The United States of America has gone mad [Emetic!]

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives?

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.

Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work.

In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that “somebody” was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr’s cry: “That man tried to kill my Daddy.” But it’s still not personal, this war. It’s still necessary. It’s still God’s work. It’s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.

To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t.

If Saddam didn’t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.

Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair’s part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can’t. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can’t get out.

It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain’s opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that’s Britain’s tragedy, as it is America’s: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair’s best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world’s greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant’s head to wave at the boys?

Blair’s worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.

There is a middle way, but it’s a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.

I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can’t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.

“Because otherwise Mr Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.”

“And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?”

Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: “Peace is also Patriotic”. It was gone by the time he’d finished shopping.

The author has also contributed to an openDemocracy debate on Iraq at www.openDemocracy.net

An attempt on a US President's life is overwhelming justification for taking any b*st*rd out. If Klintoon had any core principles and moral values whatsoever, we would've taken care of this problem (Saddam) 8 years when the attempt occurred.

It's too bad Clowntoon didn't feel a pressing need to get his crimes and pecadilloes off the front page at that time. Then, he would have done the right thing (albeit for the wrong reason).

Truth be told, I was against the first Gulf War. And after we did go to war, we had the "murderer" in our hands and let him go.

And not only did he go, he went and murdered people we told we would protect and support. Meaning the Kurds.

Is that right about the Kurds? I have yet to read anything on my own or have anyone show me that we did not abandon them.

And if it's true that we abandon the Kurds, after we told them we'd protect them, then shame on us.

Also, while we're having a discussion, what about all the veterans of the Gulf War who are trying to draw attention to the government on the medical problems they are having since the war? There have been a few posts on FR about this and I didn't hear anybody calling them 'sorry peaceniks' etc.

I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods.

I love how these people always say they'd like Saddam to be gone, just not that way. Well, what way, then? Give us your plan there, John. You can write excruciatingly convoluted novels, so you presumably can knock out a downfall-of-Saddam operation in an afternoon.

And, how 'bout them Kurds?

That was a travesty, but is not the issue of today.

I don’t think this ouster of Sadaam is for oil so much as it is for revenge for the attack on George I.

Proof please!

If we would have taken Sadaam our the first time, there would have been no attempt on the President.

You are correct, but again, that is not the issue for January 15, 2003.

The difference between 1991 and 2003 is that there are l3,000 dead at the WTC and the Pentagon. Iraq is a state sponsor of terror directed at the West. I believe there is a link between Iraq and Al Queda – the least being the meeting in Prague between Muhammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence. That is what this war is about.! About stopping terrorism in its track, before a madman can arm terrorists to do more harm in the US, Israel, and the West.

Now, we can debate this issue until the cows come home because this is the issue. (IMO)

And lastly, I've had some discussions with people here about the Kurds, whom if I remember correctly, we promised to defend in Gulf War I. It seems to me we didn't and I haven't seen or heard anyone explain why we didn't. If Sadaam was such a 'Hitler' why didn't we do it right the first time?

What do you call the Northern Fly Zone? That was setup specifically to protect the Kurds. And by the way, because of that no-fly zone, Kurdish controlled Northern Iraq is one of the few places in the Middle East where they have a functioning rule of law. If one were objective about what is taking place in Northern Iraq, one could even say that it provides a model for how Iraq should be governed as a whole once the United States destroys Hussein's thugocracy.

No, I didn't ignore your comment. Maybe I didn't answer it in the best manner. If I remember correctly, the first time around, President Bush I said Sadaam was a Hitler and had to be done away with. We even got to hear the stories of babies being dumped out of incubators, seen Kuwaiti's hanging throughout their country, Sadaam gassing his own people, etc.

Sadaam was 'public enemy number 1.'

Then we had him. We had him defeated and we let him go and Sadaam killed the Kurds. Why didn't we go back THEN?

Now, you say that we abandoned the Kurds and it was wrong. Then you say we didn't treat the Indians very nice either.

And I'm the bad guy in this????

More and more people here will make good police officers.

Why don't you take your sorry peacnik-ass to DU.

I disagree with the Cap'n, but exiling people that we disagree with is exactly what DU does, and avoiding debate is a silly way to try to advance the conservative agenda. Let the DU homogenize their discussions so that they never have to articulate why they hold the positions they do. I don't want to see that here.

it really is not correct to say that we abandoned the Kurds. They have a slice of Northern Iraq right now where they are able to live in comparative freedom. However, if Cap'n'Crunch has his way, we really will be abandoning them. Finally, I find Cap'n'Crunch's position in regard to the Kurds particularly ironic because he is in effect saying that because we abandoned then once we should prove our consistency by abandoning them twice.

