See Spot Run
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
How bewildering and disgusting the barrage of half-truths, propaganda, and outright lies emanating from the White House on the war on Iraq – which have gone unchallenged by our "independent" press. The level of argument being put forth by administration spokesmen borders on insulting. They jump from one unsubstantiated, outdated, or wildly speculative claim to another, parrying legitimate concerns about their lack of hard evidence with such sloganeering responses as, "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." As Mike Matt put it, "What’s next? ‘See Spot run’?"
A friend tried to persuade me that perhaps they really do have some hard evidence, but can’t reveal it without compromising their sources. That won’t work, though: with the exception of Britain, our European allies, who behind closed doors have seen everything we’ve got, treat our alleged "evidence" with amused grins. Even the Council on Foreign Relations observed that if President Bush had had any evidence of an ongoing nuclear program in Iraq, he would have presented it. The closest he came was to warn that Iraq had ordered some aluminum rods. Well, bombs away, then!
The looming war with Iraq bears more than a passing resemblance to the Third Punic War, when the ancient Romans, at the urging of demagogic politicians, laid waste to a defeated and impotent Carthage. The rest of the world really thinks we have lost our minds, what with our huffing and puffing about the terrible danger posed by a sad little country whose people have known nothing but malnourishment, devastation, and ruin for the past eleven years.
Accusations of Iraqi links to al-Qaeda have proven equally slippery. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice assures us that she knows of "documented" links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden’s group, though she hasn’t actually shown us any. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insists that al-Qaeda are in Iraq, though the only truth to that claim appears to be that a few al-Qaeda have indeed turned up in the northern, Kurdish-controlled area of Iraq, over which Saddam has no control. (The Kurds, remember, are the ones who are supposed to be our friends.)
Saddam, we are told, may supply al Qaeda, with whom he as the head of a secular state has profound ideological differences, with dangerous weapons. Yet nothing in his past indicates that he is suicidal (for surely he knows that any such attacks on the United States would lead to his swift and utter destruction). "If there is any leader in the world who is not irrationally suicidal," writes columnist Alan Bock, "someone who is alleged to sleep in a different palace every night and have at least two or three body doubles is on the list."
Perhaps the drive for war does indeed have something to do with controlling Iraq’s oil, as some critics (and Iraqi spokesmen) allege, and perhaps it has something to do with Israel. Given how thin the administration’s case has been (and I highly recommend Jude Wanniski’s point-by-point refutation of Bush’s speech to the United Nations, available in the archive at polyconomics.com), the drive for war cannot really be all about the hysterical claims about "weapons of mass destruction," or the indisputable fact that Saddam is just a really bad guy – if that were our criterion, we’d be engaged in a ceaseless string of wars in a ridiculous and quixotic quest for a world free of mean people.
Well, hold on a second. Such a string of wars is precisely what the neoconservatives desperately want. The neoconservative Wall Street Journal recently reacted with horror to President Bush’s suggestion that a US invasion might not be necessary if the Iraqi people or top Iraqi generals were to take matters into their own hands and eliminate Saddam themselves. The Journal and its neoconservative base want this war, no matter what Saddam does to comply and no matter if he is even still alive. For the neocons – and Bush is surrounded by them – this war is only the opening salvo in a long-term military struggle to extend a US-dominated New World Order to the Middle East. All this nonsense about "weapons of mass destruction" serves the useful purpose of bringing gullible Americans on board for the war effort, but it couldn’t matter less to those who are pushing the hardest for war, who waste little time worrying about these propagandistic claims. "The goal this time," the Journal writes, "shouldn’t be merely disarmament or even ‘regime change,’ but the liberation of the Iraqi people and the Middle East."
So the war is to liberate not simply the Iraqi people but also, apparently, the entire Middle East. What that open-ended commitment could mean is made clear by neoconservative guru Norman Podhoretz: war after war against the enemies of Israel, at American expense. After Saddam is overthrown, in Podhoretz’s vision, it’s on to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and of course the Palestinian Authority – and even to the more or less pro-American regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Podhoretz is far from alone: the same kind of imperial bluster can be heard from Daniel Pipes, William Kristol, and the rest of the neoconservative stable of armchair generals.
