| Author | Message | | Guest-400c | |  | | Guest-c651 | | | | Guest-cdbc | | Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2003 12:45 pm Post subject: New York Times Forum; Distrust of Feith and Perle |
| Subject: New York Times Forum; Distrust of Feith and Perle
lfeiner1 - 06:39pm Feb 14, 2003 EST (# 16265 of 16343)
to Baikonur who says
(how can you say there) was an official plan to (transfer Palestinians), a plan approved by supposed zionist controllers of the government (you named them)--and in addition, that this plan was elicidated in a recent Time Magazine article
According to former CIA official Bill Christenson, when Douglas Feith and Richard Perle were advisors to Israeli PM Netanyahu they wrote up a plan for the US to invade Iraq and turn Iraq into a constitutional monarchy and Jordan into a Palestinian state. If you have any questions about this you can email Bill Christenson at christenson@counterpunch.org. Mr. Feith is on record has having stated that the Palestinians have no claims whatsover in "Judea and Samaria". Last Wednesday I called up the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Victoria Clarke in charge of public affairs, in order to express my concerns about Feith and Perle and also to express my concerns about reports in the Israeli media about Sharon's plans to expel Palestinians during a US invasion of Iraq. The woman who answered the phone said that she knew Mr. Feith and that his position had moderated considerably since then, that people change, and that he "wasn't Richard Perle". She seemed to be unaware the the Palestinian relief agency, UNRWA, upon which 1/3 of the Palestinians in the territories depend on for subsistence was about to run out of funds in a month. She seemed to imply that the statement by Powell at Davos about a contiguous Palestinian state was the US position. She also said that Rumsfeld was keeping a very close eye on Sharon and the Palestinians vs a vs transfer. She also seemed taken aback when I told her that Victoria Clarke had repeated Netanyahu's statement that the 9/11 attack on the WTC was really a "blessing in disguise" because it woke Americans up to the threat of terrorism. Ms. Clarke made that statement at a town hall meeting called by Congressman Moran of Virginia last Monday. It was on CSPAN. The woman I spoke to at the DOD Office of Public Affairs said the remark was disturbing and that she would look into it.
lfeiner1 - 06:57pm Feb 14, 2003 EST (# 16270 of 16343)
It seems also that I am not alone in my distrust of Mr. Feith and others in this administration in regards to Iraq. According to Albert Hunt in yesterday's Wall Street Journal
If it had been a prize fight the Senate Foreign relations committee hearing would have been a TKO. Two of the Bush administration's national security heavyweights - Marc Grossman and Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy - testified on plans for a post-Saddam Iraq. On the nature, scope, cost and duration they spent the entire morning on the ropes offering few specifics. The inescapable conclusion: The US has prepared brilliantly for the military operation and is frightfully ill-prepared for the difficult aftermath.(*) .Anthony Zinni (an outside expert) former commander in chief of the US central command.lamented the lack of a post-Saddam 'counterpart' in the military planning; he was dismissive of the high-level groups assembled at the Pentagon three weeks ago to consider the next state: 'That doesn't do it for me'.Sen Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam combat veteran angrily spoke of the dangers of a largely ad hoc policy once war starts and American forces are in harm's way: 'If you're having a problem now,' he lectured (Feith and Grossman) 'what the hell do you think you're going to do when you get in there?' Few accept Mr. Grossman's estimate that the American rebuilding effort in Iraq would last two years. A 10 year plan would be 'more realistic' suggested Zinni
lfeiner1 - 07:03pm Feb 14, 2003 EST (# 16271 of 16343)
Nor am I alone in my distrust of Richard Perle
(The Defense Policy Board) is chaired by Richard Perle - a Pentagon official whose hard-lined views won him the title "Prince of Darkness" - the board gives its 31 unpaid members, something every Washington player wants; unrivaled access without accountability. Perle uses his post as a springboard to for his unilateralist, attack-Iraq views to try to whip the Bush administration into action. But despite its name, the board does not make policy. As the Saudi episode shows, it can do something far scarier: give a false impression of it. In effect, the board has becomes Perle' podium. It rarely achieved any notice before he assumed the chairmanship last year, but now his position there lends weight to his public pronouncements. New York Times 8/21/2
* Which of course would lead to instabiity and opportunities for transfer.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Views are those of the owners. Views may not be construed as reflective of the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.
