- Don't worry, the White House is telling us. The world's
most powerful leader was simply making a rhetorical point. At a White House
press conference last week, just in case you haven't heard, President Bush
informed the American people that he had told world leaders "if you're
interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested
in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear
weapon." World War III. That is certainly some rhetorical point, especially
coming from the man singularly most capable of making such an event reality.
-
- Pundits have raised their eyebrows and comics are
busy writing jokes, but the president's reference to Armageddon, no matter
how cavalierly uttered and subsequently brushed away, suggests an alarming
context. Some might note that the comment was simply an offhand response
to a reporter's question, the kind of free-thinking scenario that baffles
Bush so. In a way, this makes what the president said even more disturbing,
since we now have an insight into the vision, and related terminology,
which hovers just below the horizon in the brain of George W. Bush.
-
- When I was a weapons inspector with the United Nations,
there was a jostling that took place at the end of each day, when decisions
needed to be made and authorization documents needed to be signed. In an
environment of competing agendas, each of us who championed a position
sought to be the "last man in," namely the person who got to
imprint the executive chairman (our decision maker) with the final point
of view for the day. Failure to do so could find an inspection or point
of investigation sidetracked for days or weeks after the executive chairman
became distracted by a competing vision. I understand the concept of "imprinting,"
and have seen it in action. What is clear from the president's remarks
is that, far from an innocent rhetorical fumble, his words, and the context
in which he employed them, are a clear indication of the imprinting which
is taking place behind the scenes at the White House. If the president
mentions World War III in the context of Iran's nuclear program, one can
be certain that this is the very sort of discussion that is taking place
in the Oval Office.
-
- A critical question, therefore, is who was the last
person to "imprint" the president prior to his public allusion
to World War III? During his press conference, Bush noted that he awaited
the opportunity to confer with his defense secretary, Robert Gates, and
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice following their recent meeting with
Russian President Vladimir Putin. So clearly the president hadn't been
imprinted recently by either of the principle players in the formulation
of defense and foreign policy. The suspects, then, are quickly whittled
down to three: National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Vice President
Dick Cheney, and God.
-
- Hadley is a long-established neoconservative thinker
who has for the most part operated "in the shadows" when it comes
to the formulation of Iran policy in the Bush administration. In 2001,
following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Hadley (then
the deputy national security adviser) instituted what has been referred
to as the "Hadley Rules," a corollary of which is that no move
will be made which alters the ideological positioning of Iran as a mortal
enemy of the United States. These "rules" shut down every effort
undertaken by Iran to seek a moderation of relations between it and the
United States, and prohibited American policymakers from responding favorably
to Iranian offers to assist with the fight against al-Qaida; they also
blocked the grand offer of May 2003 in which Iran outlined a dramatic diplomatic
initiative, including a normalization of relations with Israel. The Hadley
Rules are at play today, in an even more nefarious manner, with the National
Security Council becoming involved in the muzzling of former Bush administration
officials who are speaking out on the issue of Iran. Hadley is blocking
Flynt Leverett, formerly of the National Security Council, from publishing
an Op-Ed piece critical of the Bush administration on the grounds that
any insight into the machinations of policymaking (or lack thereof) somehow
strengthens Iran's hand. Leverett's article would simply underscore the
fact that the Bush administration has spurned every opportunity to improve
relations with Iran while deliberately exaggerating the threat to U.S.
interests posed by the Iranian theocracy.
-
- The silencing of informed critics is in keeping with
Hadley's deliberate policy obfuscation. There is still no official policy
in place within the administration concerning Iran. While a more sober-minded
national security bureaucracy works to marginalize the hawkish posturing
of the neocons, the administration has decided that the best policy is
in fact no policy, which is a policy decision in its own right. Hadley
has forgone the normal procedures of governance, in which decisions impacting
the nation are written down, using official channels, and made subject
to review and oversight by those legally and constitutionally mandated
and obligated to do so. A policy of no policy results in secret policy,
which means, according to Hadley himself, the Bush administration simply
does whatever it wants to, regardless. In the case of Iran, this means
pushing for regime change in Tehran at any cost, even if it means World
War III.