"How many body bags filled with American boys," wonders Pat Buchanan, "will it cost to realize the vision of…Podhoretz, and destroy all the regimes in Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority? Whose sons will they be? Do they care?"
Good questions. But to a juvenile "conservative movement" that thinks conservatism is synonymous with military bluster and conquest, they fall on uncomprehending ears.
Even among a heavily propagandized American public, support for this war is very soft. Congressmen have been reporting that calls from constituents have been running as high as 99 to one against war. And the march to war proceeds apace.
Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz – who, by the way, is an Eastern rite Catholic, something unthinkable under an Islamic regime, which Iraq is not – recently appeared to resign himself to the inevitability of a US attack. "We cannot boast we can break the US army," Aziz said. "But we shall defend our homeland; it is our responsibility and we are prepared for it." Thus a people who have done us no harm, and who have suffered unspeakably since 1991, now face the prospect of still greater horror, all for motives that remain mysterious and unclear.
Apart from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the only other world leader who has been beating the drums for war has been Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Now on one level, we can certainly understand why Sharon would want to see Iraq targeted: it is a hostile state, and one that launched missiles into Israel in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War.
But there may be much more to Sharon’s support for an Iraqi invasion than meets the eye. Some observers have warned that Sharon may well intend to use the distraction that war with Iraq would provide as an opportunity to carry out the ethnic cleansing of the two million Palestinian Arabs living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Impossible? Two years ago, a Gallup poll found only eight percent of Jewish Israelis in favor of such expulsion (euphemistically referred to as "transfer"). By April of this year that figure had risen to 46 percent. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat recently told Reuters: "All the signs indicate that Sharon’s mind is set on exploiting the preparations for war on Iraq to destroy the Palestinian Authority and the peace process. I’m afraid that once war breaks out Sharon may…even go further by trying to transfer Palestinians outside the West Bank and Jerusalem and Gaza Strip."
It isn’t just Palestinians who are drawing attention to this possibility. In late September, some 99 Israeli scholars signed a letter to the Guardian (UK) newspaper warning of such a possibility and urging the international community to watch Israel’s behavior closely. "We are deeply worried," the letter said, "by indications that the ‘fog of war’ could be exploited by the Israeli government to take further action against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing…. We call upon the international community to pay close attention to events that unfold within Israel and in the occupied territories, to make it absolutely clear that crimes against humanity will not be tolerated, and to take concrete measures to prevent such crimes from taking place."
Ben Shapiro, a columnist for townhall.com (a widely visited conservative website) who is idiotically described as a "staunch conservative," recently sketched a fantasy scenario in which an Israeli spokesman in the year 2005 recalls the events of the past three years, during which time "we expelled the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs from Judea, Samaria and Gaza and annexed the land…. Those who fought were arrested and exiled to Cyprus or killed in battle."
Effie Eitam, an extreme nationalist whom Sharon put in charge of Israel’s militarized settlement program earlier this year, openly favors a solution in which all the Palestinians in the occupied territories would be moved to Jordan. "I think our Jewish conscience will be clean if we say [to the Palestinians], ‘you brought war and in war there are great human tragedies,’" said Eitam this year. "They will cross the river and go to Jordan."
Martin van Creveld, Israel’s foremost military historian, pointed out in the Telegraph (UK) in late April that an American attack on Iraq would provide Ariel Sharon with the cover he needs to carry out the expulsion of the two million Palestinian Arabs currently living in the West Bank and Gaza. Although van Creveld hastened to add that he himself did not support such a policy, he laid out how he thought it might happen:
First, the country’s three ultra-modern submarines would take up firing positions out at sea. Borders would be closed, a news blackout imposed, and all foreign journalists rounded up and confined to a hotel as guests of the Government.
