| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2004 9:47 pm Post subject: NEOCONS AFTER MORE WAR FOR ISRAEL |
| NEOCONS AFTER MORE WAR FOR ISRAEL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/11/neocons-after-more-war-for-israel.php
The tragic 9/11 attack happened because of our vast financial support of Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinians (see the ticker for how many US taxpayer Billions Israel gets while US states, Medicare and Social Security go broke at the upper left at www.wrmea.com-also see the USS Liberty and Neocon Corner drop-down menus at www.wrmea.com as well) as former Republican Congressman Paul Findley has mentioned similar in the third edition of his 'They Dare to Speak Out' book. Even Bin Laden warned us about our government's support of Israel as you can see via the following URL (but the 'protect Israel first' US press/media did not tell us of this warning to the extent that it should have):
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/01/22/every-morning-every-american-should-read-this-twice.php
http://www.investigate911.com/binladensez.htm
Subj: Iraq in Israel's Grand Strategy
Date: 4/7/04 7:15:09 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: hectorpv@comcast.net
To: hectorpv@comcast.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Friends,
Iraq in Israel’s Grand Strategy
As this article points out, the US attack on Iraq fits into a Zionist grand strategy of weakening Arab neighbors, which was conceived long before the independence of Israel in 1948. To me this appears like a very logical foreign policy for the Jewish state to hold, though it doesn’t help the US to advance this goal.
The neocon aim for attacking Iraq is now revealed quite openly in the major media--that Bush neocons were targeting Iraq for an attack prior to September 11 and that the terrorist attacks provided the pretext to implement their plans. What is still taboo is the neocon connection with Israel. But the neocons have been closely tied to the Israeli right. The original flagship of the neoconservative movement was _Commentary Magazine_, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, which has as its stated purpose the protection of Jews and Israel. Neocons Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser even advised then Prime Minister Netanyahu to attack Iraq in 1996 in their "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" policy paper. [http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm ]
In Israel, a military attack on Iraq had been discussed by Oded Yinon in a 1982 policy paper entitled, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," which proposed a plan for the destabilization and fragmentation of Israel’s Middle East enemies. [http://www.theunjustmedia.com/the%20zionist_plan_for_the_middle_east.htm]
As the following article points out, the idea of weakening and dissolving Israel’s Middle East neighbors was not just a Likudnik idea but has been a central Zionist goal from a much earlier period, being promoted by David Ben Gurion himself. "It is against this backdrop that Israel has supported secessionist movements in Sudan, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon and any secessionist movements in the Arab world which Israel considers an enemy. Yet the concern for Iraq and its attempts to weaken or prevent it from developing its strengths has always been a central Zionist objective. At times, Israel succeeded in gaining a foothold in Iraq by forging secret yet strong relationships with leaders from the Kurdish movement."
Zionist support for the Kurdish effort to weaken Iraq actually began in the 1930s, before the state of Israel existed, and blossomed in the 1950s and 1960s. "By the end of the 1950s and the early 1960s, Israel became the primary source of arms and military training for the Kurds in their fight against the Iraqi central government. While full details have yet to be revealed, thousands of Mossad agents and Israeli military personnel were located throughout northern Iraq under different covers (military advisors, agricultural experts, trainers, and doctors); Israeli support for the Kurds peaked during the second Gulf War after the Kurdish takeover of strategically important and oil rich Kirkuk. The secessionist movement, however, quickly collapsed after heavy military blows from the Iraqi army before the United States imposed changes that ended control of the centralised government and established an area of Kurdish sovereignty."
Israel’s goal has been not simply to weaken external enemies but to weaken the position of the Palestinians—the internal demographic threat that poses the greatest danger to the Jewish supremacist state. The reason for this is that the Arab states provide spiritual and material aid to the Palestinian cause. Without outside aid the Palestinians would give up hope. The author writes: "Sequential wars with the Arab world have given Israel opportunities to exhaust the Arab world, as well as tipping the demographic and political situation against Palestinians. Even regional wars which Israel has not participated in have benefited Israel and weakened the Palestinian national movement The first and second Gulf War are a few examples." Of course, some of Israel’s wars have involved the expulsion of Palestinians and the occupation of Palestinian lands. Even the US war on Iraq in 1991 had this effect, although Israel was not involved. "Finally, the second Gulf War of 1991 resulted in the expulsion of the Palestinian community from Kuwait, which formed one of the primary arteries of Palestinian income and power in the occupied territories."
With Israel grand strategy in mind, it is apparent that the current war on Iraq has already significantly weakened Israel’s external enemies as well as the Palestinians, even if the US is unable to establish a puppet regime in Iraq.
_____________________________________
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/print/2003/634/op2.htm
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 17 - 23 April 2003 (Issue No. 634)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/634/op2.htm
Israel: the ultimate winner
Saleh Abdel-Jawwad* examines, why Israel wanted the war against Iraq
An important question which continues to surface in the war against Iraq relates to Israel and the effort by the Zionist lobby to push the war option on the American administration as well as the American public. In other words, what are the goals that Israel seeks to achieve from the war in Iraq and how will it impact the Palestinian file?