If you're Jewish please support the Jewish statement supporting Palestinian refugee rights especially the Right to Return. For details go to www.TheStruggle.org | | | | Guest-cdbc | | | | Guest-cdbc | | Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2003 1:08 pm Post subject: John Pilger: Urgency of Saving Lives |
| It is not possible to overstate the significance and urgency of the march and demonstration against an unprovoked British and American attack on Iraq, a nation with whom we have no quarrel and who offer us no threat. : John Pilger :14 Feb 2003
The urgency is the saving of lives. First, let us stop calling it a "war". The last time "war" was used in the Gulf was in 1991 when the truth was buried with more than 200,000 people. Attacking a 70-mile line of trenches, three American brigades, operating at night, used 60-ton armoured earthmovers to bury alive teenage Iraqi conscripts, including the wounded and those surrendering and retreating. Survivors were slaughtered from the air. The helicopter gunship pilots called it a "turkey shoot".
Of the 148 Americans who died, a quarter of them were killed by Americans. Most of the British were killed by Americans. This was known as "friendly fire". The civilians who were killed, whose deaths were never recorded by the American military because it was "not policy", were "collateral damage".
Today, after 13 years of an economic blockade that has been compared with a medieval siege, Iraq is defenceless, no matter the discovery of an odd missile that can reach barely 90 miles. Its ragtag army is woefully under-equipped and awaiting its fate, along with a civilian population of whom 42 per cent are children. They are stricken. Even the export of British manufactured vaccines meant to protect Iraqi infants from diphtheria and yellow fever has been restricted. The vaccines, say the Blair government, are "capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction".
This is the nation upon which the Bush gang says it will rain down 800 missiles within the space of two days. "Shock and awe" the Pentagon calls its "strategy". Meanwhile the weapons inspectors and their morose Swedish leader go about their treasure hunt and a cartoon show is hosted in the UN by General Colin Powell (who rose to the top by covering up the notorious My Lai massacre in Vietnam).
It is all a charade. The Americans want Iraq because they want to control and reorder the Middle East. Their once-favourite dictator, Saddam Hussein, made the mistake of misreading the signals from Washington in 1990 and invading another favourite American oil tyranny, Kuwait. So belatedly, Saddam must be replaced, preferably by another Saddam, though more reliable and less uppity. There is no issue of "weapons of mass destruction". That is a distraction for us and the media.
The wider significance of the promised attack is the rapacious nature of the American state. As Tony Blair has confirmed, North Korea is likely to be "next". I think he is wrong and that Iran will be next. That is what the Israeli regime wants and Israel's wishes are as important to influential members of the Bush gang as oil. Thereafter, there is China. Says Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Institute in Washington: "What radical US nationalists have in mind is either to 'contain' China by overwhelming military force or to destroy the Chinese Communist state."
ONE of the Bush gang's planners, Richard Perle, has said: "If we let our vision of the world go forth and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war ... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."
September 11 2001 was their big opportunity. On September 12 Donald Rumsfeld wanted to use the Twin Towers tragedy as an excuse to attack Iraq, which was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell argued that "public opinion has to be prepared". Afghanistan was the easier option and they were planning to attack it anyway.
The subsequent American endeavour to encircle al-Qaeda in the eastern mountains of Afghanistan was a fiasco and more than 20,000 people, estimates Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, paid the price of that country's "liberation".
Since September 11 America has established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of fossil fuels. The Unocal oil company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush has repudiated the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions, with the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states "if necessary" - incredibly Geoffrey Hoon, on Blair's behalf, has said exactly the same.
Assassination is now legal. Virtually before our eyes, prisoners have been tortured to the point of suicide in an American concentration camp in Cuba. Under Donald Rumsfeld a secret group with the Orwellian name of the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group has the job of provoking terrorist attacks, which would then require "counter-attack" by the United States. You have to keep reminding yourself this is not fantasy: that the enemy to all our security is not a regional tyrant - there are plenty of those, many created by America and Britain.
And what of Blair? Do he and his craven Ministers understand any of this? It is difficult to know. Such is Blair's evangelical obsession with Iraq, and perhaps his desperation in the face of overwhelming public opposition, that he is prepared to mislead and deceive not only the public but the armed forces he has sent to pursue his and the mad Perle's "vision".
Does anyone believe the Prime Minister any more? During his interview last Thursday with the BBC's Jeremy Paxman, Blair lied once again that UN weapons inspectors were "thrown out" of Iraq by the regime in 1998. He knows the truth: that they were withdrawn when it was discovered the CIA had planted spies among them in order to gather intelligence for the subsequent Anglo-American bombing of Iraq in December 1998.
I MEAN," said Blair last week, "(the threat of Iraq's undiscovered weapons of mass destruction) is what our intelligence services are telling us and it's difficult because, you know, either they're simply making the whole thing up ..."
