IRWIN D. BROSS

The principal points of my original essay on "Making History" were:

(1) The 21st century got off to a terrible start with election of George W. Bush in 2000 and the attack on America on September 11 2001.

(2) Vote buying, media-control, and fraud in the electoral process by the Bush Dynasty is rapidly leading to the death of traditional American democracy.

(3) Pentagon takeover of the infrastructure of U.S. science and medicine ended a mid-20th century "Golden Age" of U.S. science. Scientific fraud and commercialism are leading to the death of genuine scientific and medical research in the U.S.

(4) The oilmen running the Bush Administration support a clique of right-wing Pentagon brass who are trying to set up an "American Hegemony" that will rule the world. This was the underlying reason for the push for war on Iraq.

(5) The price of an American Hegemony to rule the world is extremely high: American involvement in Hegemony Wars throughout the 21st century (i.e., a cycles of killing and being killed on a world-wide scale similar to what is presently going on in Israel).

(6) Most citizens in the other nations on this planet have no desire to be ruled by an American Hegemony; most Americans have no desire to rule the world. However, the proponents of an American Hegemony disregard world opinion.

President George W. Bush now has gotten the U.S. into three wars, a "war against terrorism", a war in Afghanistan, and a war in Iraq. While he has proclaimed "victories", none of the wars show any sign of ending soon. Bush has threatened military action against Iraq, North Korea, Iran and other countries. He has also threatened an economic war against the European Union because of European reluctance to eat food products of U.S. biotechnology.

Europeans once laughed at the uncivilized Texas Cowboy but not many are laughing now. They have begun to realize how dangerous George W. Bush can be – both to the civilized and uncivilized nations on the planet. The crude foreign policies of the Bush Administration have shaken up Old Europe.

The leaders of France, Germany, and Russia were accustomed to being the movers and shakers at the end of the 20th century. However, President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, blandly announced on May 24, 2003 that, for daring to oppose the Iraq war, Bush will punish the French, ignore the Germans, and make peace with the Russians. Clearly, the American Hegemony does not play by the old 20th century rules "rules of engagement". It feels free to attack anyone, anywhere, anytime and for any reason that it chooses.

In the Iraq war, Europeans saw a weak Islamic nation virtually destroyed by American "weapons of mass destruction". Supposedly, Iraq had such weapons although none have yet been found. Hence, more thoughtful Europeans may have finally deciphered the "handwriting on the wall": The American Hegemony wants to rule the world. Perhaps Europeans have also learned this: If what "civilization" meant at the end of the 20th century is to survive in the 21st century, Europeans will have to learn how to cope with the American Hegemony.

One key to coping with the American Hegemony is to understand the history of the American Hegemony – a thumbnail of this history will be given in section 5.

Once this history is understood, it becomes obvious that the primary reason for the Iraq war was ideology of the American Hegemony rather than Iraq oil or any of the "justifications" given by the Bush Administration. This is obvious because the planning for the Iraq war started immediately after the election of George W. Bush in 2000. Its planners have bragged publicly that their purpose was to promote the ideology of the Hegemony.

Although the "war on terrorism" was sometimes used as a pretext for the Iraq war by the propaganda apparatus of the Bush Administration, the current facts show that (1) Iraq was not involved in the attack on America, (2) Iraq did not have "weapons of mass destruction", and (3) Iraq did not even have operational scud missiles. The attack was unjustified. Europeans may forget about this (and about Iraq) as time goes. However, Islamic nations are not going to forget what happened in Iraq any more quickly than Americans will forget "9/11". It will eventually lead to more and deadlier Islamic terrorism.

Several useful lessons of history can be learned from the "downside" of the Iraq War. The Bush propaganda machine succeeded in covering-up these events from the American public (and from most Europeans). In fact, the attack went rather badly at the start because the ideologists of the American Hegemony – notably Richard Perle – had ignored the history of Islamic guerrilla tactics that had been used successfully against European invaders for centuries.

The ideologists’ historical "blind spot" resulted in many unnecessary U.S. casualties. It prolonged a war that was officially predicted to be over in 5 days by at least three weeks. Here are some of the suppressed facts: The lower-level U.S. commanders were trained using computerized simulations based on Hegemony ideology. From their simulation experience, the commanders thought they were leading their troops in an "Autobahn War" to Baghdad. This put U.S. troops in harms way unnecessarily because they outran their logistic lifeline on the road to Baghdad.

The low-level U.S. troop commanders subsequently complained (until they were firmly squelched) that the simulations that were supposed to embody Iraqi tactics had given no warning of the deadly guerrilla attacks that actually occurred. The simulations had actually embodied Perle’s wisdom: The Iraqis would flee "at the first whiff of gunpowder!" As a result, the Iraqi war that was intended as a demonstration of the power of the new "stun and awe" warfare actually provided a demonstration of the weaknesses of planning that was based on American Hegemony ideology.

Item: A weak Islamic country using traditional guerrilla warfare had held out for weeks longer than George W. Bush had proclaimed. Item: The high tech troops that were so effective in pulverizing Iraq’s infrastructure were unable to control looting or to restore the water supply and other necessary services. Because the cocksure ideologists of the American Hegemony had learned none of the historical lessons of the past, the U.S. casualty figures are still increasing.

Earlier aspirants to world domination who used the low-tech weaponry of bayonets had ruefully remarked that "you can do anything with bayonets but sit on them". The same principle applies to high-tech weapons of mass destruction. George W. Bush has yet to learn that neither high-tech weaponry nor the ideology of the American Hegemony can impose a democracy on the various mutually-hostile ethnic groups in a shattered Iraq.

