War on Iraq
www.GlobalAware.org
Mid-Week Review: Bush Dances the Seven Veils
March 26, 2003
As Baghdad is the setting for Arabian Nights, it is appropriate to use
the analogy of removing veils to review what’s been happening since
our last summary on Saturday.
The first veil falls: Since the optimism of Saturday, things have taken
a definite turn for the worse for Coalition forces (I do not use the honourable
‘allies’ of the Second World War where it meant something
altogether different). There have been deaths, accidents and coalition
forces now number among the POWs of this war. Having said that, of the
20 British soldiers who have died so far, 18 were killed by ‘friendly
fire’ – one of those Orwellian phrases that must chill the
blood of their families and real friends back home. Towns and cities that
were ‘secured’ Saturday seem all but today. Basra is the largest
among them and still doesn’t have water or power making it far more
certain that there will be a humanitarian crisis here. So much for ‘shock
and awe’ and minimal ‘collateral damage.’
The second veil floats to the ground: The US has made it official that
they will be contracting only US firms for the reconstruction of the country
because only they have security clearance… Huh? What happened to
the Coalition all of a sudden? I don’t suppose the Poles are all
that prepared to make a killing on this project, but I imagine the Brits
are going to be none too pleased to be shut out. Oh, and Dick Cheney’s
former fiefdom, Halliburton, is high on the bidder’s list. We shouldn’t
be ‘shocked’ by this, though I confess a little ‘awe’
that they’re making things this plain.
The third veil is ripped away: Though not getting too much press at the
moment, Turkey has decided on a little pre-emption of its own and is moving
troops to Kurdish territory in northern Iraq – just in case the
Kurds get any funny ideas about a separate Kurdistan. This is not good
for the Kurds who are poorly armed and have no reason to trust that the
US will defend them. It also puts paid to the idea, so cherished in Washington,
that only the US will decide when and where to defend its interests by
invading a sovereign state.
The fourth veil wafts gently in the breeze: While the US postures and
stomps about the Geneva Convention and treatment of US POWs, one of the
few international treaties Bush Jr. hasn’t tried to ‘unsign’
or broker into meaninglessness, law experts remark that "There's
been a little violation [of the Geneva Convention] on each side,"
with Iraqi surrendering soldiers featuring in Western TV coverage during
the halcyon (3) days of optimism. The Coalition is now realizing that
they are not the only ones to use the media as a tool of war and are belatedly
trying to destroy Iraqi television. If they are successful, at least we
will be spared the constant circus of ‘intelligence’ officials
debating whether images of Saddam are real or fake. As one commentator
noted, if he’s already dead and pre-recorded all his messages, he
sure was prescient about how this war would run.
The fifth veil quivers: World stock markets rallied with all that bullish
news of certain victory but have resumed their downward spiral now that
the ‘reality of war’ has become apparent. I apologize to everyone
related to a stock broker, but I am sick to death of living in a world
where a bunch of money-grubbing MBAs (Masters, and I use this term as
lightly as possible, of Business Administration) determines whether the
world economic system is healthy or not – especially when they trade
almost entirely on imagined values rather than real production and even
realer human lives are not considered. They turned a pathetic excuse for
a war into gold in the first days and that is disgusting. Now that quick
victory eludes us, as it always did, they bail out signaling thousands
of jobs lost and who knows how many pensions risked. It just sickens me.
Instead of ‘Iraq first, France/N. Korea/Iran next’, how about
‘Forget War, World Economic Reform Now’?
The sixth veil, on or off?: Bush and Blair are meeting to discuss how
things are going. Blair is insisting that lives will not be sacrificed
in Basra, but this is looking increasingly like a promise he can’t
keep. The British Press is convinced that Blair has no control over this
war and as more Britons than American have died, mostly from American
incompetence, support for the war must be getting thinner than it already
was. Geoffrey Hoon, British Defense Secretary defended his lack of knowledge
of the war with “I am no military expert.” Apart from the
fact that this is an ‘own goal’ of colossal proportions, it
also signals that the Brits are not sharing in command of this war and
the solid foundation of the lead players of the coalition may begin to
crack under the strain.
The seventh veil is definitely off: Clear Channel Communications, the
largest US radio network, is promoting pro-war demonstrations in the US.
Big players in Clear Channel, men like Tom Hicks, have long snuggly ties
with Junior and helped make him rich back in their Texas days. So much
for independent media. Oh well, at least Michael Moore had a chance to
call ‘em as he sees ‘em at the in-worse-taste-than-usual Oscars:
"We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that
elect a fictitious president, We live in a time where we have a man who's
sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it's the fiction of
duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts ... Shame on you, Bush. Shame
on you."
© Dr. Leslie Jermyn leslie@globalaware.org
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