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THE ROVING EYE
The (Rumsfeld) show must go
on
By Pepe Escobar
PARIS -
"Don't underestimate panic. And don't underestimate
Donald Rumsfeld's ambitions. You may have noticed his
body language, how he has been moving to center stage
since September 11. He's running this show. The State
Department is a sideshow: see how powerless and helpless
[Colin] Powell looks in his mindless trips to Delhi and
Islamabad. Bush is slipping in the polls. They need a
war now, and badly. And if Bush sees that attacking Iraq
is his way to reelection, he will do it sooner rather
than later."
The New York source is an American
investment banker extremely well-connected to the
industrial-military complex. He is saying the unsayable
in an America in theory still gripped by patriotic
fever. President George W Bush may not have any
diplomatic endorsement to engage in Desert Storm, The
Replay. But Americans are increasingly reacting like the
investment banker: they know that there's no business
like war business.
On the other side of the
Atlantic, in Paris, professor Jean-Louis Dufour
expresses what is practically a consensus in Brussels,
in the European Union circles of power: a new Afghan
war-style campaign against Iraq - aerial ballistic fury,
special forces, a bunch of anti-Saddam Iraqi fighters,
and a few GIs on the ground - is bound to fail.
Dufour repeats what is already common knowledge
in Europe. The Iraqi opposition is opportunistic, deeply
divided and displays no military capability. The CIA has
already tried to convince the Kurds to join the American
campaign - to no avail. This is obviously another planet
- compared to the 15,000 to 20,000 fierce and
ultra-motivated warriors in Afghanistan, members of the
Northern Alliance. Europe also knows Saddam's army bears
no resemblance to Mullah Omar's ragged
Kalashnikov-toting bunch of Taliban fanatics.
Dufour points to crucial logistical problems.
Because of the Afghan campaign, only next winter will
the American navy have the required absolute minimum of
six aircraft carriers essential to the Iraqi campaign.
The army lacks laser-guided ammunition: it will need
another six months, starting from now, to replenish its
arsenal. Forces on the terrain will need at least two or
three months to be positioned - even if the positioning
had in fact already started very quietly last winter.
Anyway: the Pentagon war machine will only be ready to
roll by February 2003.
While the whole Iraqi
drama has been reduced by the American government and
media to a purely technical debate - how do we strike,
with what kind of force, etc - there is still no
thorough public analysis in America of the
ultra-volatile political consequences of this operation.
They may not be exactly on good terms with
Saddam Hussein - although there have been recent signs
of detente - but Syria and Iran are extremely wary about
the possible emergence of a Washington-designed puppet
government right in their neighborhood. Saudi Arabia -
which through Prince Abdullah has organized a long,
tortuous but ultimately fruitful rapprochement with Iraq
- will keep struggling as much as it can to keep its
status as America's number one oil source: this means
fighting any source of instability. Jordan has
officially made clear this month that it refuses to be
used as a platform to attack Iraq. And Turkey is in the
middle of nothing less than a political earthquake -
with reverberations to be felt at least for the next few
months.
As if this regional context was not
incandescent enough, India-Pakistan tension may get out
of hand during elections in India-held Kashmir in
October. Ariel Sharon is bound to keep turning
Palestinian's lives into a living hell. And as much as
Saddam's regime rhetorically extols Iraqis to help the
Palestinian cause, a targeted Saddam may in the end
authorize a mass exodus of Iraqis to wage jihad and
multiply chaos around Israel.
It is never enough
to remind that America is alone - the Pentagon is alone
- against Saddam Hussein, and the diplomatic initiative
remains on the Iraqi side. Russia is against a strike.
China is against a strike. The European Union is against
a strike.
It is extremely unlikely that the Bush
administration will be able to concoct a puppet,
so-called "democratic" regime in Baghdad with central
authority strong enough to balance the conflicting
interests of the Sunni center, the Kurdish north and a
Shi'ite south. "But Donald Rumsfeld obviously doesn't
care about these things," says the American banker. "His
vision thing is to keep running the show."
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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