As we have been told by scholars, history has a way of repeating itself. Today, we find the Bush administration beating the drums for war against Iraq. As always happens, Iraqi leaders are being demonized. Of course, demonizing Saddam Hussein is an easy thing to do. But beyond Hussein, this country and Britain have stooped to manufacturing “evidence” and outright lying. In his presentation to the United Nations Security Council on February 14, 2003, Hans Blix took an unprecedented step in accusing the American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, of using misleading information. The impolite word for what Blix had to say was lying.
There is the matter of aluminum tubes which the Bush people say are to be used to produce nuclear bombs. Everyone else says the tubes are for rockets. Bush’s people are claiming that enriched uranium is being imported from Africa to enable the Iraqi nuclear program to go forward. There is no record of African uranium being imported by Iraq. The inspector, Dr. El Baredi, says Iraq has no nuclear capability.
Then there is Colin Powell’s presentation to the Security Council on February 7, 2003 wherein he quoted extensively from British “intelligence” papers about Iraqs wartime capabilities. The fact is that the so called “intelligence” which the Brits used and which Powell included in his speech, were musings published in ordinary journals and periodicals and a professor’s work on the internet. Tony Blair’s people picked this up a couple of years ago, called it “intelligence” and Powell used it without checking its origins or validity.
The list of misleading information used by Powell goes on and on. There is the alleged link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden. Even last week starting on February 10, 2003, there was the Osama tape broadcast on Al Jazeera which Powell claimed showed a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Powell simply ignored the thrust of the tape which was to rouse Muslim adherents and to condemn infidels like Saddam Hussein. No one aside from Powell and some of his Bush administration compatriots ever thought of a link between Iraq and Osama. The rest of the world is laughing at the assertions of the United States.
And then there is Powell’s claim on behalf of the U.S. that mobile laboratories were being used by the Iraqi’s and his claim that an inspection site had been cleaned up shortly before the United Nations inspectors appeared. Hans Blix took the unprecedented step of skewering Powell’s claim and indeed, he referred to these unfounded claims as coming from the U. S. Secretary of State.
It is no wonder that Maureen Dowd in the New York Times of February 16, 2003 said Powell had been “filleted.” She used that term in reference to Dominique de Villepin the Foreign Minister of France, but it could also apply to Hans Blix’s destruction of Powell’s assertions.
And finally, what are we doing at this late date dealing with Osama Bin Laden? Bush said he was going to grab him “dead or alive” in 2001. Well, I guess Bush is going to have to invent some new cowboy talk to explain what we are doing listening to Osama some 18 months after the debacle of the World Trade Center.
My point in telling you about the American demonization of Iraq and inventing “FACTS” to support its story, is that this is much like an earlier war against Ethiopia. In 1935, Italy was the aggressor. They demonized the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, accusing him of uncivilized conduct. Italy rebuffed entreaties from the United Nations forerunner, the League of Nations. Benito Mussolini was the Fascist dictator of Italy and he wanted to show Adolf Hitler that he was an aggressive leader. Nothing could dissuade him from going ahead with the invasion of Ethiopia just as now, nothing can persuade George Bush that he should use caution in invading Iraq. Instead, Bush is as bombastic in 2003 as Mussolini was in 1934 and 1935.
There is one more parallel in the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy and the proposed Bush war on Iraq. Mussolini concluded that because he wanted war with Ethiopia, every Italian would fall in line and support the invasion.
Mussolini controlled the press which published only Fascist propaganda. The radio was the province of Count Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law. He had complete control of the government, just as Bush has in 2003. Telephones were monitored so in the end, Il Duce – the leader – which is what Mussolini called himself – began to believe his own propaganda. And he then concluded that the Italian people were behind his invasion of Ethiopia.
In point of fact, however, the invasion of Ethiopia was opposed by many in the Italian electorate. Going to war without the backing of the electorate was a very dangerous business in 1935 in Italy, and in 2003, it is also dangerous business for the United States.
There is an ancient maxim that those who ignore the mistakes of history are bound to repeat the same mistakes. You don’t go to war without the backing of the electorate. Look what happened to us in the Vietnam War. Bush has ignored that outcome even though he was of military age. He used his father’s connections to flee to the Texas National Guard and of course, he had nothing to do with that bloody conflict which cost 55,000 casualties among his countrymen. Bush is repeating the same mistake that Benito Mussolini made. But in spite of degrees from Yale and Harvard, there is no record that Bush has a sense of history or anything other than a very modest pedestrian intellect. We deserve better.
I might point out that in the Italian case, Mussolini was defeated in Ethiopia by British and South African forces in 1941. By 1945, he had not only lost his job but his life as well. I hope this is a thought that one day might occur to Bush.
Now in the event that you might think that Ethiopia in 1935 was an uncivilized country, it should be pointed out that its history extends back to the 10th Century B. C. when it was known as Abyssinia. The first king seems to be Menelik who was born to the Queen of Sheba. Is that old enough for you, Donald Rumsfeld?
Jumping ahead to the 19th Century AD, we find that England, France and Italy all had thoughts of co-opting the Ethiopian government because of its location next to the Red Sea. In 1889, another Emperor Menelik concluded a treaty with Italy at a town called Ucciali. Shortly after, a dispute broke out over Article 17 of the treaty with Italy saying that the Italian version of the treaty gave them a protectorate over Ethiopia. Menelik said the Amharic version of Article 17 said no such thing. So in 1895, the Italians invaded Ethiopia and were soundly beaten at a town called Aduwa on March 1, 1896. So Italy then recognized Ethiopia’s independence.
In 1930, Haile Selassie I became Emperor of Ethiopia. Italy again started to raise threats against Ethiopia and there was a clash at a town called Wal Wal on December 5, 1934. The clash ended pretty much as a tie. Mussolini then turned down all efforts at conciliation, from the other governments and from the League of Nations, and started a war on October 3, 1935. Using air power and machine guns, the Ethiopians were soon defeated. The Ethiopians used spears. In 1936, Haile Selassie fled the country and Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, added Ethiopia to his title. In 1941, British and South African forces easily defeated the Italians. Ethiopia was free again and Haile Selassie returned to his throne in Addis Ababa. In 1945, Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy and Ethiopia, fled to Portugal as a former monarch.
I am always taken back by unthinking people who say that the dictator, in the case of Mussolini in 1935 or the President of the United States in 2003, knows more than ordinary citizens know and the electorate should fall in behind him and cheer him on. Such thinking, such ceding of logic particularly in the 21st Century, is astoundingly ignorant.
The thought that Bush, by virtue of his position, knows more than anyone else is clearly false. His unilateral prejudices about any European thought – read France, Germany and Russia – makes him spectacularly ill informed. Of late, he makes much of his relationship to Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy, and Aznar, Prime Minister of Spain. Aren’t they “Old Europe” also? Berlusconi may soon be out of a job as he must answer to serious fraud allegations about money laundering. Both the Italian and Spanish prime ministers are presiding over electorates with 75% against the war. Bush, who often points to these two men for his backing, is leaning on a very weak reed.
We have much to learn from “Old Europe.” Bush could profit most by the experiences of France, Germany and England in two World Wars. But Bush is uninterested. Among other facts of life that those “Old European” powers might teach Bush is to avoid the military industrial complex which so troubled Dwight Eisenhower. Today, that complex is represented by Cheney and Wolfowitz and other neo-conservative hawks who have nothing more in mind than lining the pockets of their wealthy compatriots with war-time profits. Bush is repeating the mistakes of our history since 1918.
Speaking of responses being astonishingly ill informed, brings me to a young man in Fishkill, New York and once again to Colin Powell. Matthew Purdy who writes the “Our Town” column in the New York Times, visited Fishkill, New York around Valentines Day, 2003. Fishkill is in “staunchly Republican Duchess County,” reports Purdy. In the White House Bar on Main Street he found John Beska who says, “I was in the Marine Corps. I’m for what ever the commander in chief says.” I wonder how many dead German and Italian and Japanese soldiers and sailors said they were for whatever Hitler, Mussolini or Hideki Tojo said they were for. If they could be resurrected from their battlefield graves, it causes me to wonder how many would say as John Beska said, “I’m for what ever the commander in chief says.” The lack of intelligence in that viewpoint is astonishing. Luckily, not all of his neighbors agreed with him.
Now we turn once again to Colin Powell who had my admiration when he was a voice of reason in the Bush Administration. He has now gone over to the Bush, Rumsfeld, Perle and Wolfowitz side, the military industrial complex, with the thought that peace and prosperity come mainly from bombing and bullying. Powell has no training as a diplomat. His career as a soldier conditioned him to believe that an order was to be carried out, without question. He simply started his diplomatic career as the Bush’s Secretary of State. He had no apprenticeship; he started at the top.
When a question was put to him shortly after the ruckus started at the United Nations concerning what he would do if he received orders from his boss to do something he disagreed with, Powell quickly answered, salute and go do it. The thought of resisting or arguing or resigning never seemed to enter his mind. If he found himself in fundamental disagreement with the White House, he would salute and perform the distasteful task. This is what I would expect of a soldier which Powell was all his life, but not of a diplomat. On hundreds of occasions, I was told as an enlisted man in World War II, soldiers don’t get paid to think. Just carry out the order. But diplomats must think and have resignation as their obvious alternative. Powell must know that saluting and carrying out the orders of a draft dodging president is another case of an unintelligent act.
In the Italian case in 1935, Mussolini wanted to show that he could be as tough as Hitler in Germany. That was his motivation. In 2003, we have Bush who has intended to take this country to war because Karl Rove has told him that the American people will not vote against a war time president. If you don’t believe that, kindly look at what Rove said as early as 2001 and again, may I direct your attention to Bush’s campaign to elect senators in 2002 from the Republican Party. In the latter case, for example, Bush campaigned against Max Cleland, a Senator from Georgia, who left three limbs in Vietnam and who voted for Bush’s tax reduction proposal. Bush, the hero who never left the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War, claimed that Cleland was unpatriotic because he saw nothing wrong with workers in the new Department of Homeland Security being unionized as is the case in the rest of the U. S. Government. So Cleland was defeated by an undistinguished clod hopper who now takes his place in the United States Senate.
Mussolini wanted to show that he could play with the big boys. Bush wants a war for the same reason and for oil and for his reelection. And in pursuit of that war, he has demanded that Colin Powell abandon his claim to integrity and engage in inept deceptions recognized by the other foreign ministers who sit on the United Nations Security Council. The White House dreams up these issues of the aluminum tubes and the alleged tie between Bin Laden and Hussein, for example, and demands that Powell must make a convincing case to the rest of the world. On Friday February 14, 2003, a columnist said that Hans Blix and the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, “filleted” Powell’s performance. Soon thereafter, White House sources said that Tony Blair would have done a much better job with Powell’s material. Is this a vote of confidence in the Secretary of State? Or does it mark the beginning of his forced departure from his job.
Powell is now a pitiful case. If he continues to take manufactured “evidence” to the Security Council to please the sycophants at the Washington Times, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Fox Broadcasting System, he will fail dismally and it will give his handlers in the White House another reason to shoot the messenger.
Powell argued with the hawks in the Bush administration last August that the dispute should be taken to the United Nations rather than starting a preemptive war. Denied of sustainable facts and with the White House offering fictional series of charges, the move to the United Nations seems poised to back fire which is another reason to fire the messenger.
A column by James P. Pinkerton in a current issue of Newsday, a New York paper, offers this sobering assessment of Powell’s dilemma. “Meanwhile as Powell struggles to pull himself and his policy out of the multilateralist mire, he might notice that some administration colleagues will be happy if he sinks and drowns.” And this was the man of immense prestige and integrity that Bush selected to be his Secretary of State. Now if he drowns, that’s fine with some of the Bush administration providing that others are satisfied that the messenger has been appropriately shot.
In the final analysis, the aim of Bush has always been to take the U. S. to war – nothing less – for his own personal enrichment and his re-election and to show that he can play with the big boys. His intentions are absolutely transparent. To claim that since he is the President, that he knows best and that we should all fall in behind him will lead us precisely in the direction of Mussolini’s Italy which became a third rate country in the industrial world after World War II. As I say, such thinking, particularly in the 21st century is monumentally and astoundingly dumb.
E. E. CARR
February 16, 2003
~~~
I think it’s a pretty fair assumption that when it comes to national security, the president absolutely does know better than the average citizen, because he’s kept constantly up to date on classified security data, and knows plenty of things average citizens don’t. Now, he can ignore those things, or he can be lied to, but ideally he should be one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on the matter. Of course, Bush was pretty tone-deaf on the subject, just like ol’ “build a wall” Donald Trump will be, but still his opinion should always be considered valuable — but not something for the whole country to immediately fall in line behind, especially when the opinion in question is obviously wrongheaded or politically motivated. Launching preemptive strikes against Iraq based on what he almost certainly knew to be lies is basically unforgivable. Moreover these troop movements and regime changes were incredibly short-sighted, and ISIS exists today in large part due to how we handled the Iraq war in the 2000s.