% FROM THE NOAM CHOMSKY ARCHIVE
% http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu:/usr/tp0x/chomsky.html
% ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/cap/chomsky/
% Filename:    articles/chomsky.z.what-we-say-goes
% Title:       ``What We Say Goes'': The Middle East in the New World Order
% Author:      Noam Chomsky
% Appeared-in: Z Magazine, May 1991
% Source:      ACTIV-L listserver file POST-WAR TEACH-IN
% Keywords:    Iraq, Kuwait, Bush, new world order
% Synopsis:    Domestic and mideast fallout of the Gulf War
% See-also:  

  ``WHAT WE SAY GOES'': THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER
                       A Post-War Teach-In
                          Noam Chomsky
                          April 4, 1991
                      Z Magazine, May 1991


With the Gulf war officially over, broader questions come to the
fore: What are the likely contours of the New World Order,
specifically, for the Middle East? What do we learn about the
victors, whose power is at least temporarily enhanced?

A standard response is that we live in ``an era full of
promise,'' ``one of those rare transforming moments in history''
(James Baker). The United States ``has a new credibility,'' the
President announced, and dictators and tyrants everywhere know
``that what we say goes.'' George Bush is ``at the height of his
powers'' and ``has made very clear that he wants to breathe light
into that hypothetical creature, the Middle East peace process''
(Anthony Lewis). So things are looking up. {note: Baker, Address
to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Oct. 29, 1990. Bush,
Feb. 1; cited by Robert Parry, _Nation_, April 15, 1991. Lewis,
_NYT_, March 15, 1991.}

Others see a different picture. A Catholic weekly in Rome, close
to the Vatican, writes that Bush is the ``surly master of the
world,'' who deserves ``the Nobel War Prize'' for ignoring
opportunities for peace in the Gulf. Bush ``had the very concrete
possibility of a just peace and he chose war.'' He ``didn't give
a damn'' about the many peace appeals of Pope John Paul II and
proposals of others, never veering from his objective of a
murderous war (_Il Sabato_).

The _Times of India_ described Bush's curt dismissal of Iraq's
February 15 offer to withdraw from Kuwait as a ``horrible
mistake,'' which showed that the West 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 insensitivity to `alien' cultures,
its appalling jingoism. . . .'' A leading Third World monthly
condemned ``The most cowardly war ever fought on this planet.''
The foreign editor of Brazil's major daily wrote that ``What is
being practiced in the Gulf is pure barbarism---ironically,
committed in the name of civilization. Bush is as responsible as
Saddam. . . . Both, with their inflexibility, consider only the
cold logic of geopolitical interests [and] show an absolute scorn
for human life.'' The ``Business Magazine of the Developing
World'' predicts that the Arab states will ``in effect . . .
become _vassal states_,'' losing such control as they once had
over their resources (_South_, London). {note: _Il Sabato_, March
2 (AP, Feb. 26); _Times of India_, cited by William Dalrymple
(writing ``on why the Iraqi dictator is the most popular pin-up
in India''), London _Spectator_, Feb. 23; _Third World
Resurgence_ (Malaysia), No. 6, Feb.; cover, No. 7, March 1991;
_Folha de Sao Paulo_, Ken Silverstein, p.c.; _South_, Feb. 1991.}

All of this was before the glorious ``turkey shoot'' in the
desert and the ``euphoria'' and unconcealed bloodlust it evoked
until the news managers thought better of the project and
suddenly called it off.

Outside the West, such perceptions are common. One experienced
British journalist observes that ``Despite the claims by
President Bush that Desert Storm is supported by `the whole
world', there can be little doubt about which side has won the
contest for the hearts and minds of the masses of the Third
World; it is not the US'' (Geoffrey Jansen). Commenting on the
world's ``moral unease'' as the air war began, John Lloyd noted
in the London _Financial Times_ that the US and Britain are a
``tiny minority in the world'' in their war policy. _South_
concludes that the French, Italians and Turks joined the
US-British war only ``to secure a slice of the pie in the form of
lucrative reconstruction and defence contracts in a post-war Gulf
or in the form of aid and credits or both.'' Reports from the
Third World, including most of the neighboring countries,
indicated substantial, often overwhelming, popular opposition to
the US-UK war, barely controlled by the US-backed tyrannies. The
Iraqi democratic opposition publicly opposed the war, and even
the most pro-American Iraqi exiles condemned the ``wanton quality
of the violence'' in Bush's ``dirty and excessively destructive
war'' (Samir al-Khalil). {note: Jansen, _Middle East
International_, Feb. 22; Lloyd, _FT_, Jan. 19--20; Iraqi
democrats, see below; al-Khalil, _New York Review_, March 18,
1991; _South_, Feb. 1991. Sources in Syria estimated that 80--90%
of the population opposed its participation in the war (Sarah
Gauch, _Christian Science Monitor_, March 28, 1991). Much the
same was reported elsewhere.}

Before evaluating such conflicting perceptions, we have to settle
a methodological question. There are two ways to proceed. One is
to rely on the rhetoric of power: George Bush has ``made it
clear'' that he is going to ``breathe light'' into the problems
of suffering humanity; that settles the matter. Perhaps there are
some blemishes on our record, but we have undergone another of
those miraculous changes of course that occur at convenient
moments, so we need not trouble ourselves with the documentary
record, the events of past and present history, and their
institutional roots. That is the easy way, and the path to
respectability and privilege. Another approach, lacking these
advantages, is to consider the facts. Not surprisingly, these
approaches commonly yield quite different conclusions.


``The Surly Master of the World''

Adopting the second approach, we face some obvious questions.
Consider the President's proud boast that _dictators and tyrants_
know ``that what we say goes.'' It is beyond dispute that the US
has no problem with dictators and tyrants if they serve US
interests, and will attack and destroy committed democrats if
they depart from their service function. The correct reading of
Bush's words, then, is: ``What we say goes,'' whoever you may be.

Continuing on this course, we find no grounds to expect George
Bush to ``breathe light'' into the Middle East peace process, or
any other problem. In fact, why is the peace process a
``hypothetical creature''? Though inexpressible in polite
company, the answer is not obscure: the US has kept it that way.
Washington has barred the way to a diplomatic settlement of the
Arab-Israel conflict since February 1971 (coincidentally, just as
George Bush appeared on the national scene as UN Ambassador),
when Kissinger backed Israel's rejection of Egyptian President
Sadat's proposal for a peace settlement in terms virtually
identical to official US policy, without even a gesture towards
the Palestinians. The US has regularly rejected other peace
proposals, vetoed Security Council resolutions, and voted against
General Assembly resolutions calling for a political settlement.
In December 1990, the General Assembly voted 144--2 (US and
Israel) to call an international conference. A year before, the
Assembly voted 151--3 (US, Israel, Dominica) for a settlement
incorporating the wording of UN Resolution 242, along with ``the
right to self-determination'' for the Palestinians. {note: Paul
Lewis, _NYT_, Jan 12, 1991; UN Draft A/44/L.51, 6 Dec. 1989.} The
NATO allies, the USSR, the Arab states, and the nonaligned
countries have been united for years in seeking a political
settlement along these lines, but the US will not permit it, so
the peace process remains ``hypothetical.''

In part for similar reasons, reduction of armaments has been a
``hypothetical creature.'' In April 1990, Bush flatly rejected a
proposal from his friend Saddam Hussein to eliminate weapons of
mass destruction from the Middle East. One way to direct
petrodollars to the US economy has been to encourage arms sales.
Currently, Bush is proposing to sell $18 billion worth of arms to
his Middle East allies, with the Export-Import Bank underwriting
purchases, at below-market rates if necessary, a hidden tax to
benefit major sectors of industry. Military victories by the US
and its Israeli client have long been used as an export-promotion
device. Corporations may hire showrooms to display their goods;
the government hires the Sinai and Iraqi deserts. {note: AP,
April 13, 1990. Reuters, _BG_, April 14, 1990. _FT_, March 9;
Clyde Farnsworth, _NYT_, March 18, 1991.}

There are no plausible grounds for optimistic expectations now
that the great power that has kept the peace process
``hypothetical'' and has helped keep the region armed to the
teeth is in an even stronger position than before to tell the
world that ``what we say goes.''

The Administration has in fact taken pains to present itself as
``surly master of the world.'' As the ground campaign opened,
_New York Times_ correspondent Maureen Dowd quoted a leaked
section of a National Security Policy Review from the first
months of the Bush presidency, dealing with ``third world
threats.'' It reads: ``In cases where the U.S. confronts much
weaker enemies, our challenge will be not simply to defeat them,
but to defeat them decisively and rapidly.'' Any other outcome
would be ``embarrassing'' and might ``undercut political
support.'' {note: _NYT_, Feb. 23, 1991.}

``Much weaker enemies'' pose only one threat to the United
States: the threat of independence, always intolerable. For many
years, it was possible to disguise the war against Third World
nationalism with Cold War illusions, but that game is over and
the real story is bright and clear: the primary target has always
been Third World independence, called ``radical nationalism'' or
``ultranationalism'' in the internal planning record, a ``virus''
that must be eradicated.

The _Times_ report makes no reference to peaceful means. That too
is standard. As understood on all sides, in its confrontations
with Third World threats, the US is ``politically weak''; its
demands will not gain public support, so diplomacy is a dangerous
exercise. That is why the US has so commonly sought to keep
diplomatic processes ``hypothetical'' in the Middle East, Central
America, Indochina, and on other issues, and why it has regularly
undermined the United Nations. Furthermore, political support at
home is understood to be very thin. Naturally, one does not want
to confront enemies that can fight back, but even much weaker
enemies must be destroyed quickly, given the weakness of the
domestic base and the lessons that are to be taught.

