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How Bush gets neoconned: Deccan Chronicle
New Delhi, Oct 10: Rather sooner than anticipated, resolving the crisis in post-war Iraq has boiled down to a tussle between the neoconservatives in the Bush administration guarding their imperialistic grand vision and the compulsions of the George W Bush re-election campaign, with the presidential election just over a year away.
New Delhi, Oct 10: Rather sooner than anticipated, resolving the crisis in post-war Iraq has boiled down to a tussle between the neoconservatives in the Bush administration guarding their imperialistic grand vision and the compulsions of the George W Bush re-election campaign, with the presidential election just over a year away.
Falling popularity levels of the President are ringing alarm bells as the drip effect of American soldiers dying almost every day, combined with an insecure and chaotic Iraq, the overstretched Army and the rising costs of occupation, takes its toll.
To add to President Bush’s woes, a scandal over the naming of a CIA agent has taken centre-stage. The Vietnam analogy is being repeatedly invoked by politicians and commentators alike, if only to shoot it down, and there is growing uneasiness in Washington that the Iraq adventure has gone awry, with unwelcome consequences for the health of the United States and its prosperity. The great reluctance of the US to part with even civilian power in running Iraq although it has gone to the United Nations, cap in hand, is at the heart of the difficulties the Bush administration is facing in its belated efforts to share blood and costs. A new UN resolution may well be passed and few doubt America’s ability to twist arms in seeking individual nations’ help, but these attempts are hardly likely to amount to significant assistance in lightening the US burden.
For the neocons in the Bush administration, the problem is that Iraq is their city on the hill to prove America’s credentials as the new imperial hegemony imposing the US version of democracy in what is viewed as benighted West Asia and claiming the Second Roman Empire’s privilege of ruling the world in its own interests.
To give any measure of real authority to the United Nations to govern Iraq or let the Iraqis themselves run it under international supervision until they form a representative regime is anathema to the neocons.
Instead, the neocon script calls for a carefully stage-managed transition to an Iraqi government taking shape to give America primacy in the land on which they have expended blood and treasure.
The fly in the ointment is that the ubiquitous international community is not willing to anoint America as the new Roman Emperor just yet, if ever. France, Germany and Russia are trying to prove that the US might have truly awesome military power but it cannot rule the planet on its terms.
There are other factors and other people’s will to defy overwhelming force to live their own lives their way without paying court to a new imperial centre in the 21st century.
The present contest between the US and the two dominant countries in the European Union supported by much of the world is above all about taming the behemoth.
The attempt is to make it realise that it cannot flout at will the UN and other international commitments and the civilised norms of behaviour. In other words, military might should be tempered by others’ concerns and a measure of morality and justice.
Against the undoubted clout of the neocons in the Bush administration, the world community has found a powerful friend in the US system of governance necessitating elections.
Ironically, the 9/11 phenomenon that gave President Bush high popularity ratings and the neocons the justification for starting the Iraq war is coming to haunt the presidency. Before the war, Bush Junior was a shoo-in for a second term, whereas now he and his strategists are anxiously watching the political scene to ensure success in 2004.
George W Bush is not yet in a Vietnam-like quagmire even as his neocon handlers are determined to consolidate their imperialist adventure in Iraq. But signs of trouble are multiplying.
Like the proverbial woman’s prerogative of changing her mind, the Bush administration has changed its own several times. He went to war ostensibly to neutralise Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which, he said, presented an imminent threat to US security.
Now he says it is an achievement to depose an evil dictator and points to the horrific nature of Saddam Hussein’s evil deeds. An army of American inspectors has scoured the country for months and have found no signs of those elusive weapons.
The Bush administration’s decision to start the Iraq war, it was also assumed, would be one way of resolving the Palestinian-Israeli imbroglio. With a large American footprint in Iraq, it would be easier to persuade Israelis to give Palestinians justice and their land.
But the optimists did not count with the neocons’ alignment with the fundamentalist Christian right and their affinity with the proponents of Greater Israel. In any event, the American election schedule makes it impossible for Bush Junior to resolve the problem, even if he would want to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
There are more pressing concerns for Bush Junior as more Americans look askance at the consequences of his war of choice. Given the mess in Iraq, he is no longer the knight in a shining armour. American soldiers are dying and the drafts are lengthening.
A world alienated by the grand proclamations of America’s imperial right pre-emptively and preventively to invade any country of its choice is viewing the self-inflicted wounds in Iraq with a mixture of wry satisfaction and concern.
Americans are now counting the costs of unilateralism and they don’t like the sums. There are even cries in America of proclaiming victory and cut and run.
In the Sixties, I would go to Saigon, as it then was, every six weeks to assess America’s Vietnam War. Every time I went American officials would build a new house of cards because the previous structures they had so elaborately constructed for my benefit had been demolished by events in the meantime.
