Santorum: State Murder as a "Moral Enterprise"

“God did not just give us rights,” pontificated His High Holiness Rick Santorum during a January 17 campaign stop in Lexington, South Carolina. “He gave us a moral code by which to exercise them. See, that’s what Ron Paul sort of leaves out. He leaves out [that the] rights and responsibilities that we have come from God…. And he says, `No, we just have rights, and then that’s it.’ No, we don’t. America is a moral enterprise.” And morality, Santorum believes, is best instilled through State coercion, including officially sanctioned murder.

Santorum presented that assessment just a few hours after a GOP debate in which Dr. Paul precipitated torrential booing from the pious Republican crowd by insisting that government is bound by the central tenet of the Christian moral code – the Golden Rule. 

According to Newt Gingrich – whose General Urko act drove the assembled Republicans into a simian frenzy of bloodlust – it is “irrational” of Paul to insist that there are limits on the government’s powers of discretionary killing. 

Elaborating on that idea in a January 18 interview with South Carolina pastor Kevin Boling, Gingrich asserted that Dr. Paul’s insistence on applying the Golden Rule to foreign policy demonstrated that he had absorbed the “anti-American, self-hating attitude of the American Left.” 

That accusation of moral lassitude against Dr. Paul – who served in the military as a young father with two small children – dribbled down the multiple chins of an impenitent Chickenhawk who used his wife as a draft deferment, then spent the last few years of the Vietnam Era schtupping college girls. ("We would have won in 1974 if we could have kept him out of the office, screwing [a young volunteer] on the desk,” lamented his congressional campaign director.) 

 In the same interview, Newt -- who is the Hogarthian embodiment of several of the deadly sins – reiterated the indolent smear that most of Paul’s core supporters are young people obsessed with recreational drug use (something in which Newt indulged before emerging as the self-appointed “Teacher of Civilization”). Perhaps inspired by Santorum’s example, Newt used that caricature as the basis for his own little collectivist homily.

“We have been endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, but that means we have to be citizens,” Newt decreed, claiming that “a heroin addict or a methamphetamine addict [has] lost the ability to be a true citizen.”

There is nothing in the Declaration of Independence that describes rights as contingent on citizenship. According to that document, individual rights are innate and unalienable; government, on the other hand, enjoys a contingent existence, and can be altered or abolished whenever it imperils those rights. In that scheme, the purpose of citizenship is to restrain the government, rather than to submit to its supposedly ennobling influence.

Like most of the people who support him, Dr. Paul has no interest in drug consumption, recreational or otherwise. He simply understands that the federal government has no constitutional authority to wage war on drug consumption, and that no government anywhere has the moral authority to regulate what individuals choose to ingest. He likewise understands that prohibition always engenders lethal violence – something vividly illustrated by the horrendous death toll exacted by Washington’s proxy drug war in Mexico, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 2006.

Once again, Dr. Paul’s perspective on this question is informed by the New Testament: “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man…. Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceedeth out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness, blasphemies....” (Matthew 15:10-12, 16-19) 

While Jesus of Nazareth never uttered a syllable endorsing drug prohibition, He had a great deal to say denouncing war and related violence. To judge from the priorities and behavior of the “Christian” Right, one would assume that exactly the opposite were the case. 

Although Rick Santorum’s politics are detestable, he is a robustly decent husband and father. That certainly isn't true of the human pustule called Newt Gingrich. Although sharply different in terms of their personal deportment, Santorum and Gingrich share a totalitarian worldview: They assume that while nobody is virtuous enough to govern himself, they belong to a consecrated caste that is holy enough to rule over others. 

Reaching for a big historical idea and falling badly short, Santorum attempted to depict Dr. Paul as a Jacobin:

“I would argue that [Dr. Paul’s] understanding of the Constitution was similar to the French Revolution…. Their founding watchwords were the words, `liberty’ and `fraternity.’ Fraternity. Brotherhood. But no fatherhood. No God. It was a completely secular revolution. An anti-clerical revolution. And the root of it was, whoever’s in power rules.”

Bear in mind, once again, that Santorum offered that description of the candidate who – just hours earlier – had been publicly ridiculed for insisting that God’s law, the Golden Rule, applies to everybody, including those who preside over the criminal enterprise called the State. Furthermore, among the current GOP presidential contenders, Dr. Paul is the only candidate to extol the Constitution as a law that restrains the government. Santorum, on the other hand, consistently seeks to restrain the individual and emancipate the State. While he insinuates that Ron Paul is an anarchist (he isn’t -- none save One was perfect, after all -- but he should be), Santorum has giddily celebrated State lawlessness. 

During an October visit to South Carolina, Santorum endorsed assassination as an instrument of policy when employed by the U.S. government.

“On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead," he explained, broadly intimating that the U.S. government was responsible. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly….I think we should send a very clear message that if you are scientist from Russia or North Korea or from Iran, and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a nuclear bomb for Iran, you are not safe."

