-Caveat Lector-
The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20030320-75800736.htm
A reckless path
Paul Craig Roberts
CREATORS SYNDICATE Published March 20, 2003
We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their
fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they
started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the
causes of the war for our position is that no grievances or policies will
justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as
an instrument of policy.
— U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, U.S. representative to
the International Conference on Military Trials, Aug. 12, 1945.
Will Bush be impeached? Will he be called a war criminal? These are not
hyperbolic questions. Mr. Bush has permitted a small cadre of
neoconservatives to isolate him from world opinion, putting him at odds
with the United Nations and America's allies.
What better illustrates Mr. Bush's isolation than the fact that he
delivered his March 16 ultimatum to the U.N. concerning Iraq from an air
base in the Azores, where there was no prospect for massive
demonstrations against his policy. Standing with Mr. Bush against the world
were Britain and Spain.
The U.S., once a guarantor of peace, is now perceived in the rest of
the world as an aggressor. Its victim is a small Muslim nation unable to
defend its own air space, much less to project power beyond its borders.
If Iraqis attempt to resist invasion, they will be slaughtered.
On the eve of Mr. Bush's ultimatum, it came to light that a key piece of
evidence used by the Bush administration to link Iraq to a nuclear weapons
program is a forgery. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the ranking
Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has asked the FBI to
investigate the origin of the forged documents that the Bush
administration used to make its case that Saddam Hussein possesses
weapons of mass destruction.
Secretary of State Colin Powell denies that the Bush administration
created the phony documents. "It came from other sources," Mr. Powell
told Congress, but he could not identify the source.
As George Santayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are
condemned to relive it." The administration's use of forged evidence opens
Mr. Bush to unflattering comparisons that his enemies will not hesitate to
make. They will point out that it was Adolf Hitler's strategy to fabricate
evidence in order to justify his invasion of a helpless country. He used S.S.
troops dressed in Polish uniforms to fake an attack on the German radio
station at Gleiwitz on Aug. 31, 1939. Following the faked attack, Hitler
announced: "This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on
our own territory." As German troops poured into Poland, Hitler declared:
"The Polish state has refused the peaceful settlement of relations which I
desired, and has appealed to arms." The German High Command called the
German invasion of Poland a "counterattack."
Thanks to his neoconservative cadre, outside the U.S. Mr. Bush is now
a disliked and distrusted politician. Mr. Bush's enemies will exploit parallels
to "naked aggression." After many decades of U.S. leadership in building an
"international order," Mr. Bush's enemies will hold him accountable for his
defiance of this order.
As much as those of us who prefer national sovereignty to world
government lament the fact, the many decades of appealing to "world
opinion" and enlisting it in behalf of our foreign policies has resulted in
considerable authority being poured into that nebulous concept. In
setting Mr. Bush in opposition to this American creation, neoconservatives
have exposed him to serious charges. Democrats, who intended to use
allegations about the 2000 Florida vote to destroy Mr. Bush's presidency as
illegitimate, now have more deadly ammunition.
Mr. Rockefeller will not be the only one to ask if the forged nuclear
documents are part of a Bush administration campaign to deceive the
public. Polls show that 50 percent of Americans believe it was Iraqis who
hijacked the airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Towers and
Pentagon. Inattention or media incompetence are the likely explanations
for this extraordinary misinformation, but some will now blame deception.
Others are already thinking the forged documents are part of a
neoconservative campaign to deceive President Bush and win his support
for their Middle Eastern policy.
Many perceive Mr. Bush as following a reckless path, one that
politicians normally try to avoid at all costs. If Iraq resists and devastating
new explosives, which our military has been testing at Eglin Air Force Base
in Florida, are dropped on Baghdad, there will be massive civilian deaths
and charges of war crimes fueled by anger at American arrogance.
Mr. Bush and his advisers have forgotten that the power of an
American president is temporary and relative. The U.S. is supposed to be
the world's leader. For the Bush administration to pursue a policy that sets
the U.S. government at odds with the world is to invite comparisons with
recklessness that we have not seen in international politics since Nikita
Khrushchev tried to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. Is Saddam Hussein
worth this much grief?
Paul Craig Roberts is a nationaly syndicated columnist.
Copyright © 2003 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Then accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief,
from the Kalama Sutra
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