As you know, I subscribe to the historian Gabriel Kolko's view that the morons running the Bush administration are destroying the US empire from the inside out. But even the seasoned Dr. Kolko's must be agape at how quickly the rot has set in. Not only has the Bush administration provoked civil war inside Iraq, they've also ignited one inside the Pentagon. That's because by and large the Generals who run the show aren't all that anxious to start extended wars so much as to engage in threat inflation to justify their real operational mission which is to funnel billions into the coffers of the big defense firms: Lockheed, Boeing, TRW, Raytheon and the like. Recall that the Iraq war was supposed to be a quick cakewalk, with Saddam's regime smashed to bits during the Shock and Awe air assault, and the ground forces entering Baghdad in a kind of parody of a Roman triumph. And it was all supposed to pay for itself through the looting of Iraq's oil wealth. Surprise! The Pentagon now finds itself in an intractable quagmire with no foreseeable exit. Worse from the Generals' point of view is the escalating costs, now approaching a trillion dollars with no end in sight and not the slightest indication from Bush Central that any new revenue streams, ie, tax hikes, are in the offing. The public debt is soaring and that means that real business of the Pentagon is being put at risk: procurement of big-ticket items. At the top of the list, of course, is Star Wars, the $100 billion fantasy, which has never worked and never will.
The biggest reason Kim Jung Il has nothing to fear from the Bush crowd is that they need his slingshot missile program in order to justify continuing to dump money into Star Wars on the ludicrous grounds that the North Koreans might be able to hit one of the outer Aleutian Islands with a wind-aided missile strike. And there are dozens of other baroque projects dreamed up during the height of the Cold War, from the F-22 Fighter to the Stealth bomber to the Joint Strike Fighter, which no longer have any strategic or tactical utility other than to keep Boeing and Lockheed's assembly lines rolling with the costliest weapons systems ever conceived to be deployed against an enemy that doesn't exist. Now, personally, I think if we're going to spend billions on weapons we might be better off spending them on weapons that don't work and almost certainly will never be used. But the Pentagon and the big contractors are having night sweats. For the first time in 60 years there may not be enough money to go around. That's why you've begun to hear grumblings from inside the Pentagon and inside the executive offices of companies such as Lockheed and Boeing that it might be time to cut and run in Iraq. Rumsfeld is fighting two insurgencies: one is Iraq and one inside the Pentagon. It's probably our best hope for an early end of the war.
JF: You close Grand Theft with a quote from Jefferson, "If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest." So, how are we to end all of this looting? How are we to hold all the criminals accountable and end these scandalous wars?
JSC: Unfortunately, I don't think "we" appear to be capable of ending this war. The peace movement at the organizational level is moribund. It's trapped in tired old formulas. The occassional demonstrations appear more like the parades of a dead movement marching. There is no opposition party to the war. There's not a single national political leader of any standing who is an outspoken advocate of a complete withdrawal. All we have is Murtha's redeployment plan and Feingold's tiresome legalisms. This is all the more scandalous given the fact that the overwhelming majority of the American populace has turned against the war. The only way the peace movement could stop this war given the lack of any political power is to cut off the supply of fresh blood. By that, I mean the movement should concentrate almost all of its energy on anti-recruitment work. The Rumsfeld army is at the breaking point. The military can't afford a steep drop in new recruits. But such protests are unglamorous, grueling and necessitate a degree of commitment that seems beyond the capacity of most antiwar organizers these days.
Ultimately, I believe that Professor Kolko is right. The American Empire will be undone by its own arrogance and extravagance. As in Vietnam, the US will be chased from Iraq not by the American antiwar movement, but by Iraqis. We have entered a very grim phase of the war, when, to quote Shakespeare, sin will pluck on sin. In fact, the US occupation of Iraq, which is degenerating daily, may succeed in uniting Kurds, Shias and Sunnis, especially after the massacres of the last few weeks by US troops.
The sooner the Iraqis evict US forces from Iraq, the better off we'll both be. Perhaps then America's imperial ambitions will be chastened. Perhaps the federal budget will be so busted that future forays will be curtailed and provocative and destabilizing weapon systems will be mothballed. And, perhaps, a third party will emerge to reclaim the banner of Jeffersonian idealism. I said, perhaps, didn't I?
The biggest reason Kim Jung Il has nothing to fear from the Bush crowd is that they need his slingshot missile program in order to justify continuing to dump money into Star Wars on the ludicrous grounds that the North Koreans might be able to hit one of the outer Aleutian Islands with a wind-aided missile strike. And there are dozens of other baroque projects dreamed up during the height of the Cold War, from the F-22 Fighter to the Stealth bomber to the Joint Strike Fighter, which no longer have any strategic or tactical utility other than to keep Boeing and Lockheed's assembly lines rolling with the costliest weapons systems ever conceived to be deployed against an enemy that doesn't exist. Now, personally, I think if we're going to spend billions on weapons we might be better off spending them on weapons that don't work and almost certainly will never be used. But the Pentagon and the big contractors are having night sweats. For the first time in 60 years there may not be enough money to go around. That's why you've begun to hear grumblings from inside the Pentagon and inside the executive offices of companies such as Lockheed and Boeing that it might be time to cut and run in Iraq. Rumsfeld is fighting two insurgencies: one is Iraq and one inside the Pentagon. It's probably our best hope for an early end of the war.
JF: You close Grand Theft with a quote from Jefferson, "If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest." So, how are we to end all of this looting? How are we to hold all the criminals accountable and end these scandalous wars?
JSC: Unfortunately, I don't think "we" appear to be capable of ending this war. The peace movement at the organizational level is moribund. It's trapped in tired old formulas. The occassional demonstrations appear more like the parades of a dead movement marching. There is no opposition party to the war. There's not a single national political leader of any standing who is an outspoken advocate of a complete withdrawal. All we have is Murtha's redeployment plan and Feingold's tiresome legalisms. This is all the more scandalous given the fact that the overwhelming majority of the American populace has turned against the war. The only way the peace movement could stop this war given the lack of any political power is to cut off the supply of fresh blood. By that, I mean the movement should concentrate almost all of its energy on anti-recruitment work. The Rumsfeld army is at the breaking point. The military can't afford a steep drop in new recruits. But such protests are unglamorous, grueling and necessitate a degree of commitment that seems beyond the capacity of most antiwar organizers these days.
The sooner the Iraqis evict US forces from Iraq, the better off we'll both be. Perhaps then America's imperial ambitions will be chastened. Perhaps the federal budget will be so busted that future forays will be curtailed and provocative and destabilizing weapon systems will be mothballed. And, perhaps, a third party will emerge to reclaim the banner of Jeffersonian idealism. I said, perhaps, didn't I?
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