The black clouds of War and its terrible woe Gave the luster of mid-day to objects below.

In the flickering CNN light of U.S. and British explosives thunderbolting into Iraq -- attacks waged to punish the dictator Saddam Hussein -- the folly of embracing London's detention of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet looks clear as mid-day.

Could the parallels be more obvious? Both men are CIA-financed dictators hired to crush their own people and their region's -- both are now used-up and discarded as "human rights violators."

And neither men are the real targets of imperial power -- but then neither are human rights.

Crimes Of course there's every reason to want Pinochet (and every other Chilean military and Christian Democratic leader) brought to justice. After all, Pinochet and his ilk were mass murderers and torturers who crushed the bursting flower of Chilean democracy, art, education and health care under their jackboots ... their efforts financed and organized by the Washington. But the crimes of Pinochet are dwarfed by those of Saddam Hussein's.

Recall the glory days of the Revolution in neighboring Iran-- its destruction of the Shah's terror-state, unleashing of popular democracy, expulsion of 40,000 U.S. forces, and re-nationalization of Iran's oil. Then recall its subsequent drowning in the blood of one million as Saddam Hussein unleashed war against it ... his efforts financed and organized by Washington.

Attacks Yet few --even in Iran-- could cheer the later Gulf War supposedly aimed at Hussein, suddenly dubbed "a modern-day Hitler" by his former overseers. Not in the dark light of half a million U.S. troops, explosives raining on the people of Baghdad, butchery of countless fleeing Iraqi soldiers

... or subsequent "sanctions" that have killed some 600,000 Iraqi children. And certainly there are no popular celebrations of the mid-December bombardment of Iraq, even in the lands whose leaders launched the operation. Credit war's dark clouds for casting events in sharp relief.

Trials Yet Pinochet's detention--ostensibly for crimes against humanity--has been widely seen by progressive-minded people as a step towards justice, especially in Europe and the U.S. Some are so delighted as to overlook the detention of Pinochet directly inspired (gasp) Belgian legal moves against the dethroners of Mobuto, the dictator installed by Belgian troops in their former nightmare colony of the Congo. Or the similar U.S. clamor, following Pinochet's arrest, to put Fidel Castro on trial.

Blame First World ignorance: few Third Worlders were celebrating Pinochet's detention, even in Chile. Blame Euro-American arrogance: the civilized world bears white man's burden of saving natives from savagery.

Or, perhaps, blame the absence of war.

But ironically, war is precisely what Pinochet's detention is about. Belligerents For nowadays the capitalist economy is spiraling towards disaster: economic collapse sweeps Asia, engulfs Russia and much of central Europe, and threatens Latin America. Even the mass media talks of "global over-capacity," deflation, and inevitable collapse of grossly-inflated stock markets.

Yet if big-business media coverage of looming international financial disaster --and parallels to 1929-- is growing, mention of its logical outcome --war-- is demonstratively absent.

But war is precisely the trajectory of global economics and politics. Corporations gird themselves with mega-mergers. Rival nations erect vast trading blocs--from NAFTA to the European Economic Community--against each other. Demagogic concerns over health, environmental and labor standards are wielded to restrict competitors' trade. Sharpened competition compels governmental austerity and mass corporate sackings.

Germany and Japan violate their Constitutions to build up interventionist militaries. The U.S. preserves--even increases--the war machinery once justified by the now-evaporated "threat" of Soviet military power . . . and unleashes it in Iraq and Yugoslavia. All signal the pregnancy of war.

Problems Indeed war is already underway in Russia's soft underbelly, especially Iraq and Yugoslavia. It's all about who gets to grab the unexploited vastness of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Yet anything except quick, low-casualty war remains a hard sell.

The bellicose --their eyes on profits, markets and oil-- need beguiling "human rights" cover for bombardments and troop deployments. Chilean torture victims, ethnically-cleansed Bosnians and Kosovars, and genocidally-butchered Rwandan Tutsis are coins cheaply spent for an apparent cloak of justice. And imperial prosecutions of war criminals from Chile, Yugoslavia and Rwanda establish--under the banner of "international law"--Western powers' right to intervene anywhere in the world.

Solutions But places like Washington, London, Madrid, and Paris have long since forfeited any right to judge monsters in the Third World -- after all, they created every one of them.

Only Chileans and Iraqis can deal justice to the likes of Pinochet and Hussein. And it's up those in Europe and the U.S. to dethrone--not embrace--their creators.

Otherwise there will only be war, more deaths . . . and no justice at all.

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