Once again, a superb article by Jack Rabbit!

[MaryBear]

It's good enough to send to repuglican relatives, Jack.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/12/17_tyrants.html

[proud patriot]

1. Yay ! Jack Rabbit

I read it first thing this morning .

Great Article :hi:

[teryang]

2. Thanks Jack!

Well said.

[bpilgrim]

3. Thank you JR! - PREVENTIVE WAR IS ILLEGAL - psst... pass the word ;-)

"While it would be wrong to say that Bush is more brutal that Saddam - his tyranny inclines him more to theft rather than murder - neither would it be correct to say that Bush is a paper tiger."

remember bush is just gettin started saddam has decades under his reign of terror.

great article... reminds me of tom paine :toast:

peace

[Jack Rabbit]

4. Hey, GrandmaBear

:loveya:

[Big_AJ]

5. Hyperbole

and baseless assertions.

[bpilgrim]

6. care to cite 1

welcome to DU :hi:

peace

[Big_AJ]

11. Baseless assertions:

We should make no mistake that this war is a colonial war. For all the high-sounding talk of nation-building and democracy, the Bush Administration wants nation-building only if it is profitable to those who have foot the bill for Mr. Bush's political career.

AJ

[Jack Rabbit]

12. Response

There are two assertions in the passage cited. First, that the invasion of Iraq is a colonial war. Second, that the administration is playing favorites in awarding reconstruction contracts to transnational corporations with close ties to Mr. Bush. Neither of these assertions is baseless.

That this is a colonial war for the benefit of Bush’s corporate cronies would seem almost self-evident. However, it seems that some remain unconvinced. For the benefit of such people, evidence to support these assertions is presented here.

First, this is a colonial war. Colonialism, also called imperialism, is a system of international relations where a stronger state uses its relative strength as leverage to force a weaker nation to open its markets to the stronger in a way that is wholly advantageous to the stronger state.

Under classic British imperialism, the typical scenario was for British troops to force their way into a foreign country, place a colonial governor in power to run things and pass laws granting British companies monopolies over critical native industries. Natives were effectively prevented from benefiting from the natural resources of their own country. Raw materials in the colony would be mined, sent to the mother country to be converted to finished products which were then shipped back to the colony for consumption. For their income, the natives were dependent on menial labor and minor civil service positions. Since they were forbidden to compete with the mother country’s interests, the natives would never rise above a servile rank.

Why did the Bushies launch the invasion of Iraq? The stated reasons were: that Saddam possessed certain weapons in defiance of UN resolutions passed after the 1991 Gulf War; that Saddam had ties to terrorist organization, including the al Qaida network, the organization responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001; and that the UN authorized the attack.

In fact, Iraq was not invaded to rid her of banned weapons. That had already been accomplished. Nor was it to punish Saddam for his ties to al Qaida or his role in the September 11 attacks. There were no such ties nor any such role. It is difficult to see how top administration official could not have known the true facts; nevertheless, their public pronouncements were something other than the truth.

Bush sought legalistic reasons by asserting that Saddam was out of compliance with UN resolutions. For this, Bush would have to get the UN Security Council to agree. In passing Resolution 1441, the Security Council agreed to send inspectors into Iraq under threat of "serious consequences." This did not mean war; diplospeak for that would be "any means necessary." Consequently, in order to go to war legally, Bush would have get a second resolution. Such a resolution was introduced by Britain and Spain, but withdrawn when it faced certain defeat. The majority of the council was satisfied that Iraqi cooperation with the inspectors, while not perfect, was sufficient to allow the process to continue. The claim by Bush and his aides and their defenders that the UN authorized for the invasion is false.

So much for the stated reasons.

Since we cannot rely on positive evidence provided by the Bush Administration for the reasons for invading Iraq, we must seek indirect evidence for those reasons. The evidence, while circumstantial, points to colonial motivations.

