Neo-Conned! Again

by D Liam O'Huallachain

  When I worked in the Pentagon, my military co-workers and I attempted privately to understand the real reasons for the invasion of Iraq, and why it was needed in 2002 or 2003, a time when Saddam Hussein had never been more contained and constrained politically, economically, and militarily. We realized that the “intelligence” being touted in 2002 didn't match what we knew and had known for years about Saddam Hussein's capabilities and intentions. So why invade? Why topple this dictator? And why now? Saddam Hussein was a former ally; the United States purchased 80% of the oil he sold under sanctions, even while bombing his military positions. He was certainly no worse to his people than many current dictators we confer and trade with, and even defend. In fact, Saddam tolerated more religious freedom and education of women than both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. There were “reasons,” however. To sustain the occupation these reasons must be put forward by Bush; and military occupation must be accepted by the United States population as the only option.

  Military basing shifts in the Middle East were a key driver for the occupation, and for the awarding of contracts to the Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown, and Root, and to Bechtel. These are our lead base builders. Base building is the most profitable of the work they have been doing in Iraq, with numerous bases constructed or upgraded to support United States military operations. That we may “safely” leave Saudi Arabia, and “safely” threaten Iran and Syria on behalf of Israeli interests or our own, is a great strategic benefit. But that benefit will be greater still when the ring of American bases, top of the line in some cases, from Bosnia to Kosovo, to Uzbekistan, to Afghanistan, to Iraq is completed. We will then militarily encircle an oil and gas geography that is coveted by many but effectively challengeable by none. In terms of cold war realist theory, if no state can challenge us, and expand to where we are, we are secure. The conceptual flaw on the part of neoconservatives, otherwise intelligent and well-educated people, is their Neanderthal-like perspective that states are the ultimate conception of organization, and that all fights use the same weapons. Just as their intellectual predecessors faded and left only traces of their one-time ascendance, so will go the neoconservatives – but not just yet.

  But the war is about more than bases. Saddam Hussein in 2003 was ready to re-enter the community of nations, and all evidence to that effect was well known to the rest of the world. Even the UN inspection regime was satisfied that the level of access and cooperation they had received was satisfactory, and that the sanctions were costing far more in human terms than ever intended or justified. The major nations of the world were preparing to lift sanctions, to trade with Iraq, and to invest in Iraq and take advantage of economic opportunities there – once the most industrially productive of the Arab countries. Plus it was a secular nation where women freely worked outside the home and could supervise men in the workplace, as education, skills and productivity might demand. It was believed by most of the world that sanctions on Iraq should be lifted, and the UN – even the Security Council itself – is only as strong as a shared faith in its mandates. Had the sanctions been lifted either in part or in full with Saddam Hussein in power, only three countries would have been unable to participate in the harvest: the United States and the United Kingdom, who had been busily bombing Iraq for well over a decade, and the tiny but economically strained Israel, a nation Saddam Hussein had clearly deemed an enemy, and against which he supported the Palestinian cause. The sanctions were in fact already collapsing, with many countries, including European Security Council members, actively seeking business arrangements with Iraq. A post-sanction Iraq with Saddam Hussein in charge would not only be costly to the United States, Great Britain, and Israel; it would be unacceptable to American neoconservatives. Regime change was necessary: not for the common Iraqi “suffering” under Saddam Hussein's rule, but for American, British, and Israeli corporations sure to be left out otherwise. A key success for the neoconservative approach in Iraq is that United States, British, and Israeli investment is first, and then contracts with other firms are granted only as the spoils of war, not on productive merit or free competition in the global marketplace.

  A final reason, again merging the interests of the United States and Israel – and to a lesser extent the U.K. – has to do with the financial dilemma of George W. Bush's America. Unlike a generation or two ago, even in the big spending years of Nixon, LBJ, and Ronald Reagan, the United States today is a debtor nation which since November 2002 has been running significant monthly current account deficits – at times as much as some $60 billion. Unlike what has happened in the past to countries like Mexico or Argentina, no one on the planet can mandate that the United States implement the “Washington consensus,” a ten-step financial repair and dietary program of reduced spending, increased taxes and tax collection, deregulation of industries, and privatization of federal and state assets. The American solution is to print and sell more Treasury bills, hoping against hope that future generations will be able to make good on the promises of today's aging but politically empowered baby boom generation. Treasury bills are purchased by foreign governments, particularly Asian and European, and their central banks. Dollars are thus a large part (but not all) of their investment portfolios. The rise of the Euro was viewed with some trepidation a decade ago, but its managerial overhead and floundering as a favored currency was a calming influence in Washington. But as the debt-laden American economy has slowed in growth and shifted in terms of real exports and real productivity (from a technology and a demographic perspective), the popularity of the dollar as the bank reserve currency of choice has diminished. But there were no worries as long as it was clear that most oil would be traded on the dollar.

