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From: secr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Why the Bush administration wants war
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
Why the Bush administration wants war
Statement of the WSWS Editorial Board
14 September 2001
In the midst of the hysterical war
mongering of the US government and a
state-controlled media that knows no
shame, it is more than ever necessary to
retain not only one�s composure, but
also one�s ability to think, analyze, and
reason. It is surely appropriate to
mourn the terrible loss of life on September
11. But sympathy for the victims, their
families and friends should not blind
anyone to the fact that powerful
sections of the US ruling elite view this
tragedy as a welcome opportunity to
implement a militaristic agenda that has
been in the works for more than a
decade.
Modern wars require a pretext, a casus
belli that can be packaged to the
public as a sufficient justification for
the resort to arms. Every major war in
which the United States has been
involved since its emergence as an imperialist
world power�from the Spanish-American
War of 1898 to the Balkan War of
1999�has required a catalytic event that
inflamed public opinion.
But whatever the nature of such trigger
events, they never proved, in the light
of sober historical analysis, to be the
real cause of the wars that followed.
Rather, the actual decision to go to
war�while facilitated by the change in
public opinion produced by the casus
belli�flowed in each instance from
more essential considerations rooted in
the strategic political and economic
interests of the ruling elite.
�War,� said von Clausewitz in his
oft-quoted aphorism, �is the continuation of
politics by other means.� This means, in
essence, that war is a means by which
governments seek to secure political
ends they could not achieve peacefully.
There is no reason to believe that this
profound truth does not apply to the
events that are now unfolding in the
aftermath of Tuesday�s hijackings and
bombings.
The attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon have been seized on
as an opportunity to implement a
far-reaching political agenda for which the
most right-wing elements in the ruling
elite have been clamoring for years.
Within a day of the attack, before any
light had been shed on the source of the
assault or the dimensions of the plot,
the government and the media had
launched a coordinated campaign to
declare that America was at war and the
American people had to accept all the
consequences of wartime existence.
The policies that are now being
advanced�an open-ended expansion of US
military action abroad and a crackdown
on dissent at home�have long been in
preparation. The US ruling elite has
been hampered in implementing such
policies by the lack of any significant
support within the American population
and resistance from its imperialist
rivals in Europe and Asia.
Now the Bush administration has decided
to exploit the public mood of shock
and revulsion over the events of
September 11 to advance the global economic
and strategic aims of American
imperialism. He has the full support of a
debased media and a Democratic Party
that is more than happy to end any
pretense of opposition to the Republican
right.
On Thursday Bush all but admitted as
much, declaring that the atrocity carried
out two days before had provided �an
opportunity to wage war against
terrorism.� He went on to say that the
conduct of this war would be the focus
of his entire administration. Such a
declaration of unabashed militarism would
have been unthinkable prior to September
11. But the assault on the World
Trade Center had, in the parlance of
imperialist real politik, created new facts.
Without having begun to seriously
investigate, let alone explain, the very
strange circumstances surrounding the
terrorist attacks on New York and
Washington, the Bush administration and
the media have declared that all-out
war is the only possible response to
these events. This is before the government
has even established the political
identity of the terrorists, or answered
troubling questions about how such an
elaborate plot�apparently involving
dozens of conspirators operating within
the United States�could have gone
completely undetected by the FBI, CIA
and associated intelligence agencies.
Nor have the Federal Aviation
Administration, the Air Force or the FBI
explained the failure to issue an alert
or attempt to intercept the hijacked
airliners as they swerved off course and
made for the nerve centers of the US
financial and military establishment.
For all the claims of sorrow and
sympathy, there could not have been a more
timely or fortuitous event for the Bush
administration than the attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
When George W. Bush awoke on
September 11, he presided over an
administration in deep crisis. Having come
to power on the basis of fraud and the
suppression of votes, his government
was seen by millions both in the US and
around the world as illegitimate.
