Most American politicians and many pundits now concede they were wrong to support Bush’s invasion of Iraq, stating that the administration lied to them about its justification. Politicians who voted to support the invasion, especially liberal politicians, say that the Bush administration lied to them about its reasons for this invasion. It is hard to believe this, especially in the case of bright, educated, and talented people like Hillary Clinton and others. The Bush administration’s phony excuses did not fool many ordinary American citizens, who did not have the same access to information as did the Clinton-style politicians and inside-the-beltway denizens.

When trying to justify launching this war, the Bush administration and its apologists gave reasons that included:

• Saddam’s supposed cache of weapons of mass destruction
• Saddam’s nose-thumbing UN weapons inspectors in the face of UN sanctions
• The undoubtedly brutal nature of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship
• The supposed desirability of creating an Arab democracy that would serve as a beacon in the Middle East, the latter a more “politically correct” and polite version of early 19th century meme of carrying “white man’s burden” and securing the “blessings of western civilization.”

But the truth is that none of these stated reasons were the real reasons for this war. These currently transparent excuses were really nothing more than a now-failed public relations ploy.

As demonstrated below, the American corporate rulers had planned this war a decade before the initiation of hostilities. This war planning had always been about control of energy resources and marketplaces, not democracy, not terrorism, not Islam.

Moreover, this war was not an aberration from American moral principles that supposedly guide its foreign policy. It was the natural outgrowth of a longstanding foreign policy, a strategy that stems back from the days of the Spanish-American war of 1898 and before.

Consider my reasons for stating this:

A modern national economy runs on energy. Without energy, a modern economy is not possible. Coal can produce energy for much manufacturing as China shows us, but it’s petroleum that makes large-scale agriculture and distribution of commodities at all possible.

Unfortunately for the world’s ecology and the human race, this will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. Governments and research institutes are exploring alternatives, but no real large-scale replacement of petroleum is likely to come on line for several decades or more.

That’s why modern nation states view access to petroleum at low prices to be a national security issue. A superpower’s status correlates directly with the degree of control over energy production and marketing in the context of a globally interlinked network of market economies.

Insofar as access to and control of energy resources are located abroad, the would-be superpower must tend to develop an assertive and interventionist military and an aggressive foreign policy.

And in selling this military and foreign policy to its own citizens, the superpower’s need to justify what in essence is an imperialist foreign policy can dominate a large part of the political life of a country. This is the case in the United States today.

At the beginning of the 21st century, there is only one superpower, the United States. But the US seems to face two potential rivals for global economic domination in China and India. Additionally, the European Union is a potential third superpower rival. So if the United States wants to maintain its status as the dominant world power, it must tightly hold onto the world’s gas pump and control the flow and price of energy to China, India, and Europe. That iron imperative forms the strategic underpinning of US policy towards China, India, and Europe.

The current American president, Mr. Barack Obama, said this in his acceptance speech in November, 2008, after he won the election:

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you. (emphasis added)

President Obama followed this up talking about American strength coming not from military and economic power, but from the “enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.” However, those pretty words should be seen as as public relations ploy to sell the desirability of a “shared destiny” under “American leadership.”

The crucial part of President Obama’s message lies in that part about the United States’ desire to assume the role of “world leadership” and determination to “defeat” those who oppose that very US “leadership.”

And it’s not just conjecture that the USA seeks political and economic hegemony in the coming century. Nor is this strategic posture a recent innovation. Consider this:

On January, 28, 1998, the Project For A New American Century (sometimes abbreviated as PNAC), an important so-called neoconservative think tank, wrote a letter to President Clinton about what they thought should be done with Iraq. They proposed “regime change.” That is to say, they proposed a preemptive invasion and the toppling of a foreign government via an unprovoked war for economic advantage on the world economic stage. Here are some quotes from that letter:

As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. ……if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. (Emphasis added)

The solution, as far as the signers of this letter are concerned, to put it crudely, is to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime and to install another one that will be more amenable and obedient to American pressure. From the same letter:

In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. …..We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council. (Emphasis added)

Remember, this was years before the 9/11 attack in New York. So just who are these people who constitute PNAC? Who are they who had the chutzpah to call for the preemptive invasion and overthrow of a sovereign government, even in the face of worldwide disapproval?

