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Title: “What We Say Goes”
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: May 1991
Language: en
Topics: Middle East, US foreign interventions
Source: Retrieved on 8th June 2021 from https://chomsky.info/199105__/
Notes: From Z Magazine, May, 1991

Noam Chomsky

“What We Say Goes”

With the Gulf war officially over, broader questions come to the fore:

What are the likely contours of the New World Order, specifically, for

the Middle East? What do we learn about the victors, whose power is at

least temporarily enhanced?

A standard response is that we live in “an era full of promise,” “one of

those rare transforming moments in history” (James Baker). The United

States “has a new credibility,” the President announced, and dictators

and tyrants everywhere know “that what we say goes.” George Bush is “at

the height of his powers” and “has made very clear that he wants to

breathe light into that hypothetical creature, the Middle East peace

process” (Anthony Lewis). So things are looking up.[1]

Others see a different picture. A Catholic weekly in Rome, close to the

Vatican, writes that Bush is the “surly master of the world,” who

deserves “the Nobel War Prize” for ignoring opportunities for peace in

the Gulf. Bush “had the very concrete possibility of a just peace and he

chose war.” He “didn’t give a damn” about the many peace appeals of Pope

John Paul II and proposals of others, never veering from his objective

of a murderous war (Il Sabato).

The Times of India described Bush’s curt dismissal of Iraq’s February 15

offer to withdraw from Kuwait as a “horrible mistake,” which showed that

the West sought a “regional Yalta where the powerful nations agree among

themselves to a share of Arab spoils…. [The West’s] conduct throughout

this one month has revealed the seamiest sides of Western civilisation:

its unrestricted appetite for dominance, its morbid fascination for

hi-tech military might, its insensitivity to ‘alien’ cultures, its

appalling jingoism….” A leading Third World monthly condemned “The most

cowardly war ever fought on this planet.” The foreign editor of Brazil’s

major daily wrote that “What is being practiced in the Gulf is pure

barbarism — ironically, committed in the name of civilization. Bush is

as responsible as Saddam…. Both, with their inflexibility, consider only

the cold logic of geopolitical interests [and] show an absolute scorn

for human life.” The “Business Magazine of the Developing World”

predicts that the Arab states will “in effect…become vassal states,”

losing such control as they once had over their resources (South,

London).[2]

All of this was before the glorious “turkey shoot” in the desert and the

“euphoria” and unconcealed bloodlust it evoked until the news managers

thought better of the project and suddenly called it off.

Outside the West, such perceptions are common. One experienced British

journalist observes that “Despite the claims by President Bush that

Desert Storm is supported by ‘the whole world’, there can be little

doubt about which side has won the contest for the hearts and minds of

the masses of the Third World; it is not the US” (Geoffrey Jansen).

Commenting on the world’s “moral unease” as the air war began, John

Lloyd noted in the London Financial Times that the US and Britain are a

“tiny minority in the world” in their war policy. South concludes that

the French, Italians and Turks joined the US-British war only “to secure

a slice of the pie in the form of lucrative reconstruction and defence

contracts in a post-war Gulf or in the form of aid and credits or both.”

Reports from the Third World, including most of the neighboring

countries, indicated substantial, often overwhelming, popular opposition

to the US-UK war, barely controlled by the US-backed tyrannies. The

Iraqi democratic opposition publicly opposed the war, and even the most

pro-American Iraqi exiles condemned the “wanton quality of the violence”

in Bush’s “dirty and excessively destructive war” (Samir al-Khalil).[3]

Before evaluating such conflicting perceptions, we have to settle a

methodological question. There are two ways to proceed. One is to rely

on the rhetoric of power: George Bush has “made it clear” that he is

going to “breathe light” into the problems of suffering humanity; that

settles the matter. Perhaps there are some blemishes on our record, but

we have undergone another of those miraculous changes of course that

occur at convenient moments, so we need not trouble ourselves with the

documentary record, the events of past and present history, and their

institutional roots. That is the easy way, and the path to

respectability and privilege. Another approach, lacking these

advantages, is to consider the facts. Not surprisingly, these approaches

commonly yield quite different conclusions.

“The Surly Master of the World”

Adopting the second approach, we face some obvious questions. Consider

the President’s proud boast that dictators and tyrants know “that what

we say goes.” It is beyond dispute that the US has no problem with

dictators and tyrants if they serve US interests, and will attack and

destroy committed democrats if they depart from their service function.

The correct reading of Bush’s words, then, is: “What we say goes,”

whoever you may be.

Continuing on this course, we find no grounds to expect George Bush to

“breathe light” into the Middle East peace process, or any other

problem. In fact, why is the peace process a “hypothetical creature”?

Though inexpressible in polite company, the answer is not obscure: the

US has kept it that way. Washington has barred the way to a diplomatic

settlement of the Arab-Israel conflict since February 1971

(coincidentally, just as George Bush appeared on the national scene as

UN Ambassador), when Kissinger backed Israel’s rejection of Egyptian

President Sadat’s proposal for a peace settlement in terms virtually

identical to official US policy, without even a gesture towards the

Palestinians. The US has regularly rejected other peace proposals,

vetoed Security Council resolutions, and voted against General Assembly

resolutions calling for a political settlement. In December 1990, the

General Assembly voted 144–2 (US and Israel) to call an international

conference. A year before, the Assembly voted 151–3 (US, Israel,

Dominica) for a settlement incorporating the wording of UN Resolution

242, along with “the right to self-determination” for the

Palestinians.[4] The NATO allies, the USSR, the Arab states, and the

nonaligned countries have been united for years in seeking a political

settlement along these lines, but the US will not permit it, so the

peace process remains “hypothetical.”

In part for similar reasons, reduction of armaments has been a

“hypothetical creature.” In April 1990, Bush flatly rejected a proposal

from his friend Saddam Hussein to eliminate weapons of mass destruction

from the Middle East. One way to direct petrodollars to the US economy

has been to encourage arms sales. Currently, Bush is proposing to sell

$18 billion worth of arms to his Middle East allies, with the

Export-Import Bank underwriting purchases, at below-market rates if

necessary, a hidden tax to benefit major sectors of industry. Military

victories by the US and its Israeli client have long been used as an

export-promotion device. Corporations may hire showrooms to display

their goods; the government hires the Sinai and Iraqi deserts.[5]

There are no plausible grounds for optimistic expectations now that the

great power that has kept the peace process “hypothetical” and has

helped keep the region armed to the teeth is in an even stronger

position than before to tell the world that “what we say goes.”

The Administration has in fact taken pains to present itself as “surly

master of the world.” As the ground campaign opened, New York Times

correspondent Maureen Dowd quoted a leaked section of a National

Security Policy Review from the first months of the Bush presidency,

dealing with “third world threats.” It reads: “In cases where the U.S.

confronts much weaker enemies, our challenge will be not simply to

defeat them, but to defeat them decisively and rapidly.” Any other

outcome would be “embarrassing” and might “undercut political

support.”[6]

“Much weaker enemies” pose only one threat to the United States: the

threat of independence, always intolerable. For many years, it was

possible to disguise the war against Third World nationalism with Cold

War illusions, but that game is over and the real story is bright and

clear: the primary target has always been Third World independence,

called “radical nationalism” or “ultranationalism” in the internal

planning record, a “virus” that must be eradicated.

The Times report makes no reference to peaceful means. That too is

standard. As understood on all sides, in its confrontations with Third

World threats, the US is “politically weak”; its demands will not gain

public support, so diplomacy is a dangerous exercise. That is why the US

has so commonly sought to keep diplomatic processes “hypothetical” in

the Middle East, Central America, Indochina, and on other issues, and

why it has regularly undermined the United Nations. Furthermore,

political support at home is understood to be very thin. Naturally, one

does not want to confront enemies that can fight back, but even much

weaker enemies must be destroyed quickly, given the weakness of the

domestic base and the lessons that are to be taught.

These lessons are directed to several audiences. For the Third World,

the message is simple: Don’t raise your heads. A “much weaker” opponent

will not merely be defeated, but pulverized. The central lesson of World

Order is: “What we say goes”; we are the masters, you shine our shoes,

and don’t ever forget it. Others too are to understand that the world is

to be ruled by force, the arena in which the US reigns supreme, though

with its domestic decline, others will have to pay the bills.

The Lessons at Home

There is also a lesson for the domestic audience. They must be

terrorized by images of a menacing force about to overwhelm us — though

in fact “much weaker” and defenseless. The monster can then be

miraculously slain, “decisively and rapidly,” while the frightened

population celebrates its deliverance from imminent disaster, praising

the heroism of the Great Leader who has come to the rescue just in the

nick of time.

These techniques, which have familiar precedents, were employed through

the 1980s, for sound reasons. The population was opposed to the major

Reagan policies, largely an extension of Carter plans. It was therefore

necessary to divert attention to ensure that democratic processes would

remain as “hypothetical” as the peace process. Propaganda campaigns

created awesome chimeras: international terrorists, Sandinistas marching

on Texas, narcotraffickers, crazed Arabs. Even Grenada was portrayed as

a mortal threat, with fevered tales of an air base that would be used to

attack the continent, huge Soviet military stores, and the threat to

Caribbean sea lanes. Only a year ago, Noriega — a minor thug by

international standards — was elevated to the status of Genghis Khan as

the US prepared to invade Panama to restore the rule of the 10% white

minority and to ensure that the Canal Treaty, or some remnant of it,

will not interfere with US control over the Canal and the military bases

there. Government-media Agitprop has had some success. The tourism

industry in Europe repeatedly collapsed while Americans cower in terror,

afraid to travel to European cities where they would be 100 times as

safe as they are at home, eliciting much derision in the right-wing

European press.

