BUSH OR GORE PICK YOUR WAR

["D.R." <danica_razlag@usa.net>]

Behind the Headlines
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com

http://128.121.216.19/justin/pf/p-j120800.html

December 8, 2000

BUSH OR GORE – PICK YOUR WAR

The ongoing coup attempt, and the outraged reaction to
Gore's political grand larceny, has obscured a vitally
important if somewhat depressing fact: no matter which
candidate emerges triumphant, he is going to cause major
trouble on the foreign policy front. Gore's lawyers were still
stretching the limits of credulity down in Florida, but that
didn't stop Dubya from putting together his "transition
team," and otherwise acting "presidential." Last week, while
the Democrats launched a propaganda campaign accusing
the GOP of incipient "fascism," and coverage of the election
crisis might have been dubbed "All Al, All the Time," Dubya
was nowhere to be found: during his one TV appearance last
week, he was asked about Democratic accusations that he
was trying to "steal the election": he replied that he couldn't
wait to get into office so that he could start implementing tax
cuts. Far from answering the most outrageous Democratic
charges, Dubya has been programmed by his advisors to not
even acknowledge them. 

A STARTLING DECLARATION

This week, as the Democrat blitz continued, Dubya was
equally missing in action until Wednesday, when he turned
up at a photo op with Condi Rice, his putative national
security advisor, and announced that he had just about
settled on his White House staff. Fresh from his second CIA
intelligence briefing, Dubya made a rather startling
declaration: 

"I have all the confidence in the world that the Clinton
administration and the next administration, which I hope is
the Bush administration, would do whatever it takes to
send a chilling signal to terrorists that we'll protect our
property and our people. The warning ought to be that, as
we decide this election, people ought not to take advantage
of our nation."

DUBYA SPILLS THE BEANS

Aside from speculating about just what he learned at his
briefing session, one has to wonder what "property" is
Dubya talking about – unless he means the whole of the
Middle East. And isn't it odd how property, in this equation,
comes first, with "our people" – the 17 martyred sailors on
board the USS Cole come to mind – a secondary
consideration. Parsing Dubya's pronouncements could be a
thankless task, if not an impossible one, but I suspect the
reason we haven't been seeing much of him is that his
handlers don't trust his natural spontaneity: they're afraid
he might spill the beans before they've had a chance to
prepare the public for whatever surprises might be in store.
"Our property"? And who, pray tell, is us? Surely he cannot
mean ordinary US taxpayers, who don't as a rule own a
whole lot of overseas real estate. This is what it means to
have elected what Ralph Nader rightly described as "not a
person but the equivalent of a giant corporation" to the US
presidency: "Our property" means the property of
American and British oil companies, and when Dubya moves
into the White House their interests will be equated with
America's "national interests." 

FREE ENTERPRISE AND THE MARINES

Not that this isn't the operational principle of US foreign
policy, especially in the Middle East, already: The special
and longstanding relationship between US oil executives and
the Saudi monarchy, which has enriched Big Oil beyond the
dreams of avarice, is backed up by tens of thousands of
American soldiers and sailors stationed on or near Saudi soil.
For all their talk of "free enterprise" in America, for the
Republicans it is quite a different story abroad, where
government intervention in the form of the US Marines is
always welcomed. As I pointed out on Wednesday, Dubya
hasn't even taken office yet and already the academic
minions of certain US corporate interests are beating the
drums for war in the Middle East, calling on the son to
complete the job begun by the father – and take Baghdad.
And there is every indication that Dubya is champing at the
bit for his chance to prove himself worthy of the Bush
legacy: We are at "a very unique moment in American
history to promote a foreign policy that is bipartisan," said
Dubya, as Condi nodded eagerly beside him. In answer to
questions about the likelihood of a Republican victory in the
court battles raging down in Florida, he added "I hope we
can get this over with quickly. There's lots of work to be
done." Desert Storm II, here we come!

A QUESTION OF LEGITIMACY

Here, at last, is something Republicans and Democrats can
agree on: the necessity of going to war for the profits of Big
Oil. For President Bush, it would be a diversion away from
political divisions at home that could give him much-needed
legitimacy. He didn't quite win it at the polls: perhaps he can
win it on the battlefield. In this way, a new precedent will be
set, and the analogy with the old Roman Empire will be
complete. On account of his conquests, Dubya, like Caesar,
could win the crown and the accolades of the people. Few
would notice what had been lost. 

