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COLUMN
SEVENTY-EIGHT, NOVEMBER 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)
BY MAUREEN DOWD
1. LEMON FIZZES ON THE BANKS
OF THE EUPHRATES
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Lemon Fizzes on the Banks of
the Euphrates
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 13:16:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by info@blacklistedjournalist.com
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September 18, 2002
Lemon Fizzes on the Banks of the Euphrates
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON---The trap is sprung. The name of the game is
containment.
Contain the wild man, the leader with the messianic and
relentless glint who is scaring the world.
Surround him, throw Lilliputian nets on him, tie him up
with a lot of U.N. inspection demands, humor him long enough to stop him from
using his weapons and blowing up the Middle East.
But this time, the object of the containment strategy is
not Saddam Hussein, but George W. Bush, the president with real bombs, not the
predator with plans to make them.
America's European and Arab allies now act more nervous
about the cowboy in the Oval Office who likes to brag on America as "the
greatest nation on the face of the Earth" than the thug in the Baghdad
bunker.
"We don't want another war in this region," says
an adviser to the Saudi royal family. "When Afghanistan is bombed, they
just hit rocks. When there's bombing in our neighborhood, they hit oil
fields."
Gerhard Schr?der's campaign prospects soared when he
started running against Mr. Bush. "Many Germans," wrote The Times's
Steven Erlanger, "seem to fear American military action in Iraq more than
they fear Mr. Hussein."
With assists from the rump cabinet of internationalists,
including Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, America's allies have been engaged
in a benevolent conspiracy to ensnare the president in the web of U.N. rules for
war and diplomacy.
The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, insists
that the Iraqi threat must be taken care of without "the firing of a single
shot or the loss of a single soldier." He added a big sweetener, promising
that American bombers could use Saudi bases if Mr. Bush would work through the
U.N.
Privately, Saudi officials said they are alarmed by the
Bush team's military strutting, and think it would have been much better to get
rid of Saddam with a covert operation. They agree with the president that Saddam
is a monster who not only eliminates his enemies, real and perceived, but also
their wives, children and friends. But if he has nothing to lose, they worry, he
might fire his chemical and biological weapons at the Saudis or the Israelis or
give them to terrorists to use on the U.S.
By wrapping Mr. Bush in a warm embrace, the Persian Gulf
allies hope to waltz him closer to where they want him to be. Meanwhile, the
Egyptians and the Jordanians pinned Saddam to the mat and told him that if he
had any chance of avoiding Armageddon, he should open up his country to
inspectors.
Thus, in just a few days, the Iraq crisis went from Saddam
having a noose around his neck to W. being bound by multilateral macram".
"All the reasons for an attack have been
eliminated," crowed Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister.
But the allies " and especially Mr. Aziz " should not
underestimate the zeal of the Bush warriors.
Saddam can admit a legion of inspectors, but that may not
stop Mr. Bush from wriggling out of the U.N. restraints and declaring the
despot's compliance a sham.
The Arabs tut-tut that America should focus on rebuilding
Afghanistan, getting a state for the Palestinians and pursuing the war on
terror.
But the Bushies have gotten a taste of empire building in
Afghanistan and they like it.
Karl Rove is building a Republican empire. Richard Perle,
Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby are building an ideological empire. Dick Cheney
is building a unilateral empire. And Donald Rumsfeld is building a military
empire.
As Henry Kissinger told Newsweek, Rummy wants "to beat
back the attitudes of the Vietnam generation that was focused on American
imperfection and limitations."
Besides, why should former C.E.O.'s Cheney and Rummy settle
for mere Jack Welch-style perks when they can have the perks of empire?
They can restore civilization to the cradle of
civilization. Lemon fizzes, cribbage and cricket by the Tower of Babel. A
36-hole golf course on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. ArabDisney in the
hanging gardens of Babylon. Oil on tap at the Baghdad Hilton. Huge contracts for
buddies in the defense and oil industries. Halliburton's Brown & Root
construction company building a six-lane highway from Baghdad to Tel Aviv.
How long can it be before the empire strikes back?
