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The Coming Implosion of the American Empire
(Gary North, LewRockwell.com, February 23, 2004)
The American Empire is scheduled to depart from Iraq in June. The unofficial word is out in Washington: Karl Rove has told President Bush that the body count, however much reduced by strange definitions of what constitutes a battlefield death, is going to cost him the election if it continues through the summer. Dutifully, the Commander-in-Chief has announced a June deadline for the transfer of Iraq's sovereignty to "the Iraqis," meaning whichever remnants of the coalition of the suppressed will still officially deal with him on his terms. . . . The United States government started a pre-emptory war last year. Patriotic couch potatoes marveled at televised shock and awe: flash, boom, smoke. "Wow! Neat! Cool!" President Bush, Sr., said in 1991, "This shall not stand." That is what his son said about the Baghdad skyline. But Americans are now being asked to pick up the pieces, or at least to pay Halliburton to pick up the pieces. Karl Rove has heard the rumblings. The departure date is now set. . . . Of course, all of the troops will not depart. Reserves are being called up to serve as car-bomb fodder. But, officially, the United States will become an invited observer, probably sharing authority with the United Nations. . . . Meanwhile, conservatives will conveniently overlook the fact that (1) the U.S. military is in retreat mode and (2) the Administration had to beg the United Nations Organization to come to Iraq and bail out Mr. Bush politically. . . . Americans thoroughly enjoy seeing American troops bang heads around the world, but only on these assumptions: (1) the victims can't or won't fight back; (2) the military's adventures do not visibly tap into Americans' pocketbooks; (3) our troops can pull out at any time without visibly putting their tails between their legs. When there are helicopter retreats from Saigon, American voters react in a hostile fashion. Americans like war, but they like it cheap. . . . The war in Iraq has been costly in every sense, yet Americans still are paying higher prices at the gasoline pump. The price of oil has risen. The flow of oil out of Iraq today barely trickles. The pipelines cannot be defended by our troops. They are being blown up, although the media rarely report this. The Iraq adventure has now become a vast foreign aid program, and Americans do not like foreign aid programs. . . . George W. Bush invoked weapons of mass destruction, just as Lyndon Johnson invoked the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It was never quite clear exactly what had happened in the Gulf of Tonkin, but it is clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Johnson was never successfully exposed publicly as a liar regarding the Gulf of Tonkin. Bush has been exposed, and will continue to be exposed, as either completely misled or a liar, either a nincompoop or a deceiver. He is never going to get back his image as a reliable leader in a time of war, which is the only positive image he ever enjoyed, brief as it was. He will be on the defensive from now on. . . . It will become extremely difficult from now on for any American President to invoke a looming military threat in order to justify military intervention by the United States. Clearly, President Bush will never be able to do this again, but I think it goes beyond him. His enduring legacy will be the conversion of "weapons of mass destruction" into the equivalent of Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time." The phrase will become a laughingstock. Every President from now on who attempts to justify anything comparable to the Iraq war will be greeted with Congressional hoots of "weapons of mass destruction." . . . The war was a bipartisan effort, but because of the President's rhetoric, he will deservedly get blamed. The Democrats will not push too hard, however, because voters might make the connection between the President's unsubstantiated claims and Congress's willingness to roll over and play dead, or whatever it was playing when it rolled over. . . . Our troops won a minor battle in March, 2003. That battle was called a war, but it was only one battle in a very long war. This war has been going on for about 14 centuries. The war's main theater today is the Middle East. When it becomes apparent to America's enemies, which are also the State of Israel's enemies, that the United States did not win its phase of the ancient war, they will be emboldened. Winning the battle in the Middle East requires permanent military occupation by the victors. . . . Christian Europe, which is in fact secular Europe, is going to be replaced. . . . I can think of only one event that might reverse this process. No one ever mentions it in polite company. It is officially unthinkable. Yet it is being thought in high places. It could take place within 30 minutes from now. It would change everything geopolitically. The Israelis could launch a pre-emptory nuclear strike against Mecca and Medina. The primary symbols of Islam would be reduced to radioactive dust. If the Israelis used a cobalt-tipped bomb, Muslims could not visit Mecca for millennia. Yet Muslims are told to do so at least once in a lifetime. . . . This tactic is Israel's trump card strategically. Everyone in power in the Middle East knows it, but no one ever mentions it publicly. Muslims venerate Mecca and Medina and their monuments. When veneration becomes superstition, monuments become primary military targets for the enemy. If the Jews blast Mecca's rock into radioactive dust, the fallout will be more than radioactive dust. It could be the end of Islam. . . . Do I think this attack will ever happen? Yes. The Israelis know they are in a fight to the death. They know they will never be accepted by Arabs as lawful residents in the region. Over time, they will be overcome demographically. They know it. Their enemies know it. So, when push comes to shove, Mecca and Medina will disappear. . . . President Bush used to talk tough. Rumsfeld talked about a war lasting for decades. But the Bush Administration will not last for decades. It may not last another twelve months. This is why all the tough talk has ended. The war that matters here is politics, and Iraq has become a political liability. We see and hear little from Rumsfeld these days. Rove appears to have put a gag on him. . . . The neo-cons are finished. They said the Iraq war would be a cakewalk. It wasn't. They said we had to establish a presence in the Middle East. We couldn't. The Republican Party, once Bush leaves office, will not listen to them again. They will publish their subsidized magazines and pretend that the public is listening, but the public has had enough. The neo-cons are visibly losers. They got their shot at power, and they squandered it in the streets of Baghdad. Straussians do not need to read between the lines in order to discern this traditional message: "Americans do not listen to losers." . . . The contraction of the American empire will begin in June. It has already lost considerable legitimacy in the eyes of the voters, not because of some great alteration of their principles, but because we are being car-bombed out of the place. The oil is not flowing. Sand isn't worth the price. . . . This will be an historic event. . . . The troops' departure from Iraq will mark the day that Johnny comes marching home. There will be no parades, any more than there were when Israeli troops pulled out of Lebanon. . . . The implosion of the American empire is about to begin – not just the military one but also the commercial one. An empire that can no longer afford to keep its troops on active duty in occupied areas is not a good credit risk. . . . Mark the date on your calendar: June 30, 2004.

posted by Lorenzo 1:54 PM