In the Old World Order, the Soviet threat was skillfully deployed to

mobilize public support for intervention abroad and for subsidies to

high tech industry at home. These basic institutional requirements

remain a policy guide, and they have their consequences. During Bush’s

two years in office, real wages continued to decline, falling to the

level of the late 1950s for non-supervisory workers (about 2/3 of the

work force). Three million more children crossed the poverty line. Over

a million people lost their homes. Infant mortality increased beyond its

already scandalous levels. Federal spending dropped for education and

for non-military R&D. Government, corporate and household debt continued

to rise, in part concealed with various budgetary scams. Financial

institutions drowned in red ink, following the S&Ls, set on their course

by the Deregulation Task Force headed by George Bush. The gap between

rich and poor grew to postwar record levels. Civic services collapsed

further while the US took a healthy lead worldwide in prison population

per capita, doubling the figure during the Reagan-Bush years, with black

males now four times as likely to be in prison as in South Africa. And

the “third deficit” of unmet social and economic needs (repairing

infrastructure, etc.) is calculated at some $130 billion annually,

omitting the S&Ls.[7]

As inspection of its domestic programs makes clear, the Administration

has no intention of addressing such problems; rightly, from its point of

view. Any serious measures would infringe upon the prerogatives of its

constituency. For the executives of a transnational corporation or other

privileged sectors, it is important for the world to be properly

disciplined, for advanced industry to be subsidized, and for the wealthy

to be guaranteed security. It does not matter much if public education

and health deteriorate, the useless population rots in urban

concentrations or prisons, and the basis for a livable society collapses

for the public at large.

For such reasons, it is important to distract the domestic population.

They must join their betters in admiring “the stark and vivid definition

of principle…baked into [George Bush] during his years at Andover and

Yale, that honor and duty compels you to punch the bully in the face” —

the words of the awe-struck reporter who released the Policy Review

explaining how to deal with “much weaker enemies.”[8]

The principle that you punch the bully in the face — when you are sure

that he is securely bound and beaten to a pulp — is a natural one for

advocates of the rule of force. It teaches the right lessons to the

world. And at home, cheap victories deflect the attention of a

frightened population from domestic disasters while the state pursues

its tasks as global enforcer, serving the interests of the wealthy.

Meanwhile, the country continues its march towards a two-tiered society

with striking Third World features.

The same Times reporter goes on to quote the gallant champion himself:

“By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” The second

national newspaper joined in, applauding the “spiritual and

intellectual” triumph in the Gulf: “Martial values that had fallen into

disrepute were revitalized,” and “Presidential authority, under assault

since Vietnam, was strengthened.” With barely a gesture towards the

dangers of overexuberance, the ultraliberal Boston Globe hailed the

“victory for the psyche” and the new “sense of nationhood and projected

power” under the leadership of a man who is “one tough son of a bitch,”

a man with “the guts to risk all for a cause” and a “burning sense of

duty,” who showed “the depth and steely core of his convictions” and his

faith that “we are a select people, with a righteous mission in this

earth,” the latest in a line of “noble-minded missionaries” going back

to his hero Teddy Roosevelt — who was going to “show those Dagos that

they will have to behave decently” and to teach proper lessons to the

“wild and ignorant people” standing in the way of “the dominant world

races.” Liberal columnists praised “the magnitude of Bush’s triumph”

over a much weaker enemy, dismissing the “uninformed garbage” of those

who carp in dark corners (Thomas Oliphant). The open admiration for

fascist values is a matter of some interest.[9]

For 20 years, there have been vigorous efforts to “kick the Vietnam

syndrome,” defined by Reaganite intellectual Norman Podhoretz as “the

sickly inhibitions against the use of military force.” He thought the

disease was cured when we were “standing tall” after our astounding

victory in Grenada. Perhaps that triumph of martial virtues was not

enough, but now, at last, we have kicked these sickly inhibitions, the

President exults. “Bush’s leadership has transformed the Vietnam

Syndrome into a Gulf Syndrome, where ‘Out Now!’ is a slogan directed at

aggressors, not at us” (Thomas Oliphant); we were the injured party in

Vietnam, defending ourselves from the Vietnamese aggressors, from

“internal aggression” as Adlai Stevenson explained in 1964. Having

overcome the Vietnam syndrome, we now observe “the worthy and demanding

standard that aggression must be opposed, in exceptional cases by

force,” Oliphant continues — but, somehow, we are not to march on

Jakarta, Tel Aviv, Damascus, Washington, Ankara, and a long series of

other capitals.[10]

The ground had been well prepared for overcoming this grave malady,

including dedicated labors to ensure that the Vietnam war is properly

understood — as a “noble cause,” not a violent assault against South

Vietnam, then all of Indochina. When the President proclaims that we

will no longer fight with one hand tied behind our backs, respectable

opinion asks only whether we were indeed too restrained in Indochina, or

whether our defense of freedom was always a “lost cause” and a

“mistake.” It is “clear,” the New York Times reports, that “the lesson

of Vietnam was a sense of the limits of United States power”; in

contrast, the lesson of Afghanistan is not a sense of the limits of

Soviet power. Reviewing the “heroic tale” of a Vietnamese collaborator

with the French colonialists and their American successors, the Times

describes the methods he devised in 1962 to destroy the “political

organization” of the South Vietnamese revolutionaries. The most

successful device was to send “counter-terror teams to track down and

capture or kill recalcitrant Vietcong officials” — counter-terror teams,

because it was the US and its clients who were assassinating civilians

to undermine an indigenous political organization that far surpassed

anything the US could construct, as fully conceded.[11]

So effectively has history been rewritten that an informed journalist at

the left-liberal extreme can report that “the US military’s distrust of

cease-fires seems to stem from the Vietnam War,” when the Communist

enemy — but not, apparently, the US invaders — “used the opportunity [of

a bombing pause] to recover and fight on” (Fred Kaplan). Near the

dissident extreme of scholarship, the chairman of the Center for

European Studies at Harvard can inform us that Nixon’s Christmas bombing

of Hanoi in 1972 “brought the North Vietnamese back to the conference

table” (Stanley Hoffmann). Such fables, long ago demolished, are alive

and well, as the propaganda system has elegantly recovered; no real

problem among the educated classes, who had rarely strayed from the

Party Line. Americans generally estimate Vietnamese deaths at about

100,000, a recent academic study reveals. Its authors ask what

conclusions we would draw about the political culture of Germany if the

public estimated Holocaust deaths at 300,000, while declaring their

righteousness. A question we might ponder.[12]

The Leader and his Teachings

George Bush’s career as a “public servant” also has its lessons

concerning the New World Order. He is the one head of state who stands

condemned by the World Court for “the unlawful use of force”; in direct

defiance of the Court, he persisted in the terror and illegal economic

warfare against Nicaragua to prevent a free election in February 1990,

then withheld aid from his chosen government because of its refusal to

drop the World Court suit. Bush dismisses with contempt the Court’s call

for reparations for these particular crimes (others are far beyond

reach), while he and his sycophants solemnly demand reparations from

Iraq, confident that respectable opinion will see no problem here.

Or in the fact that in March 1991, the Administration once again

contested World Court jurisdiction over claims resulting from its

crimes; in this case, Iran’s request that the Court order reparations

for the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner in July 1988 by the US

warship Vincennes, part of the naval squadron sent by Reagan and Bush to

support Iraq’s aggression. The airbus was shot down in a commercial

corridor off the coast of Iran with 290 people killed — out of “a need

to prove the viability of Aegis,” its high tech missile system, in the

judgment of US Navy commander David Carlson, who “wondered aloud in

disbelief” as he monitored the events from his nearby vessel. Bush

further sharpened our understanding of the sacred Rule of Law in April

1990, when he conferred the Legion of Merit award upon the commander of

the Vincennes (along with the officer in charge of anti-air warfare) for

“exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding

service” in the Gulf and for the “calm and professional atmosphere”

under his command during the period when the airliner was shot down.

“The tragedy isn’t mentioned in the texts of the citations,” AP

reported. The media kept a dutiful silence — at home, that is. In the

less disciplined Third World, the facts were reported in reviews of US

terrorism and “U.S. imperial policy” generally.[13]

Bush opened the post-Cold War era with the murderous invasion of Panama.

