14/02/2003 - Entry #69
Right. Proper update now. No flash games or football, for a change.
So exactly one week ago, America was placed on high alert. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., all announced that the US would step up its alert level to "orange", the second highest military alert ranking, due to increased intelligence reports suggesting Qaeda leaders "may be increasing their communication and intensifying their activity." Now, anyone who knows me, or has even read this site for long, knows that I hate conspiracy theories. By their very definition they're incredibly unlikely, and border on preposterous. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. What I am is a cynic, and this full-scale alert strikes me as nothing more than scaremongering. It seems to me that at a time when support is dwindling at home and abroad, some blind panic is just the ticket to remind everyone of the target that the Bush administration is so desperate to wipe out. Say what you will, but that to me is not a conspiracy theory. That's just a tactic that history has taught us is used with alarming frequency.
Tom Ridge casually declared it was "probably not a bad idea" for families to discuss and prepare emergency plans in the event of a terrorist attack. On Monday households were urged to prepare a 'disaster supply kit,' including a three-day stockpile of food and water, and tape and plastic sheeting to seal a house in case of chemical or biological attacks. Sales of bottled water and instant meals have increased dramatically, while gas masks, wood stoves and water drums have been snapped up in record numbers. Lehman's Hardware and Appliances in Ohio has said that business hasn't been this good since the millennium bug scare. Long Life Food Depot, in Indianapolis, reported that sales of ready-to-eat meals had tripled in the past six days. Seattle's Federal Army & Navy Surplus declared huge leaps in purchases of first-aid kits and emergency supplies for houses and cars. Missile launchers have been deployed in Washington and fighter jets are patrolling the skies, ready to defend against a terrorist attack. Yesterday President Bush, clad in a green bomber jacket and standing before the guided-missile cruiser Phillipine Sea, prompted the U.N. to make a decision. All of this together points squarely towards a government riding the coat-tails of public fear for maximum gain.
Sure, sure, you think I'm being paranoid and overreacting. But you all know I think the Bush administration is proceeding with a long-running plan of, in effect, world domination, and is using the war on terror as cover. It really isn't an uncommon belief, either. Global foreign policy organisation FPIF and even the US Green Party are just two high-profile institutions to have expressed the view publicly. Nor is it, strictly speaking, a conspiracy theory, as there is such readily-available information to support the notion.
The question that has to be asked is whether or not the Bush administration is pursuing a preordained strategy that would have been instigated whether or not the World Trade Centre had been attacked. It's a useful question, too. If the current administration is nothing but the vessel, the tool with which long-standing policies of remaking the world will be exacted, then it subverts, possibly even mocks the very fabric of American democracy. Let me put it this way: Historians frequently refer to individual administrations as "eras." What this implies, deliberately so, is that as governments change hands year after year, they always carry with them the will of the voters at that particular moment in history. That's the point. But if American presidencies fail to carry out the will or actions of the people, then they're no better than ideological dictatorships pursuing their own self-interests. Indeed, looking at the political histories of the men and women shaping Bush's policies, it'd be easy to decide that this regime is pursuing policies that are noticeably far from the moments in time reflected in November 2000, or even in September 2001. Not to mention quite apart from the will of the vast majority of the public.
If the theories are correct, and I'm just speculating here, then the current administration is simply kickstarting a scheme that ended in 1992 when Clinton became President. Consider for a moment that Bush Senior's war on Iraq was the first in a multi-stage war to reshape the Middle East, and that Bill Clinton's two-term presidency set back that plan by a painful eight years. But the plan didn't go away. It was simply put on hold. The minds behind this scheme have waited almost a decade to complete the work of recasting Arabia as an Americanised outpost of democracy.
Now that they've been given a lifeline to continue their plans, the uber-hawks of the neoconservative movement, political veterans like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleeza Rice, backed up by their extra-governmental think-tank (Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, Bill Kristol and William Safire, to name a few), are pressing their long-awaited agenda from within.
That, at least, is how the theory goes. Again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I am a pessimist and a cynic. I don't trust America, and I don't believe in altruism.
The US has never made any attempt to mask its goal of world domination. I'm not talking about enslaving countries and populaces, I'm talking about being the world's one and only superpower. They call the strategy "Full Spectrum Dominance," and it amounts to, in literal terms, dominating the rest of the world. An unchallenged America sitting atop the world, controlling its resources and easing potential competitors out of the picture. Even controlling allies, with something akin to economic blackmail, as they approach the global situation like a corporation, wishing to maintain a monopoly. Just last week Bush declared that "the game is over," prompting French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to declare "It's not a game. It's not over." Perhaps this was a more insightful look into the attitudes of both countries than it first appeared.
It's undeniable that Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted to attack Iraq as early as 2000. In that year a report was drawn up by the Project for the New American Century. Whilst not an official document, the PNAC is a government think-tank peopled by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush (the president's brother), Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff) and many other official figures. The document was called 'Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century', and was published in September 2000, a full year before the World Trade Centre attack. It's a rather daunting 90 pages long, but it's an incredibly enlightening read, given the minds behind it.
The report maps out a proposed global strategy for America in the 21st Century, and it's somewhat unsettling how the Bush administration has followed the instructions almost to the letter.
Surely one of the most appropriate statements due to the current political climate reads "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." The assertion is made perfectly clear that the US should move troops into Iraq whether Saddam Hussein is overthrown or not.
It goes on to say that American military-economic pre-eminence throughout the world should be reinforced through rapid and decisive US victories in what it calls "multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars," Iraq being the first. It stresses the need for troops to be housed in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to maintain the "cavalry of the new American frontier."
Possibly a little more worrying for us is the warning the document gives to remain aware of a rising Europe, emphasising the need to cease any collusion between Western states that would create a military or economic rival to America. "It is important that NATO not be replaced by the European Union, leaving the United States without a voice in European security affairs." the document states. It even recommends manipulating allies and undermining the United Nations, which it sees as a potential US rival. "During the Cold War, America acquired its security 'wholesale' by global deterrence of the Soviet Union. Today, that same security can only be acquired at the 'retail' level, by deterring or, when needed, by compelling regional foes to act in ways that protect American interests and principles."
It proposes the ubiquitous "regime change," not just for Iraq but for other countries such as Iran, Syria, China and North Korea, as well as taking the war to most of the Arab world, for resource purposes.
Hell, it even calls for plans to develop weapons of mass destruction, including biological missiles.
Now, this whole report is far from secret. The whole thing was tweaked for use as the Bush security doctrine last year, at the behest of Condoleeza Rice. But despite it being publicly available, the US media seems completely unwilling to make any mention of a pre-existing plan to invade Iraq prior to '11/9'. Forgive me for a second for using histrionic language, but the American press has failed spectacularly to investigate, much less report on, the overwhelmingly simple but critical question of whether American public sentiment, Congressional will and the much-vaunted Constitution, not to mention International Law, are being manipulated and circumnavigated to put into place a plan cooked up decades ago, completely irrespective of the current events the spin-doctors are hiding behind today.
I firmly believe that the above theories are true, and have no doubt that the US is pursuing an agenda of full spectrum dominance, without a second's thought to terrorism or other recent events, other than to use them as a shield. The question is really whether or not you believe in America's purported altruism and goal of genuine peaceful harmony, and if you think this is a good thing. Personally, I'm wary of any one nation gaining a position of completely unchallengable dominance over the rest of the world. Call me paranoid...
Please sign the Guestbook. For the love of God, sign it now.