It will be easier to cope with the American Hegemony if the history of this concept is understood. First of all, the notion an American Hegemony is not something new. It dates at least as far back as the A-bombs that ended of World War II. Within the Pentagon at that time, there was a small clique of high-level brass who felt that Hitler had the right idea about ruling the world and exterminating inferior, non-Aryan peoples. They simply felt that world domination should be by American WASP’s, not German ones. After the A-bombs ended World War II, these closet Nazis schemed to control the Pentagon since they believed that U.S. nuclear weaponry provided the power to rule the world – if U.S. had the will to use it as with Nazi ruthlessness and efficiency.

Since at this time, many Americans believed that the U.S. had a permanent monopoly of nuclear weapons which made it invincible, there was some popular support for this early version of the American Hegemony concept as the Cold War heated up. Fortunately, however, the Pentagon generals who had actually won the World War II did not believe in such nonsense. Furthermore, they certainly had no intention of empowering the arm-chair generals who spouted it. Then, before the generals could get very far with their plots, the USSR had broken the U.S. nuclear monopoly and put the plans for an American Hegemony on indefinite hold.

Throughout the years of the Cold War, the Pentagon plotters continued to scheme and enjoyed some success, especially during Republican administrations.

Item: Despite U.S. laws barring admission of Nazi war criminals, the plotters managed to import numerous Nazi "experts" and gave them sanctuary in America in the name of "national security". One was a notorious Nazi doctor who was directly involved in the Holocaust "experiments". He landed the top job at a large Pentagon-funded laboratory where, for decades, he supervised animal experiments that the Pentagon vainly hoped would "prove" its false doctrine: Low levels of ionizing radiation are "harmless".

Item: Hegemony-minded generals formed alliances with scientists involved with the development of nuclear weapons, with businessmen with big Pentagon contracts, and with right-wing Republican politicians. All factions in this neo-Nazi conspiracy in the Pentagon saw it as a way to assure continuing or increasing federal budgets and gaining political advantages for themselves and their friends.

Therefore, one lesson of history that is important for coping with the American Hegemony is this: It has deep roots in the Pentagon and, until these roots are eradicated, the American Hegemony will remain a threat to world peace.

Note: Details which fill in some of the gaps in this historical outline can be found in my CD-ROM: A History of U.S. Science and Medicine in the Cold War. This CD-ROM contains my six published ink-print books and updated commentary on them.

6. A Thumbnail History: The Rise of the American Hegemony to Power

The power of the Pentagon plotters waxed during Republican administrations. They were riding high during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush. Although few Americans noticed, members of both these administrations had floated trial balloons for an American Hegemony. There was little public response. The plotters did not fare as well in Democratic administrations. Although the Clinton Administration was a wasteland for the Hegemony, the hopes of the clique were kept alive by right-wing Republican politicians when they were not busy with sex scandals.

Under George W. Bush and aided by the Big Oil millionaires who run the Bush Administration, the Hegemony clique finally gained control of Pentagon planning. The clique has little use for genuine democracy and even less use for genuine science and since the 2000 election has deliberately degraded both. For example when the scientific facts showed the failure of the Star Wars missile defense and refuted ideological claims of the clique, the facts were covered-up or ignored and whistleblowers were punished.

When these closet Nazis "came out" in the guise of "patriots", the ideology of the American Hegemony provided the mantras of the Bush Administration. The doctrine that America could launch pre-emptive strike with weapons of mass destruction and destroy any nation anywhere on the planet also "came out of the closet".

Coping with the American Hegemony crowd will be difficult for Europeans but is not an impossible task.

Doing this job will require constant monitoring of the U.S. political scene and close attention to the weaknesses of the American Hegemony clique.

Item: The Bush Administration has missed or muffed a series of opportunities to score at home and abroad. Currently, it supposedly controls all three branches of the American government and has a rare opportunity. It has failed to make much of this opportunity. Thus when George W. Bush repeatedly demanded a big tax cut for his friends and made it his top domestic priority, he didn’t get the tax cut he wanted. Indeed, in the end, he was reduced to claiming credit for a tax cut that he had repeatedly and angrily insisted that he didn’t want. This failure clearly demonstrate his lack of political savvy.

True, according to the friendly media, George W. "looks presidential" when repeating his favorite mantras to a hand-picked audience of big political contributors or at a various staged media event. However a closer look shows that his style of management by mantra is working no better that his father’s style. Even his pose as a "war leader" is beginning to wear thin because he made so many claims that have subsequently turned out to be highly dubious or outright false.

Item: The "little boy who cried wolf syndrome" caught up with Bush’s attempts to to win congressional approval for a war with Iran. The same Democrats who had abjectly supported his previous wars were openly skeptical. They scoffed at his claim that the attacks on Americans in Saudi Arabia had been launched from Iran.

George W. is not getting everything he wants from the U.N. or from Europeans. Even his British allies are distancing themselves. Tony Blair has run into severe political troubles at home as a result of his reputation as Bush’s lap dog. Moreover, "Old Europe" is effectively using their favorite tactics – such as bureaucratic stalling – to fend off the brute force tactics of the American Hegemony.

By failing to take full advantage of his moments of triumph, President Bush apparently has lost some momentum. With his diminished aura of credibility and authority, it looks as if he may not be able to win the 2004 election simply by starting yet another war--with Iran. Despite "great successes" in Iraq, the death toll of American soldiers has been steadily rising in Iraq and Americans are getting very tired of these endless wars. However, George W. has an enormous war chest for 2004 so he probably can buy another election.

Even so, if Europeans play their cards right, they can win the Hegemony game.