"OPERATION
FREEDOM": WHO'S NEXT?
by Srdja Trifkovic
The "evolving" concept of international legality was invented by the
multilateralist Left to justify Bill Clinton's aggression against Serbia
in March 1999. At that time "humanitarian intervention" was eagerly
embraced by those same Euro-Socialists—Schroeder, Solana, Prodi, et
al.—who were in the forefront of opposition to President Bush's war
in Iraq. With the bombing of Belgrade they paved the way for the erosion
of sovereign statehood, the pillar of the Law Between Nations since
1648. The one-worlders duly snatched Kosovo for the benefit of KLA pimps
and dope-pushers and claimed a great and glorious victory, but in the
aftermath of the war in Iraq the fruits of that victory belong to a
very different group: to the neoconservative unilateralists in the United
States. Their own version of "humanitarian intervention" is the doctrine
of pre-emption, inaugurated in September 2002 and tested this spring.
Its advocates will call the initial result an unqualified success, and
the precedent is likely to be applied to new operations containing "freedom"
in their name.
There
are dozens of countries as worthy of liberation from brutal oppression
all over the globe. In the Middle East Saudi Arabia should top the list,
the ugliest Islamo-Fascist freak show the world has ever seen. To the
north of the region recycled Communist apparatchiks rule most former
Soviet Central Asian republics with an iron hand. Further east, in addition
to North Korea, the likes of Pakistan, Burma, Vietnam, and of course
communist China come to mind. In Africa the candidates are a penny a
dozen, from the unspeakable Robert Mugabe in the south to the mass killers
and enslavers of Christians in Sudan and Mauritania. In Europe the prime
candidate is Serbia, in which more egregious human rights abuses have
been taking place in the aftermath of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic's
killing on March 12 than under Milosevic. None of the above will be
hit, however, either because they are irrelevant (Africa), or because
they are too powerful (China), or because their governments are our
obedient servants (Pakistan, Serbia, etc). The candidates for liberation
have to satisfy several important conditions: they should be
1.
Relevant to the prevailing Washingtonian ideological mindset;
2.
Militarily easy to conquer;
3.
Easily Hitlerized; and
4.
Unlikely to obtain significant foreign political support.
"Operation Cuban Freedom" is possible even without being probable. Ideologically
relevant to the Bush Administration, weak, evil, and isolated? A candidate
with impeccable prima facie credentials on all four counts can be seen
from Key West on a clear day. Economically Cuba is a basket case, and
its military has not been able to replace its ageing Soviet hardware
for a generation. The popular base of the regime is shaky, and shrinking
with the ageing leader's inability to deliver anything beyond seven-hour
speeches.
The
recent roundup and jailing of dozens of government opponents, and the
summary shooting of three would-be hijackers of a ferry to Florida,
may have been a sign that the regime is losing its sureness of touch.
Any regime that sentences opposition journalists to 20-plus years in
jail after a one-day trial is in serious trouble. It is also easily
demonized, and in Castro's case demonization would be justifiable. Behind
the 1960s radical chic, the beard, the cigar, there's a nasty and brutal
dinosaur. The Cuban American National Foundation wants him indicted
for crimes against humanity, and its chairman Jorge Mas Santos openly
talks of the need for a swift "regime change" in Havana. Exiles argue
that the army would not fight, that the people would be delighted to
be liberated, and that for Castro's sake many a Marx's orphan will protest
all over the Western world but no other country would lift a finger.
There would be demonstrations outside American embassies in Mexico City,
Caracas, or Bogota, they say, but that does not matter.
The
end-of-regime party on the streets of Havana would be much more fun
than the one in Baghdad, and there would be far less looting because
there's precious little to loot anyway. The problem is that the operation
would be too risky to contemplate in a pre-election year. Maybe no more
than ten percent of Cubans would resist, but those who do would do so
with gusto. The fallout in Latin America could be seriously unpleasant,
with leftist populists Chavez back in the saddle in Venezuela and Lula
firmly in power in Brazil. What constitutes a suitable casus belli?
We have not heard of Cuban WMDs so far, and its once-rampant connections
with terrorists such as Carlos seem to have abated. Castro will be dead
within a decade anyway, perhaps sooner, and the ensuing regime change
will probably produce the same final outcome without any messy pitfalls.
"Operation Syrian Freedom" brings us to a more likely candidate. On
April 13 President Bush accused Syria of having weapons of mass destruction
and of providing refuge to escaping Iraqi leaders: "We believe there
are chemical weapons in Syria," the President said. "Each situation
will require a different response and, of course ... first things first.
We're in Iraq now, and the second thing about Syria is that we expect
cooperation." These words should give President Bashar al-Assad some
food for thought. Mr. Bush pointedly refused to say whether the United
States might threaten war against Syria if it did not cooperate with
U.S. demands. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also did not discount
possibility of armed action. On the same day The Washington Times quoted
anonymous U.S. government officials as saying that two Iraqi biological
weapons scientists were among those making it to Damascus. In addition
watch out for fresh accusations that Syria provides support and refuge
for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other radical Islamic groups terrorist groups
operating in Israel and Lebanon. "There's got to be a change in Syria,"
Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz declared weeks ago, and he knows things
that Mr. Bush may not even suspect yet. James Woolsey, the former CIA
director, last week described Syria as a "fascist" regime that has to
be replaced. And finally, Richard Perle, out of his old post but not
out of the Administration's favor, declared last Friday that the United
States would be compelled to act if it discovered that Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction have been concealed in Syria. The risks of intervening
in Syria could be higher than in Iraq, but the signs seem clear: it
may well be next, regardless of what its leaders do or say. It is certainly
far more likely to be "liberated" than other often mentioned candidates,
such as Iran and North Korea. Iran is too big, too populous, and full
of people who are fanatically willing to die as martyrs. It would fight,
possibly quite well, and even if temporarily defeated it cannot be held
under occupation. Any new, "democratic" regime in Teheran would be no
more stable than that of the late Shah, with the same or similar final
outcome. North Korea has nuclear bombs, its also has literally tons
of chemical and biological weapons, and it could obliterate the city
of Seoul even with its conventional artillery. Its leader is unpredictable
and possibly reckless. In extremis he would unleash all that he has
and the results would be ghastly, for millions of South Koreans and
tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed south of the 38th parallel.
The fact that we are calmly contemplating the possibility of the United
States waging wars against half-dozen countries around the world that
are not directly threatening American security indicates the extent
to which the world—and America itself—have changed over the past decade.
International relations are now dominated by "doctrines" that have replaced
the Law of Nations in the name of ideological constructs. Both the Doctrine
of Pre-emption today and the Clinton Doctrine four years ago were based
on the old Brezhnev doctrine, which was used as a pretext for the Soviet
occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The communist Brezhnev Doctrine,
the multilateralist-globalist Clinton Doctrine and the unilateralist-neoconservative
Preemption Doctrine all negate the sovereign nation-state and provide
a "modern," self-validating, Gnostic replacement for the traditional
model of politics between nations. In doing so they undermine the concept
of nationhood itself.
