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% Filename:    articles/chomsky.z.aftermath
% Title:       Aftermath
% Author:      Noam Chomsky
% Appeared-in: Z Magazine, October 1991
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                            AFTERMATH
                          Noam Chomsky
                         August 31, 1991
                    Z Magazine, October 1991


Voices from Below

In concluding its report _The Challenge to the South_, the South
Commission, chaired by Julius Nyerere and consisting of leading
Third World economists, government planners, and others, called
for a ``new world order'' that will respond to ``the South's plea
for justice, equity, and democracy in the global society''---
with a touch of pathos, perhaps, since its analysis offered
little basis for such hopes. {note: _The Challenge to the South_,
Report of the South Commission (Oxford, 1990), 287.} Some months
later, George Bush appropriated the phrase ``new world order'' as
part of the rhetorical background for his war in the Gulf. The
powerful determine the rules of the game and the meaning of the
rhetoric adopted to disguise them. It is George Bush's New World
Order, not that of the South Commission, that will prevail.
Accordingly, it is not surprising that the Third World did not
join in the enthusiastic U.S. welcome for the uplifting vision
proclaimed by the President and his Secretary of State.

In earlier articles as Bush's war plans unfolded, I have quoted
Third World reactions, including the Iraqi democrats who were
rebuffed throughout by Washington and scrupulously excluded from
the propaganda system because of their opposition to every phase
of U.S. policy: the enthusiastic Reagan-Bush support for their
gangster friend as long as he followed orders; the rush to war
and barring of the danger of a peaceful negotiated settlement;
the slaughter itself; and the support for Saddam Hussein as he
crushed the popular uprisings that Bush had called for when it
suited his purposes, then abandoned as priorities changed. To
survey Third World opinion is no simple matter; the traditional
colonial areas are of little interest to Western privilege unless
they fall ``out of control,'' at which point there is a quick
transition from silence to frenzied abuse. But from what
information I can gather, there was broad agreement with the
interpretation of the editor of Germany's leading daily, Theo
Sommer of _Die Zeit_, who saw in the U.S.-U.K. reaction to the
Gulf crisis ``an unabashed exercise in national self-interest,
only thinly veiled by invocations of principle'' {note:
_Guardian_ (London), April 13, 1991.}---invocations that were
proclaimed with due pomposity and self-righteousness as long as
the interests of power were served thereby.

In a typical Third World reaction, the Jesuit journal _Proceso_
(El Salvador) warned of the ``ominous halo of hypocrisy, the seed
of new crises and resentments.'' The hypocrisy ``is extreme in
the case of the United States, the leader of the allied forces
and the most warmongering of them all.'' Writing in the Chilean
journal _La Epoca_ under a caricature of Bush in a bathtub filled
with war toys, Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti agreed that Bush
has ``succeeded in outdoing Saddam in hypocrisy.'' ``When
liberation fever hits the United States,'' he continued, ``the
alarms sound everywhere, particularly in the Third World,'' which
lacks the Western talent to turn quickly away from ``the
liberated wreckage'' and where it is no secret that ``the abyss
between the First World and the Third World is wider with each
passing day.''  There is nothing accidental, he writes, about the
resemblance of Bush's phrase ``New World Order'' to Hitler's
``Neue Ordnung'' and Mussolini's ``Ordine Nuovo.'' The ``express
intent'' of Bush's Gulf war was nothing other than ``to show both
the Third World and its old and new European allies that from now
on it is the United States that orders, invades, and dictates the
law, period.'' For the Third World, ``the combination of the
weakening of the USSR and the [U.S.] victory in the Gulf could
turn out to be frightening . . . because of the breakdown of
international military equilibrium which somehow served to
contain U.S. yearnings for domination''; ``the contempt that this
triumph has brought about (thirty countries against one) could
stimulate even wilder imperalist adventures.'' For the South, he
concludes, the only hope is to pray to every imaginable deity to
``try to convince Bush and Powell not to come liberate us.''
{note: Editorial, _Proceso_, Jan. 23, 1991. Benedetti, _La
Epoca_, May 4, 1991.}

Few in the former colonial domains would take issue with the
judgment of the _Times of India_ that the traditional warrior
states sought a ``regional Yalta where the powerful nations agree
among themselves to a share of Arab spoils . . . [The West's]
conduct throughout this one month has revealed the seamiest sides
of Western civilisation: its unrestricted appetite for dominance,
its morbid fascination for hi-tech military might, its alien'
cultures, its appalling jingoism. . . .'' The general mood was
captured by Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns of Sao Paolo, Brazil,
who wrote that in the Arab countries ``the rich sided with the
U.S. government while the _millions_ of poor condemned this
military aggression.'' Throughout the Third World, he continued,
``there is hatred and fear: When will they decide to invade us,''
and on what pretext? {note: _Z_, May 1991. Foreword, Thomas Fox,
_Iraq_ (Sheed & Ward, 1991), ix.}

Prior to the Gulf crisis, the South Commission had given a grim
though accurate assessment of the latest phase of the 500-year
European assault against the world---whether called ``the Vasco
da Gama era,'' ``the Columbian era,'' ``imperialism,''
``neo-colonialism,'' or the era of ``North-South conflict,'' the
current euphemism. There were some gestures to Third World
concerns in the 1970s, the Commission observed, ``undoubtedly
spurred'' by concern over ``the newly found assertiveness of the
South after the rise in oil prices in 1973''---which were,
incidentally, not entirely unwelcome to the U.S. and U.K., which
are producers of high-cost oil, the home of the energy
corporations that benefited mightily from the price rise, and the
recipients of much of the flow of petrodollars (primarily the
U.S.). {note: On these matters, see my _Towards a New Cold War_
(Pantheon, 1982).} As the threat of Southern assertiveness
abated, the Commission report continues, the industrial societies
lost interest and turned to ``a new form of neo-colonialism,''
monopolizing control over the world economy, undermining the more
democratic elements of the United Nations, and in general
proceeding to institutionalize ``the South's second class
status.''

Japan and continental Europe recovered from the recession of the
early 1980s, though without resuming earlier growth rates. U.S.
recovery involved massive borrowing and state stimulation of the
economy, mainly through the Pentagon-based public subsidy to high
technology industry, along with a sharp increase in protectionist
measures and a rise in interest rates. This contributed to the
crisis of the South, as interest payments on the debt rose while
investment and aid declined, and the wealthy classes invested
their riches in the West. There was a huge capital flow from
South to North, with effects that were generally catastrophic,
apart from the NICs of East Asia, where the state is powerful
enough to control capital flight and direct the economy
efficiently. The catastrophe of capitalism in the 1980s was
mirrored, though to a lesser extent, in Eastern Europe,
contributing to the disintegration of the Soviet tyranny and its
virtual disappearance from the world scene.

The ``New World Order'' is perceived in the South, not
unrealistically, as a bitter one-sided international class war,
with the advanced state capitalist economies and their
transnational corporations monopolizing the means of violence and
controlling investment, capital, technology, and planning and
management decisions at the expense of the huge mass of the
population. Local elites in the Southern dependencies can share
in the spoils, including, probably, much of the ex-Nomenklatura
in the parts of the Soviet system that will revert to their
traditional status. The U.S. and U.K., which wield the whip, may
well continue their decline toward societies with notable Third
World characteristics, dramatically obvious in the inner cities
and rural areas.


Controlling the Plunderers

In looking ahead to the New World Order, it is useful to recall
some well-established truths, rarely voiced because they lack the
redeeming value of supporting privilege and power. They are,
therefore, deemed unacceptable by the vigilant guardians of
political correctness, along with such matters as the U.S. role
in international terrorism and human rights abuses, the actual
functioning of the doctrinal system in consciousness-lowering,
and so on. But they merit consideration on the part of those who
hope to understand the world.

North-South relations are based on the principle that the South
has a service role. Independent nationalism, interfering with the
prerogatives of the rulers, is unacceptable, whatever its
political cast. Murderous tyrants are fine as long as they are
properly obedient; Saddam Hussein is only the most recent
example. But meaningful democracy, which might allow popular
pressures on state policy, is a danger unless the institutional
foundations of business rule are so firm that basic
decision-making is safely protected from challenge. In occupied
Europe and Japan after World War II, until this result was
achieved the U.S. worked effectively to undermine labor,
democratic forces, and the anti-fascist resistance while
reinstating the traditional elites, including Nazi and fascist
collaborators (simultaneously, domestic U.S. power launched a
massive and effective campaign against labor and independent
thought and politics). In the less stable societies of the South,
the conditions of business rule are often not yet securely
established. Therefore any hint of popular organization and
meaningful democracy sets off the alarm bells, often a savage
reaction as well.

In these respects, nothing has changed. Thus a Latin America
Strategy Development Workshop at the Pentagon in September 1990
concludes that current relations with the Mexican dictatorship
are ``extraordinarily positive,'' untroubled by stolen elections,
death squads, endemic torture, scandalous treatment of workers
democracy opening' in Mexico could test the special relationship
by bringing into office a government more interested in
challenging the U.S. on economic and nationalist grounds,'' the
fundamental concern over many years. The hostility to democracy
is taken as uncontroversial--- probably even unnoticed---by the
academic and other participants. {note: _Latin America Strategy
Development Workshop_, Sept. 26 & 27, 1990, minutes, 3. Andrew
Reding, ``Mexico's Democratic Challenge,'' _World Policy Journal_
(Spring 1991).}

Signs of successful development simply magnify the dangers of
independence and, even worse, popular organization: the ``virus''
might spread and the ``rotten apple'' might ``infect'' the barrel
as others are tempted to pursue the same path---the ``domino
theory'' of public rhetoric. As Washington moved to overthrow the
first (and last) democratic government in Guatemala in 1953,
State Department officials warned that Guatemala ``has become an
increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador.
Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad
social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious
struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises
has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American
neighbors where similar conditions prevail.'' {note: Quoted by
Piero Gleijeses, _Shattered Hope_ (Princeton, 1991), 365.}

Such thinking is pervasive, and understandable. It will persist,
as long as the threat of ``broad social programs'' of the
Guatemalan variety, or other forms of independence, has not been
extinguished.  From 1917 into the 1980s, it was possible to
portray the rotten apples as agents of the Evil Empire, poised to
conquer us and ``take what we have,'' in the words of one of
Lyndon Johnson's laments. The paranoid fantasies were not
entirely lacking in substance. Targets of U.S. subversion and
economic warfare did, naturally, turn to the Soviet Union for
support, and U.S.  intervention was constrained by the deterrent
effect of Soviet power---the ``international military equilibrium
which somehow served to contain U.S. yearnings for domination''
(Benedetti).  The Cold War itself had North-South dimensions that
should not be ignored. Soviet domains had in part been
quasi-colonial dependencies of the West, which were removed from
the Third World and pursued an independent path, no longer
available ``to complement the industrial economies of the West,''
as a prestigious study group defined the threat of Communism in
1955.  Furthermore, the Soviet Union offered a model of
development that was not without appeal in the Third World,
particularly in earlier years.

The USSR was, in short, an enormous ``rotten apple,'' and in this
case, a menacing one as well. It is understandable, then, that
leading scholars should justify the Western invasion of the
Soviet Union after the revolution as a defensive action ``in
response to a profound and potentially far-reaching intervention
by the new Soviet government in the internal affairs, not just of
the West, but of virtually every country in the world,'' namely,
``the Revolution's challenge . . . to the very survival of the
capitalist order'' (John Lewis Gaddis). {note: John Lewis Gaddis,
_The Long Peace_ (Oxford, 1987), 10.} The same reasoning applies
to a huge country or a speck in the Caribbean: intervention is
entirely warranted in defense against a change in the social
order, interfering with the service function, and a declaration
of revolutionary intentions, particularly when there is a fear
that ``the rot may spread.'' Although the Sandinista ``Revolution
without Borders'' was a government-media fabrication, the
propaganda images reflected an authentic concern: from the
perspective of a hegemonic power, declaration of an intent to
provide a model that will inspire others amounts to aggression.

The ``Communist'' danger was further enhanced by their unfair
advantages. The Communists are able to ``appeal directly to the
masses,'' President Eisenhower complained. Our plans for ``the
masses'' preclude any such appeal. Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles, in private conversation with his brother Alan, who headed
the CIA, deplored the Communist ``ability to get control of mass
movements,'' ``something we have no capacity to duplicate.''
``The poor people are the ones they appeal to and they have
always wanted to plunder the rich.'' {note: Eisenhower to
Harriman, quoted in Richard H. Immerman, _Diplomatic History_
(Summer 1990).  John Foster Dulles, Telephone Call to Allen
Dulles, June 19, 1958, ``Minutes of telephone conversations of
John Foster Dulles and Christian Herter,'' Eisenhower Library,
Abilene KA.} The same concerns extended to ``the preferential
option for the poor'' of the Latin American bishops and other
commitments to independent development or democracy---and also to
such friends as Mussolini, Trujillo, Noriega, and Saddam Hussein
when they forget their assigned role.

While the end of the Cold War frees the U.S. to exercise violence
more readily than before, there are several factors that are
likely to inhibit the resort to force. Among them are the
successes of the past years in crushing popular nationalist and
reform tendencies and the resulting demoralization of ``the
masses'' who seek to ``plunder the rich.'' In the light of these
achievements, and the economic catastrophes of the past decade,
the ``threat of a good example'' has been notably reduced.
Limited forms of diversity and independence can be tolerated with
less concern that they will lead to meaningful change. Control
can be exercised by economic measures: structural adjustment, the
IMF regimen, selective resort to free trade measures, and so
forth.  And although the narrow ideological constraints of elite
Western culture protect us from these visions, Third World
observers are quite capable of perceiving the savage retribution
visited upon those who step on the toes of the master: Vietnam,
Nicaragua, Iraq, indeed anyone who does not understand that
``What We Say Goes,'' in the President's fine words.

Another inhibiting factor is that German-led Europe and Japan
have their own priorities, which may not conform to those of the
United States, though there is a shared interest in subduing
Third World independence, and the internationalization of capital
gives competition among national states a different cast than in
earlier periods. Furthermore, the domestic base for foreign
adventures has eroded, both in public attitudes and economic
base. Even with privileged access to the profits of Gulf oil
production, the long-term prospects for a mercenary state running
a global ``protection racket,'' as advocated in sectors of the
business press, are not too auspicious. It is, furthermore, not
at all clear that a U.S.-dominated Western hemisphere trade bloc
can effectively compete with the Japan's Asian ``Co-prosperity
sphere'' and the German-dominated ``New Order'' in Central and
Eastern Europe---the realization of many of the dreams of
Japanese and German fascism, though in a far less virulent form,
and much modified because of changes in the international
economy.


The ``Gulf War'' in Retrospect

Two crucial events of the recent past are the accelerating
breakup of the Soviet system and the Gulf conflict. With regard
to the former, the U.S. is largely an observer. As a matter of
course, the media must laud George Bush's consummate skill as a
statesman and crisis manager, but the ritual exercise lacks
spirit. It is plain enough that Washington has little impact on
developments and no idea what to do as the Soviet system lurches
from one crisis to another. The response to Saddam Hussein's
aggression, in contrast, was a Washington operation throughout,
with Britain loyally in tow, reflecting the U.S. insistence upon
sole authority in the crucial energy-producing regions of the
Middle East.

Now that the U.S. has achieved its major aims and there is no
longer any need to terrify the domestic public and whip up
jingoist hysteria, government-media rhetoric has subsided and it
is easier to survey just what happened in the misnamed ``Gulf
War'' ---misnamed, because there never was a war at all, at
least, if the concept ``war'' involves two sides in combat, say,
shooting at each other. That didn't happen in the Gulf.

The crisis began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a year ago.
There was some fighting, leaving hundreds killed according to
Human Rights groups. That hardly qualifies as war. Rather, in
terms of crimes against peace and against humanity, it falls
roughly into the category of the Turkish invasion of northern
Cyprus, Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1978, and the U.S.
invasion of Panama. In these terms it falls well short of
Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and cannot remotely be
compared with the near-genocidal Indonesian invasion and
annexation of East Timor, to mention only two cases of aggression
that are still in progress, with continuing atrocities and with
the crucial support of those who most passionately professed
their outrage over Iraq's aggression.

During the subsequent months, Iraq was responsible for terrible
crimes in Kuwait, with several thousand killed and many tortured.
But that is not war; rather, state terrorism, of the kind
familiar among U.S. clients.

The second phase of the conflict began with the U.S.-U.K. attack
of January 15 (with marginal participation of others). This was
slaughter, not war. Tactics were carefully designed to ensure
that there would be virtually no combat.

The first component was an aerial attack on the civilian
infrastructure, targeting power, sewage and water systems; that
is, a form of biological warfare, designed to ensure long-term
suffering and death among civilians so that the U.S would be in a
good position to attain its political goals for the region.
Since the casualties are victims of the United States, we will
never have any real idea of the scale of these atrocities, any
more than we have any serious idea of the civilian toll in the
U.S. wars in Indochina. These are not proper topics for inquiry.

This component of the attack does not qualify as war: rather it
is state terrorism on a colossal scale.

The second component of the U.S.-U.K. attack was the slaughter of
Iraqi soldiers in the desert, largely unwilling Shi'ite and
Kurdish conscripts it appears, hiding in holes in the sand or
fleeing for their lives---a picture quite remote from the
Pentagon disinformation relayed by the press about colossal
fortifications, artillery powerful beyond our imagining, vast
stocks of chemical and biological weapons at the ready, and so
on. Pentagon and other sources give estimates in the range of
100,000 defenseless victims killed, about half during the air
attack, half during the air-ground attack that followed. Again,
this exercise does not qualify as war. In the words of a British
observer of the U.S. conquest of the Philippines at the turn of
the century, ``This is not war; it is simply massacre and
murderous butchery.'' The desert slaughter was a ``turkey
shoot,'' as some U.S. forces described it, borrowing the term
used by their forebears butchering Filipinos {note: Luzviminda
Francisco and Jonathan Fast, _Conspiracy for Empire_ (Quezon
City, 1985), 302, 191.}---one of those deeply-rooted themes of
the culture that surfaces at appropriate moments, as if by
reflex.

The goal of the attack on the civilian society has been made
reasonably clear. In plain words, it was to hold the civilian
population hostage to achieve a political end: to induce some
military officer to overthrow Saddam and wield the ``iron fist''
as Saddam himself had done with U.S. support before he stepped
out of line; any vicious thug will do as long as he shows proper
obedience, unlike Saddam, who violated this principle---the only
one that counts, as events once again demonstrate---in August
1991. State Department reasoning was outlined with admirable
clarity by _New York Times_ chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas
Friedman. If the society suffers sufficient pain, Friedman
explained, Iraqi generals may topple Mr. Hussein, ``and then
Washington would have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted
Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein.'' The technique of punishing
Iraqi civilians may thus succeed in restoring the happy days when
Saddam's ``iron fist . . . held Iraq together, much to the
satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia,''
not to speak of the boss in Washington, who had no problem with
the means employed. {note: _NYT_, July 7, 1991.}

The operation of holding a civilian population hostage while tens
of thousands die from starvation and disease raises only one
problem: unreasonable soft-hearted folk may feel some discomfort
at having ``sat by and watched a country starve for political
reasons,'' just what will happen, UNICEF director of public
affairs Richard Reid predicted, unless Iraq is permitted to
purchase ``massive quantities of food''---though it is already
far too late for the children under two, who have stopped growing
for six or seven months because of severe malnutrition, we learn
from his report in the Canadian press. But Bush's ex-pal may help
us out of this dilemma. The _Wall Street Journal_ observes that
Iraq's ``clumsy attempt to hide nuclear-bomb-making equipment
from the U.N. may be a blessing in disguise, U.S. officials say.
It assures that the allies [read: U.S. and U.K.] can keep
economic sanctions in place to squeeze Saddam Hussein without
mounting calls to end the penalties for humanitarian reasons.''
{note: Kathy Blair, _Toronto Globe and Mail_, June 17, 1991;
_WSJ_, July 5, 1991.} With luck, then, this huge exercise in
state terrorism may proceed unhampered by the bleeding hearts and
PC left-fascists.

