Specter of Iraq haunts Bush trip
Would-be world emperor forced to tone down rhetoric
By
Deirdre Griswold
Published Feb 24, 2005 7:51 PM
The president of the United States got
another reminder this week that it takes more than having the world's biggest
weapons to make an aggressive, expansionist foreign policy produce the desired
results.
The scripting of George W. Bush's trip to Europe was flawless.
Everything was arranged in advance to manufacture the image required by a regime
aspiring to world leadership, nay, world domination: unassailable strength
tempered with compassion and a folksy touch. How many hours did he spend being
coached on how to press his agenda firmly but in a way that would bring the
European heads of state on board with his agenda for Iraq, Iran, Syria,
Palestine and North Korea?
His enormous security apparatus did their jobs.
In the German city of Mainz, for example, the police welded shut 1,300 manhole
covers so the presidential motorcade of 80 vehicles could drive through the
streets without fear of being bombed. A scheduled town hall meeting with
"regular German citizens" was cancelled after the German government told Bush's
staff that it couldn't guarantee friendly questions. (Washington Post, Feb.
23)
This is the same city where his father, Bush I, was once welcomed by
cheering crowds. It seems so long ago.
The cameras of CNN, Fox and the
rest of the corporate media didn't focus on the empty streets--empty except
where thousands of demonstrators gathered with banners reading "Bush No. 1
terrorist." They accentuated the positive, showing Bush smiling alongside
Jacques Chirac of France, Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and Tony Blair of
Britain.
Those who looked closely, however, couldn't fail to notice Bush's
body language--tense, the smile pasted on his face. It was almost like a
flashback to the days when the embattled Richard Nixon smiled and flashed the
victory sign even while being booed to high heaven by hostile crowds. Nixon knew
the cameras would dutifully focus on him, not his opponents, and editors would
cut out the background noise.
A colossus with feet of
clay?
In some ways, Bush might seem at the height of his power. His
party managed, by hook or by crook, to get him elected to a second term. The
voting in Iraq that he promised would usher in a period of stability and
"nation-building" has taken place.
The loyal "opposition" at home, the
Democrats, endorsed his Iraq and Afghan wars, as well as the Patriot Act, the
creation of an expensive new police agency--the Department of Homeland Security,
and of an "intelligence czar" to have authority over 15 already existing spy
agencies. They even seem to be ready to accept John Negroponte in the post of
national intelligence director, despite his odious history as a facilitator of
death-squad repression in countries like Honduras.
So why has Bush
forsaken his triumphalist demeanor? Why is he actually speaking of an "equal
partnership" with Europe--the "old Europe" he dismissed so breezily not very
long ago? Why is he actually eating french fries?
It's always important to
remember that Bush is not just a cocky, power-hungry individual but someone
groomed for many years to represent the interests of the gold-plated U.S. ruling
class, which owes its vast fortunes to the exploitation of the increasingly
multi-national working class at home and the intense, super-exploitation of
hundreds of millions of workers in oppressed countries around the
world.
To them, an imperialist war like the one in Iraq is fully
justified, no matter how dirty it is, if it succeeds in protecting and expanding
their investments and their ability to suck out the resources and labor of other
countries at the lowest possible cost. They don't mind corporations like
Halliburton getting close to the presidency and skimming off extra gravy for
themselves as long as it all works to enhance the interests of their class as a
whole.
But what if it doesn't? What if the resistance of the Iraqi people
to being recolonized turns what was anticipated to be a short, brutal victory
into a long tunnel with no light at the end? What if that spirit of resistance
begins appearing in more and more places around the world?
What if the
reluctance of the population at home to fight and die for empire makes it ever
more difficult to get the needed bodies for their expensive war
machine?
And what if the decades-long preoccupation with building the
biggest, baddest, most technologically advanced military machine of all, and
borrowing trillions to pay for it, is actually hurting their competitive edge in
the world capitalist market, instead of enhancing it?
A flash of heat
lightning
At the very moment that Bush was beginning his European
trip, the financial markets got a rude shock. They heard that the Bank of Korea
might start shifting its holdings into other currencies besides the dollar. The
Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 150 points that day.
At one time, the
various brokers and financial managers who analyze market trends would probably
have laughed disparagingly if anyone suggested that a decision made by a bank in
South Korea could shake them up. Their chauvinism was unmitigated. But the world
has changed.
The huge foreign debt of the U.S. has greatly eroded its
currency, and speculation has been rife for quite a while that institutions in
other countries holding large amounts of U.S. dollars might begin to exchange
them for something more stable, like the euro. A move by the Korean bank might
be just the first shift in what could become an avalanche.
A lot of people
in the financial world know this and are holding their breath.
So there
was Bush, trying to look tough and friendly at the same time while he explained
his administration's bellicose attitude toward Iran to a skeptical audience.
Asked at a news conference if the U.S. might attack Iran--even while the
European imperialists are negotiating with that country--Bush said, looking
straight at the cameras, that such talk was "ridiculous." And then he added
hastily that the U.S. didn't rule out any action. Pure double-speak.
There
was laughter in the room. Laughter. So much laughter that it was noted in the
transcript. Another photo op turned into humiliation for the would-be
emperor.
His next stop is Russia, where he is supposed to dress down the
Putin administration for its "crackdown on independent businesses and internal
dissent." (New York Times, Feb. 23)
Independent businesses? Like the oil
company Yukos, which Bush's energy friends thought they had all sewed up?
ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco had made a deal with the richest person in Russia,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to sell them a huge chunk of that country's oil riches at
firesale prices. Now Khodor kovsky is in jail and Yukos has reverted to state
ownership.
As much as the U.S. imperialists feel they deserve to control
Russia's great resources and industries--after all, they won the Cold War!--they
have not overcome the resistance of the Russian people, even after the
destruction of the Soviet workers' state. Putin has to remember that if he wants
to keep his job.
Nor is the Bush administration likely to get Russia's
cooperation in its drive to isolate Iran and tighten its grip on the Middle
East.
At bottom, it is not the independent will of rival capitalist
politicians that has thrown a monkey wrench into the plans of Washington's
neo-cons. It is the pressure they are feeling from below, from the
masses--sometimes articulated clearly in political demonstrations, but more
often apparent in other ways, from the spread of popular resistance in Iraq to
the falling rate of military enlistment and the resistance to social service
cuts, especially Social Security, here in the U.S.
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