These lessons are directed to several audiences. For the Third
World, the message is simple: Don't raise your heads. A ``much
weaker'' opponent will not merely be defeated, but pulverized.
The central lesson of World Order is: ``What we say goes''; we
are the masters, you shine our shoes, and don't ever forget it.
Others too are to understand that the world is to be ruled by
force, the arena in which the US reigns supreme, though with its
domestic decline, others will have to pay the bills.


The Lessons at Home

There is also a lesson for the domestic audience. They must be
terrorized by images of a menacing force about to overwhelm us---
though in fact ``much weaker'' and defenseless. The monster can
then be miraculously slain, ``decisively and rapidly,'' while the
frightened population celebrates its deliverance from imminent
disaster, praising the heroism of the Great Leader who has come
to the rescue just in the nick of time.

These techniques, which have familiar precedents, were employed
through the 1980s, for sound reasons. The population was opposed
to the major Reagan policies, largely an extension of Carter
plans. It was therefore necessary to divert attention to ensure
that democratic processes would remain as ``hypothetical'' as the
peace process. Propaganda campaigns created awesome chimeras:
international terrorists, Sandinistas marching on Texas,
narcotraffickers, crazed Arabs. Even Grenada was portrayed as a
mortal threat, with fevered tales of an air base that would be
used to attack the continent, huge Soviet military stores, and
the threat to Caribbean sea lanes. Only a year ago, Noriega---a
minor thug by international standards---was elevated to the
status of Genghis Khan as the US prepared to invade Panama to
restore the rule of the 10% white minority and to ensure that the
Canal Treaty, or some remnant of it, will not interfere with US
control over the Canal and the military bases there.
Government-media Agitprop has had some success. The tourism
industry in Europe repeatedly collapsed while Americans cower in
terror, afraid to travel to European cities where they would be
100 times as safe as they are at home, eliciting much derision in
the right-wing European press.

In the Old World Order, the Soviet threat was skillfully deployed
to mobilize public support for intervention abroad and for
subsidies to high tech industry at home. These basic
institutional requirements remain a policy guide, and they have
their consequences. During Bush's two years in office, real wages
continued to decline, falling to the level of the late 1950s for
non-supervisory workers (about 2/3 of the work force). Three
million more children crossed the poverty line. Over a million
people lost their homes. Infant mortality increased beyond its
already scandalous levels. Federal spending dropped for education
and for non-military R&D. Government, corporate and household
debt continued to rise, in part concealed with various budgetary
scams. Financial institutions drowned in red ink, following the
S&Ls, set on their course by the Deregulation Task Force headed
by George Bush. The gap between rich and poor grew to postwar
record levels. Civic services collapsed further while the US took
a healthy lead worldwide in prison population per capita,
doubling the figure during the Reagan-Bush years, with black
males now four times as likely to be in prison as in South
Africa. And the ``third deficit'' of unmet social and economic
needs (repairing infrastructure, etc.) is calculated at some $130
billion annually, omitting the S&Ls. {note: Figures from Robert
Reich, _Wall Street Journal_, Jan. 30; Joshua Cohen, ``Comments
on the War,'' MIT, March 4; Erich Heinemann, _CSM_, April 2,
1991. Prison population, Maurice Briggs, _Chicago Sun-Times_,
Jan. 9; Tom Wicker, _NYT_, Jan 9, 1991.}

As inspection of its domestic programs makes clear, the
Administration has no intention of addressing such problems;
rightly, from its point of view. Any serious measures would
infringe upon the prerogatives of its constituency. For the
executives of a transnational corporation or other privileged
sectors, it is important for the world to be properly
disciplined, for advanced industry to be subsidized, and for the
wealthy to be guaranteed security. It does not matter much if
public education and health deteriorate, the useless population
rots in urban concentrations or prisons, and the basis for a
livable society collapses for the public at large.

For such reasons, it is important to distract the domestic
population. They must join their betters in admiring ``the stark
and vivid definition of principle . . . baked into [George Bush]
during his years at Andover and Yale, that honor and duty compels
you to punch the bully in the face''---the words of the
awe-struck reporter who released the Policy Review explaining how
to deal with ``much weaker enemies.'' {note: Maureen Dowd, _NYT_,
March 2, 1991.}

The principle that you punch the bully in the face---when you are
sure that he is securely bound and beaten to a pulp---is a
natural one for advocates of the rule of force. It teaches the
right lessons to the world. And at home, cheap victories deflect
the attention of a frightened population from domestic disasters
while the state pursues its tasks as global enforcer, serving the
interests of the wealthy. Meanwhile, the country continues its
march towards a two-tiered society with striking Third World
features.

The same _Times_ reporter goes on to quote the gallant champion
himself: ``By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for
all.'' The second national newspaper joined in, applauding the
``spiritual and intellectual'' triumph in the Gulf: ``Martial
values that had fallen into disrepute were revitalized,'' and
``Presidential authority, under assault since Vietnam, was
strengthened.'' With barely a gesture towards the dangers of
overexuberance, the ultraliberal _Boston Globe_ hailed the
``victory for the psyche'' and the new ``sense of nationhood and
projected power'' under the leadership of a man who is ``one
tough son of a bitch,'' a man with ``the guts to risk all for a
cause'' and a ``burning sense of duty,'' who showed ``the depth
and steely core of his convictions'' and his faith that ``we are
a select people, with a righteous mission in this earth,'' the
latest in a line of ``noble-minded missionaries'' going back to
his hero Teddy Roosevelt---who was going to ``show those Dagos
that they will have to behave decently'' and to teach proper
lessons to the ``wild and ignorant people'' standing in the way
of ``the dominant world races.'' Liberal columnists praised ``the
magnitude of Bush's triumph'' over a much weaker enemy,
dismissing the ``uninformed garbage'' of those who carp in dark
corners (Thomas Oliphant). The open admiration for fascist values
is a matter of some interest. {note: E.J. Dionne, _WP Weekly_,
March 11; John Aloysius Farrell, _BG Magazine_, March 31; Martin
Nolan, _BG_, March 10; Oliphant, _BG_, Feb. 27, 199l. Roosevelt,
see my _Turning the Tide_ (South End, 1985), 61, 87.}

For 20 years, there have been vigorous efforts to ``kick the
Vietnam syndrome,'' defined by Reaganite intellectual Norman
Podhoretz as ``the sickly inhibitions against the use of military
force.'' He thought the disease was cured when we were ``standing
tall'' after our astounding victory in Grenada. Perhaps that
triumph of martial virtues was not enough, but now, at last, we
have kicked these sickly inhibitions, the President exults.
``Bush's leadership has transformed the Vietnam Syndrome into a
Gulf Syndrome, where `Out Now!' is a slogan directed at
aggressors, not at us'' (Thomas Oliphant); we were the injured
party in Vietnam, defending ourselves from the Vietnamese
aggressors, from ``internal aggression'' as Adlai Stevenson
explained in 1964. Having overcome the Vietnam syndrome, we now
observe ``the worthy and demanding standard that aggression must
be opposed, in exceptional cases by force,'' Oliphant continues
---but, somehow, we are not to march on Jakarta, Tel Aviv,
Damascus, Washington, Ankara, and a long series of other
capitals. {note: Oliphant, _op. cit._}@Set

The ground had been well prepared for overcoming this grave
malady, including dedicated labors to ensure that the Vietnam war
is properly understood---as a ``noble cause,'' not a violent
assault against South Vietnam, then all of Indochina. When the
President proclaims that we will no longer fight with one hand
tied behind our backs, respectable opinion asks only whether we
were indeed too restrained in Indochina, or whether our defense
of freedom was always a ``lost cause'' and a ``mistake.'' It is
``clear,'' the _New York Times_ reports, that ``the lesson of
Vietnam was a sense of the limits of United States power''; in
contrast, the lesson of Afghanistan is not a sense of the limits
of Soviet power. Reviewing the ``heroic tale'' of a Vietnamese
collaborator with the French colonialists and their American
successors, the _Times_ describes the methods he devised in 1962
to destroy the ``political organization'' of the South Vietnamese
revolutionaries. The most successful device was to send
``counter-terror teams to track down and capture or kill
recalcitrant Vietcong officials''---_counter-terror teams_,
because it was the US and its clients who were assassinating
civilians to undermine an indigenous political organization that
far surpassed anything the US could construct, as fully conceded.
{note: Peter Applebome, _NYT_, March 1; Terrence Maitland, _NYT
Book Review_, Feb. 3, reviewing Zalin Grant, _Facing the
Phoenix_.}

So effectively has history been rewritten that an informed
journalist at the left-liberal extreme can report that ``the US
military's distrust of cease-fires seems to stem from the Vietnam
War,'' when the Communist enemy---but not, apparently, the US
invaders---``used the opportunity [of a bombing pause] to recover
and fight on'' (Fred Kaplan). Near the dissident extreme of
scholarship, the chairman of the Center for European Studies at
Harvard can inform us that Nixon's Christmas bombing of Hanoi in
1972 ``brought the North Vietnamese back to the conference
table'' (Stanley Hoffmann). Such fables, long ago demolished, are
alive and well, as the propaganda system has elegantly recovered;
no real problem among the educated classes, who had rarely
strayed from the Party Line. Americans generally estimate
Vietnamese deaths at about 100,000, a recent academic study
reveals. Its authors ask what conclusions we would draw about the
political culture of Germany if the public estimated Holocaust
deaths at 300,000, while declaring their righteousness. A
question we might ponder. {note: Kaplan, _BG_, Feb. 23; Hoffmann,
_BG_, Jan. 6, 1991. Sut Jhally, Justin Lewis, & Michael Morgan,
_The Gulf War: A Study of the Media, Public Opinion, & Public
Knowledge_, Department of Communications, U Mass.
Amherst.}@Set


The Leader and his Teachings

George Bush's career as a ``public servant'' also has its lessons
concerning the New World Order. He is the one head of state who
stands condemned by the World Court for ``the unlawful use of
force''; in direct defiance of the Court, he persisted in the
terror and illegal economic warfare against Nicaragua to prevent
a free election in February 1990, then withheld aid from his
chosen government because of its refusal to drop the World Court
suit. Bush dismisses with contempt the Court's call for
reparations for these particular crimes (others are far beyond
reach), while he and his sycophants solemnly demand reparations
from Iraq, confident that respectable opinion will see no problem
here.