Santorum, who is regarded by some misguided conservatives as a champion of the pro-life cause, warned those who doubt that the U.S. government would assassinate civilian scientists should take heed to the way it treats American citizens designated enemies of the State: "When people say, `You can't go out and assassinate people' — well, tell that to al-Awlaki…. We've done it. We've done it to an American citizen."

Actually, the Obama administration not only assassinated U.S.-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — who was never charged with a crime of any kind, let alone convicted and sentenced by a court -- but also al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Adbdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in Yemen while he was having dinner with a cousin (who also perished).


The Obama administration circulated the story that the 16-year-old was actually an adult “suspected” of being a “militant,” thereby redefining the killing as a strategic success. But the family was able to document that the youngster — who had gone to Yemen in a frantic search for his father, known to be on a U.S. assassination list — was born in Colorado in 1995.


Behavior of this kind is generally associated with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il. Proponents of an aggressive foreign policy often characterize the regimes ruling countries such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea as despotisms that routinely "murder their own citizens," and thus pose a threat to the peace of the world. Yet Rick Santorum — who yields to nobody in his zeal to wage war against distant and relatively powerless regimes — openly celebrates the summary execution of U.S. citizens, and describes it as a model for similar "wet work" operations against citizens of other countries. 


For Santorum, the defining principle of politics is power, not liberty. His chief ideological inspiration is not the imperfectly realized individualist James Madison, or even the centralizing constitutionalist James Madison, but the arch-authoritarian Joseph de Maistre, the 18^th Century apostle of absolutism. His role model in policy terms could well be the murderous “Operative” from the film “Serenity.”


Maistre taught that “all greatness, all power, all social order depends on the Executioner; he is the terror of human society and tie that holds it together. Take away this incontrovertible force from the world, and at that very moment order is superseded by chaos, thrones fall, society disappears." 


Santorum visibly shares the fear that society will disintegrate if the State is deprived of the discretionary power to kill people. In the film “Serenity,” the Operative acted as Maistre’s Executioner on behalf of a galaxy-spanning bureaucratic empire called the Alliance. He spent most of the film pursuing River Tam, a brilliant and irrepressibly individualistic young girl with psychic abilities who had been abducted by the regime and programmed to be an assassin.


River’s brother, a gifted physician named Simon, sacrificed his future to free River, and the two of them wound up aboard the Serenity, a merchant ship commanded by a noble but embittered man named Malcolm Reynolds. Years earlier, Malcolm (or Mal) had fought with the “Browncoats,” a group of separatists who waged a valiant but losing battle for impendence from the Alliance. 


In his pursuit of River and Simon, Alliance forces commanded by the Operative lays waste to an outpost called Haven, where Mal and his crew had briefly found refuge. Similar Alliance attacks have destroyed every other colony where Mal might have taken cover.
“I’m sorry,” the Operative explains to Mal following the massacres. “If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to…. [D]id you think none of this was your fault?”


“I don’t murder children,” Mal replies with frigid disgust.


“I do,” the Operative unblinkingly replies. “If I have to.” 


“Why?” Mal demands. “Do you even know why they sent you?”


“It’s not my place to ask,” the Operative wearily explains. “I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.” 


Although he possesses none of the Operative’s fearsome martial prowess, Rick Santorum likewise believes it is possible to build a better world through State murder – not just Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani, and (soon) Iranian children, but American children like Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. 


It’s little wonder that Santorum – like Newt Gingrich and the death cult adherents who compose much of the GOP’s rank and file -- finds Ron Paul’s devotion to the Golden Rule to be morally unsatisfactory. 

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The Awlaki Sanction: Who's Next on the List?

The links connecting Anwar al-Awlaki to anti-American terrorism were entirely suppositious, forged through unsubstantiated official assertion. He was, at most, a clerical propagandist who never exercised command authority. For that matter, no evidence has been presented that he ever had an operational role in a military force of any kind. 

Awlaki -- an American-born cleric who was once courted by the Pentagon -- was accused of expressing support for armed attacks against U.S. military personnel and government interests. It is not terrorism to employ lethal violence against an invading and occupying army, nor is it a crime to express support for armed self-defense -- including armed interposition against the aggressive designs of the U.S. government.  

The administration asserted – without providing evidence – that Awlaki had an “operational” role in planning terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens. If evidence supporting that charge existed, the administration had the unconditional constitutional duty to indict Awlaki and put him on trial. 

Intelligence officials knew Awlaki’s location. The government of Yemen, which is headed by a pliant thug named Ali Abdullah Saleh, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington and would have eagerly cooperated in an effort to track down and extradite Awlaki. But this would not have validated the claim – made by the Bush administration, and embraced by its successor – that the President of the United States isn’t bound by the Constitution, but rather is the Living Constitution. 

