 George W. Bush gave a
speech Wednesday night before the Godfather of conservative Washington
think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute. In his speech, Bush
quantified his coming war with Iraq as part of a larger struggle to bring
pro-western governments into power in the Middle East. Couched in hopeful
language describing peace and freedom for all, the speech was in fact the
closest articulation of the actual plan for Iraq that has yet been heard
from the administration.
In a previous
truthout article from February 21, the ideological connections between
an extremist right-wing Washington think tank and the foreign policy
aspirations of the Bush administration were detailed.
The Project for a New American
Century, or PNAC, is a group founded in 1997 that has been agitating since
its inception for a war with Iraq. PNAC was the driving force behind the
drafting and passage of the Iraqi Liberation Act, a bill that painted a
veneer of legality over the ultimate designs behind such a conflict. The
names of every prominent PNAC member were on a letter delivered to
President Clinton in 1998 which castigated him for not implementing the
Act by driving troops into Baghdad.
PNAC has funneled millions of taxpayer
dollars to a Hussein opposition group called the Iraqi National Congress,
and to Iraq's heir-apparent, Ahmed Chalabi, despite the fact that Chalabi
was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison on 31
counts of bank fraud. Chalabi and the INC have, over the years, gathered
support for their cause by promising oil contracts to anyone that would
help to put them in power in Iraq.
Most recently, PNAC created a new
group called The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Staffed entirely by
PNAC members, The Committee has set out to "educate" Americans
via cable news connections about the need for war in Iraq. This group met
recently with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice regarding the
ways and means of this education.
Who is PNAC? Its members include:
* Vice President Dick Cheney, one of
the PNAC founders, who served as Secretary of Defense for Bush Sr.;
* I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's top
national security assistant;
* Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, also a founding member, along with four of his chief aides
including;
* Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz, arguably the ideological father of the group;
* Eliot Abrams, prominent member of
Bush's National Security Council, who was pardoned by Bush Sr. in the
Iran/Contra scandal;
* John Bolton, who serves as
Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security in the Bush
administration;
* Richard Perle, former Reagan
administration official and present chairman of the powerful Defense
Policy Board;
* Randy Scheunemann, President of
the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, who was Trent Lott's national
security aide and who served as an advisor to Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2001;
* Bruce Jackson, Chairman of PNAC, a
position he took after serving for years as vice president of weapons
manufacturer Lockheed-Martin, and who also headed the Republican Party
Platform subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Policy during
the 2000 campaign. His section of the 2000 GOP Platform explicitly
called for the removal of Saddam Hussein;
* William Kristol, noted
conservative writer for the Weekly Standard, a magazine owned along with
the Fox News Network by conservative media mogul Ruppert Murdoch.
The Project for the New American
Century seeks to establish what they call 'Pax Americana' across the
globe. Essentially, their goal is to transform America, the sole remaining
superpower, into a planetary empire by force of arms. A report released by
PNAC in September of 2000 entitled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses'
codifies this plan, which requires a massive increase in defense spending
and the fighting of several major theater wars in order to establish
American dominance. The first has been achieved in Bush's new budget plan,
which calls for the exact dollar amount to be spent on defense that was
requested by PNAC in 2000. Arrangements are underway for the fighting of
the wars.
The men from PNAC are in a perfect
position to see their foreign policy schemes, hatched in 1997, brought
into reality. They control the White House, the Pentagon and Defense
Department, by way of this the armed forces and intelligence communities,
and have at their feet a Republican-dominated Congress that will
rubber-stamp virtually everything on their wish list.
The first step towards the
establishment of this Pax Americana is, and has always been, the removal
of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of an American protectorate in
Iraq. The purpose of this is threefold: 1) To acquire control of the
oilheads so as to fund the entire enterprise; 2) To fire a warning shot
across the bows of every leader in the Middle East; 3) To establish in
Iraq a military staging area for the eventual invasion and overthrow of
several Middle Eastern regimes, including some that are allies of the
United States.
