| Author | Message | | AMERICA FIRST!!!! | | Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2003 4:23 am Post subject: |
| Sharon was describing what his American supporters call the closest relationship in decades, perhaps ever, between a U.S. president and an Israeli government. "This is the best administration for Israel since Harry Truman [who first recognized an independent Israel]," said Thomas Neumann, executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think tank that promotes strategic cooperation with Israel as vital to U.S. security interests.
That's JINSA boys, who has taken our government by storm! I wonder who is on top, Bush or Sharon? If Sharon was, all we would see was George's big ears.
Yeppers they loved ole Truman, a fatcat Jewboy layed a loaded suitcase of money on Truman's desk, Israel bought and paid for in one day! | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2003 5:10 am Post subject: Rumsfeld family tie is first victim of war |
| From the London Daily Telegraph
news.telegraph.co.uk
Rumsfeld family tie is first victim of war
By Tony Paterson
(Filed: 09/02/2003)
The American defence chief Donald Rumsfeld has been disowned by his
anti-war relatives in north Germany, reports Tony Paterson
The Rumsfelds of Weyhe-Sudweyhe, an unremarkable red-brick suburb of
Bremen, were once proud of their long-lost cousin, America's
secretary of state for defence - but no longer.
Like many Germans, they are appalled by Donald Rumsfeld's hawkish
attitude to military action against Saddam Hussein. About 18,000
anti-war demonstrators marched through Munich yesterday to protest
at his presence at an international security conference - chanting
slogans such as "No room for Rumsfeld!"
"We think it is dreadful that Donald Rumsfeld is out there pushing
for a war against Iraq," Karin Cecere (nee Rumsfeld), 59, said from
her two-up, two-down home last week. "We are embarrassed to be
related to him," she told The Telegraph.
Margarete Rumsfeld, her 85-year-old mother, was equally
dismissive: "We don't have much to do with him anymore. Nowadays
he's just the American defence secretary to us, but for God's sake,
he'd better not start a war," she added.
They used to feel differently. Twenty-five years ago, the German
Rumsfelds were thrilled to welcome Mr Rumsfeld - then the United
States ambassador to Nato stationed in Brussels - into their
extended family.
Like many Americans keen to trace their European antecedents, Mr
Rumsfeld had made contact with the Weyhe-Sudweyhe Rumsfelds, a
branch of the family with whom his near relations had lost touch
since his great-great-grandfather, Heinrich, emigrated to America
during the 19th century.
Mr Rumsfeld paid three visits to Dietrich Rumsfeld, a bricklayer,
and his wife Margarete in their small artisan's cottage. On the last
occasion, they greeted him with chicken soup and roast pork for
lunch "It was a really pleasant family gathering, almost like a
wedding," said Mrs Cecere last week. "Mr Rumsfeld seemed a genuinely
nice man. It is such a shame about his war ambitions."
She had grown up, she said, during the Second World War and her
instincts were to search for a solution to the deadlock with Saddam
that did not involve military action. "I was born in the war and saw
its aftermath, and my mother went through it," she said. "There must
be a peaceful way of solving the Iraq problem."
This change of heart over their Rumsfeld cousin reflects the mood in
Germany. More than 60 per cent of Germans oppose a war and the US
defence secretary has become a hate figure for the country's peace
movement.
His desire to topple Saddam by force is at odds with the Social
Democrat-led government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which is
directly opposed to war in Iraq.
Even before his arrival in Germany yesterday, Mr Rumsfeld had faced
fierce criticism from senior German government officials for
describing France and Germany as "old Europe".
Last week he caused further outrage when he told the House Armed
Services Committee in Washington that Germany, like "Libya and
Cuba", had indicated that it "did not want to help in any way" the
international efforts to tackle Iraq.
The German government attempted to play down the criticism. "Mr
Rumsfeld is like he is. I can say no more," said Joschka Fischer,
the foreign minister. Other senior politicians were more
explicit. "Rumsfeld has flipped out - his behaviour is impossible,"
said Klaus Kinkel, a Free Democrat and former foreign minister.
Some Germans have misgivings, however, that their country's hard
line against war with Iraq may backfire - especially if, as widely
predicted, France drops its own objections at the last minute and
joins in military action.
Angela Merkel, the leader of the Christian Democrats, yesterday
became the first opposition figure to call for Germany to become
involved. "If it is impossible to solve the situation peacefully
then Germany has to take part in a military operation," she said,
accusing Mr Schröder's government of "spreading ill-will and
confusion" in Nato.
In Munich Mr Rumsfeld sought to dispel the furore over his own
comments by claiming that he had intended the phrase "old Europe" as
a term of affection, like that of "old friends".
He admitted that he was sometimes inclined to be blunt - but blamed
it on his German roots. "My family originates from northern Germany.
People there are well known for their direct and clear manner of
speaking."
His explanation did not impress most Germans - least of all his
cousins in Weyhe-Sudweyhe. Mrs Cecere said: "We're all in favour of
plain-speaking but our relation goes just too far."
_________________ | | | | Guest-c651 | | | | Guest-400c | | Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 4:11 am Post subject: Impending War on Iraq |
| Impending War on Iraq
American Jihad
George Bisharat
Thursday, February 13, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/13/ED152326.DTL
Many Americans suspect that the war our government is preparing to launch against Iraq is about oil. That is both correct and incorrect. True, Iraq possesses huge oil and gas reserves. Yes, the United States and England, the two countries most adamant for war, are home to the world's four largest energy conglomerates.