Making it up, indeed. On February 7 Downing Street had to apologise when it was revealed that its latest dossier seeking to justify war - "Iraq: its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation" - was lifted word for word, including the grammatical and spelling mistakes, from an article written by an American student 10 years ago. As David Edwards of Media Lens has pointed out, "the only changes involved the doctoring of passages to make the report more ominous: a claim that Iraq was 'aiding opposition groups' was changed to a claim that Iraq was 'supporting terrorist organisations'." Like Bush, Blair lies that "we do know of links between al-Qaeda and Iraq". An investigation by America's National Security Council, which advises Bush, "found no evidence of a noteworthy relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda. On February 5 a Ministry of Defence document, leaked to the BBC, revealed that British intelligence had told Blair there was "no current link" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Blair has even denied seeing this crucial report.
As a Christian, Blair says be is helping to build a "secure and hopeful world for all our children".
The Labour MP Llew Smith recently asked the Education Secretary to explain "how we can find billions of pounds to increase our defence budget and go to war with Iraq but cannot find the money to scrap tuition fees?"
There was no intelligible reply.
LAST November a report by the School of Public Policy, University of College London, disclosed that "53 per cent of children in inner London are living in income poverty". Yet Chancellor Gordon Brown puts aside "at least a billion pounds" as "a war chest" with which to attack not poverty but an impoverished people half a world away.
A peaceful solution in the Middle East is only possible when the threat of an attack is lifted and a total ban on so-called weapons of mass destruction and arms sales is imposed throughout the region, on Israel as well as Iraq. The economic blockade on the people of Iraq should end immediately and justice for the Palestinians become a priority.
The power of public opinion, both moral and political power, is far greater than many people realise. That's why Blair fears it and why, through the inept Tessa Jowell, he tried to ban tomorrow's demonstration. He fears it because if the voice of the people threatens the house of cards he has built on his obsession with Iraq and America, it may well threaten his political life and make mockery of the Anglo-American "coalition" and deny the Bush gang its fig leaf.
Should that happen, American public opinion, now stirring heroically after the most sustained brainwashing campaign for half a century, may even stop the Bush gang in its tracks. As of yesterday 42 American cities had passed resolutions condemning an attack.
Is all that a cause for optimism? Yes it is. Look at how this week's French and German "rebellion" almost seemed to change everything; and remember that those governments are speaking out only because of overwhelming pressure from their people.
Now that has to happen in Britain. Tomorrow | | | | Guest-cdbc | | Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2003 1:40 pm Post subject: Robert Fisk: The Case against War |
| Robert Fisk: The case against war: A conflict driven by the self-interest of America
15 February 2003
In the end, I think we are just tired of being lied to. Tired of being talked down to, of being bombarded with Second World War jingoism and scare stories and false information and student essays dressed up as "intelligence". We are sick of being insulted by little men, by Tony Blair and Jack Straw and the likes of George Bush and his cabal of neo-conservative henchmen who have plotted for years to change the map of the Middle East to their advantage.
No wonder, then, that Hans Blix's blunt refutation of America's "intelligence" at the UN yesterday warmed so many hearts. Suddenly, the Hans Blixes of this world could show up the Americans for the untrustworthy "allies" they have become.
The British don't like Hussein any more than they liked Nasser. But millions of Britons remember, as Blair does not, the Second World War; they are not conned by childish parables of Hitler, Churchill, Chamberlain and appeasement. They do not like being lectured and whined at by men whose experience of war is Hollywood and television.
Still less do they wish to embark on endless wars with a Texas governor-executioner who dodged the Vietnam draft and who, with his oil buddies, is now sending America's poor to destroy a Muslim nation that has nothing at all to do with the crimes against humanity of 11 September. Jack Straw, the public school Trot-turned-warrior, ignores all this, with Blair. He brays at us about the dangers of nuclear weapons that Iraq does not have, of the torture and aggression of a dictatorship that America and Britain sustained when Saddam was "one of ours". But he and Blair cannot discuss the dark political agenda behind George Bush's government, nor the "sinister men" (the words of a very senior UN official) around the President.
Those who oppose war are not cowards. Brits rather like fighting; they've biffed Arabs, Afghans, Muslims, Nazis, Italian Fascists and Japanese imperialists for generations, Iraqis included – though we play down the RAF's use of gas on Kurdish rebels in the 1930s. But when the British are asked to go to war, patriotism is not enough. Faced with the horror stories, Britons – and many Americans – are a lot braver than Blair and Bush. They do not like, as Thomas More told Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons, tales to frighten children.
Perhaps Henry VIII's exasperation in that play better expresses the British view of Blair and Bush: "Do they take me for a simpleton?" The British, like other Europeans, are an educated people. Ironically, their opposition to this obscene war may make them feel more, not less, European.