First, Israel regards any strike against the Arabs, and particularly a chief enemy like Iraq, a major blow to the Arab order as well as weakening the position of the Palestinians. After the Camp David Accords in 1979, Egypt operationally removed itself (and continued to do so until present) from the 'Arab/Israeli' conflict, while intertwining its interests with the United States. Since then Israel has shifted its attention to Iraq, given its status as the sole remaining Arab country to have a powerful mix of resources unavailable to other Arab regimes: petrol, financial assets, plentiful water supplies, significant fertile soil, a sufficiently large population, a clear nationalist political agenda, and military, industrial and scientific infrastructure.
Second, war against Iraq will likely lead to dissolution of the country, even if this is not an immediate American plan. Such dissolution would be in accordance with Israel's vision of the region, and would greatly enhance Israel's power. This regional vision is based on a 19th and 20th century orientalist perspective of the Middle East. According to this view the region is seen as a mosaic composed of many ethnic groups, cultures and nationalities. Furthermore, Iraqi residents are also divided along Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurd, and Christian lines. Likewise there are powerful regional, denominational, and tribal allegiances concentrated around economic and politically important cities such as Baghdad, Tikrit, Basra, and Mosul. A mosaic perspective of Iraq would reject Arab national ideology and the relationship of Palestine to the Arabs. It would also legitimise Zionism, based on the idea of Jewish nationalism and power for the weak.
Abba Eban succinctly described Israeli Zionist ideology in this respect, in his collection of writings entitled The Voice of Israel. Eban contests the assumption that the Middle East represents a cultural unit, and that it is incumbent upon Israel to integrate within this unit. Instead he 'clarifies' that the Arabs always lived disparately and that the short periods of unity only took place under the power of the sword. He continues by describing how political divisions were not introduced by Western colonialism, and stresses that the cultural and traditional ties which unite Arab countries are insufficient to form the base upon which political unity can be achieved.
For this reason, successive Israeli governments have adopted policies based on the principle of supporting non-Arab ethnic minorities such as the Kurds in Iraq or the Maronites in Lebanon. Literature on the Zionist movement -- particularly those published at the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the Arabisation of the Palestinian question -- indicate that the Zionist leaders in general, and yeshiva leaders in particular, placed their hopes and concerns on establishing relationships with every minority within the Arab world and neighbouring non-Arab countries.
Since the end of the 1930s, Ben Gurion articulated some principles which would become indisputable Zionist tenets:
1.The Arabs are the primary enemy of the Zionist movement. To confront this chief enemy, it is necessary for Zionism to search for allies in the East to stand with its allies in the West. These are needed to act as a counter force and support the power of the Zionist project when faced with this (primary) confrontation. At the end of the day it is a 'bloody struggle between us and them'. Therefore, any group or sect which opposes Arab nationalism -- "the primary enemy of the Jewish people"-- or is prepared to fight against it, is an ally which helps Zionism implement its settlement and state-driven policies.
2.The Jewish people, who have been subjected to the terrorism and oppression of various governments, and particularly those who lived in Arab countries, perceive all minorities and groups "oppressed" by the Arabs or Muslims as allies and partners. Thus the need to free oneself from this oppression is felt and in common to both.
The two principles above form the basis of what is known as the 'Theory of Allying the Periphery.'
3.After the establishment of the state of Israel, Ben Gurion hoped to develop this theory further and create a ring of adversaries around the Arab countries. He focused his on attention on building strategic relationships with Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia (Encirclement Theory). He also aimed to expand the links of this encirclement against the Arab world by expanding Israel's relationships with other Asian and African countries. The most recent phase of this policy focuses on India -- largely as a result of Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons, the emergence of Hindu revisionism in India, and the desire to penetrate India's enormous market.
Ben Gurion's ideas (the Theory of allying the periphery and the Theory of encirclement) which were formulated with other Zionist leaders, have provided the basis for interacting with allies in regards to the Arab world.
It is against this backdrop that Israel has supported secessionist movements in Sudan, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon and any secessionist movements in the Arab world which Israel considers an enemy. Yet the concern for Iraq and its attempts to weaken or prevent it from developing its strengths has always been a central Zionist objective. At times, Israel succeeded in gaining a foothold in Iraq by forging secret yet strong relationships with leaders from the Kurdish movement. In sharp contrast it failed to gain allies amongst the Coptic community in Egypt primarily because of the historical continuity of the Egyptian state.
Communications with the Kurds began at the end of the 1930s. The responsibility of establishing contacts with the Kurds fell to the infamous Zionist intelligence operative Rubin Shiluah -- one of the important planners and thinkers of the strategy of "allying the periphery".
Shiluah, who at the time was living as a spy in Iraq -- under the guise of studying at a Jewish school in Baghdad -- would take trips to the mountainous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. The relationships he formed there towards the end of the 1940s were primarily with Kurds who were willing to help Iraqi Jews reach Palestine through Turkey.
By the end of the 1950s and the early 1960s, Israel became the primary source of arms and military training for the Kurds in their fight against the Iraqi central government. While full details have yet to be revealed, thousands of Mossad agents and Israeli military personnel were located throughout northern Iraq under different covers (military advisors, agricultural experts, trainers, and doctors); Israeli support for the Kurds peaked during the second Gulf War after the Kurdish takeover of strategically important and oil rich Kirkuk. The secessionist movement, however, quickly collapsed after heavy military blows from the Iraqi army before the United States imposed changes that ended control of the centralised government and established an area of Kurdish sovereignty.
