World
War W
By Michael Carmicheal
13 October, 2006
Counterpunch
North
Korea's detonation of a nuclear device reveals the latest failure of
the foreign policy of the George W. Bush and Richard Cheney administration.
When Bush and Cheney took office in January 2001, they inherited mature
negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang designed to achieve the
non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. At that time, Bush and Cheney
took the momentously wrong decision to abandon the non-proliferation
negotiations with North Korea that had been in place for six years in
the vain hope that the regime of Kim Jong-Il would be nice, do the right
thing and decide voluntarily not to develop nuclear weapons.
Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld
followed this same pattern in developing their foreign policy for the
Middle East. They inherited advanced peace negotiations between the
Barak government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but the Bush-Cheney
White House chose, instead, to abandon the Middle East peace process.
The results? 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid and Bali bombings and two wars between
Israel, the Palestinians and Hizbullah.
Still unable to bring themselves
to exercise diplomacy, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice administration
is now preparing to broaden America's military activities in the Middle
East in anticipation of a wider, more engulfing and, perhaps, even global
war - World War W.
In anticipation of future
pre-emptive wars to uphold the Bush Doctrine in military clashes against
North Korea and Iran, Donald Rumsfeld recently ordered the re-tooling
of a significant proportion of America's arsenal of intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBMs) so that they could carry "conventional"
warheads. Rumsfeld took this inane decision against the shrill warnings
of some of America's leading experts on national security who fear the
outcome of such a dangerously unsound policy.
Leading American experts
based at Stanford and MIT warn that Donald Rumsfeld's program to re-tool
America's ICBMs to carry conventional warheads could precipitate a nuclear
world war, and the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, agrees with
the experts.
In a stark warning aimed
directly at Bush's America, Putin stated that the launch of non-nuclear
ICBMs could be misinterpreted, and it might lead to a retaliatory response
that could trigger a full-scale nuclear war ala the Doomsday Device
of Dr. Strangelove. In the twenty-first century, these Strangelovian
fears are no longer far-fetched. In 1995, the launch of an unarmed Norwegian
space rocket triggered a nuclear alert that appeared at the time to
be an American ICBM attack on Moscow. At that time, former Russian president,
Boris Yeltsin, activated his nuclear briefcase and took the first steps
to retaliate against a broad array of American targets before he discovered
the mistake.
Elsewhere, the Bush-Cheney
White House and Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon have ordered a broadening
of US military operations in the Middle East. Led by the Nimitz class
nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Eisenhower, a strike force bristling
with Tomahawk missiles is headed to the Persian Gulf to take up a position
to launch an aerial "shock and awe" campaign against Iran.
The Prepare To Deploy Orders (PTDO) issued to the USS Eisenhower led
Time magazine to call public attention to American moves in apparent
preparation for imminent war with Iran. The USS Eisenhower is scheduled
to arrive in the Persian Gulf on the 21st of October, just slightly
over two weeks before the ominous midterm elections on the 7th of November.
Over the past two years,
America and the global community have been bombarded with reports of
the White House and Pentagon's detailed military planning to wage war
against Iran. With the time clock ticking, and Bush's presidency on
the wane, the window of opportunity to launch the next phase of the
Project for a New American Century's (PNAC) schemes of global conquest
to deliver ongoing US control of world oil reserves is swiftly drawing
to its close.
George W. Bush's presidency
is deeply unpopular in America, and it is disastrously unpopular throughout
the rest of the world. Faced with the probability that Bush will lose
power through the midterm elections, the Republicans have been grasping
at straws in pursuit of their neoconservative vision of a muscular and
aggressive America on a permanent war footing in hot pursuit of the
dreams of full-blooded military glory of PNAC. These Republican neoconservatives
have a fifth column of support inside the Democratic Party. Headed by
Al From, a man who is at once a confirmed neocon and a zealous Zionist,
the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) supports the policy agenda of
PNAC hook, line and sinker.
Worse. At the head of the
Democratic Party's campaign to regain a majority in the House of Representatives
we find a belligerent bully of a Congressman, Rahm Emanuel. Even though
it is the official position of his party to withdraw and disengage from
Bush's unpopular war in Iraq, Rahm Emanuel still grants interviews to
reassert his support for the war to topple Saddam Hussein even though
the war is now recognized as America's gift to those who long for the
growth of terrorism in the Middle East. Frequently described as "obnoxious"
by his colleagues, Congressman Emanuel rules his official party position
as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) with
an iron fist.
And, worse. The Democratic
Party's campaign to regain a majority in the US Senate is headed by
Senator Charles Schumer. While the majority of his party favour a timely
withdrawal and disengagement from Iraq, in what should be regarded as
a very curious development, Senator Schumer voted against setting a
timetable for strategic deployment from Iraq. Additionally, Senator
Schumer has created controversy as head of the Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee (DSCC). Earlier this year, Senator Schumer endorsed
the deeply unpopular Senator Joe Lieberman in his primary campaign against
a very popular anti-war Democratic challenger, Ned Lamont. Schumer and
Lieberman are both members of the right-leaning group of Democrats who
purport to swing a lot of weight on national security affairs in their
party caucus and the DLC--as well as being the Bush-Cheney White House's
favorite "Democrats."
With the war in Iraq the
single most unpopular policy of the entire Bush presidency, it does
seem odd that the Democratic Party's dual campaigns to win majorities
in both houses of congress are being headed by two pro-war Democrats,
both of whom are warmly regarded by the Republican-leaning DLC.
