Iran: Next in Bush's political Ponzi scheme
Eric Margolis Toronto Sun

President George Bush, who assured Americans on March 17 there was "no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," now warns Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

Bush seems determined to press his crusade against Muslim nations. But another important reason impels him on. He is running a political Ponzi scheme: diverting the public from the Enron and stock market swindles by invading Afghanistan, then covering that mess by invading Iraq, and now trying to cover up the growing Iraq disaster by fanning a new crisis with Iran. ...

Orwell and me
Margaret Atwood Guardian

Margaret Atwood cried her eyes out when she first read Animal Farm at the age of nine. Later, its author became a major influence on her writing. As the centenary of George Orwell's birth approaches, she says he would have plenty to say about the post-9/11 world.

The whole experience [reading Animal Farm as a child] was deeply disturbing to me, but I am forever grateful to Orwell for alerting me early to the danger flags I've tried to watch out for since. In the world of Animal Farm, most speechifying and public palaver is bullshit and instigated lying, and though many characters are good-hearted and mean well, they can be frightened into closing their eyes to what's really going on.

The pigs browbeat the others with ideology, then twist that ideology to suit their own purposes: their language games were evident to me even at that age. As Orwell taught, it isn't the labels - Christianity, Socialism, Islam, Democracy, Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good, the works - that are definitive, but the acts done in their name.

I could see, too, how easily those who have toppled an oppressive power take on its trappings and habits. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was right to warn us that democracy is the hardest form of government to maintain; Orwell knew that to the marrow of his bones, because he had seen it in action.

How quickly the precept "All Animals Are Equal" is changed into "All Animals Are Equal, but Some Are More Equal Than Others". What oily concern the pigs show for the welfare of the other animals, a concern that disguises their contempt for those they are manipulating.

With what alacrity do they put on the once-despised uniforms of the tyrannous humans they have overthrown, and learn to use their whips. How self-righteously they justify their actions, helped by the verbal web-spinning of Squealer, their nimble-tongued press agent, until all power is in their trotters, pretence is no longer necessary, and they rule by naked force. ...

USA: Nationalism is a notoriously wild horse to let loose
Anatol Lieven The Nation

In their efforts to rally democratic support as a defense against socialism at home, the capitalist elites in Europe before 1914 similarly relied much less on imperialism than on nationalism. And in 1914, the impulse that drove the European masses to support the war and to immolate themselves in it was nationalism, universally expressed in the belief that the homeland itself was in imminent danger of attack. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have given the Bush Administration a tremendous opportunity in this regard, one they have exploited to the hilt.

It is difficult to resist the conclusion that this curious choice of the word "empire" as a name for these patterns of globalization reflects the new modishness of empire as a subject--as witnessed by the number of books now appearing on this theme. Only a few years ago, to use this word to describe the United States would have branded you automatically as a member of the left. Today, it is being taken up by writers across the spectrum, and with unbridled pride by right-wingers like Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal.

But, as Niall Ferguson notes in the conclusion to his vivid and often insightful history of the British Empire, this new open popularity of empire as a self-description in the United States is so far characteristic only of intellectuals. As far as the mass of the American people is concerned, this is still "an empire in denial." And in presenting its imperial plans to the American people, the Bush Administration has been careful to package them as something else: on the one hand, as part of a benevolent strategy of spreading American values of democracy and freedom; on the other, as an essential part of the defense not of an American empire, but of the American nation itself.

This is something that must be stressed if the power and the danger, but also the fragility, of the Bush program are to be understood: The United States under Bush is driving toward empire, but the domestic political fuel being fed into the engine is that of a wounded and vengeful nationalism. This sentiment is for the most part entirely sincere, and all the more dangerous for that. If recent history is any guide, there is probably no more dangerous element in the nationalist mix than a sense of righteous victimhood. Will this fuel continue to be available to the Bush Administration in its drive for empire? Or to put it another way, will the packaging retain its shine? ...

Here lies one clue to the difference between the American imperialism of Clinton and that of Bush, a difference that is real but--like the relationships between nationalism, capitalism and imperialism--is also by no means simple. Clinton packaged American imperialism as globalism, and he was also genuinely motivated by a vision of global order in which America would lead rather than merely dictate. Bush is not just packaging imperialism as American nationalism; he and his followers are genuinely motivated by nationalism, in a way that Clinton was not, and, as nationalists, they are absolutely contemptuous of any global order involving any formal check whatsoever on American action. ...

Bush's mercenaries are not happy. In a speech that marked his retirement as the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki said about the Junta generally and Rumsfeld in particular: "To muddy the waters when important issues are at stake, issues of life and death, is a disservice to all of those in and out of uniform who serve and lead so well." One of the ironies of this administration is that the sweet voice of reason and reconciliation is most often spoken by the warrior class. Granted much of their talk is pragmatic self-interest. Shinseki said in the same speech: "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division army." Nonetheless, it is a reaonable position. Reasonable is not an adjective that can be applied to the civilian leadership.

The Russian army's chief of staff, General Anatoly Kvashnin, seems to agree with General Shinseki. Saturday he took an indirect swipe at the United States by accusing global powers of using the war on terror as a pretext for spreading their influence abroad.

Russian general says "war on terror" used as pretext for global dominance
AFP

"It is one thing when a country is fighting terrorism on its own territory, and some other countries assist them," the Interfax-AVN military news agency quoted Kvashnin at an officers' graduation ceremony in Moscow. "But it is quite another thing when, under the guise of fighting international terror, some countries are in fact trying to get involved in the internal affairs of the nation they are meant to be helping," said Kvashnin.

He urged the graduating officers to keep this in mind as they "carefully analyze what is happening in the world." ...