January 1, 2007
OUT OF THE BOX
Political Commentary by Stephanie Hiller
I. Machismo: Why the US Won't Pull Out of Iraq
Machismo: Why the US won't pull out of Iraq
To peaceniks, and increasingly to mainstream Americans, the formula is simple. The war in Iraq was a disaster: bring the troops home now!
But for the men who fashioned this policy, who launched the attack, to "free Iraqis" from Saddam -- and to position themselves to reconfigure the map of the Middle East -- getting out of Iraq is the hardest prospect they have ever faced, and they aren't going to do it.
Why? Well most obvious, and perhaps most compelling on a world stage ruled by powerful egos, it looks bad.
What clout will the world's most powerful nation have, in the eyes of those legions of dependent nations forced to follow its lead by the dominance of the almighty dollar, if it just turns around and walks off the scene, tail between its legs?
What right wing pundits will have to say about that "craven" exit may readily be imagined after reading a single column by Michael Ledeen, Charles Krauthammer and the lot, all committed to the Neoconservative plot without having to risk their reputations by actually performing it! No, in this Western tragedy, they are merely the chorus; but for Bush and Company, a chorus that taunts.
Then there's terrorism.
Bush has promised to rid the world of terrorism, and again, walking out on the mess in Iraq is certainly a poor excuse for victory. Terrorism, as the peace community tends to forget, is a real threat. Even if you are firmly convinced that the 19 men who took over the four planes that crashed into the Twin Towers are nothing more than movie actors employed by the US government -- and certainly there is considerable evidence that the government was somehow complicit in that disaster -- other acts of terrorism have occurred, innocent people have died, and worse: the rise of terrorism augurs the demise of "civilization" as the West has defined it.
Civilization -- white, pompous, aristocratic, privileged and very very tidy -- is definitely at risk here from the tidal wave of outraged, impoverished people of color, the unruly, unwashed masses who have been left out of the bounty yielded by their own lands and delivered into the hands of the colonial masters. And while we -- leftists, neo-marxists, new agers, liberals, pagans, latter-day back-to-the-landers, and peaceniks of all varieties -- may cheer the demise of that unjust tyranny, unless we can conjure an alternative social order to take its place, it's going to be chaos down here on the way to the supermarket. Think of those frozen Russians lining up in the cold for hours to find a loaf of bread on empty shelves after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The men in Washington, and their allies, have something to defend here -- a way of life that serves up tons of goodies not only to them, but to us, and in that regard the capitalist American economy we lament and deride is the most democratic economy yet. In counterpoint to Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake!" we, the shriveling American middle classes are yet eating brie with our kiwis, wine and baguette, delivered to us from the four corners of the world.
We, the enlightened proponents of peace, are contemptuous of such things as hot water, electricity at the flick of a switch, sixteen varieties of toothpaste, almost instant emergency medical services, roads cleared of snow within hours and so forth, but I, at least, would not want to be without them, and when civilizations crumble, they are not selective in what they bring down. Casinos perhaps will remain whilst cell towers fall, and where would our children be then? The American public now so critical of the war in Iraq will be far more critical when the doors of Macdonald's close, for what keeps them open if not the desires of the people who eat there?
Shame, shame, on the leaders on whose watch the Republic falls!
In 2000 when Bush & Co. came to power, they believed they had the bull by the horns, that Western civilization would be saved the Pax Americana, by their strategy of toppling dictators and Islamist fanatics in the Middle East, gaining control of a diminishing oil supply AND maintaining the power of the petrodollar as the means of exchange. It is no coincidence that Saddam was getting ready to sell oil in euros when Bush attacked Iraq on the pretense that Iraq was building nuclear weapons. http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23645.shtml
It is the same pretense that Bush is summoning now against Iran and for the same reason. Although Iran's oil bourse, intended to open last spring, did not take shape, Iran is now selling oil in euros. Financial analysts far more savvy than this poor writer argue that opening the market to other currencies will bring about the demise of the dollar -- with disastrous consequences for the American people and even the global economy.
The stakes are high -- so high that even if the war on Iraq has turned out to cost a whole lot more in lives and dollars than Bush & Co. planned, and even though the American people have turned against them, far more likely than withdrawing troops is the planned attack on Iran because Iran, they allege, has been supporting terrorism from the get-go and is driving the insurgency that is spoiling American plans for Iraq. (Though Scott Ritter has challenged this assessment. See his article in The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061120/ritter/3) The decimation of Iran will send a powerful message to the Islamic insurgency all over the world; more, it will install America in the heart of Central Eurasia, straddling Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan: well positioned to rule the world ("for freedom") according to the rules of the Great Game.
Such a prize would be literally "to die for" in the eyes of the men who determine American foreign policy -- or at least sending thousands of young men and women to die for it. From this vantage point, for which nations have struggled since early in the 19th century, the neoconservative idealists -- for idealists they be -- will be in a position to bring peace, democracy, and most important, a free market to all the nations of the world, traded in dollars.
It is hard to imagine that given the line-up of forces and circumstance that anything else can happen now, even though an attack on Iran, inviting as it does a global conflagration with Russia, the Central Eurasian republics, China, Israel, North Korea, Turkey and NATO all choosing sides according to which way the wind is blowing, and nuclear weapons likely employed -- in short, risking Armageddon exactly as it has been imagined by Christian fundamentalist theologians -- could fail, as the war on Iraq has failed.
These are very high stakes indeed, gambling the future of the entire world on a hope and a prophecy.
Surely it is possible to imagine something else. It is possible to imagine a Great Leap of consciousness, a giant step in human evolution: the willingness to give up a pattern of human behavior that has only succeeded in creating more wars with more dangerous weapons and an environment so deteriorated it seems threatened from every direction, with global climate change invoking a Tribulation at least as horrid as that of nuclear winter.
Does the prospect of species suicide not compel us to take a risk into another, possible scenario -- out of the mode of Greek tragedy and into heroic victory ordained by Christ himself and all the angelic hosts, a true deliverance from the terminus at which we have so desperately, so forlornly, so pathetically arrived?
That too, has been prophesied, and can be described. The first step is to visualize that new story -- and then to have the courage to try.
Stephanie Hiller is the editor of Awakened Woman. This is the first in a series of articles to be followed by others listed below. If you like this article, please feel free to circulate widely! Comments are welcome. Please send to editor@awakenedwoman.com and I will post.
II. Machismo -- the roots (patriarchy)
III. NNSA -- nukes the crowning achievement of patriarchy
IV. Coming together at the brink of the abyss: Global warming, peak oil, nuclear waste, chemical pollution and a water shortage
V. A change of heart: the gift of sacrifice, and a plea
VI. Why women's leadership is so important NOW