Free American Way of War by Tom Engelhardt Page B

it already has something of the look of the Alamo (but with amenities). Someday, perhaps, it will turn out to be the “White House” (though, in BDY’s sketches, its buildings look more like those prison-style schools being constructed in embattled American urban neighborhoods) for the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, or some future Shiite party, or even a Sunni strongman.
    What we know is that such an embassy is remarkably outsized for Iraq. Even as a headquarters for a vast, secret set of operations, it doesn’t quite add up. After all, our military headquarters in Iraq are at Camp Victory, on the outskirts of Baghdad. We can certainly assume—though no one in our mainstream media world would think to say such a thing—that this new embassy will house a rousing set of CIA (and probably Pentagon) intelligence operations for the country and region, and will be a massive hive for American spooks of all sorts. But whatever its specific functions, it might best be described as the imperial Mother Ship dropping into Baghdad.
    As an outpost, the vast compound reeks of one thing: imperial impunity. It was never meant to be an embassy from a democracy that had liberated an oppressed land. From the first thought, the first sketch, it was to be the sort of imperial control center suitable for the planet’s sole “hyperpower,” dropped into the middle of the oil heartlands of the globe. It was to be Washington’s dream and Kansas City’s idea of a palace fit for an embattled American proconsul—or a khan.
    Completed, it will indeed be the perfect folly, as well as the perfect embassy, for a country that finds it absolutely normal to build vast base-worlds across the planet; that considers it just a regular day’s work to send its aircraft carrier “strike forces” and various battleships through the Straits of Hormuz in daylight as a visible warning to a “neighboring” regional power; whose Central Intelligence Agency operatives feel free to organize and launch Baluchi tribal warriors from Pakistan into the Baluchi areas of Iran to commit acts of terror and mayhem; whose commander-in-chief president can sign a “nonlethal presidential finding” that commits our nation to a “soft power” version of the economic destabilization of Iran, involving,
according to ABC News, “a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions”; whose vice president can appear on the deck of the USS John C. Stennis to address a “rally for the troops,” while that aircraft carrier is on station in the Persian Gulf, readying itself to pass through those Straits, and can insist to the world: “With two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike. We’ll keep the sea lanes open. We’ll stand with our friends in opposing extremism and strategic threats. We’ll disrupt attacks on our own forces.… And we’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region”; whose military men can refer to Iraqi insurgents as “anti-Iraqi forces”; members of whose Congress can offer plans for the dismemberment of Iraq into three or more parts; and all of whose movers and shakers, participating in the Washington consensus, can agree that one “benchmark” the Iraqi government, also locked inside the Green Zone, must fulfill is signing off on an oil law designed in Washington and meant to turn the energy clock in the Middle East back several decades.
    To recognize such imperial impunity and its symbols for what they are, all you really need to do is try to reverse any of these examples. In most cases, that’s essentially inconceivable. Imagine any country building the equivalent Mother Ship “embassy” on the equivalent of two-thirds of the Washington Mall; or sailing its warships into the Gulf of Mexico and putting its second-in-command aboard the flagship of the