Datum: Son, 13. Apr 2003 1:05 Uhr

A COMMUNICATION TO MY FRIENDS ABROAD IN A DARK TIME

Dear Friends,

With most of you my friendship has been of many years' duration, and it has been an enabling link for the exchange of opinions, beliefs, and feelings about subjects of every kind. For me it has been a source of strength and security, a way of locating myself in the world. I need to write now in order to share with you—just because of our friendship and because you are nationals of different countries--my feelings of despair and anxiety, shame and guilt, rage and contempt over the atrocities that are now being committed in the name of the U.S.A by the military forces that have been dispatched to Iraq by our reckless and arrogant government, over the disturbing prospects for the future of international relations, and over the current atmosphere in this country and the sudden feeling of alienation that many of us share.

The slaughter and destruction and disruption of life in Iraq are of course so far the worst, but by no means the only aspect of a radical agenda for transforming our society and the world as a whole, and of a radical style of encounter that has been displayed by this government since it was installed through electoral manipulations by the Republican Party that were then consummated by our imperious Supreme Court. European friends convey the impression that this marked the beginning of a psychotic episode in the history of the U.S.—not the first. To me and to virtually all of my American friends and acquaintances it feels as though the country had been hijacked by a gang of alien lunatics. In a sense both reactions exaggerate the novelty of the condition, overlooking the predatory history of the dominant elements in this country which can be traced back as far as you like. Still, this government has turned a new corner, abandoning values to which previous governments were committed, destroying relations and institutions that previous governments helped to establish, wasting the diplomatic capital that previous governments have accumulated as quickly as they have wasted our financial capital, and undermining the structure of civil liberty that has been the foundation of our society.

You surely understand, no doubt better than a majority of the American public, that the disarming of Iraq was never the real goal of our government's cabale against that country, and that our charade in the Security Council over the weapons-inspection regime was a sham from beginning to end. No criterion of success in that effort would have been recognized by our government as a sufficient condition for accepting a peaceful resolution. They were determined to invade and conquer Iraq as the first stage in the transformation of power structures in the Middle East, as a power base for that agenda, and as a pilot project and demonstration of military power. Iraq was the obvious choice—a secular state with huge oil reserves and a regime in bad repute with its neighbors and its citizenry, a leader who was easily demonizable by the very people who had propped him up a decade before (this was a very important element in the marketability of the project to Americans), and finally a militarily weak power, far from being able to pose the "threat" that our government obsessively claimed Iraq posed.

That they persisted in this sham as though they expected to be able to bully or bribe enough Security Council members to give them a war resolution, displays one of the essential and very dangerous characters of this gang, their delusion of infallibility and indominability (demonstrated again in their certainty that our troops would be welcomed as liberators). And that, seeing the failure of that game they called it off and launched the invasion on their own, reveals another, equally dangerous trait, their contempt for the opinions and interests of everyone else. That contempt is matched by a contempt for the intelligence of everyone else, displayed in their counterfeit evidence and their propaganda slogans ("the coalition of the willing," "operation Iraqi Freedom," etc.). Bush displays the same shameless arrogance since the beginning of the war in continuing to press his domestic economic program, calling for enormous tax reductions for the wealthiest in the face of unprecedented deficits, deteriorating schools, declining standards of health care, rising poverty.

I must confess that, important as it was for France, Germany, Russia, China, and numerous smaller powers to refuse to be pushed into this war, and much as we must appreciate that, I was astonished that those countries, following the niceties of international diplomacy, did not call the bluff of our government instead of playing along with the charade about the weapons inspections, which they must have known would collapse.

The policy blueprint of which the conquest of Iraq is in several ways a first step has been on the drawing board since the early 1990's. The designers are men who have been characterized in American publications describing their agenda (there is no secret about it) as "neoconservatives" and "intellectuals". The first of these labels is absurd; they are the most radical policy planners to influence our government in anyone's recollection. An article in the Moscow Times observed that not since Mein Kampf has so radical a policy design been explicitly broadcast in advance of its implementation. The second is accurate in the sense that they are war planners without military experience—the label "chicken hawks" has circulated some here. "Ideologues" and "zealots" would be more appropriate designations. You may have seen reports of controversy over the design of the Iraq invasion, in which retired generals said that not enough troops had been consigned for the job. This was a direct challenge to (Secretary of Defense) Rumsfeld's war-fighting policy that depends on "lighter," more mobile, more technologized forces. It is not a dispute only over the right way to invade Iraq; Rumsfeld's policy has sinister implications for a future of perpetual warfare, moving quickly from one enemy to another and being waged against more than one enemy at once. That is one of the senses in which the Iraq adventure is a trial run for the whole agenda.