Since he became UN Ambassador in 1971, the US is far in the lead in

vetoing Security Council resolutions and blocking the UN peacekeeping

function, followed by Britain — “our lieutenant (the fashionable word is

partner),” in the words of a senior Kennedy advisor.[14] Bush took part

in the Reaganite campaign to undermine the UN, adding further blows

during the Gulf crisis. With threats and bribery, the US pressured the

Security Council to wash its hands of the crisis, authorizing individual

states to proceed as they wished, including the use of force (UN

Resolution 678). The Council thus seriously violated the UN Charter,

which bars any use of force until the Council determines that peaceful

means have been exhausted (which, transparently, they had not, so no

such determination was even considered), and requires further that the

Security Council — not George Bush — will determine what further means

may be necessary. Having once again subverted the UN, the US compelled

the Security Council to violate its rules by refusing repeated requests

by members for meetings to deal with the mounting crisis, rules that the

US had angrily insisted were “mandatory” when it objected to brief

delays in earlier years. In further contempt for the UN, the US bombed

Iraqi nuclear facilities, proudly announcing the triumph shortly after

the General Assembly reaffirmed the long-standing ban against such

attacks and called upon the Security Council “to act immediately” if

such a violation occurs; the vote was 144–1, the US in splendid

isolation as usual (Dec. 4, 1990).[15]

Bush was called to head the CIA in 1975, just in time to support

near-genocide in East Timor, a policy that continues with critical US-UK

support for General Suharto, whose achievements even dim the lustre of

Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, exhibiting his refined taste for

international law, Bush looks the other way as his Australian ally

arranges with the Indonesian conqueror to exploit Timorese oil,

rejecting Portugal’s protest to the World Court on the grounds that

“There is no binding legal obligation not to recognize acquisition of

territory by force” (Foreign Minister Gareth Evans). Furthermore, Evans

explains, “The world is a pretty unfair place, littered with examples of

acquisition by force…”; and in the same breath, following the US-UK

lead, he bans all official contacts with the PLO with proper indignation

because of its “consistently defending and associating itself with

Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.” Recognizing that the monumental cynicism

might disrupt the posturing about international law and the crime of

aggression, the ideological institutions have protected the public from

such undesirable facts, keeping them in the shadows along with a new

Indonesian military offensive in Timor under the cover of the Gulf

crisis, and the Western-backed Indonesian operations that may wipe out a

million tribal people in Irian Jaya, with thousands of victims of

chemical weapons among the perhaps 300,000 already killed, according to

human rights activists and the few observers.[16]

The attention of the civilized West is to be focused, laser-like, on the

crimes of the official enemy, not on those we could readily mitigate or

eliminate, without tens of thousands of tons of bombs.

On becoming Vice-President, Bush travelled to Manila to pay his respects

to another fine killer and torturer, Ferdinand Marcos, praising him as a

man “pledged to democracy” who had performed great “service to freedom,”

and adding that “we love your adherence to democratic principle and to

the democratic processes.” He lent his talents to the war against the

Church and other deviants committed to “the preferential option for the

poor” in Central America, now littered with tortured and mutilated

bodies, perhaps devastated beyond recovery. In the Middle East, Bush

supported Israel’s harsh occupations, its savage invasion of Lebanon,

and its refusal to honor Security Council Resolution 425 calling for its

immediate withdrawal from Lebanon (March 1978, one of several). The plea

was renewed by the government of Lebanon in February 1991,[17] ignored

as usual while the US client terrorizes the occupied region and bombs

elsewhere at will, and the rest of Lebanon is taken over by Bush’s new

friend Hafez el-Assad, a clone of Saddam Hussein.

Another friend, Turkish president Turgut Ozal, was authorized to

intensify Turkey’s repression of Kurds in partial payment for his

services as “a protector of peace,” in Bush’s words, joining those who

“stand up for civilized values around the world” against Saddam Hussein.

While making some gestures towards his own Kurdish population and

attempting to split them from Iraqi Kurds, Ozal continues to preside

over “the world’s worst place to be Kurdish” (Vera Saeedpour, director

of the New York-based program that monitors Kurdish human rights).

Journalists, the Human Rights Association in the Kurdish regions, and

lawyers report that this protector of civilized values has made use of

his new prestige to have his security forces expel 50,000 people from

300 villages, burning homes and possessions so that the people will not

return, and fire on anti-war demonstrators, while continuing the torture

that is standard procedure in all state security cases. The Frankfurt

relief organization Medico International reported in late January that

hundreds of thousands of Kurds were in flight from cities near the Iraqi

frontier, with women, children and old people trying to survive the cold

winter in holes in the ground or animal sheds while the government bars

any help or provisions, the army is destroying fields with flame

throwers, and jet planes are bombing Kurdish villages. Human Rights

Watch reports that in mid-August, Turkey officially suspended the

European Convention on Human Rights for the Kurdish provinces,

eliminating these marginal protections with no protest from any Western

government, while the army “stepped up the village burnings and

deportations.” Censorship is so extreme that the facts remain obscure,

and lacking ideological utility, are of no interest in any event.[18]

Plainly, we have here a man who can be expected to “breathe light” into

the problems of the Middle East. If we prefer the facts, we may derive

further conclusions about the New World Order.

The Background to the War

Prior to August 2, 1990, the US and its allies found Saddam Hussein an

attractive partner. In 1980, they helped prevent UN reaction to Iraq’s

attack on Iran, which they supported throughout. At the time, Iraq was a

Soviet client, but Reagan, Thatcher and Bush recognized Saddam Hussein

as “our kind of guy” and induced him to switch sides. In 1982, Reagan

removed Iraq from the list of states that sponsor terror, permitting it

to receive enormous credits for the purchase of US exports while the US

became a major market for its oil. By 1987, Iraq praised Washington for

its “positive efforts” in the Gulf while expressing disappointment over

Soviet refusal to join the tilt towards Iraq (Tariq Aziz). US

intervention was instrumental in enabling Iraq to gain the upper hand in

the war. Western corporations took an active role in building up Iraq’s

military strength, notably its weapons of mass destruction. Reagan and

Bush regularly intervened to block congressional censure of their

friend’s atrocious human rights record, strenuously opposing any actions

that might interfere with profits for US corporations or with Iraq’s

military build-up.[19]

Britain was no different. When Saddam was reported to have gassed

thousands of Kurds at Halabja, the White House intervened to block any

serious congressional reaction and not one member of the governing

Conservative Party was willing to join a left-labor condemnation in

Parliament. Both governments now profess outrage over the crime, and

denounce those who did protest for appeasing their former comrade, while

basking in media praise for their high principle.[20] It was, of course,

understood that Saddam Hussein was one of the world’s most savage

tyrants. But he was “our gangster,” joining a club in which he could

find congenial associates. Repeating a familiar formula, Geoffrey Kemp,

head of the Middle East section in the National Security Council under

Reagan, observed that “We weren’t really that naive. We knew that he was

an SOB, but he was our SOB.”

By mid-July 1990, our SOB was openly moving troops towards Kuwait and

waving a fist at his neighbors. Relations with Washington remained warm.

Bush intervened once again to block congressional efforts to deny loan

guarantees to Iraq. On August 1, while intelligence warned of the

impending invasion, Bush approved the sale of advanced data transmission

equipment to his friendly SOB. In the preceding two weeks, licenses had

been approved for $4.8 million in advanced technology products,

including computers for the Ministry of Industry and Military

Industrialization, for the Saad 16 research center that was later

destroyed by bombing on grounds that it was developing rockets and

poison gas, and for another plant that was repeatedly bombed as a

chemical weapons factory. The State Department indicated to Saddam that

it had no serious objection to his rectifying border disputes with

Kuwait, or intimidating other oil producers to raise the oil price to

$25 a barrel or more. For reasons that remain unexplained, Kuwait’s

response to Iraqi pressures and initiatives was defiant and

contemptuous.[21]

The available evidence can be read in various ways. The most

conservative (and, in my view, most plausible) reading is that Saddam

misunderstood the signals as a “green light” to take all of Kuwait,

possibly with the intention of setting up a puppet government behind

which he would keep effective power (on the model of the US in Panama

and many other cases), possibly as a bargaining chip to achieve narrower

ends, possibly with broader goals. That was unacceptable: no independent

force is permitted to gain significant control over the world’s major

energy reserves, which are to be in the hands of the US and its clients.

Saddam’s record was already so sordid that the conquest of Kuwait added

little to it, but that action was a crime that matters: the crime of

independence. Torture, tyranny, aggression, slaughter of civilians are

all acceptable by US-UK standards, but not stepping on our toes. The

standard policies were then set into motion.

Deterring Iraqi Democracy

Throughout these years, Iraqi democratic forces opposing Bush��s comrade

were rebuffed by the White House, once again in February 1990, when they

sought support for a call for parliamentary democracy. In the same

month, the British Foreign Office impeded their efforts to condemn Iraqi

terror, for fear that they might harm Anglo-Iraqi relations. Two months

later, after the execution of London Observer correspondent Farzad

Bazoft and other Iraqi atrocities, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd

reiterated the need to maintain good relations with Iraq. Iraqi Kurds

received the same treatment. In mid-August, Kurdish leader Jalal

Talabani flew to Washington to seek support for guerrilla operations

against Saddam’s regime. Neither Pentagon nor State Department officials

would speak to him, even though such operations would surely have

weakened Iraq’s forces in Kuwait; he was rebuffed again in March 1991.

