- The title is not part of my usual vocabulary, but sometimes
an expression fits so perfectly that it becomes irresistible. And so it
is for the authors of a neo-con "manifesto" on foreign policy.
The Gomer Pyle of American Presidents recently was presented with a plan
to reorder much of the world, a plan intended to build on his remarkable
achievements in Iraq and Afghanistan, spreading resentment and future mayhem
against Americans across the world.
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- Have you ever noticed how many of those odd people, the
American neo-cons, use the rhetoric of nineteenth century European radicals?
You'd be hard put to count all the references to "revolutionary,"
"radical," and "manifesto" in the American Right's
industrial-scale output of pamphlets and tracts. This practice may have
started as a marketing gimmick, the catchy application of a term from an
unexpected context, but this kind of language is far more revealing than
its authors realize.
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- Hitler was partial to just this kind of language. That
lover of fire engine-sized roadsters, cane and cape at the opera, and tea
with elegant pastries always used such terms to describe his political
movement when he strutted in public with whip and jackboots.
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- One of the authors of this "manifesto" is David
Frum. After years of dutifully churning out his quota of words for one
of America's well-endowed, right-wing propaganda mills styled as academic
institutes, Frum's big moment came with his elevation to presidential speechwriter.
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- Knowing the quality of Bush speeches, you might think
that being dismissed as a speechwriter would be impossible, but Frum managed
the feat. He or his wife, the case is not clear, committed the sin of speechwriter
lse-majest, letting people know he wrote the original version of what became
the "axis of evil" expression. You are never permitted to know
such things. You are supposed to think such stirring words sprang directly
from the head of President Pyle. When Frum or his wife bragged of his contribution
to history on the Washington cocktail circuit, they found themselves packing
their bags before the hangovers had lifted.
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- Crushed by now missing out on the greatest period of
winks, nods, and influence-peddling since President Grant's administration,
Frum hasn't risen from his knees since being ushered from the imperial
presence. Teaming up with Richard Perle may or may not rekindle a nearly-dead
career, but it is Frum's first opportunity to walk upright in months.
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- Richard Perle needs little introduction. He might be
summed up as Washington's resident Creature from the Black Lagoon, displaying
the accumulated toxic effects of a lifetime spent wallowing and bottom-feeding
in the Potomac. He is exalted "fellow" at another of those propaganda-mill
institutes, Defense Department wheeler-dealer and profiteer, tireless advocate
for every American colonial war and bombing run, and energetic lobbyist
for the Israeli military's way of doing things.
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- The "manifesto" is contained in a new book,
An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. Now, there's an intriguing
title suggesting fresh thought. An end to evil? Do the neo-con crackpots
ever stop talking as though the date were 700 BCE? Perhaps Pat Robertson,
Jerry Falwell or others of the trailer-park heavenly host are credited
in the Acknowledgments with contributions or inspiration?
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- The title should frighten us. After all, anyone even
near to influencing the use of atomic-powered aircraft carriers and thermonuclear
weapons who speaks about ending evil in foreign policy is a very dangerous
person. One can't help but recall General Ripper's concerns over a declining
"purity of essence" in Dr. Strangelove as he launched his strategic-bomber
wing on a pre-emptive nuclear attack. But as we live in a time when an
American president himself speaks this mumbo jumbo, I suppose we have added
nothing to our stock of fear. As for pre-emptive attack, hasn't President
Pyle made that an official doctrine of the United States?
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- The authors express concern over what they see as a faltering
will to win in Washington. Will to win? The expression chillingly recalls
radio announcements crackling over the airwaves from Berlin, circa 1944.
Again, language can be so revealing.
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- I suppose an American military now up to its armpits
in long-term commitments combined with a public tired of hearing about
dead soldiers would have a little something to do with this perception
of flagging will. Undoubtedly, too, a frenzy of spending while cutting
taxes and running monumental trade deficits, a reckless policy combination
that ultimately threatens the economic stability of the United States,
might contribute. But, as we all know, when you are fighting evil, there
can be no half-hearted measures. That's how the President's oily, well-fed
spiritual advisors in silk suits admonish their flocks as they pass the
collection plate for the third time.
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- The "manifesto" brims with stuff to please
the kind of Americans who never read genuine news or books on international
affairs yet maintain chest-thumping opinions on how to treat foreigners.
Surprise, surprise, we find in these pages demands for "regime change"
in Syria and Iran, although the explanation of just where the U.S. would
get sufficient holy warriors for these crusades while still holding down
Iraq and Afghanistan may be consigned to some very fine type at the back
of the book. As it is, America's reprehensible system of buying poor young
military recruits by promising money for college is coming under strain
with the sudden realization that you may actually have to face a stinking,
pointless war for your tuition.