Similarly, Israel supported the Shah of Iran in its struggle against Baghdad. The beginning of Israel's relationship with the Shah was formed when the Mossad, acting in accord with British (MI6) and American (CIA) intelligence, worked to bring about the collapse of the democratically elected Iranian leader Mossadeq in 1953. Their role remains a secret to this day. The relationship forged with the Shah enabled Iran to be the primary importer of Israeli products until the rise of Khomeni. Israel also played a role in training the SAVAK, the infamous and brutal intelligence service which protected the Shah.
Likewise, Israel has worked closely to monitor Iraq, and has done everything in its power to prevent it from developing nuclear capabilities. In this context, Israel destroyed the Iraqi reactor during its assembly in France in 1977. It also assassinated scientists who worked in the Iraqi nuclear programme -- most notably the Egyptian scientist Yehya El-Mashd who was assassinated in Paris. They also assassinated the brainchild of the Super Canon in Brussels, and destroyed the Usaris Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. At the same time Israel provided arms to Iran during the first Gulf War.
Israeli enmity towards Iraq precedes the Saddam Hussein regime -- originating after Iraq participated in the 1948 War. At the time, Iraq was the sole country participating in the war which refused to participate in the negotiations leading up to the Rhodes Armistice agreement in 1949. Likewise, Iraq sent reinforcements to the Jordanian front in 1967. In addition, Iraq continues to refuse to acknowledge UN Resolution 242 and was actively engaged in the defense of Damascus in 1973.
Third, war as an end in and of itself, is an ever- present Israeli objective. Sequential wars with the Arab world have given Israel opportunities to exhaust the Arab world, as well as tipping the demographic and political situation against Palestinians. Even regional wars which Israel has not participated in have benefited Israel and weakened the Palestinian national movement The first and second Gulf War are a few examples.
The War of 1948 resulted in the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians, representing 87 per cent of the population to come under Zionist control. The War of 1956, according to declassified Israeli documents, relating to the Kufr Qasem Massacre, sought to facilitate a new wave of expulsions and to bring about the occupation of the West Bank. The expulsion of 400,000 Palestinians during the 1967 War, and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, further facilitated Israel's ambitions as a regional powerhouse. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 also resulted in dangerous demographic changes for Palestinian refugees. Of the 450,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon in 1982, no more than 250,000 remain today. (Had the war not taken place, the number of Palestinians in Lebanon would have reached at least 650,000). Not to mention the social, morale and political subjugation the Palestinians in Lebanon faced as a result of that war.
The first Gulf War between Iraq and Iran also disempowered the Palestinian cause: the Arab world was split into two camps, Arab resources were squandered, oil income was depleted, and Arab attention was taken away from the Palestinian question. This all negatively impacted the Palestinian position.
Finally, the second Gulf War of 1991 resulted in the expulsion of the Palestinian community from Kuwait, which formed one of the primary arteries of Palestinian income and power in the occupied territories. In my opinion, Yitshak Shamir sought, through the implementation of the 1990 Massacre, to exploit these events by creating a dynamic that would result in the expulsion of West Bank residents. The massacre took place within the Haram Al-Sharif compound three months before the outbreak of the 1991 Gulf War. Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian demonstrators, killing twenty. Yet at the time, the American administration which hoped to preserve the Arab alliance in the war against Iraq, was one of the main reasons which prevented Shamir from realising his plans.
* The writer is a professor at Beir Zeit University.
Also, see the 'War Conceived in Israel' article which is linked under the map of 'greater Israel' after scrolling down to it on the left at http://www.nowarforisrael.com
NO US/UK SOLDIERS SHOULD HAVE TO DIE IN IRAQ FOR ISRAEL TO GET OIL:
http://www.nogw.com/warforisrael.html | | | | foppe37 | | Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2004 6:22 am Post subject: deaths |
| Many more deaths world wide must occur before the general public begins to understand the Zionist/ USA games.
Madrid is just the beginning.
As someone wrote on BBCW 'Have your say': 'war is the rich man's war, terrorism is the poor man's war'.
One Italian hostage in Iraq is reported killed, El Jazeera has the murder tape, 'too horrible to be broadcast'.
There are some 27 million Iraqi, if the number in my memory is correct.
There are just some 135.000 USA troops in Iraq.
Occasionally part of the USA bluff game is given away, such as yesterday when a group of marines outside some beleagered town discussed action plans, while being filmed.
Not all USA marines have been trained in propaganda.
The leader said 'this afternoon from sixteen to eighteen hours (so, I think, from 4 pm to 6 pm) we have an F-16 supporting us'.
There are just two roads from outside Iraq to Baghdad, one from Amman Jordania, and one from Basra in the S.
The USA is unable to guard these roads.
Supply convoys are destroyed all the time.
So one wonders if lack of fuel, water, ammo and armored vehicles hampers the USA unlawful combatants.
Another interesting story is a group of Iraqi resistance fighters that managed to capture a USA armored vehicle intact.
F-16's were called in to try to destroy the vehicle.