Or in the fact that in March 1991, the Administration once again
contested World Court jurisdiction over claims resulting from its
crimes; in this case, Iran's request that the Court order
reparations for the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner in
July 1988 by the US warship _Vincennes_, part of the naval
squadron sent by Reagan and Bush to support Iraq's aggression.
The airbus was shot down in a commercial corridor off the coast
of Iran with 290 people killed---out of ``a need to prove the
viability of Aegis,'' its high tech missile system, in the
judgment of US Navy commander David Carlson, who ``wondered aloud
in disbelief'' as he monitored the events from his nearby vessel.
Bush further sharpened our understanding of the sacred Rule of
Law in April 1990, when he conferred the Legion of Merit award
upon the commander of the _Vincennes_ (along with the officer in
charge of anti-air warfare) for ``exceptionally meritorious
conduct in the performance of outstanding service'' in the Gulf
and for the ``calm and professional atmosphere'' under his
command during the period when the airliner was shot down. ``The
tragedy isn't mentioned in the texts of the citations,'' AP
reported. The media kept a dutiful silence---at home, that is. In
the less disciplined Third World, the facts were reported in
reviews of US terrorism and ``U.S. imperial policy'' generally.
{note: _Chicago Tribune_, March 6, 1991; Carlson, _U.S. Naval
Institute Proceedings_, September 1989; _Los Angeles Times_,
Sept. 3, 1989; AP, April 23, 1990; _Third World Resurgence_, Oct.
1990.}

Bush opened the post-Cold War era with the murderous invasion of
Panama. Since he became UN Ambassador in 1971, the US is far in
the lead in vetoing Security Council resolutions and blocking the
UN peacekeeping function, followed by Britain---``our lieutenant
(the fashionable word is partner),'' in the words of a senior
Kennedy advisor. {note: Mike Mansfield, cited by Frank
Costigliola, in Thomas Paterson, ed., _Kennedy's Quest for
Victory_ (Oxford, 1989).} Bush took part in the Reaganite
campaign to undermine the UN, adding further blows during the
Gulf crisis. With threats and bribery, the US pressured the
Security Council to wash its hands of the crisis, authorizing
individual states to proceed as they wished, including the use of
force (UN Resolution 678). The Council thus seriously violated
the UN Charter, which bars any use of force until the Council
determines that peaceful means have been exhausted (which,
transparently, they had not, so no such determination was even
considered), and requires further that the Security Council---not
George Bush---will determine what further means may be necessary.
Having once again subverted the UN, the US compelled the Security
Council to violate its rules by refusing repeated requests by
members for meetings to deal with the mounting crisis, rules that
the US had angrily insisted were ``mandatory'' when it objected
to brief delays in earlier years. In further contempt for the UN,
the US bombed Iraqi nuclear facilities, proudly announcing the
triumph shortly after the General Assembly reaffirmed the
long-standing ban against such attacks and called upon the
Security Council ``to act immediately'' if such a violation
occurs; the vote was 144--1, the US in splendid isolation as
usual (Dec. 4, 1990). {note: Michael Tomasky & Richard McKerrow,
_Village Voice_, Feb. 26, 1991.}

Bush was called to head the CIA in 1975, just in time to support
near-genocide in East Timor, a policy that continues with
critical US-UK support for General Suharto, whose achievements
even dim the lustre of Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, exhibiting his
refined taste for international law, Bush looks the other way as
his Australian ally arranges with the Indonesian conqueror to
exploit Timorese oil, rejecting Portugal's protest to the World
Court on the grounds that ``There is no binding legal obligation
not to recognize acquisition of territory by force'' (Foreign
Minister Gareth Evans). Furthermore, Evans explains, ``The world
is a pretty unfair place, littered with examples of acquisition
by force . . .''; and in the same breath, following the US-UK
lead, he bans all official contacts with the PLO with proper
indignation because of its ``consistently defending and
associating itself with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.'' Recognizing
that the monumental cynicism might disrupt the posturing about
international law and the crime of aggression, the ideological
institutions have protected the public from such undesirable
facts, keeping them in the shadows along with a new Indonesian
military offensive in Timor under the cover of the Gulf crisis,
and the Western-backed Indonesian operations that may wipe out a
million tribal people in Irian Jaya, with thousands of victims of
chemical weapons among the perhaps 300,000 already killed,
according to human rights activists and the few observers. {note:
Reuters, Canberra, Feb. 24; Communique', International Court of
Justice, Feb. 22, 1991. Evans, Senate Daily Hansard, Nov. 1,
1989; _Indonesia News Service_, Nov. 1, 1990; Greenleft
mideast.gulf.346, electronic communication, Feb.  18, 1991. ABC
(Australia) radio, ``Background briefing; East Timor,'' Feb. 17,
1991. Robin Osborne, _Indonesia's Secret Wars_ (Allen & Unwin,
1985); George Monbiot, _Poisoned Arrows_ (Abacus, London, 1989);
Anti-Slavery Society, _West Papua_ (London, 1990).}

The attention of the civilized West is to be focused, laser-like,
on the crimes of the official enemy, not on those we could
readily mitigate or eliminate, without tens of thousands of tons
of bombs.

On becoming Vice-President, Bush travelled to Manila to pay his
respects to another fine killer and torturer, Ferdinand Marcos,
praising him as a man ``pledged to democracy'' who had performed
great ``service to freedom,'' and adding that ``we love your
adherence to democratic principle and to the democratic
processes.'' He lent his talents to the war against the Church
and other deviants committed to ``the preferential option for the
poor'' in Central America, now littered with tortured and
mutilated bodies, perhaps devastated beyond recovery. In the
Middle East, Bush supported Israel's harsh occupations, its
savage invasion of Lebanon, and its refusal to honor Security
Council Resolution 425 calling for its immediate withdrawal from
Lebanon (March 1978, one of several). The plea was renewed by the
government of Lebanon in February 1991, {note: _NYT_, Feb.  19,
1991.} ignored as usual while the US client terrorizes the
occupied region and bombs elsewhere at will, and the rest of
Lebanon is taken over by Bush's new friend Hafez el-Assad, a
clone of Saddam Hussein.

Another friend, Turkish president Turgut Ozal, was authorized to
intensify Turkey's repression of Kurds in partial payment for his
services as ``a protector of peace,'' in Bush's words, joining
those who ``stand up for civilized values around the world''
against Saddam Hussein. While making some gestures towards his
own Kurdish population and attempting to split them from Iraqi
Kurds, Ozal continues to preside over ``the world's worst place
to be Kurdish'' (Vera Saeedpour, director of the New York-based
program that monitors Kurdish human rights). Journalists, the
Human Rights Association in the Kurdish regions, and lawyers
report that this protector of civilized values has made use of
his new prestige to have his security forces expel 50,000 people
from 300 villages, burning homes and possessions so that the
people will not return, and fire on anti-war demonstrators, while
continuing the torture that is standard procedure in all state
security cases. The Frankfurt relief organization Medico
International reported in late January that hundreds of thousands
of Kurds were in flight from cities near the Iraqi frontier, with
women, children and old people trying to survive the cold winter
in holes in the ground or animal sheds while the government bars
any help or provisions, the army is destroying fields with flame
throwers, and jet planes are bombing Kurdish villages. Human
Rights Watch reports that in mid-August, Turkey officially
suspended the European Convention on Human Rights for the Kurdish
provinces, eliminating these marginal protections with no protest
from any Western government, while the army ``stepped up the
village burnings and deportations.'' Censorship is so extreme
that the facts remain obscure, and lacking ideological utility,
are of no interest in any event. {note: Reuters, Sept. 26, 1990.
Saeedpour, Pacific News Service, March 11, 1991; John Murray
Brown, _Financial Times_, Feb. 12, March 8, 1991; AP, March 20,
1991; Michael Gunter, _Kurdish Times_, Fall 1990; Ray Moseley,
_Chicago Tribune_. Feb. 6, 1991. Medico International, _Krieg und
Flucht in Kurdistan_, Frankfurt, citing _Tageszeitung_, Jan. 28
and _Frankfurter Rundschau_, Jan. 25, on the bombing. _Human
Rights Watch #1_, Winter, 1991.}

Plainly, we have here a man who can be expected to ``breathe
light'' into the problems of the Middle East. If we prefer the
facts, we may derive further conclusions about the New World
Order.