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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2. CULTURE WAR WITH B-2'S
Subject: NYTimes.com Culture War With B-2's
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 13:16:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by info@blacklistedjournalist.com
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September 22, 2002
Culture War With B-2's
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON " Don't feel bad if you have the uneasy
feeling that you're being steamrolled. You are not alone.
As my girlfriend Dana said: "Bush is like the guy who
reserves a hotel room and then asks you to the prom."
As the Pentagon moves troops, carriers, covert agents and
B-2 bombers into the Persian Gulf, the president, Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld continue their pantomime of consultation.
When Senator Mark Dayton of Minnesota asked the defense
chief on Thursday, "What is compelling us to now make a precipitous
decision and take precipitous actions?" an exasperated Mr. Rumsfeld
sputtered: "What's different? What's different is 3,000 people were
killed."
The casus belli is casuistry belli: We can't cuff Saddam to
9/11, but we'll clip Saddam because of 9/11.
Mr. Rumsfeld offered sophistry instead of a smoking gun:
"I suggest that any who insist on perfect evidence are back in the 20th
century and still thinking in pre-9/11 terms."
Ah, Rummy. Evidence, civil liberties, debating before we go
to war . . . it's all sooo 20th century.
Anyway, how can we have evidence when we learned last week
that our evidence-gathering snoozy spooks are even more aggressively awful than
we thought?
The administration isn't targeting Iraq because of 9/11.
It's exploiting 9/11 to target Iraq. This new fight isn't logical " it's
cultural. It is the latest chapter in the culture wars, the conservative dream
of restoring America's sense of Manifest Destiny.
The Bush hawks don't simply want to go back in a time
machine and make Desert Storm end with a turkey shoot. They want to travel back
even farther to the Vietnam War and write a more muscular coda to that as well.
Extirpating Saddam is about proving how tough we are to a
world that thinks we got soft when that last helicopter left the roof of the
American embassy in Saigon in 1975.
We can't prove it with al Qaeda. That's like grabbing
smoke.
So former Nixon officials Cheney and Rummy are playing out
their own "Four Feathers," rescuing the lost honor of the American
empire in the sands of Arabia. They want to stomp on Saddam to exorcise the
specters of Vietnam and Watergate " the ethical relativism, the lack of
patriotism, the postmodern angst, the loss of moral authority, the feeling that
America is in decline or in the wrong, the do-whatever-feels-good Clintonesque
ethos.
Dick Cheney fought multinationalism and Lynne Cheney fought
multiculturalism, defending the dead white males who made the republic great.
She has written a children's book, America: A Patriotic Primer, and urged
that 9/11 be a day to remember the nation's glories rather than its "faults
and failings."
The Cheneys, who have been known to invite dinner guests at
the vice presidential mansion to sing along to Home on the Range, think
they can restore a sunnier, more can-do mood to our society. Even if it takes
incinerating Baghdad to do it.
Rummy is equally impatient with the post-Vietnam focus on
imperfections and limitations. He wants to yank the boomers by their collars and
make them, if not the Greatest Generation, at least a bit Greater.
This is fine with W., who stayed 50's through the 60's and
stopped liking the Beatles when they got into their "weird psychedelic
period." He arrived at Yale and Harvard Business School just as the white
male WASP ascendancy was slipping. He was in that small coterie of bewildered
guys in wide-wale corduroy trousers, Izod polo shirts and Sperry Topsiders,
surrounded by wild and crazy hippies protesting the war and smoking roaches.
The Bushies want to bring back the imperial, imperious
presidency. The pre-emption proclamation had the tone of Cheney Caesar and Condi
Ben Her. And the resolution sent to Congress seeking authority to go after Iraq
was the broadest request for executive military authority since L.B.J. got the
Gulf of Tonkin resolution rubber-stamped in 1964. At least L.B.J. had to phony
up the Tonkin Gulf provocation. Mr. Bush can't be bothered. "I cannot
believe the gall and the arrogance of the White House," Sen. Robert Byrd
bellowed.
Things are getting dangerouser and dangerouser. Karl Rove's gunning for the Democrats. Ariel Sharon's gunning for Arafat. W.'s gunning for Saddam. And Al Qaeda's still gunning for us.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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