As a guarantee of individual liberty, a political constitution is about as intrinsically valuable as a paper currency. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are irredeemable unless they are backed by a noble metal – lead, in the form of privately owned ammunition. Nonetheless, and for the record, this must be said: 

There is nothing in the Constitution or laws of the United States of America that permits a president to order the summary execution of any human being. Only Congress can declare war. Only a jury can find someone guilty of a crime. Only a judge can impose a death sentence. Or such would be the case, were we still living in a constitutional republic, rather than the militarist empire into which that republic inevitably degenerated. 

The vertically integrated murder apparatus that killed Awlaki and fellow U.S. citizen Samir Khan is entirely autonomous – and increasingly automated. Awlaki was added to a “kill list,” and his execution “sanctioned” by a secret legal memorandum, on the basis of things he had said in public. Within a few years, the machinery of mass murder will be refined to the point where people – including U.S. citizens – may find themselves targeted for execution on the basis of behavior “patterns” that suggest unexpressed by impermissible thoughts. 

 As Thomas Englehardt points out:

“In 2007, [then-] CIA director Michael Hayden began lobbying the White House for `permission to carry out strikes against houses or cars merely on the basis of behavior that matched a “pattern of life” associated with al-Qaeda or other groups.’ And next thing you knew, they were moving from a few attempted targeted assassinations toward a larger air war of annihilation against types and `behaviors.’”

Unmanned, automated drones are an ideal instrument for this variety ofall-encompassing warfare against dissent. “They are capable of roaming the world,” Englehardt continues. “Someday, they will land on the decks of aircraft carriers or, tiny as hummingbirds, drop onto a windowsill, maybe even yours, or in their hundreds, the size of bees, swarm to targets and, if all goes well, coordinate their actions using the artificial intelligence version of `hive minds.’”

According to retired General Wesley Clark, the murder – or, to use his term, “takedown” -- of Anwar al-Awlaki heralds a “transformation” of the Regime’s strategy in waging open-ended warfare. Awlaki’s death “makes his final legacy a proof of the effectiveness of America’s active defense against terrorists,” enthuses Clark. 

He goes on to emit one of the purest specimens of totalitarian agitprop ever recorded:

“For the United States, the journey continues: Awlaki’s death … moves us closer to the time when we must transition, psychologically and practically, from being a nation under threat to a nation that once again champions its openness and welcome to the whole world.”

Mere acceptance of the presidential power to execute anybody on a whim isn’t sufficient. It must be celebrated openly – nay, it must be extolled as a selling point to the rest of the world: Come visit this uniquely blessed land of killer drones and murder by executive decree! 

Inspired by Clark’s exhortation, and eager to display my patriotic zeal to eradicate those who have aided and supported terrorism, I would like to submit two nominees for the next drone-inflicted counter-terrorist “takedown”: Retired Generals Wesley Clark and Michael Hayden. 

Clark (l.) with KLA chieftain Hashim Thaci (r).

As noted above, there is no evidence that Anwar al-Awlaki ever actively collaborated in armed violence by Jihadists. Wesley Clark, however, was the commanding general during the NATO’s 78-day terror bombing of Serbia. 

Hundreds of civilians were murdered in that act of international terrorism, which resulted in the installation of a criminal syndicate called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as the government of that Serbian province. 

The KLA has a remarkable pedigree: It is descended on one side from the notorious WWII-era Skanderbeg militia organized by the Nazi SS; the other half of its heritage is Stalinist. It received material and technical assistance from the CIA , and financial aid from Osama bin Laden -- who were partners in supporting jihadist elements during the wars of Balkan secession.

As CIA director under George W. Bush, Michael Hayden was deeply involved in recruiting, arming, and supporting a large number of unreconstructed jihadist, among them an enchanting Somali warlord named Indha Adde, who now refers to himself as Gen. Yusuf Mohammad Siad.

In an on-the-scene account, Jeremy Scahill of The Nation observes that Siad has “pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda” and “openly admits to having sheltered some of the most notorious Al Qaeda figures—including Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania….”

Stipulating that the term “al-Qaeda” is, in effect, shorthand for “any group of Muslims Washington has not succeeded in bribing yet,” the critical point here is that Siad openly admits doing the kinds of things Awlaki was accused of doing. Hayden and Clark, on the other hand, have committed crimes well beyond Awlaki’s capacity: As heads of military and intelligence bureaucracies, they offered material aid and support to terrorists. In fact, they – and a number of other veterans of the military-intelligence establishment – continue to do so in retirement.

Retired Generals Clark and Hayden are among the War Partyluminaries who are on the payroll of the Iranian Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK), orthe so-called “People’s Mujahadeen,” which is listed as a terrorist group bythe State Department. Clark and Hayden, along with former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton and Peter Pace, former NATO commander James L. Jones, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former 9-11 Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton, Rudolph Giuliani, Michele Bachmann, andseveral other luminaries have been hired by the MEK to lobby the StateDepartment to remove the group from its list of Foreign TerroristOrganizations. 

MEK Flag.

The MEK was created in 1965 as part of a Soviet-sponsored international terrorist network that waged wars of "national liberation" throughout the developing world. Human Rights Watch, which describes the MEK as an "urban guerrilla group," points out that the group's ideology is a Muslim variation on "liberation theology." 

