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THE MOTHER OF WARS
BY MICHAEL McCUSKER
-
"What is evil?" the baby is asked
The baby thinks: "Evil is power "
-ARABIC FOLKSAYING
"But what good cause came of it at last?"
"Why, that I cannot tell you, but 'twas a famous victory "
-ROBERT SOUTHEY (1798)
'THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM'
The victory parades were massive and expensive, staged
like opera. The President who made the war a personal test of his
power, relit the dimmed marquee of the 'American Century', and
America beamed with yellow ribboned patriotism and a collective
thrill of feeling 'Number One'. Ancient Rome, Byzantium, not
even the British Empire at its imperial height could match the
USA at this moment as Guardian of the West; and not since
World War 2, the real tnumph of Amencan arms and civilization,
had the nation so dominated world affairs, reigning unchallenged
and supreme
The war started just when it seemed as if the world was
taking off its helmet and emerging with a sigh of relief from its
Cold War bunker A nation suddenly attacked another nation in
the savage old way In response dozens of other nations led by
the USA rushed their armed forces to the battlezone in fear of
losing their heartlines of oil which the invasion threatened and
vindicated their warlike reaction with pieties of maintaining peace
and thwarting aggression
Though it should already have been apparent a decade
ago that the oil age was neanng its end, the irony is that the
Western nations and their Arab suppliers fought to preserve their
supplies of fossil fuels by squandering vast quantities in their
immense war machines, which is why the defeated enemy set
the liberated oil fields afire to deny the victors the spoils of their
victory
Barrels of blood were offered in exchange for barrels of
oil. The world has a glut of human blood but oil is finite and will
likely dry up sometime in this new century (An American military
nurse interviewed in Saudi Arabia said that she did not want to
die for an oil well.)
The 1991 war in the Persian Gulf was reminiscent of
traditional warfare in vtfiich armies moved enmass and one or twa
major battles completed a war The fast moving legions of tanks
and armored troop carriers that roared across the Arabian Desert
into Kuwait and Iraq acted with the same purpose as ancient war
chariots and later cavalry It was in support arms that major shifts
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were evident, though not in purpose from rock hurtling catapults
or Greek Fire, which is to crush or incinerate enemy positions
or fortifications. The change in the Persian Gulf War was that
artillery and aenal bombardment were the pnmary force of the
allied war effort against Iraq and its army. The ground forces
were for the first time in land warfare relegated to a subsidiary
role which amounted to little more than a mop-up operation.
Gunpowder in the hands of Europeans ended the military
supremacy of the mounted nomad archer; the 'smart bomb',
which some pundits claim is capable of tracing its victim to his
favorite club, supersedes the infantry rifleman. The enduring
image of the war against Iraq a decade later is that of a missile
going straight through the door of its target.
"A splendid little war." Theodore Roosevelt called the
short, decisive and incredibly profitable war against Spain's
decrepit colonial empire in 1898 — v^iich gave the USA its first
overseas empire consisting primarily of islands (European flags
dominated the large landmasses). T.R would say the same thing
of the Persian Gulf War, known also by the Pentagon inspired
cachet "Desert Storm." The excitement was high, the losses
low, the gains immense
Although a large number of the nearly 350 American
dead in the Gulf War were from "friendly fire," and perhaps
more than a hundred others died in accidents ("collateral losses")
wtiile in Saudi Arabia waiting nearly six months for the war to
begin, allied troops were spared the tens of thousands of deaths
to disease that even the cheap little war with Spain produced.
Perhaps the greatest revolution in military arms is its medical
care Far fewer combat wounded die and epidemics seldom
ravage modem armies. Ironically, although the threat of the
spread of disease has been virtually eradicated in the ranks,
it is the military itself that presents the gravest threat of epidemic
with its production and stockpiling of biological and chemical
weapons
POP QUIZ
The scene: thousands upon thousands of human
beings are killed Their corpses are slopped onto one another
like compressed disposable diapers The bodies are shoveled
and scraped into countless anonymous pits, then efficiently
and surgically covered
This is all done in the name of a superior nation and
an eventual tidy and moral victory A god is named to be on
the side of the victors. Architects of Fashionable Atrocity
Many citizens of the Politically Correct Nation are
too numbed or afraid or ashamed to speak out or attempt to
interfere for fear of appearing not to support the omnipresent
mass hysteria currently rated Best Opinion by the latest
government sponsored poll. (Now we can understand Polled
Herefords a little better)
Pop Quiz The year and place is (a) 1944 Germany;
(b) 1991 Iraq; (c) 1952 Sibena: (d) all of the above: (e) not
applicable, doesn’t matter what's on TV tonight, support our
god
-ALAN RICHARDS. 1991
Simultaneous with the initial stages to end the nuclear
arms race by the USA and its former global adversary the Soviet
Union (wtiich was dissolved later that year, a Christmas present
for the world), the threat of toxic warfare was a forceful rationale
for making war against Iraq, which had used such weapons in
its eight-year war with Iran and against indigenous Kurds. These
weapons were a major threat to the allied forces gathering at the
borders of Iraq and Kuwait. The second most enduring image of
the Gulf War might be the nightmarish eerieness of soldiers and
civilians (as well as journalists filming them) moving about in gas
masks and spacesuit-like protective clothing Virtually the entire
population of Israel was issued gas masks and instructed howto
seal off rooms of their homes and offices against chemical attack
— though it was longer before the Israeli government reluctantly
included Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied territories.