Yet oil is a constant. In a sense, everything in U.S. Middle East policy for the last 50 years or more has been about oil. For that very reason, however, oil cannot explain a shift in policy toward war. Some new variable has entered the equation.
No, the real reason we are going to war is the messianic vision of a small but influential group of strongly pro-Israeli hawks within the Bush administration. Their goal is unilateral global domination through absolute military superiority. U.S. global hegemony will "promote democracy" and "spread prosperity" through free enterprise and trade.
But the hawks' almost theological obsession with Iraq still needs explaining. The evidence in support of the "Iraqi threat" to America is palpably thin. Whether or not Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, for years he has been safely contained by threat of nuclear retaliation.
The hawks recognize this evidentiary weakness, and have aggressively pressed the CIA to cook its reports to support war. Douglas Feith, assistant to Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, oversees an amateur intelligence unit inside the Department of Defense that equips Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld with unconfirmed, professionally substandard information (according to Robert Dreyfuss in the American Prospect) to contest less gung-ho CIA reports. It has reportedly pressed especially hard to generate evidence of an Iraq-al-Qaeda connection (consider Colin Powell's Security Council presentation last week in this light).
Why the determination to overthrow the Iraqi regime? One key is the special regard of the hawks for Israel's right-wing elements. A number of senior Bush officials, including Wolfowitz, Feith and others, have strong affiliations with the Likud Party of Ariel Sharon (as documented by Bill and Kathleen Christison in the online magazine Counterpunch). Feith and Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, for example, helped author a 1996 study for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu describing Hussein's overthrow as "an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right -- [and] a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions." Interestingly, the study for the Israeli government also advocated resort to pre-emptive strike -- a theme now taken up by President Bush.
If an Iraqi attack on the United States is far-fetched, a rejuvenated Iraq could eventually alter the regional balance of power now favorable to Israel. Iraq is the only Arab state to combine oil wealth, water and a large population (more than 23 million), making it a potential powerhouse. War on Iraq would eliminate, for the foreseeable future, any obstacle to a disposition of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms that satisfy Israel's territorial ambitions on most or all of the West Bank.
Israel is quietly exultant at the turn in U.S. policy, occasionally hinting that Iran or Syria should be next. Israeli Deputy Interior Minister Gideon Ezra suggested to the Christian Science Monitor in August that a U.S. attack on Iraq will help Israel impose a new order, without Arafat, in the Palestinian territories: "The more aggressive the attack is, the more it will help Israel against the Palestinians. The understanding would be that what is good to do in Iraq, is also good for here." A U.S. strike would "undoubtedly deal a psychological blow" to the Palestinians and would help Israel vis-a-vis Syria, Ezra added.
Does this mean that we are going to war for Israel, rather than the United States? That question is incomprehensible to the hawks, who view the two countries as two democracies, shoulder to shoulder in facing the common threat of terrorism. Like the Israelis, the hawks would not stop at Iraq. Instead, Iraq is just a first step in redrawing the map of the entire Middle East. Iraq under a pro-Western leadership, with its enormous oil reserves, would diminish the strategic value of Saudi Arabia and negate Saudi leverage vis-a-vis the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. A new Iraq would be a beachhead for ridding the Middle East of autocracies -- the wellsprings of terrorism, in the hawks' view -- installing democratic governments, and making the region a haven for free enterprise and development.
This rosy vision of a revolutionized Middle East overlooks immense risks. Most obviously, a return to colonialism in the Arab world is almost certainly a formula for perpetual war -- Osama bin Laden's dream. Many of us in the Jan. 18 anti-war demonstration in San Francisco -- including supporters of Israel who carried the Israeli flag -- demur from this American jihad. We have very little time left to stop it.
George Bisharat is a professor of at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, where he teaches a course in law and Middle East societies.
Page A - 27 | | | | Guest-400c | | Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 4:54 am Post subject: JINSA Zionists in Bush Regime Destroying European Relations |
| (salon.com)
Europe's new world order
The streets are jammed with protesters. Governments are at risk of falling. Analysts say Europe is ready for a break from the U.S. that could reshape global relations for years to come.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Noah Sudarsky
Feb. 13, 2003 | PARIS -- The bitter standoff between the Bush administration and three longtime European allies over Iraq war plans continued for a third day Wednesday, as France, Germany and Belgium rejected the United States' scaled-down request that NATO prepare to defend Turkey from an attack by Saddam Hussein.
The argument is largely symbolic, and the U.S. has promised to bolster Turkish defenses without the blessing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization if necessary. But the division over Iraq is so stark and so deep that some analysts say it could precipitate the rise of a new world order in which Europe acts as an independent power to check and contain the U.S.
Stresses in the alliance have been growing since last fall, when European leaders and Bush administration moderates prevailed in getting the U.S. to take its case against Iraq to the United Nations. The latest conflict, however, is widely seen as the worst in the 53-year history of NATO and a defining moment in the post-Cold War era.
Europe and the U.S. have weathered past conflicts, and no one expects the alliance to end anytime soon. For now, European governments remain divided on the war. But grassroots opposition to the war is so strong that it is endangering leaders who back the U.S. effort -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for instance, and Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar. And in the longer term, some analysts say, opposition to the U.S. as a solo superpower could create favorable conditions for a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis that would reshape global relations for years to come.
"For a long time, only France was proposing to use the European Union as a counterweight to the United States," says Georgetown University professor Charles Kupchan, who served as a foreign policy advisor in the Clinton administration. "Today, that idea has been adopted by virtually everyone ... This generation [of Europeans] believes it's important to have a European voice on the global stage."
