I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
Bob Dylan, Masters of War
In order to demystify the post-September 11 situation it is helpful to briefly touch on the two basic claims of the warmongers which were bolstered by the tragedy of the attacks.
The assertion concerning the new ferocity and immediate danger which the enemy allegedly represents (1), as well as the supposedly dumbfounded response of the administration (2), were at the core of the propaganda campaign. While we cannot go further in dispelling the myths and exposing the hypocrisy in the US-UK relation towards Iraq, Afghanistan, Saddam and Bin Laden (3), the premeditated utilisation of the terrorist attacks (4) is evident in light of the agendas propagated and planned by The Project for the New American Century (5) well before there was any talk of Al Qaeda or the immediate threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Their central document Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century (September 2000), states that "while the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification [for US military invasion], the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein" (6). The coinciding wars in Afghanistan and Iraq also seem to be inspired by the supposition that the US must “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars”(7), as well as “discourage [advanced industrial countries] from challenging our leadership” (8) and “increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".(9) Away from the attention of the mass media, “the war on terrorism provided the US with an opportunity to establish a string of military bases in Central Asia - a region closed to it during the Cold War - and to return its troops to the Philippines, where US bases were closed in the early 1990s”.(10)
It would be rather naive to attribute these policies merely to a certain whimsical conspiracy of the Republican Party or even generally to neoconservatives in the “public life”. In order to genuinely move towards a better understanding of imperialism, it is of fundamental importance to adopt a structural approach which can help us better understand the consensus among the elite circles of both parties, but perhaps even more importantly, the economic forces behind these political organisations as well.
One of the most prominent reasons for the invasion by US and its allies, yet certainly not the only, is the fact that Iraq possesses the second largest oil reserves in the world, and the control of Iraqi oil fields diminishes the dependence on Saudi Arabian oil (11), which puts the proprietors of these reserves in the position of potentially dominating the entire global energy system. (12)
A Luxemburgian interpretation of the arms industry as a ‘sink’ sector used to absorb surplus output of machines is also possible. The war is a deeply needed financial boost for the economic system, partly since the military-industrial complex makes up a third of the American economy and is the strongest lobby besides oil, with which it intertwines. The U.S. spends over $400 billion on the army and weapons yearly, which is half of the overall allocations of the world in this respect, and a major foreign policy incentive. The influence of arms manufacturers is obvious considering 32 of the highest officials of Bush Jr.’s first administration used to be executives, counsellors or major share holders in the weapons industry. (13) Vice President Dick Cheney’s former employer, military company Halliburton, closed a ten-year contract with the government in the "war against terrorism", reemphasising the strength of corporate influence on policy decisions. Even the war enthusiasm of Blair’s administration becomes much clearer in light of the fact that, for instance, Britain's war industry is second largest, after the American one. (14) Apart from short-term economic interests, the involvement of the UK should also be interpreted as a strong determination of an essential part of the British elite to strategically align with the “project for a new American century”.
Moreover, the so-called “reconstruction of Iraq” represents a great corporate opportunity for acquiring lucrative commissions and securing a new privatized, deregulated trade zone.(15) In the immortal words of a US officer in Vietnam commenting an attack on a village: “We had to destroy it in order to save it.”
The struggle for global dominance between the euro and the dollar is also a major, but basically covert issue behind the war. (16)
It should also be noted that the media campaign in favour of US intervention in Iraq began to develop in September 2002, which was also the time of the opening of the mid term congressional campaign. The Republican Party, deeply interested in the advancement of the neo-conservative agenda, recognised the necessity of diverting attention of the campaign away from social and economic issues (except for abortion, gay rights and tax cuts, of course).
One of the main ideological objectives was also the introduction of the hard-line imperialist and hegemonic doctrine of “preemptive attack” (Articulated in the National Security Strategy of 2002 which was issued only nine days after the September 11 attacks and it represents an ideological match to PNAC’s Rebuilding America’s Defenses. John Kerry didn’t oppose it), unconstrained even by the stance of other international factors. Although most see it as a confirmation of unchallenged US hegemony, some scholars interpreted this new foreign policy approach as a manifestation of a structural crisis and a decline of US economic domination.(17)
Additionally, the struggle for ideological hegemony (which can be partly interpreted as a “defence”/reaction to the global justice movement/s), epitomised by the Patriot Act, specifically aimed at the curtailment of civil liberties and the “strategy of permanent war abroad” with “a permanent domestic state of emergency which means a permanent state of siege for all Americans” (18) as a result.
The mechanisms of opportunism and “radicalisation”, especially within the US society, mostly included the activation of the available and newly emerging “us-them (culturally racist – D.J.) boundaries”(19), opportunity/signaling spirals (20) and selective retaliation (21). The majority of the US population, however, (considering the elections and various polls) seems to have been only moderately or slightly influenced by the process of identity shift, which is more obvious among the participants of the “public arena” (the “intellectual” and “mediating” strata). Except perhaps in the case of elites, I would dare to assume that the expected(?) process of unification was rather ineffectual, if not outright counterproductive. What (without a doubt) represented an immediate gain (eg. the post-September 11 support for Bush’s policies) might subsequently reflect itself in an escalation of the old American North-South or left-right divide.
“Opportunity spirals operate through sequences of environmental change, interpretation of that change, action, and counteraction, repeated as one action alters another actor’s environment.”(22) The “war against terror” seemingly started a “circulos vitiosus” in which we have seen the conservative radicalisation of large segments of both the US and Arab populations. However, we have also witnessed the radicalisation of the progressive community (seemingly short-lived), not just in the US but worldwide. With the US ideological capital after the September 11 tragedy long-since destabilised, it doesn’t seem completely incongruous to expect some increasingly conflictual times ahead. Even if revolutions still aren’t “on the agenda” anytime soon.
