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The Fabulous War On Terror Flim Flam

David Martin: damrtn48@ntplx.net

10/21/03: (ICH) All good magicians know the secret of a successful trick is misdirection. Get the audience to focus on your right hand while the left palms the coin to be pulled out of a dazzled on-looker's ear.

This is the principle behind George Bush's callously cynical misadventure in Iraq. It's a war based on misdirection and deception, and we are the rubes in the audience who are being duped by the charlatan's smoke and mirrors.

Everything Bush and his coterie of neocon chickenhawks tell us about the war is a fraud. Saddam Hussein's huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and his ties to al Qaeda have vanished like a desert mirage. The patriotic saga of Jessica Lynch turned out to be a made for television, feel-good fantasy. GI letters to hometown newspapers touting what a wonderful job they're doing and how proud they feel to be doing it are nothing more than a commanding officer's PR form letter sent without the soldiers' knowledge.

But every now and then, the star-spangled curtain lifts, and we catch a glimpse of the greasy machinery that is doing the real work of occupation. American soldiers give looters free rein throughout most of Baghdad but shoot to kill if any of them get too close 

to the Oil Ministry. Major league contractors, direct wired to administration topcats, are given no-bid budget-busting contracts for the re-construction of the country shattered by the bombs they supply to the Defense Department. All sectors of the Iraqi economy, except the oil monopoly, are put up for auction to the lowest bidder. Gucci-wearing lobbyists start a new growth industry helping Western companies get pieces of the re-construction pie.

This is not a Marshall Plan. It's a buzzard's feast, and every Republican-connected firm that can afford a big enough campaign contribution is invited to dine on the corpse of Saddam's Iraq.

And all the while, the President talks of bringing democracy to Iraq. Another lie. The last thing we want is democracy in Iraq. That would give the country independence, a freedom to act against the wishes of its American overlords. 

What we really want is to turn Iraq into an American suburb. It's a simple exchange. You give us your oil; we give you Walmart and Burger King. Let us do for you what Enron did for California.

Welcome, Iraqis, to the wonderful world of free trade in which you too can work at sweatshop wages to make plastic geegaws sold in the bargain aisle of a discount retailer near you. And since you didn't want to sign our non-union binding agreement, well then, here it is: globalization at gunpoint, delivered to you courtesy of the U.S Marines. 

Sorry about all those innocents shot by the trigger-happy soldiers who man our American checkpoints. Sorry about all those family members arrested in the middle of the night to be stashed in Saddam's prisons and held in legal limbo. But you know that old saying about having to break a few eggs to made a $2.99 fast food franchise breakfast special omelet.

There's no need to feel alone in your occupied misery though. Your pain is being felt by Bolivian tin miners rioting against their country's free trade reforms that are culminating in a plan to sell its natural gas to the U.S via a pipeline through Chile. For the moment, the miners seem to have won a victory by ousting the Bolivian presidente. But not to worry. Any minute now, President Bush will announce the miners have ties with al Qaeda, and we'll send the troops to quell them.

Even as we speak, George the Magician is flying around the world to preach the gospel of free trade and globalization to the economically unenlightened heathens of the Far East. And just to make sure no one gets the point, he'll stop in Bali for a photo op moment to wave the red herring of the War on Terror.

Actually, Iraqis, you should feel honored to be the first stop of George Bush's anti-terror, Social Darwinist, laissez-faire traveling medicine show. Now that he's learned he can get away with his flim flam, there's no telling what country he'll choose to invade and turn into the next branch office of MegaGlobalCorp, Inc. with its headquarters in NewYorkLondonTokyoAmsterdam.

That's the great thing about this war on terror. You can paint anyone in terrorist colors. No one will know the difference, and then we send in the troops singing our favorite old hymn, "Onward corporate soldiers marching off to war with the Cross of Gold going as before."