December 12, 2006
The
Iraq Study Group Study Group (ISGSG), a shadowy organization
of indeterminate number (to wit, this author and those who frequent this
web site) was created to reflect and comment on the better known
Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group (ISG). The ISGSG has now released its own
report. President Bush, upon reviewing an advance copy of the ISGSG's
white paper mumbled something to the effect that it was "very interesting"
before filing it in the same cylindrical file with the Baker-Hamilton
report.
Once stripped of its
tepid criticisms, the Baker-Hamilton ISG report looks like an attempt to
stuff the evil genie of Mr. Bush's policies back into the bottle of a more
subtle Bismarck-Metternich style of empire. Mr. Baker and his groupies
clearly are nostalgic for the day when his class of people could achieve
dominance while keeping up the pretenses of goodness and democracy for
public consumption. They recoil from the blunt, naked aggression of the
Bush Administration which Mr. Baker et. al. equate with the boorish
behavior of crass amateurs and thugs. Baker et. al. prefer the more
nuanced, more subtle exercise of power, like the true aristocrats they
are, who keep their white gloves clean while the blood is spilled
off-stage and out-of-sight by covert military operations.
Notwithstanding its
atavistic longing for a less messy empire, the Baker ISG should be
congratulated for concluding (as so many of us hoi polloi concluded
several years ago) that the Bush Administration foreign policy has been an
unmitigated disaster. In fact, Mr. Bush has done such a swell job
enervating the American military, undermining the dollar as the world's
reserve currency, eviscerating the economy and totally demythologizing the
mythology of America that one might conclude that W is the last century
Kremlin's ultimate deep mole. And since we have mentioned the Kremlin, the
Baker "old guard" undoubtedly sees the specter of déjà vu haunting
an arrogant BushAmerica that is emulating the old Soviet empire's meltdown
while permitting South America to escape from neoliberalism's orbit.
Although we of the
The Iraq Study Group Study Group ultimately found little that was novel or
insightful in the ISG report, we congratulate Mr. Baker and his colleagues
for exposing definite fault lines within the international ruling cabal.
For days after the release of the Baker-Hamilton report it was very
pleasing to read conservative political pundits dissing Mr. Baker's ISG as
"muddled", irresponsible and unbalanced. Indeed, one such conservative
columnist castigated the public disclosure of the Baker-Hamilton
report that, in the esteemed pundit's opinion, should have been kept
absolutely secret and accessible only to the inner circle of policymakers
-- quite consistent, of course, with aristocratic notions of
"democracy" and government transparency.
Dissension within
the ownership class?
We take it as a
given that the so-called "left" is not monolithic. Although most of its
constituents generally want "change", the quality, degree, nature and
means of attaining that change leads to disorientation (such as backing
the Democratic Party of the Status Quo as the perpetual lesser of two
evils). The left's inherent disunity, caused as much by a lack of
historical perspective, the absence of a unifying theoretical vision, as
well as by government infiltration, co-option and misdirection, is often
mischaracterized by eternal optimists as a political "strength". Although
non-hierarchical, leaderless, multi-strategy movements can be profound and
resilient, political discordance is a weakness. The peace
movement's inefficacy proves itself in a century-long succession of failed
efforts to stop the beginning of one new war after another. It is the
hubris of well-meaning American peace activists (most of whose hearts are
in the right place even though their vision might be myopic) that they do
not appreciate how an endless succession of invisible, economically
insignificant, officially-sanctioned "weekend" demonstrations along with
endless letters to tone deaf editors, interminable law suits creeping
ineffectively toward a conservative Supreme Court, and email petitions to
privately owned legislators are not the primary engines of
fundamental social or political change.
Alas, America's disgust with the Iraq War (as manifest in the November
electoral unsaddling of the Republican House and Senate) was based less on
the immorality of the enterprise and more on the ineptitude of
its execution. Americans, like the rest of the world, hate losers,
and, as experience shows, people quickly sour on athletes, sports teams,
coaches, presidents, congressmen and political parties when they fail to
deliver the goods.
