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Bush ready
to fight war on two fronts
Defeat of Saddam does not end US ambitions in the Middle East. The
friends of President Bush have grand plans to create an American
Imperium - and to consolidate their power at home Ed Vulliamy in
Washington The last shot of the
war in Iraq will be the starting pistol for two further campaigns by the
administration of President George W Bush. One will be fought in the
region: no one really believes America's project is confined to Iraq.
The toppling of Saddam is first base in what Michael Ledeen, leading
thinker among the neo-conservatives driving foreign policy, calls 'a war
to remake the world'.
The second front will be the home one: unlike his father - who lost
an election the year after driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait -
President George Bush junior has also to win what former Clinton aide
Sidney Blumenthal promises to be a resumption of 'partisan warfare' at
home.
If he succeeds in both campaigns, he will have become the most
powerful President in US history, both at home and across the new
Imperium of which victory in Iraq is the first footprint.
America's continuing 'war on terrorism' aims to secure Iraq, but then
focus on fresh enemies: Syria and Iran. When an aide told Bush last week
that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had fired a verbal warning shot
at Syria, the President said: 'Good'.
William Kristol, a long-time friend of Bush from Yale days, wrote in
a book he co-authored: 'The mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not
end there. We stand at the cusp of a new historical era. It is so
clearly about more than Iraq. It is about more even than the future of
the Middle East. It is about what sort of role the United States intends
to play in the twenty-first century.'
When the US was preparing for war, the then director of the
semi-official Defence Policy Board, Richard Perle, said one of its
advantages would be 'that we could deliver a short message, a two-word
message: "You're Next."'
Grand plans for continuing war are devised by neo-conservatives on
the edges of the administration, but the group includes key players, not
least Vice-President Dick Cheney and eputy Defence Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, regarded as the real architects of war and its aftermath.
'There will have to be change in Syria,' said Wolfowitz last week. And
John Bolton, number three at the State Department, warned countries the
US has accused of pursuing weapons of mass destruction - including Iran
and Syria - to 'draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq'.
'I think we're going to be obliged to fight a regional war, whether
we want to or not,' says Ledeen, a pivotal thinker within the
neo-conservative group. The logic of the global war on terrorism - and a
conviction that a democratic revolution can be encouraged to sweep
across the Middle East will take the US into confrontation with other
countries, argues Ledeen, since 'we are going to face the whole
terrorist network' and 'the terror masters', Syria, Iran and even Saudi
Arabia.
Briefings at the Pentagon now mention the Palestinian Hamas and Shia
Hizbollah militias, based in Lebanon, far more than they do al-Qaeda.
Hizbollah is the cover under which America would act against Syria,
described by the Pentagon's number three, Douglas Feith, as 'one of the
key international terrorist networks, supported by the Syrians and the
Iranians'.
The Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, argued last week
that moving against Syria would be a way of cutting off aid to Hizbollah,
which he called 'the A team' of world terrorism.
But Saudi Arabia - with its hold over oil prices - is also coming
within America's sights. 'After Hussein is removed, there will be an
earthquake through the region,' predicts Max Singer, co-founder of the
Hudson Institute think-tank, which recommends a dismantling of the Saudi
kingdom by encouraging breakaway republics in the oil-rich eastern
provinces.
America's dream of waging wider war in the region is all too familiar
to James Akins, former political officer at the US Embassy in Baghdad
and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. 'If the ultimate goal [of the US] is to
be world dominatrix, then she will need the oil of Arabia, from Kirkuk
to Muscat,' he states. 'The ideological, imperial aim and that of
commanding the oil markets for the rest of the oil era, entwine into the
same game plan. If we do this, and move into Saudi Arabia, we are
masters of the universe - the American Imperium.'
Ivo Dalder, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is writing a
book entitled America Unbounded, and argues that 'the real debate in
this administration is not between the doves and the hawks, it is
between the hawks and the hawks'. Between people like Cheney, 'who
believe there are evil people out there and we have to confront them
before they confront us', and people like Wolfowitz, 'who believe we can
transform these people from dictatorships to democracies. They go hand
in hand during the destructive phase, but part during the constructive
phase. Cheney and Rumsfeld will want to get out of Iraq, Wolfowitz will
want to stay in.'
Akins was fired from the US diplomatic service in 1976 after
confrontations with then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger over US
aspirations in the Gulf. 'In normal circumstances, I would say there is
no question of these things happening - attacks on Syria or Iran,' Akins
reflects. 'But these are not normal circumstances. These people can
always find some Syrian atrocity - the Israelis attack, then we attack.
The dragons have taken over now; you never know what these people will
do and how far they will go.'
State Department sources tell The Observer Israel is integral to
plans to attack Syria. They say a guarantee to remove Hizbollah and its
sponsorship is a secret ingredient to the Middle East 'road map', agreed
between Washington and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
'But there is one problem,' says Akins. 'Whatever makes them think
free elections in Syria or Saudi Arabia will produce pro-Western
governments wanting peace with Israel? They would produce anti-Western
governments committed to the destruction of Israel.'
Fareed Zakaria, former editor of Foreign Affairs, believes the
administration is 'wrong, if it believes a successful war will make the
world snap out of a deep and widening distrust and resentment of
American policy. What worries people around the world above all else is
a world shaped and dominated by one country - the United States'.
A continuing war is integral to Bush's domestic campaign to retain
power for another term.'When the dust settles, he'll get great credit
from the American public for having the courage of his convictions,'
says Ron Kaufman, who was political director in Bush senior's White
House.
But Bush junior must look to the home front too. 'Now the President
must show he can walk and chew gum,' says Donna Brazile, manager of Al
Gore's campaign against Bush. 'He has to follow through on the
reconstruction of Iraq and then focus on domestic issues again.'
According to NBC, 66 per cent support the President, but only 38 per
cent support his plan for a $350 billion tax cut over the next 10 years.
'The Republicans had a khaki election in 2002, and that is what they
want for 2004,' says Sidney Blumenthal, former senior official in the
Clinton White House. 'They have got to prevent domestic issues
dominating the presidential election'.
But, Blumenthal predicts: 'This country is going to plunge into
partisan warfare very shortly. This is not simply over his absurd
economic programme which will undermine the economy.
'It is to do with rolling back social programmes and social gains
through the Clinton, Johnson and Kennedy eras to the New Deal and
beyond. And, perhaps most important, there's going to be a battle royal
over the Supreme Court'. Emboldened by the war, Bush junior may well,
says Blumenthal, risk appointing hard-right judges to fill vacancies in
the court.
'While that might appease the Right,' he says, 'the political impact
in the country will be immediate and profound, and will dominate the
summer of 2003 in politics.'
An election campaign linked to the war has begun. Karl Rove, Bush's
most powerful adviser, tours the country presenting the image of a
wartime leader and, connecting the two fronts, urges people - as he did
at a rally in the swing state of Michigan last week- 'to 'trust the
Republicans to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's
military might, and thereby strengthening America'. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4647248,00.html
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