Lieven De Cauter11 maart 2008 – 15:53

After 9/11 the US invaded Afghanistan. But on the moment they could close in on Bin Laden, they withdrew. Why? Instead, they started an illegal invasion in Iraq, which was a catastrophe foretold. Why? The neocon ideology still provides a key to the answer. The book ‘Present Dangers’ (1998) spelled it out. After the Cold War, America needed a new, big enemy, for having no enemy is bad for both politics and the military industrial complex. As soon as it was founded in 1996, the project for The New American Century (PNAC), with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz as co-signatories, asked in several letters to the president for a war against Iraq. In 2000, the PNAC published its report ‘Rebuilding America’s Defences’, in which they asked for a major increase in military spending to “fight and decisively win multiple simultaneous major theatre wars”. They also said that the unresolved conflict with Saddam Hussein provided an alibi for a permanent military presence in the Gulf. They were well aware that this revolution in the military was unlikely without, and here I quote, “some catalysing catastrophic event, like a new Pearl Harbour” (it is still on their website). So 9/11 was a godsend. The Bush government took up this new neocon vision and declared the ‘war on terror’. With the strategy of letting Osama in Afghanistan and the Taliban regain force and spreading Al Quada to Iraq and angering the entire Middle East and radicalising fractions of Islam everywhere, they got what they needed: the ideal, big, if not monstrous, post-Cold War enemy. On the way they fulfilled the hidden agenda of Israel to get rid of Iraq, and by privatising warfare they gave a huge push to the development of a new military and paramilitary industry (what Naomi Klein has called the ‘disaster capitalism complex’). They destroyed the Iraqi state, privatised its assets and its oil, got permanent bases and built the biggest embassy ever. So as far as we can see, the neocon agenda was realised, almost all according to plan. That it cost more than 1 million Iraqi lives and four to five million refugees and an entire population maimed, underfed or traumatised – which makes it the biggest manmade disaster on the planet at this moment – too bad. Of course, there are conflicting opinions and interests, the public opinion has turned against the war and the situation on the ground is called “messy”, but, as long as permanent war is reassured, all is well. All is well for the think tanks that concocted the project for a new century of American dominance, “pre-eminence” as they call it, by unleashing and heroically fighting “the present dangers”: the ubiquitous terrorist as both enemy within and the enemy without, the best enemy there is, for it gives you both the right for war and the right for the state of emergency (from patriot act to Guantanamo and beyond, up to the antiterrorism laws in Europe). For that is what this war on terror is and remains: a willed planetary state of emergency. The war in Iraq is part of that plan for permanent war and permanent emergency.

Lieven De Cauter
philosopher, initiator of the BRussells Tribunal, Belgium

Bericht aan de Bevolking is een initiatief van Het beschrijf, in samenwerking met het B/Russell/s Tribunal. Een aantal auteurs van deze teksten treedt ook aan op de Literaire Wake n.a.v. 5 jaar oorlog in Irak, op woensdag 19 maart van 20 u. tot 24 u. in Literatuurhuis Passa Porta, A. Dansaertstraat 46, 1000 Brussel. Zie www.passaporta.be

Link naar het overzicht