“ A Final Word on War “

by S. Jovian Radheshwar for Radheshwar.com

Huntington Beach, California, March 18^th, 2003

With the renewal of engineered politicking in Turkey at the outset of the last several days of the diplomatic cycle, the gates to war have been clearly demarcated through northern Iraq, southern Iraq and the airspace extending out in all directions on all planes from Baghdad. Certainly, I have many thoughts on the issue, as is evident from other writings posted on this website, but I will begin this week by responding to the so-called arguments of the American right-wing, which this week has focused its attention and hatred against the French, Germans and Russians. Leaving the Russians out of the equation at first, to enable a more direct analysis of the French and Germans positions, the most important aspect of this situation has been the democratic responsiveness of the French and German government to the people in those nations. The public there is on average eighty percent or more against the war with Iraq, and those countries responded in such a manner befitting that opinion. Along the same vain, of accusing the Germans and French of particular dubious actions in the Iraq quagmire-to-be, pundits have been attempting to cast the tale as one of Franco-German power in the European Union, as if these two countries are actually embarking on a path identical to the historical practice of realpolitik of what Rummy referred to ignorantly as “old Europe” in a recent ad-hoc quibble with the media. What is truly disturbing about this is that such an attitude prevents those of us who yearn for a liberal and free life from forming accurate opinions about the nature of these postmodern societies in Western Europe. France and Germany have extensive welfare state institutions, educational infrastructure, health care services, modern economies and research and many other things to be found in any modern state. In fact, in addition to this these proud nations have a liberal character not to be found in the pathetic excuse for America that has been conjured up by the necromancing necrophiliacs of the Bush administration. Anyone who chooses an avoidable war over peace is operating in a very dangerous moral framework.

It appears that America and its fake-Laborite crony will be able to march of war with all the military strategic requirements they originally sought, especially as it is expected that the Turks, having recently installed Recip Tayyip Edrogan as Prime Minister, will now yield to American basing and logistics requests. With that, those Turks will get their bribe, the Americans will go in through the north of Iraq, and will in all likelihood seize the Kirkuk oilfields, and in the best case scenario, prevent the igniting of the oil as is expected by most analysts. It all sounds wonderful, right? Of course, this view ignores the very complicated ethnic politics between the Turks and Kurds, who are historically hostile to one another, and both have their eyes set on the oil of northern Iraq. The Turks want it to make certain that the Kurds don’t get it, which they feel would enable the Kurds to create an economic base for a future Kurdistan, which would affect the territorial integrity of Turkey. This issue is largely unaddressed, with the Americans merely assuming that they will (a) arrive at the oil fields prior to ignition, and (b) that the Turks, Kurds or Iraqis themselves will not put up a fight for these facilities. To assume that Saddam will torch the oil, as the military would have us think (as well as Saddam’s track record), sending in American troops through Turkey will only result in their being embedded into a quagmire between Iraqis, Americans, Turks and Kurds, all desperately trying to avoid the burning fields and fouled air, all the while forced to fight one another as airpower becomes useless in close-quarters combat between four armies, all of questionable loyalty, training and discipline.

In southern Iraq, there is now talk of the Iraqis using weapons of mass destruction against American and British soldiers there, which would likely trigger some type of “presented-as-proportional” response from the Bushies, which may include the annihilation of Baghdad, or the mass destruction of other population and troop concentrations in Iraq. While these troops certainly are the enemy in this war, with reports of large scale defections in the works, these troops are militarily expendable to both sides in the conflict, which will encourage both sides to use them as cannon fodder of the worst sort. Look for these folks to catch some backwind chems and then also take the tactical nuclear reprisal from the unthinking, inhuman Bush administration. All the while the south of Iraq is expected to be booby trapped with burning oil, vast minefields, and even suicide volunteers of Islamic fundamentalist groups. It seems as though Osama bin Laden read the American people like a fucking book, and now our titular head of state has yielded his sovereign power to the hawks that he shares like minds with, and will fall into bin Laden’s mischievous trap of igniting the Arab world into anti-American fervor. Certainly, any such sentiment would be exacerbated by our utilization of a weapon of mass destruction. (Hey, shouldn’t we be submitting to inspections?, or, as I suspect, do Bush and company feel that white people are just uniquely privileged to own the fucking things?)

The ignorance of our allies, the fifty years of international institutionalism built up through a bipartisan consensus, and other pillars of our security will not serve this administration well. Perhaps if we embarked on a negotiated reform of the United Nations, or engaged in more serious coalition building, all the administration’s goals would be achievable sans the uproar, but that is not what has happened here up to this juncture in the crisis. America will go it alone, and don’t let Fox News confuse you, there is no coalition making military contributions, only welfare recipients making token contributions. As I have had a rather long day, I will close this one out here, but I leave all of you with the message that if hate crimes start happening throughout America as a result of the Bushies’ racialist politicking (see old eds for more info), move to Europe, where liberal brothers and sisters await you away from the lecherous orientalizing committed by the American hick. Please be vigilant, and safe. Beware the weapons of rednecks, the semiautomatic weapons of mass destruction owned by the white man in America, as he has been given a special mandate by our racist politicians to own the ghastly creations, free of weapons inspections and preemptive strikes aimed at increasing the general security of the lives of all of us. Of course, mentioning philosophical consistency to Mr. Bush will only result in a “huh” or a “c-o-n, sist-what?” In the meantime, I’ll be writing the pathetic excuse for a President a letter to consider unilateral disarmament (dream on, fucking hippie!).

* - For a truly frightening view of the intentions of the Bush Administration, please take some time from your busy day to peruse the website for "The Project for the New American Century", a think-tank (or not-thinking-tank) organized by the most right wings hawks of this administration. It is in many ways, like reading a latter-day, American version of Mein Kampf. I am fairly certain that it is at newamericancentury.org.