YOU TELL ME

It will be a lot harder, however, to convince Republicans,
especially conservatives, that the enemy is Saddam Hussein
instead of Gore and his fellow coup-plotters. If there is one
thing that Republicans, even the so-called moderates, have
learned from the past month is that the main enemy is at
home. Saddam Hussein may want to overthrow the
American Constitution and replace it with a Baathist-style
one-party dictatorship, but that can happen only in his
dreams. On the other hand, the dream of Al Gore – to
reinvent the voting process, steal the presidency, and
subvert the Constitution – may yet come true, and, if not, he
came mighty damn close. Now, you tell me, who is the real
threat – Saddam or Gore? 

THE IRON LAW OF BUREAUCRACY

Ah, yes, the glories of our "bipartisan foreign policy," as
Dubya glowingly puts it: whatever their differences over
domestic policy (and a Dubya administration may reveal
that these differences are vastly overstated) the essential
unity of the two parties on the foreign policy front is
illustrated by one of the favorite adages of our bipartisan
statesmen: "Politics ends at the water's edge." This is what
makes it possible for such cold war relics as "Radio Free
Europe" and "Radio Liberty" [RFE/RL] to continue long
after the implosion of Communism and the fall of the Soviet
Union. Founded at the height of the cold war to counter
Communist propaganda by broadcasting the US government
line overseas, Radio Free Europe and its satellites faced the
budget-cutters' axe when the Berlin Wall fell, but escaped on
account of bipartisan collusion and the logic that governs all
government agencies: a state bureaucracy, once established,
is never considered obsolescent, because its employees and
their patrons can always be mobilized to fight like hell for the
agency's continued existence. The cold war may be over, but
the national security apparatus it spawned is alive and well –
and busy meddling and causing no end of trouble.

DISSING KOSTUNICA

So what does RFE/RFL do, now that the Communist
Menace has shrunk to the diminutive dimensions of Mirjana
Markovic, Slobodan Milosevic's wife and leader of the
neo-Communist Yugoslav Left Party? Why, what else but
attack the anti-Communist government of Vojislav
Kostunica, who led a popular uprising against the last
Stalinists in Europe? In a December 1 broadcast, which
sneeringly starts off by asking is it "the end of history in the
Balkans?," the RFE/RFL announcer disdainfully remarks
that 

"Scarcely a week or even a few days go by as of late
without some Western politician or group of politicians
waxing eloquent about Yugoslav President Vojislav
Kostunica and his allies from the Democratic Opposition of
Serbia (DOS). The Westerners routinely hail the fall of
dictatorship in Serbia and birth of democracy there. Some
observers even suggest that Serbia and the Balkans have
ceased to be an international trouble spot, and that the
West can best deal with them through "soft" institutions
such as the EU's Balkan Stability Pact rather than through
NATO or the UN. Some in the US have added that
Washington can safely consign the region to the care of
Brussels and concentrate on its own interests in other
parts of the globe."

NO END OF TROUBLE

It is the one inflexible rule of US foreign policy that both
parties endorse: the trouble never ends. There is always
someone, be it the Serbs, or the Iraqis, or the Russians, or
the Colombians, who dares to defy the diktat of Uncle Sam.
In that case, they are quickly discovered to be the
reincarnation of Hitler and their country is deemed a "rogue
nation," or a "nation of concern," as Madeleine Albright's
State Department likes to put it. (One imagines that Colin
Powell and his crew will reinstate the "rogue" terminology).
Once a "trouble spot" always a "trouble spot" – why else do
we have troops in Germany and Japan, for god's sake, more
than 50 years after the end of World War II? What are US
soldiers doing guarding the Korean DMZ, as if frozen in time,
still ready to fight an enemy that has long since been
defeated? 

WESTERN SERBOPHILIA?

Don't imagine for a moment that they're going to let the
Serbs off that easy – oh no you don't! According to
RFE/RFL, the US appears to be discriminating in favor of
the Serbs. Forget the US bombs that fell and killed over
5,000 citizens of Yugoslavia; forget the sanctions, that killed
and crippled more; there is "the perception that the
Westerners are suddenly falling all over themselves to give
large sums of money and other aid to Serbia." The Bosnians,
Kosovars, and other US clients in the regions "shake their
heads in disbelief." The Serbs, complain their enemies in the
Balkans, are having an easy time of it: they are getting 

"into the international community's good books without
having had to meet the painstaking prerequisites for
democracy, market reforms, human rights, and
cooperation with the Hague-based war crimes tribunal
that some of its neighbors have. Croatian President Stipe
Mesic, for one, has frequently tried to remind the
Westerners that the changes in Serbia have only just
begun, and that one should not be so generous or trusting
until one better knows with whom and what one is
actually dealing."