Palestine has much to do with it. Brits have no love for Arabs but they smell injustice fast enough and are outraged at the colonial war being used to crush the Palestinians by a nation that is now in effect running US policy in the Middle East. We are told that our invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a burning, fearsome wound to which Bush devoted just 18 words in his meretricious State of the Union speech – but even Blair can't get away with that one; hence his "conference" for Palestinian reform at which the Palestinians had to take part via video-link because Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, refused to let them travel to London.
So much for Blair's influence over Washington – the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, "regretted" that he couldn't persuade Sharon to change his mind. But at least one has to acknowledge that Sharon – war criminal though he may be for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres – treated Blair with the contempt he deserves. Nor can the Americans hide the link between Iraq and Israel and Palestine. In his devious address to the UN Security Council last week, Powell linked the three when he complained that Hamas, whose suicide bombings so cruelly afflict Israelis, keeps an office in Baghdad.
Just as he told us about the mysterious al-Qa'ida men who support violence in Chechnya and in the "Pankisi gorge". This was America's way of giving Vladimir Putin a free hand again in his campaign of rape and murder against the Chechens, just as Bush's odd remark to the UN General Assembly last 12 September about the need to protect Iraq's Turkomans only becomes clear when one realises that Turkomans make up two thirds of the population of Kirkuk, one of Iraq's largest oil fields.
The men driving Bush to war are mostly former or still active pro-Israeli lobbyists. For years, they have advocated destroying the most powerful Arab nation. Richard Perle, one of Bush's most influential advisers, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld were all campaigning for the overthrow of Iraq long before George W Bush was elected – if he was elected – US President. And they weren't doing so for the benefit of Americans or Britons. A 1996 report, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm) called for war on Iraq. It was written not for the US but for the incoming Israeli Likud prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and produced by a group headed by – yes, Richard Perle. The destruction of Iraq will, of course, protect Israel's monopoly of nuclear weapons and allow it to defeat the Palestinians and impose whatever colonial settlement Sharon has in store.
Although Bush and Blair dare not discuss this with us – a war for Israel is not going to have our boys lining up at the recruiting offices – Jewish American leaders talk about the advantages of an Iraqi war with enthusiasm. Indeed, those very courageous Jewish American groups who so bravely oppose this madness have been the first to point out how pro-Israeli organisations foresee Iraq not only as a new source of oil but of water, too; why should canals not link the Tigris river to the parched Levant? No wonder, then, that any discussion of this topic must be censored, as Professor Eliot Cohen, of Johns Hopkins University, tried to do in the Wall Street Journal the day after Powell's UN speech. Cohen suggested that European nations' objections to the war might – yet again – be ascribed to "anti-Semitism of a type long thought dead in the West, a loathing that ascribes to Jews a malignant intent." This nonsense, it must be said, is opposed by many Israeli intellectuals who, like Uri Avnery, argue that an Iraq war will leave Israel with even more Arab enemies, especially if Iraq attacks Israel and Sharon then joins the US battle against the Arabs.
The slur of "anti-Semitism" also lies behind Rumsfeld's snotty remarks about "old Europe". He was talking about the "old" Germany of Nazism and the "old" France of collaboration. But the France and Germany that oppose this war are the "new" Europe, the continent which refuses, ever again, to slaughter the innocent. It is Rumsfeld and Bush who represent the "old" America; not the "new" America of freedom, the America of F D Roosevelt. Rumsfeld and Bush symbolise the old America that killed its native Indians and embarked on imperial adventures. It is "old" America we are being asked to fight for – linked to a new form of colonialism – an America that first threatens the United Nations with irrelevancy and then does the same to Nato. This is not the last chance for the UN, nor for Nato. But it may well be the last chance for America to be taken seriously by her friends as well as her enemies.
In these last days of peace the British should not be tripped by the oh-so-sought-after second UN resolution. UN permission for America's war will not make the war legitimate; it merely proves that the Council can be controlled with bribes, threats or abstentions. It was the Soviet Union's abstention, after all, which allowed America to fight the savage Korean war under the UN flag. And we should not doubt that – after a quick US military conquest of Iraq and providing 'they" die more than we die – there will be plenty of anti-war protesters who will claim they were pro-war all along. The first pictures of "liberated" Baghdad will show Iraqi children making victory signs to American tank crews. But the real cruelty and cynicism of this conflict will become evident as soon as the "war" ends, when our colonial occupation of a Muslim nation for the US and Israel begins.
There lies the rub. Bush calls Sharon a "man of peace". But Sharon fears he may yet face trial over Sabra and Chatila, which is why Israel has just withdrawn its ambassador to Belgium. I'd like to see Saddam in the same court. And Rifaat Assad for his 1982 massacre in the Syrian city of Hama. And all the torturers of Israel and the Arab dictatorships.
