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Resources on Iraq

Gary Dorrien on Unipolarism

Mr. Gary Dorrien, Parfet Distinguished Professor at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, has an article in the March 8, 2003 issue of the Christian Century Magazine describing the “Unipolarist” agenda.  Unipolarism is the theory that now that there is one super power in the world, the USA, the world should be remade in the image of the USA.  This is the essential doctrine of the Project for the New American Century, many members of which are in key positions in the current administration in Washington.  Here is the concluding three paragraphs from the article, which is entitled “Axis of One.”

I assume that Saddam possesses biological and chemical weapons, like other thugs of his kind, and that the United States, working through the United Nations, has just cause to pressure his regime to disarm.  But Saddam was not chosen as America’s first target of preemptive war because he poses an immediate threat to the U.S.  He was chosen because he is not strong enough to have to be dealt with diplomatically, like North Korea or China, and because his regime is the key to what the unipolarists call “a transformed Middle East”—one that serves American economic and security interests and that renounces its hostility to Israel.

The Pax Americanists are determined to establish a major American military presence in the Middle East; they dream of toppling nearly every regime in that region.  Unipolarists often refer to the process as “draining the swamp.”  At the moment it is prudent for them to focus their mass-media attention on the present war, not the permanent war, but they take the permanent war for granted.

President Bush is fond of declaring that America invades and fights only to liberate, never to conquer.  I do not doubt that he is sincere in perceiving himself and his country in this way, for this self-perception is widely held in the U.S.  Many Americans actually believe that we should be welcomed as liberators whenever we invade another country.  For decades Americans felt safe from the problems and dangers of other countries, often while being oblivious to the suffering that we caused in the world.  On 9/11 we lost the former illusion, but our leaders are invoking that experience to reinforce our hubris and our obliviousness to the consequences of our actions.