------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 27, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
CONVENTIONAL DEVASTATION AND NUCLEAR TERROR: BUSH PUSHES WAR ON MANY FRONTS By Fred Goldstein The Bush administration is pushing out on all fronts in an effort to develop a permanent state of belligerency and war. Right now it is trying to prolong the war in Afghanistan, is supporting Israel's war in Palestine, is planning to launch wars in other areas of the world, and is trying to keep the people of the U.S. in a perpetual state of fear, suspicion and patriotic war fever. This is what was behind the showing of the inflammatory tape of Osama bin Laden for 24 straight hours by all the television networks. This is what is behind the escalating campaign against Muslim students, other Middle Eastern immigrants and Muslim charities. And this is what is behind the periodic announcements of "terror alerts" coming from Washington. On the battlefield in Afghanistan, the Pentagon is trying to prolong the war and the killing as long as possible-to wreak destruction and havoc and to condition the population at home to a state of prolonged war. As an example, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went to Afghanistan to review the troops, assess the situation and dictate instructions to the new puppet leadership. During a visit to an airfield, he met with Hamid Karzai, who is to be installed as the provisional head of the new government, and the incoming Secretary of Defense, Gen. Muhhamad Fahim. Rumsfeld told them that even though the Afghan local forces considered the war over, the U.S. was going to continue its military operations in the country. RUMSFELD DECIDES WHEN WAR IS OVER Warlord commanders in the Tora Bora region said they had taken control of the area and, according to the New York Times of Dec. 17, commanders Muhhamed Zaman and Hazirat Ali, tribal leaders in the region, both declared that the military conflict was over. "There is no need for American bombing," commander Zaman said. "Our men have control over the situation." Commander Ali, speaking of the fortified caves in which bin Laden might be hiding, said, "There is no cave that is not under the control of the mujahadeen." On the next day, according to the Times of Dec. 18, "the Pentagon delivered its answer. ... American AC-130 gunships continued to prowl over the mountain area. Then a thunderous explosion lit up the sky. The American bombing had resumed and was continuing on the other side of the mountain today." "They have got their own program," declared Ali. "Last night they even bombed us." Washington's determination to keep the war going as long as possible and to bring as much killing and destruction as possible was further demonstrated earlier in the week. "The anti-Taliban, anti-Qaeda commanders were furious and dejected," reported the Times of Dec. 13, " believing that they had negotiated a cease-fire and surrender agreement in good faith, only to see it derailed by American bombing and strafing by AC-130 gunships through the night and a heavy barrage early in the morning, just before the surrender was supposed to take place." The agreement was to allow the Al Qaeda fighters to surrender and for Arab, Pakistani and other foreign fighters to be turned over to the United Nations. But Rumsfeld was not having any of that. The Pentagon vetoed the agreement with bullets and the killing continued. THE BUSH DOCTRINE: MILITARY DEVASTATION This military policy was dictated by the political strategy of the so-called Bush Doctrine of perpetual war for decades to come, first enunciated to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 14. Bush made a follow-up elaboration of this new, ultra-militaristic doctrine in a speech at the Citadel military college in Charleston, S.C., on Dec. 12. Pumped up by the victory in Afghanistan, he denounced those who thought that after the destruction of the Soviet Union "our military would be used overseas, not to win wars, but mainly to police and pacify; to control crowds and contain ethnic conflict. They were wrong." He drove home the lesson that the Pentagon and the ruling class wanted everyone to learn from the war in Afghanistan. "Our military has a new essential mission: For states that support terror, it's not enough that the consequences be costly; they must be devastating." The New York Times, reporting on the speech, said that "Mr. Bush cited the American military campaign in Afghanistan as a model for future wars, and said the United States needs to further develop unmanned planes, like the Predator, and precision-guided bombs." With intentional racist insensitivity, Bush referred to the war in Afghanistan and the new use of high technology by Special Forces operations as "strikes from horseback in the first cavalry charge of the 21st century." Speaking at this Southern military academy in the land where slavery was defended and the Native people were conquered by the cavalry, the symbolism was hard to miss. It is fitting that Bush has now chosen the Citadel to make two major policy speeches. Charleston is the birthplace of the Confederacy-the site of Fort Sumter. U.S. NUCLEAR TERROR AND CANCELLATION OF ABM TREATY In the same speech Bush signaled his intention to withdraw from the ABM Treaty of 1972, which he did officially a few days later. It shows the dimension of the global military threat that the Rumsfeld wing of the Pentagon had been working on before Sept. 11. Breaking the treaty will free up the U.S. government to begin the construction of anti- missile silos in Greeley, Alaska, as early as June of next year. There was much ado in the ruling class opposition about how this would damage relations with Russia. It is a characteristic of this administration's fiercely militarist wing, headed by Rumsfeld and his deputy secretary Paul Wolfowitz and supported by a host of strategists for the military-industrial complex, that they advocate subordinating diplomacy wherever it interferes with military expansion