A little housekeeping is in order to start a week that may be quite significant in all our lives. First of all, a correction. The other day I claimed that the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk was heading for Korean waters. Not so. It’s been sent to the Gulf. So many carrier task forces are now circling in the Gulf and the Mediterranean (with a French one recently dispatched as well) that there must be aircraft-carrier gridlock in the region.
Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by the a-historicity of the media. I have yet to see anyone use the classic imperial phrase, “gunboat diplomacy.” If you want to know what that once meant just drop back to the nineteenth century and read about the “Opium Wars,” when English warships busted China open to the drug trade and, in due course, to neocolonial possession, turmoil, warlordism, and finally a violent, massive people’s revolution that reached its own catastrophic end in our time.
In any case, insider information from a “senior official” close only to me leads me to believe that the Kitty Hawk may soon be repositioned off the coast of France in preparation for an upcoming Presidential “quintuplets of evil” address. (After all, last week, in Congressional budget hearings, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld managed to associate the Germans with the Cubans and Libyans in their opposition to an Iraq war. “Then there are three or four countries that have said they won’t do anything. I believe Libya, Cuba, and Germany are ones that have indicated they won’t help in any respect.”) The same source informs me that our military leaders are considering floating Rumsfeld himself into position off the Korean coast until an aircraft carrier can arrive.
As for this week, by its end Blix and El-Baradei will have given their next reports to the UN and assumedly the French and Germans will have submitted their new inspection-plus proposal, already being roundly denounced by every American “senior official” in sight, to the Security Council.
Monika Bauerlein, an editor at Mother Jones magazine, sent the following “footnote” to my comments yesterday on the new French-German-(now Russian) plan:
“I read several European news services and I was startled this
morning by the difference between their description of the Franco-German
plan and its characterization in the U.S. press. From reading the Times this
morning, I got the impression that Old Europe was calling for a few thousand
blue helmets to convoy around with the inspectors. In the Euro press (e.g.
Der Spiegel), the plan is described as calling for an “invasion” that would
turn Iraq into a “U.N. protectorate” with Saddam remaining in power only
“pro forma,” the expectation being that his regime would collapse. The
entire country would be turned into a no-fly zone; the U.N. would take
“control” of the administration; hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops would
remain stationed nearby; etc. I don’t know if the Euro papers are
overreaching here–after all, there’s no document (yet?) we can all look
at–but I’d love to see a comprehensive description of the plan in the
English-language press.”
Of course, though he evidently gave in on U-2 flights and legislation banning weapons of mass destruction today, Saddam Hussein, if left to his own devices, could sink the latest plan in a trice. My guess, though, is that the U.S. will jump in first with both “diplomatic” feet.
Of course, though he evidently gave in on U-2 flights and legislation banning weapons of mass destruction today, Saddam Hussein, if left to his own devices, could sink the latest plan in a trice. My guess, though, is that the U.S. will jump in first with both “diplomatic” feet.
Most important of all, at the end of this week there will be a historic global demonstration against the war. I’ll certainly be focusing on this remarkable near-planet-wide demo all week, but I thought I might start with an interview Noam Chomsky did with the Guardian on the new antiwar movement, which is now posted on the ZNET site. Don’t miss it. Chomsky, who works off a different cultural script than the rest of us and so sees the world in ways that most of us in this country simply can’t, touches on many matters, but especially on the uses (or perhaps I should say, abuses) of fear in this country and globally. If we in the antiwar movement don’t grasp the uses of fear by this administration we’ll be in terrible trouble. Tom
Chomsky on the antiwar movement
An interview in The Guardian
by Noam Chomsky
The Guardian
By Matthew Tempest
February 4, 2003Noam Chomsky: The [peace] demonstrations were another indication of a quite remarkable phenomenon. There is around the world and in the United States opposition to the coming war that is at a level that is completely unprecedented in US or European history both in scope and the parts of the population it draws on.
There’s never been a time that I can think of when there’s been such massive opposition to a war before it was even started. And the closer you get to the region, the higher the opposition appears to be. In Turkey, polls indicated close to 90% opposition, in Europe it’s quite substantial, and in the United States the figures you see in polls, however, are quite misleading because there’s another factor that isn’t considered that differentiates the United States from the rest of the world.
To read more Chomsky click here