On the global stage, the
increasingly ominous scenario unfolding against a backdrop of the US
war in Iraq is dark and getting darker. Not only is America moving much
more military hardware into the theatre, a constellation of its allies
in NATO are moving heavy hardware into the Eastern Mediterranean where
they will be in position to cheque any potential retaliation by Syria
or Hizbullah against Israel in the wake of a US assault on Iran.
The repercussions of a US
attack on Iran could well be dire--especially for Israel and Iraq, Afghanistan
and Pakistan. There have been reports in the international media of
tens of thousands of suicide bombers awaiting the order from Iran to
launch themselves against targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel,
America, the United Kingdom and other allied targets--if Bush, Cheney
and Rumsfeld give the orders to launch "pre-emptive" war against
Iran.
Some of the world's leading
military experts now believe that a unilateral US strike against Iran
could broaden America's wars in the Middle East to engulf the oil-rich
regions of Central Asia. Kazakhstan and Russia are now in possession
of massive reserves of untapped oil. The enlargement of NATO that began
in the 1990s has led to a new system of counter-balancing alliances
in Central Asia involving Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan
and Kyrgztan in a new organization called the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO). Recently, CSTO conducted joint military exercises
at the same time that Iran staged the largest war games in her history.
These collateral military operations between CSTO and Iran were stage-setting
defensive manoeuvres in advance of the anticipated American attack against
Iran so stridently threatened by the Bush-Cheney White House and their
minions led by Condoleezza Rice in Foggy Bottom and Donald Rumsfeld
at the Pentagon.
Last week, Condoleezza Rice
visited the Middle East. In advance of her trip, the reports were to
the effect that she would experience an icy reception, but there was
vanishingly little coverage of the outcome of her mission in the western
media. However, in the Middle East, there was ample coverage. We learn
from reports from Cairo that Rice was greeted politely, but when she
launched into her usual harangue about American fears of nuclear technology
in Iran she met with a wall of cold, hard logic. A stream of Middle
Eastern diplomats delivered a calm, cool and lucid concatenation of
criticism of provocative US policy in the region. Rice learned, perhaps,
for the first time in her life - that American policy for the Middle
East should not be predicated on bogus fears about Iran and Iraq but
on Israel and its persistent historical denial of human rights to the
Palestinians, a travesty of justice that is now entering its seventh
decade. From the perspective of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, Rice's
latest mission to the Middle East was a total failure. Their warships,
missiles and bombers are now in striking position--and they have a very
important ace-in-the-hole--a well-financed fifth column of support in
Iran.
With a budget estimated in
published accounts of circa eighty-five million dollars ($85,000,000)
per year, the US State Department funds a covert pro-democracy movement
inside Ahmadinejad's Iran. This US-Iran project has been roundly criticized
in the US and in the international media for its financial support of
the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq (MEK)--an independent militia that has been labelled
a terrorist organization for the past twelve years because of its overt
links to Saddam Hussein. That dubious distinction does not prevent the
MEK from finding warm support in the Republican-dominated Congress.
While the right-wing extremists, Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) and Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) are the most vocal supporters of the MEK, at
least four more members of Congress have also voiced their support for
the terrorist militia. Astonishingly and shamefully, three of them are
Democrats. These Republican-leaning Democrats are: Edolphus Towns (D-NY);
Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas). In addition to
these Republicrats, the rabid Republican right-winger Lincoln Diaz Balart
of Florida is known to be a supporter of the pro-Saddam faction in Iran.
An ark of darkness is moving
swiftly across American history. Not only has America undertaken to:
provoke nuclear war with Russia; wage expansionist wars in the Middle
East; precipitate the proliferation of nuclear weapons in North Korea;
encourage wars between Israel and its neighbouring territories and conduct
its foreign policy through the constant and obsessive resort to belligerent
military confrontations instead of diplomacy--the Bush-Cheney White
House is also attempting to implement a dynastic succession designed
to perpetuate its imperialistic wars for generations to come. The bureaucrat
in charge of the vast budget for support of the MEK and other insurgents
in Iran is none other than Dick Cheney's eldest daughter, Elizabeth
Cheney.
Born in 1966, Elizabeth Cheney
is the mother of five children as well as the American bureaucrat responsible
for the "democratization" of Iran. As head of the Iran-Syria
Operations Group (ISOG), Elizabeth Cheney controls a strategically important
unit of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department.
World War W--a grand military
scheme to dominate the world's largest land mass and some of the most
oil-rich regions of the planet as we enter decades of waning oil production
depends in no small measure on the judgement of the Vice-President's
daughter, who has only recently returned to her desk at the State Department
after taking maternity leave to give birth to her fifth child. "Richard
Cheney" was born unto Elizabeth Cheney on the eleventh day of July,
2006. He is now the youngest grandson of America's Vice President -
Richard Cheney. Both his grandfather and his mother are deeply involved
in critical military planning and intelligence operations designed to
alter the face of the Middle East and to recalibrate the balance of
power on the planet for at least one hundred years. Both Cheneys, father
and daughter, are integral to the execution of America's plans to wage
war on Iran.
Given the chain of bad, bogus
and downright ridiculous decisions flowing from the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice
administration and speaking entirely for myself, I am not confident
in their ability to govern America--much less to design, launch and
wage World War W.
Michael Carmichael
has been a professional public affairs consultant, author and
broadcaster since 1968. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited,
a global public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He
has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC's Today Programme,
Hardtalk, PM, as well as numerous appearances on ITN, NPR and many European
broadcasts examining politics and culture. He can be reached through
his website: www.planetarymovement.org
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