The reason, presumably, was concern over the sensibilities of the

Turkish “defender of civilized values,” who looked askance at Kurdish

resistance.[22]

It is a very revealing fact that the Iraqi democratic opposition was not

only ignored by Washington but also scrupulously excluded from the

media, throughout the Gulf crisis. That is easily explained when we hear

what they had to say.

On the eve of the air war, the German press published a statement of the

“Iraqi Democratic Group,” conservative in orientation (“liberal,” in the

European sense), reiterating its call for the overthrow of Saddam

Hussein but also opposing “any foreign intervention in the Near East,”

criticizing US “policies of aggression” in the Third World and its

intention to control Middle East oil, and rejecting UN resolutions “that

had as their goal the starvation of our people.” The statement called

for the withdrawal of US-UK troops, withdrawal of Iraqi troops from

Kuwait, self-determination for the Kuwaiti people, “a peaceful

settlement of the Kuwait problem, democracy for Iraq, and autonomy for

Iraq-Kurdistan.” A similar stand was taken by the Teheran-based Supreme

Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (in a communique from

Beirut); the Iraqi Communist Party; Mas’ud Barzani, the leader of the

Kurdistan Democratic Party; and other prominent opponents of the Iraqi

regime, many of whom had suffered bitterly from Saddam’s atrocities.

Falih ‘Abd al-Jabbar, an Iraqi journalist in exile in London, commented:

“Although the Iraqi opposition parties have neither given up their

demand for an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait nor their hope of displacing

Saddam some time in the future, they believe that they will lose the

moral right to oppose the present regime if they do not side with Iraq

against the war.” They called for reliance on sanctions, which, they

argued, would prove effective. “All the opposition parties are agreed in

calling for an immediate withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait,”

British journalist Edward Mortimer reports, “but most are very unhappy

about the military onslaught by the US-led coalition” and prefer

economic and political sanctions. They also condemned the murderous

bombing.[23]

A delegation of the Kuwaiti democratic opposition in Amman in December

took the same position, opposing any Western assault against Iraq. On

British television, anti-Saddam Arab intellectuals in London, including

the prominent Kuwaiti opposition leader Dr. Ahmed al-Khatib, were

unanimous in calling for a cease-fire and for serious consideration of

Saddam’s February 15 peace offer. In October 1990, Dr. al-Khatib had

stated that Kuwaitis “do not want a military solution” with its enormous

costs for Kuwait, and strenuously opposed any military action.[24]

The silence here was deafening, and most instructive. Unlike Bush and

his associates, the peace movement and Iraqi democratic opposition had

always opposed Saddam Hussein. But they also opposed the quick resort to

violence to undercut a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Such an

outcome would have avoided the slaughter of tens of thousands of people,

the destruction of two countries, harsh reprisals, an environmental

catastrophe, further slaughter by the Iraqi government and the likely

emergence of another murderous US-backed tyranny there. But it would not

have taught the crucial lessons, already reviewed. With the mission

accomplished, the disdain for Iraqi democrats continues unchanged. A

European diplomat observes that “The Americans would prefer to have

another Assad, or better yet, another Mubarak in Baghdad,” referring to

their “military-backed regimes” (dictatorships, that of Assad being

particularly odious). “This may account for the fact that thus far, the

administration has refused to meet with Iraqi opposition leaders in

exile,” Jane Friedman reports in the Christian Science Monitor. A

diplomat from the US-run coalition says that “we will accept Saddam in

Baghdad in order to have Iraq as one state,” which might be interpreted

as meaning: to prevent Iraqi democracy.[25]

In mid-March, Iraqi opposition leaders alleged that the US favors a

military dictatorship, insisting that “changes in the regime must come

from within, from people already in power” (Leith Kubba, head of the

London-based Iraqi Democratic Reform Movement). Banker Ahmed Chalabi,

another prominent opposition activist, said that “the United States,

covered by the fig leaf of non-interference in Iraqi affairs, is waiting

for Saddam to butcher the insurgents in the hope that he can be

overthrown later by a suitable officer,” an attitude rooted in the US

policy of “supporting dictatorships to maintain stability.” Official US

spokesmen confirmed that the Bush administration had not talked to any

Iraqi opposition leaders and did not then intend to: “We felt that

political meetings with them…would not be appropriate for our policy at

this time,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher stated on March

14.[26]

These judgments were confirmed in the following weeks. Bush had openly

encouraged uprisings against Saddam Hussein, and, according to

intelligence sources, had authorized the CIA in January to aid rebels —

secretly, perhaps to avoid offending his Turkish and Saudi friends. But

he stood by quietly as Saddam slaughtered Shi’ites and Kurds, tacitly

approving the use of helicopter gunships to massacre civilians, refusing

to impede the terror or even to provide humanitarian aid to the victims.

Fleeing refugees bitterly asked journalists “Where is George Bush,”

probably not knowing the answer: he was fishing in Florida. Turkey was

accused by Kurdish leaders of blocking food shipments to starving Kurds,

and later closed its borders to most of those in flight. US forces

turned back people fleeing the terror in the South, and refused even to

provide food and water to those who had escaped, Reuters reported,

though individual soldiers did so. A senior Pentagon official said: “The

bottom line here is, if you’re suggesting we would stay purely for a

purpose of protecting the refugees, we won’t.” “We are under no

obligation to them,” another added. Our job is to destroy, nothing more.

The US and Britain barred efforts to have the UN Security Council

condemn the massacre, let alone act in any way, until it was too late to

matter.[27]

So profound is Bush’s commitment to the principle of noninterference

that he also could lend no support to Kuwaiti democrats. His delicacy

barred mention of the word “democracy” even in private communications to

the Emir, officials explained. “You can’t pick out one country to lean

on over another,” one said; never will you find the US “leaning on”

Nicaragua or Cuba, for example, or moving beyond the narrowest

interpretation of international law and UN initiatives.[28]

Those who find any of this strange are simply unacquainted with standard

procedures and the reasons for them.

Blocking the Diplomatic Track

Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait fell within the range of many other recent

atrocities. The regular response of the international community is

condemnation, followed by sanctions and diplomatic efforts. These

procedures rarely succeed, or even begin, because they are blocked by

the great powers, in the past several decades, primarily the United

States, with Britain second; these powers account for 80% of Security

Council vetoes in the 20 years of George Bush’s national prominence.

Since the US and UK happened to oppose Iraq’s aggression, sanctions

could be invoked, with unusually high prospects for success because of

their unprecedented severity and the fact that the usual violators — the

US, UK, and their allies — would, for once, adhere to them. The

likelihood of success was stressed by virtually all witnesses at the

Nunn Senate Hearings (including former Defense Secretaries and chairmen

of the Joint Chiefs), as well as by academic specialists on sanctions.

The question whether sanctions would have worked may be idle; quite

possibly they already had worked by late December, perhaps mid-August.

That seems a reasonable interpretation of the Iraqi withdrawal proposals

confirmed or released by US officials.

Washington moved resolutely to bar the success of peaceful means.

Following the prescriptions of the National Security Policy Review, it

ensured that this “much weaker enemy” would be punished by force. On

August 22, New York Times chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman

outlined the Administration position: the “diplomatic track” must be

blocked, or negotiations might “defuse the crisis” at the cost of “a few

token gains” for Iraq, perhaps “a Kuwaiti island or minor border

adjustments.” A week later, Knut Royce revealed in Newsday that a

proposal in just those terms had been offered by Iraq, but was dismissed

by the Administration (and suppressed by the Times, as it quietly

conceded). The proposal, regarded as “serious” and “negotiable” by a

State Department Mideast expert, called for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait

in exchange for access to the Gulf (meaning control over two uninhabited

mudflats that had been assigned to Kuwait in the imperial settlement,

leaving Iraq landlocked) and Iraqi control of the Rumailah oil field,

about 95% in Iraq, extending two miles into Kuwait over an unsettled

border.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry adds further details. The offer,

relayed via Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Nizar Hamdoon, reached

Washington on August 9. According to a confidential Congressional

summary, it represented the views of Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi

leaders. On August 10, the proposal was brought to the National Security

Council, which rejected it as “already moving against policy,” according

to the retired Army officer who arranged the meeting. Former CIA chief

Richard Helms attempted to carry the initiative further, but got

nowhere. Further efforts by Hamdoon, the Iraqi Embassy in Washington,

and US interlocuters elicited no response. “There was nothing in this

[peace initiative] that interested the US government,” Helms said. A

Congressional summary, with an input from intelligence, concludes that a

diplomatic solution might have been possible at that time. That we will

never know. Washington feared that it was possible, and took no chances,

for the reasons expressed through the Times diplomatic correspondent.

From the outset, the US position was clear, unambiguous, and

unequivocal: no outcome will be tolerated other than capitulation to

force. Others continued to pursue diplomatic efforts. On January 2, US

officials disclosed an Iraqi proposal to withdraw in return for

agreement of an unspecified nature on the Palestinian problem and

weapons of mass destruction. US officials described the offer as

“interesting” because it mentioned no border issues, taking it to

“signal Iraqi interest in a negotiated settlement.” A State Department

Mideast expert described it as a “serious prenegotiation position.” The

facts were again reported by Knut Royce of Newsday, who observed that

Washington “immediately dismissed the proposal.” A Times report the next

day suggested that mere statement by the Security Council of an

intention to deal with the two “linked” issues might have sufficed for

complete Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. Again, the US was taking no

chances, and quashed the threat at once.[29] The story continued. On the

eve of the air war, the US and UK announced that they would veto a

French proposal for immediate Iraqi withdrawal in exchange for a

meaningless Security Council statement on a possible future conference;

Iraq then rejected the proposal as well. On February 15, Iraq offered to

withdraw completely from Kuwait, stating that the withdrawal “should be

linked” to Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and Lebanon,

in accord with UN resolutions. The Iraqi Ambassador to the UN stated

that the offer was unconditional, and that the terms cited were “issues”

that should be addressed, not “conditions” involving “linkage.” The

State Department version, published in the New York Times and elsewhere,

mistranslated the Iraqi offer, giving the wording: “Israel must

withdraw…” Washington at once rejected the offer, and the Ambassador’s

comments, which were barely noted in the press, were ignored. The US

insisted that Iraqi withdrawal must precede a cease-fire; Iraqi forces

must leave their bunkers and be smashed to pieces, after which the US

might consider a cease-fire. The media seemed to consider this quite

reasonable.[30]

Washington’s plan was to launch the ground operation on February 23.

Problems arose when the Soviet Union, a day earlier, reached an

agreement with Iraq to withdraw if UN resolutions would then be

cancelled. The President, “having concluded that the Soviet diplomacy

was getting out of hand” (as the Times puts it), brusquely dismissed the

final Soviet-Iraq agreement, quickly changing the topic to the charge of

an Iraqi “scorched-earth policy.” Again, the crucial difference between

the two positions had to do with timing: should Iraq withdraw one day

after a cease-fire, as the Soviet-Iraqi proposal stated, or while the

bombing continued, as the US demanded.[31]

Throughout, the media went along, with scarcely a false note.

The record strongly supports the judgment of Reagan insider James Webb,

former Navy Secretary, one of the few critics of the war to gain a

public forum. In the Wall Street Journal, he wrote that “this

administration has dealt in extremes,” favoring “brute force” over other

means. Bush “relentlessly maneuvered our nation into a war” that was

unnecessary. He chose to turn the country into “the world’s Hessians,” a

mercenary state paid by others while “our society reels from internal

problems” that the administration refuses to address.[32]

This record is, again, highly informative. The possibility of a

negotiated settlement was excluded from the political and ideological

systems with remarkable efficiency. When Republican National Committee

Chairman Clayton Yeutter states that if a Democrat had been President,

Kuwait would not be liberated today, few if any Democrats can respond by

saying: If I had been President, Kuwait might well have been liberated

long before, perhaps by August, without the disastrous consequences of

your relentless drive for war. In the media, one will search far for a

hint that diplomatic options might have been pursued, or even existed.

The mainstream journals of opinion were no different. Those few who felt

a need to justify their support for the slaughter carefully evaded these

crucial issues, in Europe as well.

To evaluate the importance of this service to power, consider again the

situation just before the air war began. On January 9, a national poll

revealed that 2/3 of the US population favored a conference on the

Arab-Israeli conflict if that would lead to Iraqi withdrawal from

Kuwait. The question was framed to minimize a positive response,

stressing that the Bush administration opposed the idea.[33] It is a

fair guess that each person who nevertheless advocated such a settlement

assumed that he or she was isolated in this opinion. Few if any had

heard any public advocacy of their position; the media had been

virtually uniform in following the Washington Party Line, dismissing

“linkage” (i.e., diplomacy) as an unspeakable crime, in this unique

case. It is hardly likely that respondents were aware that an Iraqi

proposal calling for a settlement in these terms had been released a

week earlier by US officials, who found it reasonable; or that the Iraqi

democratic forces, and most of the world, took the same stand.

Suppose that the crucial facts had been known and the issues honestly

addressed. Then the 2/3 figure would doubtless have been far higher, and

it might have been possible to avoid the huge slaughter preferred by the

administration, with its useful consequences: the world learns that it

is to be ruled by force, the dominant role of the US in the Gulf and its

control over Middle East oil are secured, and the population is diverted

from the growing disaster around us. In brief, the educated classes and

the media did their duty.

The academic study of attitudes and beliefs cited earlier revealed that

the public overwhelmingly supports the use of force to reverse illegal

occupation and serious human rights abuses. But, like journalists and

others who proudly proclaim this “worthy standard,” they do not call for

force in a host of cases that at once come to mind. They do not applaud

Scud attacks on Tel Aviv, though Saddam’s sordid arguments compare well

enough to those of his fellow-criminal in Washington, if honestly

considered; nor would they approve bombs in Washington, a missile attack

on Jakarta, etc.[34] Why? Again, because of the triumphs of the

ideological system. The facts having been consigned to their appropriate

obscurity, the slogans can be trumpeted, unchallenged.

Deterring US Democracy

Such examples, readily extended, illustrate the success in suppressing

democracy in the United States. The ideal, long sought by the business

community and the political class, is that the general population should

be marginalized, each person isolated, deprived of the kinds of

associations that might lead to independent thought and political

action. Each must sit alone in front of the tube, absorbing its

doctrinal message: trust in the Leader; ape the images of the “good

life” presented by the commercials and the sitcoms; be a spectator, a

consumer, a passive worker who follows orders, but not a participant in

the way the world works. To achieve this goal, it has been necessary to

destroy unions and other popular organizations, restrict the political

system to factions of the business party, and construct a grand edifice

of lies to conceal every relevant issue, whether it be Indochina,

Central America, the Middle East, terrorism, the Cold War, domestic

policy, …, whatever — so that the proper lessons are on the shelf, ready

when needed.

The methods have been refined over many years. The first state

propaganda agency was established by the Woodrow Wilson administration.

Within a few months, a largely pacifist population had been turned into

a mob of warmongers, raging to destroy everything German and later

backing the Wilson repression that demolished unions and independent

thought. The success impressed the business and intellectual

communities, leading to the doctrines of “manufacture of consent” and

the elaboration of methods to reduce the general public to its proper

spectator role. When the threat of popular democracy and labor

organizing arose again in the 1930s, business moved quickly to destroy

the virus, with great success. Labor’s last real legislative victory was

in 1935, and the supporting culture has largely been swept away.

“Scientific methods of strike-breaking” rallied community support

against the disruptive elements that interfered with the “harmony” to

which “we” are devoted — “we” being the corporate executive, the honest

sober worker, the housewife, the people united in support of

“Americanism.” Huge media campaigns wielding vacuous slogans to dispel

the danger of thought are now a staple of the ideological system. To

derail concern over whether you should support their policy, the PR

system focuses attention on whether you support our troops — meaningless

words, as empty as the question of whether you support the people of

Iowa. That, of course, is just the point: to reduce the population to

gibbering idiots, mouthing empty phrases and patriotic slogans, waving

ribbons, watching gladiatorial contests and the models designed for them

by the PR industry, but, crucially, not thinking or acting. A few must

be trained to think and act, if only to serve the needs of the powerful;

but they must be kept within the rigid constraints of the ideological

system. These are the tasks of the media, journals of opinion, schools

and universities.

They have been accomplished with much distinction. To approach any

serious question, it is first necessary to clear away mountains of

ideological rubble. But the triumph is far from complete, far less so

than a generation ago. Outside elite circles, the indoctrination is

thin, and often is cast aside with surprising ease if people have an

opportunity to think. Skepticism and disbelief are barely below the

surface. Where there are even fragments of organization, many have been

able to defend themselves from the ideological onslaught. The famed

“gender gap” is an example. The opportunities for association and

independent thought offered by the womens’ movement have led to a

dramatic shift in attitudes — or, perhaps, willingness to express

long-held attitudes — over the past two decades. The same is true of

church groups, solidarity organizations, and others.

The political leadership and others who hail the martial virtues know

well that the domestic base for intervention in the traditional mode has

eroded: no more Marines chasing Sandino, or US forces marauding for

years in the Mekong Delta. Either proxy forces must be used, as in the

international terror networks of the Reagan-Bush years, or victory must

be “rapid and decisive.” And a “much weaker enemy” can be attacked only

if it is first demonized and built to awesome dimensions by vast

propaganda campaigns. By the same token, those who hope to narrow the

options for violence and state terror must find ways to clear away the

rubble under which the reality of the world has been buried. It is not

an easy task, but the task of raising consciousness never is, and it has

been pursued effectively under circumstances that most of us can barely

imagine.