Israeli and US ambitions in the region are now entwined, almost synonymous. This war is about oil and regional control. It is being cheer-led by a draft-dodger who is treacherously telling us that this is part of an eternal war against "terror". And the British and most Europeans don't believe him. It's not that Britons wouldn't fight for America. They just don't want to fight for Bush or his friends. And if that includes the Prime Minister, they don't want to fight for Blair either.
15 February 2003 23:08 | | | | Guest-cdbc | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2003 1:08 pm Post subject: Israel's Proxy War? |
| Find this article at:
http://www.mediamonitors.net/mshahidalam1.html
Israel's Proxy War?
by M. Shahid Alam
It has been apparent to all but the purblind ? a defect in understanding assiduously cultivated by America?s mass media ? that the war United States is ready to wage against Iraq has almost nothing to do with its security.
In an age when the people believe that their voices must be heard, the United States must sell its wars the way corporations sell their products. In the past, the people were asked to lay down their lives for visions of glory; now, governments appeal to their self-interest. The first Gulf War had to be fought to protect American jobs. If Saddam Hussain stayed in Kuwait, he would raise the price of oil, and Americans would lose their jobs.
The argument this time is different. It had to be weightier than any fear of losing jobs. This new war seeks regime-change; it involves greater risks. American forces must invade Iraq, defeat the Iraqi army, occupy Baghdad, and stay around, even indefinitely. Americans understand that "regime-change" is serious business. They would not back this war unless Iraq threatened American lives. That explains why the war against Iraq had to supersede the war against terrorism, and why Saddam replaced Osama as the new icon of America?s loathing.
This substitution was quite easily executed. Most Americans take the President at his word when he talks about foreign enemies; this trust comes more easily when a Republican occupies the White House. George Bush told Americans that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction, and he had to be stopped before he could transfer them to Al-Qaida. (Why hadn?t he done this already?) For many Americans, it was an open and shut case. Saddam had to be removed.
The flaws in this argument did not matter. If Saddam hadn?t used WMDs during the first Gulf War ? when his army was being pummeled ? why would he use them now? The CIA warned that a war, or the threat of it, would increase the risk of Iraq using WMDs. Others, like Scott Ritter, a former chief weapons inspector for the UN, pointed out that Iraq did not have any WMDs that mattered. More than 90 percent had been destroyed by inspectors; if any escaped, they would be past their shelf life. At least initially, few Americans gave any credence to these doubts, though that has been slowly changing.
Why then is United States straining to go to war against Iraq?
The most popular theory on the left is that this war is about oil. According to one version of this theory, the White House, a captive of oil interests, wants to corner Iraq?s oil for American oil corporations. I do not find this credible. The power brokers in United States would not allow a single industry lobby, even a powerful one, to drag the country into a war which could hurt all of them, and perhaps badly, if the war plans went awry and produced a spike in oil prices. At the least, it is doubtful if oil interests, on their own, can account for the unobstructed rush to a mad war.
There is another oil theory. It argues that the American economy needs cheaper oil; this will save tens of billion dollars. Once Saddam has been removed, and Iraq?s oil supply restored to levels that existed before the first Gulf War, the oil prices will come down substantially. It is hard to reconcile this theory with a US-imposed sanctions regime that has drastically curtailed Iraq?s oil output for the past twelve years. If there were concerns that Saddam might use the oil revenues for a military build-up, that could be addressed by an inspections regime and selective economic sanctions.
There is also a third oil theory, one offered recently.[1] It maintains that this war preempts the Euro threat to the hegemony of the dollar. By pegging oil to the dollar, OPEC has been a key player in the arrangements that have maintained the dollar as the currency of international reserve. In October 2000, Saddam Hussein offered the first challenge to this system by switching Iraq?s dollar reserves to Euro. If OPEC follows Iraq?s lead it could spell trouble for the dollar. This can only be stopped by dismantling the OPEC, and this demands war against Iraq.
An OPEC challenge to the dollar sounds seems na?ve at best. This is hardly the kind of revolutionary action we can expect from an OPEC packed with client states like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and UAE; the oil price hike of 1974 could only occur in the backdrop of the Cold War. A precipitate dethronement of the dollar could produce consequences for United States and the world economy which would make the East Asian financial crisis of 1997 look like a storm in a teacup. Not even the EU would push for such results. On the other hand, there is a small chance that the war itself might validate this theory ? if it convinced OPEC that the war aims to dismantle the oil cartel.
