By Mathew Maavak
The international charade continues, adhering as closely as possible to a Copernican path. Now, that Iraq is seemingly vanquished, according to the same liberators who still can’t exercise their writ beyond Kabul, there is always the next phase couched in the same ultra-humanitarian lies.
The heat is now on Iran and, to a lesser extent, Syria. The accusations levelled by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld have become strikingly hackneyed. These revolve around the same Al Qaida, WMDs, overarching regional menace besides a litany of other grouses, also predictable, like human rights, freedom etc. Add in some impeccable "intelligence sources" and you have a ready-made justification to rape a nation.
First of all, no WMDs have been found in Iraq, hardly an Al Qaida terrorist and the nation, which could supposedly launch a bio-chemical missile attack within 45 minutes, found itself vanquished in three weeks.
The special 75th Exploitation Task Force, assigned to uncover WMDs in Iraq, have left no stones unturned, only to find not even telltale footprints in the sand. All they got were just two supposedly "mobile bio-weapons labs." Let’s hope the Pentagon's new, 2,000-strong Iraq Survey Team does better or that the much-maligned Hans Blix gets a return trip to Baghdad.
But there are lots of bones though, and that probably can be traced back to an era when "sanctions" had a different, tacit connotation. The madman and his equally lunatic sons have disappeared mysteriously, but who cares that the US Leviathan, and it’s British Bulldog, with their panoply of gizmos and intelligence assets still can’t find them. Or Bin Laden, who is probably watching this freak show unfold on Al Jazeera while enjoying a plate of qabile pilau in some Pashtun stronghold?
The next project is already planned, which, might garner the same degree of patriotic support, but this time probably only in the US. The world’s scepticism has reached its apogee, despite Tony’s Blair assertions that he has "secret proof" of WMDs in Iraq, which were coincidentally uttered while he was in St Petersburg, Russia.
There was a joke a while back that some Russian general was going to get rich soon.
If that fails, an Iraqi scientist’s "confession" might do. According to the Guardian (June 1), this drama "follows a week in which Government and intelligence sources appear(ed) to have changed their story on the likelihood of finding WMDs on an almost daily basis." While British leaders are forced - by public opinion - to do some sort of soul searching, the Americans do not seem that perturbed.
Paul Wolfowitz had casually stated that the pre-war spectre of WMDs was merely a "bureaucratic" resort, something that was useful to psyche up a nation for war. A statement like this would have caused a riot even in "less democratic" capitals, but not so in Washington DC.
The tergiversations of US officials, which, certainly doesn’t follow old Nicolaus’ cosmic laws, may yet carry them through, with the active connivance of well-paid stooges in the mainstream media. America has always been a country struggling with collective solipsism. It’s hard to blame the people. The roots can be traced to founding fathers like James Madison, who according to Noam Chomsky declared that the new republic’s ethos was "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," or the "great beast", as described by Alexander Hamilton.
This plutocratic blueprint is being etched even deeper into soul of the society. Freedoms purportedly enshrined in the US constitution are systematically being dismantled. The Patriot Act II and its concomitant tools of social emasculation are just the latest manifestation. A society hooked to the factoids of the elite, beamed to homes in spectacular audio-visuals, accompanied by cheap casuistry, will tend to believe the long anthology of glorified myths i.e. Vietnam was a great patriotic war.
It may be difficult to tell the citizens of a superpower, marked by their egregious geographical illiteracy about the frauds perpetrated abroad, or even within.
The criminal media is loath to mention that many developing nations have a more humane and accessible health care system. There are hardly any allusions either to niggling facts like the frequent hunger facing 30 million Americans or that the benevolent Uncle Sam has the highest rate of child poverty among industrialized nations. (Institute for Food and Development Policy –1998) Or, even the ultimate irony - the nation that seeks to impose "freedom" abroad has the highest concentration of inmates in jail.
The heart of capitalism has a large constituency of the lumpenproletariat. Karl Marx must be laughing in his grave.
This is mass hypnosis on a scale never seen before. For while Hitler had to brutalize his population en route to power, a similar feat is accomplished in the US through a Fabian Orwellianism of the most furtive kind. The population mustn’t be sufficiently informed, otherwise someone like Ralph Nader would hijack cherished American values. What was his share of votes during the last elections anyway?
In the meantime, as always, whoever sits on the White House can rest assured, barring those little ruffles of life that most human do not have the privilege to face. Pennsylvania Avenue is not paved with gold, but it certainly is littered with mind-numbing propaganda, hagiographic novels and Airforce One-type Hollywood flicks.