In keeping with its fabled dedication to international law and
morality, the U.S. is naturally demanding that compensation to
the victims of Iraq's crimes must have higher priority than any
purchase of food that might be allowed---under U.N. (meaning
U.S.) control, of course; a country that commits the crime of
disobeying Washington has plainly lost any claim to sovereignty.
While proclaiming this stern doctrine with suitable majesty, the
Bush Administration was keeping the pressure on Nicaragua to
force these miscreants, who committed the same unspeakable crime,
to abandon their claims to reparations for a decade of U.S.
terror and illegal economic warfare as mandated by the
International Court of Justice. Nicaragua finally succumbed, a
capitulation scarcely noticed by the media, mesmerized by
Washington's lofty rhetoric about Iraq's responsibilities to
compensate its victims.

As Third World observers have no difficulty in perceiving, the
``ominous halo of hypocrisy'' can rise beyond any imaginable
level without posing a serious challenge for the cultural
commissars of the West.

The third phase of the conflict began immediately after the
cease-fire, as Iraqi elite units, who had been largely spared by
the U.S. attack, proceeded to slaughter first the Shi'ites of the
South and then the Kurds of the North, with the tacit support of
the Commander-in-Chief, who had called upon Iraqis to rebel when
that suited U.S. purposes, then went fishing when the ``iron
fist'' struck.

Returning from a March 1991 fact-finding mission, Senate Foreign
Relations Committee staff member Peter Galbraith reported that
the Administration did not even respond to Saudi proposals to
assist both Shi'ite and Kurdish rebels, and that the Iraqi
military refrained from attacking the rebels until it had ``a
clear indication that the United States did not want the popular
rebellion to succeed.'' A BBC investigation found that ``several
Iraqi generals made contact with the United States to sound out
the likely American response if they took the highly dangerous
step of planning a coup against Saddam,'' but received no
support, concluding that ``Washington had no interest in
supporting revolution; that it would prefer Saddam Hussein to
continue in office, rather than see groups of unknown insurgents
take power.''  An Iraqi general who escaped to Saudi Arabia told
the BBC that ``he and his men had repeatedly asked the American
forces for weapons, ammunition and food to help them carry on the
fight against Saddam's forces.'' Each request was refused. As his
forces fell back towards U.S.-U.K. positions, the Americans blew
up an Iraqi arms dump to prevent them from obtaining arms, and
then ``disarmed the rebels'' (John Simpson). Reporting from
northern Iraq, ABC correspondent Charles Glass described how
``Republican Guards, supported by regular army brigades,
mercilessly shelled Kurdish-held areas with Katyusha multiple
rocket launchers, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery,''
while journalists observing the slaughter listened to Gen.
Schwartzkopf boasting to his radio audience that ``We had
destroyed the Republican Guard as a militarily effective force''
and eliminated the military use of helicopters. {note:
_Spectator_ (London), Aug. 10, April 13, 1991.}

This is not quite the stuff of which heroes are fashioned, so the
story was finessed at home, though it could not be totally
ignored, particularly the attack on the Kurds, with their Aryan
features and origins; the Shi'ites, who appear to have suffered
even worse atrocities right under the gaze of Stormin' Norman,
raised fewer problems, being mere Arabs.  Again, this slaughter
hardly qualifies as war.

In the most careful analysis currently available, the Greenpeace
International Military Research Group estimates total Kuwaiti
casualties at 2--5,000; and Iraqi civilian casualties at
5--15,000 during the air attack, unknown during the ground
attack, 20--40,000 during the civil conflict, perhaps another
50,000 civilian deaths from April through July along with another
125,000 deaths among Shi'ite and Kurdish refugees. {note:
Greenpeace press release, July 23, 1991; Environet.}

In brief, from August 1990 through July 1991, there was little
that could qualify as ``war.'' Rather, there was a brutal Iraqi
takeover of Kuwait followed by various forms of slaughter and
state terrorism, the scale corresponding roughly to the means of
violence in the hands of the perpetrators, and their impunity.
The distinction between war, on the one hand, and slaughter and
state terrorism, on the other, is one that should be observed.


``The Best of all Worlds''

Despite its substantial victory, Washington has not yet achieved
``the best of all worlds,'' as Friedman observes, because no
suitable clone of the Beast of Baghdad has yet emerged to serve
the interests of the U.S. and its regional allies. Needless to
say, not everyone shares the Washington-media conception of ``the
best of all worlds.'' Well after the hostilities ended, the _Wall
Street Journal_, to its credit, broke ranks and offered space to
a spokesman for the Iraqi democratic opposition, London-based
banker Ahmad Chalabi. He described the outcome as ``the worst of
all possible worlds'' for the Iraqi people, whose tragedy is
``awesome.'' {note: _WSJ_, April 8, 1991.} From the perspective
of Iraqi democrats, remote from that of Washington and New York,
restoration of the ``iron fist'' would not be ``the best of all
worlds.''

The U.S. propaganda system did face a certain problem as the Bush
administration lent its support to Saddam's crushing of the
internal opposition. The task was the usual one: To portray
Washington's stance, no matter how atrocious, in a favorable
light. That was not easy, particularly after months of ranting
about George Bush's magnificent show of principle and supreme
courage in facing down the reincarnation of Attila the Hun just
as he was about to take over the world. But the transition was
quick, smooth, and impressive. True, few can approach our
devotion to the most august principles. But our moral purity is
tempered with an understanding of the need for ``pragmatism'' and
``stability,'' useful concepts that translate as ``Doing what we
choose.''