If it isn?t oil, then, is this civilizational war, a war of the Christian West against Islam? This conjecture flies in the face of some obvious facts. First, this is America?s war. It is opposed by two key Western allies, France and Germany; and apart from Britain and Israel, the support of other Western countries lacks depth. More to the point, the overwhelming majority of Westerners outside the United States oppose this war. In United States itself, the anti-war sentiment has grown rapidly, and the most recent polls indicate a majority against the war if it happens without the support of the United Nations.
Is it then America?s war against Islamists? Even that is doubtful. Apart from the right-wing Christian extremists, led by the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, nearly all Christian denominations have come out against the war. Everyone would agree that Al-Qaida constitutes the most serious Islamist threat to United States; they had proved it on September 11, 2001. And yet, we are ready to push this threat aside in order to wage war against one of the most decidedly secular of Arab states, one that spent ten years waging war against ?fundamentalist? Iran? Why not Wahhabi Saudi Arabia which supplied 16 of the 19 hijackers of September 11. Why not Shiite Iran? Their turn too will come, one hears neoconservative voices, to be followed by Syria, Egypt and Pakistan.
Why then is United States ready to wage this war against Iraq, ostensibly against its own best interests? Most sensible people agree that this is a war whose consequences cannot be controlled, or even foreseen. It may destabilize friendly regimes, bringing radical Islamists to power in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It may disrupt oil supplies, causing a price hike at a time when the global economy already weak and vulnerable to shocks. It may force Saddam to use his chemical and biological weapons ? if he has them ? leading United States to nuke Baghdad or Basra. It may fuel global terrorism for years to come, leading to attacks on American interests globally.
These anomalies quickly melt away if we are willing to entertain a seldom-aired hypothesis. This may not be America?s war at all, much less a war of the West against Islam or Islamists. Instead, could this be Israel?s war against the Arabs fought through a proxy, the only proxy that can take on the Arabs? This will most likely provoke derisive skepticism. Could the world?s only superpower be persuaded to fight Israel?s war? Is it even possible? Could the tail wag this great dog?
Consider first Israel?s motives. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Pakistan do not threaten the United States; but they are a threat to Israel?s hegemonic ambitions over the region. This conflict between Israel and her neighbors was written into the Zionist script. A Jewish state could only be inserted into Palestine by resort to a massive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. After such inauspicious beginnings, Israel could only sustain itself by keeping its neighbors weak, divided, and disoriented. It has since waged wars against Egypt in 1956; against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967; against Iraq in 1981; against Lebanon, since 1982; and against Palestinians continuously since 1948.
Israel?s contradictions have deepened since the mounting of the second Intifada. When the Palestinians rejected the Bantustans offered at Oslo, Israel chose Ariel Sharon, a war criminal, to ratchet its war against Palestinian civilians. Faced with Apaches, F-16s, tanks and artillery, in desperation, the Palestinians turned increasingly to suicide bombings. Sharon?s brutal war was not working, and Israel?s losses began to catch up with Palestinian casualties. In April 2002, Israeli tanks reoccupied the Palestinian towns, destroyed Palestinian civilian infrastructure, increasingly placing Palestinians under curfews, sieges, destroying their workshops, stores, hospitals, orchards and farms. This was the new strategy of slow ethnic cleansing through starvation.
This slow ethnic cleansing is only a stopgap. The most serious threat which Palestinians pose is demographic: their growing population could soon turn the Jews into a minority inside greater Israel. Since the Palestinians won?t live under an Israeli apartheid, the Likud, with growing popular support, is turning to Israel?s second option. If the apartheid plan were to fail, Israel would engage in large-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, more massive than the ones implemented in 1948 and 1967.
But Israel cannot do this alone. This ethnic cleansing can only be implemented in the shadow of a major war against the Arabs, a war to Balkanize the region, a war to bring about regime-change in Iraq, Syria and Iran, a war that only United States can wage. Israel needs United States to wage a proxy war on behalf of Israel.
It should be clear that Israel has the motive; but does it also possess the capability to pull this off? Is it possible for a small power to use a great power ? the only superpower, in this case ? to wage its own wars. Historically, great powers have often waged wars through lesser proxies; but that does not mean that this relationship can never get inverted.
What makes this eminently possible is the way an indirect democracy ? in particular, democracy in United States ? works. The demos elect candidates picked by powerful lobbies, ethnic, industry and labor lobbies; once elected, the officials work for the lobbies. By far the most powerful political lobby in this country works for Israel, led by American Israel Public Action Committee (AIPAC). There is scarcely a member of the Congress whose election campaigns have not been funded by AIPAC; several are funded quite heavily.[2] The power of the pro-Israel lobby in United States, however, does not start or end with AIPAC. The result of this massive power is a Congress packed with Israeli yes-men. No member of the Congress has dared to contradict Israeli interests and remained in office. Just last year, two members of Congress, Earl Hilliard and Cynthia McKenny, were defeated by pro-Israeli money because they had stepped out of line.