And, Kupchan warns, "if America is perceived less and less as a munificent power, and more and more as a predatory power, the risks of 'hard' competition will increase."
The immediate crisis was provoked Monday, when the three countries -- with strong backing from Russia -- charged that the U.S. move on Turkey's behalf was designed to undermine peace efforts. It has been exacerbated by a new French-led effort to triple the number of weapons inspectors in Iraq and, according to some reports, to put peace-keeping troops in the country. The argument has featured an unusual display of public acrimony among leaders whose countries have been allied since the end of World War II.
"It's clear that if NATO had accepted the American demands, we would already have entered a logic of war without a U.N. mandate," Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt declared on Monday. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell answered that the decision by France, Germany and Belgium to veto NATO deployment in Turkey was "inexcusable," and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the opposition a "disgrace."
To many in Europe, the Bush administration seems to care little -- or not at all -- if it is perceived as a Wild West Lone Ranger who has morphed into an insensitive 21st century hyper-power. In fact, many signals suggest that the U.S. recognizes the divisions within modern Europe and will not hesitate to exploit them.
Emerging victorious from the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and galvanized into action by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has made clear that it will act unilaterally and preemptively, if need be, to protect and advance American interests. But from the European grass roots to its halls of power, that position has frightened and incensed those who believe that working within multilateral governing bodies like the United Nations or the European Union is essential to resolving global disputes.
Robert Kagan, a journalist, author and former U.S. diplomat, makes the case that U.S.-Europe relations are dictated by one fundamental principle: Europeans, he argues in his new book "Of Paradise and Power," are guided by the ideal of perpetual peace, which implies a desire to settle disputes not by military power but by law, consensual politics, negotiation and cooperation. The United States, on the other hand, sees a chaotic, more Hobbesian world, in which it imposes a liberal order by the threat -- and sometimes by the use -- of blunt force. Europe may indeed want a more multilateral world, Kagan says, but isn't attempting to create a "countervailing power."
Conservative pundits in the U.S. have generally embraced that view; so has much of the Bush administration, no doubt reinforced by the Republicans' midterm electoral sweep. But that means they've failed to see, or have ignored, the desire of a growing segment of Western European society to break from the U.S. sphere of influence.
On issues ranging from the death penalty to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, from the creation of the International Criminal Court to the imminent invasion of Iraq, the European establishment is at odds with Washington. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have been marching through the streets of European cities in a popular upwelling against a new war with Iraq -- the most visible manifestation of a massive grassroots phenomenon that has been gaining momentum. European leaders, no matter what their views on Iraq, are increasingly concerned that they are being perceived by a new generation of constituents as subordinated to U.S. imperatives.
Concerned about their own loss of international clout and fearful of an eroding political base at home, European leaders like German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder have pulled away from the superpower that helped restore Europe after World War II and protected the continent during the Cold War. France and many of the other core E.U. states have begun to radically rethink their military dependence on the United States and their commitment to NATO as the organization best suited to defend Europe. That revolutionary notion, while probably latent even before the election of George W. Bush, has gained widespread acceptance in recent months.
In September, France officially declared itself "the defining power" behind the yet-to-be-created European Rapid Reaction Force (it will provide 20 percent of the funding). The European force would be able to mobilize 60,000 troops, hundreds of fighter jets, and dozens of battleships. The French nuclear aircraft carrier Charles-de-Gaulle, the only one of its class in Europe, would serve as an operational and logistical platform.
In November, France used its position as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to leverage the U.S. into acceptance of Resolution 1441. The resolution established a two-step process for any military action against Iraq, though the two sides disagree over whether a second vote by the council is ultimately needed.
French historian Patrice Higonnet, now a Harvard professor, has never been known for anti-American views. But in a Op-Ed piece published recently in the left-leaning French daily Liberation, he expressed a withering frustration with the Bush administration and suggested Europe had no choice but to step out of the U.S. sphere. "Europe, sooner or later, will have to separate from this new America," he wrote. "It would be best to do it audaciously, firmly, and with dignity."
Failure to do so, he suggested, meant that France must "collaborate" with a "gun-toting, arrogant, imperial, racist, opportunistic, politically manipulative, conspiratorial" United States epitomized by the Bush administration.
But while the confrontational methods of the Bush administration have squandered much, if not all, of the sympathy engendered by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there is still no universal opposition to a U.S.-led war against Iraq, even in France. Instead, many critics expressly oppose only a war dictated by the United States outside the bounds of the United Nations. Jean-Marie Colombani, editor of the prestigious newspaper Le Monde, has argued that the "Bush factor" is merely contextual and shouldn't erase the long history of cooperation between France and the United States. "We cannot remain prisoners of the 'war-antiwar' dilemma," he wrote in an editorial last week. "And for that to occur, we must rise above a simplistic negative reaction to the American attitude. That's the basic problem of Europe in general, and France in particular. What is the strategic doctrine the Europeans would oppose to the preventive war America is calling
The Franco-German plan of beefing up inspections, while giving inspectors more time to determine whether Iraq actually possesses weapons of mass destruction, seems to answer that question. Unlike Germany, France has never said it opposed a war on principle, and there has been no effort by any mainstream media outlet or politician to paint Saddam Hussein in anything but a negative light. But the United States, pushing an urgent timetable for war, seems uninterested in such subtleties. If France and Germany will not support the coalition, White House hawks suggest, then the U.S. will isolate them and undermine their heavyweight status within the E.U. by turning to other European allies. The eight-nation declaration of support for the Euro-U.S. bond is seen as illustrative of this strategy -- and has made French President Jacques Chirac furious. He considered the statement a machination of the Bush administration, and a personal affront.
