Why Are We at War? Read Online Free PDF

on Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East. One can also propose that we wish to go into Iraq for the water. To quote apiece by Stephen C. Pelletiere in The New York Times of January 31:
There was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.
    So, yes, oil is a part of the motive, even if that can never be admitted. And water could prove a powerful tool to pacify a great many heated furies of the desert. The underlying motive, however, still remains George W. Bush’s underlying dream: Empire!

    “What word but ‘empire’ describes the awesome thing that America is becoming?” wrote MichaelIgnatieff on January 5 in The New York Times Magazine:
It is the only nation that polices the world through five global military commands; maintains more than a million men and women at arms on four continents; deploys carrier battle groups on watch in every ocean; guarantees the survival of countries from Israel to South Korea; drives the wheels of global trade and commerce, and fills the hearts and minds of an entire planet with its dreams and desires.
    From Timothy Garton Ash in The New York Review of Books , February 13:
The United States is not just the world’s only superpower; it is a hyperpower, whose military expenditures will soon equal that of the next fifteen most powerful states combined. The EU has not translated its comparable economic strength—fast approaching the US $10 trillioneconomy—into comparable military power or diplomatic influence.
    Perhaps the most thorough explanation of this as yet unadmitted campaign toward Empire comes from the columnist Jay Bookman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution . Back on September 29, 2002, he wrote:
This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the “American imperialists” that our enemies always claimed we were.
    Back in 1992, a year after the final fall of the Soviet Union, there were many on the right inAmerica, early flag conservatives, who felt that an extraordinary opportunity was now present. America could now take over the world. The Defense Department drafted a document which, to quote Jay Bookman once more,
envisioned the United States as a colossus astride the world, imposing its will and keeping world peace through military and economic power. When leaked in its final draft form, however, the proposal drew so much criticism that it was hastily withdrawn and repudiated by the first President Bush.…
The defense secretary in 1992 was Richard Cheney; the document was drafted by [Paul] Wolfowitz, who at the time was defense undersecretary for policy.
    Now, as we know, Wolfowitz is deputy defense secretary under Rumsfeld.
    Afterward, from 1992 to 2000, this dream of world domination was not picked up by the Clintonadministration, and that may help to account for the intense, even virulent hatred that so many on the right felt during those eight years. If it weren’t for Clinton, America could be ruling the world.
    Obviously, that document, “Project for the New American Century,” projected prematurely in 1992, had now, after September 11, become the policy of the Bush administration. The flag conservatives were triumphant. They could seek to take over the world. Iraq could be the first step. Beyond, but very much on the historical horizon, were not only Iran, Syria, Pakistan, and North Korea but China.
    Of course, not every last country had to be