Who were those worthies who, in January of 1998, 3-plus years before 9/11 and 5-plus years before the invasion of Iraq, called for using military force in the name of guaranteeing Americas “vital interests in access to oil” to safeguard such “moderate” regimes as Saudi Arabia, (whose law is a very severe form of Shariah) and Egypt (which is a dictatorship), as well as Israel?

Why, oddly enough, they happen to be the same people who designed the Bush Administration’s wartime policies……the very same people!

And among those who signed and endorsed this extraordinary letter are such former Bush administration operatives and apologists as Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, Richard Perle, William J. Bennett, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, and Robert B. Zoellick.

Here’s how PNAC managed to become the designers of the Iraq war.

According to PNAC’s Statement of Principles, it started in 1997 to promote a shift in US foreign policy towards an enhanced use of an augmented military presence. Signers of that Statement of Principles included many of the above signatories and a few others, including former vice president Dick Cheney and his disgraced chief-of-staff Scooter ( I. Lewis) Libby, implicated in the Valerie Plame affair.

In 2000, a few years later, PNAC expanded on this in a 90-page paper called Rebuilding America’s Defenses (sometimes abbreviated as RAD), which sought to lay out a road map for America’s foreign policy as the Bush administration was coming into power. RAD’s introduction says the following:

Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

In broad terms, we saw the project as building upon the defense strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush Administration. The Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.

Note the strategic concern with “precluding the rise of a great power rival” and “maintaining U.S. preeminence.” This is an apology for a nakedly imperialist foreign policy and inter-imperialist rivalry.

Dick Cheney, the Secretary of Defense during this time under the first Bush administration, had had Paul Wolfowitz draft a document called the Defense Policy Guidance (DPG).

This document was leaked to the New York Times and The Washington Post. When it hit the public consciousness, there was a huge political storm.

You can read Wikipedia’s article about it here and the New York Times documentary coverage here, where you’ll find this passage:

The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. In non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role. (Emphasis added)

Such are the real reasons for the United States’ foreign policy vis-à-vis Iraq in particular and the middle east in general. American foreign policy has everything to do with control of marketplaces and resources, of “convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”

While the DPG document’s words have the virtue of being frank, they have precious little to do with what President Obama calls the “enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.”

Although the naked language of Wolfowitz’s DPG document is mighty poor theater indeed, its author should be forgiven for this breech of good table manners.

After all, Cheney and Wolfowitz never intended that the squeamish American public should actually lay eyes on these sober words, less they begin to suspect that perhaps they ultimately don’t determine public policy at the ballot box.

Oh no! This document was meant to be read by the actual wielders of political power, the financiers, the war planners, the executive committees of what can only be called the ruling class. And it was merely an accident of history that it ever got a public airing.

And when this gruesomely Machiavellian document fell into the bright light of public awareness, it caused a political firestorm, as it had been commissioned by none other than the redoubtable Dick Cheney, in his official capacity of Secretary of Defense (which is Orwellian language for what used to be called Secretary of War before the end of the Second World War).

Both the Democratic and Republican party claim they represent the national interests of the United States. What they really attempt to defend are the corporate interests and the interests of American finance capital on the world stage, foremost among them the banking, insurance, financial services, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, “defense,” and the petroleum industries.

As anyone reading the current news must realize, the Democrats and Republicans surely hate each other immensely and continuously try to undermine each other while smiling at each other most civilly. That enmity is real and comes about because they seek to represent different factions of the corporate plutocracy that actually rules the United States, and they have different tactical approaches to achieving their shared strategic goal: the perpetuation of “American leadership” in the world capitalist system.

These rival factions battle over policy issues; that is to say, over which tactics best serve those “American national interests,” by which they mean American corporate international domination, control of resources and marketplaces.

Nevertheless, despite the viciousness of the Republican Party-versus-Democratic Party tactical spats, their long-term strategic interests remain identical.

Fundamentally, the Republicans and the Democrats do not really disagree about whether the US should be the dominant economic and political in the world, or (as PNAC unapologetically says) the world’s constabulary power. They differ only in when and how to balance the use military tactics to best advantage with the use of diplomatic blandishments and economic threats. Their disagreement is not whether the United States has any right to impose its “leadership role” on the rest of the human race.

The Difference Between The Liberal Doves And The Conservative Hawks

On the one hand, some of the Democratic Party’s so-called liberals originally opposed military intervention in Iraq because they thought it would ultimately be counterproductive to “American national interests.” Such liberals (for example, the then Senator Obama), feared military intervention threatened to destabilize the region so much that it would endanger America’s overall Mideast policies.