The Background to the War

Prior to August 2, 1990, the US and its allies found Saddam
Hussein an attractive partner. In 1980, they helped prevent UN
reaction to Iraq's attack on Iran, which they supported
throughout. At the time, Iraq was a Soviet client, but Reagan,
Thatcher and Bush recognized Saddam Hussein as ``our kind of
guy'' and induced him to switch sides. In 1982, Reagan removed
Iraq from the list of states that sponsor terror, permitting it
to receive enormous credits for the purchase of US exports while
the US became a major market for its oil. By 1987, Iraq praised
Washington for its ``positive efforts'' in the Gulf while
expressing disappointment over Soviet refusal to join the tilt
towards Iraq (Tariq Aziz). US intervention was instrumental in
enabling Iraq to gain the upper hand in the war. Western
corporations took an active role in building up Iraq's military
strength, notably its weapons of mass destruction. Reagan and
Bush regularly intervened to block congressional censure of their
friend's atrocious human rights record, strenuously opposing any
actions that might interfere with profits for US corporations or
with Iraq's military build-up. {note: See my articles in _Z
magazine_, March and October 1990, Feb. 1991, and _Deterring
Democracy_ (Verso, forthcoming). For further reports (lacking
sources, hence difficult to evaluate), see Pierre Salinger and
Eric Laurent, _Guerre du Golfe_ (Olivier Orban, Paris, 1991);
Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander, _Unholy Babylon_ (St.
Martin's, 1991). Also Don Oberdorfer, _WP Weekly_, Stuart
Auerbach, _WP Weekly_, March 18--24; Michael Massing, _New York
Review_, March 28; Helga Graham, _South_, Feb. 1991.}

Britain was no different. When Saddam was reported to have gassed
thousands of Kurds at Halabja, the White House intervened to
block any serious congressional reaction and not one member of
the governing Conservative Party was willing to join a left-labor
condemnation in Parliament. Both governments now profess outrage
over the crime, and denounce those who did protest for appeasing
their former comrade, while basking in media praise for their
high principle. {note: Darwish, _op. cit._, 79; Tony Benn, et
al., letter, _Manchester Guardian Weekly_, March 31, 1991.} It
was, of course, understood that Saddam Hussein was one of the
world's most savage tyrants. But he was ``our gangster,'' joining
a club in which he could find congenial associates. Repeating a
familiar formula, Geoffrey Kemp, head of the Middle East section
in the National Security Council under Reagan, observed that ``We
weren't really that naive. We knew that he was an SOB, but he was
our SOB.''

By mid-July 1990, our SOB was openly moving troops towards Kuwait
and waving a fist at his neighbors. Relations with Washington
remained warm. Bush intervened once again to block congressional
efforts to deny loan guarantees to Iraq. On August 1, while
intelligence warned of the impending invasion, Bush approved the
sale of advanced data transmission equipment to his friendly SOB.
In the preceding two weeks, licenses had been approved for $4.8
million in advanced technology products, including computers for
the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization, for the
Saad 16 research center that was later destroyed by bombing on
grounds that it was developing rockets and poison gas, and for
another plant that was repeatedly bombed as a chemical weapons
factory. The State Department indicated to Saddam that it had no
serious objection to his rectifying border disputes with Kuwait,
or intimidating other oil producers to raise the oil price to $25
a barrel or more. For reasons that remain unexplained, Kuwait's
response to Iraqi pressures and initiatives was defiant and
contemptuous. {note: Auerbach, Salinger, Darwish, _op. cit._}

The available evidence can be read in various ways. The most
conservative (and, in my view, most plausible) reading is that
Saddam misunderstood the signals as a ``green light'' to take all
of Kuwait, possibly with the intention of setting up a puppet
government behind which he would keep effective power (on the
model of the US in Panama and many other cases), possibly as a
bargaining chip to achieve narrower ends, possibly with broader
goals. That was unacceptable: no independent force is permitted
to gain significant control over the world's major energy
reserves, which are to be in the hands of the US and its clients.

Saddam's record was already so sordid that the conquest of Kuwait
added little to it, but that action was a crime that matters: the
crime of independence. Torture, tyranny, aggression, slaughter of
civilians are all acceptable by US-UK standards, but not stepping
on our toes. The standard policies were then set into motion.


Deterring Iraqi Democracy

Throughout these years, Iraqi democratic forces opposing Bush's
comrade were rebuffed by the White House, once again in February
1990, when they sought support for a call for parliamentary
democracy. In the same month, the British Foreign Office impeded
their efforts to condemn Iraqi terror, for fear that they might
harm Anglo-Iraqi relations. Two months later, after the execution
of London _Observer_ correspondent Farzad Bazoft and other Iraqi
atrocities, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd reiterated the need to
maintain good relations with Iraq. Iraqi Kurds received the same
treatment. In mid-August, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani flew to
Washington to seek support for guerrilla operations against
Saddam's regime. Neither Pentagon nor State Department officials
would speak to him, even though such operations would surely have
weakened Iraq's forces in Kuwait; he was rebuffed again in March
1991. The reason, presumably, was concern over the sensibilities
of the Turkish ``defender of civilized values,'' who looked
askance at Kurdish resistance. {note: Sources in London-based
Iraqi democratic opposition; Darwish, _op. cit._ Talabani, Vera
Saeedpour, _Toward Freedom_ (Burlington, VT), March 1991; Stephen
Hubbell, _Nation_, April 15, 1991.}

It is a very revealing fact that the Iraqi democratic opposition
was not only ignored by Washington but also scrupulously excluded
from the media, throughout the Gulf crisis.  That is easily
explained when we hear what they had to say.

On the eve of the air war, the German press published a statement
of the ``Iraqi Democratic Group,'' conservative in orientation
(``liberal,'' in the European sense), reiterating its call for
the overthrow of Saddam Hussein but also opposing ``any foreign
intervention in the Near East,'' criticizing US ``policies of
aggression'' in the Third World and its intention to control
Middle East oil, and rejecting UN resolutions ``that had as their
goal the starvation of our people.'' The statement called for the
withdrawal of US-UK troops, withdrawal of Iraqi troops from
Kuwait, self-determination for the Kuwaiti people, ``a peaceful
settlement of the Kuwait problem, democracy for Iraq, and
autonomy for Iraq-Kurdistan.'' A similar stand was taken by the
Teheran-based Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
(in a communiqu from Beirut); the Iraqi Communist Party; Mas'ud
Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party; and other
prominent opponents of the Iraqi regime, many of whom had
suffered bitterly from Saddam's atrocities. Falih `Abd al-Jabbar,
an Iraqi journalist in exile in London, commented: ``Although the
Iraqi opposition parties have neither given up their demand for
an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait nor their hope of displacing
Saddam some time in the future, they believe that they will lose
the moral right to oppose the present regime if they do not side
with Iraq against the war.'' They called for reliance on
sanctions, which, they argued, would prove effective.  ``All the
opposition parties are agreed in calling for an immediate
withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait,'' British journalist
Edward Mortimer reports, ``but most are very unhappy about the
military onslaught by the US-led coalition'' and prefer economic
and political sanctions. They also condemned the murderous
bombing. {note: ``For a Peaceful Settlement,'' Gruppe Irakischer
Demokraten, _Frankfurter Rundschau_, Jan. 14; al-Jabbar,
_Manchester Guardian Weekly_, Feb. 3; Mortimer, _FT_, Jan. 21,
1991.}

A delegation of the Kuwaiti democratic opposition in Amman in
December took the same position, opposing any Western assault
against Iraq. On British television, anti-Saddam Arab
intellectuals in London, including the prominent Kuwaiti
opposition leader Dr. Ahmed al-Khatib, were unanimous in calling
for a cease-fire and for serious consideration of Saddam's
February 15 peace offer. In October 1990, Dr. al-Khatib had
stated that Kuwaitis ``do not want a military solution'' with its
enormous costs for Kuwait, and strenuously opposed any military
action. {note: Lamis Andoni, _FT_, Dec. 6, 1990. David Pallister,
_Guardian_ (London) Feb. 18, 1991. Khatib, _Middle East Report_,
Jan/Feb. 1991, cited by Mouin Rabbani, letter, _New Statesman_,
March 22, 1991, replying to Fred Halliday. The quote is from
Khatib's interview with Halliday, who advocated war, also
claiming that it was supported by the populations of the region,
which is untrue, as far as we know, and hardly relevant; no one,
including Halliday, relies on regional attitudes to justify the
use of force against Israel to remove it from Lebanon and the
occupied territories.}

The silence here was deafening, and most instructive. Unlike Bush
and his associates, the peace movement and Iraqi democratic
opposition had always opposed Saddam Hussein. But they also
opposed the quick resort to violence to undercut a peaceful
resolution of the conflict. Such an outcome would have avoided
the slaughter of tens of thousands of people, the destruction of
two countries, harsh reprisals, an environmental catastrophe,
further slaughter by the Iraqi government and the likely
emergence of another murderous US-backed tyranny there. But it
would not have taught the crucial lessons, already reviewed.
With the mission accomplished, the disdain for Iraqi democrats
continues unchanged. A European diplomat observes that ``The
Americans would prefer to have another Assad, or better yet,
another Mubarak in Baghdad,'' referring to their
``military-backed regimes'' (dictatorships, that of Assad being
particularly odious). ``This may account for the fact that thus
far, the administration has refused to meet with Iraqi opposition
leaders in exile,'' Jane Friedman reports in the _Christian
Science Monitor_. A diplomat from the US-run coalition says that
``we will accept Saddam in Baghdad in order to have Iraq as one
state,'' which might be interpreted as meaning: to prevent Iraqi
democracy. {note: _CSM_, March 20, 1990.}

