O Washington
Jones, Arthur
O WASHINGTON Arthur Jones Desert Song As the caravan bearing the latest California caliph watered the animals and sank the tent pegs into the shifting sands of Foggy Bottom, questions rose like...
...historical makeup...
...Is there a new Athena, a new goddess of wisdom in the arts of government and warfare, called Bechtel...
...This Bechtel is Briareus, just a giant with 300 corporate arms and fifty corporate heads...
...And then guess what happened...
...New armies, new machinery, new technology, new concrete—a crazy superstructure of baseness and lunacy pushed higher and higher, only to collapse of its own weight...
...And buy Caspar's guns and bombs...
...And inevitably, the House of Saud...
...And he knows Begin has no money, no credit, and no oil...
...Caliph Shultz knows where the money goes when the Soviet grain sales are honored...
...Romulus Cruceanu is there now...
...There are no politicians in the Administration, just Reagan's wealthy friends and supporters who don't know there is, finally, a difference between foreign policy and foreign profits...
...O WASHINGTON Arthur Jones Desert Song As the caravan bearing the latest California caliph watered the animals and sank the tent pegs into the shifting sands of Foggy Bottom, questions rose like the campfire smoke to hover in the Potomac mists...
...Ah, but Caliph Shultz knows who profits from Soviet pipeline construction...
...That the Shah's Teheran was the big help-yourself barbecue for the multinational corporate jet set...
...Now it is Saudi Arabia's turn to benefit from the trinkets in Western capitalism's technological caravan...
...faster, faster, faster go the Saudi oil pumps to pay for it—the Saudi spinning top with the little princes and sheiks dancing in glee and clapping their hands...
...the dictators who will enforce the Friedmanite discipline and guarantee the marketplace for outside investors and repatriated profits...
...The United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament ground down to something worse than the first session...
...Higher, higher, higher mounts the tin-kerer's toy chest—as jewels and diamonds once were piled to weigh the Aga Khan...
...The ever self-effacing Ethiopian refugees must settle for half a loaf...
...All moves well, if slowly...
...No, Bechtel has no wisdom to bring to the art of government and warfare...
...You may also remember from the August issue the Romanian success story: Five Romanian exiles stationed themselves outside the Cannon House Office Building and in five days were promised by the Romanian embassy that Bucharest would release their families...
...One Scandinavian diplomat assured me that the first session's much respected final document would not have been approved this time, so strained are East-West relations...
...What do we know...
...foreign policy—no, not Henry Kissinger or Alexander Haig, but Menachem (Go-It-Alone) Begin...
...Ethiopians who arrived before June 1980 will be placed on a "voluntary departure status" to be renewed annually...
...Begin saw that Haig had a feeling for foreign politics in an Administration that has instincts only for foreign profits...
...It is accurate to say that Reagan is the pitchman in Washington for what Bechtel and the other multinational corporations represent: the right to unfettered pursuit of profits at home and abroad...
...The foreign policy of this Administration is lavished on the Bad Boys Club—in the foreign profit seas of Taiwan, South Africa, and capitalism's mecca, Hong Kong...
...Caliph Shultz knows you can only sell to people with plenty of money or its substitutes, credit or oil...
...Eventually, Reagan will, too...
...The U.S...
...Exile Notes Ethiopians in the United States were theatened at last writing (O Washington, August issue) with eviction back to Mengistu's maw...
...Is there, then, a new Athena...
...The fanatics had their field day...
...Reagan, a likable intellectual pigmy, understands foreign policy only as it appeared in Classic Comics...
...For it hasn't got one, it has two, both confused...
...Backslide Atale of failure...
...Meanwhile, Menachem Begin, the John McEnroe of world leaders, the man they love to hate, has the secret: He understands that the Reagan Administration doesn't understand its own foreign policy...
...Those in the shadows have not forgotten the ways of the people, the bazaars, and the desert that shifts...
...Was Ronald Reagan the first...
...it was a burden they neither understood nor wanted...
...The megabuck outfits of freewheeling free enterprise capitalism got started by sucking up the oil while sucking up to the Shah...
...And size alone is not power enough in world affairs...
...The Iranian people could not carry the load...
...Faster, faster, faster goes the Saudi growth...
...Where politics intrudes, it is the politics that will set countries right for capitalism: the Chilean Pinochet who takes his vacations in Capetown...
...After a while—two years, four years— the caravan will rouse the animals...
...Caspar strips veil after veil from the military-industrial complex's belly dancer fresh from America's technological seraglio...
...Caliph Shultz may be El Bechtel's latest emissary to the mystery-shrouded capital...
...Campfires doused, tents folded, Caliph Shultz will sway off into history...
...Immigration and Naturalization Service appears to have softened the threat...
...Well, if you were a Romanian and you wanted your spouse out of Romania, wouldn't you station yourself on the Independence Avenue Steps of the Cannon Building...
...Caspar the Graspar, late of Bechtel himself, unveils before the eyes of Saudi princes sensuous AWACs and military jewelry...
...Will the Sultan, Ronald Reagan, now do for the House of Saud what Jimmy Carter did for Iran's Pahlavi "dynasty...
...Permission granted but passports for the families not yet issued...
...Dare Sheik Yamani seek advice from the only living expert on U.S...
...That the fanatics were Muslims and not Marxists was sheer chance...
...In the shadows, not clapping, perhaps a few princes and sheiks among the fanatics and zealots...
...Get in line...
Vol. 46 • September 1982 • No. 9
