'MAD DOG' STRATEGY OF U.S. EMPIRE

When U.S. president George W. Bush launched into his bellicose State of the Union address recently, and called Iran, Iraq and North Korea the "Axis of Evil," Europeans, Asians and people the world over reacted with shock, fear and wide-eyed disbelief of the American implication that these nations were the next targets in the never-ending war against Evil.

Many of these erstwhile "allies" (really junior partners) looked at the Americans as if they were crazy. "Were they planning a world war?," many wondered. They did not want this. For who knows where this will end?

American saber-rattling and war-talk may sound like madness, but there's a method to the madness. Indeed, it's more than a method -- it's a policy.

In 1995, the U.S. Strategic Command (the group responsible for the nation's nuclear arsenal) prepared an internal study, called "Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence." Here are some excerpts;

Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the US may do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed. The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially 'out of control' can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary's decision makers. This essential sense of fear is the working force of deterrence. That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries. [See Boston Globe, 2 Mar. '98, p. 5]

This, then, is the method behind the madness, it seems. These crazy Americans!

Drunk on the ambrosia of empire, striking matches in a room reeking of gasoline, shocking the world with bombast and bluster, every bellow like the rage of a rampaging elephant, the US is a power that sends shudders through a hundred capitals on every continent. They shudder because they know, perhaps better than most Americans, the horrific costs that America has imposed on the world in the name of capital. As former CIA station chief John Stockwell noted in Praetorian Guard (1991):

Coming to grips with these U.S./CIA activities in broad numbers and figuring out how many people have been killed in the jungles of Laos or the hills of Nicaragua is very difficult. But, adding them up as best we can, we come up with a figure of six million people killed -- and this is a minimum figure. Included are: one million killed in the Korean War, two million in the Vietnam War, 800,000 killed in Indonesia, one million in Cambodia, 20,000 killed in Angola -- the operation I was a part of -- and 20,000 killed in Nicaragua [p. 81].

These Americans! Like wild cowboys!

Crazy, No?

Mumia Abu Jamal 25.02.02