Another PNAC signatory, author Norman
Podhoretz, quantified this aspect of the grand plan in the September 2002
issue of his journal, 'Commentary'. In it, Podhoretz notes that the
regimes, "that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced, are not
confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a
minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as
'friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak,
along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of
his henchmen." At bottom, for Podhoretz, this action is about
"the long-overdue internal reform and modernization of Islam."
This casts Bush's speech to AEI on
Wednesday in a completely different light.
Weapons of mass destruction are a
smokescreen. Paeans to the idea of Iraqi liberation and democratization
are cynical in their inception. At the end of the day, this is not even
about oil. The drive behind this war is ideological in nature, a crusade
to 'reform' the religion of Islam as it exists in both government and
society within the Middle East. Once this is accomplished, the road to
empire will be open, ten lanes wide and steppin' out over the line.
At the end of the day, however,
ideology is only good for bull sessions in the board room and the bar.
Something has to grease the skids, to make the whole thing worthwhile to
those involved, and entice those outside the loop to get into the game.
Thus, the payout.
It is well known by now that Dick
Cheney, before becoming Vice President, served as chairman and chief
executive of the Dallas-based petroleum corporation Halliburton. During
his tenure, according to oil industry executives and United Nations
records, Halliburton did a brisk $73 million in business with Saddam
Hussein's Iraq. While working face-to-face with Hussein, Cheney and
Halliburton were also moving into position to capitalize upon Hussein's
removal from power. In October of 1995, the same month Cheney was made CEO
of Halliburton, that company announced a deal that would put it first in
line should war break out in Iraq. Their job: To take control of burning
oil wells, put out the fires, and prepare them for service.
Another corporation that stands to do
well by a war in Iraq is Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.
Ostensibly, Brown & Root is in the construction business, and thus has
won a share of the $900 million government contract for the rebuilding of
post-war Iraqi bridges, roads and other basic infrastructure. This is but
the tip of the financial iceberg, as the oil wells will also have to be
repaired after parent-company Halliburton puts out the fires.
More ominously is Brown & Root's
stock in trade: the building of permanent American military bases. There
are twelve permanent U.S. bases in Kosovo today, all built and maintained
by Brown & Root for a multi-billion dollar profit. If anyone should
wonder why the administration has not offered an exit strategy to the Iraq
war plans, the presence of Brown & Root should answer them succinctly.
We do not plan on exiting. In all likelihood, Brown & Root is in Iraq
to build permanent bases there, from which attacks upon other Middle
Eastern nations can be staged and managed.
Again, this casts Bush's speech on
Wednesday in a new light.
Being at the center of the action is
nothing new for Halliburton and Brown & Root. The two companies have
worked closely with governments in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Burma,
Croatia, Haiti, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Somalia during the worst chapters in
those nation's histories. Many environmental and human rights groups claim
that Cheney, Halliburton and Brown & Root were, in fact, centrally
involved in these fiascos. More recently, Brown & Root was contracted
by the Defense Department to build cells for detainees in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba. The bill for that one project came to $300 million.
Cheney became involved with PNAC
officially in 1997, while still profiting from deals between Halliburton
and Hussein. One year later, Cheney and PNAC began actively and publicly
agitating for war on Iraq. They have not stopped to this very day.
Another company with a vested interest
in both war on Iraq and massively increased defense spending is the
Carlyle Group. Carlyle, a private global investment firm with more than
$12.5 billion in capital under management, was formed in 1987. Its
interests are spread across 164 companies, including telecommunications
firms and defense contractors. It is staffed at the highest levels by
former members of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. Former
President George H. W. Bush is himself employed by Carlyle as a senior
advisor, as is long-time Bush family advisor and former Secretary of State
James Baker III.
One company acquired by Carlyle is
United Defense, a weapons manufacturer based in Arlington, VA. United
Defense provides the Defense Department with combat vehicle systems, fire
support, combat support vehicle systems, weapons delivery systems,
amphibious assault vehicles, combat support services and naval armaments.
Specifically, United Defense manufactures the Bradley Fighting Vehicle,
the M113 armored personnel carrier, the M88A2 Recovery Vehicle, the
Grizzly, the M9 ACE, the Composite Armored Vehicle, the M6 Linebacker, the
M7 BFIST, the Armored Gun System, the M4 Command and Control Vehicle, the
Battle Command Vehicle, the Paladin, the Crusader, and Electric Gun/Pulse
Power weapons technology.
