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Recent Stories
March 26, 2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets of Blood
Patrick Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs, Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What Democracy Looks Like: the Streets
of Cairo
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings on
the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood Indicator: Casualties and the Stock
Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country
March 24, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil:
the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint Them
Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest
for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier
Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become
an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and
Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats,
Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from
Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The Erosion
of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush:
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March
29, 2003
Dreams of Empire
Eulogies
for International Law
By JOHN GERSHMAN
With
the war in Iraq just under a week old, the jockeying for what comes
next has already begun, with implications that will shape the outlines
of imperial governance in the post-9/11, post-invasion world. Two related
but nevertheless distinct debates--one regarding the occupation and
reconstruction of Iraq and the other over whether Iraq is just the first
step in a broader and more sustained effort to transform the region--will
define a new relationship between the U.S., international organizations
like the United Nations, and both formal and informal alliances such
as NATO and the "coalition of the willing" that has been cobbled
together to support this particular military operation. While 9-11 is
often portrayed as if it changed everything, the invasion of Iraq and
the fallout could mark a significant turning point in the architecture
of U.S. hegemony.
Reconstruction
The
debate over reconstruction in Iraq has already begun, even as the bombs
continue to fall. Both the ends and the means of reconstruction are
up for grabs. In terms of means, the major issue is when and in what
capacity will the United Nations be asked to play a role? The main plan
at the moment appears to be one of U.S. unilateral control, with a civilian
administration headed by retired General Jay Garner under the direct
command of the military serving as an occupational government. The civilian
administration will be staffed primarily with former U.S. diplomats,
and is aimed at ruling for as long as it takes for an interim Iraqi
government to be formed--at this point, at least a few months. U.S.
companies are already competing for contracts worth roughly $1 billion
to rebuild infrastructure and operate health and education services.
Under
the plan, the role for the UN in the immediate aftermath of the conflict
will be limited to humanitarian relief. Its role in reconstruction efforts
remains unclear, as any major UN role would require authorization by
the Security Council. Aid groups are concerned that their humanitarian
relief and reconstruction efforts will be branded as part of U.S. military
operations.
This
plan has sparked concern among members of the administration's "coalition
of the willing" as well as opponents of the war. The joint statement
released at the conclusion of the war council meeting in the Azores
on the weekend prior to the launch of the war described a central role
for the UN in reconstruction efforts. But the current U.S. plans would
seem to suggest those were just words. The political battle is currently
being waged in the negotiations over a UN Security Council Resolution
that would provide the political sanction for post-war operations in
Iraq. Last week Britain's Minister for International Development Clare
Short left the U.S. empty-handed, after failing to get agreement on
a resolution that would place the UN in charge of reconstruction. British
Prime Minister Tony Blair is scheduled to arrive in the next day or
two to discuss both the progress of the war as well as the role of the
UN in reconstruction.
The
debate stretches to control over the funds to be used for reconstruction.
The UK has also clashed with the Bush administration over the control
of Iraqi assets, which have been frozen since the first Gulf war began
12 years ago.
The
Bush administration has asked countries who have frozen assets to pool
them into a U.S.-controlled fund. The Bush administration has already
ordered 17 banks in the U.S. to hand over $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi
government money. But Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon
Brown, has so far refused o turn £200 million Iraqi assets frozen
in Britain to an American-controlled account, instead wanting them to
go to the UN. White House officials have threatened to prevent foreign
banks from doing business in the U.S. if they refused to turn over Iraqi
government money and what they called "blood money" belonging
to President Saddam Hussein or his associates.
The
U.S. plan for reconstruction, with the UN in a subordinate, if not subcontracting
role, is the most immediate example of a new world order where the UN
has a well-defined, explicitly subordinate position in the architecture
of U.S. global hegemony. It suggests an end to rhetorical, if not actual,
commitments to collective security based on international law and multilateralism
embodied in the UN charter.