The terrible truth is that but for the Iraqi people's determination and
willingness to bleed to free their land of occupation (much like the
determination showed by the Vietnamese people during their bloody war of
independence), the peace movement would have gained no traction in the
United States; for it is the dead and horribly maimed American soldiers,
wreaked upon us by the Iraqis themselves, who gave our sickened nation and
the peace movement the impetus to tell Congress to change, not stay the
course. It was not the surfeit of lies or torture that undid the
Republican Congress; rather, America's citizens would have readily feted
their petroleum conquering troops, dishonesty, torture and
unconstitutionality notwithstanding, had only they been able to grab the
prize as easily and as cheaply as we have ripped off everyone else in
Africa, Asia, North and South America in the past. The salutary result of
the November 2006 election, regardless of motivation, was that the
electorate registered a strong disgust for the status quo, which disgust
is also shared by the Baker-Hamiltons of the right-wing world, ergo their
"report" to the President.
However, fortunately
for what is "left" of us, the Baker-Hamilton ISG demonstrated that the
"right" is also no more monolithic than the "left." Like the
"left," the "right" also suffers from a lack of historical perspective and
the absence of a unifying theoretical vision (other than the capitalist
mantra of screw everyone else before they screw you).
The ownership class
worldwide rarely concerns itself with such trivial notions as
"nationality", and those who have power and wealth -- regardless of race,
religion, citizenship or ethnicity -- easily identify, support and
associate with one another no matter what passports they bear.
Nevertheless, the center of gravity of that ownership class lies
indubitably in the United States, if for no other reason than here lies
control over that final arbiter of power: overwhelming military might and
nuclear weapons.
Thus, political and
economic control of the United States is essential to the maintenance of a
certain world order, and therein lie the fissure lines highlighted by Mr.
Baker's ISG. To maintain that control in a world increasingly destabilized
by dramatic and impending climate change and diminishing resources of all
kinds (including, and especially, hydrocarbon fuel stocks), the ownership
class in America joined a marriage of convenience, a ménage a trois,
between the Old Power represented by Mr. Baker, the so-called
Neoconservatives and the Christian Right. Luckily for us all, this is a
loveless marriage and they are likely to eat their own children.
Who is the Iraq Study Group? Its chair is James Baker, former
Secretary of State under Bush I, Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald
Reagan, partner at the Baker Botts law firm (attorneys for the government
of Saudi Arabia), past campaign chair for Presidents Ford, Reagan and
Bush, and senior counsel to the Carlyle Group. Mr. Baker is the finest
representative of that class of skilled "enablers" who facilitate the aims
of those who own nearly everything.
The co-chair of the ISG, Lee Hamilton, is a retired senior
congressman who has presided over many interesting organizations including
the 911 Commission, the CIA and Homeland Security Advisory Council, and
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. While serving on the
committee investigating the unlawful Iran-Contra Weapons scandal, Mr.
Hamilton chose not to seek impeachment for either Ronald Reagan or George
H. Bush. Mr. Hamilton is a true conciliator who has no qualms sacrificing
truth on the alter of consensus building.
Other members of the
ISG include:
Lawrence
Eagleburger,
assistant to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger during the Nixon
presidency, a careerist in the "State Department", and someone who is
noted for rather controversial stints as ambassador to the former
Yugoslavia and the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance
Claims;
Edwin Meese,
Yale University graduate, past Attorney General under Ronald Reagan, murky
involvement with the Iran-Contra affair, Fellow of the Heritage and the
Discovery Institute (the folks who advocate for "intelligent design" as an
alternative theory of evolution);
Vernon Jordan,
friend of both John Kerry and Bill Clinton, a past president of the
National Urban League, noteworthy as a director of the investment bank
Lazard Freres, who either sits, or has sat on, the board of directors of
American Express, Dow Jones, Revlon, Corning, RJR Nabisco, and Xerox.
William Perry,
a high tech specialist with a PhD. D. in mathematics; Bill Clinton's
Secretary of Defense; currently serves on the Board of Directors of Los
Alamos National Laboratory and co-directs the "Preventive Defense Project
at the Stanford University Center for International Security and
Cooperation";
Alan Simpson, former U.S. Senator from Wyoming and Senate
Republican Whip for ten years; friend of Bush I and fellow Wyoming
political prodigy, Dick Cheney.
