of the Islamist
bomb, the scientist was a Pakistani national hero=E2=80=A6
How many Khans are out there, and how do Bush=E2=80=99s policies enable them
to operate? This question acquired special urgency in 2005 when it
became clear that the Bush administration, still at the mercy of
Musharraf, was tacitly allowing the dramatic expansion of Pakistan=E2=80=99s
nuclear arsenal =E2=80=93 as if the most dangerous post-9/11 moment of all =
had
not been the 2002 nuclear standoff between Pakistan and India=E2=80=A6 The
nuclear nightmare that roiled the dreams of a generation, not that
long ago, is back. That it was not necessarily so makes this
development a crime and an outrage=E2=80=A6
The China factor
The compelling but rarely admitted purpose of shoring up American
control of supplies of oil and natural gas was reflected in the job
histories of Bush=E2=80=99s policy team (for example, Vice President Cheney=
=E2=80=99s
Halliburton years)=E2=80=A6 As America=E2=80=99s Middle East wars of the fi=
rst decade
of the twenty-first century unfolded, the stated focus was on Arabs,
Muslims, and the threat of terrorism, yet the overriding strategic
issue remained the oil supply. And that meant Washington=E2=80=99s nervous
gaze had to shift from the Persian Gulf to China, the world=E2=80=99s most
rapidly expanding economy and America=E2=80=99s new rival. The inextricable
link between the distant Asian nation and the Middle East is revealed
in the fact that China=E2=80=99s largest source of foreign oil is Iran, and
China=E2=80=99s dependence on Persian Gulf oil is expanding as fast as its
economy, making it a direct oil competitor of the United States. In
2004, China and the United States together used one third of all the
oil produced on earth, and their needs were growing exponentially.
China, meanwhile, was one nation with the capacity to demolish the
neoconservative dream of a unipolar world under American dominance,
and as such it became the object of sharp, sudden suspicion=E2=80=A6 Bush
administration alarms, twinned with policies to match, consistently
pushed this new Asian rival away from economic and political
competition and toward military competition, including an arms race=E2=80=
=A6
belligerent posturing designed to intimidate adversaries only prompts
belligerent posturing in return; posturing fuels escalation=E2=80=A6risking
another cold war, but with a new wrinkle. In addition to a hostile,
nuclear-armed China, these policies could lead to the reemergence of
Japan as a military power, now gone nuclear.
Concluding thoughts
We are now on a road to World War III. The United States under George
W=2E Bush and ***** Cheney has opted for imperialistic conquest and the
rules of the jungle in place of the rule of law. Consequently, we are
a pariah nation, and much of the rest of the world has recognized that
and is responding accordingly. That is the context in which George
Bush conducts his so-called =E2=80=9CWar on Terror=E2=80=9D. I love candida=
tes like
Gravel and Kucinich for having the courage to place that =E2=80=9CWar on
Terror=E2=80=9D in a perspective which Americans need to understand
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
