'The earth is a graveyard of angry young men' one of the ancients once said. What he did not have the temerity to add was 'The earth is a graveyard of angry young men sent to war by calculating old men.' And what are the calculations for this war? Who gains?
The Iraqi people may get a new leader to hate -- perhaps one less murderous. That is something. However a lot of them will die in the process.
The arms merchants who sell the toys to the boys will stand to make a killing. And the way the Bush administration is ramping up military spending, they stand to make one for some time to come. The more toys blown up and destroyed, the better as far as that gang is concerned.
The corporations that will be involved in the rebuilding of Iraq stand to gain. Already the contracts for this work are being tendered. Billion dollar contracts to repair the Iraqi oil fields and critical command and control infrastructure, but you can bet your sweet ass there will not be a penny for Iraqi healthcare and education. They won't spend it on the American people, why should the Iraqis be any different?
Finally, your average consumer oriented corporation, which is difficult to differentiate because of all the boardroom cross connections, that just wants a new market, a quiet and peaceful world in which to do business -- big macs in Baghdad and adidas in Basra, lovingly protected by a nice young marines with M16's holding up a global Pax Americana umbrella -- this type of corporation might stand to gain. Might.
Oh and there might be a couple of other minor gains as well; the continuing ascendancy of the American dollar as the world's reserve currency of choice, aka the petrodollar, would make some happy and there might be some residual political gains for a victorious commander in chief in 2004.
Can they pull it off? Perhaps yes. Perhaps no.
I am not in the business of prophecy. I do not pretend to know if the battle will last six days or six months. Who knows what little surprises Mr. Hussein might have hidden away in Baghdad or Washington?
There is a potential to inflame a widespread backlash among the Moslem nations that will engage America in decades of terrorism, in prolonged and profitless war. At the very least, the consumer oriented corporations will suffer in one sixth of the world market.
Certainly there is a potential for grinding and protracted failure. At best the victory will be hard to maintain on the ground in Iraq.
There is also the potential for America to transform itself into the fourth Reich. The name of GWB and the neocon vision of America's manifest destiny arching over the world may come to be cursed in all 50 states.
We will see what transpires.
In the meanwhile, there are several remarkable phenomenon which need to be well noted. The springing up overnight of a broadly based, global opposition to a future war has never happened before. A lot of people in authority have spent time denigrating and denying this phenomenon, but I'll bet it has them really worried. A new force has shown itself. It means a lot of people, all over the world, understand the issues and see what is going on. This has a lot to do with the internet I suspect, (which means there will be renewed efforts to bring the net under control).
The spiritied defiance which the Bush administration met at the United Nations was heartened and informed by this global opposition.
It is notable that there is no international political mechanism for this constituency. One wonders what form this might take in the future.
Another notable aspect of the current situation is negative. It is the monotonic, echo-chamber of the American media, which has become a propaganda machine of which Goebbbels would be proud. One could write a book about the subject, but the heart of it revolves around diversity of opinion versus uniformity and rightthink, breadth of coverage versus myopic provincialism, and depth -- investigative journalism has been neutralized in America.
The reasons for this state of affairs are various -- a good part of it has been done by concentration of ownership, although some governement agencies have always had their finger on the pulse of the media. The Pentagon embedding journalists and advertising that they will kill independent reporters in Iraq is just another spect of this control.
This is something that needs to be fixed -- by Americans.
It is often difficult to speak of Americans. One tends to use a broad brush when finer differentiations would be more accurate. One tends to say 'Oh the Americans are doing such and such' when actually it is the current administration or 5 senators on some sub-committee. Those who have personal connections -- wives, friends, soul mates -- tend to find it even more difficult. There is a broad swath of different feelings and opinion in America, although you wouldn't know it from the broadcast media.
The thing of it is that America has a mythology of equality, which blinds many to the actual disparities in wealth throughout the country. If you talk about the elite you are liable to be perceived as some kind of extremist, but there is an American elite. People who deny this might want to consider the fact that the top 0.25% of the American population owns more wealth than the other 99¾% combined.
There is an urban myth that in the 1992 election campaign, George Bush senior saw a supermarket bar code scanner for the first in his life. You might want to contemplate the level of isolation due to privilige that myth implies the next time you are standing in line waiting at a checkout.
The American elite is sitting firmly atop the military industrial complex, firmly buttressed by think tanks and propaganda and years of successfully prosecuting indifferently oppressive policies. Now that have directed their figurehead to cement their grip on the Middle East, for geopolitical reasons which are not part of the cover story. We know there is no valid reason beyond empire for this American adventure.
The only thing that is certain about war is that people die. At this stage we can only hope that not too many innocents die. And wonder -- who will GW Bush be afraid of next? Tomorrow, there is a new world to be built - a multilateral world, built on the rule of international law and justice.
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