Charles Robb,
former conservative Democratic Governor and Senator of Virginia, past
chair of the Iraq Intelligence Commission, co-founder of the Democratic
Leadership Council (DLC), married Lynda Bird Johnson, successfully dodged
at least one sex and one drug related scandal, voted (as a Democrat) for
the Supreme Court appointment of Clarence Thomas and for Newt Gingrich's
Contract for America, past member of the Trilateral Commission and current
member of George Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Leon Panetta,
initially a moderate Republican who served in the Nixon Administration,
Panetta later became counsel for the NAACP; then, as a Democrat, was
elected for nine terms as U.S. Congressman; Bill Clinton's Director of OMB
and, later, Chief of Staff; Director and Founder of the Panetta Institute
for Public Policy.
Sandra Day
O'Connor,
first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court (appointed by Ronald Reagan), wanted
to retire during a Republican administration that could appoint her
successor and was reportedly upset in 2000 when she heard, prior to the
Supreme Court's intercession halting the Florida recount, that Al Gore had
been elected instead of George Bush.
Two other people had
been appointed to the ISG, but they resigned before it issued its report:
the cantankerous presidential aspirant and former NYC Mayor Rudi
Giuliani, of 911 era fame/notoriety and self-idolizing Super Hero
Crime Fighter; and Robert Gates, former Director of the CIA under
Bush I and just appointed as Bush II's Secretary of Defense.
Mr. Baker's Study
Group is, indeed, "blue ribbon" and "blue blood." This is a very elite
little circle that tends to associate with or serve the interests of power
and money. The core of the ISG (that is, its Republican majority) have
rubbed shoulders with or served clients like Saudi princes, Carlyle Group
types, the European old guard, investment moguls, oil men, men of high
finance, the cream of Club Society. The other members of the ISG
are compromisers concerned more with preserving institutions than ideals.
The core ISG are pragmatists; they do not care what nation beats up on
which other nation, who lives or dies, so long as, at the end of the day,
they, the institutions they represent, or their clients have benefited and
come out ahead. They currently work, or have worked in the past, with the
new royals, the 21st Century Bourbons and Hapsburgs, the robber barons of
our time.
That is why the
Baker ISG plan does not contemplate completely withdrawing American
soldiers, but drawing them down slightly and consolidating the remainder
in supposedly impregnable fortresses from which military power over the
entire region can be exercised. Consistent with the ISG members' own
government experiences from the last decades of the 20th Century, the
Baker plan does not rule out an El Salvador "solution" -- a bloody, U.S.
induced civil war that will cause Muslim to kill Muslim for decades, and
thus forestall the evolution of a strong Shi'a regime in Iraq -- the
nightmare of the House of Saud, the House of Mubarak, the House of
Jordan's King Abdullah, and of Bahrain, Kuwait, Pakistan, Algeria and all
other western supported autocracies.
The pragmatic, economic perspective of the Baker ISG is also manifest in
its emphasis on, once and for all, privatizing Iraq's petroleum reserves
and serving them up to the western oil cartel to sell and distribute as it
sees fit. In other words, the Baker ISG plan calls for seizing the
ultimate prize that has eluded the Bush Administration. Mr. Baker's
clients, the Saudis, also approve this plan because they, like the other
despotic clans propped up by the U.S. in that part of the world, will not
tolerate the creation of a new Shi'a competitor that could dwarf Saudi
Arabia's own oil production and world economic significance.
The Neoconservatives, by contrast, are clearly concerned with rearranging
the Middle East map, primarily as it benefits Israel. These people are not
as well heeled as is Mr. Baker's society. These are the folks whose
primary interest is the complete dismantling of "dangerous" states like
Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iran, the nations of the Saudi
peninsula and of North Africa having been already neutered. They do not
want to talk to Iran or Syria about anything, except total capitulation.
They wish the United States to remain engaged in literal confrontation
with Arabs and Muslims everywhere because they want Americans to share
with Israel a "comradeship of enmity" against a "hostile" Middle East,
i.e., the enemy of my enemies is my friend. Although the
Neoconservatives, too, lay claim to Iraqi oil, their primary objective is
security for Greater Israel, no matter what the cost to anyone else. The
Neoconservatives consider a strong Israel as essential to the projection
of American power in the Middle East, and a perpetual confrontation of
America with the Muslim world as essential to preserving a strong Israel.
If anything, the message of the November election to the Neoconservatives
is that their agenda is in jeopardy because the Baker brand of geopolitics
shares interests with the Saudis and with other regional Arab autocrats.