There is a vast difference between Palestine and Iraq, and this is vastness.
Just Falluga has 300.000 inhabitants, Baghdad, if I remember correctly, six million.
Israel is so small that Israeli jet pilots must excercise over Turkey, Israel simply is too small.
Israel and the USA together have some 280 million inhabitants, there are some 1.5, some assert 2.0, billion Muslims.
The more the USA and Israel misbehave, the more enemies they get, worldwide.
There is a limit to USA worldwide control, by coincidence I learned that Durban, S Africa, harbour is off limits because of USA pressure.
But anyone knows how bribery accomplishes a lot, in S Africa.
USA coast guard of course cannot search all incoming vessels completely. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2004 12:05 am Post subject: Subj: J.Cole: US Turning into Israel? + Bleier |
| Subj: J.Cole: US Turning into Israel? + Bleier
Date: 4/19/04 11:54:49 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: rbleier@igc.org
To: rbleier@igc.org
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Friends:
In this important article Juan Cole makes the link between the Iraq and Palestine uprisings with the most ominous implications for the United States. (Athough he doesn’t say so, such a link is part of the neocon agenda: to spread anarchy, dissolution and war on the region, where the powerful Israelis will come out the winners. Increased risks to the US are also part of the neocon agenda.)
However, it's not clear why Professor Cole seems to take Sharon at his word about a planned withdrawal from Gaza. Despite the support for disengagement from Gaza that Sharon has recently picked up from hard right Likud members, it’s unlikely that Sharon intends to remove any settlements from Gaza into which the Israelis have already poured many millions (if not billions) of U.S. tax dollars. As Meron Benvenisti, longtime critic of Israeli settlement policy, has recently written in Ha’aretz, similar plans have come and gone “quite a few times over the past 20 years.” Benvenisti points out that talk of “disengagment” is a mask for the more important issue of Israeli unilateralism, the point of which is to “erase the last remnants of the Oslo agreement and return to the policies of the mid 80s when it was illegal to talk to the PLO.” (April 8, 2004, quoted in Middle East International, No. 723, April 16, 2004)
Shedding more light on ultimate Israeli intentions, Israeli journalist and author, Tanya Reinhart pointed out in March, that there is “no sign on the ground of any intention to evacuate from Gaza.” After Sharon’s dramatic “disengagement” announcement in early February, sources in Sharon’s office said that not all of the 17 settlements in Gaza are to be evacuated. Moreover, work on fortifying the strategically important settlement of Netzarim which separates the northern area including Gaza City from the rest of the strip “has only intensified in recent weeks.” At the cost of millions of shekels, a new electronic security fence around Netzarim is currently going up. These plans were approved by the chief of staff and the region commander issued orders which included the appropriation of land from the Palestinians. (Sharon's "Disengagement" from Gaza, March 30th, 2004 Tanya Reinhart, http://www4.alternativenews.org/opinion/display.php?id=3644)
More such details emerged in a New York Times story that quoted an Israeli official to the effect that settlement projects “in the pipeline” would go forward. And the Times also quoted an Israeli settler who was bullish on settlement expansion in Gaza. (April 3, 2004, Sharon Says He Has Ordered a Halt to Gaza Development, By James Bennet.)
The assassinations of Yassin and Rantisi should be seen for what they are: Sharon’s attempt to destroy any chance of negotiations
leading to a diplomatic settlement with the Palestinians as part of his campaign to undermine their ability to remain anywhere in Palestine,
including Gaza.
--Ronald Bleier
Salon.com
Turning into Israel?
Outraged by President Bush's embrace of Ariel Sharon and the bloody U.S. assault on Fallujah, the Arab world is linking America's occupation with Israel's. That's ominous.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Juan Cole
April 16, 2004
One year after Baghdad fell to victorious U.S. troops, the Americans had to conquer the country all over again. The great rebellion of April 2004 expelled the U.S. from much of the capital, humiliated coalition allies, cut supply and communications lines to the south, and revealed a reservoir of popular hatred for the U.S. among both some Sunni Arabs in Fallujah and some Shiites in their cities. But perhaps the most ominous development for the U.S. was that the events tied together two occupations and two intifadas, or popular uprisings -- Iraq and Palestine.
In his press conference of April 13, President Bush gave several reasons for cracking down on Iraqi insurgents. He said their motivation was the same as those who set off bombs in Jerusalem; he tied them to the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, executed by al-Qaida in part for being Jewish. He also cited Shiite radical Muqtada al-Sadr's support for the Palestinian Hamas organization and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah party. He gave as one reason for having gone to war against Saddam Hussein the former dictator's support for Palestinian terrorists. In this speech, he presented the Iraq war and its violent aftermath as an extension of the Israeli struggle to subjugate the Palestinians and Hezbollah.
Before the war, Bush connected nonexistent dots between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Now he and his neoconservative brain trust are mapping the Iraq conflict onto the Likud Party agenda in Palestine. This time, however, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy -- and one that will have devastating repercussions for U.S. interests in both Iraq and the entire Arab world.
The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so central to U.S. diplomacy in the region that it cannot help affecting every other policy imperative, including Iraq. Many Arabs, including Iraqis, initially looked upon the U.S. as an honest broker, but its reputation has gradually been sullied. The U.S., for instance, had long opposed the aggressive Israeli colonization of the West Bank and Gaza as an obstacle to a full and fair settlement with the Palestinians. On April 14, however, Bush met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington and, breaking with longstanding U.S. policy, acquiesced in the permanent annexation by Israel of large swathes of the West Bank. In other words, as of this week, the Bush administration has endorsed the seizure of the land of one party by another in an international dispute.
Events in Palestine have already had an important impact on Iraqi attitudes to the United States, and likely will continue to do so. It is not that most Iraqis are fanatically pro-Palestinian: In fact, many resent Palestinian leaders for taking money and support from Saddam. But Iraqis, like most Arabs and Muslims, feel anger and sorrow over the Palestinian catastrophe and regard their struggle as legitimate. Even cautious, mainstream Iraqi leaders such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani have expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause and condemned Israel for attacks on Palestinians.
On the morning of March 22, Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at Muslims emerging from a radical mosque in the densely populated al-Sabra quarter of the occupied territory of Gaza. They killed eight people, including the half-blind paraplegic, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (clerical leader of Hamas), and wounded 24 others. Yassin had blessed the suicide bombings that had taken so many civilian lives in Israel, but he was not on the operational side of Hamas. He planned no such attacks, although Israeli Interior Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi implied that he did, saying, "The days of the terrorist chiefs and commanders who will not spend all their time trying to survive and still prepare attacks are numbered." Actually, Yassin had spoken of the possibility of a century-long truce with Israel, and exercised a restraining influence on young hotheads in the movement. Nor had any court tried and found Yassin guilty. He was simply assassinated, a contravention of the Geneva Convention of 1949 governing military occupations. Despite U.S. denials, many Arabs and Muslims concluded that Yassin's assassination was green-lighted in Washington, and Hamas itself briefly threatened revenge on the United States -- a virtually unprecedented departure from its position that its war is only with Israel.
Israel's right-wing Likud government, headed by Sharon, came into office in 2001 determined to undo the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, which required Israel to give back all or most of the Palestinian land it occupied in 1967. Israel had militarily occupied the West Bank and Gaza ever since, and had systematically colonized large parts of them, expanding Israeli territory at the Palestinians' expense.
Sharon wanted to permanently annex about half of the West Bank, and appears to have decided that this action might be made palatable to the U.S. and some European states if he, at the same time, withdrew from Gaza altogether. Gaza is a vast slum. It is the most densely populated place in the world, burdened by a poverty-stricken, angry population that has suffered through nearly 40 years of military occupation. The 7,500 Israeli settlers in Gaza, who are difficult and expensive to protect, would be removed to the West Bank, which has much better real estate values, and Israel would be seen to be voluntarily relinquishing Palestinian territory. In the process, it would permanently acquire much of the real prize, the West Bank, and make it almost impossible for a Palestinian state to emerge -- despite continued empty promises on that score from Sharon and Bush. (In fact, Sharon has made his intentions quite clear: He told the Israeli press that his plan would "bring their [Palestinians'] dreams to an end.")
At their joint news conference on April 14, Bush blessed Sharon's plot. Of the "existing major Israeli population centers," (i.e. settlements) on the West Bank, Bush said it is "unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Bush also hailed Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and move its settlers to the West Bank as "historic."
Translated, what Bush really said was that there would be no return to the 1967 borders and that Israel's policy of annexing occupied territory and planting large settlements on it -- actions forbidden by the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1949, which forbid permanently acquiring territory by war -- had now received the stamp of approval from Washington. Moreover, Sharon was authorized to take further steps unilaterally, without negotiating with the Palestinians.
Combined with the American military assault on Fallujah, Bush's embrace of Sharon's position succeeded in making America, in Arab eyes, virtually indistinguishable from Israel. The Egyptian daily al-Jumhuriyyah spoke for many Arabs when it observed in the wake of the Bush-Sharon accord, "the victims being killed daily in Palestine and Iraq are due to the continuation of the occupation ... Violence and extremism have increased as a natural response to the brutality of the occupation."
Before Bush endorsed Sharon's plan, much of the Arab press and popular opinion had stopped short of such an equation. Many, even those opposed to the U.S. invasion and critical of the occupation, were prepared to acknowledge that not all of those fighting the Americans were noble freedom fighters. Now, the rhetoric and sentiment are swinging the other way.
Sharon's plan for West Bank annexation and withdrawal from Gaza had held one danger. Hamas, strong in Gaza, might take advantage of an Israeli withdrawal to use the territory as a base for even more suicide bombings. Sharon was determined to wipe out the Hamas leadership so as to cripple its organizational capacity and render it unable or fearful to benefit from a unilateral Israeli pull-back. Thus he launched the rocket attack on Sheikh Yassin on March 22, which was a piece of political theater. A half-blind man in a wheelchair could simply have been arrested (in fact, Yassin served time in an Israeli prison in the 1990s). The point was to inspire fear among his successors.
Hamas is a Sunni Muslim fundamentalist party, deriving from the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood. Sheikh Yassin's extremist writings are widely read among fundamentalists, including those in Iraq. His murder provoked outrage among both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis. Some of them determined to take revenge on the closest ally of the Israelis, the Americans who were occupying them.
