Global Eye -- Dark Passage

By Chris Floyd

The Moscow Times - 20 September 2002

 http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/stories/2002/09/20/120.html

Not since "Mein Kampf" has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed, years ahead of the blow.

Adolf Hitler clearly spelled out his plans to destroy the Jews and launch wars of conquest to secure German domination of world affairs in his 1925 book, long before he ever assumed power. Despite the zigzags of rhetoric he later employed, the various PR spins and temporary justifications offered for this or that particular policy, any attentive reader of his vile regurgitation could have divined his intentions as he drove his country -- and the world -- to murderous upheaval.

Similarly -- in method, if not entirely in substance -- the Bush Regime's foreign policy is also being carried out according to a strict blueprint written years ago, then renewed a few months before the Regime was installed in power by the judicial coup of December 2000.

The first version, mentioned in passing here last week, was drafted by a team operating under then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. It set out a new doctrine for U.S. power in the 21st century, an aggressive, unilateral approach that would secure American domination of world affairs -- "by force if necessary," as one of the acolytes put it.

When the Dominators were temporarily ousted from government after 1992, they continued their strategic planning with funding from the military-energy-security apparatus and right-wing foundations. This culminated in a new group, the aptly-named Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Members included hard-right players like Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad (now "special envoy" to the satrapy of Afghanistan) and other empire aspirants currently perched in the upper reaches of government power.

In September 2000, PNAC updated the original Cheney plan in a published report, "Strengthening America's Defenses." In this and related documents, the earlier precepts were reiterated and refined. The plans called for unprecedented hikes in military spending, the plantation of American bases in Central Asia and the Middle East, the toppling of recalcitrant regimes, the militarization of outer space, the abrogation of international treaties, the willingness to use nuclear weapons and control of the world's energy resources.

And the present course of action was clearly set forth: "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."

But Iraq is just a stepping stone. Iran is next -- indeed, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the PNAC team say that Iran is "perhaps a far greater threat" to U.S. oil hegemony. Other nations will follow, including Russia and China. In one way or another -- by military means or economic dominance, by conquest, alliance or silent acquiescence -- they must all be brought to heel, forcibly prevented from "challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."

These texts spring from the Dominators' quasi-religious cult of "American exceptionalism," the belief in the unique and utter goodness of the American soul -- embodied chiefly by the nation's moneyed elite, of course -- and the irredeemable, metaphysical evil of all those who would oppose or criticize the elite's righteous (and conveniently self-serving) policies.

Anyone still "puzzled" over the Bush Regime's behavior need only look to these documents for enlightenment. They have long been available to the media -- which accepted Bush's transparent campaign lies about a "more humble foreign policy" at face value -- but have only now started attracting wider notice, in the New Yorker magazine this spring, and this week in the Glasgow Sunday Herald.

The documents explain America's relentless march across Afghanistan, Central Asia and soon into the Middle East. They explain the Bush Regime's otherwise unfathomable rejection of international law, its fanatical devotion to so-called missile defense, its gargantuan increases in military spending -- even its antediluvian energy policy, which mandates the continued primacy of oil and gas in the world economy. (They can't conquer the sun or monopolize the wind, so there's no profit, no leverage for personal gain and geopolitical power in pursuing viable alternatives to oil.) The Sept. 11 attacks gave the Regime a pretext for greatly accelerating this published program of global dominance, but they would have pursued it in any case.

So there will be war: either soon, after the November mid-term elections, or -- in the unlikely event that Iraq's offer of inspections is accepted -- then later, after some "provocation" or "obstruction," no doubt in good time before the 2004 presidential vote. The purse-lipped rhetoric about "liberation" and "moral clarity" is just so much desert sand being thrown in our eyes. Backstage, the Bush Regime is playing Mafia-style hardball, warning reluctant allies to get on board now or else miss out on their cut of the loot when America -- not a "democratic Iraq" -- divvies up Saddam's oil fields: a shakedown detailed this week by the Economist, among many others.

The Dominators dream of empire. Not only will it extend their temporal power, they believe it will also give them immortality. One of their chief gurus, Reaganite firebreather Michael Ledeen, says that if the Dominators reject "clever diplomacy" and "just wage total war" to subjugate the Middle East, "our children will sing great songs about us years from now." This madness, this bin Laden-like megalomania, is now driving the hijacked American republic -- and the world -- to murderous upheaval.

It's all there in the text, set down in black and white.

Read it and weep.