Rumsfeld is one of the patrons of these "neoconservative intellectuals" highly placed in the government. The other is Cheney, the vice president. With the installation of the Bush II presidency, these schemers were placed in high positions in the Departments of Defense and State, where they are now extremely influential and have begun to speak publicly on their own behalf. The underlying principle of their agenda can be stated very simply. Since the end of the cold war the U.S. remains the only hyperpower. We should use our power to shape the world in accordance with our view of how it should and in accordance with our interests. We should tolerate no competition from any other power or alliance of powers, and we should submit to no supra-national authority such as the UN. In implementation of this stance we should be prepared to initiate pre-emptive warfare, and we should not stop short of the use of nuclear weapons, if we judge that to be necessary. This doctrine has been set forth in documents written by its designers (see, for example, "Project for the New American Century" on the internet), and it has been described here in numerous media. It is a matter of public record, and anyone with a direct or indirect interest in politics and policy who does not factor it into interpretations or actions is naïve. (We have a new kind of situation here: a totalitarian, quasi-fascist regime, functioning nevertheless in an atmosphere of an open press, at least so far. Censorship is not out of the picture, but it is self-imposed voluntarily, as I will try to describe.)

No portrayal of the lines of influence in this government can be at all adequate that does not take account of the powerful role of Bush's political manager, Karl Rove. It is Rove's job to guide Bush in the accretion of power and to assure his reelection, and in working at it he takes Machiavellianism to its outer limit. A few examples will suffice. Bush ran for the governorship of Texas against the incumbent, Ann Richards. He defeated her, in part, because Rove spread rumors that she is a lesbian. Bush ran for the Republican nomination for the presidential candidacy against Senator John McCain. He won partly because Rove spread rumors that McCain is mentally unstable and the father of a black child (the McCains had adopted an orphan from Bangladesh). The campaign for the Congressional election of 2002, which resulted in the Republicans gaining control of the Senate by a small majority. That was accomplished in part by defeating certain targeted incumbent Democrats. One of those was Senator Max Cleland of Georgia. Rove organized a campaign to brand this man, who had lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam, as unpatriotic, in part by means of a TV ad showing Cleland along with pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The timing of the accelerated campaign for the invasion of Iraq immediately after the 9/11 anniversary and seven weeks before the congressional election of 2002 was Rove's inspiration. The shift in Colin Powell's presentations to the UN Security Council in which he tried to link Iraq with 9/11—something he had earlier refused to claim—came under pressure from the White House, where Rove and Bush are partners in cynicism.

Bush subscribes to the geopolitical doctrine of the "neoconservatives", and there is some disagreement here over whether he was committed to it before his appointment to the presidency or was converted to it after 9/11 as a way of elevating the grandiosity of his presidency and assuring his re-election. Noam Chomsky has claimed that he adopted it as a smoke screen for his real interests, which are domestic—further distributing wealth to the wealthiest, undermining environmental protection, and serving the corporations in various other ways. I think this is not mistaken, just too simple, and that is somewhat characteristic of Chomsky, with all due respect. Bush is altogether difficult to fathom. Different contradictory things have been said about him, and I think they're all correct: he's stupid (a book of "Bushisms" has been published, a series of photographs juxtaposing his facial expressions with those of a chimpanzee was circulating via the internet), he's controlled by public relations people who create fraudulent images (a photo circulated while he was on a tour in support of his "education" program showing him with a little gil in a school, both holding copies of a book entitled America but his is upside-down. In another he's shown with army troops looking through binoculars that have their lense-caps on). Another view urges that we had better not amuse ourselves with these signs but take seriously his craftiness and his control of the political functionaries around him. Still another points to his messianism and his belief that he is doing God's work. And another emphasizes his megalomania, pomposity, and macho posture. Still another notices that his speech is most fluent when its contents are threats, violence, and boasting. There seems to be little doubt about his cynicism, his willingness to manipulate the fears of Americans for his own political ends—the craftiness is unmistakable with which he threw the war-mongering against Iraq into high gear exactly after the anniversary of 9/11 and just in time for the November, 2002 congressional election, to elevate fear and hatred and drown out concerns about the economy. And it is equally unmistakable that he turned off the code orange alert for terrorism just before the invasion of Iraq so that he could turn it on again in his speech announcing the beginning of the invasion.

