Global
Eye -- Dark Passage
By Chris Floyd
08 May, 2003
Adolf Hitler clearly spelled
out his plans to destroy the Jews and launch wars of conquest to secure
German domination of world affairs in his 1925 book, long before he
ever assumed power. Despite the zigzags of rhetoric he later employed,
the various PR spins and temporary justifications offered for this or
that particular policy, any attentive reader of his vile regurgitation
could have divined his intentions as he drove his country -- and the
world -- to murderous upheaval.
Similarly -- in method, if
not entirely in substance -- the Bush Regime's foreign policy is also
being carried out according to a strict blueprint written years ago,
then renewed a few months before the Regime was installed in power by
the judicial coup of December 2000.
The first version, mentioned
in passing here last week, was drafted by a team operating under then-Defense
Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. It set out a new doctrine for U.S. power
in the 21st century, an aggressive, unilateral approach that would secure
American domination of world affairs -- "by force if necessary,"
as one of the acolytes put it.
When the Dominators were
temporarily ousted from government after 1992, they continued their
strategic planning with funding from the military-energy-security apparatus
and right-wing foundations. This culminated in a new group, the aptly-named
Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Members included hard-right
players like Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad
(now "special envoy" to the satrapy of Afghanistan) and other
empire aspirants currently perched in the upper reaches of government
power.
In September 2000, PNAC updated
the original Cheney plan in a published report, "Strengthening
America's Defenses." In this and related documents, the earlier
precepts were reiterated and refined. The plans called for unprecedented
hikes in military spending, the plantation of American bases in Central
Asia and the Middle East, the toppling of recalcitrant regimes, the
militarization of outer space, the abrogation of international treaties,
the willingness to use nuclear weapons and control of the world's energy
resources.
And the present course of
action was clearly set forth: "The United States has for decades
sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While
the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification,
the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends
the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
But Iraq is just a stepping
stone. Iran is next -- indeed, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the PNAC team say
that Iran is "perhaps a far greater threat" to U.S. oil hegemony.
Other nations will follow, including Russia and China. In one way or
another -- by military means or economic dominance, by conquest, alliance
or silent acquiescence -- they must all be brought to heel, forcibly
prevented from "challenging our leadership or even aspiring to
a larger regional or global role."
These texts spring from the
Dominators' quasi-religious cult of "American exceptionalism,"
the belief in the unique and utter goodness of the American soul --
embodied chiefly by the nation's moneyed elite, of course -- and the
irredeemable, metaphysical evil of all those who would oppose or criticize
the elite's righteous (and conveniently self-serving) policies.
Anyone still "puzzled"
over the Bush Regime's behavior need only look to these documents for
enlightenment. They have long been available to the media -- which accepted
Bush's transparent campaign lies about a "more humble foreign policy"
at face value -- but have only now started attracting wider notice,
in the New Yorker magazine this spring, and this week in the Glasgow
Sunday Herald.
The documents explain America's
relentless march across Afghanistan, Central Asia and soon into the
Middle East. They explain the Bush Regime's otherwise unfathomable rejection
of international law, its fanatical devotion to so-called missile defense,
its gargantuan increases in military spending -- even its antediluvian
energy policy, which mandates the continued primacy of oil and gas in
the world economy. (They can't conquer the sun or monopolize the wind,
so there's no profit, no leverage for personal gain and geopolitical
power in pursuing viable alternatives to oil.) The Sept. 11 attacks
gave the Regime a pretext for greatly accelerating this published program
of global dominance, but they would have pursued it in any case.
So there will be war: either
soon, after the November mid-term elections, or -- in the unlikely event
that Iraq's offer of inspections is accepted -- then later, after some
"provocation" or "obstruction," no doubt in good
time before the 2004 presidential vote. The purse-lipped rhetoric about
"liberation" and "moral clarity" is just so much
desert sand being thrown in our eyes. Backstage, the Bush Regime is
playing Mafia-style hardball, warning reluctant allies to get on board
now or else miss out on their cut of the loot when America -- not a
"democratic Iraq" -- divvies up Saddam's oil fields: a shakedown
detailed this week by the Economist, among many others.
The Dominators dream of empire.
Not only will it extend their temporal power, they believe it will also
give them immortality. One of their chief gurus, Reaganite firebreather
Michael Ledeen, says that if the Dominators reject "clever diplomacy"
and "just wage total war" to subjugate the Middle East, "our
children will sing great songs about us years from now." This madness,
this bin Laden-like megalomania, is now driving the hijacked American
republic -- and the world -- to murderous upheaval.
It's all there in the text,
set down in black and white.
Read it and weep.
"Bush
Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before
Becoming President,"
Glasgow Sunday Herald, Sept. 15, 2002
"Foreign
Policy Blueprint,"
TomPaine.com, March 2002
"US
and the Triumph of Unilateralism,"
Asia Times, Sept. 10, 2002
"George
Bush and the World,"
New York Review of Books, Sept. 26, 2002 issue
"The
Next World Order,"
The New Yorker, March 25, 2002
"Saddam
in the Crosshairs,"
Village Voice, Nov. 21-27, 2001
"Statement
of Principles,"
Project for a New American Century, June 3, 1997
"Fortunes
of war await Bush's circle after attacks on Iraq,"
The Independent (UK), Sept. 15, 2002
"Don't
Mention the O-Word,"
The Economist, Sept. 12, 2002
"Backing
on Iraq? Let's Make a Deal,"
Los Angeles Times, Sept. 13, 2002
"In
Iraqi War Scenario, Oil is a Key Issue,"
Washington Post, Sept. 15, 2002
"Cronies
in Arms,"
New York Times, Sept. 17, 2002
Questions
That Won't Be Asked About Iraq,"
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, Republican, Texas, Sept. 10, 2002
Bombs
Will Deepen Iraq's Nightmare: An Iraqi Dissident Speaks,"
The Guardian, Sept. 17, 2002
"Iraqgate,"
Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 1993