ZGram - 7/4/2004 - "Angst!"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

July 4, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

When I saw today's Ha'aretz article, I thought it was a reprint from 
a previous article with the same title - and while there is some 
content overlap, it's worth rereading carefully. 

It's quite an article!  It should have been titled "The Chickens 
coming home to roost":

[START]

Sun., July 04, 2004 Tamuz 15, 5764

White man's burden
Ari Shavit

The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, 
most of them Jews, who are pushing President Bush to change the 
course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and 
Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible. But another journalist, 
Thomas Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical

1. The doctrine

WASHINGTON - At the conclusion of its second week, the war to 
"liberate" Iraq wasn't looking good. Not even in Washington. The 
assumption of a swift collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime had 
itself collapsed. The presupposition that the Iraqi dictatorship 
would crumble as soon as mighty America entered the country proved 
unfounded. The Shi'ites didn't rise up, the Sunnis fought fiercely. 
Iraqi guerrilla warfare found the American generals unprepared and 
endangered their overextended supply lines. Nevertheless, 70 percent 
of the American people continued to support the war; 60 percent 
thought victory was certain; 74 percent expressed confidence in 
President George W. Bush.

Washington is a small city. It's a place of human dimensions. A kind 
of small town that happens to run an empire. A small town of 
government officials and members of Congress and personnel of 
research institutes and journalists who pretty well all know one 
another. Everyone is busy intriguing against everyone else; and 
everyone gossips about everyone else.

In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town: 
the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by 
a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them 
Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard 
Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, 
Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one 
another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving 
force of history. They believe that the right political idea entails 
a fusion of morality and force, human rights and grit. The 
philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neoconservatives are 
the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke. They also 
admire Winston Churchill and the policy pursued by Ronald Reagan. 
They tend to read reality in terms of the failure of the 1930s 
(Munich) versus the success of the 1980s (the fall of the Berlin 
Wall).

Are they wrong? Have they committed an act of folly in leading 
Washington to Baghdad? They don't think so. They continue to cling to 
their belief. They are still pretending that everything is more or 
less fine. That things will work out. Occasionally, though, they seem 
to break out in a cold sweat. This is no longer an academic exercise, 
one of them says, we are responsible for what is happening. The ideas 
we put forward are now affecting the lives of millions of people. So 
there are moments when you're scared. You say, Hell, we came to help, 
but maybe we made a mistake.

2. William Kristol

Has America bitten off more than it can chew? Bill Kristol says no. 
True, the press is very negative, but when you examine the facts in 
the field you see that there is no terrorism, no mass destruction, no 
attacks on Israel. The oil fields in the south have been saved, air 
control has been achieved, American forces are deployed 50 miles from 
Baghdad. So, even if mistakes were made here and there, they are not 
serious. America is big enough to handle that. Kristol hasn't the 
slightest doubt that in the end, General Tommy Franks will achieve 
his goals. The 4th Cavalry Division will soon enter the fray, and 
another division is on its way from Texas. So it's possible that 
instead of an elegant war with 60 killed in two weeks it will be a 
less elegant affair with a thousand killed in two months, but 
nevertheless Bill Kristol has no doubt at all that the Iraq 
Liberation War is a just war, an obligatory war.

Kristol is pleasant-looking, of average height, in his late forties. 
In the past 18 months he has used his position as editor of the 
right-wing Weekly Standard and his status as one of the leaders of 
the neoconservative circle in Washington to induce the White House to 
do battle against Saddam Hussein. Because Kristol is believed to 
exercise considerable influence on the president, Vice President 
Richard Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he is also 
perceived as having been instrumental in getting Washington to launch 
this all-out campaign against Baghdad. Sitting behind the stacks of 
books that cover his desk at the offices of the Weekly Standard in 
Northwest Washington, he tries to convince me that he is not worried. 
It is simply inconceivable to him that America will not win. In that 
event, the consequences would be catastrophic. No one wants to think 
seriously about that possibility.

