Anti-Empire Report No. 4
He’s still fumbling around for a reason
After failing to convince the world about any of his many reasons for starting a war, George W., on November 6, devoted almost all of a speech to the new improved reason — we invaded to install democracy; something that he had touched upon before, but in his endearingly simple manner he’s now promoting it as the primary reason for the invasion and occupation, at least on Mondays and Thursdays.
In this speech, he waxed eloquent about democracy. If you’re not sure whether this new reason deserves any more regard than any of the previous reasons, consider this: In the speech, he likened the battle against Iraqi insurgents to fighting against communism, "as in the defense of Greece in 1947."
Do you know what happened in Greece in 1947? There was a civil war. One side had amongst its prominent leaders people who had supported the Nazis in the world war, including those that actually fought with them. On the other side were people who had fought against the Nazis, and had actually forced them to leave Greece. Guess which side the United States supported back then? The fascists, of course. And this is what George Bush tells us is an inspiration for fighting the Iraqi resistance.
Greece was but one example of many after the war of the United States taking the side of its supposed former enemies, working closely with governments, movements and individuals who had taken part in the Nazi or Japanese war effort or had collaborated with German or Japanese occupation forces. Those who had opposed the likes of these were viewed by Washington as "communists" and treated accordingly.
Ideology for all seasons
When a recent poll found that most Europeans believe that Israel is the greatest threat to world peace, Israeli government minister Natan Sharansky stated: "Behind the ‘political’ criticism of Israel lies nothing more than pure anti-Semitism." What, I wonder, can "pure anti-Semitism" mean other than something like a belief that Jews are inherently inferior creatures, less human than other people, evil. Does the man really believe that that’s what motivates critics of Israeli policies?
Sharansky was a leading dissident in his native Soviet Union before finally being released from prison and permitted to emigrate to Israel in 1986. What would he have thought in his dissident days if the Soviet leaders had declared that he and his fellow dissidents opposed the communist system purely because they believed that communists were some sort of sub-species, or because they hated Russians, or were self-hating Russians, or perhaps because they were Nazis (the German version of whom were in fact very anti-communist); anything to avoid having to deal with the questions raised by the dissidents about the actual policies of the communist government.
It may be that Natan Sharansky was able to see through and escape one kind of brainwashing only to fall victim to another kind.
The mystique of America
We now know that Iraq tried to negotiate a peace deal with the United States to avoid the American invasion in March. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search; they also offered full support for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process and handing over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. If this is about oil, they said, they would also talk about US oil concessions.
What is most surprising about this is not the offers per se, but the naivet