In mid-March, Iraqi opposition leaders alleged that the US favors
a military dictatorship, insisting that ``changes in the regime
must come from within, from people already in power'' (Leith
Kubba, head of the London-based Iraqi Democratic Reform
Movement). Banker Ahmed Chalabi, another prominent opposition
activist, said that ``the United States, covered by the fig leaf
of non-interference in Iraqi affairs, is waiting for Saddam to
butcher the insurgents in the hope that he can be overthrown
later by a suitable officer,'' an attitude rooted in the US
policy of ``supporting dictatorships to maintain stability.''
Official US spokesmen confirmed that the Bush administration had
not talked to any Iraqi opposition leaders and did not then
intend to: ``We felt that political meetings with them . . .
would not be appropriate for our policy at this time,'' State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher stated on March 14. {note:
_Mideast Mirror_ (London), March 15, 1991.}

These judgments were confirmed in the following weeks. Bush had
openly encouraged uprisings against Saddam Hussein, and,
according to intelligence sources, had authorized the CIA in
January to aid rebels---secretly, perhaps to avoid offending his
Turkish and Saudi friends. But he stood by quietly as Saddam
slaughtered Shi'ites and Kurds, tacitly approving the use of
helicopter gunships to massacre civilians, refusing to impede the
terror or even to provide humanitarian aid to the victims.
Fleeing refugees bitterly asked journalists ``Where is George
Bush,'' probably not knowing the answer: he was fishing in
Florida. Turkey was accused by Kurdish leaders of blocking food
shipments to starving Kurds, and later closed its borders to most
of those in flight. US forces turned back people fleeing the
terror in the South, and refused even to provide food and water
to those who had escaped, Reuters reported, though individual
soldiers did so. A senior Pentagon official said: ``The bottom
line here is, if you're suggesting we would stay purely for a
purpose of protecting the refugees, we won't.'' ``We are under no
obligation to them,'' another added. Our job is to destroy,
nothing more. The US and Britain barred efforts to have the UN
Security Council condemn the massacre, let alone act in any way,
until it was too late to matter. {note: Jim Drinkard, AP, April
3; Geraldine Brooks, _WSJ_, April 3; Michael Kranish, _BG_, April
4; Walter Robinson, _BG_, March 21; Paul Taylor, Reuters, March
21 (_Mideast Mirror_, March 21); _LA Times_, April 2; Christopher
Marquis, _BG_, April 3; Paul Lewis, _NYT_, April 3, 1991.}

So profound is Bush's commitment to the principle of
noninterference that he also could lend no support to Kuwaiti
democrats. His delicacy barred mention of the word ``democracy''
even in private communications to the Emir, officials explained.
``You can't pick out one country to lean on over another,'' one
said; never will you find the US ``leaning on'' Nicaragua or
Cuba, for example, or moving beyond the narrowest interpretation
of international law and UN initiatives. {note: Andrew Rosenthal,
_NYT_, April 3, 1991.}

Those who find any of this strange are simply unacquainted with
standard procedures and the reasons for them.


Blocking the Diplomatic Track

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait fell within the range of many other
recent atrocities. The regular response of the international
community is condemnation, followed by sanctions and diplomatic
efforts. These procedures rarely succeed, or even begin, because
they are blocked by the great powers, in the past several
decades, primarily the United States, with Britain second; these
powers account for 80% of Security Council vetoes in the 20 years
of George Bush's national prominence. Since the US and UK
happened to oppose Iraq's aggression, sanctions could be invoked,
with unusually high prospects for success because of their
unprecedented severity and the fact that the usual violators---
the US, UK, and their allies---would, for once, adhere to them.
The likelihood of success was stressed by virtually all witnesses
at the Nunn Senate Hearings (including former Defense Secretaries
and chairmen of the Joint Chiefs), as well as by academic
specialists on sanctions. The question whether sanctions would
have worked may be idle; quite possibly they already _had_ worked
by late December, perhaps mid-August. That seems a reasonable
interpretation of the Iraqi withdrawal proposals confirmed or
released by US officials.

Washington moved resolutely to bar the success of peaceful means.
Following the prescriptions of the National Security Policy
Review, it ensured that this ``much weaker enemy'' would be
punished by force. On August 22, _New York Times_ chief
diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman outlined the
Administration position: the ``diplomatic track'' must be
blocked, or negotiations might ``defuse the crisis'' at the cost
of ``a few token gains'' for Iraq, perhaps ``a Kuwaiti island or
minor border adjustments.'' A week later, Knut Royce revealed in
_Newsday_ that a proposal in just those terms had been offered by
Iraq, but was dismissed by the Administration (and suppressed by
the _Times_, as it quietly conceded). The proposal, regarded as
``serious'' and ``negotiable'' by a State Department Mideast
expert, called for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait in exchange for
access to the Gulf (meaning control over two uninhabited mudflats
that had been assigned to Kuwait in the imperial settlement,
leaving Iraq landlocked) and Iraqi control of the Rumailah oil
field, about 95% in Iraq, extending two miles into Kuwait over an
unsettled border.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry adds further details. The
offer, relayed via Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Nizar Hamdoon,
reached Washington on August 9. According to a confidential
Congressional summary, it represented the views of Saddam Hussein
and other Iraqi leaders. On August 10, the proposal was brought
to the National Security Council, which rejected it as ``already
moving against policy,'' according to the retired Army officer
who arranged the meeting. Former CIA chief Richard Helms
attempted to carry the initiative further, but got nowhere.
Further efforts by Hamdoon, the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, and
US interlocuters elicited no response. ``There was nothing in
this [peace initiative] that interested the US government,''
Helms said. A Congressional summary, with an input from
intelligence, concludes that a diplomatic solution might have
been possible at that time. That we will never know. Washington
feared that it was possible, and took no chances, for the reasons
expressed through the _Times_ diplomatic correspondent.

From the outset, the US position was clear, unambiguous, and
unequivocal: no outcome will be tolerated other than capitulation
to force. Others continued to pursue diplomatic efforts. On
January 2, US officials disclosed an Iraqi proposal to withdraw
in return for agreement of an unspecified nature on the
Palestinian problem and weapons of mass destruction. US officials
described the offer as ``interesting'' because it mentioned no
border issues, taking it to ``signal Iraqi interest in a
negotiated settlement.'' A State Department Mideast expert
described it as a ``serious prenegotiation position.'' The facts
were again reported by Knut Royce of _Newsday_, who observed that
Washington ``immediately dismissed the proposal.'' A _Times_
report the next day suggested that mere statement by the Security
Council of an intention to deal with the two ``linked'' issues
might have sufficed for complete Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.
Again, the US was taking no chances, and quashed the threat at
once. {note: See my articles in _Z magazine_, October 1990 and
February 1991, for details; and Parry, _op. cit._} The story
continued. On the eve of the air war, the US and UK announced
that they would veto a French proposal for immediate Iraqi
withdrawal in exchange for a meaningless Security Council
statement on a possible future conference; Iraq then rejected the
proposal as well. On February 15, Iraq offered to withdraw
completely from Kuwait, stating that the withdrawal ``should be
linked'' to Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and
Lebanon, in accord with UN resolutions. The Iraqi Ambassador to
the UN stated that the offer was unconditional, and that the
terms cited were ``issues'' that should be addressed, not
``conditions'' involving ``linkage.'' The State Department
version, published in the _New York Times_ and elsewhere,
mistranslated the Iraqi offer, giving the wording: ``Israel must
withdraw . . .''  Washington at once rejected the offer, and the
Ambassador's comments, which were barely noted in the press, were
ignored.  The US insisted that Iraqi withdrawal must _precede_ a
cease-fire; Iraqi forces must leave their bunkers and be smashed
to pieces, after which the US might consider a cease-fire. The
media seemed to consider this quite reasonable. {note: The
translation by AP from Cyprus and by the BBC was accurate. AP,
_BG_, Feb. 16; BBC, _FT_, Feb. 16; State Dept. version, _NYT_,
Feb. 16, _Time_, Feb. 25. See also William Beeman, PNS, Feb. 18.
Original obtained by Edward Said. Iraqi Ambassador, _NYT_, Feb.
17, 1991, 100 words. John Cushman, ``U.S. Insists Withdrawal
Comes Before Cease-Fire,'' _NYT_, Feb.  16, 1991.}

Washington's plan was to launch the ground operation on February
23. Problems arose when the Soviet Union, a day earlier, reached
an agreement with Iraq to withdraw if UN resolutions would then
be cancelled. The President, ``having concluded that the Soviet
diplomacy was getting out of hand'' (as the _Times_ puts it),
brusquely dismissed the final Soviet-Iraq agreement, quickly
changing the topic to the charge of an Iraqi ``scorched-earth
policy.'' Again, the crucial difference between the two positions
had to do with timing: should Iraq withdraw one day after a
cease-fire, as the Soviet-Iraqi proposal stated, or while the
bombing continued, as the US demanded. {note: Thomas Friedman and
Patrick Tyler, _NYT_, March 3; Transcript of Moscow Peace
Proposal and Bush-Fitzwater statements, _NYT_, Feb. 23; Patrick
Tyler, _NYT_, Feb. 26, 1991.}

Throughout, the media went along, with scarcely a false note.

