Fred Block over at the Longview Institute has some interesting thoughts about why we went to war with Iraq that I think are equally applicable to why the GOP right wing and Neocons of all parties are rapidly assuming the language and position of Garrison America and the New World War Against Islamo-Fascists. All indications are that this will play a major roll in the 2006 positioning of the GOP candidates. Understanding why might help poke some holes in this latest propaganda scheme.
Block first reviews the triumvirate of “real reasons” we went into Iraq:
- Shock and Awe (the demonstration war);
- Oil (Similar to the Controlled Chaos theory that allows us to place and keep military power in the region to assure access to oil – especially as peak oil approaches.)
- Seeding Democracy (and Block here agrees with some of my previous musings that the PNAC goals make much more sense if you replace “democracy” with “free-market” economies – a term which itself makes more sense if pronounced “free-racket” economies.)
Find more about PNAC here:
http://www.oldamericancentury.com/pnac.htm
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
But he finds that even if these reasons singly or together could explain why we went into Iraq, they could not explain HOW we went into Iraq and how we operated the occupation of Iraq.
To find a rationale for both the invasion and the occupation, Block explores the domestic/political benefits created by the Iraq war for the GOP and specifically for the Sovereign Executive that appears to the goal of the Bush regime.
By serving its own interests in power accumulation, the economic interests of its global corporate wing and activating the wartime knee-jerk loyalty of the religious/social conservatives, under the Bush regime war has indeed become politics by other means.
Unfortunately, the synthesis of Clausewitz’s dialectical discussion of war remains the more complete and relevant description:
“War is neither “nothing but” an act of brute force nor “merely” a rational act of politics or policy. This synthesis lies in his “fascinating trinity” [wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit]: a dynamic, inherently unstable interaction of the forces of violent emotion, chance, and rational calculation.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz
Predictably, since our leaders have not learned from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
(For some reason I have the urge to add a saying from years ago: When the leaders fail to lead, the people must rise up to lead the leaders.)
Excerpts from Block’s article follow:
The Domestic Side of the Iraq War
by Fred Blockhttp://www.longviewinstitute.org/research/block/domesticsideiraq
Explaining the War
…But why did the Bush Administration decide on pre-emptive war in the first place? There are basically three main lines of explanation for the decision to go to war that correspond roughly to different factions within the Bush Administration.
The first is the “shock and awe” argument.
In the post-Cold War world, the U.S. is the only remaining superpower and the superiority of its military firepower over all rivals is unprecedented in history. Some Bush Administration theorists believed that this military superiority could be translated into an effective political and economic resource by waging a brief “demonstration war” that sent a signal of shock and awe to capitals around the world, and especially to Beijing, the capital of the world’s most rapidly rising power.
The second is the argument that the invasion was primarily about oil.
Given the geo-political importance of the Middle Eastern oil fields, and the growing appetite for petroleum in East Asia, the invasion was a way for the U.S. to establish a direct military presence close to the oil fields. Even though the United States’ historical alliance with the Saudi royal family continues, that connection has become increasingly precarious, so it is only prudent to establish a larger U.S. military presence in the region.
Finally, there is the democratization argument associated with the Neo-Conservatives that attacking Iraq was a first step in redrawing the map of the Middle East and substituting democratic regimes for the authoritarian regimes that had dominated in the region. While the rhetoric of this policy currently focuses on democracy, its actual emphasis is on creating “free market” economies in which government is rolled back and citizens are told that they must become more self-reliant and market oriented.
…
But whether one takes the arguments singly or in combination, the actual Iraq War has undermined all of these expectations. Rather than enhancing U.S. global power, the spectacle of U.S. forces being unable to contain a hastily assembled insurgency has had perverse consequences internationally. U.S. enemies from Teheran to Caracas have been emboldened and democracy in the recent Palestinian elections brought the militant Hamas faction to power. Iraqi oil has not come back on line yet, global oil prices have spiked substantially, and maneuvering by other powers for new energy resources appears to have intensified. Finally, the whole world has learned that “shock and awe” does not translate into actual control of territory.
…The Domestic Logic of War
Frances Fox Piven published an important book in 2003, The War at Home. After reviewing the standard explanations for the war, she asked:
“Why the turn to preemptive war and relatedly, the cavalier treatment of the painstakingly constructed multilateral arrangements of the past half century? I don’t think the question can be fully answered if the war in Iraq is regarded solely as a foreign policy strategy. The war is also a domestic strategy, rooted not only in calculations of America’s global power, but in calculations geared to shoring up the Bush regime’s domestic power and its ability to pursue its domestic policy agenda.”…Yet despite the President’s low poll numbers, Karl Rove has indicated his intention to play the war card yet again in the 2006 midterm elections to keep many Republican voters from defecting or sitting out the election. Given the obvious corruption of the Republican Congress and the Administration’s broad record of failure, the war could well save the Republicans from an even larger electoral drubbing in November 2006.
Concerns about the end of the Republican lock were intensified by dangerous rumblings within the Republican coalition. Since the mid-1970’s, the Republican ascendancy had been organized on the basis of an unusual alliance that joined business conservatives with religious and social conservatives. Business conservatives, including most of the Fortune 500 corporate elite, contributed vast amounts of cash and received unconditional support for their agenda of lower taxes and less regulation of business. Religious and social conservatives provided the shock troops for the Republican Party and in exchange, the Party adopted their anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-big-government agenda.
From the start, there were always strains in this coalition. Big business is unrelentingly internationalist, committed to the process of turning the whole world into a single marketplace, while religious and social conservatives are deeply parochial and highly suspicious of global institutions. The platform of the Texas Republican Party still calls on the United States to withdraw from the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. Business is also committed to continuing scientific and technological advances, while many religious conservatives prefer creationism to Darwinism and are highly suspicious of technological change. But, the Republican leadership has been extremely successful in papering over these tensions and focusing both sides on their shared distrust of the liberal and progressive agenda.
The “Background War” Solution
The published reports of the Project for a New American Century from the late 1990’s indicate that some of the key players in the Bush Administration favored the militarization of U.S. foreign policy as a way to minimize conflict between the two wings of the coalition. A militarized foreign policy that included preemptive strikes on its enemies would allow the U.S. to continue to project its power internationally.
Moreover, the U.S. could continue its involvement in a whole host of global organizations as long as it was done “under the radar” and explained as necessary to accomplish U.S. war aims. But, militarization meant that the U.S. would abandon the aspiration to be both feared and loved. Under this new foreign policy regime, it would be the U.S. willingness to mobilize overwhelming force that would persuade the rest of the world to comply with U.S. demands.
The attacks on September 11th provided the context for the Administration to move forward on its militarized foreign policy. After the quick fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, it became obvious that an abstract “Global War on Terrorism” was not sufficient to hold domestic tensions in check.
For that, one needed an ongoing military engagement and this made the invasion of Iraq inevitable for the Bush Administration. Moreover, with a hot war playing in the background of U.S. politics, the Administration would be able to hold its coalition together and have a free hand to pursue its most important domestic goals.
In sum, the unending cost in dollars and lives of the Iraq War has weakened the U.S. global position. Nevertheless, the quagmire has helped this Administration domestically. To be sure, the returning body bags have driven the President’s approval level down to Nixonian levels.
But without the background noise of a continuing hot war overseas, this Administration might well be in far deeper trouble. The two wings of its political base would likely be engaged in open warfare.
Citizen discontent with the Administration’s disregard for the Constitution would have boiled over into a broad revolt, and the Democratic opposition would be far more effective in mobilizing public anger at the failure of the Bush White House to deal effectively with any number of domestic social and economic problems.