  Unfortunately for Saddam Hussein, he formally changed the currency Iraq would use for oil exports in November 2000 (almost a year before 9/11). In a post-sanctions oil production environment, this shift in currency was terrifying to those who rely politically on continued monthly purchases of America's debt. Naturally, the first executive order signed by President Bush regarding Iraq in May 2003 changed the oil-trading currency back into dollars, and effectively transferred the oil into American control.

  Indeed there were many reasons to invade and occupy Iraq and select a friendly puppet government. But none would have gotten Americans excited; because most Americans believe in free trade and peace, and are not interested in sending their sons and daughters to faraway places to fight a war that really interests only pro-Israel ideologues, banks, and the big corporations. Americans may have a certain fondness for Israel, banks, and corporations, but there were other ways of achieving the salient goals of each of these entities. But the peaceful, trade-oriented ways of accessing Iraqi oil, helping develop the Iraqi economy, making the dollar more attractive, and even negotiating military bases in foreign countries, were not controllable by a small group of neoconservatives. The outcomes could not be guaranteed. So the neocons chose to send us to war instead. Their salient goals, it seems, were all achieved, and are locked up tight. The only uncertainties are which of our sons and daughters gets to die today, and which ones will come home maimed today, as we weather an occupation that is opposed by almost all Iraqis. These uncertainties are not born by neoconservative ideologues. As has been often noted, the ideologues, including Bush and Cheney, have no personal experience with combat, and none of their children serves in uniform.

  Could the immoral and illegal invasion of Iraq have been prevented? Of course. Imagine Bill Clinton in a post-Monica Lewinsky environment launching a preemptive war of occupation, with boots on the ground. He barely got his “humanitarian” war in Kosovo, and the whole Washington establishment wanted that one. He dropped a few missiles into Afghanistan, and the chattering classes consumed themselves with “wag the dog” theories of his real motivation. Simple partisan politics between the Congress and the President would have prevented such an invasion.

  Could the media have prevented the Iraqi invasion and occupation? Of course. They could have asked
the right questions, the hard questions, and challenged the transparently illogical storyline from the White House and the Pentagon. They might have publicly queried our supercilious secretary of defense with real questions of strategy and motivation instead of offering only tentative fawning adoration. The so-called independent American media might have put aside its fear of exclusion, and of being verbally attacked by government talking heads, and found the fortitude to discover and report the truth.

  Could the military brass have prevented this invasion? Yes, by insisting privately and stating publicly what the real reasons were for this war and why it was seen as a strategic necessity. Those reasons included the cost and operational constraints of enforcing sanctions on Iraq with air strikes from bases in Kuwait, Turkey, and the 5th Fleet that were draining the readiness of the Air Force and Navy, while the Army was perceived as growing fat and lazy. A discussion of both the real military problem in the Middle East and American strategic goals would have opened the door to real solutions. And none of the best solutions would have included the neo-conservative choice of invasion, occupation, and a puppet government.

  Could the American people have prevented this invasion? By themselves – without the support of the Congress, the media, and the military leadership – they could not. That, in fact, exemplifies the situation we have observed in the last several years. American democracy, like most others, is vulnerable to the vagaries and incompetence of those who control the mainstream media and to Congressional representatives more concerned with their own political positions than serving the interests of their constituents. Moreover the American people are always vulnerable to a White House willing to use its credibility and bully pulpit to appeal to emotions over logic, to offer colorful fireworks instead of a shed full of split wood to a people in fear of a cold winter.

  Our Iraq occupation will end when the American people themselves react to a corporate Washington political establishment by refusing to listen to the marionette media; when we reject the pleas of the President for more time, more money, more lives, and more understanding. It will end when we send a message of disgust to Congress for their utter lack of statesmanship and respect for the Constitution. It will end as returning servicemen and women tell the truth to anyone willing to listen. And it will end when we step up to living as a compassionate people and accept our responsibility to care for the returning soldiers – the physically and mentally disabled ones – who paid too high a price for this narrow, un-American, and immoral agenda.

  In ending the occupation of Iraq, and the military and financial manipulation of many lesser countries in the Middle East, we would also fight (and possibly end) terrorism against American interests and friends. In making a moral and a traditionally American choice about how to behave in the world, and without spending a penny or sacrificing one more life, we would be acting as true patriots. Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the Founders would certainly have advised us in this direction.

  1. Thomas Ricks, “U.S. Troops Death Rates Rising in Iraq” Washington Post, September 9, 2004, p. A1.

  1. Amy Svitak Klampe, “Former Iraq Administrator Sees Decades Long U.S. Military Presence in Iraq,” Government Executive, February 6, 2004.

  THE EDITORS' GLOSS: Where Karen Kwiatkowski provides a snapshot from the battlefield of career military officers serving their civilian, political-appointee masters, Dr. Hickson fills in the historical, cultural, and philosophical background. His sweeping essay drives at – among other things – the issue that we have raised in a number of places: the need for an effective military culture to act as a restraint against those who have effectively hijacked the Defense Department as an instrument not in the service of the national interest, but of a dangerously radical agenda aiming to transform the world by force of arms.