Consider some of the achievements of the pro-Israeli lobby over the years. First, an estimate of the cost of Israel to US taxpayers. Since 1985, without debate or demurral, the Congress has sheepishly voted an annual foreign aid package of $3 billion to Israel, nearly two thirds of this in outright grants, and constituting one-third of all US foreign assistance. When estimated in 2001 constant dollars, the total foreign aid to Israel since 1967 adds up to $143 billion.[3] That amounts to a transfer of $28,600 for every Jewish citizen of Israel.
The official aid is only a small part of the cost of Israel to the US economy. We need to account for loan guarantees and write-offs, bribes paid to Egypt and Jordan in support of our Israeli policy, subsidies to Israel?s military R&D, boost in oil prices (attributed to US support for Israel in the 1967 war), losses due to trade sanctions imposed on Israel?s enemies, etc. When Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington, added up all these costs, he concluded that since 1973 Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion.[4] In per capita terms, this amounts to $320,000 for every Jewish citizen of Israel.
The US record on vetoes cast in UN Security Council constitutes another major achievement of the pro-Israel lobby. The US has cast 73 vetoes out of the 248 cast by all permanent members of the Security Council. On 38 occasions, these vetoes were cast to shield Israel from any criticism directed against its violation of human rights of Palestinians or the territorial rights of its neighbors. On another 25 occasions, US abstained from such a vote.[5] This does not include the votes cast by United States ? along with Israel, Tuvalu and Nauru ? against UN General Assembly resolutions criticizing Israeli violations of human rights or Security Council resolutions. It would be difficult to maintain that the strategic interests of United States always demanded such a consistent voting record on Palestine.
I am aware that the notion of an Israeli proxy war against Iraq will be greeted with skepticism by not a few. I hope to have established that Israel possess in abundance both the motive and capability for such a war. There is some evidence that it has demonstrated this capability in the past also. In the words of Lloyd George, then Prime Minister of Britain, the Zionist leaders promised that if the Allies supported the creation of "a national home for the Jews in Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied Cause. They kept their word."[6] It is doubtful if Zionist influence now is weaker than it was in 1917.
This is not to argue that the pro-Israeli lobby is the only reason for the projected US war against Iraq. At present, there are several forces in United States that are pushing for this war. Prominent among these indigenous forces are the oil corporations, the arms manufacturers, the aerospace industry, and the right-wing Christian evangelists. However, it is doubtful if these indigenous groups, on their own, could have pushed United States so decisively towards the present catastrophic confrontation with the Islamic world. Certainly, the intellectual justifications for this hazardous confrontation have come almost entirely from the pro-Israeli lobby. And their intellectual input may have been vital.
Notes:
[1]http://www.sierratimes.com/03/02/07/arpubwc020703.htm
[2]http://www.wrmea.com/html/aipac.htm
[3]http://www.counterpunch.org/rooij1116.html
[4]http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1209/p16s01-wmgn.html
[5]http://middleeastinfo.org/print.php?sid=63
[6]Lilienthal, Alfred M., "What price Israel" (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953): 20-21.
M. Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. His last book, "Poverty from the Wealth of Nations," was published by Palgrave in 2000. | | | | Guest-c651 | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2003 1:14 pm Post subject: 'The Axis of Evil' |
| 'The axis of evil'
By Hasan Abu Nimah in Jordan Times - Wednesday, February 19, 2003
WE LIVE in a world that has never lived without a natural or man-made catastrophe in one or other of its corners. We have come to accept that some of these disasters are simply inevitable. But that is not the case when a superpower decrees that we must have a war for the most unconvincing, fabricated reasons, for an openly imperialistic ideology, for power and greed, and for distraction from other, glaring, failures. These reasons, and nothing more, lie behind the US drive for an attack on Iraq, supported primarily by the United Kingdom and Israel.
The irony is that more and more people in the world, especially in the Middle East, are starting to see these three countries acting together as the true “axis of evil”. Haaretz confirmed that Israel's “military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq”. (“Enthusiastic Israeli army awaits war in Iraq”, Haaretz, Feb. 17, 2003)
Israel's leadership hopes that the destruction of Iraq will lead to the total subjugation and defeat of Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Israel also hopes to benefit from deep divisions about Iraq among the United States and its European allies. According to the Israeli newspaper: “There is also excitement in the Israeli army's planning department over the stand-off between the US and its NATO allies. A paper distributed to the army's upper echelons even spoke of an opportunity to remove the pro-Palestinian Europeans from the Middle East. A senior source said Saturday that the US will punish the Europeans for their back-stabbing on the road to Baghdad, and will no longer ask them for input regarding Israeli concessions.”
