- The most peculiar aspect of George W. Bush's war on terrorism
is how little it has to do with terrorism.
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- A country that doesn't trust its government to run a
health system becomes remarkably credulous whenever the word terrorism
is mentioned.
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- Certainly, it has much to do with Iraq. According to
the Washington Post, the U.S. president has authorized his Central Intelligence
Agency to send armed teams into Iraq to capture and if necessary kill that
country's leader, Saddam Hussein.
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- Many otherwise neutral observers might think this just
fine. Who likes Saddam anyway?
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- But given that Iraq appears to have had nothing to do
with either Al Qaeda or the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S., the Bush regime's
fixation with Saddam seems, at the very least, odd.
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- Bush's explanation is that Iraq is stockpiling weapons
of mass destruction. Scott Ritter, a former member of the United Nations
inspection team charged with looking at these matters, insists this isn't
true.
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- But even if it were, one might be tempted to ask why
Iraq is being singled out. The U.S. itself has weapons of mass destruction.
So do Russia, China, France, Britain, India, Pakistan and Israel.
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- Yet so far, the only nation that has allowed such weaponry
to fall into the hands of terrorists seems to be the United States. American
officials acknowledge that the fatal toxin used in last fall's anthrax
letter attacks probably came from one of their own military labs.
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- Then there is the war on Afghanistan. That, we were told,
was the first victory in the battle against terrorism.
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- But now, according to the New York Times, both the CIA
and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have concluded that the U.S.-led
war did not diminish the terrorist threat.
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- In fact, the Times reports, the Afghan war made matters
worse by scattering potential hostiles to other countries and inflaming
anti-American sentiment among Islamic militants worldwide.
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- Here the CIA and FBI are echoing a wisdom first articulated
last fall by those skeptical of the Bush war, including (to their great
credit) Alexa McDonough's New Democratic Party caucus.
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- At the time, such critics were dismissed by some in the
North American media as professional anti-Americans and pusillanimous twerps.
Now it seems, the twerps were on to something.
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- This is not to say that the bombing of several hundred
Afghan civilians might not have an upside. The war could result in a government
that does more for that sad country than the misogynists of the now departed
Taliban.
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- But that, as we say in the war biz, would be a collateral
benefit. The U.S., Canada, Britain and their assorted friends didn't invade
Afghanistan to help women. They invaded to demolish what was at the time
called the "terrorist infrastructure" behind the attack on the
World Trade Center. And in this, they seem to have failed spectacularly.
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- So what is the war on terrorism about, if not terror?
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- Cynics would say it is about oil. Bush's main targets
are intimately linked to the politics of oil production. Iraq is one of
the world's largest producers. Afghanistan is strategically placed next
to the rich oil and gas fields of Central Asia.
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- All of this is true.
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- My own view, though, is that the war is about opportunity
in the larger sense. Americans are notoriously entrepreneurial; the Bush
regime is no exception.
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- Even beyond oil, the attacks on New York and Washington
opened up rich new possibilities for a president whose very legitimacy
was under question until Sept. 11.
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- In effect, they gave him and his administration carte
blanche.
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- Does Attorney-General John Ashcroft object to the U.S.
Constitution's Bill of Rights? Bingo, it's gone.
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- Witness the case of Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah al
Muhajir, the one-time New York gang banger accused of plotting to release
a radioactive, or "dirty" bomb in his own country. Padilla, who
is being held indefinitely in a military prison, has not been charged ó
for the simple reason that there is not a whit of evidence of his alleged
crime.
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- Yet most of his fellow citizens seem to think that's
just fine. A country that doesn't trust its government to run a health
system becomes remarkably credulous whenever the word terrorism is mentioned.
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- Does the president want to settle scores with Iraq, the
enemy his father never quite beat? No problem. All he has to do is mention
the T-word and Congress falls into line. Troops to the Philippines? Why
not.
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- If, during these grand adventures, the Bush warriors
happen to run across terrorists, well, that's fine too. But it is clearly
not a priority.
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