Pak Tribune, Pakistan
Islamic-Fascists? ... Bush Neocons Give Fascism a Bad Name

By Anwaar Hussain*

September 1, 2006
Pakistan's Pak Tribune - Original Article (English)    

Most recently, the president of United States said: "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation."

Not to be debated here is the fact that the United States itself is now embarked on a course of such vile fascism that even genuine American fascists are distancing themselves from the Neocon. Also not to be debated here is the fact that the Islamic fundamentalists who, according to the grapevine, perpetrated 9/11 and similar crimes in Europe, hanker for a fundamentalist theocracy, not fascism. Nor will we mull over the fact that the new American fascists themselves have welded religion and government together so thoroughly, that it's difficult to tell one from the other.

No sirs, the agenda of the Islamic cave dwellers of Tora Bora [al-Qaeda] is anything but fascist. "Islamic fascism," this most current war cry of the Neocons, is nothing more than the latest terminological inexactitude on the descending power curve of the Neocons, an ugly last ditch attempt to breathe new life into the quickly fading, faltering and dying warhorse of the Neocons.

Unlike our lying Neocons, Benito Mussolini, the true father of fascism, had a pretty straightforward definition of his creed. He, in his seminal essay "The Doctrine of Fascism ," wrote:

"Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism, because it is a merger of state and corporate power."

If the Neocons really were convinced of their cause, if they were a little less deceiving and a little more forthcoming, they would have come up with a more becoming name for their agenda. Allow me to explain.

First, since September 11 (the much pined for "New Pearl Harbor" of the Neocons) was indeed the launching pad of Neocon campaign, let us quickly see who profited and who lost in the wake of 9/11.

Fact 1: The period since September 11 has seen the plains of the Middle East continuously drenched with the blood of innocent Muslims, who are the supposed perpetrators of the crime. Internationally, during the same period, their coreligionists have been increasingly treated like dogs.

Fact 2: During the same period, the Anglo-American military-industrial corporation has enjoyed a boom without parallel since the Second World War.

Consider the following:

In 2005 alone, for example, defense contracts totaled $269 billion, up from $143 billion in 2000, or almost double, a dizzying increase without parallel in the post World War-II era. Please also note that annual military spending of the United States that same year was approximately $518 billion. Simple math would tell us that after deducing the costs for maintaining a standing army, care for the dead, dying and wounded soldiers etc., the remainder of these funds made a beeline to the very deep pockets of war profiteers.

Now, care to venture a guess as to who one of the biggest war profiteer of them all are? It is none other than the scandal-plagued former firm of Vice President Richard Cheney, Halliburton. While Halliburton may be the prime example of war profiteering, it is by no means the only one. As of April 2006, America's Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction reported 72 ongoing corruption investigations.

Lockheed Martin is another king among war profiteers, raking in $21.9 billion in Pentagon contracts during 2003 alone. With satellites and planes, missiles and IT systems, the company has profited from just about every phase of the war except for the reconstruction. The company's stock has tripled since 2000 to just over $60. And guess what, word has it that Cheney's wife Lynne has served on the Board of Lockheed Martin, and was compensated to the tune of $120,000 a year just for showing up at its quarterly meetings.

Here's a short list of some of the other war profiteers;

AEGIS, BearingPoint, Bechtel, BKSH & Associates, CACI and Titan, Custer Battles, Loral Satellite, and Qualcomm.

But for the sake of brevity, it is quite easy to show that from election campaign contributions to direct connections with the Neocons, all of these companies are linked in one way or the other to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice, also known as The Five Morons as Paul Craig Roberts calls them . As a matter of fact, were it not for the sheer irony of it, one would have suggested that the only way to bring the "War on Terror" to an abrupt halt is for the American taxpayer to promise to give this money with no questions asked directly to the Five Morons and their masters.

Probably the most ironic aspect of all this is that while the Five Morons are busy offering spin after spin to justify the war profiteering of their corporate masters, the masters themselves are actually following a pretty straight-forward business plan. If the gravy train is to continue chugging along, a few golden business rules would have to be followed … that's a no-brainer. A simple Google search for the cardinal business rules throws up an article by Mark Smock . Here are some of Mark's cardinal business rules (additions in parenthesis are mine);

Cardinal Business Rule No. 1: Give priority to new product or service development: (Indeed. In every war they kill us in newer ways).

Cardinal Business Rule No. 2: Find new applications for existing products or services: Be sure to establish a communication means between your company and your product/service users to determine how they really use your products. Offering a financial incentive to "surface" news applications helps too! (Financial incentives … eh? Tell that to the Five Morons)

Cardinal Business Rule No. 3: The easiest sale of them all: You have already spent the money to acquire your customers and build a relationships with them, why not ask what else can you make or provide for them? (Ask the Five Morons and you shall receive)

Cardinal Business Rule No. 4: Know where to get all the answers: ALL the answers about how your company is doing, where it should go and what it should stop doing, reside within your own customer base. Just ask! (Ask who? Who is the customer base? The Five Morons once again)

Cardinal Business Rule No. 5: Think out of boundaries! If you just focus on U.S. markets, someday you will find your company can no longer effectively compete because someone else beat you to the global market game board, the board the business game of tomorrow will be played on. (Indeed. Now, could it be plainer than this? Do we still wonder why from Afghanistan to Lebanon, newer theaters (read markets) are coming up all the time, and what the real agenda of the Five Morons is?)

From Iraq's WMDs to mushroom clouds over America, to freedom and liberty to Islamic Fascism, the Neocons' war cries have taken a circuitous route to arrive where we are today.

Who was it that said "Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive"?

*Anwaar Hussain is a former Pakistan Air Force F-16 fighter pilot. With a Masters in Defense and Strategic Studies from Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, he now resides in United Arab Emirates. He has published a series of articles in Defense Journal, South Asia Tribune and a host of other web portals. Other than international affairs, Anwaar Hussain has written extensively on the religious and political issues that plague Pakistan.

VIDEO FROM SAUDI ARABIA: NEOCONS ARE

THE CLOSEST THING THERE IS TO THE NAZIS

IQRA TV, SAUDI ARABIA: Excerpts from an interview with Saudi intellectual Awadh Al-Qarni, March 16, 2006, 00:01:40, Via MEMRI

"Fifteen years ago, the American intellectuals used to call them crazy, but now they are surprised to find that those crazy people are ruling America, and controlling the entire world. They say: We do not want America to be the leader of the world. We want it to rule and Americanize the world."

Saudi intellectual Awadh Al-Qarni