The very narrow social base of support
his administration had in the beginning
was rapidly eroding in the face of a
deepening economic slump in the US and
around the world. Unable to advance any
solution to the growth of
unemployment and catastrophic losses on
the stock market, facing criticism
over the evaporation of the budget
surplus and the reversal of its pledge not to
spend Social Security funds, the
administration was showing signs of internal
dissension and disarray.
Some three weeks before, on August 20,
the New York Times carried a
front-page article expressing the fears
within ruling circles that world capitalism
was descending into a global recession
of massive proportions. �The world
economy,� the Times wrote, �which grew
at a raging pace just last year, has
slowed to a crawl as the United States,
Europe, Japan and some major
developing countries undergo a rare
simultaneous slump.�
The Times continued: �The latest
economic statistics from around the globe
show that many regional economic
powers�Italy and Germany, Mexico and
Brazil, Japan and Singapore�have become
economically stagnant, defying
expectations that growth in other
countries would help compensate for the
slowdown in the United States.... [M]any
experts say the world is experiencing
economic whiplash, with growth rates
retreating more quickly and in more of
the leading economies than at any time
since the oil shock of 1973. And this
time there is no single factor to
account for the widespread weakness,
persuading some economists that recovery
may be slow in coming.
��We have gone from boom to bust faster
than any time since the oil shock,�
said Stephen S. Roach, the chief
economist of Morgan Stanley, a New York
investment bank. �When you screech to a
halt like that, it feels like getting
thrown through the windshield.��
The Times derisively described the
response of the Bush administration to the
unfolding crisis: �The Bush
administration still puts a relatively bright gloss on
the picture.� It reported with
unconcealed skepticism the White House
projection of a sharp upturn in the US
economy later this year or in early
2002.
On the same day the Times reported that
Ford Motor Co. was preparing to
announce more layoffs and quoted CEO
Jacques Nasser as saying, �We don�t
see any factor that�s going to restore
the robustness of the economy� in the
next 12 to 18 months.
The Wall Street Journal provided an
equally gloomy assessment, writing:
�Almost a year after the slump in high
tech and manufacturing began, many of
the other pillars that have been
supporting the economy are starting to weaken.
Businesses that started slashing
spending on equipment and software late last
year are now doing the same on office
and industrial real estate...
�Automobile sales, which were
surprisingly healthy most of this year thanks to
generous incentives and low interest
rates, have started to slide.... Since April,
most industry groups tracked by the
Labor Department have been reducing
payrolls.... Construction shaved 61,000
jobs between March and July, the
clearest example of the spillover from
high tech and manufacturing.�
The mood of gloom within business
circles turned to near panic last Friday
when the Labor Department�s jobless
report for August showed a sharp rise in
the unemployment rate, from 4.5 percent
to 4.9 percent in a single month.
Nearly one million jobs were wiped out
in August, as job cuts hit every sector
of the economy. Faced with the prospect
of a collapse in consumer spending,
investors rushed to dump their stock
holdings. The Dow Jones Industrial
Average fell 230 points, ending the day
well below the 10,000 mark.
The economic crisis compounded a host of
foreign policy dilemmas
confronting the Bush administration.
Washington�s policy in Iraq was in a
shambles, with sanctions crumbling and
the US facing open opposition from
France, Germany, Russia and China to its
plans for maintaining sanctions and
intensifying its vendetta against Saddam
Hussein. On this and other major
issues the US was finding itself unable
to get resolutions through the United
Nations Security Council and other
international bodies. On a whole host of
issues�missile defense, global warming,
an international criminal court�the
US was in open conflict with most of its
nominal allies.
The growth of social protest and
anti-capitalist sentiment was expressed in the
wave of �anti-globalization�
demonstrations, which revealed the extreme
isolation of the governments of all the
major powers and rising popular
discontent over their right-wing
policies, seen to be embodied above all in the
Bush administration.
