By GARY LEUPP, 12/26/06, Originally published on CounterPunch.org
The reaction to the Iraq Study Group
(ISG) report suggests that a showdown is shaping up within the
U.S. power elite between two different sets of cowboys. On the
one hand, there are the George W. Bush cowboys who want to expand
their conquests from Afghanistan and Iraq into Syria and Iran.
It’s a natural extension of the Manifest Destiny doctrine that
underpinned the conquest of the “Wild West,” the annexation
of almost half of Mexico’s territory in the 1840s, the “opening
of Japan” resulting from gunboat diplomacy in 1854, the
Marines’ overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, and the
establishment of a colonial empire from the Pacific to the Caribbean
following the Spanish-American War. Bush and Dick Cheney saw
nothing wrong with the Vietnam War (except the possibility that
they might be personally involved, since they had other priorities
at the time). They really liked the first Gulf War, but were
disappointed it didn’t conquer more. Thus Dubya told Mickey Herskowitz,
a Houston Chronicle sports columnist helping ghostwrite
his autobiography in 1999 that, “My father had all this
political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait
and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade [Iraq]—if I
had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it.”
On the other hand, there are
the Jim Baker-type cowboys who question the feasibility of further
conquest at this time, and want to lasso in their wayward buckaroo
buddies and rowdy youngins before they get everybody into deeper
horseshit in them foreign parts. The Baker cowboys are saying
talk to the natives at least, smoke the peace-pipe if
necessary, then ride off into the sunset leaving a fort or two
behind proudly waving the tattered flag to help save face.
Dubya’s cowpokes say, “No,
we don’t talk to the natives in those rich lands, overflowing
with milk and honey and petroleum products, that God made for
us.” Like a spirit-filled country parson, Bush declared
(to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in 2003), “God told
me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed
me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined
to solve the problem in the Middle East.” Solving that problem
of course means making all of Southwest Asia U.S. and Israel-friendly.
(Here the concept of the “promised
land,” a central theme in the Old Testament which envisions
an Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates and deeply affects modern
Zionism, nicely dovetails with the entitlement notion so long
operative in American psychology and mythology. The Pilgrims
felt God gave them the heathen Indians’ land, and even the most
progressive American artists, such as Woody Guthrie —“this
land is your land, this land is my land”—and Bruce Springsteen—“”I
believe in a promised land”—draw on that powerful, ultimately
religious concept. The twin myths of divine favor to the biblical
Israelites and to the European settlers of America can easily
enough in the whiskey-impacted cowboy mind produce the delusion
that God wants a Yankee war on any oil-rich Muslim country. Especially
after 9-11 because “they” attacked “us.”)
The Bush gang, backed up by
an Israeli posse, says the Syrian and Iranian leaders are evil.
Dick Cheney, real bold behind his 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun,
has declared, “We don’t negotiate with evil. We defeat it.”
(Especially in a canned-hunt situation.)
But the Baker cowboys respond, “Well sure they’re evil.
They’re murderous heathens. But we have to at least parlay
with some of them, if it keeps us god-fearing folks from getting
massacred. That’s just common sense.”
The ISG doesn’t question the
decision to invade Iraq, problematize its morality or acknowledge
the humanity of the Iraqi resistance braves in the face of the
Great White Father’s assault. It doesn’t say, “Pardners,
you done wrong, and gotta be held to account.” They don’t
want to deal with any of that history; they just want
to move on. (Just like Rumsfeld deputy Paul Wolfowitz, who having
disseminated so much disinformation to get Americans to back
the assault on Iraq, dismissed the embarrassing collapse of the
claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction as a merely “historical
issue” just a few months after the crime had occurred.)
These cowboys aren’t interested in going back and dredging up
all that dirt, or questioning the need for the cavalry to stay
in Iraq for ages to come. They just want the troops out of rifle
range, as much as possible, so that the commonfolk back home
don’t start forming a lynch mob marching on DC. That means asking
the Syrians and Iranians to help out.
* * * * *
That recommendation—that the U.S. in the context
of a regional conference sit down and talk with those it wants
to destroy—was the one most immediately and emphatically rejected
by Bush, Condoleezza Rice and other top officials. That rejection
is a strong indication that Dick Cheney continues to steer foreign
policy assisted by neocon lieutenants such as Elliott Abrams
and David Wurmser. From his undisclosed location, undaunted by
abysmal popularity ratings, Cheney seems to keep Condi in line
and on board the program, and during his weekly lunches with
Bush encourages the cowboy president’s messianic vision of a
Greater Middle East free of terrorism, dotted with U.S. bases
“protecting” the oil fields, friendly with Israel,
and affording infinite profit opportunities to U.S. corporations.
