Manufacturing Enemies- America’S Utterly Mad Ethnocentrism

Blair’s vainglorious condition though was more than self-deception, he was also visited by frequent Churchillian fantasies. He some how allowed himself to equate attacking a destitute and besieged Iraq with taking on the Third Reich. We can only be too thankful that Hitler had to deal with the likes of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin and not the present generation of delusional Western leaders. Nor is the eminent Mr. Blair a student of human nature. In a recent speech in New York he referred to Iran as a country fostering terrorism and Islamic extremism reminiscent of early 20th century fascism. What Mr. Blair and other stupid white men from the West fail to realize is that if you try to push a child, group or country to hard in one direction you are going to get exactly the opposite the result you want. If you are continually manipulating, demonizing and punishing the chasm only deepens, extremist behavior is fomented, and any possibility of reconciliation more elusive. Blair forgets all too quickly that Iran has no reason to trust the West. For eight years it fought a war against Iraq lead by Saddam Hussein who started this war and at that time was a US ally and had their blessing and active support. Hussein quite obligingly was acting as a US surrogate. Donald Rumsfeld’s first visit to Baghdad was to shake hands with Hussein and deliver best wishes. As a matter of convenience a blind eye was turned to Hussein’s atrocities. Given the sacrifices Iraq had made on America’s behalf Hussein might have felt Kuwait was his pay off. Rumsfeld’s later visits to Iraq were stealthy fly-bys to inspire his troops in their final and wanton destruction of that country. Hussein learned the hard way being an American ally is a very precarious existence, just as Turkey is learning now. Blair is following his scripted fraudulence religiously, portraying the terrorists as the aggressors when it was the West who attacked Iraq, Afghanistan, are stirring up trouble in Pakistan, Turkey and are now targeting Iran. A more impartial assessment might term these “terrorists” as Arab nationalists or freedom fighters as they see their countries over run and utterly destroyed, but of course in the illustrious West the term “terrorist” is an essential instrument of demonization and propaganda. It is utterly bizarre that Blair, as Washington’s poodle, should be sent to the Middle East as a peace envoy considering his involvement in the destruction of Iraq. A peace envoy must first and foremost be somebody of trusted integrity and neutrality-Blair has neither. The rhetoric we are hearing now has a familiar ring to it. It is an echo of what we heard before the attack on Iraq in 2003. The difference being the impending attack on Iran will be nuclear. As for genocidal tendencies, since 9/11 there is an endless bloodlust that seems to require the death of a thousand Arabs for every Western victim of this so called terrorism. Now there is war; serial warfare, pre-emptive, covert warfare, and remote-control warfare. It doesn’t seem to matter that the 20th century saw the deaths of tens of millions in wars of very size. There is a determination the 21st will be every bit as bloody. Where enemies do not exist they will be manufactured. Where they do exist their capabilities will be appropriately exaggerated to suit the political agenda at hand. Enemies and their manufacture are essential as huge military arsenals cannot be left to rust and collect dust and arm sales quotas must be met. US president Dwight Eisenhower warned his countrymen of the danger of the military industrial complex getting out of control such that it might become a self-serving hydra headed monster enslaving the country. Little could he imagine it would come to be a global tyranny where war and arms production race perilously out of control. The terrorist attack of September 11th 2001 was described at the time as an event that would reshape the world. In the hands of sinister political opportunists just that has happened. Where there should have been a well planned, deliberate and calculated response it was treated as a call to arms followed by crazed, misdirected and disproportionate responses. 9/11 is past being an event, it is now an epoch, one that will not be ending any time soon. Values, liberties, structures have been turned inside out. The world has, quite speciously, been polarized into a simple-minded us versus them scenario. It is a tragedy that is ongoing. The casualties, human, financial, and societal mount daily. Osama bin Laden must be utterly delighted as he sees Western leaders vilify him from their rickety podiums, expend vast resources, human and financial on their Pyrrhic wars; as we exaggerate his capabilities and become our own worst enemies. “Against All Enemies” The 9/11 epoch has generated an endless supply of books among them is Richard Clarke’s, Against All Enemies. As a high level bureaucrat serving under three presidents, Bush 41 and 43 and Clinton, he offers an insiders view of the war on terrorism. Clarke might be considered a pioneer