"Chirac thought he could well have signed that letter, as it did not explicitly mention war," a source close to the French leader told Salon. "He wasn't consulted and felt the administration was deliberately attempting to isolate France. He was not amused." White House hawks did not seem especially concerned about his pique. Richard Perle, interviewed Sunday night on CNN, stated that "overreaching by France" and "German pacifism" would lead to a strengthening of U.S. ties with other European countries that are "unsatisfied" with the Franco-German tandem -- and particularly with the new Eastern bloc members of NATO. Currently, the U.S. has the backing of the U.K., Italy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Within Europe, there has always existed a split between nations who think of European unity basically in terms of the traditional transatlantic alliance with the United States, and the federalists who want to increase the degree of European unity as well as the degree of autonomy with regard to America. Traditionally, the balance has been in favor of the federalist faction, but with the E.U. spreading eastward, the balance could tip in favor of the "Atlantists," who have yet to adhere to the concept of strong Europe independent from the United States. The Eastern European nations look to America for leadership rather than to France or Germany. The Bush administration seems to be assuming that the divisions in Europe will grow deeper before they get begin to close. The letter signed by the "European 8" in favor of strong cooperation with Washington could undermine the development of the E.U. as a political entity. The new European constitution will call, in particular, for the election of a European foreign minister who will present a "common position" on issues of diplomacy and defense, based on a majority vote. But with countries like Hungary, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic now E.U. members or about to become E.U. members, that prospect seems increasingly illusory. The Franco-German tandem is going to find it more challenging to mold the E.U. into a more federalist entity with a coherent foreign policy and an independent military. "It's going to take a while for these countries to feel part of the European family, and not Euro-Atlantic," one French diplomat conceded in an interview. One result of the emerging split within Europe could be the consolidation of an axis among Bonn, Paris, and Moscow. If that were a reliable alliance, it would exert a powerful gravity on the rest of Europe, perhaps extending all the way to China. Such a coalition would prove a formidable challenge to any U.S. administration. In the near term, however, conditions within the alliance will be volatile, with the scales tipping tentatively toward Europe. Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has called on Europe, and France in particular, to start playing a bigger role in the Middle East. That could breed more conflict with the U.S., which is generally more pro-Israel than Europe. Saudi Arabia this month signaled that it wants U.S. troops out after the Iraq campaign is completed. Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., announced during a trip to Europe last Friday that U.S. troops stationed in Germany would probably be deployed elsewhere, perhaps permanently. The major problem with the current White House gambit is that popular opposition to a U.S.-led strike against Iraq outside the aegis of a new U.N. resolution has become overwhelming in virtually all of Western Europe. In Great Britain, Spain and Italy, opposition fluctuates between 77 percent and 98 percent. Saturday's scheduled antiwar demonstrations, which observers predict will dwarf anything previously seen in Europe, are likely to provide Blair and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with the strongest indication yet that granting unconditional support to America will likely have significant long-term political ramifications. Within his own Labour Party, Tony Blair is facing potentially crippling opposition over his policy of open support for the United States. Two high-ranking officials from his government have threatened to resign if the Blair goes to war without a second U.N. resolution. Clare Short, the International Development secretary, has stated that waging war without another resolution would be unacceptable. According to Hans-Ulrich Joerges, a prominent German political analyst, Chancellor Schroeder likewise sees popular revolt as the force behind Europe's declaration of independence. This, Joerges says, is Schroeder's hope: "The most important allies, Tony Blair included, spurn the United States because people would otherwise turn their backs on them. The conflict becomes the birthing hour of European unity. NATO and the United Nations are democratized. The Old Continent becomes a world power." Because of financial considerations and internal divisions, it is doubtful that Europe will become a powerhouse anytime soon. France's military ambitions are already creating a huge national deficit, putting it at odds with official E.U. dictates to achieve a balanced budget by 2004. Whether or not the present crisis is resolved, though, George Bush's brand of power politics has clearly convinced much of Europe that it must set off on a different course, however uncertain. | | | | Guest-400c | | Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 5:54 am Post subject: [Fwd: Impending War on Iraq / American Jihad] |
| Subj: [Fwd: Impending War on Iraq / American Jihad]
Date: 2/13/03 2:05:07 PM Pacific Standard Time
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/13/ED152326.DTL&type=printable
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Impending War on Iraq
American Jihad
George Bisharat
Thursday, February 13, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/13/ED152326.DTL
Many Americans suspect that the war our government is preparing to launch against Iraq is about oil. That is both correct and incorrect. True, Iraq possesses huge oil and gas reserves. Yes, the United States and England, the two countries most adamant for war, are home to the world's four largest energy conglomerates.
Yet oil is a constant. In a sense, everything in U.S. Middle East policy for the last 50 years or more has been about oil. For that very reason, however, oil cannot explain a shift in policy toward war. Some new variable has entered the equation.
No, the real reason we are going to war is the messianic vision of a small but influential group of strongly pro-Israeli hawks within the Bush administration. Their goal is unilateral global domination through absolute military superiority. U.S. global hegemony will "promote democracy" and "spread prosperity" through free enterprise and trade.
But the hawks' almost theological obsession with Iraq still needs explaining. The evidence in support of the "Iraqi threat" to America is palpably thin. Whether or not Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, for years he has been safely contained by threat of nuclear retaliation.