In his July 7 testimony before the House Committee on ForeignAffairs, Ray Takeyh, who is (of all things) a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out that the MEK “sought to … amalgamate Islam and Marxism. Islam was supposed to provide the values while Marxism offered a pathway for organizing the society and defeating the forces of capitalism, imperialism, and feudalism…. [F]rom Lenin they embraced the importance of a vanguard party committed to mass mobilization, and from Third World revolutionaries they took the primacy of guerilla warfare as indispensable agents of political change.” 

In 1970, 13 members of the MEK received training (most likely under Soviet supervision) at PLO camps in Jordan and Lebanon. Upon their return, the PLO-trained MEK cadres shared their newly acquired skills with their comrades, and the group embarked on a wave of attacks and bombings intended to bring down the Shah. During one rampage, MEK terrorists killed several U.S. military personnel – including Colonel Lewis Hawkins, the Deputy Chief of Military Mission in Tehran. 

Although the group suffered some attrition in its conflict with the SAVAK, the Shah’s hideous secret police, it survived long enough to participate in Khomeini revolution. MEK cadres were involved in the seizure of American hostages in October 1979. But the MEK’s ambitions and ideology made it a poor fit for Khomeini regime, so the group was purged from the ruling coalition in 1981 and much of its leadership was driven into exile in Iraq. There it was, in Takeyh’s words, used “as Saddam’s Praetorian Guard.”

Following Saddam’s U.S. supported invasion of Iran, the MEK began a hit-and-run guerrilla war against the Iranian regime in the hope of triggering a popular uprising. When that proved unsuccessful, the group set up a political front group called the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI) in Paris. In 1985, notes Human Rights Watch, the MEK's "leadership was transformed when Masoud Rajavi announced his marriage to Maryam Uzdanlu.... The husband and wife team became co-leaders" of the MEK and announced an "ideological revolution." 

Everyday life in Camp Ashraf.

All of the group's members were required to undertake an individual "ideological revolution" by engaging in Maoist-style "self-criticism" sessions. Adherents were expected to listen raptly "to radio messages and explanations provided by [their] commanders" in order to "gain a deep insight into the greatness of our new leadership, meaning the leadership of Masoud and Maryam.... To believe in them as well as to show ideological and revolutionary obedience to them." 

By 1987, the MEK had acquired "all the main attributes of a cult," writes Iranian scholar Ervand Abrahamian, with Masoud Rajavi claiming the titles Rahbar (leader) and Imam-i hal (the Present Imam), and the forerunner to the impending second advent of the Mahdi. In 1994, the House Foreign Relations Committee described the group as a violent, Marxist-influenced cult. The Committee Chairman at the time was Congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Indiana), who is now on the group’s payroll.

“Friendships and all emotional relationships are forbidden” to those recruited into the MEK, writes Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times magazine, who has spent time at the group’s headquarters at Camp Ashraf, 40 miles north of Baghdad. “From the time they are toddlers, boys and girls are not allowed to speak to each other. Each day at Camp Ashraf you had to report your dreams and thoughts.” Maoist “struggle sessions” and severe punishment for “deviationism” are commonplace. 

Expelled from France in 1986, Masoud Rajavi was welcomed in Baghdad, where he and his followers built a "National Liberation Army" that joined the Iran-Iraq war on Saddam's side. The MEK's plan was to recruit a huge army of suicide commandos whose sacrifice would inspire the “liberation” of Iran.

“We will not be fighting alone; we will have the people on our side,” proclaimed Rajavi. “They are tired of this regime, and ... they have every incentive to get rid of it forever. We will only have to act as their shields, protecting them from being easy targets for the [revolutionary] guards. Wherever we go there will be masses of citizens joining us, and the prisoners we liberate from jails will help us lead them towards victory. It will be like an avalanche, growing as it progresses.”

When the war ended in 1988 without victory for Iraq or the "National Liberation Army," the MEK leadership imposed yet another "ideological revolution" on its followers, this one including compelled mass divorces and widespread torture of those suspected of espionage or ideological deviation. Following the first Gulf War, the MEK collaborated in Saddam's crackdown on Shi'ites and Kurds.

In its campaign to build support for the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration mentioned MEK camps in Iraq as evidence of Saddam’s support for international terrorism. Following the invasion, U.S. forces disarmed MEK fighters who operated several camps within 60 miles of the Iranian border. Rather than treating them as terrorists, the Bush administration designated the MEK fighters as "protected" persons under the Geneva Convention. 

In fact, the Bush administration was so intent on sheltering the MEK – which, recall had killed Americans and taken part in the seizure of American hostages – that it rebuffed an offer from Iran to exchange MEK leaders for al-Qaeda suspects being held in Tehran. In exchange for protection, the MEK began to produce a series of lurid – and entirely fabricated – “intelligence” reports regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

The MEK has no support among reform-minded Iranians; in fact, the group is immensely useful to the incumbent regime as a way of discrediting its opposition, which in official propaganda is depicted as allies of the bizarre Islamo-Leninist cult. The current Iranian government is awful; if it were to seize power, the MEK -- which is the Persian equivalent of the Khmer Rouge -- would be dramatically worse. 

