Loss Leader: Terror War Dividends From Pakistani Breakdown
Monday, 05 November 2007
by Chris Floyd
The nightmare scenario that the "War on Terror" is ostensibly meant to address — with its massive outlay of tax dollars and death — is now coming to pass: an Islamic nation which has extensive ties to sectarian terrorism, a nuclear arsenal and a proven record of blackmarket proliferation of WMD technology is collapsing into the status of a failed state. But of course this scenario doesn't apply to any of the three countries already shattered by Terror War "shock and awe" — Iraq, Afghanistan andSomalia -- nor to the country squarely in the crosshairs of the next wave of war crime: Iran. No, the nightmare scenario has become a reality in the country that perhaps more than any other has benefited from Washington's Terror War largess — Pakistan.
As the world knows, Bush ally Pervez Musharraf has stripped off the "constitutional" drag that he pranced around in so awkwardly since seizing power in 1999 and has now emerged in his true guise: a military tyrant, ruling by force and repression. His seizure of emergency powers last week is a screaming confirmation of the chaos and collapse that authoritarian rule has brought to Pakistan. His alliance with Bush as a firm Terror War "partner" has done nothing to quell the spread of Islamic extremism in the region nor cut off the vast safe havens for al Qaeda and the Taliban within Pakistan itself. On the contrary, this partnership of authoritarian poltroons has seen only the spread of Islamic fundamentalism much deeper into Pakistan's society and government, while the Taliban and its allies have only grown stronger in their Pakistani redoubts. Brutal ethnic crackdowns in Baluchistan have only aggravated the separatist sentiments and violence in that key province, while Musharraf's attacks on the judiciary and cynical backroom dealing with the hugely corrupt former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto (a deal brokered in Washington), made malicious mockery of the claims of "democratic reform" long trumpeted by the dictator and his political bedfellow in the Oval Office.
Looking at all this,
one might be forgiven a cynical suspicion that the Bush-Mush alliance was not really aimed at fighting terrorism or quelling extremism or establishing democracy, but had much more to do with, say, the nearly $10 billion in arms that Bush has given his friend — a pass-through of American taxpayer money to the war industry cronies of the White House. A slice of that pork is then funneled back into the operations of the corporatist-militarist political machine (and its various bootlicking media and "think tank" subsidiaries). As we have noted here many times before, this endless loop of war profits poured into the coffers of warmongers allows the latter to continue skewing the political landscape vastly in favor of their radical elitist agenda.
No doubt there are many in the government and the military who sincerely believe they are "fighting terrorism" — or at least trying to — in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration. Hence the growing frustration we hear from various retired generals, foreign service officers, intelligence agents, media mandarins etc., about the "incompetence" of Bush's policies, the complaints about how ill-informed, wrongheaded and counterproductive the Administration's approaches are. But two demonstrably false assumptions lie at the bottom of this frustration: first, that the Administration's policies are actually designed (however badly) to address the issue of violent sectarian extremism; and second, that the best way to combat terrorism is by practicing terrorism — state terrorism — on a monumental scale.
The "War on Terror" is the justification for the implementation of the long-held radical agenda of the corporatist-militarists to extend their armed dominion over world political and economic affairs, and to transform American society into an elitist playground of unfettered corporate rapine, where a gilded sliver lord it over a shattered, dispossessed and powerless people. This has been a long-term project, going back many decades, but has accelerated with dizzying speed since 1980, with both parties eagerly embracing and advancing the tenets of free market fundamentalism. This process has been described many times before, but Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine, is an excellent summary, analysis and updating of this grim history. The degradation of the quality of life for ordinary Americans at the hands of this extremist doctrine is painfully evident and undeniable to most Americans over the age of, say 40 to 45, who came to adulthood before the real frenzy of this war against the American people began.
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http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/2774/81/
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