The fuse ran from Gaza to Iraq, and ignited in Fallujah. Sunni Arab fundamentalists and Arab nationalists are particularly strong in al-Anbar Province, the site of the notorious centers of opposition to American rule such as Fallujah, Ramadi, and Habbaniyah. Fallujah in particular has many Islamists close in their thinking to Hamas. The group that killed the four American civilian security guards in Sunni Arab Fallujah on March 31 identified itself as "Phalanges of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin," calling the grisly killings a "gift to the Palestinian people."
American military forces immediately began closing on the city, seeking revenge. Although the link was virtually unreported in the Western press, the ghost of the man in the wheelchair had cast a long shadow over the American occupation of Iraq -- one that would grow longer.
Then, on April 2, the radical young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr announced in his Friday prayer sermon in the southern Shiite city of Kufa that he should be considered the "striking arm" of Hamas "because the fate of Iraq and Palestine is the same." On April 3, the Coalition Provisional Authority issued 28 arrest warrants for associates of al-Sadr, and took 13 of them into custody, including Sheikh Mustafa Yaqubi, his representative in Najaf. The pretext for the arrests was a year-old murder, and the warrants were themselves several months old. It is probable that the decision to act was taken in the light of al-Sadr's April 2 sermon, by Bush administration officials who feared his movement posed a threat to Israel.
The U.S. responded with massive military force to the twin Sunni and Shiite uprisings, assaulting Sadrist positions in East Baghdad and besieging and shelling Fallujah. The situation in Fallujah in particular became dire, and as noted above has exacerbated anti-U.S. sentiment across Iraq and the Arab world.
Neoconservatives, many of them ardent defenders of Israel with strong ties to the Likud, were among the chief intellectual architects of the war on Iraq. The American neoconservative linkage between Iraq and the Likud was first revealed in a position paper, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," written by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and other neoconservatives for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. They advocated an Iraq war, the destruction of the Oslo peace process, the refusal ever to return territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and using a conquered Iraq as a means of pacifying the Lebanese Hezbollah.
At the time, such positions were regarded as wildly radical: Today they have become U.S. policy.
Perle used his position of influence as chair of the Defense Policy Board, which advised the Pentagon, to promote an Iraq war, as did Feith, who became undersecretary of defense for planning in Bush's Department of Defense, and Wurmser, a Middle East advisor on the staff of Vice President Cheney.
The irony is that even though they got what they thought they wanted, the entire enterprise might have just boomeranged on them. Instead of neutralizing Iraq as a player in the Middle East conflict, they almost certainly have provided new allies to the Palestinians and to the Lebanese Shiites, in the form of popular Sunni and Shiite religious and political movements that can now freely mobilize since Baath repression is gone.
The U.S. siege of Fallujah aimed at trapping the guerrillas that had used the town as their base. Some of them were ex-Baath military, others Iraqi or Arab nationalists, and yet others were radical Muslim fundamentalists little different in their views from Hamas. Many were well armed, having raided Baath weapons depots, and well trained, having served in the Iraqi army.
In order to get at them, the Marines surrounded the city, gradually invaded it, and ordered strikes on positions from which they took fire. It is the nature of urban warfare that civilians fall victim to it, for while they can flee a field of battle, here the battle comes to their own homes and street corners. It is too soon to estimate reliably the death toll of Iraqis during the assault on Fallujah, but reports of 600 deaths are common. It is controversial how many of those are women and children as opposed to combatants (some say as many as 200). It seems likely that most of the dead were combatants, since they were the ones the Marines were firing at. That U.S. firepower was so blunt an instrument that it killed dozens of innocents is, however, plausible, as is the countercharge that the insurgents' wild firing was responsible for much civilian loss of life.
The impression gained by many Iraqis and the Arab media was that the U.S. showed a disregard for innocent life in besieging and attacking the entire city, and that perhaps there was even an element of deliberate vindictiveness in the operations against ordinary Fallujans. Even Adnan Pachachi, the prominent Iraqi nationalist and former foreign minister of the Qasim government in the early 1960s, said, "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah, and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal." Pachachi serves on the U.S.-appointed Interim Governing Council (IGC) and was one of the few Sunni leaders with some credibility to have associated himself with the Americans. That he was so enraged by Fallujah is a bad sign. His implication that the U.S. was engaged in collective punishment, assaulting an entire city to avenge the desecration of four U.S. security contractors, was especially damaging, since collective punishment is forbidden by the Geneva Conventions.
The Iraqi minister of human rights, Abdul Basit Turki, who had been appointed by the IGC to great fanfare as a symbol of the new Iraq, resigned his post in disgust. Another IGC member suspended his membership on the council in protest at U.S. attacks on Shiite cities in the south, in pursuit of militiamen loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, who had mounted insurrections in several cities.
One British commander who spoke anonymously to the press complained bitterly of the tactics of U.S. forces in places like Fallujah, saying that they were using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. He also forthrightly accused the U.S. military of viewing Iraqis as an inferior form of human being or Untermenschen, and having little regard for innocent Iraqi life.
