-Caveat Lector-
>From www.iraqwar.org/beltwaybombers.htm
War Benefits the "Beltway Bombers"
by Jon Basil Utley
As America is now in its second post-communist war plus
continuing a naval blockade and air strikes from its first Iraq War,
we wonder sometimes who really benefits. Cui bono is the legal
expression used in court, taken from Latin, for "Who Benefits?"
Inside the Washington Beltway are many. First, of course, is
the President. Anytime any President faces problems or criticism at
home he can start a war to take media attention away. Any critic then
fears to "undermine the war effort." Then there are the Congressmen
getting much more media exposure as they debate the important matters
of life or death. Then there�s the media, watching ratings soar as
readers and TV watchers hang on their every word. Every atrocity
story makes good "news." TV is ideal for the misery of war, just as
local news programs always stress murder, rape, and fire.
But there are other "Beltway Bombing" or what some call "War
Party" interests. Of course, there�s the defense establishment
getting new appropriations, honor, new weapons systems, the chance
for some excitement and the opportunity to try out their new
technological marvels in real wars. One thing they, of course, don�t
have to worry about hardly at all is getting hurt, much less killed.
Added to this is, of course, the old NATO bureaucracy, tens of
thousands of high caliber men and women, looking for a new mission.
Then there are the police and intelligence agencies. The FBI,
CIA, ATF, etc. will all have new promotions and pay raises as they go
out to guard against friends of the assorted foreigners we kill to
protect America from terrorism. In the old days there were only a few
militant Palestinians to watch. But as we bomb more and more nations,
now they must shadow vengeful Serbs, angry Afghans, irate Iraqis, or
even sullen Sudanese and their friends who might be seeking to bring
the battlefront to America. Even American Albanians may end up
unhappy if Washington doesn�t gain everything for them it has now
promised. Watch for new billions for their needs too.
Another Beltway group to benefit from wars are the Think Tanks.
They get new grants to publish learned papers about how to "win" or
what to do after we "win." Their experts are called onto TV for
weighty discussions and called to Congress and the White House for
advice. As Pat Buchanan wrote (Washington Post 4/13) "Maybe the
foreign policy establishment needed a second Cold War, as anything is
preferable to irrelevance."
And of course, there�s still the military industrial complex, old
timers who have been hurting from cutbacks since the collapse of
communism. Beyond these there are the restaurants and even the pizza
delivery companies, called upon late at night for nourishment while
strategicians are deciding on the next day�s bombing targets.
The above is not just a theory. Recent Congressional votes
reflect these interests. For example, the recent 213-213 split over
approving the bombing of Kosovo showed Virginia�s Beltway
Republicans, Frank Wolf and Tom Davis, in favor. But downstate
Republicans joined the Republican majority voting against it. Senator
McCain�s go-to-war amendment, recently tabled by the Senate, was
favored by McConnell, Lugar and Warner, all old Beltway Republicans,
against newer Senators. Equally most of the Freshmen and Sophomore
Republicans voted against bombing, while many old, long established
Beltway ones voted in favor. Newt Gingrich, when he ruled, always
supported bombing.
Another aspect of the attack on Yugoslavia is its undermining of
Washington's prestige as arbiter of nuclear proliferation. Together
with bombing China's Embassy it has atomized efforts to restrain
China and Russia from shipping nuclear and missile knowhow to 3rd
World nations. America the attacker now inspires every nation to try
to go nuclear so as to have a defense against America.
"For those determined to designate China as our next great
enemy," writes NATIONAL INTEREST Editor Owen Harries (NYT 5/16),
"this (China�s reaction to bombing Serbia) will be good news."
Harries writes further, "With U.S. ability to overawe diminished,
Washington will have to resort to force even more often.
The "Beltway Bombers" will, of course, benefit as new studies,
greater budgets, and more wars will be needed against newly
proliferating enemies of America overseas and at home. War always
benefits big government and big government is Washington�s business.
Mr. Utley, a long time conservative activist, is Chairman of
Americans Against World Empire and editor of <
iraqwar.org/kosovotalking points> He was a former foreign
correspondent and Asso. Editor of Times of the Americas and
Conservative Digest.
Via www.iraqwar.org/tomhayden.htm
<Picture: America: A Beacon, Not a Policeman> America: a
Beacon, not a Policeman
Tom Hayden on
The Liberals' Folly
Americans Against World Empire
The Liberals� Folly
By Tom Haden ("The" Tom Hayden)
Liberals in the Democratic Party should withdraw their support
for the Kosovo war. So should the Democratic Party. Their dream of a
war for human rights is descending into a nightmare of human despair.
Their confident expectation of an early military victory is sinking
in a Vietnam-style quagmire. Their political fortune in 2000 are fast
becoming collateral damage.
Vietnam was also a liberals' war at the beginning. The liberal
Democrats painted it with a coat of international altruism that
blinded them to folly. It was not until the Tet Offensive and the
Democratic primaries of 1968 that most Democratic liberals
reconsidered their position. By then a million people were dead.