What is the war about? I ask. Kristol replies that at one level it is 
the war that George Bush is talking about: a war against a brutal 
regime that has in its possession weapons of mass destruction. But at 
a deeper level it is a greater war, for the shaping of a new Middle 
East. It is a war that is intended to change the political culture of 
the entire region. Because what happened on September 11, 2001, 
Kristol says, is that the Americans looked around and saw that the 
world is not what they thought it was. The world is a dangerous 
place. Therefore the Americans looked for a doctrine that would 
enable them to cope with this dangerous world. And the only doctrine 
they found was the neoconservative one.

That doctrine maintains that the problem with the Middle East is the 
absence of democracy and of freedom. It follows that the only way to 
block people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden is to 
disseminate democracy and freedom. To change radically the cultural 
and political dynamics that creates such people. And the way to fight 
the chaos is to create a new world order that will be based on 
freedom and human rights - and to be ready to use force in order to 
consolidate this new world. So that, really, is what the war is 
about. It is being fought to consolidate a new world order, to create 
a new Middle East.

Does that mean that the war in Iraq is effectively a neoconservative 
war? That's what people are saying, Kristol replies, laughing. But 
the truth is that it's an American war. The neoconservatives 
succeeded because they touched the bedrock of America. The thing is 
that America has a profound sense of mission. America has a need to 
offer something that transcends a life of comfort, that goes beyond 
material success. Therefore, because of their ideals, the Americans 
accepted what the neoconservatives proposed. They didn't want to 
fight a war over interests, but over values. They wanted a war driven 
by a moral vision. They wanted to hitch their wagon to something 
bigger than themselves.

Does this moral vision mean that after Iraq will come the turns of 
Saudi Arabia and Egypt?

Kristol says that he is at odds with the administration on the 
question of Saudi Arabia. But his opinion is that it is impossible to 
let Saudi Arabia just continue what it is doing. It is impossible to 
accept the anti-Americanism it is disseminating. The fanatic 
Wahhabism that Saudi Arabia engenders is undermining the stability of 
the entire region. It's the same with Egypt, he says: we mustn't 
accept the status quo there. For Egypt, too, the horizon has to be 
liberal democracy.

It has to be understood that in the final analysis, the stability 
that the corrupt Arab despots are offering is illusory. Just as the 
stability that Yitzhak Rabin received from Yasser Arafat was 
illusory. In the end, none of these decadent dictatorships will 
endure. The choice is between extremist Islam, secular fascism or 
democracy. And because of September 11, American understands that. 
America is in a position where it has no choice. It is obliged to be 
far more aggressive in promoting democracy. Hence this war. It's 
based on the new American understanding that if the United States 
does not shape the world in its image, the world will shape the 
United States in its own image.

3. Charles Krauthammer

Is this going to turn into a second Vietnam? Charles Krauthammer says 
no. There is no similarity to Vietnam. Unlike in the 1960s, there is 
no anti-establishment subculture in the United States now. Unlike in 
the 1960s, there is now an abiding love of the army in the United 
States. Unlike in the 1960s, there is a determined president, one 
with character, in the White House. And unlike in the 1960s, 
Americans are not deterred from making sacrifices. That is the 
sea-change that took place here on September 11, 2001. Since that 
morning, Americans have understood that if they don't act now and if 
weapons of mass destruction reach extremist terrorist organizations, 
millions of Americans will die. Therefore, because they understand 
that those others want to kill them by the millions, the Americans 
prefer to take to the field of battle and fight, rather than sit idly 
by and die at home.

Charles Krauthammer is handsome, swarthy and articulate. In his 
spacious office on 19th Street in Northwest Washington, he sits 
upright in a black wheelchair. Although his writing tends to be 
gloomy, his mood now is elevated. The well-known columnist 
(Washington Post, Time, Weekly Standard) has no real doubts about the 
outcome of the war that he promoted for 18 months. No, he does not 
accept the view that he helped lead America into the new killing 
fields between the Tigris and the Euphrates. But it is true that he 
is part of a conceptual stream that had something to offer in the 
aftermath of September 11. Within a few weeks after the attacks on 
the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, he had singled out Baghdad in his 
columns as an essential target. And now, too, he is convinced that 
America has the strength to pull it off. The thought that America 
will not win has never even crossed his mind.