The record strongly supports the judgment of Reagan insider James
Webb, former Navy Secretary, one of the few critics of the war to
gain a public forum. In the _Wall Street Journal_, he wrote that
``this administration has dealt in extremes,'' favoring ``brute
force'' over other means. Bush ``relentlessly maneuvered our
nation into a war'' that was unnecessary. He chose to turn the
country into ``the world's Hessians,'' a mercenary state paid by
others while ``our society reels from internal problems'' that
the administration refuses to address. {note: Webb, _WSJ_, Jan.
31, 1991.}

This record is, again, highly informative. The possibility of a
negotiated settlement was excluded from the political and
ideological systems with remarkable efficiency. When Republican
National Committee Chairman Clayton Yeutter states that if a
Democrat had been President, Kuwait would not be liberated today,
few if any Democrats can respond by saying: If I had been
President, Kuwait might well have been liberated long before,
perhaps by August, without the disastrous consequences of your
relentless drive for war. In the media, one will search far for a
hint that diplomatic options might have been pursued, or even
existed. The mainstream journals of opinion were no different.
Those few who felt a need to justify their support for the
slaughter carefully evaded these crucial issues, in Europe as
well.

To evaluate the importance of this service to power, consider
again the situation just before the air war began. On January 9,
a national poll revealed that 2/3 of the US population favored a
conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict if that would lead to
Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. The question was framed to minimize
a positive response, stressing that the Bush administration
opposed the idea. {note: _WP_, Jan. 11, 1991.} It is a fair guess
that each person who nevertheless advocated such a settlement
assumed that he or she was isolated in this opinion.  Few if any
had heard any public advocacy of their position; the media had
been virtually uniform in following the Washington Party Line,
dismissing ``linkage'' (i.e., diplomacy) as an unspeakable crime,
in this unique case. It is hardly likely that respondents were
aware that an Iraqi proposal calling for a settlement in these
terms had been released a week earlier by US officials, who found
it reasonable; or that the Iraqi democratic forces, and most of
the world, took the same stand.

Suppose that the crucial facts had been known and the issues
honestly addressed. Then the 2/3 figure would doubtless have been
far higher, and it might have been possible to avoid the huge
slaughter preferred by the administration, with its useful
consequences: the world learns that it is to be ruled by force,
the dominant role of the US in the Gulf and its control over
Middle East oil are secured, and the population is diverted from
the growing disaster around us. In brief, the educated classes
and the media did their duty.

The academic study of attitudes and beliefs cited earlier
revealed that the public overwhelmingly supports the use of force
to reverse illegal occupation and serious human rights abuses.
But, like journalists and others who proudly proclaim this
``worthy standard,'' they do not call for force in a host of
cases that at once come to mind. They do not applaud Scud attacks
on Tel Aviv, though Saddam's sordid arguments compare well enough
to those of his fellow-criminal in Washington, if honestly
considered; nor would they approve bombs in Washington, a missile
attack on Jakarta, etc. {note: See notes @Ref, @Ref.}
Why? Again, because of the triumphs of the ideological system.
The facts having been consigned to their appropriate obscurity,
the slogans can be trumpeted, unchallenged.


Deterring US Democracy

Such examples, readily extended, illustrate the success in
suppressing democracy in the United States. The ideal, long
sought by the business community and the political class, is that
the general population should be marginalized, each person
isolated, deprived of the kinds of associations that might lead
to independent thought and political action. Each must sit alone
in front of the tube, absorbing its doctrinal message: trust in
the Leader; ape the images of the ``good life'' presented by the
commercials and the sitcoms; be a spectator, a consumer, a
passive worker who follows orders, but not a participant in the
way the world works. To achieve this goal, it has been necessary
to destroy unions and other popular organizations, restrict the
political system to factions of the business party, and construct
a grand edifice of lies to conceal every relevant issue, whether
it be Indochina, Central America, the Middle East, terrorism, the
Cold War, domestic policy, . . . , whatever---so that the proper
lessons are on the shelf, ready when needed.

The methods have been refined over many years. The first state
propaganda agency was established by the Woodrow Wilson
administration. Within a few months, a largely pacifist
population had been turned into a mob of warmongers, raging to
destroy everything German and later backing the Wilson repression
that demolished unions and independent thought. The success
impressed the business and intellectual communities, leading to
the doctrines of ``manufacture of consent'' and the elaboration
of methods to reduce the general public to its proper spectator
role. When the threat of popular democracy and labor organizing
arose again in the 1930s, business moved quickly to destroy the
virus, with great success. Labor's last real legislative victory
was in 1935, and the supporting culture has largely been swept
away. ``Scientific methods of strike-breaking'' rallied community
support against the disruptive elements that interfered with the
``harmony'' to which ``we'' are devoted---``we'' being the
corporate executive, the honest sober worker, the housewife, the
people united in support of ``Americanism.'' Huge media campaigns
wielding vacuous slogans to dispel the danger of thought are now
a staple of the ideological system. To derail concern over
whether you should _support their policy_, the PR system focuses
attention on whether you _support our troops_---meaningless
words, as empty as the question of whether you support the people
of Iowa. That, of course, is just the point: to reduce the
population to gibbering idiots, mouthing empty phrases and
patriotic slogans, waving ribbons, watching gladiatorial contests
and the models designed for them by the PR industry, but,
crucially, not thinking or acting. A few must be trained to think
and act, if only to serve the needs of the powerful; but they
must be kept within the rigid constraints of the ideological
system. These are the tasks of the media, journals of opinion,
schools and universities.

They have been accomplished with much distinction. To approach
any serious question, it is first necessary to clear away
mountains of ideological rubble. But the triumph is far from
complete, far less so than a generation ago. Outside elite
circles, the indoctrination is thin, and often is cast aside with
surprising ease if people have an opportunity to think.
Skepticism and disbelief are barely below the surface. Where
there are even fragments of organization, many have been able to
defend themselves from the ideological onslaught. The famed
``gender gap'' is an example. The opportunities for association
and independent thought offered by the womens' movement have led
to a dramatic shift in attitudes---or, perhaps, willingness to
express long-held attitudes---over the past two decades. The same
is true of church groups, solidarity organizations, and others.

The political leadership and others who hail the martial virtues
know well that the domestic base for intervention in the
traditional mode has eroded: no more Marines chasing Sandino, or
US forces marauding for years in the Mekong Delta. Either proxy
forces must be used, as in the international terror networks of
the Reagan-Bush years, or victory must be ``rapid and decisive.''
And a ``much weaker enemy'' can be attacked only if it is first
demonized and built to awesome dimensions by vast propaganda
campaigns. By the same token, those who hope to narrow the
options for violence and state terror must find ways to clear
away the rubble under which the reality of the world has been
buried. It is not an easy task, but the task of raising
consciousness never is, and it has been pursued effectively under
circumstances that most of us can barely imagine.


The War

The war followed the script laid out for confrontations with a
``much weaker enemy.'' A ground war was avoided. US combat
casualties were on the scale of Grenada, while Iraqi military
deaths are estimated by the US military at 1--200,000, killed
from a safe distance. The victors bulldozed corpses into mass
graves, in violation of the Geneva Conventions to which they
appeal when some interest is served. But the laws of war are as
relevant as they were in earlier days, when the _New York Times_
cheerily described how helicopter gunships would attack the
``dazed and bleeding people'' surrounding B-52 bomb craters in
Vietnam and ``put them out of their misery,'' honoring the law
that soldiers unable to fight ``shall in all circumstances be
treated humanely.'' {note: Walter S. Mossberg and David Rogers,
_WSJ_, March 22; Holly Burkhalter, Washington director of Human
Rights Watch, _LAT_, March 12; _News_, Middle East Watch, March
7, 1991. Malcolm Browne, _NYT_, May 6, 1972; see E.S. Herman and
N. Chomsky, _Manufacturing Consent_ (Pantheon, 1988), 193, for
longer quote and context.}

In a briefing, General Schwartzkopf observed that during the
Grenada invasion, the Cubans fought harder than expected---
referring to the several dozen paramilitary construction workers
who resisted the assault of 6000 elite US forces after Washington
had ignored Cuba's announcement that they would not fire unless
attacked, and its call for a peaceful resolution. This time, the
heroic General explained, we would take no chances. The tactic
was to pulverize the Third World peasant army---hiding in the
sand, immobile, and defenseless---after months of disinformation
about its artillery, sophisticated defenses, chemical weapons,
and other fantastic capacities, later conceded to be largely
fakery. When the enemy was utterly demoralized, US forces cut off
escape, the Air Force slaughtered those attempting to flee
(including Asian workers and Kuwaiti hostages, BBC reported),
{note: BBC-1 TV news, 9 PM, March 5; BBC radio, cited by
Christopher Hitchens, _Nation_, April 8.} and troops were sent it
to pick up the pieces---though elite Iraqi units were allowed to
move on to crush later revolts with savage terror, in accord with
the US aim of reconstructing something rather like the friendly
regime of the pre-August 1990 period, but now with firmer
guarantees of obedience to the master.

