[iwar] [fc:Yes,.We.Need.a.'Regime.Change'.in.This.Rogue.State...]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-08-11 06:13:48

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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 06:13:48 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Yes,.We.Need.a.'Regime.Change'.in.This.Rogue.State...]
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Yes, We Need a 'Regime Change' in This Rogue State...
Adrian Hamilton
Independent UK

Its government has no majority. It refuses arms monitoring. Its opponents
are locked up without trial.

Friday, 9 August, 2002

The idea that a pre-emptive strike could save the world a heap of trouble
isn't entirely idle. Think, if Genghis Khan could have been taken out when
he was still the leader of just a band and not the whole Mongol race, Europe
and Asia would have been saved several million dead and the destruction of
much of its civilisation. Remove Napoleon from the scene on his return from
his ill-fated Egyptian foray and Europe would have been a different place.

The last century doesn't provide such good examples, of course. To have
"changed regime" in Berlin in the early Thirties would have meant
overturning a democratically elected leader in Hitler. As for the efforts by
the allies to stop the course of the Russian revolution with troops after
1918, the results were disastrous despite having well-armed local allies.

Nonetheless George Bush has done something in the last week to set out the
parameters to pre-emptive action. "We owe it," he put it in Maine last
weekend, "to the future of civilisation not to allow the world's worst
leaders to develop and deploy and therefore blackmail free countries with
the world's worst weapons." And he went on to define such enemies of the
people as regimes intent on building up weapons of mass destruction,
oblivious of international law and UN resolutions, governments who
imprisoned their opponents without trial and who could not claim democratic
legitimacy at home.

Significantly, nowhere in the series of speeches he made this week did Mr
Bush actually name these rogue regimes. But it is pretty clear reading the
descriptions whom he must have meant. The government which is spending by
far the most on weapons of mass destruction, and is now planning to raise
its budget by an increase greater than the total defence spending of Europe,
is, of course, based in Washington. Not only is it building an arsenal the
like of which the world has never seen, it has unilaterally withdrawn from
the treaties designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, and has
refused to accept any kind of international monitoring of its chemical or
nuclear weapons facilities.

It has a government in power without the legitimacy of a democratic
majority, in the hands of a coterie from a single part of the country and
clearly aiming at a dynasty of rule. Its rhetoric is one of violent
aggression against anyone seen as its enemies. It opponents are locked up
without trial or the right to habeas corpus.

Of course there are those who say the country's threats are greatly
exaggerated and the rhetoric of world mastery must not be confused with a
real intention of using its weaponry in defiance of international law. True,
it has a has a history of interfering with and invading its neighbours ?
Panama, Grenada, Haiti et al. But since the long and debilitating war in
Vietnam, it has kept largely to its own region.

Of course it has a peculiarly obnoxious regime, ready to poison its own
people with corrupt capitalism and deregulated pollution. But give it time,
and pressure from the outside world, and it will pay up its UN dues, rejoin
the nuclear proliferation pacts and the Kyoto treaty and start behaving as a
responsible member of the community again.

Against this, the hard men of the right would say that time is exactly what
the world does not have on its side. Washington has showed itself determined
to enforce its hegemony, come what may. It has shown itself ready to use
weapons of aerial bombardment that make no discrimination between combatants
and civilians, to show precious little remorse when it is guilty of
"mistakes".

It is no friend of democracy, having announced its refusal to deal with the
only two elected leaders of the Islamic world ? Khatami in Iran and Yasser
Arafat in Palestine, the latter the only Arab leader ever elected with
western observers checking the process. The country has armed and succoured
state terrorism and assassination by the Israelis. It has installed the
worst sort of warlord gangsters in Afghanistan and, according to
"intelligence", been party to upsetting (albeit briefly) the elected
president of Venezuela. The world cannot afford to await its next move.

The problem remains the practicalities. Whereas in Afghanistan the allies
could rely on a local opposition force on the ground, no such scenario can
be relied on in this case. The Spanish speaking minority in the south might
be induced to rise up. There could be assistance from Minutemen in the
mountains. But the democratic opposition is too defeated and divided to
provide much help. The answer could be an "inside-out" strategy using
special forces to take Washington and a few key nuclear bases. Provided the
rest of the country was left to get on with its business, there would
probably be little internal opposition to a seizure of the capital.

That leaves the substantial problem of an "exit strategy". There is no point
in a repeat of 1812. But the experience of America in Japan after the Second
World War could provide a model. A period of occupation of five to 10 years
could provide an opportunity to inculcate ideas of true democracy, with a
fair electoral system based on absolute majority, abolition of the death
penalty, introduction of unions into hi-tech industries and a break-up of
the Zaibatsu, the overweening corporations such as Microsoft, Exxon and
General Electric.

Given time, this rogue superstate might then be able to take its place once
again among the family of peace-loving nations.

-------

E-mail Adrian Hamilton at : <a href="mailto:a.hamilton@independent.co.uk?Subject=Re:%20(ai)%20Yes,%20We%20Need%20a%20'Regime%20Change'%20in%20This%20Rogue%20State...%2526In-Reply-To=%2526lt;B97B5E28.3AF30%25rforno@infowarrior.org">a.hamilton@independent.co.uk</a>

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