January 12, 2005 - Some of us are old enough to remember Nixon’s April 30, 1970, announcement on national television that U.S. troops had invaded Cambodia, supposedly to prevent the North Vietnamese from supplying its military. I was seventeen at the time, writing for an antiwar newspaper and passing it out in high school, and I distinctly remember what happened after Nixon invaded and bombed Cambodia and armed the Cambodian dictator Lon Nol: antiwar protests exploded across the country. "Antiwar students occupied university buildings, shut down classes, and burned R.O.T.C. facilities on campuses across the country," write James S. Olson and Randy Roberts ( http://home.sandiego.edu/~hhaynes/1970-1972.htm#_ftn1 Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam 1945-1990). Four days after Nixon’s announcement, the National Guard shot and killed four students (Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, William Schroeder, and Sandra Scheuer) at Kent State University in Ohio. On May 8, 100,000 people marched on Washington to protest to the war and the shootings at Kent State. Several days later, on May 14-15, 1970, in Jackson, Mississippi, two students were shot dead by police at an antiwar demonstration. "The American people," writes Rodger Streitmatter, "realized that perhaps those crowds of long-haired young people who had been protesting the war actually made some sense after all. The hearts and minds of the American public had shifted. People were finally willing to say out loud that they had been supporting a hideous and inhuman war for too many years. And they refused to continue." ( http://home.sandiego.edu/~hhaynes/1970-1972.htm#_ftn6 ).
That was then, this is now.
As Richard Sale writes for United Press International, "Bush administration hard-liners have been considering launching selected military strikes at insurgent training camps in Syria and border-crossing points used by Islamist guerrillas to enter Iraq in an effort to bolster security for the upcoming elections, according to former and current administration officials." ( http://www.uruknet.info/?p=8815 ). In short, Bush is preparing his Cambodia, his Laos in Syria. "There are all sorts of discussions going on, the White House, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs," former CIA counterterrorism chief, Vince Cannistraro, told Sale. It appears to be only a matter of time before Bush and Crew invade Syria.
Response in America? Nada. No visible antiwar movement, no marches on Washington, no students writing and passing out antiwar newspapers, or very few, anyway. Of course, part of this is due to the fact there is no draft—not yet, anyway—but the larger reason is that Americans simply don’t care, or can’t be bothered, about Bush’s dirty invasion, occupation, and now expansion of hostilities into Syria, even though, if we are to believe the corporate media conducted polls, roughly fifty percent of Americans think invading Iraq was probably not the right thing to do, not that Americans plan to go into the streets to put an end to it.
Of course, it was all planned this way. If the Strausscons understand anything, it is that a large and viable antiwar movement will crush their hopes and dreams, thus putting an end to World War IV, as they fondly call their war against Islam and Arabs, their engineered "clash of civilizations." It is no mistake that we do not see on TV, like we did during the Vietnam War, what is really going on Iraq—the criminal flattening on Iraq’s third largest city, Fallujah, the daily murders at military checkpoints, the jackbooted raids on Iraqi homes, the disappearance of Iraqis into Bush’s torture gulag, the widespread mistreatment of Iraqis by "our troops" who are, increasingly, racist and sadistic, shooting women and children, doctors, and ambulance drivers. None of this appears on our TV screens, although news and commentary about these atrocities appears daily on websites and blogs. Increasingly, Americans are going there to find the truth.
Bush and Crew were very shrewd to hitch their anti-Arab Strausscon-Zionist wagon up to the "war on terrorism" in the wake of 9/11—in fact, some of us claim 9/11 was an "inside job" pulled off expressly for that reason, to arouse hatred and manufacture consent for massive violence against people who happen to be a threat to Israel’s "security," that is to say millions of Arabs and Iranians.
Richard Sale faithfully repeats the Strausscon line when he writes "Damascus is also home to associates of a top insurgency commander now affiliated with al-Qaida, Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is responsible for many major suicide bombing attacks in Iraq," a fallacious claim at best, based on an engineered mythology created by the Strausscons and telegraphed slavishly by the corporate media. "In addition to Syria being used as a rear area for insurgents, it is a key center of finance for former Saddam Hussein officials who are leading the insurgency, thanks to stashes of Iraqi cash that could run as high as $3 billion, which is all in the Syrian banking system, according for former and serving administration officials."
So there you have it, folks, all the hobgoblins—Osama’s al-Qaeda, Zarqawi, and Saddam dead-enders—are operating out of Syria, an insane claim on its face but one the American people will thoughtlessly digest, that is if they even bother to notice. Never mind that Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, would be truly insane, entertaining a death wish, if he allowed his country and banking system to be used to support and finance the Iraqi resistance. It makes absolutely no sense for him to do this—that is if he wants to remain ruler and spare his people the "shock and awe" of the Strausscons—but then millions of Americans believe Saddam was involved in 9/11 and that attack was carried out by cave dwellers in Afghanistan. If a majority of Americans believe a handful of medieval Muslims with satellite phones and pack animals were able to pull off such a sophisticated operation, they will probably believe anything Bush and the Strausscons tell them.
Last week we heard about the "Salvador option" death squads in Iraq—yet another ominous parallel to Vietnam (i.e., Operation Phoenix)—and this week we hear about the impending invasion (or bombing at any rate) of Syria. Meanwhile, Rumsfeld, like some third-rate stand-up comic, is trotted out over at the Pentagon to serve up the usual denials or, at least, a refusal to even discuss the subject. "Why would I even talk about something like that?" he chastised a wimpish media, according to the AFP ( http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/afp/20050111 /wl_mideast_afp/usiraqrumsfeldsyria ). As Rummy sees it, "somebody has been reading too many spy novels and went off in flights of fancy." Remarkably, for many Americans and the corporate media, this will put the matter to rest. Rumsfeld has spoken, no follow-up required.
It’s no longer 1970, no viable antiwar movement exists, and the American people are not "willing to say out loud that they had been supporting a hideous and inhuman war," as they did over thirty years ago. Syria will be attacked, as well eventually Iran and the other targets on the Likudite-Strausscon roster. Of course, with so many brush fires set by the pyromaniac Strausscons, sooner or later they are going to need help in their eventually doomed effort "to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together," as Zbigniew Brzezinski put it ( http://www.wanttoknow.info/brzezinskigrandchessboard ). This will necessitate conscription, or bullet-stopper slavery, and will lead to a new antiwar movement as the young cell phone crowd begins to realize what their leaders have in mind for them. Naturally, the Strausscons realize this and that is why they are steadfastly against conscription, but their ambitious agenda will require they put their reservations aside and call for conscription. Of course, it will be easier for them if they can pull off another "Pearl Harbor," as they did on September 11, 2001. Even so, future Kent States, or worse, are down the road and right around the bend.
|