My nomination for quotes of the week — both in yesterday’s New York Times:
From “U.S. Is Pessimistic Turks Will Accept Aid Deal on Iraq” on the front page,
“In private, though, administration officials were fuming, with one senior official calling the Turkish efforts to hold out for more aid — and perhaps access to oil from the Kirkuk region of Iraq — as ‘extortion in the name of alliance.’ Another said that despite a stream of aid from the United States, ‘the Turks seem to think that we’ll keep the bazaar open all night.'” (You know those Middle Eastern types, always ready to haggle the night away…)
And then from a blandly headlined p. 4 piece, “U.S. Official Cites Progress In Trade Ties With China,”
“Led by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Washington officials have become increasingly critical of China in the last week for not doing more to support American positions on Iraq and North Korea at a time when the Chinese economy has benefited enormously from exports to the United States.”
Extortion, it turns out, is meant to be a one-way street and when it comes to herding our “allies” in the UN and elsewhere into line, we have no hesitation about keeping the bazaar open all night.
Last week, three US “government employees” (assumedly CIA operatives) were captured and two killed by Colombian rebels after their plane went down over rebel territory; today, the Pentagon confirms that 1,700 American troops are heading for the Philippines not just to train the natives, but to actively fight a small, obscure rebel group whose modus operandi falls somewhere between terrorism and banditry. They will open, as the Pentagon puts it, “a new front in the campaign against terrorism” in a country which years ago, oddly enough, closed down our bases and tossed our garrisons out.
And then from a blandly headlined p. 4 piece, “U.S. Official Cites Progress In Trade Ties With China,”
“Led by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Washington officials have become increasingly critical of China in the last week for not doing more to support American positions on Iraq and North Korea at a time when the Chinese economy has benefited enormously from exports to the United States.”
Extortion, it turns out, is meant to be a one-way street and when it comes to herding our “allies” in the UN and elsewhere into line, we have no hesitation about keeping the bazaar open all night.
Last week, three US “government employees” (assumedly CIA operatives) were captured and two killed by Colombian rebels after their plane went down over rebel territory; today, the Pentagon confirms that 1,700 American troops are heading for the Philippines not just to train the natives, but to actively fight a small, obscure rebel group whose modus operandi falls somewhere between terrorism and banditry. They will open, as the Pentagon puts it, “a new front in the campaign against terrorism” in a country which years ago, oddly enough, closed down our bases and tossed our garrisons out.
“No country on earth without a garrison” should be our national motto these days on a planet where we could sooner or later end up embroiled in something like a global Vietnam. Below, Paul Rogers of the openDemocracy website offers his estimate — five weeks — of how far we are from a war in Iraq, based on the inescapable buildup of American forces in the Gulf. In the meantime, Undersecretary of State John Bolton has been visiting Israel where he and Ariel Sharon have evidently been exchanging views on which countries to take on next in what’s shaping up as an age of endless imperial wars. I’ve included a piece from the Israeli paper Ha’aretz on the visit just to give you a sense of the agenda this administration’s hawks can’t stop talking about, but which doesn’t get much attention here.
You might also consider visiting the Foreign Policy in Focus website and checking out Ian Williams’s piece, “John Bolton in Jerusalem: The New Age of Disarmament Wars.” He writes:
“Almost as amazing as Bolton’s statements [in Israel] is the relative silence of the U.S. media about him and other administration hawks. Shouldn’t the American public know that senior administration officials are promising that after a war with Iraq, there will be one with Iran, and then one with Syria, with Libya, with North Korea, and with Cuba? Each of these is a scenario that could frighten the American public. Taken together, George W. Bush is threatening to make the Prussian kings look like Pacifists. Do those Reservists in the Gulf know how long they will be away, making the world fertile for terrorism?”
To read more Williams click here
Finally, I include a piece Jim Lobe wrote recently for the Asia Times about our new imperialists and their thinking. Tom
War by timetable
By Paul Rogers
openDemocracy
February 19, 2003The popular protests against US war on Iraq are massive and growing. The US faces acute diplomatic problems over weapons inspection, in Nato, and with Turkey. But the White House hawks and the US military are charting the full moon over Baghdad. There will be war in five weeks.
The huge anti-war marches and events around the world on the weekend of 15-16 February 2003 may be the most significant political demonstrations since the Cold War era. In their scale, they resemble the 1986 and 2001 ‘people power’ movements in the Philippines which removed Presidents Marcos and Estrada, and the mass outpouring of popular feeling across the Soviet bloc in 1989.
If the size of the demonstrations greatly exceeded the expectations of the organisers, their timing was also important.
To read more Rogers click here
Sharon says U.S. should also disarm Iran, Libya
and Syria
By Aluf Benn
Ha’aretz
February 20, 2003Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq. “These are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve,” Sharon said to a visiting delegation of American congressmen.
Sharon told the congressmen that Israel was not involved in the war with Iraq “but the American action is of vital importance.”
In a meeting with U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton yesterday, Sharon said that Israel was concerned about the security threat posed by Iran, and stressed that it was important to deal with Iran even while American attention was focused on Iraq.
Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials that he had no doubt America would attack Iraq
To read more Ha’aretz click here
Old-time imperialism
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times
February 20, 2003WASHINGTON – “Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.”
So reads a bronze plaque that sits on Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld’s massive desk in his office across the Potomac River from Washington. It encapsulates much of the spirit that animates the hawks in the administration of President George W Bush, and their supporters.
The quotation is by former president Theodore Roosevelt, Bush’s favorite president, who led the charge on San Juan Hill in Cuba in the supposedly decisive battle of the 1898 Spanish-American War that, with the defeat of the Spanish navy in Manila Bay half a world away, established the United States as an imperial power with global reach.
Of course, the current president’s reading of “TR” is rather selective.