There is a tangible difference between the New World and the Old Europe. Tony Blair is sweating right now. It has nothing to do with a lingering dessert heat that may have melted him to deliver an unusual "common touch" speech before his troops. Those five-minute stirring words in Iraq recently were a rather conspicuous departure from his usual didactic assaults on Doubting Thomases. The Guardian described that the British troops were on "their best behaviour…no applause," quite unlike that raucous, jubilant scene on USS Lincoln when a fighter jock landed on May 1.
Photo shots of a young child thankfully singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and a grateful kiss by a schoolboy will certainly not cool the temperature at Westminster, where a growing number of MPs, for whatever reasons, are revving up their rage over a medley of deceptions that forced a nation into war. Perhaps, the British aren’t just getting the sub contracts they were hoping for and its payback time.
More likely, the Old Europe that Britain actually belongs to is better-informed, more cognizant over international affairs and individual rights, and demands greater public accountability. They have free or government subsidised healthcare and education, besides a more humane welfare safety net. The trade unions in Europe are stronger, and worker rights are not something to be taken very lightly.
There is already talk of a wealth tax in Germany while George Bush is doing just the reverse. A good sociological treatise may throw up the fundamentals of this phenomenon vis a vis the US.
For quickie insight, forget Foucault or Baudrillard, just watch Anne Robinson’s quiz show, The Weakest Link. One might routinely find British housewives, caravan operators, firemen and clerks scintillating with their general knowledge. In one of Robinson’s specially-made shows for the US audience, the transatlantic deficits in worldview were glaring, despite the similarity in social class, and a pretty military officer of rank. That’s the difference between the Old Europe and Uncle Sam, though Rumsfeld’s elucidations result in freedom fries, freedom toasts and…freedom letters?
Take this further, and a Quebecois becomes a Freedom Canadian.
For a man who thinks that all human beings have an IQ like his president, I wouldn’t put it past him to utter those words one day.
Many paeans have been sung about the special Anglo-American ties. The British government has long advertised its special leverage on successive White House administrations and this fantasy is eagerly played up by Whitehall Mandarins. Public fears must be allayed that the fountainhead of the Greatest Empire ever has not been reverse-colonised, yet. Whatever the illusion, Chomsky, describes modern Britain as "much of an independent actor as Ukraine was in the pre-Gorbachev years."
There are historical facts to support such cynicism. One defining moment was the embarrassing Suez Canal crisis in 1956, which destroyed the career of Prime Minister Anthony Eden. It seems a livid President Eisenhower despatched Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to remind Eden who was boss with a crisp "Whoa Boy." (It must have momentarily relieved Eden of his liver problem, which later killed him anyway. Apologists claim excess bile led the Prime Minister into that irrational enterprise. It doesn’t explain how he convinced the French and the Israelis to act as fellow mercenaries.)
Then of course, there is that well-known funnelling of transatlantic funds into IRA coffers from sympathetic Irish Americans, an issue that was brought up in UK dailies when there was much outrage expressed over Islamic charities that funded Al Qaida, post Sept 11.
Again, Blair came to the rescue, pledging wholehearted British support; backed with a revisionist account of how the US stood by their ally during the Battle of Britain (not true really, unless certain convoys carrying logistical supplies – for profit- sailed into the horizons of victor’s history. The US only entered the fray after Hitler declared war). The very same Britain that has the compulsive urge to enforce "peace" elsewhere needs Clinton and Dubya to sort out the messy Northern Ireland issue, on supposedly sovereign British territory.
So, why self-relegate once own proud nation into a secondary role? Someone needs to do the dirty work and the ones most beholden are the ones entrusted.
The coalition of the willing included not only Blair but also others like Jose Maria Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi, whose populations again, were against the war. Again, why do these leaders actually risk their incumbency by supporting an unpopular, illegitimate action?
As for Blair, he can always franchise his image rights to Pedigree Chum or whatever poodles love, Berlusconi might be going to jail, so what the heck, anyway? As for Maria Aznar, who knows? This is not the first time that the thin red line called vox populi vox dei had been deliberately crossed, disregarding a democratic electorate, for which there is only one rational explanation – the background role played by the rarefied eyries of high finance.
These are occupied by invisible creatures who, from their lofty vantage points, decide which course a nation should take. For these movers and shakers, opaque veneers are needed, cloaking them with legitimacy. Politicians can disregard their electorate but not their paymasters who can both re-engineer a comeback or open that closet full of skeletons.