What is the war about? It's about three different issues. First of 
all, this is a war for disarming Iraq of its weapons of mass 
destruction. That's the basis, the self-evident cause, and it is also 
sufficient cause in itself. But beyond that, the war in Iraq is being 
fought to replace the demonic deal America cut with the Arab world 
decades ago. That deal said: you will send us oil and we will not 
intervene in your internal affairs. Send us oil and we will not 
demand from you what we are demanding of Chile, the Philippines, 
Korea and South Africa.

That deal effectively expired on September 11, 2001, Krauthammer 
says. Since that day, the Americans have understood that if they 
allow the Arab world to proceed in its evil ways - suppression, 
economic ruin, sowing despair - it will continue to produce more and 
more bin Ladens. America thus reached the conclusion that it has no 
choice: it has to take on itself the project of rebuilding the Arab 
world. Therefore, the Iraq war is really the beginning of a gigantic 
historical experiment whose purpose is to do in the Arab world what 
was done in Germany and Japan after World War II.

It's an ambitious experiment, Krauthammer admits, maybe even utopian, 
but not unrealistic. After all, it is inconceivable to accept the 
racist assumption that the Arabs are different from all other human 
beings, that the Arabs are incapable of conducting a democratic way 
of life.

However, according to the Jewish-American columnist, the present war 
has a further importance. If Iraq does become pro-Western and if it 
becomes the focus of American influence, that will be of immense 
geopolitical importance. An American presence in Iraq will project 
power across the region. It will suffuse the rebels in Iran with 
courage and strength, and it will deter and restrain Syria. It will 
accelerate the processes of change that the Middle East must undergo.

Isn't the idea of preemptive war a dangerous one that rattles the world order?

There is no choice, Krauthammer replies. In the 21st century we face 
a new and singular challenge: the democratization of mass 
destruction. There are three possible strategies in the face of that 
challenge: appeasement, deterrence and preemption. Because 
appeasement and deterrence will not work, preemption is the only 
strategy left. The United States must implement an aggressive policy 
of preemption. Which is exactly what it is now doing in Iraq. That is 
what Tommy Franks' soldiers are doing as we speak.

And what if the experiment fails? What if America is defeated?

This war will enhance the place of America in the world for the 
coming generation, Krauthammer says. Its outcome will shape the world 
for the next 25 years. There are three possibilities. If the United 
States wins quickly and without a bloodbath, it will be a colossus 
that will dictate the world order. If the victory is slow and 
contaminated, it will be impossible to go on to other Arab states 
after Iraq. It will stop there. But if America is beaten, the 
consequences will be catastrophic. Its deterrent capability will be 
weakened, its friends will abandon it and it will become insular. 
Extreme instability will be engendered in the Middle East.

You don't really want to think about what will happen, Krauthammer 
says looking me straight in the eye. But just because that's so, I am 
positive we will not lose. Because the administration understands the 
implications. The president understands that everything is riding on 
this. So he will throw everything we've got into this. He will do 
everything that has to be done. George W. Bush will not let America 
lose.

4. Thomas Friedman

Is this an American Lebanon War? Tom Friedman says he is afraid it 
is. He was there, in the Commodore Hotel in Beirut, in the summer of 
1982, and he remembers it well. So he sees the lines of resemblance 
clearly. General Ahmed Chalabi (the Shi'ite leader that the 
neoconservatives want to install as the leader of a free Iraq) in the 
role of Bashir Jemayel. The Iraqi opposition in the role of the 
Phalange. Richard Perle and the conservative circle around him as 
Ariel Sharon. And a war that is at bottom a war of choice. A war that 
wants to utilize massive force in order to establish a new order.