As the redoubtable Glenn Greenwald has observed, the retired U.S. officials who have become paid propagandists for the MEK are providing material support for an international terrorist organization. Staten Island resident Javed Iqbal, who operated a cable TV company, was recently convicted of that charge and sentenced to 69 months in federal prison for the supposed offense of carrying programs produced by a television network owned by Hezbollah. And of course, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were summarily executed without trial for allegedly rendering the same service to al-Qaeda. 

Clark, Hayden, and the MEK's other American courtesans are members of the American nomenklatura, which means that they are on the "who" side of Lenin's "who does what to whom" formula. The murder of Anwar al-Awlaki was intended as an object lesson to those of us on the other side of that dichotomy, demonstrating what can and will be done to anyone who is identified by the Regime as what the Soviets used to call a "socially dangerous person." 

An Update, and an Urgent Appeal 

"For the second time this year, Americans can celebrate the elimination of another enemy of the state," proclaims columnist Mark Paredes in Utah's Deseret News. No, seriously -- he really wrote those words. See the blog at LewRockwell.com for my reaction to that Stalinoid screed.

During the past couple of months, I've been doing some editorial work and writing for Republic magazine (and some related properties); this explains why my output here at Pro Libertate has declined during that period. This is very much a full-time job -- but, in all candor, it pays next to nothing, which is pretty typical of activist-oriented publications. It is the first regular paying work I've had since getting thrown under the bus by TNA five years ago today, and I'm certainly grateful for it -- but it's not enough to support a family of eight. 

I recognize that there is nothing unique about our predicament, and that many of you are in similar straits. I would be deeply and abidingly grateful for any help you can provide. 

Thanks so much for your help in keeping Pro Libertate on-line! God bless. 

Dum spiro, pugno!

Imperial Dread

Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take one against our own. I must fairly say I dread our own power and our own ambition. I dread our being too much dreaded.... Sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.

Edmund Burke, Remarks on the Policy of the Allies, 1793

In the final decade of the 18^th Century, an alliance coalesced among conventional European powers to contain the insurgent revolutionary forces of Jacobin-ruled France. Edmund Burke, easily the most perceptive and persuasive critic of the French Revolution's abominations and atrocities, yielded to no man in his concerns about the ambitions of revolutionary rulers and their allies.

But Burke was consistent in his concerns about consolidated and unaccountable power, and he understood that nothing worthwhile would be gained by permitting the imperial British Government to acquire the power it accused the French of seeking.

Burke admonished countrymen unnerved by the prospect of France exporting its revolution abroad and building a continent-spanning Jacobin empire to regain their composure and try to see England as outsiders would:

“We are already in possession of almost all the commerce of the world.... If we should ... be absolutely able, without the least control, to hold the commerce of all other nations totally dependent on our good pleasure, we may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing, and hitherto unheard-of, power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it.”

Since other nations were not as serenely convinced of Britain's bottomless benevolence and endless generosity, they would eventually form a “combination” to prevent it from exercising unchecked political and economic hegemony, Burke pointed out.

The contrived furor over the Iranian “threat” -- which has recently been dialed down to a low drone, rather than the persistent shrieking we heard a few months ago – prompts me to adapt Burke's insights to our own condition, living as we do in the world's largest and most powerful empire.

We are constantly told that Iran is a world-menacing power led by the most recent edition of Hitler (re) Incarnate. Yet unless I missed something, Iran's military doesn't occupy a meter of foreign ground, even though Tehran does have allies and surrogates in Lebanon and Iraq, and warm relations with Venezuela's clown-tyrant Hugo Chavez. The Iranian regime has also been plausibly implicated in an act of anti-Jewish terrorism in Argentina some years ago.

Abhorrent as its ruling elite may be, Iran is not an aggressive power. Though some of its rulers may occasionally emit gusts of irrational nostalgia for the glories of Xerxes' empire, it requires an even greater investment in lunacy to believe that Iran poses a global threat.

Virtual imperialism: Understandably reluctant to visit "liberated" Baghdad, Emperor Bush holds a joint videoconference with Iraqi puppet Nouri al-Maliki to sign a "Cooperation and Friendship" accord.

Meanwhile, Washington – which maintains a globe-straddling empire of military garrisons -- is putting the finishing touches on an “agreement” with its puppet regime in Baghdad, a Soviet-style pact bearing the Soviet-esque title “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America.”

(Does anybody else suspect that every totalitarian bureaucracy – whether in Moscow, Beijing, or Washington – includes a group of scribes who are paid by the syllable to devise grandiose titles for imperial pronouncements?)

Owing to the fact that the Empire's Mesopotamian province is not yet secure enough for the Emperor to pay a personal visit for an official ceremony, the agreement was jointly signed by the Swaggering Fool and his Iraqi satrap, Nouri al-Maliki, via “secure video conference.”