This zeal for war and destruction is supposed to lead to an outcome where a defeated Arab world and a marginalised Europe cannot stand in the way of Israel, backed by an increasingly extremist and isolated United States, imposing any settlement it wants on the Palestinians. At best, what the Palestinians can hope for is direct Israeli rule with all their civil and national rights cancelled. This will be Israel's “generous” alternative to what many in Israel's leadership really want, which is the total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Looking back, this is no more than an attempt to achieve what was tried — but failed — more subtly after the 1991 Gulf War. The main difference is that the first war was widely seen as justified by Iraq's clear transgression of invading and occupying Kuwait. What followed was essentially not different from what is planned this time. The 1991 war created “convenient” circumstances for an Arab-Israeli settlement. The PLO was severely weakened politically and hard hit financially, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians working in Gulf states were expelled and governments cut off their assistance to the leadership. The PLO was not even accepted as a direct participant in the October 1991 Madrid conference, and the talks which followed in Washington.
With Israel's position thus strengthened, and unlimited American diplomatic support (except for token and temporary US resistance to aid for Israel's colony-building on Palestinian land), Israel did not respond to any of the far-reaching Palestinian compromises offered for peace, including full recognition of Israel in advance and full acceptance of the two-state solution. Rather, Israel took advantage of the weakness and desperation of the PLO and, behind the backs of the Washington negotiators, hatched the secret Oslo agreement which must go down in history as one of the worst deals ever made. This disaster simply laundered, with full PLO approval, all of Israel illegal war gains, at the expense of the Palestinian people. Negotiations were dragged on indefinitely in order to allow Israel the necessary time to achieve de facto annexation of all of the conquered territory.
By imposing, by brute force, a scandalously unjust and humiliating deal on the Palestinians, entirely denying their political and national rights, and by reducing the PLO to nothing more than a South Lebanon army-like police force for the Israeli occupation, Israel laid the grounds for the present Intifada and did not achieve the “peace” of the strong that it hopes for.
The warmongers in Washington and Tel Aviv believe that this time round they can get it right, having failed twelve years ago, by going all the way. Once they impose “total defeat” on the Palestinians and Arabs, they believe a golden age will open for Israel, which will face no obstacles before it. This will not happen.
It is quite possible that an attack on Iraq will destroy that country and produce immense political pressure on Syria, Lebanon and Iran. It is also possible that Israel, while world attention is focused on Iraq, will further intensify its campaign of war crimes against the Palestinians. It is even possible that by raising the level of atrocities even higher, Israel will claim to have imposed some sort of order on the situation, to have “defeated” the Palestinians. None of this will succeed. Israel, instead, will be guaranteed only more unrest, more determined resistance, more bloodshed and more horror.
The planned war against Iraq is an idea of a small group of ultra-pro-Israeli hawks who hatched it in the mid-1990s when they were advising the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Today, this same small group has hijacked American policy at the Pentagon. This group, that gathered around figures like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, is not concerned with Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction”, human rights or terrorism. Their concern is the pure pursuit of power. For this group, there is no difference between American interests and the interests of Israel as defined by the most extreme elements. They have an obsession with the Arab and Muslim world that borders on hatred.
While it is easy to trace the growing influence of this group on an American establishment that has always allowed Israel to set the agenda for US policy in the Middle East, the UK's slavish commitment to this group is more puzzling. The British people are clearly concerned about how their prime minister seems to have transformed himself into America's deputy secretary of state in pursuit of an agenda that holds nothing positive for Britain. The UK always calculated that by forging a “special relationship” with the United States, it would gain influence both in America and in Europe. Prime Minister Tony Blair's foolish policies have done the opposite. The Americans simply take British support for granted, while Britain's position in Europe is worse even than it was under Thatcher. And for what? Blair claims that the UK is in danger from global terror. Maybe so, but many of his people answer that his dangerous policies are exposing the country to such terror rather than dealing effectively with any threat.
The voices of the tens of millions who marched for peace all over the world are sending a loud message to the United States, Britain and Israel, the three pillars of this new axis, if not of “evil”, then at least of raw, dangerous power and colonialism. These are voices of truth and reason. They are voices which bridge the gulf of misunderstanding, fear and suspicion between the West and the rest of the world, that figures like Bush, Blair and Sharon are fuelling. Let us hope that the millions who came out will act as an urgently needed check on the forces who relish war and use words like “justice” and “peace” only to mock them. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
