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WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
Where is the Bush administration taking the American people?
By the WSWS Editorial Board
22 September 2001
One unmistakable message emerged from the speech delivered by President
George W. Bush to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night: the United
States is being propelled onto a course of global violence and domestic
repression unprecedented in the nation's history.
In the name of a "war against terrorism," the Bush administration is
demanding and being granted unspecified and unlimited powers to employ
military force all over the world.
The siege-like setting for Bush's speech with the Capitol ringed by troops
and the sound of military helicopters seeping into the chamber was in
keeping with the administration's posture since the terrorist attacks on New
York and Washington. The government has gone out of its way, not to reassure
the American people, but rather to create an atmosphere of panic. It is
encouraging a mood of hysteria combined with flag-waving chauvinism in order
to stampede the public into accepting not only the unrestrained use of
American military power, but also a far-reaching attack on basic democratic
rights within the United States itself.
Hence the absence of Vice President Cheney and the announcement that he had
been taken to an undisclosed secure venue. The administration wants the
American people to believe that the immense power of the US military could
not guarantee the safety of government leaders in the Capitol building. If
Bush and company really believe this preposterous idea, then it must be said
they have completely lost their heads. The more likely explanation is that
they want to fortify their incessant claim that America is at war, and
accustom the population to war-time measures and a government that carries
out its major functions behind the backs of the public.
In his speech Bush employed apocalyptic terms to convince the American
people that they must acquiesce in a global war of indefinite duration,
against a host of as yet unnamed enemies, with no limit on the death and
destruction to be meted out to people outside the US, or the toll in body
bags containing the remains of American soldiers.
"Our response," he declared, "involves far more than instant retaliation and
isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy
campaign unlike any other we have ever seen." It would not be a short and
decisive war against a single country, as in Iraq, he continued, or an air
war with no US casualties, as in Yugoslavia. He called his war for the
"defeat of the global terror network" a "task that does not end." Pointedly
refusing to rule out the use of nuclear weapons, he added, "We will direct
every resource at our command...and every necessary weapon of war."
Laying down a rationale to attack any nation deemed now or in the future to
be an obstacle to the global ambitions of the United States, Bush declared,
"Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are
with us, or you are with the terrorists." Any nation that refuses to obey
Washington's dictates "will be regarded by the United States as a hostile
regime."
At the heart of the scenario presented by Bush was an anomaly that he made
no attempt to explain. On the one hand he describedthe enemy as a "fringe"
element of Islamic fundamentalists, amounting to some "thousands" of
terrorists spread out among 60 countries. Yet this relative handful of
loosely connected terrorist groups posed a dire and direct threat to America
and the entire "civilized world" of such dimensions that only the most
massive and sustained use of military force would suffice to defeat it.
The immediate purpose of Bush's speech was to take the country into war
against Afghanistan. Bush listed a set of demands he knew would mean
political suicide for the Taliban regime, and which they could not meet even
if they wanted to. He demanded that the Taliban deliver into American hands
"all the leaders" of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, that they
immediately close every al-Qaida installation, and that they give the US
"full access to terrorist training camps."
In effect, the Bush administration is demanding that the Taliban regime
accede to the transformation of Afghanistan into a militaryprotectorate of
the United States. This ultimatum, Bush declared, is "not open to
negotiation or discussion." If the leaders of the regime do not surrender to
US demands, Bush warned, they will share the terrorists' fate, i.e., they
will be killed.
There was no formal demand for Osama bin Laden's extradition. Indeed, there
is no convention under international law for what Bush demanded.
Washington's demands have been formulated to provide a pretext for a war
that had already been decided upon.
Bush charged bin Laden and his Taliban protectors with direct responsibility
for the September 11 atrocities. These are, without question, reactionary
forces who may very well have played a role, but Bush provided no evidence
to back up his indictment. Even the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial
pages have been clamoring for war not only against Afghanistan, but also
against Iraq, acknowledged in a news article on September 19 that US
officials have been unable to assemble sufficient evidence to prove their
case against bin Laden.
"But by 21st-century Western standards of law and international relations",
the Journal wrote, "how much actual evidence do investigators have of Mr.
bin Laden's involvement? The answer so far-based on what can be gleaned from
public statements and US officials willing to discuss the matter is not
enough."
Bush further sought to justify war on Afghanistan by pointing to the
repressive and totalitarian character of the Taliban regime. But the Taliban
regime is the direct product of earlier American policies, and its
dictatorial methods of rule and religious intolerance are not all that
different from the United States' closest allies in the Middle East, such as
the oil sheikdoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Persian Gulf states.
As the Bush administration embarks upon war, it is giving little thought to
the far-reaching and even incalculable consequences of its actions.
Intervening in the most unstable region in the world, where a host of great
powers vie for control of strategic resources and geo-political influence
amidst the unspeakable poverty of hundreds of millions of people, the United
States is embarked upon a course of action whose outcome may prove
catastrophic for the entire planet.
It is worthwhile to compare the methods of the Bush administration to those
employed by Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis. That was certainly one of
the greatest confrontations of the Cold War, in which the US government
faced, from its standpoint, a clear military threat. At that time the
American government went to the United Nations and presented detailed
evidence with documents and photographs to make its case. It proceeded,
moreover, with a degree of caution that stands in glaring contrast to the
actions of the Bush administration.
Today the US government makes the most sweeping claims, but presents no
evidence, either to the world or to the American public, to back them up.