The key quid-pro-quo in the arrangement is this: US forces will remain in Iraq in some configuration to prop up the Shi'ite-dominated regime (even as they build little Sunni fiefdoms ruled by al-Qaeda-connected warlords). For their part, Washington's Iraqi puppets will permit politically connected corporate interests rape and plunder Iraq. That's part of the long-anticipated payoff envisioned during the heady first months of Bush the Dumber's rule, when Viceroy Cheney's secretive energy task force pored over maps of Iraqi oil fields with predatory intent.

That energy task force, in turn, was the outgrowth of a report published in December 2000 by a Joint Task Force on Petroleum organized by the Council on Foreign Relations and the James A. Baker III Institute at Rice University. The final report of that task force (published with the “generous support” of Khalid al-Turki of Saudi Arabia, fretted that Iraq has “become a key `swing' producer [of petroleum], posing a difficult situation for the US government.... Saddam is a `destabilizing influence ... to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East.”

Therefore, concluded the CFR report, the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and political/diplomatic assessments.

According to investigative reporter Greg Palast, who cites individuals with direct knowledge of the events, the report was handed directly to Cheney. He then convened an energy task force whose membership was largely identical to that of the CFR/Baker Institute task force. Then along came 9-11, and after making a feint in the direction of avenging the attack, the Bush Regime pivoted in the direction of Iraq.

And now, with 14 permanent US military installations sprouting up in Iraq, the “Declaration” signed by Bush and al-Maliki – essentially, an illegal military treaty completed without the constitutionally mandated Senate ratification -- offers yet another avenue to expand the war to Iran.

As Justin Raimondo points out, the “Declaration” contains a provision authorizing US military to conduct operations in support of “the Republic of Iraq in its efforts to combat all terrorist groups, at the forefront of which is al-Qaeda, Saddamists, and all other outlaw groups regardless of affiliation, and destroy their logistical networks and their sources of finance, and defeat and uproot them from Iraq.”

Raimondo observes:

“It's in this context that the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, enthusiastically supported by Hillary Clinton as well as the Bush administration, takes on special importance: having targeted the Iranian security force known as al-Quds, or the Revolutionary Guards, as an officially designated `terrorist' group, the American garrison is already authorized to take on Tehran. The road to war with Iran is paved, and we're ready to roll no matter who sits in the driver's seat.”

All that's missing is a suitable pretext, and if Iran doesn't provide one the Bush Regime has proven itself capable of conjuring one ex nihilo.

But, as Burke would expect, Washington's blatant grab for political control over energy sources in the Near East has inspired other powers to push back. Beijing's eagerness to stiff-arm US naval vessels seeking to dock in Hong Kong offers one illustration. Moscow's moves to upgrade its strategic nuclear forces presents another.

But the most acute threat to the American Imperium, as Hugo Chavez gleefully observed at the recent OPEC summit, is the ever-accelerating demise of the dollar. "Soon they won’t be talking any more about dollars because the dollar is on a free fall and the empire of the dollar is coming down,” gloated the Venezuelan ruler, a comment we should file under “Things That Are True Despite Being Said By Loathsome People.”

Burke wouldn't be surprised to learn that Washington's ambitions have engendered combinations devoted to bringing about its ruin. But he would likely be amazed at the audacity of our rulers in trying to build an Empire on money borrowed from those (such as Beijing's ruling caste) who stand to gain the most from its eventual demise.

And like our Founders – whose courage and wisdom he appreciated, and with whose grievances he sympathized – Burke would be astonished and disgusted by complacent Americans who cannot understand how empire-building always ends in misery and servitude.

Coming Soon To A Province Of Washington's Empire --

Dum spiro, pugno!

"Diplomacy" As The Art Of Cultivating Conflict

The purpose of diplomacy is to protect our independence and security through means other than war.

Those occupying the upper echelons of the Bush Regime define diplomacy as the practice of removing impediments to war. Indeed, for Dick Cheney and his cohorts, manufacturing pretexts for war is the highest form of diplomacy.

But then again, as Stephen Kinzer documents extensively in his fascinating (and infuriating) book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, that type of perverse “diplomacy” has long been the Power Elite's stock-in-trade.

Of John Foster Dulles, scion of a family deeply rooted in the Anglo-American Elite, one biographer noted that “it was not too difficult ... for threats and interests to merge in [his] mind,” leading him to the conclusion “that the United States might actually have an interest in being threatened, if through that process Americans could be goaded into doing what was necessary to preserve their way of life.” Thus Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, arranged the 1953 Iranian coup that deposed Mohammad Mossadegh, thereby creating the conditions for several decades of stimulating conflict in the Persian Gulf that may well culminate in an apocalyptic war.