Notice how the neocons out
of power (including Richard Perle and David Frum) who have recently
criticized Bush for his failure to properly subdue Iraq have
spared Cheney, no doubt because they see him as their real remaining
ally and rock of support in the administration. He may not share
their emotional connection to Israel, so central to the neocon
movement, but like them he is committed to using U.S. force to
refashion the Middle East. He thinks in terms of securing U.S.
geopolitical advantage vis-à-vis other imperialist powers
and rising capitalist China as the U.S. economy relatively declines.
(The U.S. GDP this year for the first time lags behind that of
the European Union.) His interests dovetail with those of the
neocons, which is why he seeded the administration with them
when he constructed Bush’s cabinet after the 2000 election.
As Robert Dreyfuss pointed
out in the American Prospect in May 2006, Cheney sees
China as the biggest long-term threat to U.S. interests in the
Middle East, if not the world: “For the Cheneyites, Middle
East policy is tied to China, and in their view China’s appetite
for oil makes it a strategic competitor to the United States
in the Persian Gulf region. Thus, they regard the control of
the Gulf as a zero-sum game. They believe that the invasion of
Afghanistan, the U.S. military buildup in Central Asia, the invasion
of Iraq, and the expansion of the U.S. military presence in the
Gulf states have combined to check China’s role in the region.
In particular, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the creation
of a pro-American regime in Baghdad was, for at least 10 years
before 2003, a top neoconservative goal, one that united both
the anti-China crowd and far-right supporters of Israel’s Likud.
Both saw the invasion of Iraq as the prelude to an assault on
neighboring Iran.”
The administration still adheres
to its New American Century game plan of toppling the Syrian
and Iranian regimes, despite the Iraqi disaster. The “Office
of Iranian Affairs,” a successor of the “Office of
Special Plans” that prepared the disinformation campaign
leading into the Iraq War, occupies the same Pentagon offices
as it predecessor and is headed by the same Machiavellian psy-ops
specialist Abram Shulsky. John Dean, among others, predicts
an assault on Iran next year, following the predictable failure
of the UN Security Council to satisfy U.S. demands for harsh
sanctions on Iran. A watered-down UNSC resolution will be cited
as an international justification for preemptive action, which
will blow away the Iranian leadership and produce some sort of
friendly Iranian regime. Meanwhile Syria, blamed for political
assassinations in Lebanon and support for “terrorist”
Hizbollah will also feel Bush’s terrible swift sword.
That’s all impossible,
many rational people say. These may include members of the Iraq
Study Group, but their report—a shot across the bow of the
Office of Iranian Affairs—indicates, it seems to me, some genuine
alarm that the president is out to do the impossible, with more
disastrous results. Surely they, and administration officials
as well, are worried that an Iran attack could produce some embarrassments,
like the resignations of high-level military officers. It could
produce some seriously painful measures by China, which owns
much of the U.S. national debt, and Russia. It would certainly
intensify the already soaring anti-U.S. feelings felt throughout
the world, and maybe even jeopardize the emerging alliance with
aspiring superpower India. But those who brought us the Iraq
War have enormous confidence in themselves and the power of their
heroic will, which they think can create a whole new reality
for generations to come. They feel that more aggression in Southwest
Asia—even if it sows chaos, draws Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
into the Iraqi conflict, and generates another war between Israel
and Hizbollah and its Lebanese allies—is necessary soon,
under the current sympathetic president, lest the bold project
be lost entirely.
Some suggest that the expansion
of the war is inevitable given the internal logic of capitalist
imperialism. But clearly many thoroughly invested in the system
find the neocons nuts. They want to head them off before they
with some of their Christian fundamentalist allies in tow produce
an apocalyptic scenario. Baker, Hamilton & Co. seem to doubt
that the system’s best served at this point by attacking Syria
and Iran, and are deliberating provoking discussion about the
wisdom of the near-future, planned stages of the neocon project.
If that’s happening at the level of the ruling class, isn’t there
an even greater basis for the antiwar movement to agitate against
an expanding war? The greatest deterrent of all would be Cheney’s
expectation that an assault on Iran might lead a politically
informed American people to pour out into the streets as the
attack gets underway, denouncing it, informing the world that
we reject it and those who planned it and demand regime change
right here.
* *
I’ve been accused of spinning
a “conspiracy theory” because I connect the dots between
Cheney, the neocons, the Office of Special Plans and the campaign
to make war on Iraq. I’m really not a conspiracy theorist, but
if I were one, I’d have to bring up the issue of Mary Cheney’s
pregnancy. Just bear with me.
On October 26, 1965, the Selective
Service listed constraints on drafting childless married men.