Now liberal war fever is back: 181 House Democrats voted for the
air war, and only twenty-six opposed it. Fully 164 Democrats even
voted to forfeit their most important political gain of the Vietnam
era--the War Powers Act, which requires that Congress approve a US
ground war. Only forty-five Democrats were willing to insist on being
consulted.
There is no disagreement on the liberals' assertion that the
Kosovar Albanians are victims of a ruthless ethnic cleansing. But the
meaning of and remedies for this horror must be filtered through two
key questions: (1) If we are opposing ethnic cleansing, why only in
Kosovo and not in Tibet, Turkey, Rwanda or, for that matter, Northern
Ireland? (2) Are bombing and ground troops an effective and
proportionate response to the crisis?
The answer to the first question is that this war is being
conducted for reasons of state and not primarily for human rights.
The White House has cultivated and toasted the Chinese oppressors of
Tibet as it was bombing Belgrade, and NATO has ignored the ethnic
cleansing of Kurds by NATO member Turkey. The reason of state appears
to be the consolidation of Europeans and Americans for a global
police role outside the United Nations. As a German political
scientist crowed, the Balkan war can be a "military euro," a unifying
blood equivalent of the single European currency.
That the former colonial and imperial powers are consolidating an
economic and military alliance is not necessarily welcome news to the
wretched of the earth. Clinton has spent more on the Balkans this
month than on the entire budget for Central American victims of
Hurricane Mitch. In Africa alone, millions of people have been
cleansed, killed, starved and uprooted in the former Western colonies
of Rwanda, Sudan, Angola and Sierra Leone, without NATO or US
intervention. The war in Kosovo widens the gap between the United
States and all the nonwhite countries where dying is a way of life.
Liberals should be speaking for the voiceless of Latin America, Asia
and Africa and insisting on the UN as a multinational, multiracial
vehicle for conflict resolution. But pro war liberalism is
reinforcing the very North-South global gap it should be healing.
(ed.)
As for the "effectiveness" of the war in promoting human rights,
the bombing campaign has helped empty Kosovo of Albanian Kosovars,
strengthened the morale of the Serbian Army, rallied Milosevic's
former opposition behind him and left America, and NATO, knee-deep in
the Big Muddy once again.
By defending Clinton's "degrading" of Serbia's military
capability, pro-war liberals are degrading their own moral capability
to serve as critical watchdogs (ed.) As a result, avoidable civilian
suffering is on the rise, and military doubletalk is fostering a
credibility gap that goes unquestioned. Saying you are sorry for
killing cleaning ladies is little consolation when the Administration
already acknowledges it to be inevitable. Even worse, the Clinton
Administration is intentionally targeting the civilian infrastructure
of Serbia to weaken Milosevic and,
if possible, avoid a US troop commitment. The moral balance between
means and ends disintegrates where there is no liberal dissent from
policies like these. War may be hell, but there is no justification
for the United States to refuse to admit it is carpeting Kosovo with
antipersonnel bombs to save it. These cluster bombs are spilled from
the sky and explode from vibrations on the ground, sending twisted
chunks of shrapnel in all directions.
It is morally meaningless for liberals to send charitable
contributions to refugee aid organizations (themselves dependent on
the United States and NATO for funding) while silently supporting the
use of these antipersonnel bombs. How can the liberal memory forget
the hidden use of these fragmentation bombs and the slow, painful
deaths they caused in Vietnam?
If the war proceeds, the domestic agendas of liberals and Clinton
Democrats will be paralyzed. Despite Clinton's famous ability to
compartmentalize, the war will become his preoccupation. He could
argue legitimately that the impeachment proceeding was diverting
attention from our needs at home, but how can he argue that Kosovo
will not? Already Clinton has accommodated the Republican demand for
$13 billion as a down payment for the war's costs through September
alone. Money for school lunches and seniors' prescriptions will be
spent instead on weapons and a bureaucracy of spin doctors. As in the
sixties, a prolonged war will undermine any lingering focus of the
Clinton presidency on poverty, racism or violence at home.
Al Gore and the Democratic Congress are also becoming collateral
damage of Clinton's war. Already 40 percent of Americans are opposed
to a ground war, and 47 percent believe that the NATO air strikes
against Serbia have been a failure, according to a Washington
Post/ABC News poll. Clinton's popularity is slipping by the week.
Gore's unswerving loyalty to the Clinton line may have been
defensible when the issue was Monica Lewinsky, but it will be a
disadvantage when he tries to explain this Kosovo quagmire. Whatever
edge the Democratic Party gained from the impeachment trial is in
mortal danger of being squandered in the Balkans.
Liberals should play the role they eventually did in Vietnam by
abandoning their support for this blunder and insisting that our
leaders pursue a peaceful alternative.
TOM HAYDEN
Thm Hayden is a Cahfornia state senator.
copyright 1999, The Nation
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