I hasten to clarify that the “way of life” referred to above is one in which the bulk of the American population dutifully submits to the benevolent supervision of the likes of Dulles – the anointed Guardians of the Bipartisan Consensus. Keeping the population perpetually alarmed over some foreign threat is a vital part of maintaining that sinister stability; absent such a perpetual crisis, at least some of the people would start agitating for a smaller, less expensive, and less invasive government.

So threat cultivation is necessary in order to ensure a rich harvest of government power. This is hardly a secret; it's been the common practice of rulers for as long as they have afflicted humanity. But the Bush Regime has distinguished itself somewhat by its vulgar, transparent lust for war, and its dogmatic refusal to explore alternatives. It's not their wealth that's being wasted, or their own flesh and blood being rent, by the needless wars they pursue.

To get some sense of just how alienated the Regime is from reality as the rest of us experience it, consider this: The administration's eagerness to go to war with Iran has alarmed Fareed Zakaria.

A little more than a decade ago, Mr. Zakaria – at the time managing editor of the Council on Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs – kicked off his career as foreign affairs columnist for Newsweek with an essay entitled “Thank Goodness for a Villain.” The piece contained this breathtaking specimen of Establishment “wisdom”:

“If Saddam Hussein did not exist, we would have to invent him. He is the linchpin of American policy in the Mideast…. If not for Saddam, would the Saudi royal family, terrified of being seen as an American protectorate (which in a sense it s), allow American troops on their soil? Would Kuwait house more than 30,000 pieces of American combat hardware, kept in readiness should the need arise? Would the king of Jordan, the political weather vane of the region, allow the Marines to conduct exercises within his borders?… The end of Saddam Hussein would be the end of the anti-Saddam coalition. Nothing destroys an alliance like the disappearance of the enemy.”

Of course, the Power Elite Zakaria spoke for did indeed create Saddam, for precisely the purposes Zakaria describes. As I've said before, rational people understand that sometimes it is necessary to create alliances to confront enemies; the depraved, power-intoxicated people Zakaria communes with prefer to create enemies in order to justify entangling alliances.

However, at some point Zakaria seems to have retrieved his conscience, or at least recovered his sense of the absurd. With the administration and its supposed Democratic antagonists lusting for war with Iran, and the Regime's media minions depicting Iran as a world-historic menace, Zakaria has taken up the unfamiliar role of dissident.

“Iran has an economy the size of Finland and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion,” he wrote in a recent Newsweek contribution. “It has not invaded a country since the late 18^th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?”

“We're on a path to irreversible confrontation with a country we know almost nothing about. The United States government has had no diplomats in Iran for almost 30 years. American officials have barely met with any senior Iranian politicians or officials. We have no contact with the country's vibrant civil society. Iran is a black hole to us – just as Iraq had become in 2003.”

Zakaria cites the account of James Dobbins, who served as Bush's representative to the international donor's conference in Bonn following the eviction of the Taliban. Dobbins recalls that the Iranians “were very professional, straightforward, reliable and helpful.” After dipping their toes in the mysterious waters of Washington-centered diplomacy, the Iranians wanted to take the full plunge, offering additional cooperation in Afghanistan and wide-ranging talks with the US on a variety of issues.

“Dobbins took the proposal to a principals meeting in Washington only to have it met with dead silence,” recounts Zakaria. “The then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says, `looked down and rustled his papers.' No reply was every sent back to the Iranians. Why bother? They're mad.”

The current issue of Esquire offers a similar account of Bu'ushist "diplomacy" toward Iran.

In April 2003, State Department official Hillary Mann received a detailed four-page fax from the Iranian government. The document, which was sent through the Swiss embassy in Tehran (through which Iran and the US have maintained back-channel contacts) contained “a detailed proposal for peace in the Middle East, approved at the highest levels in Tehran.”

The Iranians offered to recognize Israel, cut off all support for the terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, banish or imprison all international terrorists residing in Iran, and to end its nuclear program. The message urged Washington to re-open formal diplomatic channels that have been closed for decades.

The Bush administration refused even to acknowledge the overture from Tehran. Former National Security Council official Flint Leverett (who resigned in digust following the needless invasion of Iraq) protested that the rejection would mean “an Iran that has nuclear weapons and no dialogue with the United States.”

Odd as this result might seem to those familiar with conventional diplomacy, it makes perfect sense once it's understood, once again, that the purpose of Bush/Cheney-style diplomacy is to facilitate, rather than mitigate, conflict.

As the estimable Charley Reese observes with characteristic concision, “The reason our so-called diplomacy hasn't worked [as most people would understand the term `worked'] is because the Bush administration position is this: Iran, unless you stop what you are legally entitled to do (enrich uranium for nuclear fuel), we won't talk to you about not doing what you are legally entitled to do. You can't have talks if your position is that the other side must give in to your demands as a precondition.”

But once again, talking with the Iranians is exactly what the Bush Regime wants to avoid. Direct talks with the Iranians, after all, might lead to a solution other than the war Washington craves -- and what responsible leader would run such a risk?

Flesh For War Fantasies

One significant problem with being an Empire: Everything is supposedly "our" business.

