[NYTr] On the Eve of Destruction - Scott Ritter on Bush

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TruthDig - Oct 22, 2007
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071022_on_the_eve_of_destruction/

On the Eve of Destruction

By Scott Ritter

Don’t worry, the White House is telling us.  The world’s most powerful
leader was simply making a rhetorical point.  At a White House press
conference last week, just in case you haven’t heard, President Bush
informed the American people that he had told world leaders “if you’re
interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be
interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to
make a nuclear weapon.” World War III.  That is certainly some
rhetorical point, especially coming from the man singularly most
capable of making such an event reality.

Pundits have raised their eyebrows and comics are busy writing jokes,
but the president’s reference to Armageddon, no matter how cavalierly
uttered and subsequently brushed away, suggests an alarming context.
Some might note that the comment was simply an offhand response to a
reporter’s question, the kind of free-thinking scenario that baffles
Bush so.  In a way, this makes what the president said even more
disturbing, since we now have an insight into the vision, and related
terminology, which hovers just below the horizon in the brain of George
W. Bush.

When I was a weapons inspector with the United Nations, there was a
jostling that took place at the end of each day, when decisions needed
to be made and authorization documents needed to be signed.  In an
environment of competing agendas, each of us who championed a position
sought to be the “last man in,” namely the person who got to imprint
the executive chairman (our decision maker) with the final point of
view for the day.  Failure to do so could find an inspection or point
of investigation sidetracked for days or weeks after the executive
chairman became distracted by a competing vision.  I understand the
concept of “imprinting,” and have seen it in action.  What is clear
from the president’s remarks is that, far from an innocent rhetorical
fumble, his words, and the context in which he employed them, are a
clear indication of the imprinting which is taking place behind the
scenes at the White House.  If the president mentions World War III in
the context of Iran’s nuclear program, one can be certain that this is
the very sort of discussion that is taking place in the Oval Office.

A critical question, therefore, is who was the last person to “imprint”
the president prior to his public allusion to World War III?  During
his press conference, Bush noted that he awaited the opportunity to
confer with his defense secretary, Robert Gates, and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice following their recent meeting with Russian President
Vladimir Putin.  So clearly the president hadn’t been imprinted
recently by either of the principle players in the formulation of
defense and foreign policy.  The suspects, then, are quickly whittled
down to three: National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Vice President
Dick Cheney, and God.

Hadley is a long-established neoconservative thinker who has for the
most part operated “in the shadows” when it comes to the formulation of
Iran policy in the Bush administration.  In 2001, following the 9/11
terrorist attacks on the United States, Hadley (then the deputy
national security adviser) instituted what has been referred to as the
“Hadley Rules,” a corollary of which is that no move will be made which
alters the ideological positioning of Iran as a mortal enemy of the
United States.  These “rules” shut down every effort undertaken by Iran
to seek a moderation of relations between it and the United States, and
prohibited American policymakers from responding favorably to Iranian
offers to assist with the fight against al-Qaida; they also blocked the
grand offer of May 2003 in which Iran outlined a dramatic diplomatic
initiative, including a normalization of relations with Israel.  The
Hadley Rules are at play today, in an even more nefarious manner, with
the National Security Council becoming involved in the muzzling of
former Bush administration officials who are speaking out on the issue
of Iran.  Hadley is blocking Flynt Leverett, formerly of the National
Security Council, from publishing an Op-Ed piece critical of the Bush
administration on the grounds that any insight into the machinations of
policymaking (or lack thereof) somehow strengthens Iran’s hand.
Leverett’s article would simply underscore the fact that the Bush
administration has spurned every opportunity to improve relations with
Iran while deliberately exaggerating the threat to U.S. interests posed
by the Iranian theocracy.

The silencing of informed critics is in keeping with Hadley’s
deliberate policy obfuscation.  There is still no official policy in
place within the administration concerning Iran.  While a more
sober-minded national security bureaucracy works to marginalize the
hawkish posturing of the neocons, the administration has decided that
the best policy is in fact no policy, which is a policy decision in its
own right.  Hadley has forgone the normal procedures of governance, in
which decisions impacting the nation are written down, using official
channels, and made subject to review and oversight by those legally and
constitutionally mandated and obligated to do so.  A policy of no
policy results in secret policy, which means, according to Hadley
himself, the Bush administration simply does whatever it wants to,
regardless.  In the case of Iran, this means pushing for regime change
in Tehran at any cost, even if it means World War III.

