Behind
The Facade Of Incompetence
By Charles Sullivan
02 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
It
is clear that the US media moguls would have us believe that the catastrophic
invasion and occupation of Iraq was a sincere effort to promote freedom
and democracy in the Middle East, gone awry. But we must remember that
everything associated with capitalism is about marketing: making the
people believe that things and events are the opposite of what they
really are, and creating artificial wants that neither benefit the individual
nor society, while simultaneously embellishing corporate profits.
This understanding would
have been equally evident in the mainstream media’s buildup to
the war had we a less propagandized, better read, and more informed
citizenry. Even the politically naïve should have known that Saddam
Hussein’s threat to the US, so vividly hyped in the media, was
pure marketing propaganda.
But the majority of the people
bought it, and now we have no choice but to live with our purchase.
Short of a major social upheaval, we are going to be in Iraq for a very
long time, and the death toll will continue to rise, especially for
the Iraqis—the unwilling recipients of our corporate benevolence
delivered through carpet bombs, terror, and torture. For these are the
undeniable legacy of our foreign policies, and the illegal, amoral,
acquisition of property by blunt force trauma.
If we are to survive as a
republic, we must appreciate that capitalism and its cousin, global
corporatism—not Saddam Hussein, not Communism or Socialism, nor
Islamic terrorists, are the greatest threats to democracy. Zionism and
Christian fundamentalism, which attempt to provide the flimsy moral
basis for our Middle East policy, also pose significant obstacles to
world peace by denying justice to others and promoting ethnic cleansing.
It is beguiling that we have
yet to learn this fundamental lesson, that we know so little about our
own history, and the role that mass
ignorance plays in determining the future.
The narcotic of state sponsored
propaganda has a powerful and hypnotic effect on our collective senses,
and it is rending asunder the fabric of what is supposed to be a free
and civil society. We believe what we are told and accept what we are
given, without demanding truth, justice or accountability.
It is imperative for the
purveyors of war to maintain a cloak of secrecy and a façade
of public support where, if the truth were known, none would exist.
It is necessary to keep the truth concealed in order to throw the public
off the scent of the corruption that is the guiding principle of corporate
governance and plutocracy, fomented by morally bankrupt men and women;
a system that causes irreparable harm and suffering to its innocent
victims and then profits from the misery and suffering it inflicts.
These days it is popular
to describe the events occurring in Iraq as the result of incompetence,
mismanagement, miscalculation, and benevolent bungling; to characterize
them as a well intentioned mistake on the road to freedom and democracy,
rather than the moral abomination they are. What we have in Iraq is
not the result of any of these phenomena. It is the intended consequence
of cold calculation to bomb Iraq into submission, to thoroughly disorient
its people, and to apply economic shock therapy before they can recognize
what is being done to them.
The intent is to invade sovereign
nations either militarily,
economically, or both; and to force unbridled capitalism on them. This
means, of course, that we must first overthrow the existing
governments—many of them democracies, and replace them with ruthless
dictatorships willing to betray their own people, and amenable to opening
up their countries to corporate exploitation and privatization.
So called free market capitalism
requires corrupt leadership on the receiving end that is willing to
accept bribes while becoming a puppet to the US. This is how some of
the must brutal regimes in the world came into power. Corporate America
is always beating the drums of war in search of profits and ever increasing
shares of the world’s markets. Enough is never enough—they
want it all.
Aside from overthrowing popularly
elected governments, the unspoken objective of mature capitalism, guided
by the doctrine of economic shock therapy, is to turn once sovereign
nations into totally deregulated corporate states, answerable to no
one.
This objective will be accomplished
by privatizing the nationalized
infrastructure, inviting in foreign investors, removing tariffs that
protect local business and cooperatives from predatory multinational
corporations, and downsizing the workforce; by eliminating social spending,
and removing all forms of corporate controls. In short, by conducting
a fire sale of each nation’s stolen assets and auctioning them
off at bargain basement prices to wealthy multinational investors.
The intent is to create an
unfettered corporate state in which the
market, driven solely by profit, is the final arbiter of all things;
an
Orwellian world in which human rights, labor laws, environmental
protections, and social justice do not even exist, much less enter into
market equations.
Aided by the World Bank and
the IMF, we are rapidly arriving at a state of global corporate fascism—the
free market reform of manic capitalism, greed on steroids; a horrible
economic monster unleashed upon unsuspecting people the world over,
masquerading as democracy and free trade. And it is occurring in blatant
contradiction to everything that is free, decent, and fair; a monstrosity
utterly devoid of humanity and empathy for those struggling to survive.
But behind the marketing
façade of a beneficent capitalism that is more oxymoronic than
real, the skeleton of Reaganism, free marketry, and trickle down economics
is exposed for all to see. We are witnessing naked greed unleashed upon
the world like a swarm of locusts the size of North America. The fabulously
wealthy are realizing obscene profits, while the majority of the world’s
people are forced into economic servitude, many of them living in abject
poverty, scratching out a bleak existence on sweatshop wages under horrendous
conditions.
Economic slavery and burdensome
debt, not freedom and democracy, is what we are imposing upon Iraq,
aided by the most powerful military in history and, all too often, with
the blessings of an oblivious and propagandized citizenry. Aside from
the fierce resistance to the occupation, the US is achieving all of
its major objectives in Iraq.
Like flies circling piles
of stinking excrement, the lords of unfettered capitalism are buzzing
around the bloated corpse of what is left of the world. And they have
no intentions of stopping at Iraq. Iran and Syria are waiting in the
wings: war that will not end in our lifetime.
If the world were as enamored
with capitalism as its adherents proclaim, there would be no need to
masquerade it as anything other than what it is—economic self
interest for the privileged, driven by insatiable greed, funded by the
public treasure. There would be no need to impose it on the world through
high tech militarism and occupation, preceded by elaborate propagandistic
media blitzes and tricks. All people would seek it out, as they seek
water to slake their thirst and nourishment for their bodies.
So we must ask ourselves:
When has it ever been in the pubic interest to over feed the rich and
starve the poor? When has it ever been in the public interest to destroy
the earth for the sake of profits? When has it ever been in the public
interest to promote war and injustice over peace and shared prosperity?
Just people everywhere must
resist evil or run the risk of being
complicit in it. Neutrality, indifference and apathy, are untenable
responses to what is being done in our name. Somehow, we must awaken
from this media induced cultural stupor. We must do so under the prying
eyes of government and private security contractors who are protecting
corporate investors from democracy, and from people like us. Each of
us is being diminished just as the Declaration of Independence states:
“harass our people and eat out their substance.”
Every citizen is faced with
a simple choice: organize or perish. The storm clouds of World War Three
are looming on the horizon. These are extraordinary times that demand
something from every one of us.
Charles Sullivan is a nature photographer, free-lance
writer, and
community activist residing in the Ridge and Valley Province of
geopolitical West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at
[email protected].
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