In other words, everything a growing
Defense Department, a war in Iraq, and a burgeoning American military
empire needs.
Ironically, one group that won't
profit from Carlyle's involvement in American military buildup is the
family of Osama bin Laden. The bin Laden family fortune was amassed by
Mohammed bin Laden, father of Osama, who built a multi-billion dollar
construction empire through contracts with the Saudi government. The Saudi
BinLaden Group, as this company is called, was heavily invested in Carlyle
for years. Specifically, they were invested in Carlyle's Partners II Fund,
which includes in that portfolio United Defense and other weapons
manufacturers.
This relationship was described in a
September 27, 2001 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled 'Bin Laden
Family Could Profit From Jump in Defense Spending Due to Ties to US Bank.'
The 'bank' in question was the Carlyle Group. A follow-up article
published by the Journal on September 28 entitled ' Bin Laden Family Has
Intricate Ties With Washington - Saudi Clan Has Had Access To Influential
Republicans ' further describes the relationship. In October of 2001,
Saudi BinLaden and Carlyle severed their relationship by mutual agreement.
The timing is auspicious.
There are a number of depths to be
plumbed in all of this. The Bush administration has claimed all along that
this war with Iraq is about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism and
weapons of mass destruction, though through it all they have roundly
failed to establish any basis for either accusation. On Wednesday, Bush
went further to claim that the war is about liberating the Iraqi people
and bringing democracy to the Middle East. This ignores cultural realities
on the ground in Iraq and throughout the region that, salted with decades
of deep mistrust for American motives, make such a democracy movement
brought at the point of the sword utterly impossible to achieve.
This movement, cloaked in democracy,
is in fact a PNAC-inspired push for an American global empire. It behooves
Americans to understand that there is a great difference between being the
citizen of a constitutional democracy and being a citizen of an empire.
The establishment of an empire requires some significant sacrifices.
Essential social, medical, educational
and retirement services will have to be gutted so that those funds can be
directed towards a necessary military buildup. Actions taken abroad to
establish the preeminence of American power, most specifically in the
Middle East, will bring a torrent of terrorist attacks to the home front.
Such attacks will bring about the final suspension of constitutional
rights and the rule of habeas corpus, as we will find ourselves under
martial law. In the end, however, this may be inevitable. An empire cannot
function with the slow, cumbersome machine of a constitutional democracy
on its back. Empires must be ruled with speed and ruthlessness, in a
manner utterly antithetical to the way in which America has been governed
for 227 years.
And yes, of course, a great many
people will die.
It would be one thing if all of this
was based purely on the ideology of our leaders. It is another thing
altogether to consider the incredible profit motive behind it all. The
President, his father, the Vice President, a whole host of powerful
government officials, along with stockholders and executives from
Halliburton and Carlyle, stand to make a mint off this war. Long-time
corporate sponsors from the defense, construction and petroleum industries
will likewise profit enormously.
Critics of the Bush administration
like to bandy about the word "fascist" when speaking of George.
The image that word conjures is of Nazi stormtroopers marching in unison
towards Hitler's Final Solution. This does not at all fit. It is better,
in this matter, to view the Bush administration through the eyes of Benito
Mussolini. Mussolini, dubbed 'the father of Fascism,' defined the word in
a far more pertinent fashion. "Fascism," said Mussolini,
"should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger
of state and corporate power."
Boycott the French, the Germans, and
the other 114 nations who stand against this Iraq war all you wish. France
and Germany do not oppose Bush because they are cowards, or because they
enjoy the existence of Saddam Hussein. France and Germany stand against
the Bush administration because they intend to stop this Pax Americana in
its tracks if they can. They have seen militant fascism up close and
personal before, and wish never to see it again.
Would that we Americans could be so
wise.
-------
William
Rivers Pitt is a New York Times bestselling author of two books -
"War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context
Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in May
2003 from Pluto Press. He teaches high school in Boston, MA.
Pitt archive
originally published in T r u t h o u t | Perspective Thursday
27 February 2003 |