The air war had already reduced Iraq to a ``pre-industrial age,''
creating ``near apocalyptic'' conditions, a UN survey reported.
The air attack was aimed at civilian targets, called ``military''
for the purpose: water, sewage, and power systems, bridges and
infrastructure generally. The results, as expected, were the
effective destruction of the health system so that limbs have to
be sawed off without anesthesia among other harrowing scenes in
what remains of hospitals; mounting deaths from disease and lack
of food and water, with huge increase in infant diarrheal
infections and other serious diseases; water down to 5% of normal
supply; food rations at 1000 calories with further crises
impending; and the likelihood of major epidemics from what
amounts to biological warfare. The _Times_ reported that the US
opposes any ``premature relaxation'' of these conditions,
insisting that the civilian population be held hostage in the
expectation that if they suffer enough, they might remove Saddam
Hussein. This is apart from the tens of thousands of civilians
killed, the destruction of four hospitals, thousands of homes and
other civilian structures by bombing, and other goals readily---
and of course heroically---achieved when the the ``much weaker
enemy'' is entirely defenseless. {note: World Health
Organization, _WP_, Feb. 26, _NYT_, Feb. 26, 1991. International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), AP, Feb.
28; David Nyhan, _BG_, March 3, 1991. Paul Lewis, _NYT_, March 2;
Trevor Rowe, _BG_, March 2, 1991. For a detailed accounting, see
V.K. Ramachandran, _Frontline_ (India), March 30, 1991.}

Had the diplomatic track that Washington feared been successfully
pursued, Kuwait too would have been spared the war and the Iraqi
terror, which, according to reports, rapidly increased in the
final days. An environmental catastrophe would also have been
averted. In the small print, the _Times_ noted that according to
Pentagon officials, ``the burning of Kuwait's oil fields might
have been a defensive action by Iraq, which appeared to be
anticipating imminent attack by allied ground forces.'' While
Iraq created the largest oil spill, the one that threatened the
desalination plant at Safaniya in Saudi Arabia probably resulted
from US bombing, US military officials said. A Pentagon official
added that the Iraqi oil spill might have been aimed at the water
sources for US troops, in retaliation for US destruction of
Kuwait's major desalination plant just before. The prime
responsibility for the Gulf tragedy lies on the shoulders of
Saddam Hussein; but he is not without his partners in crime, nor
are his crimes unique. {note: Andrew Rosenthal, _NYT_, Feb. 23;
AP, _BG_, Feb. 9; Pamela Constable, _BG_, Jan 27, 1991.}

Some commentators expressed qualms about the savagery of the
final slaughter, but a look at history should have relieved their
surprise. When violence is cost-free, all bars are down. During
the Indochina war, there were constraints on bombing of Hanoi and
Haiphong, or dikes in North Vietnam, because of fear of a Chinese
or Soviet reaction and the political cost elsewhere. But in the
southern sectors of North Vietnam, or elsewhere in Indochina, no
one important cared, and the rule was that ``anything goes.'' The
Pentagon Papers reveal extensive planning about the bombing of
the North, because of potential costs to the US; the far more
devastating bombing of the South, begun years earlier and
including major war crimes, is passed over with little attention.
{note: For a detailed review, see my _For Reasons of State_
(Pantheon, 1973).}

The same was true of World War II. At the end, Japan was
defenseless, therefore demolished at will. Tokyo was removed from
the list of atom bomb targets because it was ``practically
rubble'' so that an attack would not demonstrate the bomb's
power.  Many believe that the war ended with the atom bomb. Not
so. In the official US Air Force history, we read that General
Arnold ``wanted as big a finale as possible,'' and, with
management skills that compare to Stormin' Norman's, assembled
over 1000 planes to bomb Japan after Nagasaki, killing thousands
of people and dropping leaflets saying ``Your Government has
surrendered. The war is over!'' Truman announced Japan's
surrender before the last planes returned. Japan was prostrate,
so why not? As the Korean war ground on, the Air Force could
locate no more targets.  Therefore, as an official US Air Force
study records, it attacked North Korean dams, leading to such
stirring sights as a ``flash flood [that] scooped clean 27 miles
of valley below,'' while 75% of the water supply for rice
production was wiped out and the enemy suffered ``the destruction
of their chief sustenance---rice.'' ``The Westerner can little
conceive the awesome meaning which the loss of this staple food
commodity has for the Asian,'' the study explains: ``starvation
and slow death, . . . more feared than the deadliest plague.
Hence the show of rage, the flare of violent tempers, and the
avowed threats of reprisals when bombs fell on five irrigation
dams.'' The threats of reprisal were empty, and there were no
political costs, so these war crimes joined the long list of
others compiled with impunity by the powerful, who never fail to
strike impressive poses as they call for war crimes trials---for
others. {note: For details, see my _American Power and the New
Mandarins_ (Pantheon, 1969), 210--1; _Towards a New Cold War_
(Pantheon, 1982), 112--3. On Tokyo, see Barton Bernstein,
_International Security_, Spring 1991.}


The Political Culture

The published record tells us more about the political culture in
the United States and the West generally. As noted, the
possibility of a peaceful resolution was virtually banned from
discussion. When George Bush thundered that _There Will Be No
Negotiations,_ a hundred editorials and news reports would laud
him for ``going the last mile for peace'' in ``extraordinary
efforts at diplomacy.'' Democratic forces in Iraq, with their
unwanted message, were also successfully barred. Popular
opposition to the war in most of the world was sporadically
reported, but primarily as a problem: Can the friendly
dictatorships control their populations while we gain our ends by
force? Even among those who did not exalt the ``martial values,''
the totalitarian commitments were scarcely below the surface.

In the US, dissident voices were effectively excluded from the
mainstream, as is the norm; and while the media elsewhere were
far more open, support for the war on the part of the educated
classes in the industrial democracies was so overwhelming that
the effects were slight. Strikingly, no concern was voiced over
the glaringly obvious fact that _no official reason was ever
offered for going to war_---no reason, that is, that could not be
instantly refuted by a literate teenager. That is the very
hallmark of a totalitarian political culture.

The matter merits a closer look. After various failed efforts,
one single official reason was offered for war, repeated in a
litany by George Bush and his acolytes: ``There can be no reward
for aggression. Nor will there by any negotiation. Principle
cannot be compromised.'' {note: AP, Jan. 14, 1991; George Bush's
letter to Saddam Hussein, _NYT_, Jan. 13, 1991.} Accordingly,
there can be no diplomacy, merely an ultimatum---capitulate or
die---followed by the quick resort to violence.

Presented with this argument, the educated classes did not
collapse in ridicule, but solemnly intoned the Party Line,
expressing their awe and admiration for Bush's high principles.
One would have to search far for the reaction that would be
immediate on the part of any rational and minimally informed
person: True, principle cannot be compromised, but since George
Bush is a leading supporter of aggression and always has been,
the principle invoked is not his, or his government's, or that of
any other state. And it follows that no reason has been given at
all for rejecting negotiations in favor of violence.

The specific words just quoted happen to be Bush's response to
the Iraqi withdrawal proposal released by US officials on January
2. But the stance was maintained throughout. Intellectuals asked
no questions, finding nothing to challenge in the farcical
official pronouncements and the doctrine clearly implied: the
world is to to be ruled by force.

The conclusion is brilliantly clear: no official reason was
offered for the war, and the educated classes suppressed the fact
with near unanimity. We must look elsewhere to find the reasons
for the war---a question of great significance for any citizen,
though not for the guardians of doctrinal purity, who must bar
this quest.

The methods adopted were enlightening. Those who had the
indecency to demolish the official justifications were accused of
demanding ``moral purity,'' opposing any response to Iraq's
aggression by states that had been ``inconsistent'' in the past
(in fact, they had consistently pursued their own interests,
generally supporting aggression for this reason). Returning to
the realm of rational discourse, these miscreants were pointing
out that war without stated reason is a sign of totalitarian
values, and citizens who reject these values will have to turn
elsewhere to discover the real reasons. In the mainstream, they
would find very little.

Outside official circles, the standard justification for war was
that sanctions would not work and that it was unfair to allow the
Kuwaitis to suffer on. Some held that debate over sanctions was a
standoff, perhaps irresoluble. By the same logic, the bombing of
numerous other countries can at once be justified by mere
assertion that nothing else will put an end to aggression,
annexation, and human rights abuses. Transparently, all of this
is nonsense, even if we ignore the evidence that sanctions had
already worked. Indisputably, the burden of proof lies on those
who call for the use of force, a heavy burden that was never met,
or even seriously faced.

One could not seriously argue that the suffering of the victims
in this case was more extreme than in numerous others for which
force has never been proposed. Nor is there any merit to the
argument that this case was different because of the annexation:
putting aside the US-UK response to other cases of annexation, no
less horrifying, the drive towards war continued unchanged after
Iraqi withdrawal offers that the US did not risk pursuing. The
claim that a peaceful settlement would not have destroyed
Saddam's warmaking capacity is no more persuasive. Apart from the
broader consequences of such an argument if taken seriously, the
obvious procedure for eliminating this capacity would have been
to explore the possibilities for regional disarmament and
security arrangements (proposed by Iraq, rejected by the US, well
before the invasion of Kuwait); and after his negotiated
withdrawal from Kuwait, to refrain from providing Saddam with
lavish high technology assistance for his warmaking capacity,
surely a possibility if the West could overcome its greed in this
sole instance. Other arguments are equally weighty.

