Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
January 6, 2004
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Notes on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
January
6, 2004
Sick Puppies
Frum's
New Neo-Con Manifesto
By JOHN CHUCKMAN
The title is not part of my usual vocabulary,
but sometimes an expression fits so perfectly that it becomes
irresistible. And so it is for the authors of a neo-con "manifesto"
on foreign policy. The Gomer Pyle of American Presidents recently
was presented with a plan to reorder much of the world, a plan
intended to build on his remarkable achievements in Iraq and
Afghanistan, spreading resentment and future mayhem against Americans
across the world.
Have you ever noticed how many of those
odd people, the American neo-cons, use the rhetoric of nineteenth
century European radicals? You'd be hard put to count all the
references to "revolutionary," "radical,"
and "manifesto" in the American Right's industrial-scale
output of pamphlets and tracts. This practice may have started
as a marketing gimmick, the catchy application of a term from
an unexpected context, but this kind of language is far more
revealing than its authors realize.
Hitler was partial to just this kind
of language. That lover of fire engine-sized roadsters, cane
and cape at the opera, and tea with elegant pastries always used
such terms to describe his political movement when he strutted
in public with whip and jackboots.
One of the authors of this "manifesto"
is David Frum. After years of dutifully churning out his quota
of words for one of America's well-endowed, right-wing propaganda
mills styled as academic institutes, Frum's big moment came with
his elevation to presidential speechwriter.
Knowing the quality of Bush speeches,
you might think that being dismissed as a speechwriter would
be impossible, but Frum managed the feat. He or his wife, the
case is not clear, committed the sin of speechwriter lese-majeste,
letting people know he wrote the original version of what became
the "axis of evil" expression. You are never permitted
to know such things. You are supposed to think such stirring
words sprang directly from the head of President Pyle. When Frum
or his wife bragged of his contribution to history on the Washington
cocktail circuit, they found themselves packing their bags before
the hangovers had lifted.
Crushed by now missing out on the greatest
period of winks, nods, and influence-peddling since President
Grant's administration, Frum hasn't risen from his knees since
being ushered from the imperial presence. Teaming up with Richard
Perle may or may not rekindle a nearly-dead career, but it is
Frum's first opportunity to walk upright in months.
Richard Perle needs little introduction.
He might be summed up as Washington's resident Creature from
the Black Lagoon, displaying the accumulated toxic effects of
a lifetime spent wallowing and bottom-feeding in the Potomac.
He is exalted "fellow" at another of those propaganda-mill
institutes, Defense Department wheeler-dealer and profiteer,
tireless advocate for every American colonial war and bombing
run, and energetic lobbyist for the Israeli military's way of
doing things.
The "manifesto" is contained
in a new book, An
End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. Now, there's an
intriguing title suggesting fresh thought. An end to evil? Do
the neo-con crackpots ever stop talking as though the date were
700 BCE? Perhaps Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell or others of the
trailer-park heavenly host are credited in the Acknowledgments
with contributions or inspiration?
The title should frighten us. After all,
anyone even near to influencing the use of atomic-powered aircraft
carriers and thermonuclear weapons who speaks about ending evil
in foreign policy is a very dangerous person. One can't help
but recall General Ripper's concerns over a declining "purity
of essence" in Dr. Strangelove as he launched his strategic-bomber
wing on a pre-emptive nuclear attack. But as we live in a time
when an American president himself speaks this mumbo jumbo, I
suppose we have added nothing to our stock of fear. As for pre-emptive
attack, hasn't President Pyle made that an official doctrine
of the United States?
The authors express concern over what
they see as a faltering will to win in Washington. Will to win?
The expression chillingly recalls radio announcements crackling
over the airwaves from Berlin, circa 1944. Again, language can
be so revealing.
I suppose an American military now up
to its armpits in long-term commitments combined with a public
tired of hearing about dead soldiers would have a little something
to do with this perception of flagging will. Undoubtedly, too,
a frenzy of spending while cutting taxes and running monumental
trade deficits, a reckless policy combination that ultimately
threatens the economic stability of the United States, might
contribute. But, as we all know, when you are fighting evil,
there can be no half-hearted measures. That's how the President's
oily, well-fed spiritual advisors in silk suits admonish their
flocks as they pass the collection plate for the third time.
The "manifesto" brims with
stuff to please the kind of Americans who never read genuine
news or books on international affairs yet maintain chest-thumping
opinions on how to treat foreigners. Surprise, surprise, we find
in these pages demands for "regime change" in Syria
and Iran, although the explanation of just where the U.S. would
get sufficient holy warriors for these crusades while still holding
down Iraq and Afghanistan may be consigned to some very fine
type at the back of the book. As it is, America's reprehensible
system of buying poor young military recruits by promising money
for college is coming under strain with the sudden realization
that you may actually have to face a stinking, pointless war
for your tuition.