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(1)”…the dictator ’is assembling the world’s most dangerous weapons [in order to] dominate, intimidate, or attack’; and he ‘has already used them on whole villages – leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or transfigured….If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.’ ”. George W. Bush, State of the Union address, transcribed in New York Times, 29 January 2003 in Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, Penguin Books, p.17.
(2) Exemplified by the phoney debate around The 9-11 Commission Report, W. W. Norton & Company , 2004.
(3) See for instance Sami Ramadani, Whose interests at heart?, Guardian, March 18, 2003, as well as my article Let’s talk about barbarism, Chartist Magazine, May/June, 2003.
(4) And I am keeping an open mind concerning the yet unresolved question about the real culprits, including the possibility of the (maybe only partial) “Reichstag scenario”.
(5) The leading neoconservative think tank and lobby group (www.newamericancentury.org or www.newamericanempire.org for the slower among us) which includes or has formerly included prominent members of the Republican Party and Bush’s administration such as Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense), Paul Wolfowitz (former Deputy Defense Secretary, newly appointed as the President of the World Bank), Jeb Bush (governor of Florida), Dick Cheney (Vice-President, former CEO of Halliburton Petroleum), Richard Perle (Defense Policy Board chairman), Richard Armitage (appointed Deputy Secretary of State after the 2000 elections), Lewis Libby (Chief of Staff for the Vice President), Bruce Jackson (former Pentagon official for Ronald Reagan, later assumed a leading position with the infamous weapons manufacturing corporation Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on NATO) Steve Forbes (multi-billionaire publisher of Forbes Magazine and a former presidential candidate), William Kristol (editor of the Weekly Standard, which is owned by Ruppert Murdoch, who is also the owner of the international media giant Fox News), Seth Cropsey (Director of the International Broadcasting Bureau), Dan Quayle (former vice-president), Francis Fukuyama (leading ideologue of neoliberalism) etc. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century).
(6) www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf. The leading Republican “hawks” also sent a letter to president Clinton urging him to decidedly turn in the direction of “removing Saddam's regime from power”, five years before the actual invasion took place (www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm).
(7) Ibid. The “infotainment” aspect in this, although not crucial, is often overlooked: “The corporations that own the news media will sell this eternal war at a profit, as viewership goes through the stratosphere when there is combat to be shown” (William Rivers Pitt, The Project for the New American Century, February 25, 2003 - www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm).
(8) Defence Planning Guidance for the Fiscal years 1994-1999 in William Blum, Killing Hope, Zed Books, London, 2003, p. 383. On this issue see for example my article Germany & US: Discordant Harmony, ZNet, March 21, 2005 (www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=7495) .
(9) www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf .
(10) Alex Callinicos, The grand strategy of the American empire, International Socialism Journal, Issue 97, Winter 2002. (pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj97/callinicos.htm).
(11) Michael Theodolou and Roland Watson, West sees glittering prizes ahead in giant oilfields, The Times, July 11, 2002 (www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-3-352935,00.html).
(12) Noam Chomsky and Atilio Boron, What’s Happening?, ZNet, June 14, 2003 (www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=3768)
(13) Arms Trade Resource Center, The Role of the Arms Lobby In the Bush Administration's Radical Reversal of Two Decades of U.S. Nuclear Policy (www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/reportaboutface.html).
(14) John Pilger, New Rulers of the World, Verso, London, 2003, p. 94.
(15) “The country is being treated as a blank slate on which the most ideological Washington neoliberals can design their dream economy: fully privatized, foreign-owned and open for business. (…)The US Agency for International Development has invited US multinationals to bid on everything from rebuilding roads and bridges to printing textbooks.(…)Some argue that it's too simplistic to say this war is about oil. They're right. It's about oil, water, roads, trains, phones, ports and drugs. And if this process isn't halted, "free Iraq" will be the most sold country on earth.(…)It is robbery: mass theft disguised as charity; privatization without representation.
Naomi Klein, Privatization in Disguise, The Nation, April 10, 2003 (www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030428&s=klein)
(16) See for example Tariq Ali, Re-Colonizing Iraq, New Left Review, May-June 2003 - www.newleftreview.net/NLR25501.shtml .
(17) “The prosperity of the 1990s was in many ways just a bubble sustained very artificially(…)The cause of the downturn lies deeper. The world-economy has been in a long relative economic stagnation since the 1970s.(…)We are now in the final stage of this long downward spiral, and once the bankruptcies are rampant, the world-economy may start to turn up again.(…)Below-the-surface set of fears about this less-than-sterling economic future is shaping American politics today.’’
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Decline of American Power, Verso, New York-London, 2003, pp. 4-5.
“The Bush administration clearly hopes that its macho imperialism will compensate with the voters for the sad state of US economy.“
Ibid., p. 26.
(18) Mary Louise, Project for a New American century (PNAC): Cheney’s Monstruous Scheme - www.chemtrailpatrol.com/rp_project_for_the_new_american_century.htm
(19) Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p.132.
(20) Especially the desired "catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor"(Rebuilding America's Defenses) and “the global wave of sympathy that engulfed the United States after 9-11” (Arthur Schlessinger, Los Angeles Times, 23 March 2003 in Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, p.12).
(21) Charles Tilly, op.cit.
(22) Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, Cambridge University Press 2001, p.243.
by Dan Jakopovich