  “The common good of the United States would be greatly furthered if there were even just one 'ferociously honest' man within the U.S. military,” Dr. Hickson writes. This is indeed a tall order, but as unlikely as it is, it is even more desperately needed today. When the few men who talked sense – even timidly – to the defense secretary prior to the war can be summarily dismissed for not “playing ball,” there is clearly a need for a more deeply honest man who will not just curse the tactical losses but expose the flaws of the whole system. When 20-year-old Navy petty officers are sacrificing their careers and personal comfort in order to avoid participation in a clearly unjust war to uphold the rule of law and moral values, while the four-stars charged with the leadership of the entire military establishment have not the courage to “speak truth to power,” as the saying goes, something is gravely wrong.

  Dr. Hickson's observations contribute to the beginnings of an understanding of just what that is, and they illustrate how “root and branch” the reformation of the military will have to be.

  CHAPTER

  13

  The Moral Responsibility of the U. S. Military Officer in the Context of the Larger War We Are In

  ………

  Robert Hickson, USA (ret.), Ph.D.

  THIS ESSAY PROPOSES to consider the long-range effects of a gradually implemented educational reform within the American military culture – a form of re-education that was slowly introduced by the psychological and social scientists after World War II. In a more mitigated form than the German military's Umerziehung (i.e., re-education) after World War II, the American military culture seems to have undergone its own transformation and “instrumentalization” in order to become a more useful, non-authoritarian professional cadre in the service of a modern, often messianic, and increasingly imperial democracy.

  It would seem that the traditional, more or less Christian, American military culture had to be re-paganized and neo-Machiavellianized and made more philo-Judaic – or at least less patently (or latently) “anti-Semitic.”

  The Freudian-Marxist “Frankfurt School” doctrines could further build upon the educational reforms which had already been implemented by John Dewey's own theories of pragmatism and instrumentalism. These combined innovations in military, as well as civilian, education would seem to have weakened the intellectual and moral character of the American military officer, and concurrently inclined him to become more technocratic as well as more passive and neutral as an instrument in the service of his civilian masters in a “modern democracy” or a new “messianic imperium” with a “globalist, neo-liberal ideology.” Indeed, some of these innovations were introduced when I was first being formed as a future military officer.

  It was in the autumn of 1960, after Plebe Summer and the test of “Beast Barracks,” that I first heard about the revisions that the West Point academic curriculum had recently undergone, and which would be experimentally applied to our incoming class of some eight hundred men. Col. Lincoln's Social Science Department, as it was presented to us, was to be much more influential and more deeply formative than before upon the education of officers. There were to be several more classes now in military psychology, sociology, and leadership, and fewer in strategic military history and concrete military biography. The long-standing and ongoing process of replacing the Humanities with the academic and applied social sciences would, we were told, continue and increase.

  At the time – especially at 17 years of age – I had little idea of the implications of these curricular revisions, nor of their underlying soft “logic of scientific discovery,” much less an awareness of the growing “soft tyranny” of the Social Sciences and their subtly relativizing “sociology of knowledge” (as in the work of German sociologist, Karl Mannheim). But I do remember reading two mandatory books: Samuel Huntington's The Soldier and the State and Morris Janowitz's The Professional Soldier. Both of these books, we were told, were to help form the proper kind of officer that was needed in “modern democratic society.”

  Janowitz had an intellectual background rooted in neo-Marxist “critical theory” as it was first propagated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno at the Institute for Social Research of the Unive
rsity of Frankfurt in Germany. (This school of thought became more commonly known as “the Frankfurt School.”) This internationally networked school of Marxist-Freudian thought – indeed a well-armed ideology – was likewise active in conducting various “studies in prejudice” and quite intensely concerned about the dangers of the “authoritarian personality,” especially because this character type supposedly tended to “fascism” and “anti-Semitism.” The Frankfurt School “critical theory” claimed to detect and to unmask “anti-democratic tendencies,” perhaps most notably in traditional military institutions and their more autocratic cultures – especially because of the recent history of Germany – but also in traditional, well-rooted, religious institutions of the West, i.e., Christian institutions in general and the culture of the Catholic Church most specifically.

  The Frankfurt School theorists and activists claimed to want to produce the “democratic personality” – although they had originally (and more revealingly) called it the “revolutionary personality.” This purportedly “democratic personality” was to be a fitting replacement for the inordinately prejudiced and latently dangerous “authoritarian personality,” which allegedly conduced to the disorder and illness of “anti-Semitism.”

  The combination of Karl Marx's earlier writings and critical theories and Sigmund Freud's psychiatric theories would be a special mark of this “neo-Marxist critical theory,” not only in the writings of Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, but also in the “anti-authoritarian” psychology of Erich Fromm.

  Morris Janowitz was at the time (1960) a sociologist at the University of Chicago, and he seemed to want to form a “new kind of military professionalism” and a new kind of military officer. That is to say, a military officer who would be a “suitable” instrument to serve those who are truly “governing a modern democracy.”