Our Enemies' Weapon of Mass Destruction

Forget about weapons (plural) of mass destruction. Our enemies (plural) have only one: the uterus. Along our Mexican border, and throughout the Islamic World, our enemies are slowly but inexorably moving towards the mass destruction of America and Western Europe as we know them—through an unbridled population explosion. Our friend and ally, Israel, is already terrified by the prospect (witness the desperation of its hyperdestruction of Lebanon) of Palestinians outbirthing Jews both in Israel proper and improper (as in the occupied West Bank.)

What to do? The reasonably affluent West has learned the hard way that a small family is the best way to achieve and maintain their daily pleasures and routines. Large families mostly mean poverty in both the West and the demographically explosive Third World. How do we prevent the reproletarianization of America and its allies? The Bush II Administration tried it first with Cowboy Diplomacy: Bring ‘em on! That only alienated the few natural allies we had in parts of developed EuroAmerica. Now it’s shifting to semantic sleight of mind by coining terms like Islamo-Fascist to silence those who find our current policies self-destructive. When even so conservative a cohort as pundit George Will takes on Rumsfeld, it is panic time in the West Wing.

Such impasses are inevitable in these United States of Amnesia. George W. Bush’s sudden discovery of “freedom” and “democracy” as terms of endearment are scarcely credible in an administration that subverts democracy at home with ever more secretive policies and mocks our former ideal of a shared democracy by hyping the income of the already rich and blocking such simple expedients as raising the mininum wage As we speak, both Ford and General Motors are planning outsourcing more car production to Mexico.

The globalizing corporations have no sense of fidelity to the average American. Their terminally dumb SUV overproduction policies have surrendered without a shot the world auto market to the more thoughtful Japanese. The thinking world recognizes as well that all our sleazy moves are the cynical cover ups of Our Oiligarchy. We invaded Iraq to guarantee access to its oil reserves. Fatuous rhetoric about spreading democracy in the Middle East flies in the face of a century of collusion with the authoritarian regimes there. Even Donald Rumsfeld has no answer to his shilling for Iraq in their war with Iran. Now that such duplicities have come home to roost, W. brays fecklessly about his ideals, and pretends to be a Reader. How sad Jefferson must be. Not to mention his reputed role model, Honest Abe. Honest George?. The very concept is an oily oxymoron. Leave no President Behind.

But these recriminations help us not a whit in the current Uterine Crisis enveloping the West, from the distraught banlieus of Paris to the porous borders of the Rio Grande. Patrick J. Buchanan has just published a book deploring the inevitability of the Mexican invasion. We are outraged at a million illegal Mexicans (sporting their “legal” national flag) massing in Los Angeles to protest projected restrictive immigration policies.

But, James Polk to the contrary notwithstanding, we did steal their land from them in the 1840’s –because it was convenient, and we could! Now their long delayed counteroffensive is a wave of births that makes legal citizens of all who are born on the formerly Mexican land.( Talk about the Israeli’s and their Holy Land!) And we have to allow that the fierce destructiveness of Muslims in Europe is a belated payback for the colonial oppression that first gave them the notion of climbing onto the European social welfare wagon.

It doesn’t advamce our defenses one whit to now wave the rhetorical flag of our long besmirched ideals. That’s as feckless as Canute ineffectually commanding the waves. The only way out of our self-deluded trap is to actually start practising the ideals of a shared democracy that we have fouled with our hypocritical policies. For example, we have to stop subsidizing the American sugar millionaires and give tropical countries access to our markets.

The only way out of the Uterine Impasse is to start walking the egalitarian walk, instead of confusing ourselves by merely talking the Fourth of July talk. It’ll be a hard slog, in any case. But at least it will eventually stop our demented talk of America as “the last, best hope of Mankind”. We subverted that characterization a century ago with our brutal conquering of the Phillipines.What percentage of decent Americans have any notion of how cruelly and crudely we took over the Phillipines—as a coaling station for our new Pacific fleet? After they had fought nobly to free themselves from the Spaniards.

And believe me, we are not alone in the Uterine Wars. Spanish authorities have gone apoplectic this summer over Africans slying boating over to the Canaries. Morocco used to be their jumping (makes that diving) off place for Africans head first for Spain (and EU-ishly, all the rest of Europe.) But since Spain had the “foresight” (or chutzpah) to save itself two “free” ports on the Moroccan coast, they have been able to plug that hole in their Mediterranean dike. But the Uterine Hordes now risk their lives (over 550 have already drowned this summer alone) by boating over from more distant Mauretania, some 600 nautical miles from Tenerife.

This weekend EURONEWS reported that 674 Uteros had arrived in the last 24 hours this weekend (1-3 September 2006). And the pace is picking up: 4751 refugees altogether in 2005. 6000 in August, with an estimated total of 20,000 in 2006. While we dither and diddle, protecting oversubsidized American corporate farms, the wretched of the earth in a diaspora of despair, flood into the soft underbelly of Spain and the former Spanish America. Global warming? Energy Crisis? Islamic Terrorism? Un Uhh.

Silently, exponentially escalating Uterine Warfare.No Kaiserschnitts in this battle. We either share our wealth graciously with the lethally poor, or die separately. The true Apocalypse is just around the corner: a billion living on a dollar a day, 4 billions threatened by an obesity epidemic. Such a world ends not with a nuclear bang, but rather a starving whimper.Or overfed belch.

Finally, in these United States of Amnesia I was reminded that my hero,Thomas Jefferson, had led America's first war against Muslim terrorists, between 1801 and 1805. It was the Barbary Pirates then, an unruly lot, and since the Europeans had bought immunity, they sought out American ships. We often flew British flags to sucker the Barbary barbarians to sail in close enough to be shot out of the water, a ruse that worked more than once. The story is told freshly in Joseph Wheelan's Jefferson's War (Carroll and Graf, 2003).

This Good and Evil Syndrome George W.Bush sloppily uses, in lieu of the more difficult process of actually thinking through our new threats is a strategy doomed to failure. Oilogarchs don't think. They emote oilily. Cutting brush is not thinking. They endanger all of US with their slovenly cynicism.