In a typical example of the genre, _New York Times_ Middle East
correspondent Alan Cowell attributed the failure of the rebels to
the fact that ``very few people outside Iraq wanted them to
win.''  Note that the concept ``people'' is used here in the
conventional Orwellian sense, meaning: ``people who count''; many
featherless bipeds wanted them to win, but ``serious people'' did
not. The ``allied campaign against President Hussein brought the
United States and its Arab coalition partners to a strikingly
unanimous view,'' Cowell continues: ``whatever the sins of the
Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope
for his country's stability than did those who have suffered his
repression.'' {note: _NYT_, April 11, 1991.}

This version of the facts, the standard one, merits a few
questions. To begin with, who are these ``Arab coalition
partners''? Answer: six are family dictatorships, established by
the Anglo-American settlement to manage Gulf oil riches in the
interests of the foreign masters, what the British imperial
managers called an ``Arab Facade'' for the real rulers. The
seventh is Syria's Hafez el-Assad, a minority-based tyrant and
murderer who is indistinguishable from Saddam Hussein. The last
of the coalition partners, Egypt, is the only one that could be
called ``a country.'' Though a tyranny, it has a degree of
internal freedom.

We therefore naturally turn to the semi-official press in Egypt
to verify the _Times_ report of the ``strikingly unanimous
view.'' The article is datelined Damascus, April 10. The day
before, Deputy Editor Salaheddin Hafez of Egypt's leading daily,
_al-Ahram_, commented on Saddam's demolition of the rebels
``under the umbrella of the Western alliance's forces.'' U.S.
support for Saddam Hussein proved what Egypt had been saying all
along, Hafez wrote. American rhetoric about ``the savage beast,
Saddam Hussein,'' was merely a cover for the true goals: to cut
Iraq down to size and establish U.S. hegemony in the region. The
West turned out to be in total agreement with the beast on the
need to ``block any progress and abort all hopes, however dim,
for freedom or equality and for progress towards democracy,''
working in ``collusion with Saddam himself'' if necessary.
Speaking abroad at the same time, Ahmad Chalabi bitterly
condemned U.S. support for Saddam Hussein's repression,
attributing it to the traditional U.S. policy of ``supporting
dictatorships to maintain stability.'' {note: _Al-Ahram_, April
9, 1991. _Mideast Mirror_, 10 April, 15 March, 1991.}

The Egyptian reaction hardly comes as a surprise. Though one
could learn little about the matter here, the ``victory
celebration'' in Egypt had been ``muted and totally official,''
correspondent Hani Shukrallah of the London _Mideast Mirror_
reported from Cairo. Post-cease fire developments ``seem to have
intensifed the [popular] feelings of anger against the leading
members of the anti-Iraq coalition,'' inspired as well by the
report of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights that ``at
least 200 Egyptians have been arrested in Kuwait and that many
have been subjected to torture on legally unsubstantiated charges
of collaboration.'' The Egyptian press had also bitterly
condemned the U.S. conditions imposed on Iraq, a transparent
effort to insure U.S.-Israeli military dominance, _al-Ahram_
charged.  enemy' than allies','' Shukrallah reported as the
ground attack ended, particularly the poor and students, three of
whom were killed by police in an anti-government demonstration.
``Not in over a decade have Egyptians felt and expressed so
intently their hostility to the U.S., Israel and the West,''
political scientist Ahmad Abdallah observed. {note: _Mideast
Mirror_, 27 March, 26 March, 27 February, 1991.}

Many Egyptians also expressed satisfaction when Scud missiles hit
Israel. {note: Personal correspondence, Egypt.} Lacking Western
enlightenment, they find it hard to understand why it is highly
meritorious to demolish Iraq because of its failure to withdraw
from Kuwait under the U.S. terms of unconditional surrender,
while it is a reversion to Nazism to administer to Israel what
amounts to a slap on the wrist, in comparison, for ignoring the
order of the U.N. Security Council to withdraw from Lebanon
(March 1978, and subsequently) and other condemnations of its
terrorism and repression. Backward cultures fail to see what is
so obvious to us: orders to Iraq are to be obeyed; orders to
Israel demonstrate the inveterate anti-Semitism of the world, and
are therefore to be disregarded, just as World Court
condemnations of the U.S. merely discredit this ``hostile
forum,'' as the _New York Times_ and others explain.

It is true that there was some regional support for the U.S.
stance apart from the friendly club of Arab tyrants. Turkish
President Turgut Ozal doubtless nodded his head in agreement. He
had made use of the opportunity offered by the Gulf crisis to
step up attacks on his own Kurdish population, confident that the
U.S. media would judiciously refrain from reporting the bombings
of Kurdish villages and the hundreds of thousands of refugees in
flight, trying to survive the cold winter in the mountains
without aid or provisions. The reader of the European press,
human rights reports, or this journal and a few other exotic
sources, could learn something of the Winter 1990--91 exploits of
the man who George Bush hailed as ``a protector of peace'' who
has joined all of us who ``stand up for civilized values around
the world.'' But those who depend on the mass or prestige media
were shielded from such improper thoughts.

The U.S. stance also received support in Israel, where many
commentators agreed with retiring Chief-of-Staff Dan Shomron that
it is preferable for Saddam Hussein to remain in power in Iraq.
``We are all with Saddam,'' one headline read, reporting the view
of Labor dove Avraham Burg that ``in the present circumstances
Saddam Hussein is better than any alternative'' and that ``a
Shi'ite empire'' from Iran to the territories would be harmful to
Israel. Another leading dove, Ran Cohen of Ratz, also ``wants
Saddam to continue to rule, so that perhaps the hope for any
internal order will be buried'' and the Americans will stay in
the region and impose a ``compromise.'' Suppression of the Kurds
is a welcome development, an influential right-wing commentator
explained in the _Jerusalem Post_, because of ``the latent
ambition of Iran and Syria to exploit the Kurds and create a
territorial, military, contiguity between Teheran and Damascus---
a contiguity which embodies danger for Israel'' (Moshe Zak,
senior editor of the mass-circulation daily _Ma'ariv_). {note:
Ron Ben-Yishai, interview with Shomron, _Ha'aretz_, March 29;
Shalom Yerushalmi, ``We are all with Saddam,'' _Kol Ha'ir_, April
4; _Jerusalem Post_. April 4, 1991.} None of this makes
particularly good copy. Best to leave it in oblivion.

The ``strikingly unanimous view'' supporting U.S. ``pragmatism,''
then, includes offices in Washington and New York and London, and
U.S. clients in the region, but leaves out a few others---
including, notably, Iraqi democrats in exile and the Arab
population of the region, insofar as they have any voice in the
U.S. client states. Respectable opinion in the United States
could not care less, in keeping with the traditional
disparagement of the culturally deprived lower orders.