-
- But Hadley is simply a facilitator, bureaucratic
"grease" to ease policy formulated elsewhere down the gullet
of a national security infrastructure increasingly kept in the dark about
the true intent of the Bush administration when it comes to Iran. With
the Department of State and the Pentagon now considered unfriendly ground
by the remaining hard-core neoconservative thinkers still in power, policy
formulation is more and more concentrated in the person of Vice President
Cheney and the constitutionally nebulous "Office of the Vice President."
-
- Cheney and his cohorts have constructed a never-never
land of oversight deniability, claiming immunity from both executive and
legislative checks and balances. With an unchallenged ability to classify
anything and everything as secret, and then claim that there is no authority
inherent in government to oversee that which has been thus classified,
the Office of the Vice President has transformed itself into a free republic's
worst nightmare, assuming Caesar-like dictatorial authority over almost
every aspect of American national security policy at home and abroad. From
torture to illegal wiretapping, to arms control (or lack of it) to Iran,
Dick Cheney is the undisputed center of policy power in America today.
While there are some who will claim that in this time of post-9/11 crisis
such a process of bureaucratic streamlining is essential for the common
good, the reality is far different.
-
- It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely,
and this has never been truer than in the case of Cheney. What Cheney is
doing behind his shield of secrecy can be simply defined: planning and
implementing a preemptive war of aggression. During the Nuremberg tribunal
in the aftermath of World War II, the chief American prosecutor, Supreme
Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, stated, "To initiate a war of aggression,
therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international
crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself
the accumulated evil of the whole." Today, we have a vice president
who articulates publicly about global conflict, and who speaks in not-so-veiled
language about a looming Armageddon. If there is such a future for America
and the world, let one thing be certain; World War III, as postulated by
Dick Cheney, would be an elective war, and not a conflict of tragic necessity.
This makes the crime even greater.
-
- Sadly, Judge Jackson's words are but an empty shell.
The global community lacks a legally binding definition of what constitutes
a war of aggression, or even an act of aggression. But that isn't the point.
America should never find itself in a position where it is being judged
by the global community regarding the legality of its actions. Judge Jackson
established a precedent of jurisprudence concerning aggression based upon
American principles and values, something the international community endorsed.
The fact that current American indifference to the rule of law prevents
the international community from certifying a definition of criminality
when it comes to aggression, whether it be parsed as "war" or
simply an "act," does not change the fact that the Bush administration,
in the person of Dick Cheney, is actively engaged in the committing of
the "supreme [war] crime," which makes Cheney the supreme war
criminal. If the world is not empowered to judge him as such, then let
the mantle of judgment fall to the American people. Through their elected
representatives in Congress, they should not only bring this reign of unrestrained
abuse of power to an end, but ensure that such abuse never again is attempted
by an American official by holding to account, to the full extent of the
law, those who have trampled on the Constitution of the United States and
the ideals and principles it enshrines.
-
- But what use is the rule of law, even if fairly and
properly implemented, if in the end he who is entrusted with executive
power takes his instructions from an even higher authority? President Bush's
relationship with "God" (or that which he refers to as God) is
a matter of public record. The president himself has stated that "God
speaks through me" (he acknowledged this before a group of Amish in
Pennsylvania in the summer of 2004). Exactly how God speaks through him,
and what precisely God says, is not a matter of speculation. According
to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush told him and others
that "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then
he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." As such, at least
in the president's mind, God has ordered Bush to transform himself into
a modern incarnation of St. Michael, smiting all that is evil before him.
"We are in a conflict between good and evil. And America will call
evil by its name," the president told West Point cadets in a speech
in 2002.
-
- The matter of how and when an individual chooses
to practice his faith, or lack thereof, is a deeply personal matter, one
which should be kept from public discourse. For a president to so openly
impose his personal religious beliefs, as Bush has done, on American policy
formulation and implementation represents a fundamental departure from
not only constitutional intent concerning the separation of church and
state but also constitutional mandate concerning the imposition of checks
and balances required by the American system of governance. The increasing
embrace by this president of the notion of a unitary executive takes on
an even more sinister aspect when one realizes that not only does the Bush
administration seek to nullify the will of the people through the shackling
of the people's representatives in Congress, but that the president has
forgone even the appearance of constitutional constraint by evoking the
word of his personal deity, as expressed through his person, as the highest
form of consultation on a matter as serious as war. As such, the president
has made his faith, and how he practices it, a subject not only of public
curiosity but of national survival.
-
- That George W. Bush is a born-again Christian is
not a national secret. Neither is the fact that his brand of Christianity,
evangelicalism, embraces the notion of the "end of days," the
coming of the Apocalypse as foretold (so they say) in the Book of Revelations
and elsewhere in the Bible. President Bush's frequent reference to "the
evil one" suggests that he not only believes in the Antichrist but
actively proselytizes on the Antichrist's physical presence on Earth at
this time. If one takes in the writing and speeches of those in the evangelical
community today concerning the "rapture," the numerous references
to the current situation in the Middle East, especially on the events unfolding
around Iran and its nuclear program, make it very clear that, at least
in the minds of these evangelicals, there is a clear link between the "end
of days" prophesy and U.S.-Iran policy. That James Dobson, one of
the most powerful and influential evangelical voices in America today,
would be invited to the White House with like-minded clergy to discuss
President Bush's Iran policy is absurd unless one makes the link between
Bush's personal faith, the extreme religious beliefs of Dobson and the
potential of Armageddon-like conflict (World War III). At this point, the
absurd becomes unthinkable, except it is all too real.
-
- Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation's greatest founders,
made the separation of church and state an underlying principle upon which
the United States was built. This separation was all-inclusive, meaning
that not only should government stay out of religion, but likewise religion
should be excluded from government. "I never submitted the whole system
of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in
philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking
for myself," Jefferson wrote in a letter to Francis Hopkinson in 1789.
"Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent."
If only President Bush would abide by such wisdom, avoiding the addictive
narcotic of religious fervor when carrying out the people's business. Instead,
he chooses as his drug one which threatens to destroy us all in a conflagration
derived not from celestial intervention but individual ignorance and arrogance.
Again Jefferson, in a letter written in 1825: "It is between fifty
and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered
it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation
than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."
-
- Nightmares, more aptly, unless something can be done
to change the direction Bush and Dobson are taking us. The problem is that
far too many Americans openly espouse not only the faith of George W. Bush
but also the underlying philosophy which permits this faith to be intertwined
with the governance of the land. "God bless America" has become
a rallying cry for this crowd, and those too ignorant and/or afraid to
speak out in opposition. If this statement has merit, what does it say
for the 6.8 billion others in the world today who are not Americans? That
God condemns them? The American embrace of divine destiny is not unique
in history (one only has to recall that the belt buckles of the German
army during World War II read "God is with us"). But for a nation
born of the age of reason to collectively fall victim to the most base
of fear-induced theology is a clear indication that America currently fails
to live up to its founding principles. Rather than turning to Dobson and
his ilk for guidance in these troubled times, Americans would be well served
to reflect on President Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered
in the middle of a horrific civil war which makes all of the conflict America
finds itself in today pale in comparison:
-
- "Both [North and South] read the same Bible
and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other....
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered
fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.... [T]hat He gives to both North
and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense
came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes
which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?"
-
- God is not on our side, or the side of any single
nation or people. To believe such is the ultimate expression of national
hubris. To invoke such, if one is a true believer, is to embrace sacrilege
and heresy. This, of course, is an individual right, granted as an extension
of religious freedom. But it is not a collective right, nor is it a right
born of governance, especially in a land protected by the separation of
church and state.
-
- The issue of Iran is a national problem which requires
a collective debate, discussion and dialogue inclusive of all the facts,
and stripped of all ideology and theocracy which would seek to deny reasoned
thought conducted within a framework of accepted laws and ideals. It is
grossly irresponsible of an American president to invoke the imagery of
World War III without first sharing with the American people the framework
of thought that produced such a comparison. Such openness will not be forthcoming
from this administration or president. Not in the form of Stephen Hadley's
policy of no policy, designed with intent to avoid and subvert both bureaucratic
and legislative process and oversight, or Dick Cheney's secret government
within a government, operating above and beyond the law and in a manner
which violates both legal and moral norms and values, and certainly not
in the president's own private conversations with "God," either
directly or through the medium of lunatic evangelicals who embrace the
termination of all we stand for, and especially the future of our next
generation, in a fiery holocaust born from the fraudulent writings of centuries
past. The processes which compelled George W. Bush to speak of a World
War III are intentionally not transparent to the American people. The president
has much to explain, and it would be incumbent upon every venue of civic
and public pressure to demand that such an explanation be forthcoming in
the near future. The stakes regarding Iran have always been high, but never
more so than when a nation's leader invokes the end of days as a solution.
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