SUBVERSION BY IMPLICATION

The main concern of RFE/RFL is to echo the would-be
Robespierre of the Yugoslav revolution, Zoran Djindic, who
has called for purging the Yugoslav army: Kostunica may
have "a refreshing devotion to the rule of law," but such
niceties mean little – according to US government
propagandists – if the same generals who fought NATO to a
standstill are allowed to stay in command. Kostunica is
described as a man with "strong nationalist credentials," the
"Not-Milosevic," and the DOS is described as "nominally
committed to democracy" – with the clear implication that
this could all be an illusion, or even a trick. 

THE GERMAN SOLUTION

Having characterized Milosevic – a third-rate apparatchik
and small-time hoodlum – as a Slavic Hitler, it is only
natural for US government propagandists to push for a
German solution to the Serbian "problem." For if Milosevic
really was guilty of "genocide" against the Albanians of
Kosovo – in spite of the inability of forensic scientists to
uncover more than 2,000 bodies in the war zone, including
Serbs – then surely the Serbian people themselves were
"Milosevic's willing executioners," as the New Republic
phrased it. The US State Department-New Republic
doctrine of collective guilt requires mass reeducation and the
self-abnegation of the Serbian people. In support of this
thesis, RFE/RL cites the presidents of Croatia and Albania,
who complain that

"Neither the new Serbian leadership nor Serbian society as
a whole has begun a 'catharsis' of the emotions and beliefs
that at one point led to the rise of Milosevic and ultimately
to four disastrous wars (see "RFE/RL Balkan Report," 17
and 31 October 2000). Nor do most Serbs even seem to
sense any need to look deeply into themselves and at their
political culture."

"CATHARSIS" AND SUBMISSION

This "catharsis" means nothing less than total submission.
The US and Germany will settle for nothing less than the
Bosnia-zation of Serbia: that is, a Serbia occupied by NATO
troops, where Serbian nationalists are arrested for engaging
in "hate speech" and Serbian nationalist parties are banned,
their elected candidates to the national assembly thrown out
at gunpoint by the NATO-crats. Even now our KLA allies
are penetrating the southern border, provoking a new
conflict, and RFE/RFL has a clear line on this, too: the poor
Albanians are once again being put upon by the evil Serbs,
who have the gall to object to Albanian border incursions. A
formally-constituted "Liberation Army" has been organized,
consisting of at least 600 militants, who aim to break off yet
another piece of Serbia, this time in the Presevo valley, and
adjoining regions, but the existence of an organized Albanian
terrorist network does not interest the editors of RFE/RFL:
their main interest is in "reporting" yet another Albanian
"mass exodus" on account of Serbian police action.
Interviews with various Albanians claiming mistreatment at
the hands of the Serbs are cited, RFE?RFL reports UN
estimates of 5,000 "refugees" – and does any of this sound
familiar? How long before CNN is down there "reporting"
yet another "humanitarian catastrophe," illustrated with an
endless loop of Albanians trudging down dusty roads? 

RUSSOPHOBIA – COMING TO A THEATER NEAR
YOU

The present administration is fixated on the Balkans, and its
chief interest in the Middle East is Israel, while their
would-be successors in the GOP are mildly skeptical of
Balkan adventurism (although they are committed to seeing
it through) and have a much broader Middle Eastern
agenda. Dubya and his co-president-to-be, Dick Cheney,
have their sights set on the oil fields of Iraq and the
Caucasus. An increasingly adversarial relationship with
Russia, not only over the Caucasus but on account of NATO
expansion – which ideologues like Bush advisor Paul
Wolfowitz are absolutely committed to – is inevitable if and
when Dubya wins the White House. Putin will do nicely as
the new Hitler, until and unless a more convincingly
villainous Russian ruler comes along. Already the alleged rise
of Russian anti-Semitism is becoming a Western cause
celebre, and Putin is being roundly criticized for breaking up
Russian media conglomerates critical of the regime. There is
a certain revival of anti-Russian sentiment among
conservatives, or at least an attempt to stoke those dead
embers.

THE ENEMY IS AT HOME

However, I doubt this effort will catch fire, and for the same
reason that a crusade to unseat Saddam will be met with
something less than enthusiasm among the thousands who
demonstrated against the Gore coup, and the millions more
who were deeply angered by it. These millions – the
Republican base – will not soon forget the horrors of Coup
2000. Nor will they forgive, in spite of Dubya's conciliatory
rhetoric and the bipartisan love-fest that is sure to come.
This blatant attempt to seize power, utilizing a Praetorian
Guard of lawyers and street activists like Jesse Jackson and
Al Sharpton to steal an election, has had a clarifying effect on
the Republican rank-and-file: they may be confused enough
to believe that "compassionate conservatism" means
anything other than hard-assed liberalism, but, for once,
they know who and what their real enemies are – and they
aren't in Belgrade, or Baghdad. 

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