The siege of Fallujah was represented on the Arab satellite television channels, such as al Jazeera, as a massacre of innocent civilians, a charge that was apparently widely believed but which caricatures the Marines, who took heavy fire from experienced fighters and lost many killed and wounded. This toll was hardly inflicted by innocent women and children. However, many of the latter were killed by a U.S. military strategy that disregarded risks to civilian life in its pursuit of the fighters.
In any case, the siege of Fallujah inspired a mood of anger and solidarity in much of the Arab world. Thousands of Palestinians marched in the Gaza Strip in support of the people of Fallujah on April 11. At the Jabaliya refugee camp, demonstrators raised placards with pictures of Sheik Ahmed Yassin of Hamas, Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and even Saddam Hussein.
In Baghdad, the relatively upscale Shiite quarter of Kazimiyah had a longstanding rivalry with nearby Sunni Azamiyah, which lay across the Tigris on the other side of a bridge. The youth of the two quarters often engaged in turf wars and taunting. Now they joined forces, gathering food, water and medicine in front of the Sunni Umm al-Qura mosque. They mounted a joint Sunni-Shiite relief convoy, accompanied by protesters who carried posters of assassinated Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Muqtada al-Sadr.
On Friday, April 9, Sunni cleric Sheikh Harith Suleiman al-Dhari called in his Friday prayers sermon at the Mother of All Battles Mosque in Baghdad for national unity and a three-day general strike to protest the siege of Fallujah, a call that thousands of Shiites answered. Pan-Islamism and Sunni-Shiite unity in the face of encroaching Western powers has been a political dream since the 19th century, but has usually proven futile. The U.S. assault on Fallujah managed to give it some reality.
The siege of Fallujah made the American military look to many Iraqis and Arabs as though it were imitating the tactics of the Israeli military, which had long launched punitive raids into Gaza (and before that Beirut) and targeted places like civilian apartment buildings and crowded streets with bombs and missiles from jets and helicopter gunships. The Yemeni teachers union, just the sort of educated leaders of thought the U.S. should be trying to woo, on April 12 issued a scathing condemnation of what they called the "carnage" in Fallujah and in the Gaza Strip.
The upshot: In many minds, there are now two major occupations of Arab land by outside powers, the West Bank and Iraq. This perception is a very dangerous development for Americans seeking legitimacy in Iraq and the Muslim world.
The massive U.S. assault on Fallujah created a situation in which political forces not on very good terms with one another put aside their differences to unite against the U.S. Palestinians and Iraqis tend to differ about whether the U.S. removal of Saddam Hussein from power was a good thing. Almost all Iraqis agree that it was. But both concur that Israeli occupation and punitive measures toward Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are wrong.
Likewise, radical Sunnis and radical Shiites do not for the most part like each other very much. But they were capable of joining together to send tens of relief trucks in a convoy to aid Fallujah. This forging of new bonds among forces that reject both the now-formalized process of annexation by Israel of Palestinian territory and the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq signals that the U.S. is losing the battle for hearts and minds. Once such attitudes harden, they are extremely difficult to overturn. Fallujah may be one of those historical turning points, where the stronger power wins militarily but loses all legitimacy in the eyes of those for whom it is supposedly fighting.
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About the writer
Juan Cole is professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan and author of "Sacred Space and Holy War" (IB Tauris, 2002). | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2004 12:54 am Post subject: JINSA/PNAC Neocons Ready to Expand Iraq War to Syria/Iran |
| Israel is the Problem (Our Problem as the 'A Clean Break' JINSA/PNAC Neoconservative document for wider war in the Middle East for Israel is linked in the following URL):
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=1032
Plan of Attack:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2340
George Bush: Neocon Napolean:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2325
** Analysis: US 'emulates' Israeli tactics **:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/14/analysis-us-emulates-israeli-tactics.php
The following is in accordance with the JINSA/PNAC Neocon ('A Clean Break' document which is linked in the first URL above) agenda of widening the Iraq war to Syria (with even more American soldiers/marines dying in the process as you can see the coffins coming home from Iraq in the picture at the top of www.whatreallyhappened.com -but the JINSA/CSP/PNAC Neocon 'Israel firsters' in the Pentagon don't have too much of a concern about Americans dying for Israel in Iraq and beyond -see the 'War Conceived in Israel' article which is linked under the map of 'greater Israel' after scrolling down to it on the left at http://www.nowarforisrael.com):
NO US SOLDIER SHOULD HAVE TO DIE IN IRAQ FOR ISRAEL TO GET OIL:
http://www.nogw.com/warforisrael.html
Eleven US soldiers die as revolt spreads to Syrian border
"Revolt"? How can the people revolt against a foreign government that claims to be liberating them????
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=512807
U.S. Marines engaged in 'silent war' near Syrian border:
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_9.html
Yep, Sharon (with the support of the JINSA/CSP/PNAC Zionist extremist Neocons at the Pentagon) is out to start a regional war!
Israel yesterday threatened to strike Damascus. It also warned that the Damascus-based political bureau chief of Hamas, Khalid Meshaal would meet "an identical" fate to the movement's assassinated leader in the Palestinian territories, Abdelaziz Rantissi. "When the opportunity comes to strike at Damascus, we will do it," Minister for Parliamentary Relations Gideon Erza was quoted as saying at Israel's cabinet meeting.