Mr. Baker and his clients care less for Greater Israel than they do for
the maintenance of their own clans' dominance and power. Several
Neoconservatives have been shown the exit door during the preceding year,
which probably adds a sense of urgency to their mission, as expressed by
the stridency of their reactions to the ISG report.
The third member of
the political marriage of convenience is the so-called Christian Right.
Disdained as loonies by its two other political bedfellows, the Christian
Right is, indeed, crazy. The Christian Right has no blue blood at all and
it does not play well with either the Baker crowd or the Neoconservatives.
It literally seeks to establish a Christian theocracy, not only in the
United States but everywhere on earth. Its peculiarly twisted version of
muscular Christianity most closely resembles the Christianity of the
Crusades or of the Spanish Conquistadors... or, for that matter, radical
Islam. The ownership class and the Neoconservatives thinly camouflage
their disgust for the Christian Right, a group they believe is both
ignorant and insane, but which they must tolerate solely because (until
such time as electronic vote fraud can be perfected) they have (at least
until November 2006) provided the margin of votes necessary to solidify
the political power of the other two. The two camps of Israeli zealots --
ultraconservative Christians and Neoconservatives -- can barely conceal
their mutual loathing while each imagines ascending to its respective
gated paradise (national or divine) while treading on the body of the
other.
A fourth group, not formally sleeping with the oddly-married trio but
hovering all around them like a jealous lover, is the American security
establishment. This group encompasses both the Pentagon and the CIA, who
fancy themselves the ultimate protectors of American culture and
sovereignty (as defined by themselves, of course). Since its creation at
the beginning of the Cold War, the CIA has operated fast and loose with
government controls, as the peculiar circumstances of the Bay of Pigs, the
Kennedy assassinations and the Iran-Contra affair attest. The CIA
underwent a palace coup of sorts upon the inauguration of George W. Bush
as its senior analysts were booted out to be replaced with Administration
toadies. The "professionals" who remain in Langley, and those who were
tossed into the street, hold no fondness for the current Administration
and itch for the opportunity to take it down a notch.
The American
military brass, like professional military men in every country,
absolutely loathe civilians and their "weaknesses." They despise even more
the arm chair generals like Mr. Rumsfeld who have squandered military
assets in pursuit of a rearranged "Muddle East." The generals are every
bit as crazy as the Christian Right, but these folks are also armed. Their
hubris is symbolized in the U.S. by the Oliver North types, of Iran Contra
notoriety, and abroad by the unlamented dictator created by Henry
Kissinger, Augusto Pinochet of Chile. As a class, the Pentagon crowd has
been aching to avenge the loss of the Vietnam War and now they have
another military fiasco to redeem, as well. As people know who have spent
any time around career military officers, these folks are bitterly
convinced that "they" and "their soldiers" suffer, fight and die while the
"civilians" reap the profits. This combination of disgruntlement and
ultimate power is toxic, and even though the United States has not yet
experienced a military coup d'etat, it is the fear of an unbridled
military which caused many founders of the original United States to
inveigh against creating a standing, professional army.
All these factions
-- the Baker old guard, the Neoconservatives, the Christian Right and the
Security Establishment -- are now vying for control as the Bush
Administration sinks deeper into failure. Although some of their goals are
similar, nothing sharpens fratricidal tendencies like a lifeboat too small
to hold everyone aboard the sinking ship.
The ISG report,
tepid though it is, is a sign of the widening differences among these
groups. Already, the Christian conservatives chafe at the too few bones
they believe were thrown to them during the Bush years, and the Bushmen
mutter derisory comments about their religious bedmates' mental
equilibrium. The military is sullen and prone to leak embarrassing news.
The Neocons try to salvage their new map of the Muddle East in Israel's
image, while Baker & Co., perhaps pining for the simpler, despotic days of
Their Man, Saddam Hussein, try to rebuild Humpty Dumpty status quo
ante bellum.
We in the Iraq Study
Group Study Group profoundly regret that these squabbling lovers have
inflicted such horror and misery on the world. But if the ISG report
augers correctly, this squabbling could soon end up with a political
separation. We look forward to an ugly divorce.
Zbignew Zingh
can be reached at:
Zbig@ersarts.com. This article is CopyLeft, and free to distribute,
reprint, repost, sing at a recital, spray paint, scribble in a toilet
stall, etc. to your heart’s content, with proper author citation. Find out
more about Copyleft and read other great articles at:
www.ersarts.com. copyleft 2006.
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