Global Robocop at our doorstep
Josh Hong
If the US voters were given a chance to recast their vote, would some of them vote differently, calling for Senator John Kerry instead of re-electing the jingoistic, bellicose George W Bush?
Since none of us is granted the divine power to turn back time, those Americans who regret having given Bush a second chance can only live with a sense of remorse that may never go away. Why?
For when the US went to polls in November last year, little did the Americans realise what a surprise Bush was prepared to give them. In March this year, the Pentagon unveiled the carefully crafted, best kept National Defense Strategy of the United States of America and, lo and behold, preemptive strike is now officially a state policy, as clearly indicated in the document.
As rightly pointed out by Jim Lobe, the Bush administration appears to be willing to bypass international bodies, such as the United Nations Security Council, and regional military structures, such as Nato, in order to secure US interests around the globe. Quite clearly, the president is still haunted by the debacle of consensus within Nato, when France and Germany decided against the war on Iraq in 2003.
|
Worse, even judicial process could be deemed repugnant by the Bush administration, if it is seen as impeding the US’ ability to act ‘freely’.
Meetings with Saddam
In the Pentagon report, endorsed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein is described as a tyrant ‘who used WMD (weapons of mass destruction), supported terrorists, terrorised his population, and threatened his neighbors’.
No, not that I disagree with Rumsfeld. On the contrary, I happen to concur with him on the despotic disposition of the fallen Iraqi president.
Neither was I opposed to Rumsfeld having met Saddam way back in 1983 (well, I barely understood the intricacies of the adult world then). My question is, if Rumsfeld was so sure of the evil character of the former tyrant, why on earth was he so eager to meet and forge ties with him, fully aware of the well-founded accusation that Saddam was waging a chemical warfare against Iran?
(And I was hilariously entertained when I heard George Galloway, Tony Blair’s gadfly in Westminster, say that he ‘met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Rumsfeld met him’, and that ‘by no stretch of the English language can that be described as “many meetings” with Saddam Hussein’ – read it here, and watch it here.
And if one has doubt over the symbiotic relationship between the two men, watch it here.
A faithful Bush apologist may be quick to remind me, in a realist tradition, that we should forgo all the moral arguments when dealing with a tyrant – the imperativeness to finish him off takes precedence over all else. Yet this reasoning begs the question as to why the White House and Downing Street sought to win the badly needed international support by taking a moral high ground vis a vis Saddam. Or were Bush and Blair attempting to coin a new definition for ‘freedom’ by ditching its moral connotation?
Or, as Owen Harries, a former editor-in-chief of the National Interest, contends, it is the morality of the lesser evil that counts in foreign policy. Still, can one realistically and justifiably convince a right-thinking member of the international community that, by first cozying up to a tyrant, supplying him with necessary guns and ammunition and, after changing course, slipping into a severe acute amnesia, one is indeed a lesser evil imbued with the moral power to act ‘freely and justly’?
Just say you want the oil, and I will rest my case. Simple.
Ok, I have been wandering off topic. Let’s get back to this important and significant report by the Pentagon. Mindful of all the hassle of diplomatic trappings and courtesy, Rumsfeld may have chosen to avoid mentioning some of the possible targets of attack, and the range is wide. What is clear from the document is the determination of the Bush administration to leave no stone unturned in achieving its strategic goals.
Malaysia on the list
And if the so-called US allies in the war against global terrorism think they are really indispensable as well as invaluable to Washington, they had better think again. US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick was in Malaysia recently to witness the renewal of the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement. Good move, I suppose. A small nation needs every partner possible for our own security’s sake.
But what would Zoellick make of a New Yorker article, entitled The Coming Wars and written by Seymour M. Hersh, that Malaysia, for all its effort to curb the expansion of radical Islamic forces, is on the list of countries in which Bush has permitted the Pentagon “to operate unilaterally… where there is a perception of a clear and evident terrorist threat”? That the author has been able to quote from, not one, but two former CIA clandestine officers is instructive indeed.
Only a fool will look aghast at a genuine and mutually beneficial Malaysia-US relationship, but any upright and conscientious Malaysian will be up against Bush making Malaysia out to be a potential target of attack all in the name of war against terror.
One must not overlook the severe implications of the increasingly unilateralist approach and the self-righteousness that now permeates the officialdom in Washington. It must however be made clear that one is not against the US as a whole, a country that, by and large, champions and lives out the notions of human rights, justice and press freedom. It is the Bush presidency that much of the world is ill at ease with.
In the eyes of a many US apologist, to criticise the neo-conservative, ultra right-wing Bush government is as profane a sin as chastising one’s parent in public, and one is invariably labeled anti-US fanatic even when the distinction between the state and the people is crystal clear.
Yet for all of those who are apprehensive of Bush and his warmongering cohorts, it is as much their democratic right to point out the fallacies of a recalcitrant government as that of a Bush advocate to promulgate, by hook or by crook, the agenda of the neo-conservatives in the White House, the Pentagon, and Capital Hill. Period.
