In Monday’s edition of his biweekly column, “The Wartime Economist,” Antiwar.com’s David R. Henderson takes on George Shultz of the Committee on the Present Danger and the best case the War Party can make for continuing the failed “war on terror.” Tough luck there, George.
David’s article reminds me of retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski‘s story about Shultz’s fax to Secretary of Wars Rumsfeld in the summer of 2002. As she recounted to C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb,
“I’ll tell you something about George Shultz, that – there was a fax that came into the office. It wasn’t for me. I happened to get it, and I looked at this fax. It was a short note from George Shultz, who was on – who at that time, I don’t know if he still is – but he was on the Defense Policy Board, along with Richard Perle. It was a fax, a copy of a fax that he had sent to Don Rumsfeld in June of 2002, June of 2002 I believe it was. It was the summer of 2002.
“And on this fax, it was a short, one-note thing, from Shultz to Rummy. Basically, we have to get together and talk about what we do after the victory in Iraq, and this was in the summer of 2002, long before even the president and the vice president had begun their round of why we fight-type propaganda speeches.”
“What to do after the victory in Iraq”? This may be a reference to the funneling of billions of government dollars into the Bechtel corporation, which gets paid to do nothing but show up and stand around in America’s never-ending series of global interventions. George Shultz, it seems, has a vested interest in being so full of it.
(One might even conclude that since Roosevelt turned America into the “Arsenal of Democracy,” those whose business it is to maintain that arsenal and rebuild what it destroys spend a portion of those collected tax-payer dollars on getting their stooges to positions of power in order to keep those tax-dollars flowing.)
There are some who think that Saddam’s mid-1980s refusal to pay then-Secretary of State Shultz (who had come to government “service” directly from the presidency of Bechtel) and his former company to build an oil pipeline from Iraq to the Red Sea – a major topic of discussion between Rumsfeld and Hussein when they met in 1983 – was the beginning of the end of the era of Republican-Baathist good feelings which had survived Hussein’s use of chemical weapons and America’s treachery in selling missiles to the Ayatollah.
It wasn’t long before James Baker III was “emphasizing the instruction” to U.S. ambassador April Glaspie to invite Saddam to go ahead and invade Kuwait, setting Saddam up for “Operation Desert Storm” and the people of Saudi Arabia for a permanent garrison of American troops to enforce the blockade and launch the no-fly zone bombings – which, as we all know, is the reason for Osama’s gang’s war against the United States.
Since the second war against Iraq, which Shultz promoted inside and outside the halls of state power, the terrorists have been given a new cause for their recruiting and a massive new base within which to train their new generation of recruits.
Now this man has the gumption and gall to pose as an expert on fighting terrorism and on why more of these disasterous wars should be waged. Perhaps we should send Mr. Shultz to fight this phony war of his and let the people who joined the military under the pretext that their job was to protect America come home.
(Comments welcome at Stress)