As far as justifications are concerned, Bush Junior is constructing new houses of cards in Iraq each passing day. What is worse from his point of view is that more and more Americans are catching on to the trick.
The question that remains to be determined is whether President Bush’s neocon handlers will allow him to change course when they have invested so much in the Iraq adventure. For them, no price is too high to build and consolidate the Second Roman Empire.
To add to President Bush’s woes, a scandal over the naming of a CIA agent has taken centre-stage. The Vietnam analogy is being repeatedly invoked by politicians and commentators alike, if only to shoot it down, and there is growing uneasiness in Washington that the Iraq adventure has gone awry, with unwelcome consequences for the health of the United States and its prosperity. The great reluctance of the US to part with even civilian power in running Iraq although it has gone to the United Nations, cap in hand, is at the heart of the difficulties the Bush administration is facing in its belated efforts to share blood and costs. A new UN resolution may well be passed and few doubt America’s ability to twist arms in seeking individual nations’ help, but these attempts are hardly likely to amount to significant assistance in lightening the US burden.
For the neocons in the Bush administration, the problem is that Iraq is their city on the hill to prove America’s credentials as the new imperial hegemony imposing the US version of democracy in what is viewed as benighted West Asia and claiming the Second Roman Empire’s privilege of ruling the world in its own interests.
To give any measure of real authority to the United Nations to govern Iraq or let the Iraqis themselves run it under international supervision until they form a representative regime is anathema to the neocons.
Instead, the neocon script calls for a carefully stage-managed transition to an Iraqi government taking shape to give America primacy in the land on which they have expended blood and treasure.
The fly in the ointment is that the ubiquitous international community is not willing to anoint America as the new Roman Emperor just yet, if ever. France, Germany and Russia are trying to prove that the US might have truly awesome military power but it cannot rule the planet on its terms.
There are other factors and other people’s will to defy overwhelming force to live their own lives their way without paying court to a new imperial centre in the 21st century.
The present contest between the US and the two dominant countries in the European Union supported by much of the world is above all about taming the behemoth.
The attempt is to make it realise that it cannot flout at will the UN and other international commitments and the civilised norms of behaviour. In other words, military might should be tempered by others’ concerns and a measure of morality and justice.
Against the undoubted clout of the neocons in the Bush administration, the world community has found a powerful friend in the US system of governance necessitating elections.
Ironically, the 9/11 phenomenon that gave President Bush high popularity ratings and the neocons the justification for starting the Iraq war is coming to haunt the presidency. Before the war, Bush Junior was a shoo-in for a second term, whereas now he and his strategists are anxiously watching the political scene to ensure success in 2004.
George W Bush is not yet in a Vietnam-like quagmire even as his neocon handlers are determined to consolidate their imperialist adventure in Iraq. But signs of trouble are multiplying.
Like the proverbial woman’s prerogative of changing her mind, the Bush administration has changed its own several times. He went to war ostensibly to neutralise Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which, he said, presented an imminent threat to US security.
Now he says it is an achievement to depose an evil dictator and points to the horrific nature of Saddam Hussein’s evil deeds. An army of American inspectors has scoured the country for months and have found no signs of those elusive weapons.
The Bush administration’s decision to start the Iraq war, it was also assumed, would be one way of resolving the Palestinian-Israeli imbroglio. With a large American footprint in Iraq, it would be easier to persuade Israelis to give Palestinians justice and their land.
But the optimists did not count with the neocons’ alignment with the fundamentalist Christian right and their affinity with the proponents of Greater Israel. In any event, the American election schedule makes it impossible for Bush Junior to resolve the problem, even if he would want to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
There are more pressing concerns for Bush Junior as more Americans look askance at the consequences of his war of choice. Given the mess in Iraq, he is no longer the knight in a shining armour. American soldiers are dying and the drafts are lengthening.
A world alienated by the grand proclamations of America’s imperial right pre-emptively and preventively to invade any country of its choice is viewing the self-inflicted wounds in Iraq with a mixture of wry satisfaction and concern.
Americans are now counting the costs of unilateralism and they don’t like the sums. There are even cries in America of proclaiming victory and cut and run.
In the Sixties, I would go to Saigon, as it then was, every six weeks to assess America’s Vietnam War. Every time I went American officials would build a new house of cards because the previous structures they had so elaborately constructed for my benefit had been demolished by events in the meantime.
As far as justifications are concerned, Bush Junior is constructing new houses of cards in Iraq each passing day. What is worse from his point of view is that more and more Americans are catching on to the trick.
The question that remains to be determined is whether President Bush’s neocon handlers will allow him to change course when they have invested so much in the Iraq adventure. For them, no price is too high to build and consolidate the Second Roman Empire.