The Strategy of Eliminating Opposition

The Administration is all set to conquer Iraq, giving the UN Security Council a last chance for relevance by rejoining the war bandwagon. The honeymoon after the Great Wake-Up Call is old now, but Congress still seems intimidated by this brazen grab of executive authority. This after abandoning Afghanistan to foes of the Taliban, battling warlords. It may be secure enough for pipelines, but people were not liberated. Chaos and privation reign, at least outside Kabul. In some ways women are better off since the conquest, some girls get to go to school, but there are the reports of violent reactions to these modest changes from backwards men, and Northern Alliance boys terrorizing women, like they used to before the Taliban rose to power. Such a blatant public relations ploy, shameless sham of liberating Afghan women, is so insulting, it is sickening. But this is just another media myth fitting the overall pattern.

Is this new war just another oil grab in a grand scheme, or are people expected to believe Iraq is dangerous? If Iraq is such a threat as to be a clear and present danger, people deserve to know why. Vague allusions to top secret intelligence proving the case merely insult the intelligence of everyone. People deserve the truth, can handle it better than this prattle about eliminating evil. Bush may think the public has no need to know beyond what his cronies want them to think, at least under the umbrella of national security, growing like cancer feeding on fear of terror. That Total Information Awareness project was so intrusive, important Republicans got alarmed, so it got put on hold and may die after investigation.

As for the war on terror, elimination of the enemy cannot work, but this strategy is provocation toward a world war. These potential enemies already have some legitimate grievances littering history, from Western foreign policy and industrial practices. Legitimate issues ought to be negotiable to some kind of reasonable settlement. The point is this country has too much influence on others already. Overwhelming military might cannot give it claim to any high ground to justify overthrowing rogue regimes or launching preemptive invasions. Those are not matters of morality, national pride, self-defense, only defending the cloud of propaganda, to obscure what is really going down, this bid for world domination in the name of fighting terror. Mass media plays along, too intimidated to pursue its supposed primary purpose, getting truth out to the public.