Perhaps you have seen a photograph that has been circulating through the internet showing a placard at a tram stop in Helsinki: images of Hitler and the swastika, and Bush and the American flag, with the text ""Same Shit, Different Assholes". I felt shock and deep sadness when I saw it, not that I thought it was in poor taste, but that the reputation of the leader of our country has fallen to such depths. But among my acquaintances I would find no one who feels that Bush hasn't deserved it. Another view of Bush, as a sociopath, has been put forward by a psychologist. This is with reference to the lack of any sense of moral or ethical discrimination in his behavior, exactly mocking his frequent references to"evil."

Why is it that so many Americans seem to be infatuated with this war, even to the point of being willing to put up with so much killing and maiming and suffering committed in their (our) name and for its sake, at the same time as they are willing to put up with the decline of the quality of life in this country as a direct result of it? First I should report my conviction that much of the ca. 70% support for the war that is reported by th press is thin, or casual, compared to the active and passionate opposition of the minority. I base this on my experience talking with supporters. It is something like "I'm not sure how I felt about the war before started," or even "Maybe we shouldn't have gotten into it in the first place," and then "but now that we're in it we have to try to win as quickly as possible, and support the troops and rally around the flag and support the president." This is a kind of American religio, and I don't know whether it is uniquely American. But I don't delude myself. The efflorescence of American flags on cars, bridges, business establishments, is sufficient indication of very widespread enthusiasm for this war. This goes so far that when pollsters asked two weeks ago whether people would favor suspending political campaigning for the 2004 presidential election—i.e.disrupting the democratic process--during the war to democratize the Middle East, a substantial number , 34%, said "yes." Why? For one thing, I think that Americans have an infatuation with war in general. Being at war, and especially winning at war, makes many among us feel good, feeding an intense kind of patriotism that runs through the American character and American history. I recall from my childhood the myth that America has never been defeated in war, embodied in the very popular song "We did it before and we can do it again" that was a kind of theme song for our role in WWII. That myth came back to haunt us, of course, in the Vietnam war, and Bush I's propaganda for Gulf War I featured the slogan that it affords us the opportunity to "lick the Vietnam Syndrome." This has been revived for Bush II/Gulf War II. (Infatuation with war is of course not a unique American characteristic, as we know from a review of history. But at this moment Americans, having not experienced since the Civil War the catastrophes of war directly as have other populations around the globe, manage to hold it in mind as an abstraction.) Another factor is the belligerent stance "You make trouble for us and we'll kick ass," as an English friend put it to me recently. This is, after all, the population of the only western society that practices capital punishment. Both of these characteristics have been exploited by the Bush cohort in gaining popular support for the war—in the histrionics, threats, bluster, and gestures of outward toughness that lace Bush's speeches, and perhaps most important in the increasingly explicit and baseless claims that Iraq has been a training ground and support for international terrorism, which has half or more of Americans believing that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, and even that some of the hijackers were Iraqi. Bush has promised us that, with the defeat of the regime in Bagdad we will never again have to suffer such an attack. This makes it possible to say that our troops are there defending our freedom, and that those who have been killed there "have not died in vain" (even the parents and spouses of dead soldiers have already been saying that, but not all of them; some are very bitter about the waste of young lives). This shows again the utter self assurance of Bush and his advisors, and their willingness to take great gambles. For what if there is another major terrorist attack here, or a series of them (our intelligence agencies have told us that this is virtually a certainty)? Will Americans ask Bush about his promise, and will parents and spouses of the dead say they died in vain after all?