A force of 12 divisions, 11 of them armored, plus various territorial units suitable for occupation duties, would be deployed: five against Egypt, three against Syria, and one opposite Lebanon. This would leave three to face east as well as enough forces to put a tank inside every Arab-Israeli village just in case their populations get any funny ideas….
The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a few brigades. They would not drag people out of their houses but use heavy artillery to drive them out; the damage caused to Jenin would look like a pinprick in comparison.
For a variety of reasons, van Creveld utterly discounts the possibility of effective intervention on the Palestinians’ behalf by neighboring Arab states. But what about the much-vaunted "international community"? Wouldn’t they prevent such ethnic cleansing from taking place? "I would not count on it," says van Creveld. "If Mr. Sharon decides to go ahead, the only country that can stop him is the United States."
And the US is unlikely to do much, since it regards itself as being "at war with parts of the Muslim world that have supported Osama bin Laden. America will not necessarily object to that world being taught a lesson – particularly if it could be as swift and brutal as the 1967 campaign; and also particularly if it does not disrupt the flow of oil for too long."
Although I am not predicting that this will happen, it is not by any means an implausible scenario. "It should be obvious," observes Emory University political science professor Dan Reiter, "that Sharon is going to do whatever he wants, and we’re not going to do anything to stop him."
But enough about Israel. This proposed war, which one knowledgeable general after another has described as sheer lunacy, risks all kinds of unpredictable consequences. It would certainly inflame anti-Americanism in the Middle East still further. The potential for truly dangerous instability is very great: "moderate" Arab regimes, who are terrified of the reaction of their already irate populations should US action against Iraq occur, could well fall to Islamic extremists. That’s the tip of the iceberg. A postwar Iraq could easily fall apart, with a Shi’ite Muslim enclave in the south and a Kurdish one in the north. The Shi’ites in Iraq might then be in a position to rouse the Shi’ite minority in Saudi Arabia. Likewise a Kurdish enclave in the north would certainly create problems for Turkey, and even a possible war. The nightmare scenarios are endless.
One American organization opposed to war with Iraq drew up a poster showing Osama bin Laden, dressed as Uncle Sam, exhorting the US, "I Want You – to Invade Iraq." Below, it says:
Go ahead. Send me a new generation of recruits. Your bombs will fuel their hatred of America and their desire for revenge. Americans won’t be safe anywhere. Please, attack Iraq. Distract yourself from fighting Al Qaeda. Divide the international community. Go ahead. Destabilize the region. Maybe Pakistan will fall – we want its nuclear weapons. Give Saddam a reason to strike first. He might draw Israel into a fight. Perfect! So please – invade Iraq. Make my day.
These are precisely the kinds of objections that the President and the Secretary of Defense, in their zeal for war, never pause to entertain, and which our complicit media never bother to raise.
Where in all this is the conservative’s caution, his prudence, his statesmanship? Where is the consideration of cost? Where is the consideration of long-term consequences? Could a conservative really support the enormously expensive – not to mention dangerous and intensely unpopular – long-term postwar occupation of Iraq being bandied about by Bush and his advisers? How can empire-building possibly be a conservative posture for a republic?
Pat Buchanan is right – there is absolutely nothing "conservative" about any of this.
Meanwhile, polling data in the Middle East reveal that the Arab population by and large does not dislike the United States for its "freedoms," as we are endlessly told, but for its policies. The Washington Post reported in early October that in a poll of eight Middle Eastern countries, the United States, Britain, and Israel were viewed unfavorably by a majority in all eight – including Kuwait, the country the US liberated in 1991! On the other hand, France, Canada, Germany, and Japan earned high marks, yet again undermining the standard propaganda line according to which Arab hatred is inevitable. The present course toward war with Iraq seems designed to intensify that hatred.
The neoconservative cabal that is cheering on this endless series of wars, writing in National Review and the Weekly Standard, needs to be thoroughly debunked and exposed for the dangerous fanatics they are, before their mad adventures lead to American bloodbaths abroad and increasingly terrible catastrophes at home.
November 11, 2002
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