Cheney was then classified as 1-A , “available for service.”
Cheney, who had been married to his wife Lynn for fourteen months,
may have been influenced by this policy change to think seriously
about parenthood. Daughter Elizabeth was born nine months later
on July 28, 1966. Cheney applied for and received a 3-A classification,
his fifth and final draft deferment (following marriage and education
deferments) during the Vietnam era when, as he has stated, he
“had other priorities” than going to war.
Elizabeth, married to General
Counsel of the Department of Homeland Security Philip Perry,
is now Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs
and sitting directly atop the spooky “Office of Iranian
Affairs” inhabiting the Office of Special Plans’ former
offices in the Pentagon and headed by Machiavellian disinformation
artist Abram Shulsky. (Such an irony that a child born out of
a man’s earnest desire to avoid the battlefield should be assigned
to help him later in life rain down terror upon Iran.) Lynn’s
a powerful figure too, having spent seven years on Lockheed Corporation’s
board of directors, and serving as a “fellow” at the
American Enterprise Institutute for Public Policy Research.
She founded the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative
group that monitors American academia and in November 2001 issued
a report entitled Defending Civilization: How Our Universities
Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It. The whole
family is nasty, and Mary’s being a lesbian and pregnant doesn’t
get her off the hook. She was public relations manager for Coors
Brewing Co., for god’s sakes. She was director of vice-presidential
operations in the 2004 campaign. She’s an AOL executive. But
because she’s a lesbian, and the Christian right hates lesbianism
(the sin if not the sinner), she might receive sympathy from
Americans who are liberal (or rational) on gay-lesbian issues.
And who are also, antiwar and anti-Bush/Cheney.
So maybe Vice President Cheney,
who’s gotten women pregnant before to save his skin, might not
have said to Mary, some months back, “Why don’t you and
your life partner Heather have a baby?” It makes the whole
family seem so much more human, and complicated. So many have
the stereotype of Cheney as the man who opposed the release of
Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa because he considered
him a “terrorist” working with communists. A man who,
while thoroughly callous when it comes to the well-being of South
African blacks or Iraqi civilians, is filled with self-righteousness,
telling the world “We don’t negotiate with evil, we defeat
it.” A man dripping with corporate greed, ruthlessly pursuing
his goals, repeating bald-faced lies every step of the way. A
man actively planning an assault on Iran as we speak. But a man
who supports and defends his gay daughter, expressing his own
family values. Couldn’t such a man, whose popularity is at rock
bottom, benefit should it be known that in this Christmas season
his daughter Mary is pregnant, and that he rejoices?
Cheney publicly disagrees with
the president’s position on gay marriage. Can you think of any
other issue on which the two men publicly differ? And this
isn’t just any issue; it might have been the one that won the
2004 election, skillfully managed by Karl Rove. So it was significant
that Bush and Cheney differed on it. Highly significant too that
the president just told the press: “I think Mary is going
to be a loving soul to her child. And I’m happy for her.”
That was a little risky for Bush. His hard-right Christian fundamentalist
base, reeling from the revelation that yet another prominent
Colorado preacher man has had a history of man-to-man sin, wasn’t
real pleased with it. It put Bush on record as saying, I’m not
that homophobic. I’ll bet he did it out of deference to
Cheney, the man still calling the shots, and Cheney’s family
situation.
I don’t think it’s coincidental
that the report of the “virgin birth” of the Komodo
dragon in the British zoo comes out just as Mary’s pregnancy
hits the front pages. The Komodo dragon fertilized her own eggs;
some lizards have evolved in such a way that they can do that.
A female lizard can produce young without a male (and still be
a good mother). A zoologist on NPR stated that by his calculations
the earliest likely date for the lizards to hatch is Dec. 25.
Mary Cheney’s special pregnancy.
Virgin Mary’s giving birth at Christmas. A lizard virgin birth
on that same day. How likely is all this a coincidence?
Ok. I confess I’ve just playing with your mind. I don’t believe
Cheney encouraged Mary to get pregnant, or planted the Komodo
dragon story in the press, or wants to steer the administration
away from its Christian right base towards more gay-friendly
stances in order to acquire a reputation for fairness and reason
as it plans to attack Iran. I just believe that Cheney still
shapes the cowboy mind in Washington, his violent amoral proclivities
touched by ordinary family sentiments, to which he’s asked the
homophobic Commander-in-Chief to please attach himself. Bush’s
public happiness for Mary might be simultaneously a testimony
that he is happy to leave the big decisions for his administration,
as before, with Uncle Dick.
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University,
and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author
of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan;
Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan;
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s merciless chronicle
of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial
Crusades.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu