Invented excuses for war

What's happened in the last 15 months since the terrorist attacks on this country?

People have become afraid, and in their fear, often amenable to what would otherwise be thoroughly unacceptable. A far-right regime, unpopular before the attacks, has been lionized by a compliant media. Patriotic symbolism has come to accompany all mainstream reportage. An inarticulate and ignorant president has, like the emperor in Anderson's tale, been lavishly praised by those who fear to point out his intellectual and moral nakedness. Meanwhile, the Bill of Rights has been shredded, your privacy rights jeopardized. Intelligence-gathering powers which would make the KGB or Stasi green with envy are now unleashed to monitor not just potential terrorism but all antigovernment dissent. It's all legal; it's right there in the obscenely titled "Patriotic Act."

What a series of nightmares. First there was Sept. 11; then the immediate, inevitable assaults upon people of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian ancestry throughout the country (rising by 1,600 percent in the last year). While we grieved, a warmongering cabal in the Defense Department (headed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle) gloated at the opportunity to promote a longstanding grand plan to reconfigure Southwest Asia. "First we hit al Qaeda and crush the Taliban in Afghanistan," they reasoned. "The American people will go for that because it'll be sweet revenge. Building on that, we'll use all that patriotic fervor and bloodlust _ which the media will help us generate and intensify _ to raise support for 'regime change' in Iraq. And then in Iran, and Syria, and any other country that is uncooperative and vulnerable. Sure, there will be dissent, but we'll manage that by the most draconian set of new restrictions on civil liberties since World War II."

But what's the bridge between the "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan and this grand plan, including the attack on Iraq? Well, there isn't actually any al Qaeda-Iraq link. There is no proven, meaningful connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. They are poles apart ideologically and hate one another. Al Qaeda is all about extreme fundamentalist Islam. Saddam is about secular Baath Party politics. The warmongers have to conjure up some link, out of thin air, and they've been busy at that for the last 15 months.

First they seized upon the story, which initially surfaced in a Newsweek report on Sept. 19, that there had been a meeting between hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officers, including Farouk Hijazi, Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, in Prague in June 2000. It turned out to be bogus, rejected by British, Czech and even US intelligence services (it's called disinformation).

Then there was the elaborate effort to trace the anthrax letters to Iraqi laboratories. But the FBI, CIA, and Federation of American Scientists concluded that the anthrax strain found in the letters was probably from a US lab. Then in March, mysteriously enough, the Christian Science Monitor and the New Yorker reported the existence of Ansar al-Islam, "an Islamic group with possible links to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein" which had seized several villages in Iraq. Jeff Goldberg of the New Yorker cited statements from the pro-US Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda jointly run the organization, and that Baghdad had hosted an al Qaeda leader in 1992. Former CIA director James Woolsey, a leading proponent of an Iraq attack, hailed the article as a "blockbuster," and said the CIA "got beat on this story by the New Yorker and Jeff Goldberg." All nonsense. In fact, Baghdad provided weapons to the PUK to fight the Ansar forces.

Meanwhile, we're told, a US Air Force pilot reported as killed in action on the first day of the Gulf War has now been re-categorized as MIA. But the principal argument for war now (and the fact that it's one of so many should itself generate doubt) is this: We have classified information _ that we will reveal at the right time _ that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, that might fall into the hands of al Qaeda (or other) terrorists. These weapons threaten the US and its friends and allies, and may lead to another Sept. 11-type attack.

In the real world, weapons experts like card-carrying Republican and ex-Marine Scott Ritter and Swedish former arms inspector Rolf Ekeus have made it clear that in fact the US is simply not threatened by Iraq. Madeleine Albright and Jimmy Carter have also said this. Iraqi Scuds could reach Moscow or Sicily, but the Russians and Italians aren't worried. Germany is dead-set against war and the French talk of vetoing any US-sponsored UN resolution authorizing an attack. The nations bordering Iraq, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and even Kuwait, have argued strongly against an attack and say Iraq does not pose a threat to them at this point; their foreign ministers are feverishly working to oppose a war they know will dangerously destabilize their region. In a word, all the official justifications for an attack on Iraq are spurious.

And yet, the mother of nightmares looms. As we lose our civil liberties; as political criminals of the past such as Elliot Abrams, Otto Reich, Henry Kissinger and John Poindexter step into key posts in the Bush administration; as hatred, contempt and fear of the US government mounts throughout the world; as the economy deteriorates; as hate crimes proliferate, Bush plans an unprovoked, "preemptive" attack on a sovereign state, crippled by sanctions, that will produce an unprecedented level of anti-US rage globally.

One can endorse the action, swallowing the line that it eliminates an urgent threat to American well-being. ("It is always a simple matter to drag the people along," said Hermann Goering before his execution. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.") One can be silent, mulling it all over; the world is very complicated, after all. Or one can say: I know enough to say no, now.

On the patio of Campus Center on Tuesday, December 10, 2003, and again in that massive demonstration in Washington, D.C. last Saturday, some of us said no to this war, this imperialist war, as loud as we could, as did others on campuses throughout the country. Now on to New York, February 15! May Tufts be out in force!

Gary Leupp is a professor in the History department.