Thank you for your response.

I'm sorry but it's not that easy for me to say "that was a travesty but it's not the issue of today."

Well, excuse me if I'm a bit miffed that we abandoned a people we said we would protect. Especially when they were going to do some of the dirtywork for us and oust Sadaam.

Frankly, that infurates me.

Proof about revenge and oil? I saw current President Bush on TV say: "He (Sadaam) tried to kill my daddy." Saw it with my own eyes.

Yes, I am correct as I have seen and learned up till now. That is why I am very skeptical about our reasons for Gulf 2.

I'm also infuriated that our Government has not, to the best of my knowledge, taken care of our Veterans, not only from the Gulf, but from Vietnam and Korea also.

And I'm less than thrilled that people on this forum who have directed so much venom at me for being a police officer, "falling in line" to crush the Constitution and "go along blindly" with my leaders, refer to me insultingly and go along blindly with the President. And can't come up with anything other than insults.

But hey, that's what makes America great.

Why isn't it right to say we didn't abandon them? I saw them being killed on the nightly news and asking: "where is the United States?"

Because we did something after the fact makes everything we didn't do OK?

Why didn't we get rid of Sadaam the first time?

Thank you for civil responses.

The argument has been made so many times that it becomes a waste of breath to continue to explain it. But, one more time...

Saddam Hussein destabilizes the whole region. He gassed his own people and invaded two of his neighbors. He would like nothing better than to get his hands on nukes so he could severely punish the US which kicked him in the crotch but left him standing 12 years ago. He is definitely mean enough to do it. He runs an evil, soviet style police state. His family are just as bad as he is. He has diverted shipments of food and aid to his own purposes rather than feeding the people as they were intended. There is a lot of evidence that he was behind the Murra Federal Building, which the Govt doesn't confirm or deny -- I think to protect intelligence sources.

Looking back leaving him in power was a mistake. But hindsight is 20/20. Leaving him there at the time when there was no mandate to march to Baghdad left a bad taste in peoples mouths, but it was understandable -- even the right thing to do based on the mission parameters. What happened to the Kurds was a flat out shame. I have no idea what was behind that snafu.

That is no reason to go wobbly now. He thinks he is smarter than the rest of the world. HE thinks he has hid his shit well enough that we won't be able to find it. If he remains in power under so-called 'containment' he will be able to continue to launch adventures against us and the Israelis, like paying families to blow up their children. It is his time. It will be time for the N. Koreans and the Iranians soon enough. Right now, it is Baghdad time.

It is amazing how much the non-leftist american public understands. They understand that islam equals evil, that Saddam is a menace, and that weakness in international affairs is deadly. We will carry on and do what needs to be done for an ungrateful left and ignorant public. As a cop you should understand that feeling very well.

Well, excuse me if I'm a bit miffed that we abandoned a people we said we would protect. Especially when they were going to do some of the dirtywork for us and oust Sadaam.

And I am giving you plenty of room to be angry. It was betrayal... but, should that betrayal prevent us from going after Saddam today?

Frankly, that infurates me.

Be infuriated! I don't have a problem with that.

Proof about revenge and oil? I saw current President Bush on TV say: "He (Sadaam) tried to kill my daddy." Saw it with my own eyes.

Two problems with the above. Saddam did try to kill President Bush. That is a fact not in debate today. So, GWB is correct when he says that. You said that revenge was the reason we are going into Iraq today. I am asking for proof on that.

I'm also infuriated that our Government has not, to the best of my knowledge, taken care of our Veterans, not only from the Gulf, but from Vietnam and Korea also.

This is a national shame. Yet, it does not have anything to do with the war on terror. Everything should be done to treasure and care for the men and women who fought for us.

Well... that's not right either. But, I haven't done that (at least I don't think I have).

I don't think you are being intellectually honest. We enforced the no-fly zone and prevented Hussein from killing thousands of Kurds, just like he had done before the Gulf War started. Under any definition of the word, that doesn't constitute abandoning people. And if I am wrong, tell me what is going on in the Northern Fly Zone. People are living there in comparative freedom. Those people are called Kurds. They are living that way because of the United States military. How do we get blamed for that?

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