International Socialists

Anyone who still believes that George W. Bush's "War Against Terror" has anything to do with seeking justice for the victims of the September 11 attacks should read Nicholas Lemann's "The Next World Order."

 

Bush's foreign policy advisers are concentrating on "how do you capitalise on these opportunities" that September 11 handed the US, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Lemann. September 11 "has started shifting the tectonic plates in international politics. And it's important to try to seize on that and position American interests and institutions and all of that before they harden again."

 

Behind this political science jargon lurks a dangerous imperial plan for US domination. The US is the world's unchallenged superpower that now feels it can openly declare itself the world's cop. Bush's advisers - and their dimwit boss - speak openly of "redrawing regional maps, especially in the Middle East" and "replacing governments by force," Lemann writes.

 

These imperial goals are not new to the cabal around Bush. At the end of the Cold War, this crew advocated total US global dominance to "preclude the rise of another global rival for the indefinite future." The author of those words, an aide to Vice President Cheney during the first Bush administration is Zalmay Khalilzad, the second Bush administration's man in Afghanistan.

 

Today, they have what they've always wanted - a blank cheque for the Pentagon and a president willing to let them indulge their greatest fantasies for world domination. They have even announced a US intention to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.

 

And they are perfectly prepared for the US to act alone to try and impose its will on the world. The administration's recent "unsigning" of its endorsement of the International Criminal Court is symbolic of this arrogance.

 

In Palestine, they have aided and abetted the Sharon government's war crimes against the Palestinians. With Bush cheering from the sidelines, the Israeli military massacred hundreds of Palestinians and destroyed much of the basis of Palestinian social life. When the rest of the world reacted in horror to the slaughter in Jenin, the US collaborated with Israel to sink a United Nations investigation at the Jenin refugee camp. Adding insult to injury - and showing his contempt for world opinion - Bush called Sharon a "man of peace."

 

If Bush admires Sharon, it's because he's got an affinity with the old war criminal. Sharon's whole career has been based on provoking and fighting wars to extend Israel's domination over the Palestinians and Arab regimes. Sharon is the embodiment of the Israeli view that "the Arabs only listen to force." Bush and his team believe the same - not just about the Middle East, but about the entire world.

 

Despite near universal opposition in the Middle East and among US allies, the US says it will go ahead with plans to invade Iraq and to topple Saddam Hussein. It's not that Saddam has anything to do with September 11 or other terrorist attacks. The administration's last hope of connecting Saddam to September 11 dissolved in May, when the CIA and the Czech government shot down longstanding reports of a meeting between a September 11 hijacker and an Iraqi agent in the Czech Republic.

 

The get-Saddam crowd remains undeterred. The Middle East upheaval over Palestine seems to have delayed, but not stopped, US plans for an invasion and occupation of Iraq.

 

For Bush, deposing Saddam means more than just silencing his father's critics or gaining a whip hand over Middle Eastern oil supplies. Like the Gulf War in 1991, "regime change" in Iraq would signal to anyone that the US can crush any state that doesn't sign on willingly to Pax Americana.

 

That was the message the Bush administration tried to send Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Chavez is hardly the radical his opponents in the country's elite make him out to be. But he hasn't shown Bush and his oil industry backers the proper kind of deference. And for this, the US made a fairly open (but fortunately bungled) attempt to overthrow him in a military coup in April. Just as the US support for Sharon's war crimes in Palestine made a mockery of US pretensions to stand for "human rights," US scheming with the Venezuelan coup makers showed how little the US cares about democracy.

 

Bush's plans will lead to decades of wars and destruction, from Colombia to the Middle East. No doubt, they will make a repeat of September 11 more likely, not less. Moreover, the pursuit of endless war opportunities threatens to suck billions down the Pentagon rat hole and away from important social needs.

 

But Bush's plans can - and must - be stopped. Like the first Bush administration, this one could easily unravel. Papa Bush mistook his popularity ratings as an unqualified mandate in 1991, only to find himself out of office after the 1992 presidential elections.

 

This administration is mistaking its standing in the polls as a blank cheque to carry through some policies long cherished by the political right, but which are profoundly unpopular. And this is true internationally as well. It is one thing to be the world's undisputed military and economic superpower. It is another thing to mistake that as a carte blanche to bludgeon the rest of the world into submission.

 

This is both true of other states in the world - including major US allies - and even more so, the mass of the world's population. So while the US gave a green light to the military in Venezuela, the mass protests which followed the coup gave smug US officials a black eye. It also united all Latin American governments in denouncing US sponsorship of a military coup.

 

The Bush administration seems to think it has a blank cheque at home as a result of September 11. But this is not the case. The huge turnout of protesters at the April 20 antiwar/pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Washington marked an important first step. That sentiment must be organised into a growing movement to stop Bush's plans to make the world bow down before him.