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From Cold War to Holy War

The war was about eliminating the will of any state to defy US global 
intentions, which neo-conservatives define as faith-based benign 
hegemony  

By Henry C K Liu

05/12/03: (Asia Times) Barely a decade after the end of the Cold War 
between the two superpowers, the world has entered decidedly into an 
age of Holy War between the sole remaining superpower and minor 
states deemed by it as rogue.  

The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, billed as part of a "war on 
terrorism", were essentially the remote unleashing of overwhelming 
military power on defenseless minor states. One unique characteristic 
about this new Holy War is that it seems to be open ended, that while 
major combats have ended, or never even took place, victory remains 
not at hand in the near future. In fact, the US itself refers to these 
one-sided military operations as "battles in an on-going war on
terrorism". 
That of course is the nature of religious wars. Another unique aspect is 
that while many governments around the world opposed or at least 
disapproved of US unilateral use of force, none came to the aid of the 
victim states.  

The war against Iraq was not about oil, or about keeping oil 
denominated in dollars. These objectives, while not trivial, can be 
achieved by means other than war. The war was about eliminating the 
will of any state to defy US global intentions, which neo-conservatives 
define as faith-based benign hegemony. It was above all a warning of 
similar fate to all who would be foolish enough to follow the footsteps 
of the Taliban or Saddam Hussein and stand in the path of America's 
march toward its strategic objective of establishing a world order based 
on US imperium through preemptive war.  

Taken at face value, the war as explained by the White House is part of 
a US strategy to spread democracy, to safeguard freedom and to 
reinstate popular control of national resources and destiny around the 
world. Americans generally understand democracy to mean a 
representative form of government based on majority rule with minority 
rights, administered by elected officials of fixed terms, with separation 
of powers between the executive, legislative and judiciary branches, and 
the institution of peaceful change of administrations through general 
elections. The American notion of freedom focuses on freedom of 
speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association and freedom to 
disagree with and oppose government policies through legal means. 
Associated with these political freedoms are institutions of free 
enterprise and free markets. Any nation deemed deficient in any of 
these characteristics is fair game for regime change through the 
application of overwhelming military superpower, unless it possesses 
credible counterattack deterrence.  

The Bush administration's neo-conservative view of terrorism is that it 
has become the major threat to US national security. This view is 
understandable since the September 11, 2001 attacks. Less 
understandable is its assertion that terrorism is caused by a lack of 
democracy and freedom associated with domestic oppression, and not 
by neo-imperialism and the poverty it creates. Curiously, the US 
domestic recipe for fighting terrorism requires the suspension of civil 
liberty. Furthermore, terrorists are deemed to be enemies of democracy 
and freedom.  

Thus only half the objective of a preemptive war has to do with the 
elimination of weapons of mass destruction from the control of "rogue 
states", the other half has to do with the forceful spread of democracy 
and freedom around the globe to strike at the root of terrorism. The 
grand strategy of US neo-conservatism is to bring the full force of US 
superpower to bear on the crusade to spread democracy and freedom 
around the world, through regime changes by military force if necessary. 

Unilateralism is justified by moral imperialism. Just as neo-liberal 
globalization of free trade sweeps aside economic nationalism, neo-
conservative globalization of democratization and liberation aims to 
sweep aside national sovereign and a world order that has operated 
since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648.  

Notwithstanding that such views on terrorism may be simplistic and 
misguided, that others, including many Americans as well as previous 
US administrations, view terrorism as last resort reaction from the 
disfranchised, the persecuted, the defenseless, the exploited and the 
desperate poor, the political objectives of the war on terrorism as 
enunciated by the Bush administration cannot be accomplished by 
military operations alone. President George W Bush himself 
acknowledged as much when he announced on May 1 that while the 
military phases in both Afghanistan and Iraq have essentially been 
completed, the war on terrorism is expected to be long and challenging. 
Winning the peace is much more complex than overthrowing 
governments by force.  

The US, to make the war on terrorism legitimate, must now deliver 
democracy, freedom and self-determination to the Iraqi people on their 
terms, a task that cannot be done with precision cruise missiles and 
bunker busting bombs released at long distance by remote control. It is 
a tall order that the US will find almost impossible to fulfill, due to 
its own internal contradiction. Democracy is compromised when the US 
occupation authority serves notice that "there is no way" a Shi'ite 
theocracy would be tolerated in the new Iraq, even when 60 percent of 
the population are Shi'ites, nor that the Iraqi Communists Party would 
be allowed to participate in the formation of the new Iraqi regime.  

While US neo-cons embrace the Straussian notion of the need for 
theocracy, in direct contradiction of the US constitutional doctrine 
of separation of church and state, they accept only Judeo-Christian 
theocracy. The Bush faith-based foreign policy of one world under God 
is derived from its domestic vision of "one nation under God", 
notwithstanding that in the Supreme Court's 1961 Torcaso vs Watkins 
decision, Justice Hugo Black wrote in a foot note: "Among religions in 
this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a 
belief in the existence of God is Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, 
Secular Humanism, and others."  

Neo-cons argue that the First Amendment's religion clauses were 
intended only to prevent the establishment of a national church, and 
to keep the state from interfering with the church, not to bar religious 
groups from co-opting the government, notwithstanding Thomas 
Jefferson's claim that the First Amendment had erected a "wall of 
separation between church and state". The co-oopting of the US 
government by the religious right has launched a new religious war, 
over which even the Pope, whose church has long since retreated from 
the doctrine of Ceasaropapism, has expressed wariness. It takes a 
theocracy to start a religious war.  

On May 2, Bush, in what is generally billed as the beginning of his 
political campaign for a second term, discussed national economic 
security in a speech to the employees of the Ground Systems Division 
of United Defense Industries in Santa Clara, California, a defense 
company that produces military vehicles and technology that are being 
used by soldiers in Iraq, including the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the 
Hercules Recovery Vehicle. It is not surprising that the president chose 
the defense sector as a platform to discuss national economic security, 
given that the Bush White House has reorganized national economic 
policy under the umbrella of national security, and given that the 
defense sector is the only growth sector in the stalled economy at this 
time, despite the fact that the US defense budget is only about 3 
percent of the GDP.  

A day before, the president spoke to the American people from the deck 
of the homeward bound USS Abraham Lincoln super-carrier off the 
California coast, a political stunt that caused Senator Robert C Byrd to 
comment on the Senate floor, "I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier 
being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, 
and yet that is what I saw." The president declared that major combat 
operations in Iraq had ended, and that the US and its allies had 
prevailed. The world has never doubted that the US superpower would 
prevail over tiny Iraq, isolated and emaciated by a decade of economic 
sanctions. Ironically, the fall of Iraq sent a clear message around the 
world that in this age of superpower holy war, national security lies in 
the possession of weapons of mass destruction. The US is concerned 
with Saddam's team of 1,000 nuclear scientists, whom defense officials 
called "nuclear mujahideen". These scientists, the Defense Department 
fears, can restart Iraq's weapons program once the crisis passed. 
Would any new government in Iraq have less reason to possess nuclear 
weapons after what happened?  

/CONT/

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