The War

The war followed the script laid out for confrontations with a “much

weaker enemy.” A ground war was avoided. US combat casualties were on

the scale of Grenada, while Iraqi military deaths are estimated by the

US military at 1–200,000, killed from a safe distance. The victors

bulldozed corpses into mass graves, in violation of the Geneva

Conventions to which they appeal when some interest is served. But the

laws of war are as relevant as they were in earlier days, when the New

York Times cheerily described how helicopter gunships would attack the

“dazed and bleeding people” surrounding B-52 bomb craters in Vietnam and

“put them out of their misery,” honoring the law that soldiers unable to

fight “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.”[35]

In a briefing, General Schwartzkopf observed that during the Grenada

invasion, the Cubans fought harder than expected — referring to the

several dozen paramilitary construction workers who resisted the assault

of 6000 elite US forces after Washington had ignored Cuba’s announcement

that they would not fire unless attacked, and its call for a peaceful

resolution. This time, the heroic General explained, we would take no

chances. The tactic was to pulverize the Third World peasant army —

hiding in the sand, immobile, and defenseless — after months of

disinformation about its artillery, sophisticated defenses, chemical

weapons, and other fantastic capacities, later conceded to be largely

fakery. When the enemy was utterly demoralized, US forces cut off

escape, the Air Force slaughtered those attempting to flee (including

Asian workers and Kuwaiti hostages, BBC reported),[36] and troops were

sent it to pick up the pieces — though elite Iraqi units were allowed to

move on to crush later revolts with savage terror, in accord with the US

aim of reconstructing something rather like the friendly regime of the

pre-August 1990 period, but now with firmer guarantees of obedience to

the master.

The air war had already reduced Iraq to a “pre-industrial age,” creating

“near apocalyptic” conditions, a UN survey reported. The air attack was

aimed at civilian targets, called “military” for the purpose: water,

sewage, and power systems, bridges and infrastructure generally. The

results, as expected, were the effective destruction of the health

system so that limbs have to be sawed off without anesthesia among other

harrowing scenes in what remains of hospitals; mounting deaths from

disease and lack of food and water, with huge increase in infant

diarrheal infections and other serious diseases; water down to 5% of

normal supply; food rations at 1000 calories with further crises

impending; and the likelihood of major epidemics from what amounts to

biological warfare. The Times reported that the US opposes any

“premature relaxation” of these conditions, insisting that the civilian

population be held hostage in the expectation that if they suffer

enough, they might remove Saddam Hussein. This is apart from the tens of

thousands of civilians killed, the destruction of four hospitals,

thousands of homes and other civilian structures by bombing, and other

goals readily — and of course heroically — achieved when the the “much

weaker enemy” is entirely defenseless.[37]

Had the diplomatic track that Washington feared been successfully

pursued, Kuwait too would have been spared the war and the Iraqi terror,

which, according to reports, rapidly increased in the final days. An

environmental catastrophe would also have been averted. In the small

print, the Times noted that according to Pentagon officials, “the

burning of Kuwait’s oil fields might have been a defensive action by

Iraq, which appeared to be anticipating imminent attack by allied ground

forces.” While Iraq created the largest oil spill, the one that

threatened the desalination plant at Safaniya in Saudi Arabia probably

resulted from US bombing, US military officials said. A Pentagon

official added that the Iraqi oil spill might have been aimed at the

water sources for US troops, in retaliation for US destruction of

Kuwait’s major desalination plant just before. The prime responsibility

for the Gulf tragedy lies on the shoulders of Saddam Hussein; but he is

not without his partners in crime, nor are his crimes unique.[38]

Some commentators expressed qualms about the savagery of the final

slaughter, but a look at history should have relieved their surprise.

When violence is cost-free, all bars are down. During the Indochina war,

there were constraints on bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, or dikes in

North Vietnam, because of fear of a Chinese or Soviet reaction and the

political cost elsewhere. But in the southern sectors of North Vietnam,

or elsewhere in Indochina, no one important cared, and the rule was that

“anything goes.” The Pentagon Papers reveal extensive planning about the

bombing of the North, because of potential costs to the US; the far more

devastating bombing of the South, begun years earlier and including

major war crimes, is passed over with little attention.[39]

The same was true of World War II. At the end, Japan was defenseless,

therefore demolished at will. Tokyo was removed from the list of atom

bomb targets because it was “practically rubble” so that an attack would

not demonstrate the bomb’s power. Many believe that the war ended with

the atom bomb. Not so. In the official US Air Force history, we read

that General Arnold “wanted as big a finale as possible,” and, with

management skills that compare to Stormin’ Norman’s, assembled over 1000

planes to bomb Japan after Nagasaki, killing thousands of people and

dropping leaflets saying “Your Government has surrendered. The war is

over!” Truman announced Japan’s surrender before the last planes

returned. Japan was prostrate, so why not? As the Korean war ground on,

the Air Force could locate no more targets. Therefore, as an official US

Air Force study records, it attacked North Korean dams, leading to such

stirring sights as a “flash flood [that] scooped clean 27 miles of

valley below,” while 75% of the water supply for rice production was

wiped out and the enemy suffered “the destruction of their chief

sustenance — rice.” “The Westerner can little conceive the awesome

meaning which the loss of this staple food commodity has for the Asian,”

the study explains: “starvation and slow death, …more feared than the

deadliest plague. Hence the show of rage, the flare of violent tempers,

and the avowed threats of reprisals when bombs fell on five irrigation

dams.” The threats of reprisal were empty, and there were no political

costs, so these war crimes joined the long list of others compiled with

impunity by the powerful, who never fail to strike impressive poses as

they call for war crimes trials — for others.[40]

The Political Culture

The published record tells us more about the political culture in the

United States and the West generally. As noted, the possibility of a

peaceful resolution was virtually banned from discussion. When George

Bush thundered that There Will Be No Negotiations, a hundred editorials

and news reports would laud him for “going the last mile for peace” in

“extraordinary efforts at diplomacy.” Democratic forces in Iraq, with

their unwanted message, were also successfully barred. Popular

opposition to the war in most of the world was sporadically reported,

but primarily as a problem: Can the friendly dictatorships control their

populations while we gain our ends by force? Even among those who did

not exalt the “martial values,” the totalitarian commitments were

scarcely below the surface.

In the US, dissident voices were effectively excluded from the

mainstream, as is the norm; and while the media elsewhere were far more

open, support for the war on the part of the educated classes in the

industrial democracies was so overwhelming that the effects were slight.

Strikingly, no concern was voiced over the glaringly obvious fact that

no official reason was ever offered for going to war — no reason, that

is, that could not be instantly refuted by a literate teenager. That is

the very hallmark of a totalitarian political culture.

The matter merits a closer look. After various failed efforts, one

single official reason was offered for war, repeated in a litany by

George Bush and his acolytes: “There can be no reward for aggression.

Nor will there by any negotiation. Principle cannot be compromised.”[41]

Accordingly, there can be no diplomacy, merely an ultimatum — capitulate

or die — followed by the quick resort to violence.

Presented with this argument, the educated classes did not collapse in

ridicule, but solemnly intoned the Party Line, expressing their awe and

admiration for Bush’s high principles. One would have to search far for

the reaction that would be immediate on the part of any rational and

minimally informed person: True, principle cannot be compromised, but

since George Bush is a leading supporter of aggression and always has

been, the principle invoked is not his, or his government’s, or that of

any other state. And it follows that no reason has been given at all for

rejecting negotiations in favor of violence.

The specific words just quoted happen to be Bush’s response to the Iraqi

withdrawal proposal released by US officials on January 2. But the

stance was maintained throughout. Intellectuals asked no questions,

finding nothing to challenge in the farcical official pronouncements and

the doctrine clearly implied: the world is to to be ruled by force.

The conclusion is brilliantly clear: no official reason was offered for

the war, and the educated classes suppressed the fact with near

unanimity. We must look elsewhere to find the reasons for the war — a

question of great significance for any citizen, though not for the

guardians of doctrinal purity, who must bar this quest.

The methods adopted were enlightening. Those who had the indecency to

demolish the official justifications were accused of demanding “moral

purity,” opposing any response to Iraq’s aggression by states that had

been “inconsistent” in the past (in fact, they had consistently pursued

their own interests, generally supporting aggression for this reason).

Returning to the realm of rational discourse, these miscreants were

pointing out that war without stated reason is a sign of totalitarian

values, and citizens who reject these values will have to turn elsewhere

to discover the real reasons. In the mainstream, they would find very

little.

Outside official circles, the standard justification for war was that

sanctions would not work and that it was unfair to allow the Kuwaitis to

suffer on. Some held that debate over sanctions was a standoff, perhaps

irresoluble. By the same logic, the bombing of numerous other countries

can at once be justified by mere assertion that nothing else will put an

end to aggression, annexation, and human rights abuses. Transparently,

all of this is nonsense, even if we ignore the evidence that sanctions

had already worked. Indisputably, the burden of proof lies on those who

call for the use of force, a heavy burden that was never met, or even

seriously faced.

One could not seriously argue that the suffering of the victims in this

case was more extreme than in numerous others for which force has never

been proposed. Nor is there any merit to the argument that this case was

different because of the annexation: putting aside the US-UK response to

other cases of annexation, no less horrifying, the drive towards war

continued unchanged after Iraqi withdrawal offers that the US did not

risk pursuing. The claim that a peaceful settlement would not have

destroyed Saddam’s warmaking capacity is no more persuasive. Apart from

the broader consequences of such an argument if taken seriously, the

obvious procedure for eliminating this capacity would have been to

explore the possibilities for regional disarmament and security

arrangements (proposed by Iraq, rejected by the US, well before the

invasion of Kuwait); and after his negotiated withdrawal from Kuwait, to

refrain from providing Saddam with lavish high technology assistance for

his warmaking capacity, surely a possibility if the West could overcome

its greed in this sole instance. Other arguments are equally weighty.

