by Anwaar Hussain

Most recently, the president of United States said: "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation."

Not to be debated in this column is the fact that the United States itself is now so steadfastly embarked upon a course of such vile fascism that even genuine American fascists are distancing themselves from this Neoconish version of it. Also not to be debated here are further facts that the Islamic fundamentalists who, according to the grapevine, perpetrated 9/11 and similar crimes in Europe, hanker for a fundamentalist theocracy, not fascism and that the new American fascists themselves have their religion and government so thoroughly welded with each other that it is difficult to tell one from the other.

No sirs, the agenda of the Islamic cave dwellers of Tora Bora may be any thing but fascist. 'Islamic fascism’, this most current war cry of the Neocons, is nothing more than the latest terminological inexactitude on the falling power curve of the Neocons, an ugly last ditch attempt to breathe new life into the fast fading, faltering and dying war steed of the Neocons.

Unlike our lying Neocons, Benito Mussolini, the true father of fascism, had a pretty straight forward definition for his creed. He, in his seminal essay 'The Doctrine of Fascism’, wrote;

"Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."

If the Neocons really were convinced of their cause, if they were a little less deceiving and a little more forthcoming, they would have come up with a more becoming name for their agenda. Allow me to explain how that is.

First, as 9/11 (the much pined for 'New Pearl Harbor’ of the Neocons) was indeed the launching pad of Neocons’ campaign, let us quickly see who profited and who lost in the wake of 9/11.

Fact-1 : The period since 9/11 has seen the Middle Eastern plains continuously being drenched with the blood of innocent Muslims, the supposed perpetrators of the crime. Internationally, during the same period, their coreligionists are increasingly being treated like dogs.

Fact-2 : In the same time span, the Anglo-American defense industrial corporation has enjoyed a boom that has no parallel since the Second World War.

Consider the following;

In 2005 alone, for example, defense contracts totaled $269 billion, up from $143 billion in 2000 or almost double of that year, a dizzying rise having no parallel in the post World War-II era. Please also note that the annual military spending of USA that same year was approximately US $ 518 billion. Simple math would tell us that after deducing the costs of maintaining a standing army, care for the dead, dying and wounded soldiers etc., the rest of the money has made a beeline to the deep pockets of the war profiteers.

Now also guess who is one of the biggest war profiteer of them all? It is none other than the biggest and most scandal-plagued former firm of Vice President Richard Cheney’s, Halliburton. While Halliburton may be the prime example of war profiteering, it is by no means the only one. As of April 2006, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has reported 72 ongoing such investigations.

Lockheed Martin is another corporation that remains the king among war profiteers, raking in $21.9 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2003 alone. With satellites and planes, missiles and IT systems, the company has profited from just about every phase of the war except for the reconstruction. The company’s stock has tripled since 2000 to just over $60. And guess what, the word has it that Cheney’s wife, Lynne Cheney, has served on the Board of Lockheed Martin, and was compensated $120,000 a year for showing up at its quarterly meetings.

Here is a short list of some of the other war profiteers;

AEGIS, BearingPoint, Bechtel, BKSH & Associates, CACI and Titan, Custer Battles, Loral Satellite, Qualcomm

But for the sake of brevity here, it was quite easy to show that from election campaign contributions to direct connections with the Neocons, all these companies are linked one way or the other to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice, or "The Five Morons" as Paul Craig Roberts calls them. As a matter of fact, were it not for the sheer irony of it, one would have suggested that the only way to bring the 'War on Terror’ to an abrupt halt is for the American Tax payer to promise to give this money directly to the Five Morons and their masters with no questions asked.

Probably the most ironic aspect of it all is that while the Five Morons are busy tirelessly giving spin after spin to their corporate masters’ war profiteering, the masters themselves are actually following a pretty straight forward business plan. If the gravy train is to continue chucking along, a few golden business rules would have to be followed…that is a no-brainer. A simple Google search for cardinal business rules throws up one Mark Smock’s article repeatedly. Here are some of Mark’s cardinal business rules (additions in brackets are mine);

Cardinal Business Rule No. 1 : Give priority to new product or service development: (Indeed. In every war they kill us in newer ways)

Cardinal Business Rule No. 2 : Find new applications for existing products or services: Be sure to establish a communication means between your company and your product / service users to determine how they really use your products. Offering a financial incentive to "surface" news applications helps too! (Financial incentives…eh? Tell that to the Five Morons)

Cardinal Business Rule No. 3 : The easiest sale of them all: You have already spent the money to acquire your customers and build a relationships with them, why not ask what else can you make or provide for them? (Ask the Five Morons and you shall receive)

Cardinal Business Rule No. 4 : Know where to get all the answers: ALL the answers about how your company is doing, where it should go and what it should stop doing, reside within your own customer base. Just ask! (Ask who? Who is the customer base? The Five Morons once again)

Cardinal Business Rule No. 5 : Think out of boundaries! If you just focus on US markets, someday you will find your company can no longer effectively compete because someone else beat you to the global market game board, the board the business game of tomorrow will be played on. (Indeed. Now, could it be plainer than this? Do we still wonder why from Afghanistan to Lebanon, newer theaters (read markets) are coming up all the time and what is the real agenda of the Five Morons?)

From Iraq’s WMDs to mushroom clouds over America, to freedom and liberty to Islamic Fascism, the Neocons’ war cries have taken a circuitous route to arrive at the current one.

Who was it that said "Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive"?

Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain