2006-05-26

Chris Floyd

Bush’s China Syndrome: Hypocrisy, History
and Twelve Kinds of Hell

The sick-making hypocrisy of the Bush Regime is no surprise, of course: it's on display every minute of every day, from Dick Cheney's sermonizing at Russia about democracy on his way to schmooze oil deals out of Central Asian tyrants to Condi Rice's stern lectures to the world about "outside interference in Iraq" to all the Orwellian-tagged policy initiatives and laws ("Clean Air," "Healthy Forests," "PATRIOT Act") whose positive appellations are the opposite of their sinister substance. So common are the lies tumbling out of their mouths that it's hardly worth commenting upon them anymore; it's like pointing out that the sky is blue, or that fire is hot or, more apt in this case perhaps, that fat pigs grunt and waddle.

But sometimes a particularly choice piece of hypocrisy comes along, a wrenching juxtaposition between reality and sham righteousness so sublime in the totality of its horse- hockeyness that it cries out for special recognition. Such was the story in the New York Times today about the Pentagon's latest report on "Military Power of the People's Republic of China."

The story, delivered with the Times' usual gray deadpan, tells us that the Pentagon is shocked – shocked – to find China is expanding its military establishment! The good militarists ensconced at the heart of the most gigantic, globe-enveloping war machine the world has ever known are puzzled by those inscrutable Orientals, declaring that "China's leadership has not satisfactorily explained its military expansion and long-term goals, even as it modernizes and expands its forces to be able to challenge foreign military forces operating in the region," as the Times puts it.

The story goes on to note that "the [Pentagon] report details trends in China's ability to deny other military forces access across the region by a combination of strike aircraft, submarines and precision missiles. In all, the report argues, these weapons 'have the potential to pose credible threats to modern militaries operating in the region.'"

The report concludes with the stirring words of Pentagon honcho Donald Rumsfeld, quoting his plaintive cry against the yellow peril at an, er, Asian security conference last year: "Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust deployments?"

(Rummy -- or his speechwriter -- is obviously channeling – or rather prostituting – Shakespeare: "Why such daily cast of brazen cannon, and foreign mart for implements of war? Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task does not divide the Sunday from the week? What might be toward, that this sweaty haste doth make the night joint- labourer with the day? Who is't that can inform me?" But this is the typical cultural brigandage of shallow fools who try to gussy up their raw greed and third-rate intellects with magpie pluckings from their betters. Witness the way Bush, or rather the man who has spoon-fed him most of his words, Michael Gerson, lards his speeches with stirring resonances from scripture, hymns and, in one howlingly lamebrained misappropriation, Dostoevsky. Remember the inaugural's "fire in the minds of men"? Bush and Gerson thought it referred to the universal desire for freedom; Dostoevsky, of course, was talking about the irrational lust for wanton destruction that drives the tormented minds of crippled nihilists. Then again, perhaps Bush/ Gerson's borrowing here was more revealing than they intended. Or heck, maybe they did intend it. Maybe it was a code to the cognoscenti: "We are crazier than twelve different kinds of hell and we're going to burn the whole damn planet down! How do you like them apples?")

At any rate, it staggers the mind that a man presiding over the largest military "investments" and arms purchases in the history of humanity -- not to mention a few "robust deployments" of his own – would have the chutzpah to criticize someone else for doing the exact same thing.

But perhaps we do Rummy wrong to accuse him of hypocrisy here. For he is only enunciating the long-held diplomatic philosophy of the Bush-Cheney faction – a philosophy first developed when Cheney was Pentagon overlord under Bush I. This doctrine has two cardinal tenets. First, no nation is allowed to pursue the rampant militarism, nuclear proliferation, relentless subversion and blatant interference in the internal affairs of other nations that have been the hallmarks of American policy for more than 50 years. Second, no nation is allowed to defend itself against the encroachments of American power or to oppose in any way the ever-expanding interests of the American power elite. To do so puts a nation at risk of being labeled a "rogue state," a target for what Bush has called, with chilling candor, "the path of action."

This infantile doctrine, this knuckle-dragging stupidity masquerading as statesmanship, this ludicrous, B-movie fantasy of world domination bespeaks a near-total ignorance of human nature and history: an ignorance that will pose an ever-present threat to the life of the world – exacerbating tensions, producing more terrorism, fomenting war, pauperizing nations, beating plowshares into swords – as long as it reigns supreme on the Potomac.