In one of the more serious efforts to address some of the questions,

Timothy Garton Ash asserts in the New York Review that while sanctions

were possible in dealing with South Africa or Communist East Europe,

Saddam Hussein is different. That concludes the argument. We now

understand why it was proper to pursue “quiet diplomacy” while our South

African friends caused over $60 billion in damage and 1.5 million deaths

from 1980 to 1988 in the neighboring states — putting aside South Africa

and Namibia, and the preceding decade. They are basically decent folk,

like us and the Communist tyrants. Why? No answer is offered here, but a

partial one is suggested by Nelson Mandela, who condemns the hypocrisy

and prejudice of the highly selective response to the crimes of the

“brown-skinned” Iraqis. The same thought comes to mind when the New York

Times assures us that “the world” is united against Saddam Hussein, the

most hated man in “the world” — the world, that is, minus its darker

faces.[42]

The emergence of Western racism with such stunning clarity is worth

notice. It is an understandable consequence of the end of the Cold War.

For 70 years, it has been possible to disguise traditional practices as

“defense against the Soviets,” generally a sham, now lost as a pretext.

We return, then, to earlier days when the New York press explained that

“we must go on slaughtering the natives in English fashion, and taking

what muddy glory lies in the wholesale killing til they have learned to

respect our arms. The more difficult task of getting them to respect our

intentions will follow.”[43] In fact, deprived of the benefits of our

form of civilization, they understood our intentions well enough, and

still do.

The Contours of the New World Order

Despite basic continuities, there have been changes in the international

system. It is by now a truism that the world is economically “tripolar.”

The collapse of Soviet tyranny adds new dimensions: much of Eastern

Europe can be restored to its former status as a quasi-colonial

dependency of the West; new pretexts are needed for intervention; there

is no longer any deterrent to the use of military force by the United

States. But though it has a virtual monopoly of military force, the US

no longer has the economic base to impose “order and stability”

(meaning, a proper respect for the masters) in the Third World.

Therefore, as the business press has been advising, the US must become a

“mercenary state,” paid for its services by German-led continental

Europe and Japan, and relying on the flow of capital from Gulf oil

production, which it will dominate. The same is true of its British

lieutenant, also facing serious domestic problems, but with a “sturdy

national character” and proper tradition. John Keegan, a prominent

British military historian and defense commentator for the right-wing

Daily Telegraph, outlines the common view succinctly: “The British are

used to over 200 years of expeditionary forces going overseas, fighting

the Africans, the Chinese, the Indians, the Arabs. It’s just something

the British take for granted,” and the war in the Gulf “rings very, very

familiar imperial bells with the British.”[44]

The financial editor of the conservative Chicago Tribune has been

stressing these themes with particular clarity. We must be “willing

mercenaries,” paid for our ample services by our rivals, using our

“monopoly power” in the “security market” to maintain “our control over

the world economic system.” We should run a global protection racket, he

advises, selling “protection” to other wealthy powers who will pay us a

“war premium.” This is Chicago, where the words are understood: if

someone bothers you, you call on the mafia to break their bones. And if

you fall behind in your premium, your health may suffer too.[45]

The use of force to control the Third World is only a last resort.

Economic weapons remain a more efficient instrument. Some of the newer

mechanisms can be seen in the Uruguay Round negotiations, now in

disarray because of conflicts among the rich, but sure to be revived in

one or another form. Western powers call for liberalization when that is

in their interest; and for enhanced protection of domestic economic

actors, when that is in their interest. The major concern of the US in

the GATT negotiations was not agricultural policy, as much of the

coverage suggested, but rather the “new themes,” as they are called:

guarantees for “intellectual property rights” (ranging from pop culture

to software and patents), removal of constraints on services and

investment, and so on; a mixture of liberalization and protectionism,

determined by the interests of the powerful. The effect of these

measures would be to restrict Third World governments to a police

function to control their working classes and superfluous population,

while transnational corporations gain free access to their resources and

monopolize new technology and global investment and production — and of

course are granted the central planning, allocation, production and

distribution functions denied to governments, which suffer from the

defect that they might fall under the baleful influence of the rabble.

These facts have not been lost on Third World commentators, who have

been protesting eloquently and mightily. But their voices are as welcome

here as those of Iraqi democrats.[46]

The US will try to establish more firmly its own regional dominance,

exploiting “free trade” to secure super-cheap labor in Mexico, the

Caribbean, and other dependencies, while Canadian resources are taken

over and its industry and cultural independence decline. The press

failed to give Bush sufficient credit for his achievements in his Fall

1990 tour of Latin America. Mexico was induced to allow US oil companies

new access to its resources, a long-sought policy goal. US companies

will now be able “to help Mexico’s nationalized oil company,” as the

Wall Street Journal prefers to construe the matter. Our fondest wish for

many years has been to help our little brown brothers, and at last the

ignorant peons will allow us to cater to their needs.[47]

The population at home must also be controlled, and diverted from the

growing domestic crises. The basic means have already been described,

including periodic campaigns against “much weaker enemies”: Cuba is a

likely next target, perhaps in time for the next election, if illegal

economic warfare, terrorism, intimidation of others to bar normal

relations, and other devices can set the stage.

In the Middle East, the US is now well placed to impose its will. The

traditional strategic conception has been that the US and its British

lieutenant should maintain effective power but indirect control along

lines explained by Lord Curzon in the days of British dominance: it is

preferable to rule behind an “Arab facade,” with “absorption” of the

quasi-colony “veiled by constitutional fictions as a protectorate, a

sphere of influence, a buffer State, and so on.” But we must never run

the risk of “losing control,” as John Foster Dulles and many others

warned.[48] The local managers of Gulf oil riches are to be protected by

regional enforcers, preferably non-Arab: Turkey, Israel, Pakistan and

Iran, which perhaps can be restored to the fold. Bloody tyrants of the

Hafez el-Assad variety, with his minority-based dictatorship, may be

allowed to take part, possibly even Egypt if it can be purchased, though

the regime is not brutal enough to be reliable. US and British force

remain on call if needed, and can now be freely deployed, with the

Soviet deterrent gone. The US will seek some agreement among its

clients, and might even consider an international conference, if it can

be properly managed. As Henry Kissinger insisted, Europe and Japan must

be kept out of the diplomacy, but the USSR might be tolerated on the

assumption that it will be obedient in its current straits.

As for the Palestinians, the US can now move towards the solution

outlined by James Baker well before the Gulf crisis: Jordan is the

Palestinian state; the occupied territories are to be ruled in accord

with the basic guidelines of the Israeli government, with Palestinians

permitted to collect local taxes in Nablus; their political

representatives will be chosen for them, with the PLO excluded; and

“free elections” will be held under Israeli military control with the

Palestinian leadership in prison camps. The reality will be masked

behind such slogans as “territorial compromise” and “land for peace,”

interpreted in accord with traditional Labor Party rejectionism, always

favored by the US over the Likud variant: Israel will take what it wants

in the territories, leaving the surplus population stateless or under

Jordanian administration. New excuses will be devised for old policies,

which will be hailed as generous and forthcoming.

Economic development for the Palestinians had always been barred, while

their land and water were taken. The Labor Party leadership advised that

the Palestinians should be given the message: “You shall continue to

live like dogs, and whoever wishes, may leave” (Moshe Dayan, more

pro-Palestinian than most).[49] The advice was followed, though the grim

story was largely suppressed here. Palestinians had been permitted to

serve the Israeli economy as virtual slave labor, but this interlude is

passing. The recent curfew administered a further blow to the

Palestinian economy. The victors can now proceed with the policy

articulated in February 1989 by Yitzhak Rabin of the Labor Party, then

Defense Secretary, when he informed Peace Now leaders of his

satisfaction with the US-PLO dialogue, meaningless discussions to divert

attention while Israel suppresses the Intifada by force. The

Palestinians “will be broken,” Rabin promised, reiterating the

prediction of Israeli Arabists 40 years earlier: the Palestinians will

“be crushed,” will die or “turn into human dust and the waste of

society, and join the most impoverished classes in the Arab countries.”

Or they will leave, while Russian Jews, now barred from the US by

policies designed to deny them a free choice, flock to an expanded

Israel, leaving the diplomatic issues moot, as the Baker-Shamir-Peres

plan envisaged.[50]

These are some of the contours of the planned New World Order that come

into view as the beguiling rhetoric is lifted away.

[1] Baker, Address to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Oct. 29,

1990. Bush, Feb. 1; cited by Robert Parry, Nation, April 15, 1991.

Lewis, NYT, March 15, 1991.

[2] Il Sabato, March 2 (AP, Feb. 26); Times of India, cited by William

Dalrymple (writing “on why the Iraqi dictator is the most popular pin-up

in India”), London Spectator, Feb. 23; Third World Resurgence

(Malaysia), No. 6, Feb.; cover, No. 7, March 1991; Folha de Sao Paulo,

Ken Silverstein, p.c.; South, Feb. 1991.

[3] Jansen, Middle East International, Feb. 22; Lloyd, FT, Jan. 19–20;

Iraqi democrats, see below; al-Khalil, New York Review, March 18, 1991;

South, Feb. 1991. Sources in Syria estimated that 80–90% of the

population opposed its participation in the war (Sarah Gauch, Christian

Science Monitor, March 28, 1991). Much the same was reported elsewhere.