Yet another aspect of the self image of Americans is that we are morally good, generous, and benevolent. And this is of course an aspect to which the Bush cohort has played very heavily, with the daily talk of "liberation," the label "Operation Iraqi Freedom", the displays of dancing in the streets of Bagdad on our television networks (highly selective and far from typical, according to reporters on the spot), and the assurances of a wave of democratic revolutions that will wash over the Middle East. It is interesting that the claimed original rationale for the war—disarming Iraq of weapons of mass destruction—has virtually disappeared from the screens. The one purpose for the war about which we have not heard at all from ordinary citizens is the geopolitical, imperialist agenda of the "neoconservative intellectuals". "Decent Americans" would be offended by the very insinuation.

That raises the question what public support could the Bush cohort garner for future wars in the Middle and Far East? It will be less easy, and the Democratic opposition and the press will probably be less docile. Obviously North Korea poses the greatest danger to the U.S., but our government has "dismissed" that, or "brushed it aside", to cite phrases that have become common currency in press reports on Administration reaction to the views of others, during their preoccupation with Iraq. Perhaps they will invent a Tonkin Gulf type of provocation. But the "neoconservative intellectuals" have their eyes on the Middle East, and a war on the Korean Penninsula would spoil their plans, despite Rumsfeld's boasts that we can fight three wars at once. They have treated that situation as though it were like the irritation posed by a fly, as though it were not gravely dangerous and unpredictable.

What of the Democrats and the press? Many grass-roots Democrats are very angry with their representatives for their silence and passivity about the war, beginning with theirsurrender of their constitutional authority with respect to war and peace to the President. Nine Democrats have announced their candidacy for the nomination to run against George Bush in the 2004 election. Only two of them have declared themselves in opposition to the war, in itself and because of its anticipated consequences for the safety and economic health of country and world. The rest, like the majority of Democratic congressional representatives, are reacting to that same religio, afraid of being considered unpatriotic, and depending on the continued decline of the economy, more unemployment, loss of social security, to defeat Bush. Everyone remembers what happened to Bush I after his triumph in Gulf War I. But what they don't take into account is that, however cynical the father was, the son is doubly so. We can fully expect that the timing of the next war plans will coincide with the election campaign. The Democratic candidates are foolish to ignore that.

The mainstream press has either become an affiliate of the propaganda arm of the Pentagon, or to the extent that some journal or voice has retained a modicum of independence, it, too, guards against the possibility of being considered unpatriotic. I don't watch television, but even the formally independent National Public Radio network has in the main been broadcasting reports about the war that seem every bit like reports on the Olympic Games. The reporters are like eunuchs in opium houses feeding the addicts of war their portion of the narcotic they crave. Occasionaly there is an independent voice, like the woman reporter for NPR in Bagdad who reported this morning that the "cheering" and "dancing in the streets of Bagdad" now much touted was going on in only one isolated neighborhood and not at all elsewhere. The New York Times regularly gives space to columns by writers who are opponents of the war and critical of the Administration, despite its overall servility to the war machine. But opposition to the war receives very limited coverage. The size of demonstrating crowds in the U.S. and elsewhere is always underestimated. To get a broad exposure to news and opinion in this country now we must read the foreign press on the internet, which we are very fortunate to have. The American press, on the whole, purveys war fever and triumphalism.

There is depression among us. We need to talk about all this, but we know that once launched into the subject we find it difficult to get out. Work is difficult. We look for diversion. The anti-war movement seems stalled. Before the invasion we were energized by the unrealistic hope that the unprecedented world-wide massive displays of opposition would head off the war. Some of us had fantasies about filling the streets and halting all commerce on the day the invasion would begin. Now our hopes must be directed toward the possibility of turning out the Bush administration in the next election. Ironically, we know that will depend on how badly things go between now and then. And perhaps there is hope in the world-wide popular opposition to our government. It has been observed even in the New York Times that the world population is the only other superpower with the potential of successfully challenging this one.

I hope I have not overburdened you with this unsolicited outburst. I would be glad for any reactions and reports from your perspectives. And I hope that the people and governments of your countries will live and act out of an awareness of the grave dangers presented to the world in general by the government of this country.

Let us work for peace.

Leo Treitler