http://www.antiwar.com/utley/index.php?articleid=2189

March 25, 2004
Was It All Planned? Iraq and Empire-Builders

by Jon Basil Utley
"It all began when the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, effectively ending the Cold War and prompting the Pentagon to undertake a search for a new set of principles, in part to prevent Congress, then controlled by the Democrats, from slashing the defense budget. The key participants were Cheney, Wolfowitz and Colin Powell – the three men worked closely together on forestalling cutbacks." Zalmay Khalizad, a Wolfowitz aide, authored the 12 year old Defense Planning Guidance Memo. Cheney was most pleased with it, saying "You've discovered a new rationale for our role in the world!" See details and more in Washington Post Report (3/7) by James Mann's from his forthcoming book, Rise of the Vulcans.

The original document, leaked to the New York Times, had "stressed the need to prevent the emergence of any rival (even regional) power," the so called, Wolfowitz Doctrine. The document had created a furor in Japan and Europe as other nations were "less than thrilled at the notion that the United States might try to limit their military and economic power." (Ibid). It encouraged China (as we have since learned) to restart its long dormant strategic missile projects. "Presidential candidate Bill Clinton's spokesman said that the document represented an effort by the Pentagon "to find an excuse for big budgets instead of downsizing." (ibid)

Khalizad (who is now U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan) had his memo downsized by Wolfowitz top aide, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby (now Cheney's top aide) who made "a subtle, crucial change." (ibid). The revised draft said "America had to be ready to protect its critical interests abroad "with only limited additional help, or even alone, if necessary." The new version didn't mention preemption specifically, but noted that "sometimes a measured military action can contain or preclude a crisis." Another neocon, John Bolton, who now is Asst. Secretary of State for International Organizations, added, "It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so – because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States." Insight magazine, 1999

However, there is a major gap in Mann's article. Let's go back to the first Iraq war in 1991. Mann's information is the missing link from earlier strange goings on. When Saddam first invaded Kuwait there were unexplained reports about how U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie had told him, "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts such as your dispute with Kuwait" and "Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction ... that Kuwait is not associated with America." This was backed up by testimony to Congress by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly that Washington was not taking sides in the dispute between Kuwait and Iraq. Could Saddam have been played a sucker? He knew little of the outside world and had the megalomania of most dictators and didn't understand the imperialist elements in Washington.

Then there was another big lie, that Iraqi troops were massed on the Saudi border, ready to invade. This, we may forget, was the original rationale for sending U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia, to defend it from possible Iraqi invasion. Well, the "evidence" was satellite photos which showed the massed Iraqi army. Washington kept saying they would be released, but kept finding reasons not to. Now we know it was another lie, researched by the Christian Science Monitor.

Leaving Iraq festering in misery for 10 years, leaving 10,000 troops based in Saudi Arabia to aggravate fundamentalist Muslims, and undermining the Palestine Israel Oslo peace accords (see Pat Buchanan's "Have the Neocons Killed a Presidency?") – it couldn't have been planned better to engender the monstrous enemy we now have – Islamist terrorists hidden in a sea of a billion Muslims. But it's what the War Party wanted, a justification for massive military budgets and grounds for establishing an American world empire to "protect" us from enemies that we ourselves helped create. Most Americans were blithely unaware of the hatred being generated against America by Washington's policies, nor that a million Iraqis died from disease and starvation during the U.S. imposed blockade.


So this was the international scene when 9/11 struck. Then the move became to transfer American animus towards Iraq. Last Sunday on 60 Minutes Richard Clarke, former Counter-terrorism Co-ordinator, corroborated former Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill's accusations that the Administration was searching for an excuse to invade Iraq before 9/11, fabricating evidence to justify empire in the Middle East and air bases in Central Asia. Clarke's book argues that "The rapid shift of focus to Saddam Hussein, launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide." This is also the view of most Europeans.

With the collapse of Soviet communism, there were only two foreseeable potential enemies worthy of America's might, China or the Muslim world. Most of us forget that before 9/11 the neoconservatives were working hard to foster military confrontation with China, to justify massive new defense spending. Even before 9/11 the neocon flagship Weekly Standard, a major outlet for China confrontation views, was urging a massive $100 billion increases in the Defense Budget (instead of tax cuts, as one editorial urged).

Finally it should be noted that those who benefit from war or the threat of war are many more than just the old military-industrial complex, warned about by former President Eisenhower. Indeed remember that most of the uniformed military opposed the attack on Iraq. It was pro-war neocon civilians who took over Pentagon policy making positions. Today it encompasses most key congressional districts (weapons sub-contracts are distributed widely into key congressional districts). An important new group is composed of many Think Tank intellectuals and leading elements of the Christian Right, the Armageddonites. The media itself prospers as millions of viewers stay glued to their televisions; whole new bureaucracies are created such as Homeland Defense. Guards, inspectors, police, and other government officials all become more vital and are paid commensurately, often able to retire after 20 years work with pensions reaching over a million dollars. We call them all The Beltway Bombers.

And so we now have what they sought. Massive multi hundred billion dollar increases in military spending and military bases all over the world. No doubt the War Party did not seek that America be so isolated nor our interests really be threatened as they are today, but then wars always lead in unanticipated directions, that is a reason that real statesmen try to avoid starting them.

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

II.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

III.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

* and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

VII.

So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Defense: Top Contributors to Federal Candidates and Parties