But in the aftermath of the September 11
terror attack the Bush
administration, aided by a cynical and
sophisticated media campaign, has been
working to whip up a patriotic war fever
that will enable it to overcome, at
least temporarily, its immediate
problems, while creating the conditions for
profound and lasting changes on both the
foreign and domestic front.
In the name of national unity, the
Democratic Party has given Bush a blank
check to wage war, increase military
spending and curtail civil liberties. As one
commentator aptly put it, �We will be
operating as if we have a national unity
party. That means alternative voices
will be suppressed.�
The Washington Post spoke for the
liberal establishment in a September 14
editorial calling for the curtailment of
democratic and civil rights. Entitled
�New Rules,� the editorial declared:
�[I]f replying to that attack is truly to
become an organizing principle of US
policy, as we believe it should�if the
United States is to undertake the
difficult and sustained campaign against those
who threaten it�then neither politics
nor diplomacy can return to where they
were.... This is most of all true as
Congress and others discuss the possible need
to sacrifice privacy, freedom of
movement or other liberties to the needs of
domestic security.�
Tens of billions of dollars will be
pumped into the economy in the form of
military and security spending, and to
rebuild the devastated sections of New
York City. The viability of what remains
of the social safety net�Medicare and
Social Security�will not be allowed to
stand in the way of pursuing the
twilight struggle of good versus evil
proclaimed by the White House and
Congress.
Every restriction on the exercise of US
military might and the
counterrevolutionary activities of the
CIA will be lifted. For years the most
reactionary sections of the ruling
elite, in the editorial pages of the Wall Street
Journal and the publications of
right-wing think tanks, have been agitating for
an end to the �Vietnam syndrome� and
calling for the unbridled use of
military force to secure the interests
of US imperialism. Now they see the
opportunity to realize their agenda.
Already leading spokesmen of both
parties are demanding the rescinding of the
presidential order banning the use of
assassinations as a tool of foreign policy.
The Democrats have agreed to vote for a
resolution giving the White House
virtually unlimited authority to go to
war against any nation that it claims is
aiding or encouraging terrorists. There
is little doubt that one of the first targets
for a massive bombing campaign, combined
with a ground invasion, will be
Iraq. But other countries are certain to
follow.
As one military officer said on
Wednesday, �The constraints have been lifted.�
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said
the contemplated military action will
�not be restricted to a single entity,
state or non-state entity.� Georgia
Democrat Zell Miller was more blunt in
expressing the bloodlust that prevails
in government circles: �Bomb the hell
out of them. If there�s collateral
damage, so be it.�
Senator John McCain said the US should
�not rule out any force short of
nuclear weapons.� New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman, in a piece
entitled �World War III,� refused to
make such a caveat, writing that while the
September 11 attack �may have been the
first major battle of World War III, it
may be the last one that involves only
conventional, non-nuclear weapons.�
The American people, at a moment of
enormous grief and anxiety, are being
told they must accept the prospect of
having their sons and daughters sent to
distant parts to kill and be killed, to
fight an enemy or enemies yet to be
named, and at the same time acquiesce to
the gutting of their democratic
rights.
What they are not being told is that the
American corporate and financial elite,
in the name of a holy war against
terrorism, intends to rain death and
destruction on countless thousands of
people in order to realize global aims it
has long harbored. Can there be any
doubt that this crusade for �peace� and
�stability� will become the occasion for
the US to tighten its grip over the oil
and natural gas resources of the Middle
East, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian?
Behind the pious and patriotic
declarations of politicians and media
commentators stand the long-cherished
designs of American imperialism to
dominate new parts of the world and
establish global hegemony.
See Also:
Arab-Americans and Muslims attacked in
the US
[15 September 2001]
The political roots of the terror attack
on New York and Washington
[13 September 2001]
The political significance of Israel�s
assassination policy
[7 September 2001]
After the Slaughter: Political Lessons
of the Balkan War
[14 June 1999]
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