Behind the Headlines

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.

December 8, 2000

BUSH OR GORE – PICK YOUR WAR

A STARTLING DECLARATION

DUBYA SPILLS THE BEANS

FREE ENTERPRISE AND THE MARINES

A QUESTION OF LEGITIMACY

YOU TELL ME

THE IRON LAW OF BUREAUCRACY

DISSING KOSTUNICA

NO END OF TROUBLE

WESTERN SERBOPHILIA?

SUBVERSION BY IMPLICATION

THE GERMAN SOLUTION

"CATHARSIS" AND SUBMISSION

RUSSOPHOBIA – COMING TO A THEATER NEAR YOU

THE ENEMY IS AT HOME

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