Before the Next Superpower

The Associated Press noted a new death toll Thursday for Iraqi civilians that far exceeds the estimates released thus far, 150,000 killed in the war.

In your Tucson Friday morning paper was a graph illustrating the casualties in deaths per day on average per month from April of 2005 through this month. There is a possibility of some error for the end months (4/05 and 11/06), but other than that, you see the equivalent to the left with the multiplication performed to give actual fatalities per month.

Folks coming here before should find the graph familiar. It has the same look and feel as the graphs of our American soldiers dying in Afghanistan and Iraq on a monthly basis. Nuff said except to note the obvious: It's getting worse.

If we are to believe Wesley Clark, invading Iraq was actually part of a Bush Administration 5 year plan to invade 7 countries while the United States has a 10-15 year window of opportunity to conquer Islamic countries and bring them over to our side before the next superpower emerges, since the 1991 Gulf War showed the "Soviet Union" was in no position to do anything should the United States choose to invade another country.

Don't take my word for a thing on this one. Click above, listen to the General, and draw your own interpretation. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and then Iran. 5 years, 7 countries. I really don't think Clark is lying and consider it safe to conclude the memo is reality, but what does it mean? Remember, it is a memo. That doesn't mean we were "all the way there." What cannot be disputed is that we were seriously thinking about it, and that ties to Liza's remarks at TDP this summer:

when George Bush was given the presidency in 2000, PNAC members became the most powerful leaders in the Bush Administration. You’ll recognize these names: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, "Scooter" Libby, Eliot Abrams, Richard Perle, and a few others. The Bush Administration’s foreign policy and more specifically, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, can only be understood within the context of Rebuilding America’s Defenses, PNAC’s 90 page blueprint for American global hegemony in the 21st century.

Much has been written about PNAC, as you might imagine, so there are better places to start than the 90 page RAD publication. William Rivers Pitt wrote these two editorials in February, 2003, for Truthout.org: Of Gods and Mortals and Empire and Blood Money. These editorials provide a good overview of PNAC.

It is interesting that RAD was published in 2000, but does not address Osama bin Laden style terrorism. It is as though these guys just didn’t get it. It might explain why the Bush Administration rigidly adheres to the idea that the "War on Terrorism" is a war against nations. Nonetheless, 9-11 was their much longed for "catalyzing event" that launched the first war on their agenda, regime change in Iraq.

RAD is long and boring, but it provides some incredible insight into the foreign policy objectives of the Bush Administration.

Liza

I invite the reader to consider that this set of folks led by Cheney and Rumsfeld, christened and indoctrinated during the 50's and serving in the 60's and 70's under folks like Nixon during the Cold War, applied Cold War thinking to the events of September 11 and the world situation at that time.

They've fought the big red bear for so long, they're gearing up for the next one.

Before the next Superpower!

What emerging superpower? China. So we need to invade these 7 nations to get them to "our side" before China moves in? Think I'm insane? Find and play the video of Reagan telling us that Ortega and Nicaragua was about to conquer the free world as we know it. Now that Ortega is back on the scene, saw that tape again recently, and it sounds even more ridiculous now than it did at the time.

Is China huge? Damned straight China is huge. They implement the equivalent infrastructure of Houston in a day and a half or something like that. They are going places, but this means we should invade seven countries because if we don't they will? The Chinese going into Somalia? Well, actually, they are. But this is the 21st Century. New thinking is required.

If you sink deep into cold war thinking (where Cheney still lives), you recall a world where the USA and USSR played this weird game. Countries were literally seen as chess pieces on a chess board. Instead of going at each other directly (certain suicide), the USA and USSR played chess with the rest of the planet. Remember the 1960 Nixon / Kennedy debates bickering about which parts of the world were "free" and which were communist? Consider that the entire Vietnam War was one nasty fight over a single piece.

What's a 21st Century Elected Official to think?

Well, first they might ask whether this notion of superpower even applies anymore. What is, after all, a superpower in this century, in this globalized high tech 21st century political economy?

There was a brief period of time after the USSR disintegrated when the USA could regard itself as the "remaining superpower" simply because the other one went away, but quickly, far more quickly than the likes of Cheney can understand, this concept became obsolete, as did the notion that some entity resembling the old USSR would resurface with a similar menu of threats.

The next major forces as nations which must be dealt with certainly include China and India, but the superpower label no longer applies. Their military designs on us are as minimal as ours towards them. They have no desire to occupy us, blow us up, and couldn't give a tinker's cuss who we worship or how we govern ourselves.

The Bush Administration's foreign policy is based on, or at least significantly influenced by, obsolete ideas held by old school thinkers I frankly believe are too arrogant to question themselves. Unlike the deeply insightful and extremely intelligent Robert McNamara, the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld seem bent on command and control. They want to conquer to protect their precious oil, and make no mistake, ENERGY looms huge in this century, but command and control is dead in all but a few situations.

Is China hungry and getting more hungry for oil? Probably. Would China invade the middle east to get it? I think not. They'll figure something else out.

I have a better idea for all of us. Let's kick the oil habit. The entire planet will thank us for it.