[4] Paul Lewis, NYT, Jan 12, 1991; UN Draft A/44/L.51, 6 Dec. 1989.

[5] AP, April 13, 1990. Reuters, BG, April 14, 1990. FT, March 9; Clyde

Farnsworth, NYT, March 18, 1991.

[6] NYT, Feb. 23, 1991.

[7] Figures from Robert Reich, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 30; Joshua

Cohen, “Comments on the War,” MIT, March 4; Erich Heinemann, CSM, April

2, 1991. Prison population, Maurice Briggs, Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 9;

Tom Wicker, NYT, Jan 9, 1991.

[8] Maureen Dowd, NYT, March 2, 1991.

[9] E.J. Dionne, WP Weekly, March 11; John Aloysius Farrell, BG

Magazine, March 31; Martin Nolan, BG, March 10; Oliphant, BG, Feb. 27,

199l. Roosevelt, see my Turning the Tide (South End, 1985), 61, 87.

[10] Oliphant, op. cit.

[11] Peter Applebome, NYT, March 1; Terrence Maitland, NYT Book Review,

Feb. 3, reviewing Zalin Grant, Facing the Phoenix.

[12] Kaplan, BG, Feb. 23; Hoffmann, BG, Jan. 6, 1991. Sut Jhally, Justin

Lewis, & Michael Morgan, The Gulf War: A Study of the Media, Public

Opinion, & Public Knowledge, Department of Communications, U Mass.

Amherst.

[13] Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1991; Carlson, U.S. Naval Institute

Proceedings, September 1989; Los Angeles Times, Sept. 3, 1989; AP, April

23, 1990; Third World Resurgence, Oct. 1990.

[14] Mike Mansfield, cited by Frank Costigliola, in Thomas Paterson,

ed., Kennedy’s Quest for Victory (Oxford, 1989).

[15] Michael Tomasky & Richard McKerrow, Village Voice, Feb. 26, 1991.

[16] Reuters, Canberra, Feb. 24; Communique’, International Court of

Justice, Feb. 22, 1991. Evans, Senate Daily Hansard, Nov. 1, 1989;

Indonesia News Service, Nov. 1, 1990; Greenleft mideast.gulf.346,

electronic communication, Feb. 18, 1991. ABC (Australia) radio,

“Background briefing; East Timor,” Feb. 17, 1991. Robin Osborne,

Indonesia’s Secret Wars (Allen & Unwin, 1985); George Monbiot, Poisoned

Arrows (Abacus, London, 1989); Anti-Slavery Society, West Papua (London,

1990).

[17] NYT, Feb. 19, 1991.

[18] Reuters, Sept. 26, 1990. Saeedpour, Pacific News Service, March 11,

1991; John Murray Brown, Financial Times, Feb. 12, March 8, 1991; AP,

March 20, 1991; Michael Gunter, Kurdish Times, Fall 1990; Ray Moseley,

Chicago Tribune. Feb. 6, 1991. Medico International, Krieg und Flucht in

Kurdistan, Frankfurt, citing Tageszeitung, Jan. 28 and Frankfurter

Rundschau, Jan. 25, on the bombing. Human Rights Watch #1, Winter, 1991.

[19] See my articles in Z magazine, March and October 1990, Feb. 1991,

and Deterring Democracy (Verso, forthcoming). For further reports

(lacking sources, hence difficult to evaluate), see Pierre Salinger and

Eric Laurent, Guerre du Golfe (Olivier Orban, Paris, 1991); Adel Darwish

and Gregory Alexander, Unholy Babylon (St. Martin’s, 1991). Also Don

Oberdorfer, WP Weekly, Stuart Auerbach, WP Weekly, March 18–24; Michael

Massing, New York Review, March 28; Helga Graham, South, Feb. 1991.

[20] Darwish, op. cit., 79; Tony Benn, et al., letter, Manchester

Guardian Weekly, March 31, 1991.

[21] Auerbach, Salinger, Darwish, op. cit.

[22] Sources in London-based Iraqi democratic opposition; Darwish, op.

cit. Talabani, Vera Saeedpour, Toward Freedom (Burlington, VT), March

1991; Stephen Hubbell, Nation, April 15, 1991.

[23] “For a Peaceful Settlement,” Gruppe Irakischer Demokraten,

Frankfurter Rundschau, Jan. 14; al-Jabbar, Manchester Guardian Weekly,

Feb. 3; Mortimer, FT, Jan. 21, 1991.

[24] Lamis Andoni, FT, Dec. 6, 1990. David Pallister, Guardian (London)

Feb. 18, 1991. Khatib, Middle East Report, Jan/Feb. 1991, cited by Mouin

Rabbani, letter, New Statesman, March 22, 1991, replying to Fred

Halliday. The quote is from Khatib’s interview with Halliday, who

advocated war, also claiming that it was supported by the populations of

the region, which is untrue, as far as we know, and hardly relevant; no

one, including Halliday, relies on regional attitudes to justify the use

of force against Israel to remove it from Lebanon and the occupied

territories.

[25] CSM, March 20, 1990.

[26] Mideast Mirror (London), March 15, 1991.

[27] Jim Drinkard, AP, April 3; Geraldine Brooks, WSJ, April 3; Michael

Kranish, BG, April 4; Walter Robinson, BG, March 21; Paul Taylor,

Reuters, March 21 (Mideast Mirror, March 21); LA Times, April 2;

Christopher Marquis, BG, April 3; Paul Lewis, NYT, April 3, 1991.

[28] Andrew Rosenthal, NYT, April 3, 1991.

[29] See my articles in Z magazine, October 1990 and February 1991, for

details; and Parry, op. cit.

[30] The translation by AP from Cyprus and by the BBC was accurate. AP,

BG, Feb. 16; BBC, FT, Feb. 16; State Dept. version, NYT, Feb. 16, Time,

Feb. 25. See also William Beeman, PNS, Feb. 18. Original obtained by

Edward Said. Iraqi Ambassador, NYT, Feb. 17, 1991, 100 words. John

Cushman, “U.S. Insists Withdrawal Comes Before Cease-Fire,” NYT, Feb.

16, 1991.

[31] Thomas Friedman and Patrick Tyler, NYT, March 3; Transcript of

Moscow Peace Proposal and Bush-Fitzwater statements, NYT, Feb. 23;

Patrick Tyler, NYT, Feb. 26, 1991.

[32] Webb, WSJ, Jan. 31, 1991.

[33] WP, Jan. 11, 1991.

[34] See notes 12, 10.

[35] Walter S. Mossberg and David Rogers, WSJ, March 22; Holly

Burkhalter, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, LAT, March 12;

News, Middle East Watch, March 7, 1991. Malcolm Browne, NYT, May 6,

1972; see E.S. Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent (Pantheon,

1988), 193, for longer quote and context.

[36] BBC-1 TV news, 9 PM, March 5; BBC radio, cited by Christopher

Hitchens, Nation, April 8.

[37] World Health Organization, WP, Feb. 26, NYT, Feb. 26, 1991.

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), AP,

Feb. 28; David Nyhan, BG, March 3, 1991. Paul Lewis, NYT, March 2;

Trevor Rowe, BG, March 2, 1991. For a detailed accounting, see V.K.

Ramachandran, Frontline (India), March 30, 1991.

[38] Andrew Rosenthal, NYT, Feb. 23; AP, BG, Feb. 9; Pamela Constable,

BG, Jan 27, 1991.

[39] For a detailed review, see my For Reasons of State (Pantheon,

1973).

[40] For details, see my American Power and the New Mandarins (Pantheon,

1969), 210–1; Towards a New Cold War (Pantheon, 1982), 112–3. On Tokyo,

see Barton Bernstein, International Security, Spring 1991.

[41] AP, Jan. 14, 1991; George Bush’s letter to Saddam Hussein, NYT,

Jan. 13, 1991.

[42] Ash, “The Gulf in Europe,” NYRB, March 7, 1991. “Inter-Agency Task

Force, Africa Recovery Program/Economic Commission, South African

Destabilization: the Economic Cost of Frontline Resistance to Apartheid,

NY, UN, 1989, 13, cited by Merle Bowen, Fletcher Forum, Winter 1991.

Mandela, AP, NYT, Nov. 8, 1990. Editorials, NYT, Feb. 23, 27, 1991.

[43] See Turning the Tide, 162.

[44] Richard Hudson, WSJ, Feb. 5, 1991.

[45] William Neikirk, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 9, 1990; Jan. 27, 1991.

[46] See particularly Chakravarthi Raghavan, Recolonization; Martin Khor

Kok Peng, The Uruguay Round and Third World Sovereignty (Third World

Network, Malaysia, 1990).

[47] WSJ, Nov. 28, 1990.

[48] William Stivers, Supremacy and Oil (Cornell, 1982), 28, 34;

America’s Confrontation with Revolutionary Change in the Middle East

(St. Martin’s, 1986), 20f.

[49] Yossi Beilin, Mehiro shel Ihud (Revivim, 1985), reviewing internal

cabinet records.

[50] For references, see my article in Z magazine, Jan. 1990, and

Deterring Democracy.