Our steak-fed Potomac revolutionaries
give little thought to how the international community would
regard such wholesale aggression. Their anointed leader already
has done more damage to America's traditional alliances and friendships
than perhaps any president in history, but Frum and Perle think
America needs to throw off entirely the yoke of international
concerns. If Marx and Engels could call for humanity to cast
off its chains, Frum and Perle can call for humanity to take
a hike.
The boys appear to have sworn off using
their expense accounts at cafes serving frites with their bifteck,
because they are really pissed of at France. They want France
treated as a rival, perhaps even an enemy, of the United States.
Never mind that France secured America's independence in the
late eighteenth century and that she has been a dependable ally
through a number of wars and conflicts since. Never mind that
France remains one of the world's true beacons for freedom and
the human spirit, the kind of precious values supposedly motivating
Frum and Perle.
Does it matter that France sustained
a successful struggle against terrorism long before the subject
became trendy with neo-cons and did so without overthrowing other
societies? Does it matter that France might have some genuine
insight and wisdom in these matters? France simply must be punished,
especially, one suspects, because virtually every point the French
made in public against attacking Iraq has proved embarrassingly
accurate.
The scope of Frum and Perle's historical
vision is not limited to creating more havoc in the Middle East
and spitting on old friends like France, they want to do great
things in Asia, too, starting with a military blockade of North
Korea. America should seriously plan a strike on that country's
nuclear facilities. These are the words of pyromaniacs ready
to throw lighted matches into dry tinder around Los Angeles just
for fun. Again, concerns about how the world would see such acts
of war are brushed aside.
More importantly, concerns about what
South Koreans might think are brushed aside, people whose thriving,
populous capital of Seoul is completely vulnerable to attack
from the North. Of course, in this Frum and Perle reflect the
spirit of much of the President's dealings with the North to
date. He doesn't waste time on anything beside the point, the
point pretty much always coming down to "you're with us
or against us." Anyway, people in Washington are better
equipped to understand Korea than Koreans, aren't they? A lifetime
of scribbling for imperial patrons on how the planet should be
run qualifies you as an expert and a man of action, so Frum and
Perle call for action.
The manifesto is about many things, but
despite its boast, it is not about ending terror. As a brave
Anglican Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, said so perfectly recently,
"For Bush and Blair to go into Iraq together was like a
bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton [a bad neighborhood
in London] to stop drug dealing. This is not to deny there's
a problem to be sorted, just that they are not credible people
to deal with it." The manifesto is about permanently deputizing
the white vigilantes.
Its recommendations lead in only one
direction and that is towards a system of extreme suppression
of views and beliefs in the world that mainstream America either
does not understand or holds to be unacceptable. It invites a
fear-forged world in which there can never be enough security,
paralleling closely what one sees in territories touching on
Israel. Israel never has enough security. Occupation, reprisals,
and wars haven't supplied enough. Arrest and torture haven't
supplied enough. Spies and assassinations haven't supplied enough.
Atomic weapons haven't supply enough. Walls will not supply enough.
The simple act of refusing to make a
genuine peace is what makes Israel's paranoid apparatus seem
necessary. And so the United States with its invasive, destructive
policies that created Bin Laden in Afghanistan, that inflamed
Hussein's ambitions, or that brought a quarter century of hatred
from Iran. Frum and Perle don't want a revolutionary change in
policies, they want Israel's paranoid apparatus extended to world-scale.
This is a mad vision of a world which
perhaps resembles nothing so much as Orwell's 1984 politely introduced
through the back door in the name of stopping terror instead
of being imposed by a police state, although in this vision America
would become effectively a police state vis-a-vis the rest of
the world.
The manifesto might be viewed as a call
to fulfill what was once known as America's Manifest Destiny
when only Indians and Spaniards in Western North America were
affected. Now that call is openly to assume the imperial purple
of Rome on a planetary scale. You have the military power, America,
use it. To hell with what the other ninety-five percent of humanity
thinks or fears.
Considering the book's timing, entering
an election year, its major purpose may be to make Bush look
moderate by comparison. Of course, he is not a moderate: every
major proposal in this book has already been noised about during
his administration. But then again neither is he a war hero,
yet he has been able to stupidly play act at that with considerable
success for a large audience of Americans. Who, a year or so
ago, would have believed Bush pig-headed enough actually to invade
Iraq, an action whose full, terrible costs will be coming in
for years? Not a single reason given for his doing so was true,
yet Americans still support him in the polls.
The sick puppies' manifesto may just
become a forecast.
John Chuckman
lives in Canada. He can be reached at: chuckman@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|