Once again we have an ultimatum: the
coalition “certainly will not tolerate”
the situation in Falluja and
Najaf. “Insurgents” (anyone who
challenges the coalition’s right to be
there) must give up their weapons . . .
immediately. Time is running out.
I remember similar pronouncements about
time running out: either others must
render what they ordinarily would not,
or the US “must take decisive action”
and attack/kill/level the target.
Revisiting a past use of this threat
may hold clues about what causes the
urgency.
Look at the series of ultimata the Bush
administration delivered as they moved
toward their pre-decided invasion of
Iraq: they couldn’t allow more time for
inspections, there was no time for
discussion, Iraq would destroy us all
if someone didn’t act now, the UN must
act immediately or the US would be
obliged to do so—to avoid Armageddon.
How was that threat orchestrated?
First, fear was the strongest sustained
chord in the background. The movements
flowed together—a pretended biblical
series of who begat whom—Saddam’s
ruthless past, Al Qaeda, the attacks of
September 11, the oh-so-portable vial
of white powder, and—big crescendo here—
a chorus of Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld
singing “Mushroom Cloud” loud enough to
make listeners tremble. Time—doom,
doom, doom—is running out.
Now that we know what the
administration knew as they were making
those dire predictions, we have to
wonder about the time pressure. Iraq
was so weakened by sanctions it could
scarcely challenge the heaviest
hardware in history. Iraq was not a
threat to its neighbors, or to the US.
There were no WMDs (when Saddam’s son-
in-law told the US in the mid-90s of
pre-1991 programs—widely broadcast here—
he also said that everything was
destroyed shortly after the first Gulf
war—conveniently ignored here). And
Saddam’s horrendous gassing of
thousands of Iranians and Iraqi Kurds
wasn’t a current threat either—it
happened 20 years ago, with money and
supplies from the Reagan
administration.
So what was so urgent that the world
was compelled to act immediately? If
the US had not invaded Iraq in March
2003: · the level of fear would have
subsided: it’s nearly impossible to
sustain an emotional high of any kind
for very long;
· inspections would have revealed
the truth: no WMDs;
· the yellow-cake-from-Niger
forgery and other misrepresentations
would have been further investigated
(nothing like a continuing state of
crisis to sideline such
inconveniences);
· the voices of millions
worldwide opposing the invasion would
have grown even stronger;
· the US general public might
have grasped that the excuses for
invasion were lies—aha! With no hyped-
up fear supporting immediate action,
there would have been time to think,
real diplomacy and the rule of law
might have prevailed, and (the “bad
news”) control of Iraqi oil and untold
billions of dollars in defense
contracts—the goals of the 2000 neo-
conservative policy paper “Project for
a New American Century”—would have been
lost.
For the Bush-Cheney team and its oil
company and defense contractor
contributors, time was truly running
out. So when it’s announced that the
Bush-appointed Iraqi puppet government
must be installed immediately—before it
becomes clear how little control they
really will have—and that there is no
time to listen to the grievances of the
people in Najaf and Falluja, question
what we and the rest of the world might
think about, what other solutions we
might create, if we had—or took—more
time.