But Hadley is simply a facilitator, bureaucratic “grease” to ease
policy formulated elsewhere down the gullet of a national security
infrastructure increasingly kept in the dark about the true intent of
the Bush administration when it comes to Iran.  With the Department of
State and the Pentagon now considered unfriendly ground by the
remaining hard-core neoconservative thinkers still in power, policy
formulation is more and more concentrated in the person of Vice
President Cheney and the constitutionally nebulous “Office of the Vice
President.”

Cheney and his cohorts have constructed a never-never land of oversight
deniability, claiming immunity from both executive and legislative
checks and balances.  With an unchallenged ability to classify anything
and everything as secret, and then claim that there is no authority
inherent in government to oversee that which has been thus classified,
the Office of the Vice President has transformed itself into a free
republic’s worst nightmare, assuming Caesar-like dictatorial authority
over almost every aspect of American national security policy at home
and abroad.  From torture to illegal wiretapping, to arms control (or
lack of it) to Iran, Dick Cheney is the undisputed center of policy
power in America today.  While there are some who will claim that in
this time of post-9/11 crisis such a process of bureaucratic
streamlining is essential for the common good, the reality is far
different.

It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this has never
been truer than in the case of Cheney.  What Cheney is doing behind his
shield of secrecy can be simply defined: planning and implementing a
preemptive war of aggression.  During the Nuremberg tribunal in the
aftermath of World War II, the chief American prosecutor, Supreme Court
Justice Robert H. Jackson, stated, “To initiate a war of aggression,
therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme
international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it
contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Today, we
have a vice president who articulates publicly about global conflict,
and who speaks in not-so-veiled language about a looming Armageddon.
If there is such a future for America and the world, let one thing be
certain; World War III, as postulated by Dick Cheney, would be an
elective war, and not a conflict of tragic necessity.  This makes the
crime even greater. 

Sadly, Judge Jackson’s words are but an empty shell.  The global
community lacks a legally binding definition of what constitutes a war
of aggression, or even an act of aggression.  But that isn’t the
point.  America should never find itself in a position where it is
being judged by the global community regarding the legality of its
actions.  Judge Jackson established a precedent of jurisprudence
concerning aggression based upon American principles and values,
something the international community endorsed.  The fact that current
American indifference to the rule of law prevents the international
community from certifying a definition of criminality when it comes to
aggression, whether it be parsed as “war” or simply an “act,” does not
change the fact that the Bush administration, in the person of Dick
Cheney, is actively engaged in the committing of the “supreme [war]
crime,” which makes Cheney the supreme war criminal.  If the world is
not empowered to judge him as such, then let the mantle of judgment
fall to the American people.  Through their elected representatives in
Congress, they should not only bring this reign of unrestrained abuse
of power to an end, but ensure that such abuse never again is attempted
by an American official by holding to account, to the full extent of
the law, those who have trampled on the Constitution of the United
States and the ideals and principles it enshrines. 

But what use is the rule of law, even if fairly and properly
implemented, if in the end he who is entrusted with executive power
takes his instructions from an even higher authority?  President Bush’s
relationship with “God” (or that which he refers to as God) is a matter
of public record.  The president himself has stated that “God speaks
through me” (he acknowledged this before a group of Amish in
Pennsylvania in the summer of 2004).  Exactly how God speaks through
him, and what precisely God says, is not a matter of speculation.
According to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush told
him and others that “God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck
them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.” As
such, at least in the president’s mind, God has ordered Bush to
transform himself into a modern incarnation of St. Michael, smiting all
that is evil before him. “We are in a conflict between good and evil.
And America will call evil by its name,” the president told West Point
cadets in a speech in 2002.

The matter of how and when an individual chooses to practice his faith,
or lack thereof, is a deeply personal matter, one which should be kept
from public discourse.  For a president to so openly impose his
personal religious beliefs, as Bush has done, on American policy
formulation and implementation represents a fundamental departure from
not only constitutional intent concerning the separation of church and
state but also constitutional mandate concerning the imposition of
checks and balances required by the American system of governance.  The
increasing embrace by this president of the notion of a unitary
executive takes on an even more sinister aspect when one realizes that
not only does the Bush administration seek to nullify the will of the
people through the shackling of the people’s representatives in
Congress, but that the president has forgone even the appearance of
constitutional constraint by evoking the word of his personal deity, as
expressed through his person, as the highest form of consultation on a
matter as serious as war.  As such, the president has made his faith,
and how he practices it, a subject not only of public curiosity but of
national survival.

