Our world has reached one of the more dangerous moments in its history by Phillip Adams The Australian 1:12pm 1st Feb, 2003   BE ALARMED !    February 01, 2003    Let me state the obvious: we're in deep, terrible and, in many ways, unprecedented trouble. Our world has reached one of the more dangerous moments in its history - and what makes the situation worse is the fact that we are not really discussing it. We shuffle down the road to war like zombies.    The necessary debate is being censored by governments, muffled by a compliant media and accepted by numbed, distracted and acquiescent societies. To oppose the drift of history is to invite a charge of treason, to be characterised as un-Australian, un-American or unpatriotic.    In the US the people are blinkered by the millions of flags that flutter on a forest of poles and hang from every other window. They block the political view and the thunder of their flapping means that even anxious questions, let alone protests, cannot, will not, be heard.    And in Australia we bend the knee and bow the head in almost grateful submission. Having wasted a few billion dollars and much of our moral capital on a shameful charade - an exaggerated response to a few wretched refugees - we now invite enemies of the US to be our enemies. And those of us who see this as capitulation to the madness of the Bush regime are increasingly branded as subversives, fifth columnists or fools.    September 11 was, for George W. Bush and the boys, a God-given excuse. It provided an all-purpose justification for the implementation of policies that had been rehearsed, planned and plotted during their years in exile.    The great US writer Joan Didion writes that while the flames were still visible in Lower Manhattan, the words bipartisanship and national unity had come to mean acquiescence to the administration's agenda - further tax cuts, Arctic drilling, the elimination of regulatory and union protections, even funding for the missile shield.    The entire ultra-conservative wish list became, overnight, the political agenda, and either you were with us or you were against us. Any expression of dissidence within US democracy or the poor old UN was drowned out by the flapping of the flags and the beat of the drums. As in Australia, the political opposition in the US dropped its bundle and people who should have known better lay on the road, waiting for the tanks to roll over them. The tanks that, long before the war against terror, had been massed for a war against Iraq.    Didion writes of books being withdrawn, films held back, plays being cancelled. All across the nation it was deemed inappropriate even to hint at anything that could be regarded as criticism of the US. And she's right to point out that the term "moral clarity" began to echo up and down the corridors of power. The world was reduced to Bush's vision of good vs evil. Context and complexity, history itself, were pushed aside in favour of what Bush accidentally but accurately described as a crusade.    Inspection teams? An irritation, a sideshow. As, indeed, were the weapons of mass destruction. The jokes that these weapons were a mass distraction is a good one. The war was going to happen whether they existed or not; whether Saddam Hussein, if he had them, would use them or not. The fact that there was no connection between Baghdad and the World Trade Centre mattered not a jot. The juggernaut grew in scale and accelerated in momentum - and the rest of the world, most enthusiastically London and Canberra, climbed on board. And the poor old UN fell over itself trying to accommodate the US's zealotry.    Almost every day there was another appalling revelation. Bush told graduates at West Point that the US would, in future, act pre-emptively against organisations and states in possession of chemical, nuclear or biological weapons. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told NATO that the US would no longer wait for absolute proof of such weapons before taking action. And the Pentagon let it be known that the US was seriously considering using high-yield nuclear weapons on a first-strike basis. As Didion reports, the Department of Defence was talking as early as last June about unleashing, for the first time since 1945, high-yield nuclear weapons.    As the world reeled in shock and dithered in dismay, the arrogance and hubris of Washington grew louder and larger. The President kept upping the ante and public debate, real debate, real analysis, evaporated. It happened in parliament, in the press. And where are the mass rallies? Where are the Vietnam-style marches? In London, they got a bigger crowd to protest proposed laws against fox hunting.    Around the world millions feeling null, void and helpless turn up the volume on their tellies or go shopping. US triumphalism, unilateralism, brooks no arguments, heeds no critics. First Afghanistan - in a war that chased away the Taliban but entirely failed to smash al-Qaida or find Osama bin Laden. And now Iraq. And the juggernaut is ginormous.    Every crazy idea, every brutal strategy, is represented as an inevitable outcome of September 11. Which provided moral clarity. And a blank cheque for political recklessness. And the madness is enthusiastically endorsed by Australia's swelling, posturing army of reactionary ideologues unchecked by a pusillanimous ALP and a confused, impotent Left.    We have seen the insistent use of September 11 to justify the reconception of the US's correct role in the world as one of initiating and waging virtually perpetual war, warns Didion. And, tragically, those in the US - and in Australia - who know that this is not only an immense mistake but truly madness are marginalised and mocked. A few months back, some mild observations had me dragged before the Press Council and the Human Rights Commission. How long before we're dragged before military tribunals?    A third world war may now be beginning. No, not the long-awaited apocalypse that's all over in a few days or hours, but a series of catastrophes as the juggernaut of the mightiest state provokes the hatred and fury of globalised, stateless terror. It's a moot point which side is more dangerous. And I, for one, am in despair... Email Phillip Adams Visit the related web page
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