First of all, Mr. Bush’s advisors are stacked with members of the Project for the New American Century. Such high-ranking administration officials and advisors as Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitiz and Richard Perle are members of PNAC. PNAC’s website reads like a bizarre conspiracy theory, except that this particular theory is put out by the conspirators themselves. The goal of PNAC is to assert American hegemony in the military, political and economic spheres.

This is a colonial design on a far grander scale than any seen before. America’s military prowess will be used to promote its economic sphere, meaning the interests of transnational corporations. The rest of the world will simply not be able to resist. Many of the essay on PNAC’s site take pains to deny that this is imperialism, but it is difficult to call it anything else.

A more honest assessment then that of PNAC may be found by musing Charles Krauthammer’s piece, The Unipolar Moment revisited (National Interest, Winter 2002/03). Krauthammer, like the PNAC group, finds multilaterialism confining and urges the US to abandon it in favor of unilateral action. Krauthammer, however, is not so embarrassed as to call this imperialism. He concludes his piece by paraphrasing Franklin: History has given you an empire, if you will keep it.

Second, the behavior of the US invasion indicates that the US was most interested in preserving Iraq’s oil wealth. The rest of Iraq could be destroyed, but US troops made certain that the oil industry remained intact. For example, when US troops went into Baghdad, the building housing the oil ministry was secured. Hospitals and cultural centers, including the national museum, were allowed to be looted. That shows an interesting set of priorities. The Iraqi people meant nothing. Civilians being injured in a war zone could not be assured of medical care by making hospitals safe from vandals. However, the records of the business of extracting Iraq’s natural wealth was made safe.

Third, in addition to advocates of American empire being so prominent in the Bush administration and the fact that the US was most interested in preserving Iraq’s most profitable natural resource, is the simple fact that it is transnational corporations that have benefited from the invasion. The largest contracts were awarded to Halliburton and Bechtel on a no bid basis. Thus, we see the earmarks of the colonial pattern: military might has been used to open markets in a weaker nation to the benefit of the interests of the stronger. The interests of the weaker nation have been subjugated by force to those of the stronger. Moreover, the article cites an example of an attempt by the Iraqis to solve a problem that has emerged since the fall of Saddam: namely, the case of police protection. The Iraqis must not be allowed to solve their own problems by setting up their own solutions when an American concern could profit.

Thus, not only has the military might of a stronger nation been used to force open the market of a weaker nation, but the natives are forbidden to establish their own enterprises that would compete with the interests of the mother country. Meanwhile, a American administrator, Paul Bremer, is placed at the head of the government of Iraq and hand-picks natives to act as a governing council to give these arrangements a vainer of legality to which they are not entitled. In effect, the Iraqi people have no say in the structuring of their post-Saddam economy or government. The Iraqi Governing Council is not responsible to the people of Iraq, but to the American administrator.

This is not only colonialism, this is classic British imperialism. It is the kind of arrangement we thought was swept into the dust bin of history, where it belonged along side slavery, in the years following World War II.

The assertion that the invasion of Iraq is a colonial war is well-based. It can hardly be called anything else.

The second assertion that could be challenged as "baseless" is that the reconstruction of Iraq is designed to benefit corporations with ties to the Republican Party.

We have established, above, that US transnational corporations are being given the opportunity to reconstruct Iraq while the Iraqis themselves are being denied the same opportunity. We have already seen that some of these firms were awarded contracts without competitive bidding. Specifically, these firms are Halliburton and Bechtel.

Both Halliburton and Bechtel are well-connected to the Republican Party.. Among Bechtel’s past board members are past GOP administration veterans George Schultz, Casper Weinberger, the late former CIA director, William Casey, and the late former Treasury Secretary, William Simon, Sr. Halliburton was once run by Mr. Cheney, the current occupant of the office of the Vice President of the United States. While Cheney was CEO at Halliburton, he brought several Republican luminaries to the board of directors, including Lawrence Eagleburger, who served briefly as Secretary of State under the elder Bush.