That George W. Bush is a born-again Christian is not a national
secret.  Neither is the fact that his brand of Christianity,
evangelicalism, embraces the notion of the “end of days,” the coming of
the Apocalypse as foretold (so they say) in the Book of Revelations and
elsewhere in the Bible.  President Bush’s frequent reference to “the
evil one” suggests that he not only believes in the Antichrist but
actively proselytizes on the Antichrist’s physical presence on Earth at
this time.  If one takes in the writing and speeches of those in the
evangelical community today concerning the “rapture,” the numerous
references to the current situation in the Middle East, especially on
the events unfolding around Iran and its nuclear program, make it very
clear that, at least in the minds of these evangelicals, there is a
clear link between the “end of days” prophesy and U.S.-Iran policy.
That James Dobson, one of the most powerful and influential evangelical
voices in America today, would be invited to the White House with
like-minded clergy to discuss President Bush’s Iran policy is absurd
unless one makes the link between Bush’s personal faith, the extreme
religious beliefs of Dobson and the potential of Armageddon-like
conflict (World War III).  At this point, the absurd becomes
unthinkable, except it is all too real.

Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation’s greatest founders, made the
separation of church and state an underlying principle upon which the
United States was built.  This separation was all-inclusive, meaning
that not only should government stay out of religion, but likewise
religion should be excluded from government.  “I never submitted the
whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever
in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I
was capable of thinking for myself,” Jefferson wrote in a letter to
Francis Hopkinson in 1789.  “Such an addiction is the last degradation
of a free and moral agent.” If only President Bush would abide by such
wisdom, avoiding the addictive narcotic of religious fervor when
carrying out the people’s business.  Instead, he chooses as his drug
one which threatens to destroy us all in a conflagration derived not
from celestial intervention but individual ignorance and arrogance.
Again Jefferson, in a letter written in 1825:  “It is between fifty and
sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it
merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of
explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.” 

Nightmares, more aptly, unless something can be done to change the
direction Bush and Dobson are taking us.  The problem is that far too
many Americans openly espouse not only the faith of George W. Bush but
also the underlying philosophy which permits this faith to be
intertwined with the governance of the land.  “God bless America” has
become a rallying cry for this crowd, and those too ignorant and/or
afraid to speak out in opposition.  If this statement has merit, what
does it say for the 6.8 billion others in the world today who are not
Americans?  That God condemns them?  The American embrace of divine
destiny is not unique in history (one only has to recall that the belt
buckles of the German army during World War II read “God is with us").
But for a nation born of the age of reason to collectively fall victim
to the most base of fear-induced theology is a clear indication that
America currently fails to live up to its founding principles.  Rather
than turning to Dobson and his ilk for guidance in these troubled
times, Americans would be well served to reflect on President Abraham
Lincoln’s second inaugural address, delivered in the middle of a
horrific civil war which makes all of the conflict America finds itself
in today pale in comparison:

“Both [North and South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God,
and each invokes His aid against the other. ...  The prayers of both
could not be answered.  That of neither has been answered fully.  The
Almighty has His own purposes. ...  [T]hat He gives to both North and
South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense
came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?”

God is not on our side, or the side of any single nation or people.  To
believe such is the ultimate expression of national hubris.  To invoke
such, if one is a true believer, is to embrace sacrilege and heresy.
This, of course, is an individual right, granted as an extension of
religious freedom.  But it is not a collective right, nor is it a right
born of governance, especially in a land protected by the separation of
church and state.

The issue of Iran is a national problem which requires a collective
debate, discussion and dialogue inclusive of all the facts, and
stripped of all ideology and theocracy which would seek to deny
reasoned thought conducted within a framework of accepted laws and
ideals.  It is grossly irresponsible of an American president to invoke
the imagery of World War III without first sharing with the American
people the framework of thought that produced such a comparison.  Such
openness will not be forthcoming from this administration or
president.  Not in the form of Stephen Hadley’s policy of no policy,
designed with intent to avoid and subvert both bureaucratic and
legislative process and oversight, or Dick Cheney’s secret government
within a government, operating above and beyond the law and in a manner
which violates both legal and moral norms and values, and certainly not
in the president’s own private conversations with “God,” either
directly or through the medium of lunatic evangelicals who embrace the
termination of all we stand for, and especially the future of our next
generation, in a fiery holocaust born from the fraudulent writings of
centuries past.  The processes which compelled George W. Bush to speak
of a World War III are intentionally not transparent to the American
people.  The president has much to explain, and it would be incumbent
upon every venue of civic and public pressure to demand that such an
explanation be forthcoming in the near future.  The stakes regarding
Iran have always been high, but never more so than when a nation’s
leader invokes the end of days as a solution.

[A former Marine Corps intelligence officer, Scott Ritter was a chief
inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq from 1991
until 1998.  He is the author of several books; “Target Iran,” with a
new afterword by the author, was recently released in paperback by
Nation Books.]