To my considerable shame, I just realized that it had been a long time since I had thought of Angola. In fact, it occurs to me that I really don't have a feeling toward that country one way or another.

How utterly scandalous this is. I obviously suffer from a severely parochial worldview, if not outright bigotry. All decent people are required to take an interest in Angolan affairs, and to work on behalf of that nation's survival.

Whoops – I made a mistake. It was Austria I had forgotten, not Angola – an easy mistake, I suppose, given that the names of those countries are similar, if little else about them is. Austria is the nation that is supposed to hold captive all of my waking thoughts, and dominate the dreams that come once my eyes surrender to weariness at day's end.

Oh. Sorry. My bad.

It turns out that the small foreign country I'm morally obliged to care about is Guatemala, where I lived for a little more than a year in the 1980s --

Now, this has become simply obnoxious. Sierra Leone, that tragic land, scene of some of the most horrific atrocities of recent memory, is the country that should always be uppermost in my thoughts, lest I be accused of indifference to genocide.

Admittedly, it's difficult to keep track of which distant, unfamiliar country should by the focus of my concerns – to such an extent that I would be willing to surrender the blood of my children in its defense.

Perhaps the issue could be clarified if the regime running that country could stage a PR campaign in which its government shamelessly pimps several young female military veterans by having them pose in borderline pornographic photo spreads for Maxim magazine.

We have a winner! The nation in question is, of course, Israel.

Like much of the evil done in this world, the idea of a Maxim photo feature on Israeli women (starring former Miss Israel Gal Gadot) originated in New York, more specifically at the Israeli consulate, “where research showed that Israel meant little to young American men” in the all-important 18-35 demographic, reports the AP.

Former Miss Israel Gal Gadot, featured in the Israeli regime's quasi-porn propaganda campaign, seen here in suitable attire.

“Males that age have no feeling toward Israel one way or another, and we view that as a problem, so we came up with an idea that would be appealing to them,” explains an Israeli government media adviser named David Dorfman. Thus Maxim was contacted by the Israeli consulate and asked to take part in “reshaping Israel's public image.”

What neither the Dorfster nor any of his allies in this effort would explain is this: Why is it obligatory for American males of any age -- let alone those in an age bracket targeted for military recruitment -- to have feelings of any sort about a country to which they have no organic connection or moral responsibility?

Israel can expect the allegiance of its citizens, and for understandable reasons Jews in every nation take an interest in its survival. But I cannot think of a compelling reason why the typical American should take a greater interest in Israel than he does in Angola, Austria, Guatemala, or Sierra Leone.

Ecclesio-Leninists of John Hagee's ilk would insist that Christians have a God-prescribed duty to support the Israeli government, to the point of mass bloodshed, if necessary. Since Hagee considers it just and meet to kill on Israel's behalf, I wonder if he would consider it appropriate to peddle quasi-porn, and consume the same, in that cause. (I'm suddenly afflicted with a mental image of Hagee poring over the pages of the July installment of Maxim, his wattles quivering and his eyes distended as he succumbs to a combination of sanctimony and salacity).

Hagee is precisely the kind of "friend to Israel" whose preferred policies would kill a lot of Israelis and other innocent people. He really should pause and ask himself if a government that would exploit prurient interests in this fashion (not to mention sponsoring "Gay Pride" parades) is really the Zion longed for by prophets and saints of ages past. From where I sit, that government appears no better or worse than any of a dozen others I could name, our own most definitely included.

While the Israeli consulate in New York prepares to fire the Maxim gun in its propaganda arsenal, the War Party is pursuing a somewhat subtler approach in preparing the public for a US/Israeli attack on Iran. Yesterday (June 20) the House of Representatives passed a resolution demanding that the UN Security Council “charge Iranian President Maumoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide,” and that the Council consider unspecified “measures” to “prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons....”

The resolution regurgitates the claim, which has been canonized through repetition although patently and demonstrably false, that Ahmadinejad “called for Israel to be `wiped off the map'.” While the Iranian president is a certifiable maniac guilty of many crimes against decency, that phrase was not uttered by him: He was, in fact, calling for what is now “regime change” by calling for an end to the Israeli government, not the annihilation of the Israeli people. If calling for “regime change” is now to be considered an incitement to genocide, the entire staff of the American Enterprise Institute should be seized and extradited to stand trial before the UN International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Only two congressmen, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), voted against the resolution. Kucinich “attempted to have read into the record alternate translations of Ahmadinejad's remarks that suggest the Iranian leader was calling Israel to come to an end through democratic means, and not through violence,” reported the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

While describing himself as “unequivocal in my support for the security and survival of Israel” and possessed of “serious concerns with the remarks made by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” Kucinich denounced the resolution, correctly describing it as an attempt to “lay the groundwork for an offensive, unprovoked war” -- one in which Israelis, as well as Americans and Iranians, would be killed, and that will probably ignite a broader conflict lasting for years or even decades.

And that is an obscenity far greater than anything available in the pages of Maxim.

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