or plans for aggression. These are the so-called unilateralists. The multilateralist "coalition builders," represented in the administration by Secretary of State Colin Powell, tried mightily to work out a negotiated arrangement with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, Powell was in Moscow trying to work it out when, according to the New York Times of Dec. 12, "Mr. Bush concluded ... that Secretary Powell's last effort would likely fail." Bush had already told Putin by telephone that he was pulling out. Setting up an ABM system is a highly aggressive act. It means the establishment of a first-strike force, since an opponent is prevented from retaliating to an attack. Thus a country like the People's Republic of China, which has only 20 or so missiles capable of reaching the U.S., would have no deterrent to prevent a military attack by the U.S. in the event that the Pentagon is able to perfect a workable ABM system. During the era of the USSR, both Moscow and Washington signed the ABM Treaty precisely to eliminate first-strike capability on the other side. Setting up an effective missile "defense" system, however, lays the basis for further Pentagon nuclear terrorism. The decision was regarded as "a major policy defeat for Secretary Powell" and "a major victory for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, fresh from the success of the military campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda," according to the Times. BUSH AND SHARON: PALESTINE IS PHASE TWO The war momentum has swept the Bush administration to new levels of aggression. The war against the Palestinians is in reality Phase Two. Washington quickly incorporated the massive offensive by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon into its so-called "war on terrorism." Sharon, a war criminal of major proportions who is currently being tried in Belgium for crimes committed during the siege of Beirut in 1982, is trying to destroy the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Islamic Jihad, Fatah and all other instruments of resistance to the Israeli occupation. U.S. Apache helicopters, U.S. F-16s, U.S. missiles, U.S. bullets and billions of dollars of U.S. military aid are waging this war. It could not continue without full support from the Bush administration. Powell had dispatched a negotiating team headed by retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of the Central Command, to try to placate moderate Arab regimes and the European imperialist allies and give the impression that the U.S. wanted to calm the situation in Palestine. The Sharon regime sabotaged the mission in advance by assassinating a major Hamas military commander, then opening up a major attack after the inevitable retaliation by Hamas. The Zinni mission was converted into a pressure group to squeeze Yasir Arafat to open up civil war against the resistance movement. Zinni finally had to be recalled. PLANNING THE NEXT WAR WELL UNDERWAY As the war in Afghanistan is winding down and the war in Palestine is heating up, the Bush administration is already trying to plan its next war. The New York Times of Dec. 17 wrote that it will be "making some difficult choices in the next few weeks... . Is it taking the war to Iraq ... to Somalia, or perhaps Indonesia and the Philippines? Or alternatively, will events pick Phase Two for him, perhaps in Pakistan or the Middle East. "For weeks now it has been clear that the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon are not waiting to see Mr. bin Laden in handcuffs ... before preparing the next phase of the war." The greatest pressure in the government is to overthrow Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The struggle inside the administration has progressed from whether to do it to how to do it. The difficulty in plunging into the heart of the Middle East in a wild act of unprovoked aggression is giving major sections of the ruling class pause for thought. It was one thing for the Pentagon to overthrow the unpopular, austere, medieval, counter-revolutionary Taliban government, which had no military to speak of. It is another thing to challenge the hundreds of millions of Arab people who have seen the genocidal destruction of villages and civilians in Afghanistan and who have been watching the Israelis kill Palestinian men, women and children with U.S. weapons and U.S. military support for the last 14 months of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. At the present there is an active effort to find some way to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The Pentagon is exploring the possibility of encircling the regime and initiating a proxy war involving the Turkish government, a section of the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Shiites in the south. Whether such a course is practical and whether it will satisfy the ultra-militarists is doubtful. But in any case, one thing is for sure, the hatred for U.S. imperialism among the masses of the Middle East is growing with each new act of aggression. Poverty and unemployment in the Middle East are growing. The governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria are all holding their breath at the moment, as mass discontent grows daily. A new act of U.S. military aggression could truly set off a conflagration that could not be put out. And above all, if the capitalist economic crisis in the U.S. continues to deepen, the masses of workers who are losing their jobs, going on short hours, losing benefits, and being driven into poverty may decide that the war they really want to fight is the war for social and economic justice at home-- not a war to conquer the Middle East or southern Asia for the benefit of the super-rich who are behind the layoffs and are raking in all the aid Congress can muster. What the militarists never count on is that mass resistance, at home and abroad, can bring all their grandiose plans of world conquest to naught. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