In one of the more serious efforts to address some of the
questions, Timothy Garton Ash asserts in the _New York Review_
that while sanctions were possible in dealing with South Africa
or Communist East Europe, Saddam Hussein is different. That
concludes the argument. We now understand why it was proper to
pursue ``quiet diplomacy'' while our South African friends caused
over $60 billion in damage and 1.5 million deaths from 1980 to
1988 in the neighboring states---putting aside South Africa and
Namibia, and the preceding decade. They are basically decent
folk, like us and the Communist tyrants. Why? No answer is
offered here, but a partial one is suggested by Nelson Mandela,
who condemns the hypocrisy and prejudice of the highly selective
response to the crimes of the ``brown-skinned'' Iraqis. The same
thought comes to mind when the _New York Times_ assures us that
``the world'' is united against Saddam Hussein, the most hated
man in ``the world''---the world, that is, minus its darker
faces. {note: Ash, ``The Gulf in Europe,'' _NYRB_, March 7, 1991.
``Inter-Agency Task Force, Africa Recovery Program/Economic
Commission, _South African Destabilization: the Economic Cost of
Frontline Resistance to Apartheid_, NY, UN, 1989, 13, cited by
Merle Bowen, _Fletcher Forum_, Winter 1991. Mandela, AP, _NYT_,
Nov. 8, 1990. Editorials, _NYT_, Feb. 23, 27, 1991.}

The emergence of Western racism with such stunning clarity is
worth notice. It is an understandable consequence of the end of
the Cold War. For 70 years, it has been possible to disguise
traditional practices as ``defense against the Soviets,''
generally a sham, now lost as a pretext. We return, then, to
earlier days when the New York press explained that ``we must go
on slaughtering the natives in English fashion, and taking what
muddy glory lies in the wholesale killing til they have learned
to respect our arms. The more difficult task of getting them to
respect our intentions will follow.'' {note: See _Turning the
Tide_, 162.} In fact, deprived of the benefits of our form of
civilization, they understood our intentions well enough, and
still do.


The Contours of the New World Order

Despite basic continuities, there have been changes in the
international system. It is by now a truism that the world is
economically ``tripolar.'' The collapse of Soviet tyranny adds
new dimensions: much of Eastern Europe can be restored to its
former status as a quasi-colonial dependency of the West; new
pretexts are needed for intervention; there is no longer any
deterrent to the use of military force by the United States. But
though it has a virtual monopoly of military force, the US no
longer has the economic base to impose ``order and stability''
(meaning, a proper respect for the masters) in the Third World.
Therefore, as the business press has been advising, the US must
become a ``mercenary state,'' paid for its services by German-led
continental Europe and Japan, and relying on the flow of capital
from Gulf oil production, which it will dominate. The same is
true of its British lieutenant, also facing serious domestic
problems, but with a ``sturdy national character'' and proper
tradition. John Keegan, a prominent British military historian
and defense commentator for the right-wing _Daily Telegraph_,
outlines the common view succinctly: ``The British are used to
over 200 years of expeditionary forces going overseas, fighting
the Africans, the Chinese, the Indians, the Arabs. It's just
something the British take for granted,'' and the war in the Gulf
``rings very, very familiar imperial bells with the British.''
{note: Richard Hudson, _WSJ_, Feb. 5, 1991.}

The financial editor of the conservative _Chicago Tribune_ has
been stressing these themes with particular clarity. We must be
``willing mercenaries,'' paid for our ample services by our
rivals, using our ``monopoly power'' in the ``security market''
to maintain ``our control over the world economic system.'' We
should run a global protection racket, he advises, selling
``protection'' to other wealthy powers who will pay us a ``war
premium.'' This is Chicago, where the words are understood: if
someone bothers you, you call on the mafia to break their bones.
And if you fall behind in your premium, your health may suffer
too. {note: William Neikirk, _Chicago Tribune_, Sept. 9, 1990;
Jan. 27, 1991.}

The use of force to control the Third World is only a last
resort. Economic weapons remain a more efficient instrument.
Some of the newer mechanisms can be seen in the Uruguay Round
negotiations, now in disarray because of conflicts among the
rich, but sure to be revived in one or another form. Western
powers call for liberalization when that is in their interest;
and for enhanced protection of domestic economic actors, when
_that_ is in their interest. The major concern of the US in the
GATT negotiations was not agricultural policy, as much of the
coverage suggested, but rather the ``new themes,'' as they are
called: guarantees for ``intellectual property rights'' (ranging
from pop culture to software and patents), removal of constraints
on services and investment, and so on; a mixture of
liberalization and protectionism, determined by the interests of
the powerful. The effect of these measures would be to restrict
Third World governments to a police function to control their
working classes and superfluous population, while transnational
corporations gain free access to their resources and monopolize
new technology and global investment and production---and of
course are granted the central planning, allocation, production
and distribution functions denied to governments, which suffer
from the defect that they might fall under the baleful influence
of the rabble. These facts have not been lost on Third World
commentators, who have been protesting eloquently and mightily.
But their voices are as welcome here as those of Iraqi democrats.
{note: See particularly Chakravarthi Raghavan, _Recolonization_;
Martin Khor Kok Peng, _The Uruguay Round and Third World
Sovereignty_ (Third World Network, Malaysia, 1990).}

The US will try to establish more firmly its own regional
dominance, exploiting ``free trade'' to secure super-cheap labor
in Mexico, the Caribbean, and other dependencies, while Canadian
resources are taken over and its industry and cultural
independence decline. The press failed to give Bush sufficient
credit for his achievements in his Fall 1990 tour of Latin
America. Mexico was induced to allow US oil companies new access
to its resources, a long-sought policy goal. US companies will
now be able ``to help Mexico's nationalized oil company,'' as the
_Wall Street Journal_ prefers to construe the matter. Our fondest
wish for many years has been to help our little brown brothers,
and at last the ignorant peons will allow us to cater to their
needs. {note: _WSJ_, Nov. 28, 1990.}

The population at home must also be controlled, and diverted from
the growing domestic crises. The basic means have already been
described, including periodic campaigns against ``much weaker
enemies'': Cuba is a likely next target, perhaps in time for the
next election, if illegal economic warfare, terrorism,
intimidation of others to bar normal relations, and other devices
can set the stage.

In the Middle East, the US is now well placed to impose its will.
The traditional strategic conception has been that the US and its
British lieutenant should maintain effective power but indirect
control along lines explained by Lord Curzon in the days of
British dominance: it is preferable to rule behind an ``Arab
facade,'' with ``absorption'' of the quasi-colony ``veiled by
constitutional fictions as a protectorate, a sphere of influence,
a buffer State, and so on.'' But we must never run the risk of
``losing control,'' as John Foster Dulles and many others warned.
{note: William Stivers, _Supremacy and Oil_ (Cornell, 1982), 28,
34; _America's Confrontation with Revolutionary Change in the
Middle East_ (St. Martin's, 1986), 20f.} The local managers of
Gulf oil riches are to be protected by regional enforcers,
preferably non-Arab: Turkey, Israel, Pakistan and Iran, which
perhaps can be restored to the fold. Bloody tyrants of the Hafez
el-Assad variety, with his minority-based dictatorship, may be
allowed to take part, possibly even Egypt if it can be purchased,
though the regime is not brutal enough to be reliable. US and
British force remain on call if needed, and can now be freely
deployed, with the Soviet deterrent gone. The US will seek some
agreement among its clients, and might even consider an
international conference, if it can be properly managed. As Henry
Kissinger insisted, Europe and Japan must be kept out of the
diplomacy, but the USSR might be tolerated on the assumption that
it will be obedient in its current straits.

As for the Palestinians, the US can now move towards the solution
outlined by James Baker well before the Gulf crisis: Jordan is
the Palestinian state; the occupied territories are to be ruled
in accord with the basic guidelines of the Israeli government,
with Palestinians permitted to collect local taxes in Nablus;
their political representatives will be chosen for them, with the
PLO excluded; and ``free elections'' will be held under Israeli
military control with the Palestinian leadership in prison camps.
The reality will be masked behind such slogans as ``territorial
compromise'' and ``land for peace,'' interpreted in accord with
traditional Labor Party rejectionism, always favored by the US
over the Likud variant: Israel will take what it wants in the
territories, leaving the surplus population stateless or under
Jordanian administration. New excuses will be devised for old
policies, which will be hailed as generous and forthcoming.

Economic development for the Palestinians had always been barred,
while their land and water were taken. The Labor Party leadership
advised that the Palestinians should be given the message: ``You
shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes, may leave''
(Moshe Dayan, more pro-Palestinian than most). {note: Yossi
Beilin, _Mehiro shel Ihud_ (Revivim, 1985), reviewing internal
cabinet records.} The advice was followed, though the grim story
was largely suppressed here. Palestinians had been permitted to
serve the Israeli economy as virtual slave labor, but this
interlude is passing. The recent curfew administered a further
blow to the Palestinian economy. The victors can now proceed with
the policy articulated in February 1989 by Yitzhak Rabin of the
Labor Party, then Defense Secretary, when he informed Peace Now
leaders of his satisfaction with the US-PLO dialogue, meaningless
discussions to divert attention while Israel suppresses the
Intifada by force. The Palestinians ``will be broken,'' Rabin
promised, reiterating the prediction of Israeli Arabists 40 years
earlier: the Palestinians will ``be crushed,'' will die or ``turn
into human dust and the waste of society, and join the most
impoverished classes in the Arab countries.'' Or they will leave,
while Russian Jews, now barred from the US by policies designed
to deny them a free choice, flock to an expanded Israel, leaving
the diplomatic issues moot, as the Baker-Shamir-Peres plan
envisaged. {note: For references, see my article in _Z magazine_,
Jan. 1990, and _Deterring Democracy_.}

These are some of the contours of the planned New World Order
that come into view as the beguiling rhetoric is lifted away.