And just who are these mysterious people? Oh, this clique can never be totally penetrated, and all attempts leave behind a trail of conspiracy theories ranging from ludicrous UFO fairy tales to a very revealing image of a pyramid on the greenback. No other image symbolises elitism and a pecking order for humanity than that multi-tiered structure which narrows at the top.
It well reflects what the Founding Fathers had in mind, for their society and beyond.
Political machinations can generally be sleuthed out, but financial ones are far more slippery. For example, China’s former Kuomintang Prime Minister T.V. Soong was alleged to have held a large stake in General Motors while his family kept on duping American citizens over their Christian credentials and their wanton usurpations of US aid. (Time magazine’s founder, Henry Luce played a magnanimous role in this).
The truth is now out, except perhaps where the GM connection is concerned. There is a branch of historians and sociologists who claim that the whole truth will never be known for sure. We just get a semblance or worse, an illusion of reality. The gaps are filled with conjectures (sometimes correct) or as Gore Vidal puts it "conspiracy stuff is now shorthand for unspeakable truth." He may be right.
After all, total power is more easily applied through total invisibility. For every snafu, politicians can take the flak. That’s what international fall guys are for. Wasn’t it Mayer Amschel Rothschild who purportedly said "Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws?" If it wasn’t for him, and his brood, Waterloo would have been won by Napoleon, there would be no freedom fries and this article would have been written in French. Ne c’est pas?
There might not have been a Suez Canal either, or, it would have flowed along another historical course. So, what if Blair was recently voted as the Worst Briton during a recent poll? Someone else can fill his shoes.
The "special relationship" between UK and the US is most likely due to a permanent interlocking of financial interests, with the same Overlords coordinating policy. It explains the UK government’s servility, tough it would be grossly unfair and incorrect to extend this state of mind to the British race.
Britain’s equation in this relationship changed a long time back. During the Yalta conference in 1945, Churchill was chagrined to note that President Roosevelt was paying more attention to Stalin. The latter two had a prior understanding that British Imperialism was no longer needed. It was, more or less, contained in a note delivered to Stalin through Joseph E. Davies, Roosevelt’s envoy to the USSR in May 1943.
The victory over the Germans was in, financial terms, rather pyrrhic. The sun was finally setting on the British Empire and it wasn’t Mahatma Gandhi who effectuated this, rather the prospect of bankruptcy. Any claim otherwise doesn’t hold much ground. With the right resources, it doesn’t take much to subdue a huge region as the Israeli existence amply testifies.
Rationing in Britain went on till the Queen’s coronation in 1953. Britain now had to play a new role, not a very painful unless one brings up questions like national pride and sovereignty. That is reserved for issues like the Euro.
Hugo Young of the Guardian recently wrote of "the strangest diplomatic axiom ever laid down by a prime minister - that British policy must be guided by the need to protect Washington from isolation." Why? Does the sole superpower need protection from a far lesser power? Or is Blair either carefully guided or hopelessly delusional?
The Old Europe’s qualms towards the Iraqi war could be explained by the existence of a more detached financial power base, if only slightly. They can be reconciled, as money is the universal lingua franca, not English. Notice the new rapprochement between Chirac and Bush? Iran is being warned in Russian as well.
In the meantime, we are treated to another merry-go-round fanfare about the Middle East peace process, or the Palestinian Solution or whatever it’s called. For the main actors involved, it’s a great opportunity to master the art of gambit and verbal mendacity. This time, the US seems "serious," after much statesmanlike "persuasion" from Blair, to which Ariel Sharon ripostes with the self-incriminating term "occupation" for the first time. ("Occupation" was hastily corrected to not "ruling" Palestinians restricted within high-walled ghettoes, meaning illegal settlements can remain).
Well, the US presidential elections are around the corner and after that Judea and Samaria or Eretz Israel can be loudly proclaimed again. It’s significant that Bush recently paid a visit to Auschwitz while in Poland. We don’t have to wait too long. Just look at the pre-negotiation constraints forced upon Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. There are many ways, after all, to rip up any road map to shreds besides bus bombings at Jaffa Street. Another famous visit to the Temple Mount alone, "for religious reasons", can negate prior, "sincere" pledges.
During Nazism’s zenith, one toady got Hitler into a paroxysm of laughter when he offered to present a decorative chest that would preserve all the treaties the latter had torn up. Perhaps Blair could offer something similar to Bush. A giant replica of Long John Silver’s chest would be nice as it could accommodate volumes of documented lies and certainly more than 15 dead men. Plus, a bottle of rum too! Yo ho ho!
Copyright @2003 Mathew Maavak
June 3, 2003
(Originally published in the Online Journal)
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