- Behind the memorial candles and commercial remembrances
lies one of the most astute marketing campaigns in American political history.
This week, as the nation marks the first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks,
the Bush administration will twist voters' outpouring of raw emotion and
patriotic fervor into a launching pad for the inevitable invasion of Iraq.
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- In a September 12 speech to the United Nations, President
Bush will further showcase his arguments for knocking off Saddam Hussein.
Behind the scenes, his advisers have been torquing the arms of European
leaders, who rightly have withheld approval. The White House is making
a very bold gamble, one that has most of the world scared to death.
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- Last week the U.S. stepped up its air attacks, sending
100 warplanes to bomb Iraq, which has been under intermittent siege since
the end of Desert Storm in 1991. The Pentagon has continued to move ships,
planes, and troops into the region. As for any congressional debate, it's
as much for display as the deliberations of the UN, orchestrated to end
in a non-binding resolution backing Bush.
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- Bush can hope war will benefit the economy. But it could
also hurt. News early this week that Saudi Arabia would deny U.S. companies
access to its prized natural gas fields is only the first sign of what
could well turn into an economic energy boycott against the U.S., driving
up prices and torpedoing our markets.
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- Time was, America appeared strong enough to command more
respect. After World War II, the guiding myths of America had more resonance,
the empire more pure clout. Now, suddenly, the whole thing seems to be
coming apart, with the facts of our weakness outweighing any attempts at
spin. No frenzy of patriotism can hide the cracks in the pillars of our
society, at least not for long. Consider some of them:
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- Military: September 11 represents a huge military and
intelligence failure, symbolized by news that air traffic controllers knew
a second plane had been hijacked and was potentially heading for the World
Trade Center well before it crashed into the south tower. But our air defenses
were nowhere. The BBC just last week aired an interview with the Northeast
Defense Sector air commander saying that there were only four armed fighters
patrolling the Atlantic coast of the U.S. that day.
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- To bolster these fighters, the air force diverted other
unarmed planes from training missions. Two of them tried to respond, but
just couldn't get there in time. This from a Pentagon that has been insisting
since the start of the Cold War it could respond to a Soviet attack within
minutes. This from a military that won World War II. This from a military
whose budget this fiscal year will be around $396.1 billion, a military
that claims it can fight at least a two-front war.
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- Our retaliatory assault in Afghanistan was no more successful.
In attacking the Taliban, our target was Osama bin Laden and Supreme Leader
Mullah Muhammad Omar. Bush said he wanted the Al Qaeda boss "dead
or alive." Neither man has been captured, although the military continues
to push speculation that bin Laden died in its bombing of Tora Bora. And
as Debka.com, the site with the inside scoop on Israeli intelligence, reported,
the Taliban not only managed an orderly retreat but re-infiltrated Afghanistan
to continue a guerrilla war. Last week, they nearly killed the American-sponsored
president, Hamid Karzai.
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- As for the intelligence failures leading up to 9-11,
Congress has refused to initiate any serious investigation into the workings
of the spy agencies, sparking speculation that lawmakers are afraid of
implicating themselves in an election year. The Independent reported over
the weekend that shortly before 9-11, U.S. officials and the UN ignored
a message from the Taliban foreign minister that bin Laden was planning
a big attack inside the U.S. The friendly Taliban emissary was ignored
by the U.S. because his alert seemed like just another of the crazy warnings
that were exhausting the spies.
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- Foreign Alliances: Despite Tony Blair's rather odd weekend
backing for Bush ("The only decision that's been taken at this stage
is that inaction is not an option"), the U.S. remains at odds with
much of the world. Last week German chancellor Gerhard Schrder bluntly
summed up his position on any war with Iraq. "The . . . arguments
that I have cited against an intervention are so important that I would
also be against such an intervention ifófor whatever reasons and
in whatever formóthe Security Council of the United Nations were
to say 'Yes,' which I cannot imagine happening in the present situation,"
he told The New York Times. French president Jacques Chirac warned the
U.S. against "attempts to legitimize the unilateral and preemptive
use of force." The Chinese are opposed to our intervention. So are
the Japanese. Turkey opposes it. Saudi Arabia opposes it. Pakistan, Egypt,
and Jordan all say no.
