America's
Best-Kept Secret
By Robert S. Becker
20 March, 2006
Countercurrents.org
There’s
a growing consensus: George Bush is totally out of touch, oblivious
to failure, his besieged head stuck in the sand. Perhaps so, but it’s
also America, distracted by surface details that’s out of touch
with underlying realities motivating the president.
One cost of hoodwinking the
nation about why we’re really in Iraq is confusion, even depression
why this administration stubbornly, almost irrationally, keeps sacrificing
brave soldiers without more obvious payoffs. It’s hardly irrational,
even if it turns out this specific war is wrongheaded. Public dismay
is perfectly reasonable if you decide Iraq is mainly about Iraqis, terrorism,
street insurgency, freedom, democracy, or even the removal of a despot.
Let us not confuse administration incompetence at executing a bad war
with blindness or lack of purpose.
A window on history
I am no ideologue but the
war in Iraq makes sense only if it’s about wider economic empire,
fueled by the need for resources and new markets. What the Bush crew
is doing, however crudely or cynically, is consistent with a pattern
of adventures beginning with the Spanish American war and reemerging
in Greece, Iran, Korea, Guatemala, Panama, Cuba, Chile, Vietnam, and
now Iraq.
The pattern follows proliferation.
National leadership, whether Republican or Democratic, first tries diplomatic
pressure, trade embargoes, even boycotts (as with Iraq). But when pressure
fails, presidents approve more insidious, violent “regime change”
(Iran and Chile come to mind). Finally, when the U.S. doesn’t
get its way, in goes Air Force and the Marines (or, sadly here, the
ill-trained National Guard).
Numbering Iraq in this historic
pattern accounts for three unarguable facts, all considerably obscured
in the vacuous debate —Iraq was strategically targeted for geo-political
reasons, not terrorism or national security; Congress rushed to commit
budget-busting funding virtually without discord; and, finally, the
calculated absence of an exit plan speaks volumes about why we invaded
and why we’re not leaving for a long, long time.
Why should we suppose a war
fueled by lies would end in truthful admissions? Deception works because
Americans, forgetting Vietnam, won’t openly endorse wars of conquest,
so high-minded compulsions must be substituted. Mr. Bush differs from
predecessors because of management ineptitude and especially bad lying,
not motivations or goals.
Because this administration
is the most “corporate” of all our presidencies, it suffered
more when standard marketing and public relations for soap and tobacco
failed. Deceived voters have limits, unlike when dissatisfied consumers,
who just grab another brand.
No withdrawal, no
victory marches
The inexorable pattern of
the American empire explains why we can’t leave Iraq any more
than Cuba or Germany or Korea. Yes, we will withdraw the most vulnerable
troops, easy targets for insurgents, and reduce the daily death rate.
But withdrawal will not only de-stabilize a region ready to explode,
terrorism aside. Withdrawal raises the ominous, unacceptable prospect
of Iranian puppets controlling a fundamentalist government in Iraq.
The operations of empire emerge clearly false justifications disappear.
Then, three unchallenged goals remain: regional geo-political control,
input where and when Iraqi oil goes; and finally the assertion of American
will as a super-power heeding its expansionist destiny.
Americans are in denial about
the darker costs of our affluence, especially periodic human casualties
charged to our culture’s unifying belief system – capitalism.
No major bridge or dam comes without some loss of life, so why should
war? Modern wars are thus never described realistically; they are sold
as about bad guys and freedom and national self-determination, as with
Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq.
Though we are bathed in political
divisiveness, we agree on core beliefs. What almost all Americans (and
Europeans) believe in, what transcends every cultural and social difference,
is that free markets and capitalism produce the most goodies for the
most people. Whether you’re a rabid evangelical, a liberal factory
worker, a over-worked doctor, a rightwing jurist, an oblivious small
business owner, or a well-heeled, detached CEO, we all bless and benefit
American capitalism. It’s the core Yankee religion, starting with
the Puritans, and no ones escapes, unless you live alone in the forest!
Dynamic capitalism
– the American way
This belief system is by
definition dynamic – growth and productivity depends on profits,
which means ever-widening markets, which means expansion. Certainly,
one hopes new markets behave peacefully but, like overheated gas, expansion
cannot be denied, whether by Peking or Washington or bin Laden. “War
is the health of the state” declared Randolph Bourne and our “state”
is capitalism and New York is the capital.
What other dynamic better
explains why we are in Iraq, why we must stay, and why there will likely
be more military "adventures." I am no pacifist and acknowledge
I share the blessings of this religion of business. I only wish someday
one president will tell more of the truth, so that a majority of us
may decide, in the open, whether to endorse this established payment
plan or choose a more humane, less destructive path. It won’t
be George Bush and it won’t be because his head is in the sand.
After all, why we're really in Iraq, and not leaving fast, is one of
America's best kept secrets!