Dateline: Oakland, CA
March 2007
posted on Perils of Empire.com
The Bush regime claims they are trying to establish a secure and democratic government of peace and tranquility in Iraq. And we know how best to do that for the Iraqis (and their oil fields). Because We are the forces of moral right and justice in the world. We have the best society, and have the best system of government, a system that we will gladly export to the Iraqis. And we (represented by George Bush the Shrub) are willing to sacrifice by sending even more American troops in to occupy and suppress those who disagree. It is all of these militant insurgent terrorists who disagree with us who are mucking it up, preventing the creation of a peaceful Iraq that allows its natural resources to be controlled by foreign corporate interests.
The Bush regime claims they are trying to establish a secure and democratic government of peace and tranquility in Iraq. And we know how best to do that for the Iraqis (and their oil fields). Because We are the forces of moral right and justice in the world. We have the best society, and have the best system of government, a system that we will gladly export to the Iraqis. And we (represented by George Bush the Shrub) are willing to sacrifice by sending even more American troops in to occupy and suppress those who disagree. It is all of these militant insurgent terrorists who disagree with us who are mucking it up, preventing the creation of a peaceful Iraq that allows its natural resources to be controlled by foreign corporate interests.
That’s the way of the New World Order, after all. And that is what the American foreign policy establishment has been all about in Iraq for more than 15 years. With Democrats or Republicans in control of the government, the ideas remain basically the same. Replace Saddam Hussein with a government friendly to our interests and which allows us (through U. S. oil companies) to exploit the vast natural resources of one of the potentially richest countries in the world. Oh yes, let’s build and maintain huge military bases in the region to assure that no Iraqi’s decide to change that situation.
This is thought process is called American Exceptionalism. That our way must be the right way to do it, because it’s what is best for America. Whatever is best for America must be best for other people as well. After all, Americans, are good people, devoted to family and friends, want what’s best. As the Michael Keaton character says in Live from Baghdad, HBO’s excellent movie about the lead up to the first Iraq War, “We’re Americans, we’re the liberty people.”
And so we try to patrol and control a population that continues to disagree with us, that has a different vision of what Iraq should be, and we vilify those who disagree with our policies by calling them terrorists. And we don’t understand why they hate us.
I know that Iraq may break down into civil war, and that many more thousands of people may die because of that. But I don’t believe that’s why the troops are there. Too many analyses by respected journalists and military men show that the war in Iraq is not being fought to win what’s best for the Iraqi people, it’s being fought to maintain. enough stability for American business interests to control the wealth of the country. But they’re losing even that war.
I don’t know how to stop the bloodbath that might occur in Iraq if/when the America military leaves. And it will take the moral weight and good intentions and economic support of the entire world to help them through the mess they are going to have to go through to truly create their future. But we set it up, didn’t we? By doing what the American foreign policy establishment wanted—regime change, dictating a friendly government willing to do our bidding. We didn’t do it for what was best for the Iraqis to control their own destinies. We did it to pursue American interests.
The point is simply this: America’s foreign policy establishment is exactly that, America’s foreign policy establishment. It is about pushing American interests in other countries. It’s about manipulating the world to accept and even agree to the point of view of what best for American—or better put, American business interests—is what is best for them. The American Empire’s goals should be their goals. It’s about how to organize the world in our American interest. Not in the interest of Palestinians, or Iraqis, or North Koreans. Or the French, or the Japanese, or the Bolivians.
As long as we keep thinking that American exceptionalism is always right, that what our interests are what’s best for everybody, we’re going to create problems in the world.
Because what’s in our interest isn’t always in everybody else’s best interest. until Americans start thinking of foreign policy as what’s best for everybody to get along and thrive, then we’re going to keep finding ourselves stuck in the morass of a Korean War…no sorry, a Viet Nam War…no sorry, an Iraqi war. I don’t want to have to write this again about the Iranian War, or the Syrian War, or the North Korean War, or the Chinese War, or the Canadian…
Because someday, somewhere along the line, somebody is going to fire an atomic weapon, drop an atomic bomb. And then the world as we know it is forever altered, disrupted, messed up. Or maybe worse, an On The Beach scenario happens where we kill the whole planet. And it might be the United States and its foreign policy establishment that uses an atomic weapon to force its Vision of the World on everybody else.
After all, we’re the only ones who have used one up to now. Maybe we’re not so exceptional.