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- Russian president Vladimir Putin said he had "deep
doubts that there are grounds for the use of force." The Russians
promise to veto such a move in the Security Council, no idle threat.
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- Energy: The U.S. imports well over half its oil, with
most of it coming from the Middle East. Iraq in particular sells half its
oil exports to the U.S. Iraq provides about 10 percent of all American
imports. As our intake of foreign fuel has grown, so has the demand for
it, epitomized by gas-guzzling SUVs. To get more oil, we are trying to
turn from the Middle East to the Russians and their pipelines into the
Caspian basin. Even so, we are totally socked into the Middle East for
the near future.
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- Economy: Even without threats from overseas, the economy
remains dead in the water, with no new jobs, only a slight increase in
wages, and unemployment near 6 percent. At the onset of the Bush presidency,
we were looking at a budget surplus of $405 billion. Halfway through his
term, the surplus had become a $157 billion deficit. Foreign investors
are pulling back. The S&P 500 has fallen 37 percent from its peak in
early 2000. As mutual funds tank, 401(k) pensions have disappeared.
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- Corporations: The functions of government have steadily
been taken over by corporate robber barons. Over the last decade, we have
re-created the business structures and atmosphere of J.P. Morgan. Each
administration since Reagan's has cut away at regulation. The market, not
the government, is left to sort out the mess.
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- Personal Freedom: Civil liberties have been steadily
reduced under the rubric of the war on terror. About 1200 people were taken
into custody after 9-11, some 752 of them on immigration charges. Many
of these people never had a hearing and never had a charge lodged against
them. Some were subjected to secret trials. Eighty-five percent were deported.
Some two dozen men are still being held as material witnesses, indefinitely,
and in complete secrecy. If a prisoner were lucky enough to speak to an
attorney, the government could routinely wiretap those conversations. For
any reason at all the government can now designate people as "enemy
combatants" and hold them in solitary, without the right to counsel.
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- Meanwhile the government has gained new powers. The FBI
can demand your library records and school transcripts. Agents can meander
through e-mail accounts at will. As always, the feds infiltrate public
meetings; the mere taking of a pamphlet has led to arrest and months in
prison.
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- Leadership: Foreigners don't know what to make of America.
To an outsider, Bush looks like a puppet run by VP Dick Cheney, who last
weekend single-handedly created a new foreign policy concept, the doctrine
of the "preemptive strike," to rationalize an attack on Saddam
Hussein. But what happens if China were to take up the preemptive strike
doctrine and attack us?
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- And then there are always Bush's cuckoo utterances. "The
world must understand . . . that its credibility is at stake," he
said after a recent Cabinet Room meeting with 18 Democratic and Republican
congressional leaders. Notwithstanding their guitar-playing cocker spaniel
chief, Brits polled lately held Bush as the third greatest threat to peace,
trailing only Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
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- American Ideals: These sorts of cracks in American society
might be remedied by opening up debate and changing direction. Instead,
politics has devolved into a nonstop talk show, paving the way for Bush
to prosecute a war for oil in the name of God.
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- Muslims act as a "fifth column in this country,"
says William Lind in Why Islam Is a Threat to America and the West. Ann
Coulter, the cold-blooded conservative columnist, has said of Muslims,
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert
them to Christianity." The former head of the Southern Baptist Convention,
Reverend Jerry Vines, also minced no words. For him, Muhammad was "a
demon-obsessed pedophile."
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- The Reverend Franklin Graham, son of the Reverend Billy
Graham and an evangelist preacher in his own right, said: "The God
of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian
or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very
evil and wicked religion."
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- The problem for America is that evil and wicked are exactly
what the world thinks of us.
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- http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0237/ridgeway.php
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