Wake up, America, before it's too late!
Despite the near-unanimous selection by the American people of Usama bin Laden as public enemy number one and a probable majority for considering him the devil incarnate, America's real enemy is much closer to home and much closer to succeeding in achieving his goals. Yes, we mean religious fanaticism and militant extremism, but not lil' 'ol Usama.
Yes, George junior, is ready and able to savage America. And he's much better placed to do fatal damage than any outsider. Perhaps a little insight into his motives. We all know GW is the son of an oil man and his cabinet and advisors are mostly oil men, too. That is those who are not bankers.
If we work backwards from who stands to gain from current US foreign policy who turns up among the big winners but the now-global-orientated commodities conglomerates with traditional roots in Texas. In fact it is the shifting developments over the last ten years in the region which centers on Afghanistan which has suddenly threatened their interests. In the light of this understanding, Bush jr. must be seen as the natural representative, basically trained all his life, to believe in the rightness of big oil corporations and their pursuit of profits wherever they are to be found. An attitude that says, if that's capitalism, that's all right with me.
Given this assumption let's go back to 11th September or even better to 10th September. We've got GW sitting on a domestic economy plummeting southwards, a good portion of the American public still dissatisfied about the 'democratic values' of the presidential elections whose delayed results left them saddled with GW jr. in the first place, and those in the know about the frailty of the real US economic situation [which now includes everybody, thanks to Enron] seeing the corporate might of free-enterprise capitalism in grave danger of losing its privileged position.
The race for control of the mineral wealth, in particular the energy reserves, of Central Asia and equally important the distribution routes out of Central Asia is the equivalent of the race for colonial possession in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this competition, the strategic thinking of capitalist corporate wealth is that they cannot afford to lose out on the possession of what will become the pivot of international wealth and power within the next two decades.
When GW took office it looked like he would have to subtly maneuver within his supposedly dominating domestic concerns to help the overseas interests of the corporations he represents. But, voila, the attack on the World Trade Center instead of being his downfall over accusations of incompetence and failure to defend two of America's proudest landmarks - including the Pentagon itself - he parlayed the American training from decades of movies, not insignificantly just peaking from the box-office hit, Steven Spielbergs' comic-book-emotion melodrama Pearl Harbor, into an unquestioning license for revenge at any price. And that meant US troops literally in Uzbekistan and Tadjekistan which is right where the oil companies wanted to be in the first place. What a lucky break the WTC attack was for these guys.
The only problem is, being there isn't in the interests of the American people, who are, after all, the nation of America. It is the private project of the oil/commodity corporations who use and always have counted on the military might of the US to obtain and hold their money-making possessions overseas. Whether it's the land of the American Indians themselves, the bananas of Central America, the rubber of the Pacific islands or the minerals of South America, US big business now concentrated in corporations have always dominated and profited on the back of the use of American military and economic prowess.
But by the time you have a situation where the domestic economy is collapsing, the burgeoning population no longer has a homogeneity of its own to hold it together and more money is to be made in the new markets abroad than at home, it is no longer the time to plant the flag ever further away and for ever more questionable motives. Just at this moment, February14th, the world press and the domestic populations of the countries concerned consider the threat of imminent American military attack, or US military-backed domestically-manned coup attempts, or US military-enforced economic sanctions (read siege) as very real possibilities against any of the following: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, the Philippines, Syria and even perhaps, Cuba.
It's just too much. Americans are not the world's policemen. American cities themselves are breeding grounds of criminal activity, nearly as bad as Wall Street itself, some would say.
GW's embarrassingly condescending speech on February 13th, on the occasion of Pakistan President [a term previously reserved for those who at least paid lip service to elections] Musharrif's visit to Washington reveals the utter inability of the US leadership to understand other people on any level. Parading Musharrif as the latest incarnation of a dictator pleasing to us before the world press and therefore, presumably the world audience, is a frightening indicator of the outdated thinking of US foreign policy planners, if that in itself is not an oxymoron. With the ghosts of the Shah of Iran, Marcos of the Philippines and more Latin American despots than you can pour a barrel of oil over haunting the proceedings, GW absent-mindedly delivers all of the pre-arranged lines of Musharrif's speech while referring to the General in the third person even while the poor flunky is standing right at his side.
GW is living out Dirty Harry movies, casting himself in the role that Clint Eastwood made famous, forgetting that the lesson then was not only that you had to take the law into your own hands in order to get the bad guys, but that it was usually the law who was the bad guys. GW's contribution to statesmanship is apparently as simple as the man himself: you are either with us, or you're the enemy. The keyword 'with us' in this context means standing like a ventriloquist's dummy alongside the US puppet-masters and mouthing the lines you're given. Any semblance on behalf of the subsumed foreign leader of promoting his own program, meaning: doing what might place his own people's interests first, will be read as disobedience and violation of the sacred pact. The dust from the departing US armed forces hadn't even cleared the Pakistani airfields before the US state department signaled an OK to India to proceed with their military escalation over the Kashmir conflict. What was the point of that, if not to consolidate US presence in the Central Asian oil and gas region and make it clear to the Pakistani military establishment who were their real masters now.
Although he personally apparently knew nothing about Pakistan at all before his election, alluding to Musharrif as 'some general' when famously asked in one of the televised debates during the election campaign who was the leader of that country, GW is now unashamed even to add his commendation to a planned reform of the madrasah system within Pakistan. All part of making Pakistan a "democratic, modern, islamic state". Where have we heard this before?
Unfortunately when George and his colleagues look for a reflection coming back from the American people they are only consulting their seriously distorted mirror on the wall - the mainstream US media. The US media is swallowing the government policy edicts and rational completely without question. Why? Perhaps because the economic interests of the corporate entities which own the media are 100% in line with the corporate interests of the commodities giants and financial titans who are also promoting and joining in on the implementation of this new empire building.
Don't misunderstand the fore-going, in many serious ways George Bush, jr. is irrelevant. It is a case of him stepping into a gap which acts like a mould, forming him from the pressure of events and forces operating quite outside of himself. Even America is ultimately dispensable to those very same interests which are exploiting its strengths and weaknesses right now. Corporate wealth is mobile in a way never before conceivable. Although it has been convenient to base much of the decision-making power right in the continental United States that could quickly change. And in fact is quite likely to change as the US will inevitably experience massive internal reactions as the violence of its international actions reverberates domestically.
No empire can expand forever. No human being can claim power without bringing down the proof of his powerlessness before the reality of the One with power. Enduring justice when it means killing thousands of people who just happen to be around the targets being aimed at, because they live there, is a policy that will backfire with disastrous results far worse than the attack on the WTC.
America as a dream concept is promoted as a Christian country, but it is now governed by people who would almost certainly regard the Messiah as a terrorist. GW jr. and his co-horts imagine they are constructing a new version of the old Roman empire, even a new Pax Romana.
1 If we look back to the days of US Sec'y of State Henry Kissinger, whose name cannot be mentioned without acknowledgement of preparation of numerous lawsuits seeking to bring him to justice for crimes against humanity at this very date as we write in Feb. 2002, we will find that Russia/USSR was already willing to accept support from their nominal enemy, i.e. the USA. Look back a bit further and you will find Stalin having done the same with Hitler. Feeding the Russians doesn't guarantee that they will sit back and let you take over the board..