Marching Forward

The Gulf ``war'' having receded into history, we turn to new
triumphs, the primary one in the region being James Baker's
skillful exploitation of the ``window of opportunity'' afforded
by the U.S. victory to advance the ``peace process.'' His
achievements, so the story goes, offer the first real opportunity
to advance the long-sought U.S. goals of ``territorial
compromise'' and ``land for peace,'' now that the
``rejectionists'' are in disarray.

To understand what is happening, we have to begin by translating
the rhetoric of political discourse into English. As is familiar,
the term ``peace process'' refers to the process of achieving
U.S. goals; it has nothing particularly to do with efforts to
reach peace. The ``rejectionists'' are not those who reject the
right to national self-determination of one or the other of the
contending parties in the Israel-Palestine conflict; rather, only
those who reject _Israeli_ claims qualify as rejectionists; the
indigenous population of the former Palestine lack any comparable
rights because they offer nothing to U.S.  power, neither
military force, nor wealth, nor anything else that serves to
raise the creatures that crawl the earth to the rank of
``people.'' In fact, they are a damned nuisance, stirring up
``radical nationalist'' (meaning, disobedient) tendencies in the
Arab world.

Turning to ``land for peace'' and ``territorial compromise,''
these terms refer to the traditional position of the Israeli
Labor Party (known in the U.S. as ``the doves''), which grants
Israel control over the usable land and resources of the occupied
territories but leaves the population stateless or under
Jordanian administration, so that Israel does not have to
confront ``the demographic problem.'' The latter is another term
of art, referring to the problem of too many Arabs in ``the
sovereign State of the Jewish people'' in Israel or the diaspora,
not the state of its citizens. Moderate Palestinian leaders
regard these Labor Party proposals as ``much worse than the
Likud's autonomy plan'' under Israeli sovereignty, Israeli dove
Shmuel Toledano observes, agreeing that this judgment is
``accurate.'' {note: _Ha'aretz_, March 8, 1991.}

The U.S. has always preferred Labor Party rejectionism. It is
more rational than the variety espoused by the governing Likud
party, which has no real provision for the population of the
occupied territories, except eventual ``transfer'' (meaning
expulsion) in some manner. In the past, Palestinian refusal to
agree to this U.S.-Israeli plan was condemned as
``rejectionism,'' but the term has recently taken on an even more
extreme twist to meet current contingencies. By now, the _New
York Times_ editors condemn Arafat's ``rejectionism'' in
demanding that the U.S. allow the PLO to select a Palestinian
delegation and guarantee that Israel will give up some occupied
land---``the old rejectionist tunes of Middle Eastern politics,''
correspondent Judith Miller adds. {note: Editorial, _NYT_, Aug.
8; Miller, _NYT_, Aug. 11, 1991.} Anything short of abject
capitulation to the masters, and national suicide with a friendly
smile, counts as ``rejectionism.''

Decoding the rhetoric of political discourse, we see a picture
that looks like this. The U.S. triumph in the Gulf has enabled it
to establish the rejectionist position it has maintained in
international isolation (apart from Israel). The peace process
that the world has sought for many years, with surprising
unanimity, can now be consigned to the ash heap of history. The
U.S. can at last run its own conference, completely excluding its
rivals Europe and Japan, always a major goal of U.S. diplomacy in
the Middle East, as Kissinger observed. With the Soviet Union
gone from the scene, Syria has accepted the fact that the U.S.
rules the region alone and has abandoned what is called its
``rejectionist stance'' in U.S. rhetoric. In this case, the term
refers to Syria's support for the international consensus calling
for settlement on the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967)
borders and full guarantees for all states in the region,
including Israel and a new Palestinian state. Those bemused by
mere history will recall that these were the terms of the 1976
Security Council resolution proposed by Syria, Jordan and Egypt,
with PLO backing, but vetoed by the U.S. and therefore out of
official history along with subsequent efforts in the same vein,
such annoyances as Egyptian President Sadat's 1971 offer of a
full peace treaty offering nothing to the Palestinians (rejected
by Israel with U.S. backing), and much else that lacks
ideological serviceability.

Another terminological device is the insistence that
state-to-state negotiations are the acid test of sincere
dedication to a just peace. Israel has always advocated exactly
this, thus passing the test with flying colors, as we expect from
the state that the _New York Times_ describes as ``the symbol of
human decency.'' The reasoning behind this condition is
transparent: it excludes the Palestinians from the start, and
thus incorporates the strict rejectionism of the U.S. and Israel
within the very framework of negotiations. Enlightened opinion in
the U.S. therefore agrees that it is right and just. For
essentially the same reason, the U.S. and Israel have always
blocked an international conference and demanded that the PLO
must be excluded. Virtually any participant in an international
conference would express at least token support for Palestinian
rights, a sour note that must be silenced. And since the PLO
will, naturally, advocate such rights, it has never been accepted
as an interlocutor by either Israel or the U.S.---including the
period of the ``negotiations'' between the U.S. and the P.L.O.,
an utter fraud, as was well-understood by the Israeli leadership.
The facts have been efficiently suppressed here, but are known at
least to readers of this journal, so I will not repeat them.
{note: See my articles ``The Trollope Ploy and Middle East
Diplomacy,'' ``The Art of Evasion: Diplomacy in the Middle
East,'' _Z_, March 1989, Jan. 1990, and my _Necessary Illusions_
(South End, 1989).}

There has long been a tacit alliance between the ``Arab Facade''
that manages the energy system and the regional gendarmes that
provide protection from nationalist currents---Israel among them,
alongside of Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan---with U.S.-British power
on call if needed, and various modifications as conditions change
(e.g., the fall of the Shah). The tacit alliance is coming quite
close to the surface now that Arab nationalism has been dealt yet
another crushing blow, thanks to the murderous gangster who
disobeyed orders, and PLO tactics of more than the usual
foolishness. The Arab rulers therefore have less need than before
to respond to popular pressures and make pro-Palestinian
gestures; accordingly, the prospects for U.S.  rejectionism have
advanced several notches.

The U.S.-run ``peace conference'' will be permitted to discuss
only one topic, as James Baker made clear and explicit in 1989:
the Shamir Plan, actually the Shamir-Peres Plan of the
Likud-Labor coalition, then governing. The basic terms of this
Plan, it will be recalled, are that there can be no ``additional
Palestinian state'' (Jordan already being one) and no ``change in
the status of Judea, Samaria and Gaza other than in accordance
with the basic guidelines of the [Israeli] Government,'' which
exclude any Palestinian rights. Palestinians must, furthermore,
be denied even the right to select their own representatives to
discuss their capitulation to U.S.-Israeli terms (no PLO); and
there will be ``free elections'' under Israeli military rule with
much of the Palestinian leadership in prison camps without
charges. These terms would be regarded as a sick joke if they
were not advocated by the U.S. and its client.

