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THE ROVING EYE
Shoot the dog
By
Pepe Escobar
"So,
Cherie my dear,
could you leave the way clear
for
sex tonight? Tell him,
'Tony Tony Tony,
I know
that you're horny,
But there's somethin' bout
that
Bush ain't right'"
- George Michael, Shoot the Dog
PARIS - It may be this summer's top blockbuster
preview, but America's first pre-emptive war against the
supreme pillar of the axis of evil is increasingly
drawing more than mixed reviews - and not only in the
US. Jordan's Prince Abdullah has just pressed the point
face-to-face to George W Bush: to attack Iraq would be
"to open a Pandora's box". The prince should have
suspected that the analogy spells trouble: Bush may
think Pandora is a box of chocolates and the guarantee
of a sweet deal.
Turkey remains extremely
worried. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said that he is
"trying to convince the US administration to give up the
operation". Turkey is alarmed over incalculable further
damage to its already fragile economy. It has already
been assured by the Americans there will be no
independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. But General
Arman Kuloglo, the head of the Eurasian Strategic
Studies Institute in Ankara, says that Turkey will be
forced to tag along, whether it wants it or not. He
believes that Turkey might end up occupying crucial
oil-rich parts of northern Iraq, including the main
prizes, the Kurdish towns of Kirkuk and Mosul.
Europe remains undeniably hostile - as much as
the so-called "moderate" Arab regimes. In the latest
Franco-German summit last week in Schwerin, northeast
Germany, French President Jacques Chirac and German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder stressed the same point
being repeated all over the European Union: a military
intervention against Iraq can only happen through a
United Nations mandate. Chirac said that an attack "can
only be justified if there is a decision by the UN
Security Council. This is the position of France and
Germany."
It is widely known that an attack on
Iraq would certainly be vetoed by France, China and
Russia at the Security Council. But it is also widely
known that the Bush administration's hardcore, obsessive
hawks at the Pentagon don't give a damn about the UN.
They don't care if there's no resolution authorizing an
attack, and they don't care if there's absolutely no
proof of close relations between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
In the corridors of the European Union, an
attack on Iraq is regarded with plenty of alarm.
Diplomats wonder what might happen after a gratuitous
attack, not preceded by an act of aggression, by one
sovereign country on another, to get rid of a leader who
just basically drives them mad. Diplomats are
unanimously appalled at the mockery the attack makes of
the UN - the whole thing caused by nothing else than
vengeance in an ongoing family feud where a stung Bush
fils tries to make up for Bush pere.
Not only is the gratuitous aggression
challenged, but also all the calls about its moral
righteousness, as well as the imperial disdain for the
sensitivities of the Arab world and America's allies.
And on top of it all, an attack on Iraq would be an open
invitation for more anti-American terrorism. It is also
inconceivable in Europe - as much as in the Arab world -
that the installation of a puppet regime in Baghdad is a
sine qua non condition for the solution of the
Palestine tragedy.
France is totally against an
attack on Iraq, and prefers to concentrate its
intelligence on playing a more active role in the real
center of all terrorist-related matters: Pakistan. Bush
visited Paris late in May and had crucial talks with
Jacques Chirac. From these talks it was established that
the CIA and Britain's MI5 would have direct access to
precious French intelligence collected in Afghanistan by
the DGSE (Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure),
the French CIA. France has always been behind the
Panjshir Lion, the late legendary commander Ahmad Shah
Masoud. Now France is exchanging its wealth of knowledge
for a frontline position in collecting intelligence in
Pakistan. Jean-Claude Cousseran, the DGSE director,
highly appreciated by Chirac, recently visited Karachi,
where he was alarmed at how the Inter-Services
Intelligence was infiltrated by Islamists with extremely
close ties with al-Qaeda.
While the French focus
on Pakistan - where the real action is - the British are
being forced to focus on Iraq. Bush and the Pentagon
hawks can count on just one faithful ally so far:
British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bush's aides have
been madly spinning that Blair has already promised to
commit British troops to an attack on Iraq. The
helicopter-carrier HMS Ocean and dozens of frigates
would certainly be employed. Britain has just
repatriated 1,700 men from Afghanistan. But a recent
report of a British military exercise in Oman revealed
an embarrassment of Monty Python proportions: most of
the equipment malfunctioned, tanks stalled after a few
hours and even the desert boots melted in the sun.
Blair is a certified hawk on Iraq, but he's
being forced to wage a ferocious internal battle against
the doves - the ranks of the Foreign Office. The Labour
Party's left wing also wants an urgent debate in
parliament. Sir Michael Rose, former chief of the UN
Blue Helmets in Bosnia, says that the best tactics are
still the current one-off strikes. Most of all, Labour's
pro-Europeans insist that to act as a blind follower of
Washington is to undermine the setting up of a common
European Union foreign and defense policy.
British big business - widely present in the
Arab world - fears a flurry of terrorist reprisals
against thousands of British expats in Saudi Arabia and
the Gulf. The City of London pays a lot of attention to
Arab warnings of a serious risk to British interests in
case of an attack. Public opinion is not exactly on
Blair's side either. Recent polls in Britain reveal that
a majority blames Blair for being too dependent on
America's whims. And most people are against sending
British soldiers for a campaign in Iraq.
Plan B,
anyway, is in place. A UN team of experts on weapons of
mass destruction is being discreetly assembled in a
ultra-secret lab affiliated with the Ministry of
Defense. This is in case Saddam Hussein again accepts
the intrusive and highly-humiliating UN inspections -
which have been condemned in Iraq by government
officials and civilians alike as nothing more than
intelligence-gathering for further attacks.
While the French and German press are extremely
critical of an attack, most of the British press is
awash in hysteria - with journalists behaving like
Britain is America's 51st state. Even sound-minded
people like William Shawcross - who wrote the best book
ever denouncing the murderous US sideshow campaign in
Cambodia during the Vietnam war - are in hawkish mode.
Shawcross reproduces all the nonsensical arguments of
the Pentagon masterminds: Iraqis will rise against
Saddam, Israel without Saddam will be propelled to
peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians, a UN
resolution for an attack is not necessary, etc.
Popular sentiment is another story entirely. So
no wonder the controversial,
formerly-busted-in-a-Hollywood-toilet singer-songwriter
George Michael is being hailed by young people from
Barcelona to Brussels and Manchester to Milan as the man
who dares to say what many are thinking. His new
devastating video "Shoot the Dog" was banned in Britain
- but airs every few minutes on European MTV. It's a
rude blow for Tony Blair - who prided himself since his
election on 1997 on being the hip, kinda groovy PM of
Cool Britannia.
In the hilarious animated video,
an Americanophile Tony Blair is a good puppy to a
dumb-as-hell Bush. George Michael's inspiration was a
Daily Mirror story (headline: "Howdy, Poodle"; subhead:
"Blair's cosy three days on Bush ranch to finalize Iraq
attack") . In the lyrics, George Michael talks about
having fun with Cherie Blair while watching the World
Cup and "while Tony's stateside": "It's gonna be
alright."
In the end, Bush in cowboy gear and
Tony as a Mexican whore dance away in the desert: "See
Tony dancing with Dubya, don't you wanna know why?"
Blair's workaholic spinners may have banned the video.
But pop culture is a reflection of popular perceptions.
And in our culture, perception is reality. Shoot the
dog.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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