On the War

by Brett Carollo, Rochester, N.Y.

It may be heresy, but it’s not a secret: U.S. foreign policy, at least since post-WW II, has been predicated upon creating political conditions advantageous to the interests of the corporate elites who wield de facto control over the government. But maintaining and justifying massive disparities of wealth is growing increasingly arduous, and inasmuch as the economic and political edge previously enjoyed by the U.S. is beginning to slip, the Empire must lean more heavily on military might to secure its interests.

Iraq is key, not only because taking it could mean co-opting much of the planet’s dwindling oil reserves (to the exclusion of competing world powers like Russia, France, and China) and establishing a more stable military presence in an intransigent region, but because of the risky political gamble taken by the neo-conservatives in the Bush Administration. According to many of the rightist think tank strategies for world domination endorsed by the hawks in charge, Iraq was supposed to be a quick and uncontroversial prize, one of many to come, yet it has thus far been extremely costly. The hawks have managed, in a relatively short span of time, to dismantle a long nexus of diplomatic relationships and polarize the rest of the world. Their only genuine ally—the other country that Iraq refused to grant oil contractsis Britain, notwithstanding the so-called‚ ”coalition of the willing”, which apparently includes all of the thirty or so countries in the world not explicitly opposing the war. Many of the countries, which include such exemplars of human rights as Singapore and Columbia, were apparantly unaware they were on the list until it was published by the State Department. This lack of support is of no small geopolitical importance; it surely presages hard times for the Empire when the nations of the world, as venal as they are, see their interests diverging so dramatically from those of the U.S.

The past months have also seen the largest and best orgainized political demonstrations in history. Some of the most massive ones have been staged in Britain, prompting MP Alice Mahon to remark that Bush and Blair ”have managed to radicalize a whole generation”. Indeed, and although there are no superpowers left to check U.S. hegemony, the hawks overlooked the most formidable obstacle to their Pax Americana—everybody else.

In spite of vigourous propaganda campaigns and covert intelligence operations, the Administaration failed to fabricate a single plausible pretext for the invasion, which is being retroactively justified by the ”Bush wdoctrine”—the new on which declares that the executive branch of the U.S. government may circumvent international law, the constitution, and the will of the world and unilaterally attack any country it deems a threat. In times past, this sort of thing was referred to as ”the law of the jungle”. Yet they have still managed, in spite of some sporadic clamors of dissent, to dupe the credulous and indoctrinated American public, who, so long as their consumtion needs are met, are easily sold on any kind of snake oil.

But we are moving into a new epoch, and maybe the worst miscalculation of the Bush Administration was to politicize an otherwise docile and mindless public. The mainstream media, dutifully fulfilling their charge as the propaganda organ for the Pentagon and the corporate elites, are still trying to keep up the charade, though. Since the beginning of the war, they have lapsed into full-fledged disinformation mode, spinning many fantastic tales since the beginning of the war. This war is being covered like no other, we are told, because reporters are ”embedded” with the combat units, enabling us to marvel at the Pentagon’s new, live expurgated militainment reality TV show, devoid of civilian casualties or aversion to foreign invaders, anything that might undermine faith in the political orthodoxy. ”Embedded journalists” are members of the media handpicked by the Pentagon for their demonstrated sympathies to U.S. militarism, and they show us what is approved by the Pentagon. The rift between the infantile political narrative peddled by the mainstream media and reality is accentuated by a reasonably reliable and critical foreign press and a few good domestic independent outlets—and maybe even Americans are beginning to catch on.

The political aftermath of the September 11th attacks and the present war in Iraq have undoubtedly been the two most significant American political events in this nascent century. They have clearly divided the thinking minority from the unthinking herd. The carnival of lies and prevarications that our institutions are founded upon has reached such stunning excesses that no one who is not morally, spiritually, and intellectually bankrupt can possibly regard it as legitimate anymore. Many are beginning to recognize that there is something dark at the core. The war in Iraq is not a blunder based on the noblest of intentions, as we have been told about so many other U.S. atrocities; nor was it a noble blunder when the CIA helped Saddam Hussein ascend to power in the late 1970s or when the Reagan administration uncritically armed his regime, supported him, in the late 1970s or when the Reagan administration uncritically armed his regime, supported him, and lied for him throughout the 1980s. Those actions were, as this war is, part of a larger pattern endemic to the economic and political infrastructure of our society. Saddam Hussein was supported when he served the interests of power; when this support was no longer expedient to those interests, he was demonized—and everyone bought it.

Ideology is dead. The sort of conventional political solutions being proposed by the U.S. peace movement are not worthy of serious consideration anymore. It is said that the 1960s was the American Apocalypse, the time when America lost an innocence that it never had, a time when a considerable contingent of the population became sentient of the true nature of American culture and politics. 60s idealism is dead, and ist legacy is an irrelevant and largely commodified novelty. The hippies, the counterculture, or whatever they’re called; these people who naively imagined a better world quit, sold out, moved to the suburbs, voted for Reagan and bought Volvos—a revolting affirmation of materialism, of emptiness. And we’re left in the wasteland. The romantic apathy and nihilism of the 1990s seemed appropriate, but times are getting desperate now. The Empire, and perhaps even our entire civilization, is moribund, and this reality, recognized elsewhere, will become increasingly apparent as the numbing palliative of the bread and circuses gives way to the grim realities of the 21st century.

Brett Carollo is a student at Suny Brockport, New York
Email: brett_carollo@yahoo.com