The hawks recognize this evidentiary weakness, and have aggressively pressed the CIA to cook its reports to support war. Douglas Feith, assistant to Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, oversees an amateur intelligence unit inside the Department of Defense that equips Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld with unconfirmed, professionally substandard information (according to Robert Dreyfuss in the American Prospect) to contest less gung-ho CIA reports. It has reportedly pressed especially hard to generate evidence of an Iraq-al-Qaeda connection (consider Colin Powell's Security Council presentation last week in this light).
Why the determination to overthrow the Iraqi regime? One key is the special regard of the hawks for Israel's right-wing elements. A number of senior Bush officials, including Wolfowitz, Feith and others, have strong affiliations with the Likud Party of Ariel Sharon (as documented by Bill and Kathleen Christison in the online magazine Counterpunch). Feith and Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, for example, helped author a 1996 study for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu describing Hussein's overthrow as "an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right -- [and] a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions." Interestingly, the study for the Israeli government also advocated resort to pre-emptive strike -- a theme now taken up by President Bush.
If an Iraqi attack on the United States is far-fetched, a rejuvenated Iraq could eventually alter the regional balance of power now favorable to Israel. Iraq is the only Arab state to combine oil wealth, water and a large population (more than 23 million), making it a potential powerhouse. War on Iraq would eliminate, for the foreseeable future, any obstacle to a disposition of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms that satisfy Israel's territorial ambitions on most or all of the West Bank.
Israel is quietly exultant at the turn in U.S. policy, occasionally hinting that Iran or Syria should be next. Israeli Deputy Interior Minister Gideon Ezra suggested to the Christian Science Monitor in August that a U.S. attack on Iraq will help Israel impose a new order, without Arafat, in the Palestinian territories: "The more aggressive the attack is, the more it will help Israel against the Palestinians. The understanding would be that what is good to do in Iraq, is also good for here." A U.S. strike would "undoubtedly deal a psychological blow" to the Palestinians and would help Israel vis-a-vis Syria, Ezra added.
Does this mean that we are going to war for Israel, rather than the United States? That question is incomprehensible to the hawks, who view the two countries as two democracies, shoulder to shoulder in facing the common threat of terrorism. Like the Israelis, the hawks would not stop at Iraq. Instead, Iraq is just a first step in redrawing the map of the entire Middle East. Iraq under a pro-Western leadership, with its enormous oil reserves, would diminish the strategic value of Saudi Arabia and negate Saudi leverage vis-a-vis the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. A new Iraq would be a beachhead for ridding the Middle East of autocracies -- the wellsprings of terrorism, in the hawks' view -- installing democratic governments, and making the region a haven for free enterprise and development.
This rosy vision of a revolutionized Middle East overlooks immense risks. Most obviously, a return to colonialism in the Arab world is almost certainly a formula for perpetual war -- Osama bin Laden's dream. Many of us in the Jan. 18 anti-war demonstration in San Francisco -- including supporters of Israel who carried the Israeli flag -- demur from this American jihad. We have very little time left to stop it.
George Bisharat is a professor of at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, where he teaches a course in law and Middle East societies.
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
Page A - 27 | | | | Freedom of Speech | | Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 6:05 am Post subject: The Great Denial in America and in Israel |
| The Great Denial In America and In Israel
Wall Street Meltdown...America Prepares for War a Year After Sept 11...Israel Without Hope
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Lerner
We live in a society whose bottom line is money and power. What is "real" in our society is only that which can be verified (or at least falsified) through some set of sense experience. All the rest is dismissed as "non-sense."
Living out this worldview, we've created a society filled with people who are rational maximizers of self-interest. They've learned that "common sense" means "looking out for number one." They've learned that we can only trust each other to do those things that we each see as being in our own short-term self-interest, measured in terms of maximizing the bottom line of money and power. In return for this way of thinking, Americans are rewarded with more money, more material goods. By creating a globalized system of capital, our society has been able to temporarily increase the wealth of people in our society at the expense of people in other parts of the world.
This selfish and materialistic way of thinking, however, doesn't come easily to most Americans. The American people are as decent as any on the planet, and have often shown their generosity and goodness to others (not least in the way that they've treated Jews). Generosity and goodness don't belong to a particular people, but to all people, passed down through the millennia of human evolution. Our natural tendency is to care for others, to feel connected to a community, and to find meaning in something of higher value. When we live as we do in a world based on a narrow conception of self-interest, when we find ourselves surrounded by people who are doing their best to teach themselves to be "realistic" and "mature" by these standards, we often end up in a great deal of pain, alienation, frustration, loneliness, and anger.
That pain is always in danger of bursting out in all kinds of ways—some of them very destructive, some of them constructive—that might lead us to challenge the whole nature of the world we live in. In response, the society established on the principles of maximizing self-interest does its best to contain, criminalize, pathologize, or otherwise repress all behaviors that express that pain, and to provide a system of material rewards for everyone who is doing their best to be out of touch with what they are really feeling.
Spiritual leaders and traditions teach us that a world cannot be based on this kind of thinking. They have taught that it is love and kindness, generosity and caring for others, justice and peace, open-heartedness and repentance that are the keys to keeping the world sane and functional. Yet there have been counter-tendencies, moments of cruelty and hurt, and when those counter-tendencies became institutionalized in social systems based on oppression, more and more people lost confidence in the underlying truths of the spiritual tradition. So, for a very short period in human history, people in the West have thought they could ignore this spiritual wisdom and build a society based on an ethos of selfishness and materialism.
