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Bazaar warriors

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For all their talk of bringing “democracy” to Iraq (without the vote, of course, because that would undoubtedly put unpalatable people in power in Baghdad), the hawks in Washington are deaf to democracy. That’s why, as Robert Cutler said yesterday in the AsiaTimes, the “bazaar” was the operative American image for negotiations with the new Turkish government.

“Press reports, especially in North America, suggested that a deal between Ankara and Washington was just a question of money, using the metaphor of the bazaar to explain Turkish negotiating behavior. In the end, this description was shown to be ill-conceived and inaccurate. More was at stake than just the amount of money. Turkish leaders consistently said so, but no one in Washington seemed to hear them.”

The true Bazaar Warriors are not those “hagglers” in the Middle East, but the hagglers in Washington who are convinced that the bribe backed by the threat of pain is all that makes the world spin. And they’re not willing to take a voted “no,” for an answer either. They’re already back pressuring for a new vote ASAP and trumpeting the withdrawal of all those promised billions from Turkey.

In a piece (Buying a Coalition) in this week’s Nation magazine, William D. Hartung and Michelle Ciarroca offer a modest summary of some of the bribing and threatening going on globally. Here’s just a taste:

“For Mexico, a vote against the United States could spark a backlash that would undermine aid and trade, a daunting prospect for a country that sends 80 percent of its exports to the US market. A no vote by Chile could kill plans for granting it the same access to the US market that Canada and Mexico now enjoy. Pakistan will have to weigh the costs of voting with the United States and antagonizing its strongly antiwar population against the costs of voting against Washington and risking cutbacks in the hundreds of millions in US aid and loans it is receiving as a privileged ally in the ‘war on terrorism.’ For Angola, future US loans for developing its critical oil industry may hang in the balance.”

Michael Tomasky in an online piece for the American Prospect magazine, “Hoarse Whisperer, Bush’s quiet but not-so-subtle bullying of Mexico,” suggests an even more malign form of threatening.

“The more or less pleasant cajolery didn’t work. The coarse arm-twisting hasn’t been doing much good, either. So now, the Bush administration — in its campaign to put the squeeze on the ‘Middle Six’ United Nations Security Council members still on the fence with regard to a second UN resolution approving war against Iraq — has commenced a whispering campaign designed to incite anti-Mexican sentiment or action in the United States.”

The true Bazaar Warriors are not those “hagglers” in the Middle East, but the hagglers in Washington who are convinced that the bribe backed by the threat of pain is all that makes the world spin. And they’re not willing to take a voted “no,” for an answer either. They’re already back pressuring for a new vote ASAP and trumpeting the withdrawal of all those promised billions from Turkey.

In a piece (Buying a Coalition) in this week’s Nation magazine, William D. Hartung and Michelle Ciarroca offer a modest summary of some of the bribing and threatening going on globally. Here’s just a taste:

“For Mexico, a vote against the United States could spark a backlash that would undermine aid and trade, a daunting prospect for a country that sends 80 percent of its exports to the US market. A no vote by Chile could kill plans for granting it the same access to the US market that Canada and Mexico now enjoy. Pakistan will have to weigh the costs of voting with the United States and antagonizing its strongly antiwar population against the costs of voting against Washington and risking cutbacks in the hundreds of millions in US aid and loans it is receiving as a privileged ally in the ‘war on terrorism.’ For Angola, future US loans for developing its critical oil industry may hang in the balance.”

Michael Tomasky in an online piece for the American Prospect magazine, “Hoarse Whisperer, Bush’s quiet but not-so-subtle bullying of Mexico,” suggests an even more malign form of threatening.

“The more or less pleasant cajolery didn’t work. The coarse arm-twisting hasn’t been doing much good, either. So now, the Bush administration — in its campaign to put the squeeze on the ‘Middle Six’ United Nations Security Council members still on the fence with regard to a second UN resolution approving war against Iraq — has commenced a whispering campaign designed to incite anti-Mexican sentiment or action in the United States.”