The real terror, however, was the possibility of crossing
the nuclear threshold, which was optioned as a response if Iraq
used chemical or biological weapons, and particular attention was
paid to possible Iraqi nuclear installations during the three-week
airwar The claimed success of cruise and 'Patriot' missiles in
offense and defense pumped up ambitions to revive pork-barrel
anti-ballistic nuclear defenses against nuclear attack, which the
Russians, then and now. have always perceived as an offensive
first-strike system.
The almost seamless victory in the Gulf War raised the
stock of the military in the USA Exultant voices proclaimed an
end to the self-laceration that psychologically haunted the country
since its dramatic failure in Vietnam. But Vietnam went deeper
into the society's vein and its effects have been profound beyond
purely military or ideological considerations. The reorganization
of the military into the all-volunteer force that fought the Gulf War
was, however, a distinct result of the Vietnam perception
The Gulf War was somevliat microwave in its effect and
consequences.The USA emerged as the world's supreme military
power as a result of the war and imminent collapse of Communist
Russia. Yet, similar to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Army which
invaded small neighboring Kuwait on August 2, 1990 to pay
a huge military debt from the war with Iran through theft of its
victim's large oil treasury, the U.S. was unable to financially
support the war's exigencies upon its military colossus The
European and Arabic nations that acted as its coalition partners
in the Gulf War were quickly pressured to pay their shares of the
war's expenses.
In the meantime the American war industry, overjoyed
that most of its products seemed to work reasonably well in the
war, hosted arms bazaars and strenuously lobbied for billions
more dollars to replenish the nation’s armory, hundreds of
millions of dollars of which were expended over Baghdad and
Iraqi Army bunkers in Kuwait. A baroque chorus of arms
merchants chanted for more and better Nintendo weapons, big
ticket stuff to keep the USA 'Number One', insisting to a parsim-
inous Congress (a majority were members of the party out of
power) that military installations (obsolete and vulnerable) be
sacrificed to ensure continuance of high-tech weapons programs
(the biggest of them. 'Star Wars', still boondoggling taxpayers a
decade later)
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait unleashed a frenzy of bellicose
patriotism in the USA Prejudice, always waiting with its intolerant
leer, leaped into the dialogue Whatever people in the Middle
East called the massive influx of Westerners into their deserts,
some wards that quickly became current in the USA to describe
the diverse types of humanity in the Arab lands were "ragheads"
and "desert niggers." Pundits assured listeners that rabid religious
beliefs and hotheaded passions were traditional Mideast traits.
Propaganda machines rapidly responded to the crisis, erasing
the ambiguities of everyday civilization to present immediate
contrasts devoid of shades; extremes overpowered dialogue:
Us against Them, good versus evil, black and white the only
acceptable tones of public conversation
The Iraqi dictator \Mio sent his heavily mortgaged army
to seize a neighboring country the size of an average city parking
lot but rich enough to bankroll the invading force, was demonized
and compared to the 20th century’s worst citizen, Hitler. The
American President (George Bush Sr.) for his part assumed the
mantle of the first Roosevelt and dispatched a very Big Stick of
military might to the Middle East, in particular to Saudi Arabia
vtfiich for several months acted as nervous host to the hordes of
Western crusaders protecting the indispensable Saudi oil fields,
building strength and momentum to wrest back the rich Kuwaiti
fields. The Iraqi leader howled for a holy war against the Satans
poised at his borders and acted to free half his army from guard
duty by making a temporary peace with his arch enemy Iran with
v4iom he had fought a war for almost a decade at a mutual cost
of a million lives
Despite boisterous and belligerent joint denunciations,
Saddam Hussein and George Bush had similar aims of imposing
political power over a vital juncture of world commerce, and each
was capable and willing to expend masses of human lives to
obtain or defend his goal. Bush represented a corporate arrange
ment of often conflicting multi-international interests (a 'New
World Order Army' in the vein of Cromwell's 'New Model Army')
that did not desire their supply of oil controlled by a regional
despot who was not a member of their global hegemony. Hussein
exerted (and continues to exert) an archaic personal tyranny He
is even now a decade after the war a man of bluster and bombast
vtfio seems at least forthright in his savage avarice, in contrast to
the sinewy sales manager guile Bush manifested
By seizing Kuwait, Hussein was reminiscent of local
emirates or bandits vtfio occasionally and ruthlessly choked off
the ancient Silk Road and extorted tariffs and tolls until either
STEAM ROOMS
OPIN THURSDAY - SUNDAY
TILIDHONI 32S-0SB1