We are now at the beginning of the breakdown of that delusion. There are signs all around us that are overwhelming. And yet, both in the United States and in Israel, the forces of denial still have a huge amount of power to shape public discourse and to force everyone to deny the evidence that is right in front of them—that the old ways are not working.
American Denial
We are about to commemorate the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Instead of using the occasion to rethink the fundamentals of our system and the world crisis that it is generating, instead of using the occasion to reclaim the best in American patriotism and to let it speak for the revolutionary values of every human being endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights, we are likely to hear more claptrap, including justifications for a war against Iraq and whatever other military maneuvers the Bush administration thinks it can get away with.
Moments drenched in self-deception will fill the airwaves and then pass, and we will still be left to face the reality that a world based on selfishness and materialism just doesn't work.
The Wall Street Meltdown
The heart of the system of self-interest beats on Wall Street, where the stock market depends on the assumption that corporations will be run to maximize the advantage of investors. But this assumption leaves out the impact of the ethos of selfishness on everyone who works in the system, and who have learned to "be realistic" and use the opportunities we have to maximize our own advantage without regard to the consequences for others. The society provides no incentive to look at our own long-term self-interest and to see how we are all interconnected and our fates tied to the well being of the planet and each other. Corporations are rewarded for maximizing profits, even if the way they do so leads to depletion of the planet's life support systems and global warming. Americans are in denial of what is facing us directly: A system built on narrow conceptions of self-interest is necessarily self-destructive.
Corporate executives are not bad people—they share the same values as almost everyone else in our society, only in different circumstances. They know that they have a short period of opportunity to maximize their own advantage. If they were not smart maximizers of self-interest, they would not have figured out how to get to the top in the first place. And the people who picked them did so because they saw those qualities and figured they'd work well for advancing the interests of the corporation. But for most top corporate executives in most (not all) fields, the corporation is primarily an opportunity to make money.
The Communists had a joke which captures a deep truth: "When the next to last capitalist is being hanged," their story goes, "the last capitalist will be selling the rope for the occasion." The reality is that selfishness blinds everyone to their own long-term best interests. Millions of people have lost their life savings and their retirement because of this dynamic. A system of wild self-interest consumes itself.
In a world in which each corporation seeks to maximize its own advantage, measured in terms of money and power, there is no incentive to develop a program for the rational use of our resources. Ecological reform movements find themselves in a struggle that they cannot win, and so become "realistic" by redefining their goals so narrowly that even when they win specific battles the overall degradation of the planet nevertheless accelerates with devastating consequences. We are just beginning to experience the reality of global warming, and that's only one of the hundreds of ways in which the ethos of selfishness is now destroying the entire life support system of the planet.
If we took the imperative to be realistic seriously, we would realize that the only realistic thing to do is to fundamentally change the bottom line of our current economic system so that people would be rewarded for being caring rather than for being selfish. Try for anything short of that, and soon you'll be left with the same old system, because the logic that leads people to compromise for minor reforms leads them to compromise on their compromises. Partial reforms are not going to work. Nor will achieving partial reforms be easier than going for larger social change, because the current political system is dominated by people in both major parties who are subservient to the interests of big capital, and because the powerful will fight against minor reforms with the same intensity they'd use if the challenge were against the whole system. Partial reforms have the additional problem of having less popular appeal than a fundamental change in the bottom line because they are so complicated and because it's so much harder to communicate their underlying ethical foundations.
That's why progressives and spiritually oriented people should stop trying to compromise and instead make the central point of what we have called Emancipatory Spirituality or a Politics of Meaning the center of their entire program:
America needs a New Bottom Line so that institutions, economic practices, and individual decisions are judged rational not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize our capacities to be caring about others, ecologically and ethically coherent, and capable of responding to the world not only in narrow utilitarian ways but with awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation.
People raised in such a society will not think it rational to pillage the economy to benefit themselves.
In Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul (Hampton Roads, 2000) I show what the specific programmatic consequences would be of taking this new definition seriously. If we demanded this new bottom line for every economic, political, and social institution, we'd have the basis for a major transformation of American society and a simple and understandable first principle that would appeal to many people who do not necessarily respond to the current vision of liberal and progressive politics.
Here's how to get this conversation going: join the Tikkun Community's national campaign for The Social Responsibility Amendment (SRA) to the U.S. Constitution. It would require corporations with incomes of $20 million or more to get a new corporate charter every ten years, which would only be granted to corporations that could prove to a jury of ordinary Americans that they had a satisfactory record of Social Responsibility as measured by an Ethical Impact Report (for the full text of the SRA see click here or check out our July/August 1997 issue at your local library).
If corporations knew that they stood to lose their corporate charter, they would have a powerful incentive to encourage different behavior than that which is bringing down the global economy.
As a first step in this campaign, local cities, counties ,and state governments should require that any corporation competing for a state contract of more than a million dollars file an Ethical Impact Report and that the contract be awarded to that corporation among the three low bidders who had the best history of social responsibility.
In their guts, most investors know that the problems caused by Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom and all the rest are endemic to the system of which they are a part. That's why, when forced to confront the rash of greed that is destroying our corporations, investors don't feel reassured by halfway measures.
No "reform" will put a permanent end to this kind of corruption as long as people accept that "looking out for number one" is the only rational approach to their life situation. That's why a progressive politics must be firmly focused on changing the bottom line. Spirit Matters very very much. Those of us who have been talking about spiritual transformation are far more practical than those who think that they can run an economy based on the ethos that has caused the Wall Street meltdown.