Given the levels of pressure being exerted and the global uproar over Iraq, as Julian Borger points out in Cents and sensibility in the Guardian today, the silence from Congress is nothing short of deafening. He writes:

“A third of Tony Blair’s party has turned against him in the biggest British political mutiny for a century. In newspapers and television news bulletins around the world, the talk is all Iraq, all the time. And while all this has been going on, the US Congress has been busy too, discussing a temporary change to the design of the five-cent coin. It is currently consumed with a blazing row over a controversial judicial nomination to one of the federal appeals courts.
“For the past four months, as the international debate on Iraq has raged, the legislature of the nation leading to the charge to war has scarcely raised a whisper on the subject. There is a lot of talk about Iraq in the corridors, where there is tangible buzz of anxiety, but the debate hardly ever makes it as far as the floor. “

Below you’ll find three pieces of interest: James Pinkerton, himself a conservative, in an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times considers the way the hawks are trying to take a big stick to a democratic antiwar protest movement in the United States. (“The intellectual mission of the Iraq hawks today is to erase bad memories of past conflicts so as to wipe the slate clean for future conflicts.”) Law professor Herbie DiFonzo on the History News Network considers what light our turn-of-the-century occupations of Cuba and the Philippines might throw on our glowing promises for a postwar Iraq; and Jim Lobe in the Asia Times suggests how the heavy tread (or, as in tanks, is it treads?) of our “diplomats” in a foreign policy run largely from the Pentagon has affected three democracies — Turkey, South Korea, and the Philippines — in their relations with us.

The amazing thing then — given the throw-weight of this administration — is that they are now considering pulling their own UN resolution for fear of a resounding defeat; the governments of their closest allies, Britain and Spain, have been shaken; the Turks refused to vote to house an invading force, and even Spanish Prime Minister Aznar has called for a new Teddy Rooseveltianism from another tone deaf Bazaar Warrior, Donald Rumsfeld. Carry the big stick, yes, the Prime Minister evidently suggested to our President, but shut up. Tom

Strangeloves in Bloom
By James P. Pinkerton
The Los Angeles Times
March 5, 2003

It’s a sign of the hawkish times that supporters of war against Iraq are able to get away with labeling antiwar doves as wimps and fools. Indeed, some pro- warriors go further, smearing antiwar Americans as dupes of the enemy.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) pronounces some antiwar Democrats guilty of “appeasement” toward Saddam Hussein; the neoconservative Weekly Standard makes the same accusation against the entire State Department as well as selected Republicans. Columnist Mona Charen has gone even further; in a new book titled “Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First,” she attacks, among others, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and Madeleine Albright. Charen’s title comes from Soviet leader V.I. Lenin’s phrase referring to those who unwittingly helped the communist cause.

James P. Pinkerton, a White House staffer in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, is a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

To read more Pinkerton click here

Let’s Hope We Do Better in Iraq than We Did in Cuba
By J. Herbie DiFonzo
History News Network
March 5, 2003

While the current Iraq crisis is quite appropriately focused on the rationale for a proposed American invasion, much less heed has been paid to the costs and consequences of a post-war American occupation. We have, however, traveled this road before, and the historical analogy is worth considering.

Prior to the Spanish-American War of 1898, American sentiments were inflamed by the tyrannical behavior of the Spanish overlords of Cuba and the Phillippines. One U.S. Senator declared that the Cuban population was “struggling for freedom and deliverance from the worst management of which I ever had knowledge.” American pre-war intentions were largely centered on the liberation of both Cuba and the Phillippines. Even though Spain had unquestioned legal authority over the two lands, the U.S. decided to ignore that barrier.

Mr. DiFonzo is a professor of law at Hofstra University.

To read more DiFonzo click here

Democracy pricks imperial balloon
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times
March 5, 2003

WASHINGTON – “Turkish support is assured,” declared deputy Pentagon chief Paul Wolfowitz triumphantly after a meeting with top military and government officials in Ankara in early December.

He was referring, of course, to the US plan to deploy tens of thousands of troops at bases in southwestern Turkey from which they would open a second, northern front in their invasion of Iraq and quickly secure control of strategic oil fields around Kirkuk, while racing south to Baghdad and Tikrit.

The bluff certainty with which Wolfowitz, leader of the neoconservative faction in the administration of President George W Bush, declared his confidence was characteristic of the way in which Washington’s hawks have approached the impending war with Iraq and their broader imperial ambitions.

To read more Lobe click here