There remain, however, some problems in implementing this
project, notably the recalcitrance of both Shamir and Peres, who
lead the two major parties (though Labor is in serious decline).
Shamir has repeatedly dragged his feet, and Peres is trying to
outflank Shamir from the jingoist extreme (what is called ``the
right''). The difficulties with Shamir are familiar: he is the
preferred scapegoat for the media, and his recalcitrance offers
the opportunity to present Washington's extreme rejectionist
position as a ``middle ground,'' suitably ``moderate'' and
``pragmatic.'' But it is harder to deal with the stand of the
Labor party, traditionally presented as ``the good guys'' who
line up with U.S. positions. Shimon Peres, in particular, has
been designated by the media as a man of ``healthy pragratism''
and a leading dove, deeply troubled by the lack of a ``peace
movement among the Arab people'' such as ``we have among the
Jewish people,'' to sample a few of the fairy tales relayed by
the _New York Times_ and its Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent
Thomas Friedman. {note: For details, see _Necessary Illusions_.}

Peres's current stand is familiar in Labor Party annals. Leading
figures in the Labor Party had opposed Menahem Begin's acceptance
of the Camp David agreement, a great boon to Israeli power
because it removed the sole Arab deterrent (Egypt) from the
conflict, thus enabling Israel to accelerate its integration of
the occupied territories and attack Lebanon, with massive U.S.
assistance. But the agreement compelled Israel to yield
settlements that Labor had established in Egyptian territory,
eliciting opposition among the top party ranks. Much the same is
true today. In the Hebrew press, Knesset Member Yossi Sarid,
regarded as a leading dove, writes that in a meeting of the Labor
Party Committee on Foreign and Security Affairs, Peres sought to
undermine any positive response to the conciliatory stance of
Syria that had been welcomed by Prime Minister Shamir. ``He,
Peres, is attacking Shamir from the right,'' Uzi Baram of the
Labor Party reported. On most matters, Sarid continues, the Labor
Party is following the Likud lead, but on the matter of the Golan
Heights, Peres is mimicking the fringe rightwing Ha-Tehiya party,
denouncing any negotiations with Syria as a trap that must be
avoided. Peres's Labor Party rival Yitzhak Rabin took the same
position at the meeting. ``The stand of the two with regard to
the Golan Heights is rejectionist to the point of despair,''
Sarid writes. Earlier, Rabin had denounced the Baker conference
plan as ``a deadly trap [for Israel], while Peres demanded that
Israel not relinquish the Golan Heights under any
circumstances,'' the press reported. These are matters of no
small moment, since, as the military command and military
correspondents have been emphasizing, failure to reach an
agreement with Syria on the Golan Heights is likely to lead to
war in the not-too-distant future. {note: Sarid, _Ha'aretz_, Aug.
1; Hana Kim, _Hadashot_, July 23, 1991.}

Peres's stand was in accord with the largest sector of the
Kibbutz Movement (Ha-TAKAM), which called for ``permanent rule
over the Golan Heights'' by Israel, and steps for further
development of the Heights. {note: Nahman Gilboa, _Al-Hamishmar_,
July 7, 1991.}

In fact, there has never been any serious difference between the
two major political groupings on the matter of Palestinian
rights, which both reject. The U.S. has always backed them in
this rejectionist stance. The official reasons are hardly worth
even refuting. The real reasons are that a Palestinian state,
even if it lacked a pistol or an ally anywhere, would control its
own land and resources, and that the U.S. and Israel will not
permit. For many years, it has been well-known that Israel relies
heavily on West Bank water; control over water has also always
been a major reason for Israel's concern over the Golan Heights
and southern Lebanon, and any Syrian or Jordanian development
projects in the region. Furthermore, some of the most popular
suburbs are in the West Bank (including the vastly expanded area
called ``Jerusalem''). Israel has also benefited from the
supercheap Palestinian labor force and a controlled market
(meanwhile preventing any independent development), though these
needs will reduce if the Arab boycott officially ends, and if
enough Soviet Jews can be forced to Israel to do the dirty work
that has been assigned to Palestinians.

The issue is not Israel's survival or even its security, which
would not be threatened by a Palestinian state. As David
Ben-Gurion observed in December 1948, ``an Arab state in Western
Palestine [that is, West of the Jordan] would be less dangerous
than a state linked to Transjordan [now Jordan], and maybe
tomorrow to Iraq.'' Nothing that has happened since has changed
that assessment, and an Israel within the
internationally-recognized borders could well be integrated into
the region as its most technologically advanced and military
powerful element. The problem lies elsewhere. It is that under
such arrangements, Israel could not ``exist according to the
scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies,'' as General Ezer
Weizmann explained in justification of Israel's decision to
launch the 1967 war by attacking Egypt, at a time when he was air
force commander and one of the top military planners. {note:
Ben-Gurion's diaries, quoted by Avi Shlaim, _Collusion across the
Jordan_ (Columbia, 1988), 364. Weizmann, _Ha'aretz_, March 20,
1972. On Israel's decision for war, see now Andrew and Leslie
Cockburn, _Dangerous Liaison_ (Harper Collins, 1991), an
important and informative study, as indicated by the hysterical
and infantile reviews in the _New York Times_ and other major
journals (for some amusing examples, see David Schoenbaum, _NYT
Book Review_, Aug. 18, 1991; John Yemma, _Boston Globe_, Aug. 15,
1991).}

To force Soviet Jews to Israel, it is necessary to gain U.S.
cooperation in barring their entry. That is readily obtained,
with the support of those who had been vociferously calling on
the Soviets to ``let my people go''---as long as they go where we
tell them to. The _Jerusalem Post_ quotes Democrat Charles
Schumer of New York, a ranking member of the House immigration,
refugee and international law committee, who said on August 15
that there would be no increase in the ceiling on Soviet
immigration (50,000, with ``some 40,000 slots reserved for
Jews'').  ``This comes as a relief to absorption officials [in
Israel], who worry that Soviet aliya [``ascent'' to Israel] would
drop-off dramatically if the U.S. allows more Soviet Jews in,''
the _Post_ news report continues. ``American Jews and Israel,''
Schumer explained, ``both seem happy with the current
equilibrium,'' effectively barring non-Jews from the U.S.
altogether and restricting Jewish immigration sufficiently to
ensure that many will be compelled to go to Israel against their
will. {note: _JP_, Aug. 16, 1991.}

