[R-G] True lies and foreign wars

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080815.COSALUTIN15/TPStory/specialComment/columnists

RICK SALUTIN


August 15, 2008

Since the Second World War, the "good war," people seem to demand  
unambiguously just wars. So each new conflict provokes attempts to  
find parallels to Hitler and the Nazis. In the Persian Gulf war, Bush  
the elder called Saddam Hussein worse than Hitler. The Bosnian war had  
camps, emaciated prisoners and alleged genocide. Now, in Georgia,  
President Mikhail Saakashvili says Russian troops are "pushing people  
into concentration camps" with "World War II-type and Baltic-type  
ethnic cleansing." He told Katie Couric the Russians are "an insult to  
humanity." In other words, inhuman monsters like guess who. Russia  
replies that Georgia attacked first with a "blitzkrieg."

It doesn't really work since the Nazis were pretty much sui generis in  
their technologized savagery and racist justification. Ethnic  
cleansing, for instance, used to be called population transfer and was  
common. It is cruel and despicable, but it's not Auschwitz. Such acts  
are frequent in foreign policy, routinely cloaked by attempts to claim  
moral status that are obviously hypocritical. Take the Georgia  
conflict. Russia supports autonomy in the ethnic regions of South  
Ossetia and Abkhazia, but denies it for Chechnya. The U.S. backs  
separation for Kosovo, but rejects it in the Georgia cases. It praises  
democracy in Georgia, but in Iraq ignores a democratically elected  
government's call for it to leave. And Georgia's President is a  
democrat who suppresses protest in his streets. The claims about  
fighting the good fight are fig leaves, even Hitler mouthed them.  
South Ossetia's beleaguered 70,000 people? Barely table stakes for  
some real politics. What are the true stakes?

These tend to appear lower down in the stories and press releases.  
Georgia's leader, says Reagan-era official Paul Craig Roberts, is a  
"U.S. puppet." He studied in the U.S. on State Department fellowships,  
worked at a New York law firm, his government's election was  
subsidized by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy and George  
Soros's Open Society Institute. He put a George W. Bush Boulevard in  
his capital. He admits this "is not about Georgia ... It is about  
America, its values." The U.S.? It wants to ring Russia militarily and  
move Caspian oil through Georgia so as to bypass Iran and Russia.  
Russia wants to assert itself in the 'hood, like any great power. It  
uses autonomy movements in Georgia as "daggers" to threaten the U.S.  
oil strategy, says energy expert Michael Klare. It differs from the  
U.S. mainly in that the U.S. considers the Caucasus, the Mideast and  
the rest of the world all as its "sphere" of "national interest." None  
of this involves confronting a new Hitler, it might as well be the  
Boer War or the Indian mutiny. Welcome to the 19th century.

When it comes to foreign policy, Noam Chomsky says, the rule is, all  
governments lie. There may be exceptions, but not among big powers.  
Does this mean a nasty retreat to cynicism? It seems counterintuitive  
to never trust anyone. But governments aren't individuals, they're  
institutions. You aren't giving up on "people," you're adopting a  
stand toward public bodies. Start from honest skepticism, and you  
might get somewhere.

Even the Second World War wasn't so unambiguous. It was hardly "good,"  
in its barbaric course and deathly results. It had to be fought at  
that point, but it could have been avoided if the West had acted  
earlier - far earlier than Munich. Instead, Hitler was indulged, in  
the hope that he'd destroy the "contagious" example of Soviet communism.

When the Allied powers did go to war, it was mainly for traditional  
geopolitical reasons - Hitler had overreached - although war was  
justified by pointing at Nazi atrocities, much as the Kaiser was  
vilified in the First World War. Hitler was bad but they weren't so  
good. It was another foreign-policy lie, although in Hitler's case, a  
true one.