The Global Struggle Against Fundamentalism
Ever since September 11 our society has deluded itself into thinking that the primary problem it faces is a bunch of Muslim fundamentalists who are irrationally committed to destroying America because of the freedom, democracy, human rights, and women's liberation that our society embodies.
Unquestionably, there are such people. But this is a picture that only makes sense through a lens of denial about our actual role in the world.
The Left enters here with an important reminder: The globalization of capital has not been good for much of the world. It is not generosity and kindness that mobilized American corporations behind a program of global expansion that was championed by the Clinton/Gore forces as much as by the Bush/Cheney team. Through a series of international agreements promoted by the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, etc., Western capital has been able to penetrate third world countries even more effectively than they could using the old-fashioned methods of colonialism and military adventurism. The impact has been an increase of wealth in advanced industrial countries and a decrease in wealth among the poorest sectors of third world countries.
But if the Left has been right about the globalization of capital, it has missed an even more important dimension: the global struggle among religious systems. The corporate penetration of the world brings with it the corporate religion of materialism and selfishness, the common sense of looking out for number one, the bottom line of money and power, the relegation of any spiritual or moral values to the sidelines as purely inner and personal pursuits that should not be allowed to define public space. True enough, these ideas are often tied to political ideas about democracy and individual rights that have been won in the West and which are in fact worth fighting for. But the reality of most people's lives outside the West is that American corporate power does not actually increase their democracy or their individual rights. When push comes to shove, as it almost always does in these countries, the United States has been far more vigilant in fighting for corporate freedom than individual freedom, and has often sponsored governments that impose undemocratic elites who repress their own populations.
It is in response to this reality that Islamic, Hindu, Jewish, and Christian fundamentalisms have made a comeback in the past hundred years. What each of these systems offers is very similar to what ultra-nationalist and fascistic ideologies offer: a way for people to feel that they are valued and important even if they are not successful in the competitive marketplace. Faced with a world that tells them that what really counts is how much they can be of use to generate money and power, most people know that they will not be very successful. No wonder that they feel validated by a spiritual system that tells them that they are fundamentally valuable regardless of how successful they will be—valuable because they are part of "the faith community" or part of "the nation."
This is a logic that works even in advanced industrial societies. The recent surge of energy around the Pledge of Allegiance (after a panel of judges had declared it unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds because of the inclusion of "under God" in its phraseology) was only the most recent stage of a battle by people desperate for some sense of meaning higher than that which can be achieved through the marketplace (albeit articulated by right wing opportunistic leaders who attempt to channel this hunger for meaning into ultra-nationalist forms, plus a bunch of pathetic elected liberals who follow them). We don't want the Pledge in schools at all, in any form, because we don't want coerced loyalty, and we don't want God's name used to legitimate any particular national entity (which is why we don't support Jewish chauvinism either). At the same time, it's important to understand why people respond to this issue so viscerally. It's not because they are stupid or reactionary, it's because they want to affirm a community which may only live in their fantasy world, but which provides them with some comfort from the realities of market-driven individualism.
The same is true globally. When people worldwide cheer attacks on the United States, it is not because, as our leaders pretend, they hate democracy, civil liberties, or human rights. The truth is that the governments the United States has attempted to impose on the world (e.g. in Iran under the Shah, Vietnam under Ky and Thieu, Chile under Pinochet, Israel's West Bank Occupation) have not been known for their democracy, civil liberties, or human rights. What most people experience of the United States comes from repressive regimes, or from the penetration of U.S. capitalism with its inevitable religion of money and power and selfishness. This capitalist religion demeans non-market values; undermines the traditional family structures that provide some degree of support for people that the market won't supply (even women in these cultures often feel more supported by these family structures than by the free market, which is one reason many women end up backing fundamentalist regimes); destroys village economies, which in turn leads villagers to move into the slums surrounding large cities; and does much else that people can legitimately detest. Faced with this choice, many people reject the religion of the market and choose the only alternative being presented to them—fundamentalist religious communities.
It would be foolish to think that Bin Laden and his trained murderers were motivated solely by the actual suffering our global system has generated. The fundamentalist forms of religion that become popular have their own distortions that subordinate women, demean those who are not part of the community of the elect, and discourage critical thinking. So although people often get attracted to these communities for decent reasons, they end up adopting worldviews that have racist, sexist, and xenophobic elements that can lead to hateful sects like that created by Al Qaeda.
Yet Americans are in deep denial when they think that the solution to these problems will be achieved by overthrowing the (non-fundamentalist, secular) government of Iraq, or any other act of war. Of course, we'd like to see different regimes in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. But why stop there? We'd also like to see a genuinely democratic process in China, Russia, and even in the United States presidential elections (direct democratic election of the president, not an electoral system). But we do not want to see any of this achieved by force and violence, which will only lead to more force and violence. The way to peace is a way of peace.
In every act we do, we either affirm and strengthen the sanctity of human beings and bring God's presence in our lives more fully into focus, or we contribute to the desanctification of human life and the distancing of ourselves from God. America had a choice after September 11: to see the world through the lens of the firemen, policemen, and ordinary civilians who risked their lives to save others, or to see the world through the frame of Bin Laden and terror.
Unfortunately, following opportunistic and misguided leaders in both parties, most Americans rallied around the latter vision, using our resources to escalate military spending, reduce civil liberties, and increase the general level of fear and paranoia in almost every aspect of American life.
