The Unpredictable Un-President

by Mary Shepard, WAMM

Not only is the Bush presidency looking increasingly imperial, George W. Bush's policy decisions are so inconsistent that we are hard put to keep track of where he is going. Inconsistency and unpredictability are hallmarks of dictatorships, and our government looks increasingly like one.

Under a dictatorship, for example, some must obey rules, but others can be rewarded for breaking them. Our appointed president defends acts of terror by some (e.g., Ariel Sharon, who has been accused of leading a massacre at Palestinian refugee camps in 1982) and declares war on others (e.g., Osama bin Laden, accused of leading the attacks of the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001). Likewise, Bush is fond of the idea of tribunals, especially secretive military ones, but wants to insure that he and his friends will never be subject to an international war crimes tribunal. He is very protective of the unborn, unless they have the bad luck to be in the wombs of Afghans or Serbs or Iraqis. Bombing or starving or poisoning them, after all, is "in the national interest."

For a while we were told to fear "rogue nations." Does anyone remember which ones they were? Bush has now switched to a new enemy: "terrorism." Was he finding it too difficult to frighten us with the thought that North Korea was a real threat? "Terrorism" is a much handier target. It need not be clearly identified. A "war on terrorism" has no geographical boundaries and it will be won or lost whenever the administration says so. "Terrorism" can be used to justify invasions of other countries, abrogations of treaties, violations of our own constitution, and suppression of dissenters. It can be used to scare us into submission to any outrage.

"Terrorism" as a target lends itself to inconsistency. The names and faces of the designated "terrorists" change without notice. The Kosovo Liberation Army recruits were originally terrorists, then freedom fighters. It depends in which country they are operating. The same can be said of the fundamentalist Muslims who assisted the U.S./NATO break-up of Yugoslavia.

In the mid-nineties the Taliban were our friends and allies, anxious to protect Henry Kissinger's client, Unocal Oil, which was planning a pipeline through Afghanistan. Shortly after George W. Bush became president, a Taliban representative named Hashimi made a tour of the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and National Security Agency, soliciting funds for the Taliban. According to Wayne Madsen of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, this tour was shepherded by the niece of former President Bush's old friend, the infamous Richard Helms (Helms was the director of the CIA who engineered the Chilean coup that resulted in the death of Chile's democratically elected Allende). Following Hashimi's visit, the Bush administration sent a $43 million gift to the Taliban.

In October, the U.S. sided with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. The Northern Alliance were also designated "terrorists" and drug dealers until the U.S. began using their ground troops in the war against the Taliban. Then they were welcomed as liberators by those who had suffered the horrors visited on them by our former friends, the Taliban. Now the name "Northern Alliance" has all but vanished from the media reports, probably because Bush knows they will eventually become an embarrassment. We have a new set of allies now called "the anti-Taliban forces."

Two young Americans were victims of the unpredictability of our government's policies: John Walker Lindh, who became a member of the Taliban and is now being prosecuted, and Mike Spann, of the CIA's Special Activities Division, who was killed last November in a prison uprising at Qala-i-Jangi while interrogating captured Taliban. A few short years ago, the one who is now considered a traitor might have been hailed as a hero helping to make Afghanistan safe for U.S. "interests," i.e., corporations. Someday, there may also be a reassessment of Spann's heroism if the massacre of prisoners at Qala-i-Jangi is ever called to account as a major war crime. Both young men are victims of a cruel and failed foreign policy.

George Bush tells us we must fear weapons of mass destruction even as he urges the Pentagon to create and sell more of them around the world and even as he cancels the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, thus potentially sparking a new round of the nuclear arms race. No wonder one commentator remarked that Bush seems to make up his policies as he goes along.

There are, however, some consistencies. Bush (like other recent presidents) only makes war on enemies that have no capability of defending themselves militarily. Consider the nations which he says are candidates for military action because they host al-Qaeda activity: the Ache region of northern Indonesia, Yemen, Bosnia (where Green Berets are already at work hunting them down), the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, Java and the Eastern Moluccan Islands, Somalia, and, of course, Iraq. Helpless as these small nations are to defend themselves, when Bush makes war it is from the safety of high-flying bombers that cannot be reached by anti-aircraft fire. The fighting on the ground is primarily done by surrogates or mercenaries.

Daily Bush adds to the list new states that harbor terrorists, many of them Western governments. Bob Drogan and Paul Watson of the L.A. Times report that a "Western intelligence officer" claims 60 percent of the radical Islamic networks are in Western nations--probably including the U.S. and Canada.

It is plain to see that the "terrorist threat" has not so much to do with terrorism as with its usefulness in controlling the world's diminishing resources for the benefit of Western corporations and banks. To this end, terrorism can be tapped when needed by using the U.S.'s most potent weapon: economic sanctions. This weapon controls the world's capital through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And, by turning the screws on poor countries that are unlucky enough to possess some of those natural resources but no financial means to exploit or protect them, the U.S. can create more desperate people who may think their only recourse is terrorism.

This is a very dangerous game to play.