Page 2 of 4 DISPATCHES
FROM AMERICA The theater of the imperially
absurd By Tom Engelhardt
journalists and pundits simply
stopped connecting the dots.
Give the Bush
administration credit: its top officials took in
the world as a whole and at an imperial glance.
They regularly connected the dots as they saw
them. The post-September 11 strike at Afghanistan
was never simply a strike at al-Qaeda (or the
Taliban who hosted them). It was always a prelude
to war against
Saddam's Iraq. And the
invasion of Iraq was never meant to end in Baghdad
(as indicated in the neo-con prewar quip,
"Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to
go to Tehran"). Nor was Tehran to be the end of
the line.
Under the rubric of the "global
war on terror", they were considering literally
dozens of countries as potential future targets.
Cheney put the matter bluntly back in August 2002
as the public drumbeat for an invasion of Iraq was
just revving up:
The war in Afghanistan is only the
beginning of a lengthy campaign. Were we to stop
now, any sense of security we might have would
be false and temporary. There is a terrorist
underworld out there spread among more than 60
countries.
Almost immediately after
the September 11 attacks, they began stitching
together the arc of instability in their minds
with an eye not so much to Arabs, or South Asians,
or even Israelis, but to playing their version of
what the British imperialists used to call "the
Great Game". They had the full-scale rollback of
energy-giant Russia in mind as well as the
containment or rollback of potential future
imperial power, China, already visibly desperate
for Iraqi, Iranian and other energy supplies.
In the year before the invasion of Iraq,
they were remarkably blunt about this. They
proudly published that seminal document of the
Bush era, the National Security Strategy of the
United States of America, 2002, which called for
the US to "build and maintain" its military power
on the planet "beyond challenge".
Think
about that for a moment. A single power on Earth
"beyond challenge". This was a dream of planetary
dominion that once would have been left to madmen.
But in what looked like a world with only one
great power, it was easy enough to imagine a great
game with only one great player, an arms race with
only one swift runner.
The Bush
administration was in essence calling for a world
in which no superpower, or bloc of powers, would
ever be allowed to challenge this country's
supremacy. As Bush put it in an address at the
United States Military Academy at West Point, New
York, in 2002, "America has, and intends to keep,
military strengths beyond challenge, thereby
making the destabilizing arms races of other eras
pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and
other pursuits of peace."
The National
Security Strategy put the same thought this way:
"Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade
potential adversaries from pursuing a military
buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the
power of the United States." That's anywhere on
the planet. Ever. And Bush and his followers
promptly began to hike the Pentagon budget to suit
their oversized, military fantasies of what a US
"footprint" should be.
With this in mind,
the arc of instability, which, in energy-flow
terms, was quite literally the planet's heartland,
seemed the place to control. And yet - look hard
as you will - you're unlikely to find a single
piece in your daily paper that takes in that arc;
that, say, includes Somalia and Pakistan in the
same piece, even though Bush administration policy
has in effect tied them together in disaster.
To take another example, the rise of Iran
(and a possible "Shi'ite crescent"), Iran's
influence or interference in Iraq, Iran's nuclear
program and Iran's off-the-wall president have
been near obsessions in the US media; and yet you
would be hard-pressed to find a piece even
pointing out that the Bush administration's two
invasions and occupations - Iraq and Afghanistan -
which left both those countries bristling with
vast US bases and sprawling US-controlled prison
systems, took place on either side of Iran.
Add in the fact that the Bush
administration, probably through the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), is in essence running
terror raids into Iran through Pakistan and you
have a remarkably different vision of Iran's
geostrategic situation than even an informed
American media consumer would normally see.
After September 11, but based on the sort
of pre-2001 thinking you could find well
represented at the neo-con website Project for the
New American Century, the Bush administration's
top officials wrote their own drama for the arc of
instability. They were, of course, the main
characters in it, along with the US military, some
Afghan and Iraqi exiles who would play their
necessary roles in the "liberation" of their
countries, and a few evil ogres like Saddam.
Today, not six years after they raised the
curtain on what was to be their grand imperial
drama, they find themselves in a dark theater with
at least six crises in search of an author, all
clamoring for attention - and every possibility
that a seventh (not to say a 17th) "character" in
that rowdy, still gathering, audience may soon
rise to insist on a part in the horrific farce
that has actually taken place.
Six
crises in search of an author Sweeping
across the region from East to West, let's briefly
note the six festering or clamoring crisis spots,
any one of which could end up with the play's
major role before Bush slips out of office.
Pakistan: The Pakistani
government was America's main partner, along with
the Saudis, in funding, arming and running the
anti-Soviet struggle of the mujahideen, including
Osama bin Laden, in Afghanistan in the 1980s; and
Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter-Services
Intelligence, was the godfather of the Taliban
(and remains, it seems, a supporter to this day).
In September 2001, the Bush administration gave
the country's coup-installed military ruler,
President General Pervez Musharraf, the basic
you're-either-with-us-or-against-us choice. He
chose the "with" and in the course of these past
years, under constant US pressure, has lost almost
complete control over Pakistan's tribal regions
along the Afghan border to various tribal groups,
the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign jihadis,
who have established bases there. Now, significant
parts of the country are experiencing unrest in
what looks increasingly like a countdown to chaos
in a nuclear-armed nation.
Afghanistan: In the
meantime, from those Pakistani base areas, the
revived and rearmed Taliban (and their al-Qaeda
partners) are preparing to launch a major spring
offensive in Afghanistan, using tactics from the
Iraq war (suicide bombers or "Mullah Omar's
missiles", as they call them, and the roadside
bomb). They are already capable of taking over
southern Afghan districts for periods of time. The
Bush administration used the Northern Alliance -
that is, proxy Afghan forces - to take Kabul in
November 2001.
It then set up its bases
and prisons and established President
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