The historical comparison demonstrates that the actions of the US government
today are determined less by the magnitude of the threat than by the
magnitude of the opportunities it perceives for turning a disaster into a
pretext for implementing a far-reaching, but unstated, military, political
and economic agenda.
This is confirmed by a New York Times report on a split within the Bush
administration between those, led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who
want to proceed with a modicum of caution for fear of destabilizing the
Middle East and other vast regions of the world, and those, led by Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who see the September 11 tragedy as a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to overthrow the regime in Iraq and establish
a whole series of puppet governments. The aim of this faction is to
implement, in rapid order, plans long on the drawing boards for tightening
America's grip on the oil-rich Persian Gulf and Caspian basin and extending
America's military presence across the Eurasian continent.
In his speech, Bush provided no explanation of the political and historical
background to the September 11 disaster. With the complicity of the media,
the administration is seeking to bury the fact that those whom it has
singled out as the perpetrators of the terrorist atrocity were trained and
financed by the United States. The Islamic fundamentalists excoriated by
Bush, including bin Laden, got their start as CIA "assets" in Washington's
covert campaign to oust Soviet-backed regimes in Afghanistan in the 1980s an
operation that was carried out while Bush the elder, formerly the CIA
director, held the post of vice president under Ronald Reagan.
Only a few years ago the US tacitly endorsed the accession to power of its
old Taliban allies. The Taliban thus become the latest in a long line of
one-time American allies who ran afoul of the US and found themselves being
denounced as war lords and modern-day Hitlers and targeted for destruction,
a list that includes Manuel Noriega of Panama, Farrah Aidid of Somalia,
Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia.
The media establishment is well aware of this history. Indeed, some twenty
years ago CBS news anchor Dan Rather traveled to Afghanistan and posed for
the TV cameras in Mujahaddin robes in order to build support for the Islamic
fundamentalist forces.
This history is being suppressed because it demonstrates that those who are
today leading the American people into war, with all of the disastrous
consequences it will entail, are politically implicated in the tragedy that
took the lives of thousands of Americans in New York and Washington.
The ominous implications for democratic rights of the war drive were
underscored by Bush's announcement of a new Cabinet-level position, the
Office of Homeland Security, to coordinate all domestic intelligence and
security operations.
The operations of the CIA, previously limited by law to external targets,
will now be coordinated under a top-level federal agency with those of the
FBI and other police agencies to wire-tap and spy on people within the US.
This alone constitutes a huge breachof civil liberties.
But it is only one part of a broader assault on democratic rights, which
includes the indefinite detention of legal aliens, deportations without
judicial review and a vast expansion of the government's powers to tap
phones and intercept electronic communications.
No section of the political establishment has questioned Bush's demand for a
blank check to wage war abroad and crack down on civil liberties at home. At
the very outset of the military crusade, both parties have disavowed all
expressions of dissent.
The Democratic Party demonstrated its abandonment of any pretext of
opposition by foregoing the traditional response of the minority party to a
presidential address to Congress. Instead the Democratic Senate majority
leader, Thomas Daschle, made a joint appearance with Senate Minority Leader
Trent Lott, in which the latter summed up the state of American politics
with the remark, "There is no opposition party."
The media, which universally lauded Bush's address, was silent on the
contradiction between the democratic rhetoric that filled the Capitol and
the defacto establishment of a one-party state. Nor did the pundits care to
point out that Bush's explanation for the terrorists' hostility toward the
United States "They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a
democraticall y elected government" was given by a man who was installed in
the White House by anti-democratic and illegitimate means.
It is both ironic and menacing that the launching of a war in the name of
freedom is accompanied by the disintegration of the most elementary
principles of democracy and the dismantling of basic constitutional
safeguards. Bush's injunction, "Either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists," is not only a formula for waging war and toppling governments
overseas, it is a rallying cry for a McCarthyite witch-hunt against
political dissent within the US.
The effective collapse of any opposition serves an additional political
function. It means there can be no examination of the staggering security
failures that made the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
possible.
The atmosphere of fear and panic allows the government to escape any
accounting for what was, at the very least, a case of criminal negligence,
and then turn around and insist that the people's security and well-being
require that they accept the abrogation of their democratic rights.
Bush's speech was also significant for what it lacked. Reflecting the
extremely privileged and narrow class interests he represents, Bush called
for a bailout of the airline companies at taxpayer expense, but had nothing
to say to the millions of workers, small businessmen and retirees whose
livelihoods are threatened by the collapse of the stock market, the plunge
in consumer spending and the mass layoffs that have followed the September
11 disaster.
Neither Bush nor the Democrats are proposing any serious measures to provide
for the families of air industry employees who are being thrown onto the
street in colossal numbers. Nor are they proposing a safety net for shop
owners in New York who have been wiped out by the destruction of an entire
section of the city. As for small investors and retirees whose life savings
and retirement nest eggs are being gutted, they can expect no help from
Washington.
The terrible loss of life on September 11 was, in the final analysis, a
product of the reckless, irresponsible and reactionary international
policies pursued for decades by American governments that represent, not the
American people, but rather a financial and corporate elite. Now this same
elite is seizing on the tragic events in New York and Washington to drag the
opulation without democratic debate or discussion and in an environment
characterized by hysteria and political intimidation into a "war unlike any
other" that can only produce new disasters and tragedies, both abroad and at home.
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