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

Yes sir, I remember the democrats. They are doing the same thing now.

When those Kurds were being murdered I say to hell with what the democrats say.

Are we going to continue to do jobs halfway and abandon people we promised (Republican promise)to protect because the communists among us get angry? Then we have no backbone and our word is no better than the democrats.

After the Gulf War President Bush's approval rating skyrocketed but he couldn't get re-elected. I voted for him twice. I did not vote for the current President. (not that it means anything to this discussion)

Thank you. I can't understand that because I have some quesitons and misgivings I'm somewhat less patriotic and don't belong here.

I'm always hearing from people that I go along unquestioningly with 'jackboot tactics' on my job and when I do post some questions I'm told to hit the bricks.

This clown sounds mediocre in more areas than authorship! "Look, le Carré, wake up and realize that muslims do NOT want peace, they want to kill you because you're an infidel!"

While I'm pointing out the obvious, I guess it needs also to be passed to le Carré that SOME threats to civilization can only be effectively countered pre-emptively. Couple that with the FACT that Saddam Hussein bank-rolled BOTH WTC attacks (remember '93?), and one has a viable target set!

Stay vigilent, stay armed, and never trust a muslim or a liberal (both are terrorists, differing only in technique and weaponry).

Ignore some of them. They are beginning to sound sort of like liberals. Don't like it when you don't share their view. You have every right to your opinion; same as everyone else on here. And, one should always question the "status-quo."Don't go along cause everyone else is.

I think we are missing an important point. I think part of the reason we are standing firm now is because of the Kurds. I think we have been asked by them for help.

ALSO, I believe that President Bush needs to keep the pressure on the UN to take care of this and the NK issues. That is the job of the UN. The world is despising the US because we are forced to take the lead and "save" everyone. Me, I'd just as soon see all of our military come home and the hell with countries that "despise" us. But, the USA is for freedom to all the world (and I believe that is why so many people join the military). So, I say, if you send in our people, make it quick and clean. Don't do another Vietnam or Mogadishu.

There... that is MY opinion.

Here are some facts about helping the Kurds out. If one is fair about what the United States has done, one can hardly say that we abandoned the Kurds. Here is another link for you. Hopefully, this will clear up for you the fact that we did not abandon the Kurds and that they are living in relative freedom in Northern Iraq as a result or ours and the Brits efforts.

Gulf War 1 was NOT about removing Saddam. The purpose of that action was to remove his forces from Kuwait. Since that time Saddam has repeatedly violated the cease fire agreements that ended the conflict. As a supposed officer of the law, I assume that you are familiar with the basic tenets of parole/probation and the consequences of their being violated? Clinton, being the consumate democrat, ignored Iraq and let the inspectors be intimidated and finally, ejected. The only use he had for Iraq was as an attention deflector during his impeachment.Thus four years passed with no inspections, and a sociopath at the helm of an America hating country with an axe to grind. Now it is time for Saddam to go,Officer-VIOLATION of PROBATION. As for the author of this piece of journalism-his country just legalized burglary and he's calling the U.S. crazy?

I appreciate the debate going on amongst the posters on this thread. It is lively and informative. But I would like to say one thing.

I want revenge.

If that is primitive, so be it. I don't think that what we have done in Afghanistan is nearly enough in the way of an answer to 9/11. Maybe Iraq is not the best next target. Maybe it should be Iran. Maybe the Saudis. The point is that my appetite for revenge against the whole Islamic world has not nearly been satisfied. I feel a sickness inside myself that won't begin to lift until we hit them, and then hit them again, and then again.

Let the pundits argue the finer points. There is a time in the affairs of men and of nations when the primitive thing is the right thing to do. Revenge is the right thing now.

Revenge will right the balance.

To me alot of what he says holds true. I don't think this ouster of Sadaam is for oil so much as it is for revenge for the attack on George I.
I'm not prepared to give my approval for war against Iraq. I think we have more concern over China & North Korea than we do Iraq.
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?

No heat here, Cap'n, just some observations:

If this is about revenge for George I, then the level of Saddam's cease-fire compliance is not relevant. Do you really imagine the Bush Administration would now be planning invasion if Saddam had been compliant and was now in compliance with the terms of the cease fire?

Is it not possible (if not probable) that the President has intelligence leading us to believe Iraq is more dangerous than North Korea, or perhaps that Iraq had been involved with 9-11? And what threat from China is being overlooked by our focus on Iraq?

We failed to give the Kurds the promised help in 1991, I agree. I also agree that we should have given them the help they needed. Does that failure in 1991 preclude liberating them now? IOW, are we prisoner to the mistakes of 1991?

I agree. Both from an emotional, hot-headed standpoint, and a coldly logical one. I am nowhere near ready to "move on" from 911. I hate the bastards that think they can do this to us and get away with it. I hate the left that gives them aid and comfort. I hate the bigots who would sacrifice Israel to appease the beast.

I also think that our response has been far too slow and weak. In international affairs weakness means you get attacked again. And again.

We need to take Sodom down yesterday. And we need to stop caring so much what the socialists here in this country and in the UN think about it.

I feel the same, we are supposed to act civilized while we are attacked, plotted against, insulted from within and without, the list goes on and on. Every time I see a stinking ,goat boinking muslim chanting and burning an American flag I just have to wonder how much of my tax money went into his ungrateful, worthless gut. I hope and pray that our soldiers show NO MERCY and get as many, as painfully as possible. Those who want to call me a racsist,bigot or anything elsist, feel free-I can't hear you.

Have you ever noticed that no one ever really makes a case against this war, they just flap their jaws. If Bush was really in it for the oil, or the revenge, or whatever why would that that matter?

Wouldn't the fact remain that Saddam is a brutal dictator who's trying to get his hands on weapons of mass destruction? Does anybody have any other idea of how to deal with this situation?

And oil really does matter. If Saddam remains in control of his own oil fields and can threaten the one's of his neighbors that means he can pressure us. And he can even more pressure on Europe which is more dependent on Middle Eastern oil. This problem is profoundly deepened if Saddam gets a nuclear bomb.

And since when did Mutually Assured Destruction become the offical doctrine of the anti-war left? Sure it worked against the Soviets, but it's not magic. And I'm far from confident that Western opinion would condone the frying of an entire nation for any purpose. Would we be willing to counter Iraqi aggression against Kuwait if Saddam could legimately threaten Isreal with a missle or a Western city with a suitcase nuke? What if he were to harbour terrorists?

The fact of the matter is that a mad man in a strategically vital region armed with nuclear weapons is a very bad thing for the entire world. Anti-war folks can't deny that so they bury under a lot of innuendo about oil connections.

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