Published on Monday, October 1, 2001  
            No News is Bad News 
            by Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen 
              
Nearly three weeks have passed since Sept. 11, and the
United States has yet to launch a military offensive in the
new unlimited global war on terrorism that President Bush
declared on Sept. 20.

Combined with news reports that Secretary of State Colin
Powell is battling within the Administration for a more
diplomatic approach, this period of "calm" has many --
including some in the antiwar movement -- talking as if a
full-scale war has been averted. No news of war, they say,
is good news.

Several considerations suggest the opposite: no news is most
likely bad news.

The first, and most obvious, point is that military
operations on the scale that the Bush administration has
discussed cannot be implemented overnight. Troops and
materiel take time to move into place, especially when
delicate negotiations are needed to establish bases in
countries where such a move can have domestic political
costs. Few countries are eager to become part of the
American military machine; on Sunday, a Saudi Arabian
official said no attacks on Afghanistan would be launched
from his nation, an indication of the political touchiness
of this endeavor.

Remember that the buildup to the Gulf War lasted five
months. No matter how tough the talk in the first weeks
after the terror attacks, Pentagon planners and their
civilian chiefs do not make large-scale plans for military
operations based on rhetoric. Words of war are spoken for
public relations, not planning purposes.

In short: The antiwar movement should not get taken in by a
diplomatic and media shell-game.

Again, the Gulf War is the perfect example. From the August
2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait up until days before the
U.S. began bombing Baghdad, officials from the first Bush
administration talked about their commitment to exploring a
diplomatic resolution of the crisis. At the time, it was
clear they weren't serious, since they said publicly many
times that there would be no negotiations; Iraq had to
either accept U.S. conditions or face an attack (that's what
passes for diplomacy in the United States). This was widely
acknowledged; early on, for example, Thomas Friedman wrote
in the New York Times that the "diplomatic track" should be
avoided because it might "defuse the crisis."

In his book Shadow, the Washington Post's Bob Woodward
reported that the Bush administration was afraid Saddam
Hussein might pull his forces out of Kuwait before the
U.S. could strike. If that happened, it would be hard to
justify keeping U.S. military forces in the region, leading
then-President Bush to tell his national security team, "We
have to have a war," according to the book.

In an interview for a PBS Frontline documentary on the Gulf
War (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/),
then-Secretary of State James Baker conceded that his
January 9, 1991, meeting with Iraq's foreign minister was
mostly for appearances, to help to secure the congressional
vote for war three days later.

In fact, the whole saga, while billed as a question of
whether Saddam Hussein would come to his senses and
negotiate, was anything but. The numerous plans presented to
give him a face-saving formula, to retreat with the most
minor of gains, were serially shot down by an administration
bent on war.

As we hear talk about the United States engaging in
diplomacy, we must remember this:. the U.S. conception of
diplomacy does not mean seeking to avoid war, as the
U.N. charter requires. It means coupling a "principled"
refusal to negotiate with threats and verbal provocations
designed to stiffen the spine of an enemy, so that
situations cannot be resolved peacefully. It means lining up
allies -- sometimes by naked coercion, sometimes by bribes
of debt-restructuring or trade favors -- so that military
actions can begin.

We see the same thing in the current situation no
negotiations with the Taliban, no attempt to offer evidence
linking bin Laden to the crime against humanity of September
11, but many peremptory demands, not just to turn over bin
Laden but to effectively cede sovereignty to the United
States by opening up training camps and other sensitive
areas to American scrutiny. Plus ca change .

Recent history offers another reason to expect that plans
for war have not been shelved: An empire's need to maintain
"credibility."

Credibility in this sense means the notion that anyone who
challenges U.S. domination will pay the price. The
destruction of one country keeps others from rising up. All
empires must maintain this credibility, or they cease to be
empires.

The major conflict of the American empire in the post-World
War II era -- the wars against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia --
was motivated by a central U.S. doctrine: Any attempt at
independent development in the Third World had to be
destroyed. But by 1967, at the absolute latest, it was clear
to everyone -- including U.S. planners -- that a military
victory was out of reach. From that point on, the war was
continued in large part to further destroy Indochina, so
that the United States was not seen to withdraw in
defeat. The million tons of bombs dropped since that time
were done to maintain credibility.

The war planners are going about the business of planning
war. Still, the fact that one of the Gulf War planners,
Colin Powell, now sits as secretary of state and is arguing
for what seems to be a less aggressive posture has led many
to be hopeful that a split in the administration could
derail war. While we can only speculate on discussions going
on inside the White House, again history and common sense
can guide us.

First, the stories in the mainstream media about the rift
between Powell and Rumsfeld, the doves and the hawks, may or
may not have any connection to what is really
happening. Internal policy disputes do break out in any
administration. But just as often officials manipulate the
press to float trial balloons and distract the public (even
conservative columnist George Will has suggested news of
this disagreement might just be "disinformation to confound
our enemies"). Even if such a rift exists, it appears that
the question for the Administration isn't whether or not to
go to war, but merely when, where and with what force.

Before we put our hopes in Powell-the-peacemaker, let us
recall that he is the man who put forth the Powell Doctrine,
which he summarized in the Frontline documentary as: "If
this is important enough to go to war for, we're going to do
it in a way that there's no question what the outcome will
be and we're going to do it by putting the force necessary
to take the initiative away from your enemy and impose your
will upon him."

Again, remember that marshaling the forces to "impose your
will" upon an enemy is not an easy process.

At this point we have little choice but to base our antiwar
work on informed speculation; it would be foolish to think
the administration is going to tell us forthrightly what it
has in store for the world. A reasonable assumption at this
point is that whatever instinct there might have been for an
immediate demonstration bombing to signal the world that the
United States has a "spine of steel" has been reined in, and
that a more careful planning process is underway.

While this process continues, a severe human toll is already
being exacted.

The administration's bellicose posture has sparked such fear
in Afghanistan that the flight of refugees has begun, with
the accompanying likelihood of mass starvation. The United
States is pressing to ensure that any food distribution plan
is carried out ''in a manner that does not allow this food
to fall into the hands of the Taliban,'' according to deputy
secretary of state Richard Armitage. Since the Taliban
itself, like most ruling elites, remains well-fed, this is
plainly doublespeak for a plan to selectively starve the
roughly 90% of the country controlled by them.

Translated: The war on the civilian population of
Afghanistan using fear, flight and food is underway.

Beyond these basic observations, there is little we can know
about what is in the minds of people gathered in the White
House, the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom.

But we can and must use the time they have given us to step
up our organizing and education efforts, not slow them down.

The polls, like the minds of most Americans, are full of
contradiction. Although over 90% supposedly favor going to
war, 63% think that strikes on Afghanistan make future
terrorist attacks more, not less, likely. Simultaneously,
the natural sympathies of Americans have been touched,
resulting in a spontaneous upwelling of concern for the
already starved, bombed, and brutalized Afghan people a
concern that has already forced a change in rhetoric from
the halls of power. Perhaps most important, people who are
normally apolitical are paying attention to this issue.

Put together, it represents a mix with heady
possibilities. The chance to build a genuine antiwar
movement is greater than it has been in a very long time as
long as, to take a leaf from George W. Bush, we do not tire
and we do not falter.

---

Rahul Mahajan serves on the National Board of Peace
Action. Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the
University of Texas. Both are members of the Nowar
Collective (www.nowarcollective.com). They can be reached at
rahul@tao.ca

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