Yet the United States will only achieve security when it is perceived by the world as a society using its vast resources to eliminate global poverty, hunger, homelessness, and all forms of economic inequalities in the world; as the major power using its resources to combat global warming and to make all global investments and finances in accord with the best interests of preserving the ecological sustainability of the planet; and as the society that in its actual practice embodies an ethos of mutual caring and open-hearted generosity to the peoples of the world. Had the United States used September 11 to follow those paths, we would all be far more secure today.
Israeli Denial
I sit here in tears. Seven students at Hebrew University were just killed by a bomb while sitting in the cafeteria. A former member of Beyt Tikkun, now studying in Jerusalem, was sitting in the cafeteria moments before the bomb exploded and was nearly killed himself. Nothing can ever justify these morally outrageous murders. I am deeply angry and mournful, as I am whenever my Jewish brothers and sisters are harmed.
And I mourn also for the Palestinians killed by Israel in the past months. The UN reports that in the months of April and May, 497 Palestinians have been killed by Israel. I mourn for each and every one of them. And there is no "moral equivalence" in mourning for both peoples—every life is unique and no murder of any one person justifies the murder of another. We must fight against the denial that goes on on both sides—the denial of the humanity of the Other.
This insanity has to stop. Since the invasion of Jenin and the escalation of oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli army in the Spring of 2002, the violent attacks and counter-attacks have spiraled out of control. Here's a brief overview:
Palestinian groups responded to the murder of Palestinian civilians in Jenin by escalating violent strikes and sickening acts of terror against Israeli civilians.
In return, instead of responding to the specific groups that attacked them, Israel once again has declared war on the entire Palestinian people. Israel has reinvaded Palestine, occupied all the major cities and most of the small towns, and imposed martial law. Most of the population is living under conditions of twenty-four hour curfews—anyone leaving their apartments for any reason is being shot and killed. As I write, Israel is allowing people to go out to restock their food only once a week, for a few hours.
The UN and other groups are reporting widespread hunger and malnutrition caused by the denial of food that is caused by the Occupation.
The Palestinians were about to break this impasse. Yet, just a few hours after Hamas, the Tanzim, and other violent Palestinian groups put forward an offer for a cease fire with Israel, and indicated a willingness to suspend all acts of violence inside the Green Lines. Israel responded by sending a U.S.-supplied B16 to bomb a leader of Hamas who was inside an apartment building in Gaza, in the process killing fourteen civilians (including seven children) and injuring over 140 other civilians. This act was condemned by every major government in the world, including the United States, which had known about the process for ending the violence and was dismayed when that process was intentionally destroyed by Ariel Sharon's government. In this one move, Ariel Sharon made it clear that, despite his protestations against Palestinian violence, it is precisely this violence that his policies seek to encourage, because it is those acts that provide him with the legitimation to avoid negotiations and to expand the West Bank settlements in defiance of the world's insistence that Israel give up the West Bank and Gaza.
Nor was this only clear to outsiders, Westerners, or people previously opposed to the current coalition government between Likud and Labor. In a dramatic move the day after Israel had torpedoed this effort for peace, the Assistant Minister of Defense of the Israeli government, the daughter of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, resigned from the government which she said was "destroying the last vestiges of the good accomplished by my father's legacy," and threatened to quit the Labor Party if it remained attached to the morally compromised direction of Shimon Peres. As the assistant Minister of Defense, no one has been in a better position than she to see what the Israeli government has been doing and why its actions are morally unacceptable.
nHamas responded to Sharon's Gaza bombing with a terror assault of its own on students eating lunch at the Hebrew University cafeteria, killing and wounding many. Predictably, and stupidly, the Palestinians did not continue to offer peace, but returned to acts of violence. Their failure to see that their own interests lie in the path of nonviolence is equal in moral blindness to that of the Israelis who cannot see that their interests lie in a whole new approach based on generosity, open-heartedness, and repentance (a repentance which we call for from both sides, since both Israel and Palestine have engaged in acts of evil and cruelty for which the appropriate response is atonement and a genuine seeking of forgiveness from the other side).
nWhile all this has been happening in Israel/Palestine, a group of people who think of themselves as "pro-Palestinian" have launched a boycott of Israeli academics. The boycott recently led a European journal to fire from their editorial board two Israeli academics who actually oppose current Israeli policy. We protest this act of moral blindness and stupidity. Similarly, we oppose any blanket boycott of Israel. We do support narrowly targeted acts to oppose the Occupation—for example, the boycott of Caterpillar which has been selling to the Israeli army tractors specifically designed for use in destroying Palestinian homes.
Time for Repentance and Atonement
This year's commemoration of September 11 offers Americans a perfect time to rethink our society's priorities, to stop and think before engaging in another war, and to change our country's policies so that it becomes the force for ecological sanity, generosity, and sharing the wealth with everyone on the planet—a force for building a world of peace and justice. Please invite people to your home, synagogue, church, mosque, or community center—and have this discussion be the focus of September 11. If you are Jewish, let this be the focus of the Days of Repentance and Atonement (September 6–16). We approach this moment with deep compassion for the pain that leads so many people into denial, but also with a strong intention to make this period of repentance more than an empty ritual: We want to end the cycles of pain and violence, and that requires fundamental changes to which we must give our energies in the coming year. May we all be inscribed for a New Year, 5763, in which the whole planet experiences a rebirth of generosity and kindness, social justice, peace, love and compassion, and ecological sensitivity. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