What those critics of the proposed invasion instinctively feared above all else was that a real revolutionary upheaval might replace the present middle eastern corrupt dictatorships and upset the power balance there, which in turn might threaten American control of marketplaces and resources and America’s role as “leader of the free world.”

On the other hand, the so-called neoconservatives also feared that control of Mideast politics and resources would spin out of the United State’s control. But they felt the danger came not from alienating the masses of the middle east with a brutish show of strength but because the USA was far too wary of offending their allies. They feared the appearance of weakness and lack of resolve would embolden those who chafed under the United States playing a leadership role.

So they advocated a more naked intimidation, the “shock and awe” school of control that could deter “potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”

In the coming months and years, we shall see if the neocon rationality made more tactical sense in serving the foreign policy goals of American plutocracy than did the liberal rationale.

The United States may yet suffer a historic defeat in Iraq if the Iraqi government collapses while or shortly after the US withdraws its last forces, perhaps withdrawn to shore up another shaky and unpopular puppet in Afghanistan.

If and when the Iraqi government collapses and plunges that unfortunate country into yet another orgy of bloodletting, there will suddenly be a large and vicious argument about “who lost Iraq,” and all that sweet talk about bipartisanship and looking to the future instead of the past will become very unfashionable indeed.

What will not be discussed is whether advancing the interests of the average “middle class” American has, or ever has had, anything in common with advancing the interests of the American corporate plutocracy. No one will critically analyze what “American national interest” actually means in terms of the average American or, for that matter, world citizen.

Lately, pundits, politicians, and even President Bush have drawn parallels to the Vietnam war and the present war in Iraq. But there is another, not-talked-about parallel, and it is much more important.

During the Vietnam war, the military brass and assorted apologists for this appalling adventure complained about how the US was fighting with one hand tied behind its back, owing to the treasonous antiwar movement and their bullying of those weak-kneed liberal politicians.

Although most of today’s military strategists do not think there are anywhere near enough “boots on the ground” to achieve US goals, they avoid voicing this sentiment too loudly. There is a good reason why the US has not mobilized its military machine to the extent they did during World War II or even Korea.

During World War II, the United States mobilized almost all domestic economic activity to fighting the war. Although there was comparatively little actual damage to US territory, apart from Pearl Harbor (not part of one of the States at that time), Americans had rationing, a draft, and literally millions of men under arms. Our armies were huge. Almost all civilian production was geared primarily to war production. For example, in 1940, President Roosevelt ordered the building of 50,000 planes for combat. Meanwhile domestic spending and economic activity were cut, government programs gutted, most strikes outlawed–all for funneling America’s industrial resources into the war. Those who stayed home contributed to the war effort by working longer hours, having a reduced standard of living, and making many small and large sacrifices. There were neighborhood drives for surplus metal for the war effort, e.g. tin cans for tanks, rusting auto wheels for bullets and hand grenades. Some people even donated dinnerware and old family treasures. People sunk their spare change into war bonds.

Americans had no similar mobilization during the Vietnam war, although Americans were told that if they did not fight the communists there, they would be fighting them in the streets of America. (Does this sound familiar?) Instead, President Johnson promised “guns and butter,” and this actually became a campaign slogan. The Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations all engaged in a policy of “gradual escalation.”

Why did the politicians hesitate to build an army of millions and mobilize the American public for a massive war effort? They faced three powerful forces that, if mobilized, could have inflicted a historic defeat. Before every escalation, the war makers wanted to know what would the Soviet Union do (a major military power), what would China do (another major military power), and what would the American people do. Of course, the American people had no military power, that having been monopolized by their government. But Americans did have the power of mass action and mass protest. That power had just succeeded in knocking down the Jim Crow laws, at the cost of no little bloodshed, For those too young to remember, Jim Crow laws were the American form of Apartheid that mandated segregation in the American south and legitimized a reign of terror over African Americans that lasted from the 1880s to the 1960s.

The Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China offered very little resistance other than rhetoric. But the American people became more and more involved in a powerful antiwar movement. At first, the peace movement was comprised of a few pacifist groups and radicals, then student groups, and then eventually mainstream groups like churches and other organizations. It reached a point where the organizations involved in antiwar activities actually represented the majority of Americans. Finally, antiwar groups sprung up in the military, including among combat personnel. Military resistance was both organized and spontaneous. Soldiers refused orders to fight, there were mass desertions, and officers who insisted on combat were frequently killed (a practice called fragging, where a fragmentation grenade would end up in an officer’s tent in the middle of the night). Then when national guardsmen killed antiwar demonstrators on the Jackson State College and Kent State College in May of 1970, there was a political explosion. A nationwide student strike shut down most of secondary education in the country, especially in the big urban areas along the coasts, and at the same time, the truckers went on strike on the east coast (though not over the war). For a few days in that May, anti-government sentiment was higher than at any other time since the Civil War of 1860 to 1865, almost exactly a century earlier.

To those who did not live through the experience, it is almost unbelievable how unpopular the Vietnam had become and how deeply legitimate and heartfelt antiwar feeling had become during final 3 or 4 years, even among military personnel. Antiwar sentiment infiltrated our culture, our music, our lives. According to this article in the Encyclopedia Britannica, around a half-million young men avoided the draft. Moreover, tens of thousands more deserted the military. Fragging incidents and outright refusals to fight escalated to unheard levels. Morale broke down completely in the Army and it became unreliable. The Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force were on the road to becoming unreliable. General public sentiment for immediate and unconditional withdrawal spread through the ranks of the fighting men. That is, in large part, what actually caused the politicians to “tie” the military’s hands behind their back, that is to say, not mobilize sufficiently for a definitive defeat of the Vietnamese resistance.

Today, the military faces a similar situation. In order to achieve its goals, the United States would have to mobilize on a scale that would cause rebellion in the United States. According to the CIA World Fact Book, there are a little more than 26 million Iraqis. In June, 2006, there were 138,000 US troops in Iraq. That is a ratio of 188 civilians to one US troop. And the US military is an occupying force in a country where according to ABC News, polls show 6 out of 10 Iraqis feel it is justified to attack US military personnel in order to drive them out..

Today, the Iraq war is unpopular enough that one does not hear too many politicians or generals yammering about having their hands tied behind their backs by the present burgeoning antiwar sentiment. Opposition to the Vietnam war legitimized dissent against wars. That legacy haunts the worst nightmares of the war makers and informs the conscience of the American public.

Not too surprisingly, North Korea would consider such an enterprise to be an act of war waged by the United States and backed by the UN member nations in whose name this idiocy is to be carried out. After all, reason the North Korean leadership, under international law, interdiction of trade is considered an act of war.

The North Korean rulers are likely to see this as a dare and a challenge to their pride or even manhood. Resisting such interference of their shipping is the North Korean version of “staying the course” and not “cutting and running.” Minor military skirmishes can easily spiral out of control, and a general war between North and South Korea, perhaps Japan and China is not out of the question. According to Global Security, the North Korean Reserve Military (active army) has 1.7 million soldiers under arms right now. These are active duty or important rear position support. On top of that, they have Worker-Peasant Militia and the Young Red Guards 5.3 million people who are the equivalent of the US National Guard and are undoubtedly combat ready. This is 7 million people under arms.

So how will this play out? My nightmare scenario is that the United States military attempt to carry out these inspections and an armed confrontation results. The United States looks to be bogged down right now in Iraq, but there is not that much of a shorefront in the desert, and so the US Navy is not playing that large a role. Thus, the redoubtable and foolish Mr. Bush and his buddies could send the Navy there to patrol and “inspect.” It is not entirely unlikely that a land war with millions of combatants could suddenly arise, a situation not seen since the Second World War. And this time, the United States , Russia, Pakistan, India, Israel, and likely even countries such as Brazil have nuclear weapons–all UN members and therefore enemies in the eyes of a North Korea at war.

The United States’ policy shows that power knows no shame. At the same time that the United States is developing new nuclear weapons and has a military budget that is larger than the military budgets of the rest of the world combined, US policy makers take it upon themselves to say who may or may not develop nuclear weapons. And in case the North Koreans need more grist for their propaganda mill, George Bush just declared that the United States has the right to determine who uses space. Under this doctrine, the United States could say North Korea, Iran, or another such state cannot put a satellite into space and reserves the right to take it down by any means necessary.

It is time for all American citizens, and all citizens of the world, to mount a gigantic antiwar movement to stop this insanity. I will write soon of how I think this can come about..