Nevertheless, there are some clouds on the horizon. _Ha'aretz_
reports that a Jewish organization was formed in the United
States to campaign for admission of Russian Jews. This dangerous
development led to a closed debate of the Jewish Agency in
Jerusalem, where participants ``expressed sharp opposition'' to
any such plan and agreed that ``the other Jewish bodies in the
United States should unite to sabotage this attempt, which might
harm the immigration of Jews to Israel.'' These moves extend
pressures of many years on American Jewish communities not to
provide assistance to refugees from the Soviet Union. Prime
Minister Devid Levy was sent to Germany to induce its Government
to stop providing refugee status to Soviet Jews. ``Our policy . . .
is that Jews should go to Israel,'' not here, the spokesman for
the Israeli Embassy said in Bonn. Michael Kleiner, head of the
Immigration and Absorption Department of the Knesset, ``sharply
attacked the decision of the German government to permit Russian
Jews to enter Germany,'' the Hebrew press reported. Israel is
also reported to have persuaded the Soviet Union to deprive
departing Jews of Soviet citizenship, to bar return there, a
growing problem as many Russian Jews seek to leave Israel despite
the serious impediments imposed by its government, including
severe financial liabilities. {note: _Ha'aretz_, Feb. 18, May 19;
_Yediot Ahronot_, March 15; _Christian Science Monitor_, July 29,
1991.}

Israel will never agree to the establishment of an independent
Palestinian state unless the U.S. withdraws the huge subsidy that
maintains it as a wealthy Western society. And that is unlikely.
Israel's services as a ``strategic asset'' have been highly
valued for thirty years, with roots extending beyond. The Israeli
lobby (not all Jewish, by any means), with its political clout
and its finely-honed techniques of defamation, slander, and
intimidation is highly effective in containing discussion within
the narrow framework of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism and support for
Israeli power and repression.

In contrast, the Palestinians, as noted, offer the U.S. nothing,
and there is no domestic lobby pressuring for their rights. What
is more, anti-Arab racism is endemic, so rampant as to be
unnoticed. The concept of ``rejectionism,'' mentioned above, is
demonstration enough, with its unquestioned assumption that Jews
have rights denied in principle to Palestinians. The same is true
of the standard assumption, also taken as uncontroversial, that
Palestinians should not even have the minimal right to select
their own representatives to negotiate their capitulation.  An
editorial in the liberal _Boston Globe_ calmly observes that the
``ultimate control'' of terrorists who take hostages is
``extermination,'' referring, of course, to Arab hostage-takers,
not to Israel with its hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian
hostages held under grotesque conditions to ensure compliance
with Israel's terrorist army in South Lebanon or to induce
Lebanese terrorists to release Israeli soldiers captured in the
course of Israeli aggression, not to speak of Palestinians
kidnapped on the high seas or the tens of thousands who have been
jailed without charges in the occupied territories. In the same
journal, a lead op-ed derides the ``frenzy'' of Arab politics
which ``expresses the resentments of a civilization which has at
once been left behind and overwhelmed by modernity'' and which
must be helped to ``accommodate to reality'' (Martin Peretz, who
reveals his own grasp of reality by accusing Baker of ``a fixed
animus to the Jewish state''). {note: Editorial, _BG_, Aug. 15;
Peretz, Aug.  9, 1991.} One can imagine the reaction to a call
for ``extermination'' of Jews or similar derisive commentary
about Jewish culture.

The approved current practice is sanctimonious and patronizing
condemnation of the Palestinians for having applauded Saddam
Hussein, and for PLO support for Iraq against the U.S. attack
(while calling for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait). Therefore,
American and Israeli hypocrites argue, the Palestinians have
abdicated their right to participate in determining their own
fate. Let us put aside the fact that that right had been
forcefully rejected by the United States and both Israeli
political groupings long before the invasion of Kuwait; one will
search far for a U.S. or Israeli commentator in the mainstream
who was willing to grant Palestinians even the right to select
their own representatives, a right explicitly denied in the
Baker-Shamir-Peres plan. Let us consider, however, what the same
logic implies about Israel, which not only applauds but directly
participates in horrifying atrocities in Latin America, Africa
and Asia, not to speak of its loyal support for U.S. aggression
in Indochina and elsewhere, and its own shameful crimes. The
conclusions are obvious enough, but, again, fail the test of
political correctness, and will therefore not be drawn in a
well-disciplined and deeply conformist culture.

For Washington's purposes, it is not of great importance that the
``peace conference'' succeed. If it does, the U.S. will have
rammed through its traditional rejectionism, having sucessfully
rebuffed the near-unanimous world support for an authentic
political settlement. If that comes about, it will be hailed as
another triumph for our great Leader, a renewed demonstration of
our high-minded benevolence and virtue. The other possibility is
that the ``peace process'' will fail, in which case we will read
of ``a classic cultural clash between American and Middle Eastern
instincts,'' a conflict between Middle Eastern fanaticism and
Baker's ``quintessentially American view of the world: that with
just a little bit of reasonableness these people should be able
to see that they have a shared interest in peace that overrides
their historical antipathies'' (Thomas Friedman). {note: _NYT_,
May 19, 17, 1991.} It's a win-win situation for U.S. power.


The ``Two Triumphs''

The ``peace process'' aside, there is not a great deal that can
be brought forth to illustrate U.S. achievements in the Gulf.
This too is not much of a problem; as state priorities shift,
respectable folk follow suit, turning to approved concerns. But
it would have been too much to allow the August 2 anniversary to
pass without notice. A last-ditch effort was therefore necessary
to portray the outcome as a Grand Victory. Even with the
journalistic achievements of the past year, such as the
suppression of the possibilities for a peaceful negotiated
settlement and the rigorous exclusion of Iraqi democrats and
world opinion generally, it was no simple matter to chant the
praises of our leader as we survey the scene of two countries
devastated, hundreds of thousands of corpses with the toll still
mounting, an ecological catastrophe, and the Beast of Baghdad
firmly in power thanks to the tacit support of the
Bush-Baker-Schwartzkopf team.

It is a relief to discover that even this onerous task was not
beyond the capacity of the cultural commissars. In its
anniversary editorial, the _New York Times_ editors dismissed the
qualms of ``the doubters,'' concluding that Mr. Bush had acted
wisely: he ``avoided the quagmire and preserved his two triumphs:
the extraordinary cooperation among coalition members and the
revived self-confidence of Americans,'' who ``greeted the Feb. 28
cease-fire with relief and pride---relief at miraculously few
U.S. casualties and pride in the brilliant performance of the
allied forces'' (_NYT_, Aug. 2, 1991). Surely these triumphs far
outweigh the ``awesome tragedies'' in the region.

These are chilling words. One can readily understand the reaction
of the non-people of the world.