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- Our steak-fed Potomac revolutionaries give little thought
to how the international community would regard such wholesale aggression.
Their anointed leader already has done more damage to America's traditional
alliances and friendships than perhaps any president in history, but Frum
and Perle think America needs to throw off entirely the yoke of international
concerns. If Marx and Engels could call for humanity to cast off its chains,
Frum and Perle can call for humanity to take a hike.
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- The boys appear to have sworn off using their expense
accounts at cafes serving frites with their bifteck, because they are really
pissed of at France. They want France treated as a rival, perhaps even
an enemy, of the United States. Never mind that France secured America's
independence in the late eighteenth century and that she has been a dependable
ally through a number of wars and conflicts since. Never mind that France
remains one of the world's true beacons for freedom and the human spirit,
the kind of precious values supposedly motivating Frum and Perle.
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- Does it matter that France sustained a successful struggle
against terrorism long before the subject became trendy with neo-cons and
did so without overthrowing other societies? Does it matter that France
might have some genuine insight and wisdom in these matters? France simply
must be punished, especially, one suspects, because virtually every point
the French made in public against attacking Iraq has proved embarrassingly
accurate.
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- The scope of Frum and Perle's historical vision is not
limited to creating more havoc in the Middle East and spitting on old friends
like France, they want to do great things in Asia, too, starting with a
military blockade of North Korea. America should seriously plan a strike
on that country's nuclear facilities. These are the words of pyromaniacs
ready to throw lighted matches into dry tinder around Los Angeles just
for fun. Again, concerns about how the world would see such acts of war
are brushed aside.
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- More importantly, concerns about what South Koreans might
think are brushed aside, people whose thriving, populous capital of Seoul
is completely vulnerable to attack from the North. Of course, in this Frum
and Perle reflect the spirit of much of the President's dealings with the
North to date. He doesn't waste time on anything beside the point, the
point pretty much always coming down to "you're with us or against
us." Anyway, people in Washington are better equipped to understand
Korea than Koreans, aren't they? A lifetime of scribbling for imperial
patrons on how the planet should be run qualifies you as an expert and
a man of action, so Frum and Perle call for action.
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- The manifesto is about many things, but despite its boast,
it is not about ending terror. As a brave Anglican Bishop of Durham, Tom
Wright, said so perfectly recently, "For Bush and Blair to go into
Iraq together was like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton [a
bad neighborhood in London] to stop drug dealing. This is not to deny there's
a problem to be sorted, just that they are not credible people to deal
with it." The manifesto is about permanently deputizing the white
vigilantes.
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- Its recommendations lead in only one direction and that
is towards a system of extreme suppression of views and beliefs in the
world that mainstream America either does not understand or holds to be
unacceptable. It invites a fear-forged world in which there can never be
enough security, paralleling closely what one sees in territories touching
on Israel. Israel never has enough security. Occupation, reprisals, and
wars haven't supplied enough. Arrest and torture haven't supplied enough.
Spies and assassinations haven't supplied enough. Atomic weapons haven't
supply enough. Walls will not supply enough.
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- The simple act of refusing to make a genuine peace is
what makes Israel's paranoid apparatus seem necessary. And so the United
States with its invasive, destructive policies that created Bin Laden in
Afghanistan, that inflamed Hussein's ambitions, or that brought a quarter
century of hatred from Iran. Frum and Perle don't want a revolutionary
change in policies, they want Israel's paranoid apparatus extended to world-scale.
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- This is a mad vision of a world which perhaps resembles
nothing so much as Orwell's 1984 politely introduced through the back door
in the name of stopping terror instead of being imposed by a police state,
although in this vision America would become effectively a police state
vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
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- The manifesto might be viewed as a call to fulfill what
was once known as America's Manifest Destiny when only Indians and Spaniards
in Western North America were affected. Now that call is openly to assume
the imperial purple of Rome on a planetary scale. You have the military
power, America, use it. To hell with what the other ninety-five percent
of humanity thinks or fears.
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- Considering the book's timing, entering an election year,
its major purpose may be to make Bush look moderate by comparison. Of course,
he is not a moderate: every major proposal in this book has already been
noised about during his administration. But then again neither is he a
war hero, yet he has been able to stupidly play act at that with considerable
success for a large audience of Americans. Who, a year or so ago, would
have believed Bush pig-headed enough actually to invade Iraq, an action
whose full, terrible costs will be coming in for years? Not a single reason
given for his doing so was true, yet Americans still support him in the
polls.
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- Elect Bush again and the sick puppies' manifesto may
just become a forecast.
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