Halliburton’s contracts in Iraq are for the most part through its subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root. As of mid-October, KBR had performed $1.6 billion worth of business in Iraq. The contracts in Iraq awarded to KBR are worth a potential $7 billion. Among the services with which Halliburton is to perform are putting out oil well fires and the operation of facilities and the distribution of products.

Bechtel was awarded a $680 million contract to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure such as schools, roads and sewage facilities. Due to deteriorating conditions in Iraq, Bechtel has since been award an additional $350 billion.

Mentioned in the article is DynCorps, a subsidiary of the Computer Sciences Corporation. DynCorps was awarded a $50 million contract to provide law enforcement, judicial and correctional facilities in Iraq. Iraqis are completely dealt out of DynCorps operations in Iraq. DynCorps advertising for positions open by the contract require that applicants prove that they have been US citizens for at least ten years. After Mr. Bush pushed his $87 billion request for expenses related to the occupation of Iraq to Congress, the State Department proposed giving DynCorps an additional $800 million to train Iraqi police.

The awarding of such contracts raised eyebrows by Congressional overseers almost from the start. Congressman Henry Waxman (D-California) has been particularly outspoken on the matter. Legislation has been proposed to make the bidding process more open and transparent.

The assertion that the awarding of contracts for Iraq’s reconstruction unduly favor transnational corporations with close ties to the Bush Administration is also well-based.

[Big_AJ]

13. As soon as

someone in the political opposition says self-evident my BS detector beeps. Assertions to follow are not necessarily based on evidence. The actions are being opposed more because of political reflex than exvidence.

Aj

[Martin Eden]

14. self-evident

Here is the paragraph in which JR used the phrase self-evident:

That this is a colonial war for the benefit of Bush’s corporate cronies would seem almost self-evident. However, it seems that some remain unconvinced. For the benefit of such people, evidence to support these assertions is presented here.

JR then goes on for several paragraphs, providing the facts and sound arguments upon which his assertions were based.

In my opinion, JR made his case very convincingly. He backed up what seemed self-evident with actual evidence -- which you have done nothing to refute.

You are not the only one with a BS detector.

If you claim that someone's assertions were baseless, then he takes the time to explain with a highly-detailed and logical response, the least you can do is address the merits of his arguments.

My BS detector says you so casually dismissed his arguments not because the figure of speech "self-evident" is a disqualifier, but because you are unable to present evidence or argument to counter his.

[marzipanni]

15. Does your BS detector

only beep when someone in the political opposition says self-evident? The political reflex can cause both right and left knees to jerk. Your reflexes are good, er, working.

[The Magistrate]

16. Excellent Work, Mr. Rabbit!

This thing is, indeed, a colonial venture in the full nineteenth century style. It even has a propagandist tincture of what in that day was known as "Liberal Imperialism", in which the project was described as an effort to uplift the natives, and improve their lot, particularly in the field of political institutions. There were some political figures of that day, and many individual supporters of imperialism, who were doubtless sincere in espousing that intention, but somehow the uplift never quite came, at least not in the form advertised. It will not come in this case either. A "Democratic Iraq" is the lest thing these reptiles might desire, for its first act would be demand the departure of the United States, and its second, most likely, would be to establish an Islamic theocracy. The establishment instead of a "puppet" regime, without any foundation save U.S. military forces, is the only course open to the colonial administration. No stability can be got that way.

[0007]

8. Such as!

[0007]

7. A very find article!

[marzipanni]

9. Yes! It ties the whole mess up with a big red bow...

Thanks, Jack Rabbit. I will email and/or print your article to send to those who are just emerging from the dark. If it wasn't such a prickly subject I'd include it with my late Christmas cards!

[jbfam4]

10. Thanks for posting

Just printed Jack's article out for my 85 year old Mother...she will love reading it.

I like the Plato quote: "Plato defined a tyrant as one who is ruled by his passions rather than reason and will break every sacred bound in order to satisfy his appetites. That is a good description of Saddam. "

Also a good description of * .