'CONSPIRACY' CRISIS
The troubling rise of paranoia in the presidential race
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
October 17, 2004
benadorassociates.com
LONDON
LAST year a number of "investigative journal ists" had a field day with "news" of a secret Saudi plan to help President Bush's re-election. The charge that made many headlines and became the subject of much television chatter passed as news: The Saudis would bring the price of oil down to $15 to make the average American, who drives a gas-guzzler, happy, thus persuading him to vote for Bush.
The claim was picked up by Sen. Edward Kennedy, an old adept of conspiracy theories, and inspired several books and "documentaries" in which Bush was labeled "The Arabian Candidate." Some weeks later, Sen. John Kerry picked up the theme at his party's convention.
Well, here we are on the eve of the election with oil above $50 a barrel, the highest price ever. There is no sign of Saudis staying awake at night to pump oil into the market to give Bush a boost. Nor have the oil barons, who were supposed to be Bush's allies, gone out of their way to increase refining to bring prices down for the American consumer.
The myth about the Saudi secret plan was reinforced with the claim that Bush was the favorite of Arabs. But now polls suggest that more than 60 percent of Arab-Americans intend to vote for Kerry, and a further 10 percent for Ralph Nader. That leaves Bush with around 30 percent of the Arab-American vote, hardly enough to qualify him as "The Arabian Candidate."
NOR is it difficult to find out what Arab regimes think of Bush. It is enough to read Al-Ahram, the Egyptian government's newspaper, or to tune in to Al-Jazeera, the satellite-TV channel owned by the Emir of Qatar, to gauge the depth of hatred that the Arab despotic elites feel for Bush.
The Islamists share that hatred. "Anybody but Bush," Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi mused in a Newsweek interview last week. Almost a dozen Islamic groups have echoed this by calling on American Muslims to vote for Kerry.
While the two senators for Massachusetts were trying to stick the "Arabian" label on Bush, some Arabs were promoting a label of their own. To them, Bush, far from being sympathetic to the Arabs, was, in the words of Al Ahram, "the most dangerously pro-Israeli president the U.S. has ever had." Al-Jazeera commentators claimed that the Bush administration was "made of Jews, and for Jews."
Yet polls show that some 70 percent of Jewish-Americans plan to vote for Kerry. The Arab media that routinely describe Jewish-Americans as an Israeli "fifth column" in the United States would have a hard time explaining why "the most pro-Israel president ever" is not getting the Jewish-American vote.
APART from being labeled "Arabian" and "Israeli," Bush has also been branded the candidate of Big Money. But is he?
We now know that the Kerry campaign raised over $300 million, compared to Bush's $240 million. And that the top 100 corporations contributed more to the Kerry campaign than to Bush's. And that the anti-Bush cause attracted massive donations from many wealthy individuals, notably a $15 million check from the speculator George Soros. No one can be sure how the Americans will vote on Nov. 2. But one thing is already certain: Bush is not an "Arabian," "Oil Cartel," "Israeli," or "Big Money" candidate.
With none of those labels having stuck to Bush, another conspiracy kite has been flown: the claim that Bush is cooking a big surprise to be sprung in October. Perhaps the sudden introduction of Osama bin Laden, the fugitive terrorist, on television just days before the election. We've been told that bin Laden was arrested months ago in Pakistan but kept on ice on Bush's orders to be conjured, like a rabbit out of the magician's hat, in October.
Well, there will be no "October Surprise," and bin Laden, as far as I know, has been dead since December 2001 (despite CIA claims to the contrary, based on a couple of dubious audiotapes attributed to bin Laden).
It is important to remember all this because of the steady growth of the market for conspiracy theories in the United States.
Normally, conspiracy theories are popular in underdeveloped despotic societies in which the government lies to the people and is lied to in return. In such societies, no one says or does anything without some concealed motive, and nothing happens without a secret plan concocted by a cabal of conspirators.
The presidential campaign of 1980 birthed the first "October Surprise" chimera. This was a yarn about secret deals between emissaries of Ronald Reagan, the Republican nominee and Iranian mullahs to delay the release of American hostages in Tehran until after the U.S. election.
The yarn served several purposes.
First, it diverted attention from the fact that President Jimmy Carter had failed miserably to obtain the liberation of the hostages after 400 days, inspiring Ayatollah Khomeini to come up with his notorious dictum: "America cannot do a damned thing!"
Second, it shifted blame for failure to liberate the hostages from Carter to Reagan, who had supposedly conspired with the mullahs to keep U.S. citizens captive.
Finally, the yarn made excuses for Carter — as an honest man who was being stabbed in the back not only by the treacherous mullahs but also by the Republicans.
THE fact that so many Ameri cans are prepared to buy "alternative histories," as presented by the arch-liar Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," and more than 200 books built on conspiracy theories, must be seen as a sign that American democracy is unwell. It shows that the opposition is unable to take on the governing party and the president through normal political debate (which is about options, choices, policies and performance).
PART of this is due to intel lectual laziness. For exam ple, it is somewhat difficult to criticize the Bush doctrine of pre-emption in self-defense as a means of altering the status quo in the Middle East to democratize the region and thus, indirectly, serve America's national interests. It is easier to say Bush invaded Afghanistan because Texas oil wanted to build a pipeline from Central Asia. Or to say Bush invaded Iraq because his oil buddies want to steal its oil or because Ariel Sharon would sleep better with Saddam Hussein in jail.
This year's presidential election is likely to enter history as the poorest in a long time, in terms of tackling real issues. At the same time, Kerry has changed his position on most key issues so many times that it is no longer possible to know what he exactly stands for. The average American voter is left with his gut feeling about whom he trusts at the helm in the next four years. |