in American counter-terrorism, first of all being a driving force in identifying al-Queda, its roots and development and then as the consummate bureaucrat developing strategies for fighting terrorism, and then as advocate trying to convince his political bosses of the urgency of counter-terrorist measures. He documents the complexities, politics and turf wars as an inescapable part of policy development. Clarke’s book is interesting for what it does say and equally so for what it doesn’t. He brings forward many valuable insights but at the same he suffers from the ethnocentric pandemic, another victim of Blair’s Syndrome and he too needs a refresher on 3rd Newton’s Law. He refuses to connect dots at a time when there is need to connect them more than ever as he eerily leaves out essential information. Early on he tells with some relish how the Reagan administration took full credit for the demise of the USSR by drawing it into futile and very expensive conflicts, Afghanistan for one. But he fails to make the connection that Osama bin Laden has sprung the same trap for the US and its allies. As he outlines the origins of al Queda an obvious conclusion is that US foreign policy in its treachery was a driving force behind its development. Prior to the Gulf War the US sought to base troops in Saudi Arabia and eventually won Saudi approval on the condition they would leave after Kuwait was liberated. Having foreign troops on its soil drove a deep wedge in Saudi society and outraged Osama bin Laden in particular who had made the offer to liberate Kuwait with his own mujahadeen- an Arab solution to an Arab problem. US troops never did leave and Clarke slides over the distinct possibility that this occupation in itself could have been the trigger event for 9/11. It was no coincidence virtually all of the terrorists were Saudi citizens. He mentions April Glaspie, US ambassador to Iraq, but slides over the well known contention it was most likely a diplomatic blunder on her part that left Saddam Hussein with the impression he could attack Kuwait with impunity. Clarke’s book doesn't make sense as he documents many of the US and other casualties that have been victims of terrorism, mentioning several times the terrorist attack in Beirut in 1983 that killed 248 US Marines. The casualties listed are minor on a global scale of tragedies. The reader is left to ask so what’s all the fuss about and why all the urgency? Clarke cannot bring himself to mention that US foreign policy has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Arabs and the terrorists acts he lists are really pitiful reprisals for monstrous crimes against the Arab peoples. Clarke’s book only makes sense when, for example, it is read in conjunction with Robert Fisk’s, The Great War for Civilization/The Conquest of the Middle East. Where Clarke spent 30 years as a bureaucrat, Fisk spent almost the same thirty years as a frontline journalist living and working in the Middle East. As the consummate journalist Fisk is completely free of any ethnocentrism. He calls the shots as he sees them and the US, among others, including his British homeland, take some very heavy hits from his razor-sharp insights. Reading Fisk makes Clarke’s sense of urgency coherent. Reading Fisk is also a documentation of America’s proficiency in manufacturing enemies. In many parts of his book Clarke appears as the mad-hatter of counter-terrorism listing page after page of counter-terrorist measures that must be funded, programmed and actualized to insure homeland security. The reader would like to tap him on the shoulder with a whispered reminder that none of these measures would be necessary if his country practiced a less ravenous and more humane foreign policy. Clarke’s book makes it clear that had there not been a change in administration 9/11 may never have happened. His efforts and those who worked with him had started to prove effective. The change in administration was a critical break in continuity that was compounded by the incoming Bush administration’s utter refusal to take the terrorist threat seriously. What was equally disturbing to Clarke was this new administration’s obsession with Iraq and establishing a rationale for attacking that beleaguered country. Intelligence of the day established incontrovertibly there was no connection between al-Queda and Iraq. Clarke rightly concludes an attack on Iraq would merely inflame the terrorist threat and further empower al-Queda, but it was clear this new administration, laced with nefarious ideologues had visions of empire and truth would be the first victim of its machinations. From the October 2007 issue of Vanity Fair magazine in an article entitled “Bush’s Bunker” it is reported that in August of 2001 a CIA analyst visited George Bush at his Texas ranch and delivered an intelligence brief indicating an al-Queda attack was imminent: “The president heard him out and then sent him packing with the words, ‘All right. You have covered your ass, now.’ ” Bush’s lack of concern and cynicism becomes spectacular in view of the fact that members of the Clinton administration, such as Clarke, had made the point adamantly and repeatedly that counter-terrorism was a critical issue that had to be addressed. Similarly, when CIA Director George Tenet, who worked closely with Clarke, tried to give Condoleeza Rice(at that time national security advisor) a similar advisory he too was given the brush off. The tragedy of 9/11 will always be shrouded in suspicion and intrigue- and fertile ground for conspiracy theorists- as the government of the day ignored repeated warnings, both domestic and international, that just such an attack was imminent. Though claims the administration was actively complicit verge on the outlandish there is the poisonous perception 9/11 was “allowed” to happen, like Katrina, all the warnings were in yet there was a indolent inability/unwillingness to act. When it did happen the administration was ever so quick to exploit the tragedy as validation for its agenda. 9/11 was seized upon as an opportunity to manufacture enemies. Neoconservatives needed a new Pearl Harbor to drive their agenda and this, most conveniently, was it. 9/11 is an event hollowed to the core by a blind ethnocentrism that refuses to entertain its real significance. It persists as the cause celebre for the war on terrorism, a tragedy ongoing ruthlessly exploited and a phoney premise leading to diabolical results. Iran in the cross hairs Clarke’s book is littered with debates as to when to bomb, when not to bomb. The presumption being the US has the right to bomb where ever and when ever it wishes. Clarke mentions how in many quarters the US came to be regarded as “The Mad Bomber.” He also mentions that during the period of UN sanctions against Iraq there was the “bomb anytime” policy. This was certainly so as US and British aircraft were continually degrading Iraqi infrastructure. By the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq the country had suffered twelve years of severe UN sanctions that resulted in the death of a half-million children. Its military capability destroyed, its civil infrastructure on the verge of collapse and yet the claim was brazenly made that this moribund country was still a threat and without one iota of shame it was attacked again! In the name of getting rid of one dictator-and former ally-over a million Iraqi’s have been slaughtered and 2.2 million now live as refugees in neighboring countries. Now, the US is still trying to over throw the government of Iran-what Saddam Hussein couldn’t do for them they must now do for themselves. The rather odious red herring is of course that dangerous terrorist states such as Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, only superpower extremely dangerous terrorist states like the US can be allowed to have them-and use them. The US does not see any irony in the fact they wish to deny Iran a nuclear deterrence as they threaten that very same country with a nuclear attack. But of course everybody knows the nuclear red herring is really very oily; for as with Iraq they want Iran’s oil and the mere thought of an Islamic government controlling one of the world’s key supplies is simply unacceptable. One of the brutal ironies of US aggression in the Middle East is that it might well end up with even less oil. By trying to control it all it might just manufacture enough enemies it gets even less. While Clarke’s book is flagrantly incomplete in its failure to discuss the manufacturing of enemies he draws the right conclusion that the US must work “with” Islamic leaders. US foreign policy has though always had a hard time comprehending the preposition “with” and what it actually means. Clarke does not delineate what he means, whether he is proposing a whole new approach or whether it is the usual hackneyed throw away phrase. It appears for the time being “working with” means a possible nuclear attack. The pundits are debating whether we are in WWIII or is this just the prelude to such a war on a much larger scale? It is no coincidence that Russian bombers are making forays into Western air space nor is it inconsequential when Russian president Valdimir Putin has a private audience with Iran’s Grand Ayatollah. We were betrayed on the Gulf War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and Iran in the cross hairs stinks of the same deceptions with much more dire consequences. On October 17th 2007 the US president warned that Iran having the bomb would lead to WWIII. This is absurdist black hilarity as it is blazingly obvious- like the 2003 lead-up to the invasion Iraq- the US is the aggressor and wants war at any cost. The US vice-president accuses Iran of killing Americans; of course for Dick Cheney it doesn’t matter that the death toll in Iraq alone is over a million people with over 2 million refugees. It remains for the global community to send the USA a loud and clear message: Starting wars based on lies and transparently obvious deceptions and bombing whomever you wish whenever you wish is self-destructive infantile ethnocentric behavior that must come to a stop. Robert Billyard © 2007 This article may be reproduced as long as it is properly credited, unaltered and used only for informative purposes.