Dan Fishback: Unthinkable, and inevitable

I'm writing this on Friday. The away message on my computer screen reads, "Oh My God." If you click on it, a new window will appear on your screen -- a New York Times article describing "The National Security Strategy of the United States," a document detailing our government's official new foreign policy.

In this document, the U.S. declares, in no uncertain terms, that it seeks unrivaled world domination.

"The president," according to the document, "has no intention of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago."

What does one say to that? What on earth could one say? You open the paper to find that your country is not only planning to dominate the world, but is willing to say it out loud, justifying it all in the name of spreading democracy and freedom. This coming from a president who has never won a legitimate presidential election. This coming from a vice president who spent the late 1990s selling oil equipment to Iraq.

"What's that?!" you ask. "What did you just say about Dick Cheney's economic relations with Saddam Hussein?"

Oh you didn't hear about that? You mean it wasn't played up in the mainstream press? Goodness me. Well let's get filled in, shall we?

Two years ago, on Nov. 13, 2000, in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, award-winning investigative journalist Martin Lee reported, "During former defense secretary Richard Cheney's five-year tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, Inc., his oil services firm raked in big bucks from dubious commercial dealings with Iraq.... Conducted discreetly through several Halliburton subsidiaries in Europe, these greasy transactions helped Saddam Hussein retain his grip on power while lining the pockets of Cheney and company."

Cheney's Halliburton dealings helped Iraq rebuild the oil production infrastructure that George Bush, Sr., destroyed in 1991. Black-market revenues from oil-production quite possibly enabled the very rearmament that Cheney's administration is now so intent on re-destroying.

If these dealings weren't bad enough, Lee continues, "human rights activists have also criticized Cheney's company for its questionable role in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Croatia, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, Indonesia and other volatile trouble spots." And aside from these countries with their measly little "human rights" problems, Halliburton also dealt with Iran (that's Iran) and Libya (as in Libya), both official "terrorist states."

The Financial Times ran a similar expose on Cheney's dealings with Iraq on Nov. 3, 2000. The Washington Post expounded on them on June 23, 2001.

Dick Cheney -- a man who has economically supported violence and misery all over the world -- is one of a small group of individuals who now assert their freedom to secure American global dominance for purposes of "liberty?" "Democracy?"

Regardless of the contradictory notion that one state can force all the nations of the world to abide by its own chosen political and economic philosophies, our country itself has never proven that even we can abide by American ideals.

We, as a country, are in no ethical position to defy the United Nations and attack states we believe support terrorism when, right up until the Gulf War, we were selling dangerous biological materials to Saddam Hussein -- and kept doing so even after he used them as weapons against Iraqi Kurds.

We are in no position to advocate "regime change" in nations we see as dangerous when we haven't dedicated sufficient resources to maintaining a manageable peace in Afghanistan.

And, perhaps most importantly, we are in no position to force countries to adopt democratic governments when the legitimacy of our own administration's regime is entirely disputable.

These are not trustworthy people. And not just because they officially reject the ideal of an egalitarian global populace dedicated to organized international peace and tranquility -- but because, by gussying up their alternative in the rhetoric of American civic values, they desecrate something sacred and eminently worthwhile. The task of promoting global freedom and liberation -- particularly when military force may be necessary to protect countless lives -- becomes nearly impossible when our leaders equate those values with their own warped, imperialistic wet dreams.

If a war should actually become necessary to secure someone's freedom, I want it to be waged by people who have been fighting for freedom all along -- not a group who have put it in jeopardy time and time again.

My away-message says, "Oh My God." I am away now. I'm trying to comprehend what it means to be an American in a world where America means militarism and greed. Leave a message.

P>Dan Fishback is a senior American Identities major from Olney, Md.

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