Tomgram

Canaries in the mine of the Iraqi crisis

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We are at a grim juncture indeed. The Bush administration senses that it’s now or never — opinion polls, national and global, are definitively heading into the tank, the stock market seems in a rush to follow, and popular resistance is on the rise everywhere. (Demonstrations, amazingly enough, continue in cities all across the United States.) War may be just weeks away. If you’re looking for a canary in the mine of the Iraqi crisis, here’s something to consider. The following message was directed from the State Department to every American living abroad (which may be a historic first) to prepare for possible evacuation:

“Mon, 27 Jan 2003 12:02:23 +0800
Subject: Department of State Public Announcement

General Advice For Americans Resident Overseas – Public
Announcement
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman

This information is current as of today, Sun Jan 26 10:04:58 2003.
General Advice For Americans Resident Overseas
Among the highest priorities of the Department of State and our
missions abroad is the safety and security of locally-resident Americans
overseas. In the past year, the Department has intervened to assist
in the evacuation of Americans from half a dozen countries throughout
the world as a result of serious political or economic unrest, natural disasters,
and terrorist attacks.

Hundreds of expatriate Americans each year are forced by
personal emergencies (e.g. death or illness in the family) to return
to the U.S. on short notice. Evacuations,
especially under crisis conditions, are inevitably very disruptive and
distressing for those involved.

The State Department routinely provides standard advice to its
employees on prudent steps to take to ensure they would be prepared
in the event of such an evacuation. The Department commends these elementary steps to you for your careful consideration.

Assemble all vital documents such as passports, birth and
marriage records, vaccination, insurance and bank records
in one readily accessible location [etc.]
Maintain an adequate supply of food, water, and necessary
medications in your home. Make sure your car is in good working order. Keep the gas tank full and check oil, coolant, tires, and battery.

General Advice For Americans Resident Overseas – Public
Announcement
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman

This information is current as of today, Sun Jan 26 10:04:58 2003.
General Advice For Americans Resident Overseas
Among the highest priorities of the Department of State and our
missions abroad is the safety and security of locally-resident Americans
overseas. In the past year, the Department has intervened to assist
in the evacuation of Americans from half a dozen countries throughout
the world as a result of serious political or economic unrest, natural disasters,
and terrorist attacks.

Hundreds of expatriate Americans each year are forced by
personal emergencies (e.g. death or illness in the family) to return
to the U.S. on short notice. Evacuations,
especially under crisis conditions, are inevitably very disruptive and
distressing for those involved.

The State Department routinely provides standard advice to its
employees on prudent steps to take to ensure they would be prepared
in the event of such an evacuation. The Department commends these elementary steps to you for your careful consideration.

Assemble all vital documents such as passports, birth and
marriage records, vaccination, insurance and bank records
in one readily accessible location [etc.]
Maintain an adequate supply of food, water, and necessary
medications in your home. Make sure your car is in good working order. Keep the gas tank full and check oil, coolant, tires, and battery.

We do not want American citizens to become unduly alarmed. These
are precautionary measures only. Given the potential for acts of violence,
terrorism, or anti-American demonstrations, we believe it is important
for all citizens to maintain readiness for all possibilities in case of an
emergency. We will promptly inform you of any significant developments
and advise you accordingly.

The Department of State encourages all American citizens residing
abroad to register their presence and obtain up-to-date information on security
conditions at the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.”

Canary two to watch — though I’ve not seen a single world about the subject in the mainstream media — the UN inspectors. It seems unlikely that the Americans would launch their blitz on Iraq without at least an attempt to get the inspectors out of that country. (Whether the UN will withdraw them is another matter.) Dead inspectors would not be a canny propaganda ploy for the Bush administration. This is a problem that American planners must be spending significant time considering. Only Bruce Ackerman in The American Prospect online (“Two Fronts, How an American invasion of Iraq may put the UN inspectors in harm’s way” To read Ackerman click here) has, as far as I know, considered the problem in print. Keep your eyes open on this one.

What follows are two of the many strong pieces being written in a desperate world facing a mad war. Robert Fisk of the Independent reviews the deceptions and contradictions inherent in American policy (not that this administration gives a damn) and then Ira Chernus, in a piece published on the commondreams.org website, introduces us to the post-post-Cold War’s Dr. Strangelove, a man named Harlan Ullman, whose devastating ideas on devastation in modern warfare may offer a window into the first potentially horrifying days of an American-style air war over Iraq, whose watch phrase would be: shock and awe. Tom

The wartime deceptions: Saddam is Hitler and it’s not about oil
By Robert Fisk
The Independent
January 27, 2003

The Israeli writer Uri Avnery once delivered a wickedly sharp open letter to Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister who sent his army to defeat in Lebanon. Enraged by Begin’s constant evocation of the Second World War — likening Yasser Arafat in Beirut to Hitler in his Berlin bunker in 1945 — Avnery entitled his letter: “Mr Prime Minister, Hitler is Dead.”

How often I have wanted to repeat his advice to Bush and Blair. Obsessed with their own demonisation of Saddam Hussein, both are now reminding us of the price of appeasement. Bush thinks that he is the Churchill of America, refusing the appeasement of Saddam. Now the US ambassador to the European Union, Rockwell Schnabel, has compared Saddam to Hitler. “You had Hitler in Europe and no one really did anything about him,” Schnabel lectured the Europeans in Brussels a week ago

To read more Fisk click here

Shock & Awe: Is Baghdad the Next Hiroshima?
By Ira Chernus
January 27, 2003
CommonDreams.org

Have your heard of Harlan Ullman? Everyone in the White House and the Pentagon has. They may very well follow his plan for war in Iraq. He wants to do to Baghdad what we did to Hiroshima.

Ullman is what they call a “defense intellectual.” He was the Navy’s “head of extended planning” and taught at the National War College. One of his students was Secretary of State Colin Powell, who says he “raised my vision several levels.”

What Powell and everyone in the Bush administration sees now is Ullman’s vision for high-tech war. He calls it “rapid dominance,” or “shock and awe.” The idea is to scare the enemy to death. To win, you don’t need to inflict physical pain and destruction. Just the fear of pain, and the massive confusion it creates, is enough.

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

To read more Chernus click here