Tom Friedman, The New York Times columnist, did not oppose the war. 
On the contrary. He too was severely shaken by September 11, he too 
wants to understand where these desperate fanatics are coming from 
who hate America more than they love their own lives. And he too 
reached the conclusion that the status quo in the Middle East is no 
longer acceptable. The status quo is terminal. And therefore it is 
urgent to foment a reform in the Arab world.

Some things are true even if George Bush believes them, Friedman says 
with a smile. And after September 11, it's impossible to tell Bush to 
drop it, ignore it. There was a certain basic justice in the overall 
American feeling that told the Arab world: we left you alone for a 
long time, you played with matches and in the end we were burned. So 
we're not going to leave you alone any longer.

He is sitting in a large rectangular room in the offices of The New 
York Times in northwest Washington, on the corner of 17th Street. One 
wall of the room is a huge map of the world. Hunched over his 
computer, he reads me witty lines from the article that will be going 
to press in two hours. He polishes, sharpens, plays word games. He 
ponders what's right to say now, what should be left for a later 
date. Turning to me, he says that democracies look soft until they're 
threatened. When threatened, they become very hard. Actually, the 
Iraq war is a kind of Jenin on a huge scale. Because in Jenin, too, 
what happened was that the Israelis told the Palestinians, We left 
you here alone and you played with matches until suddenly you blew up 
a Passover seder in Netanya. And therefore we are not going to leave 
you along any longer. We will go from house to house in the Casbah. 
And from America's point of view, Saddam's Iraq is Jenin. This war is 
a defensive shield. It follows that the danger is the same: that like 
Israel, America will make the mistake of using only force.

This is not an illegitimate war, Friedman says. But it is a very 
presumptuous war. You need a great deal of presumption to believe 
that you can rebuild a country half a world from home. But if such a 
presumptuous war is to have a chance, it needs international support. 
That international legitimacy is essential so you will have enough 
time and space to execute your presumptuous project. But George Bush 
didn't have the patience to glean international support. He gambled 
that the war would justify itself, that we would go in fast and 
conquer fast and that the Iraqis would greet us with rice and the war 
would thus be self-justifying. That did not happen. Maybe it will 
happen next week, but in the meantime it did not happen.

When I think about what is going to happen, I break into a sweat, 
Friedman says. I see us being forced to impose a siege on Baghdad. 
And I know what kind of insanity a siege on Baghdad can unleash. The 
thought of house-to-house combat in Baghdad without international 
legitimacy makes me lose my appetite. I see American embassies 
burning. I see windows of American businesses shattered. I see how 
the Iraqi resistance to America connects to the general Arab 
resistance to America and the worldwide resistance to America. The 
thought of what could happen is eating me up.

What George Bush did, Friedman says, is to show us a splendid 
mahogany table: the new democratic Iraq. But when you turn the table 
over, you see that it has only one leg. This war is resting on one 
leg. But on the other hand, anyone who thinks he can defeat George 
Bush had better think again. Bush will never give in. That's not what 
he's made of. Believe me, you don't want to be next to this guy when 
he thinks he's being backed into a corner. I don't suggest that 
anyone who holds his life dear mess with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld 
and President Bush.

Is the Iraq war the great neoconservative war? It's the war the 
neoconservatives wanted, Friedman says. It's the war the 
neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when 
September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So 
this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an 
elite. Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all 
of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) 
who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, 
the Iraq war would not have happened.

Still, it's not all that simple, Friedman retracts. It's not some 
fantasy the neoconservatives invented. It's not that 25 people 
hijacked America. You don't take such a great nation into such a 
great adventure with Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard and another 
five or six influential columnists. In the final analysis, what 
fomented the war is America's over-reaction to September 11. The 
genuine sense of anxiety that spread in America after September 11. 
It is not only the neoconservatives who led us to the outskirts of 
Baghdad. What led us to the outskirts of Baghdad is a very American 
combination of anxiety and hubris.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=White+man%27s+burden&itemNo=280279