Such
a vision was outlined in a recent op-ed by Richard Perle, the head of
Defense Policy Board and a key intellectual architect of the Bush administration's
policy in the Middle East, and is worth quoting at length:
He
[Saddam Hussein] will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony,
he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The "good
works" part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies
will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat.
What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new
world order. As we sift the debris, it will be important to preserve,
the better to understand, the intellectual wreckage of the liberal
conceit of safety through international law administered by international
institutions.
Perle's
eulogy for the vision of collective security the UN offered is an important
illustration of the vision of the future it outlines, a vision that
is truly staggering in its ambition, and in its casual rejection of
the framework of international law. Perle's alternative is a shifting
away from international institutions to one of shifting ad hoc coalitions.
As he writes,
The
chronic failure of the security council to enforce its own resolutions
is unmistakable: it is simply not up to the task. We are left with
coalitions of the willing. Far from disparaging them as a threat to
a new world order, we should recognize that they are, by default,
the best hope for that order, and the true alternative to the anarchy
of the abject failure of the UN.
(In
an interesting twist showing the editorial differences of headline writers,
the same piece was headlined "Coalitions of the Willing Are Our
Best Hope" in Canada's National Post while the Guardian headlined
it as "Thank God for the death of the UN.")
First Baghdad, Then …
While
rejecting the UN Security Council Perle also identifies countries hosting
or sponsoring terrorism and possessing weapons of mass destruction as
the major threat to international security (without actually naming
names).
What
then is the next step in the Bush administration's security agenda?
One
clue is embodied in the statement from a senior British official to
Newsweek last August: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men
want to go to Tehran." According to the Israeli paper Ha'aretz
, in February 2003, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli
officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would "deal
with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea.
With
North Korean policy in a seeming holding pattern while the war in Iraq
continues to unfold, the next steps in the Middle East are already being
tabled. Michael Ledeen, another key intellectual in the pantheon of
neoconservatives shaping the Bush administration policy, described one
such agenda. In a panel at the American Enterprise Institute on March
21st and in the New York Sun Ledeen argues for the need to look beyond
Iraq and go after other regimes in the region, particularly Iran, Syria,
and Saudi Arabia:
Iraq
is not the war. … the war is a regional war, and we cannot be
successful in Iraq if we only do Iraq alone.
Writing
in the New York Sun on March 19, there is no mistaking the messianic
vision of manifest destiny that Ledeen believes the war in Iraq will
provide:
Once
upon a time, it might have been possible to deal with Iraq alone,
without having to face the murderous forces of the other terror masters
in Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh, but that time has passed.
The
Iranian, Syrian, and Saudi tyrants know that if we win a quick victory
in Iraq and then establish a free government in Baghdad, their doom
is sealed. It would then be only a matter of time before their peoples
would demand the same liberation we brought to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Thus, they must do everything in their power to tie us down in Iraq,
bleed us on the ground, frustrate our designs, and eventually break
our will.
It
would be a terrible humiliation for America and Britain to fall prey
to needless bloodshed because we blinded ourselves to the larger war
in which we are now engaged. Iraq is a battle, not a war. We have
to win the war, and the only way to do that is to bring down the terror
masters, and spread freedom throughout the region.
Rarely
has it been possible to see one of history's potential turning points
so clearly and so dramatically as it is today. Rarely has a country
been given such a glorious opportunity as we have in our hands. But
history is full of missed opportunities and embarrassing defeats.
We'll
know soon which destiny we will achieve.
The
first Persian Gulf War marked the transition to the new post-cold war
world. The Second Gulf war will mark the end of the post-cold war world.
The history of what comes next remains to be written. But it is clear
that the advocates for Empire, for a Pax Americana, are well prepared.
John
Gershman is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric
Resource Center and the Asia/Pacific editor for Foreign Policy in
Focus.) He can be reached at: john@irc-online.org
Yesterday's Features
Daniel Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris and
Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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