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=79543&Sn=WORL
John Kerry - An Ultra Right Wing Zionist
Israel, more than any other factor or faction, including the oil industry and the WASP old guard, is presently controlling the American political agenda, through its network of influence in the media, the Congress, the policy think tanks and other centers of power."
http://rense.com/general51/kerry.htm
Are Bush and Neo-Cons Finished?
Not until it is revealed that Bush and the Neocons MADE 9-11 happen to jump-start their little war. The subversion of the US to fight a war of conquest for personal profit and for a foreign power is a crime against the people and the world. As commander-in-chief, Bush is personally responsible for the war crimes now being comitted in Iraq.
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=716
Without Reservation
http://militaryweek.com/withoutreservation.shtml
by Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col. USAF (ret.)
An Honest Appraisal, and the Way Ahead
"April is the cruelest month" is the first line of T.S. Eliot's 1922 epic The Wasteland. These days, our man in Baghdad, Civilian Administrator L. Paul Bremer III, must be wondering if his memoirs of the last year should start with the same line. Upon reflection, back home in Washington, Bremer may wish to appropriate Eliot's title as well.
This April is particularly cruel with bills coming due for a lack of post-invasion planning, failure to develop an exit strategy, and for a persistent glaring void between the ears of the Bush administration regarding Iraq's history, economy and culture. As of this writing, nearly 700 American soldiers have paid the ultimate price for these oversights.
Neoconservatives pleaded and postured for preemptive war in Iraq, but they under-estimated one of the few "successes" of Saddam Hussein's secular dictatorship. Saddam's costly, protracted war with Iran, his failed invasion of Kuwait and the resultant humiliation of a Versailles-esque settlement, plus a dozen years of global sanctions and U.S./U.K. bombings combined, have produced many negative effects. But these realities have transformed various religious and ethnic groups from the provinces into something new: Iraqis against the world.
Iraqi national identity need not be permanent to throw a monkey wrench into the U.S. self-help project in Mesopotamia. Violent civil war or a Czech and Slovak style "velvet divorce" are future options for Iraq. But this month, we've witnessed a predictable side effect of our military and political occupation. Iraqis have heard the words of Mr. Bush, and they seem to agree. You're either with us, or you're against us.
The lies and executive pressure that convinced Congress to grant the current president extraordinary war powers are now behind us. Indeed, politicians usually prove more adept at killing and maiming the younger generations than saving them.
Now is the time for practical, not political, minds to hold sway.
In discussing Iraq, Senator Ted Kennedy recalls Vietnam. He takes grief not for his facts, but because, as a natty neoconservative talking point goes, "Why, his own brother got us into Vietnam!" Robert Dreyfuss reminds us that in 1968, following the Tet Offensive, the party in the White House became traumatized by that war's reality, and fell into disarray. Perhaps this is the one dangerous parallel that agonizes 21st century Republicans. And Senator Robert Byrd equates Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade to the modern military blunders of the current administration in a moving address before a nearly empty Senate Chamber.
Conversely, the twenty most influential American newspapers editorialized this week: when it comes to Iraq, we need to stay the course. These editorial boards mean well. But it is clear that they either honestly don't know or perversely refuse to recognize the one fundamental reason why we have had over 135,000 American troops under deadly fire for the past year in Iraq.
Here's a hint: It isn't liberation, democracy, counter-terrorism, a search for weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian concerns, or even oil or Israel's security interests. It is simple geo-strategic military positioning, a classic Cold War model, aimed at punishing future enemies and rewarding allies by leveraging regional oil flow, water allocations, and weapons development. This, and nothing else, explains why the EU is nervous, the Russian President antsy, and the Chinese Prime Minister coy.
Fortunately, we don't have to take the self-serving advice of neoconservatives and editorial boards. We can save our working class sons and daughters from unnecessary death, disease, or lifelong debilitation courtesy this boutique war imposed on us by chickenhawk academics and lying old men. We do have options.
One option is to simply withdraw. Toss a key, or not, over the fence and redeploy home. Write off the whole experiment as a bad decision taken by a mediocre president unrestrained by a frightened Congress, a docile Supreme Court, a lazy domestic media, and a too-busy-to-pay-attention electorate.
This option is typically rejected as immoral and bad for the Iraqi people. Of course, the Bush Doctrine of selective, preemptive, full-scale war based on jury-rigged or incompetent intelligence, and severely outmoded, but cherished, security paradigms gets first prize in the "immoral and bad for the Iraqi people" category.
In keeping with the Administration's preference that things be either/or, there is another option. Toss a hundred keys over a hundred city walls, and militarily pull back into a subset of friendly Guantanamo-style Iraqi outposts. In places like Kurdish Mosul or Shia Basra, we can pick our own friendly hosts and spend the bulk of the $67 billion base building and security money on these must-have facilities. As we withdraw to our friendly zones, we get to keep military access. As cities like Baghdad and Fallujah settle down, we might negotiate with the emergent leadership there for additional military access. Or not.
This is an approach that will save American lives and American tax dollars. It compromises on the American oil and infrastructure development contracts. It won't guarantee that the Mosul-to-Haifa oil pipeline – a booster for the Israeli economy – will be finished on schedule, if ever. It does not protect the right of expatriate crooks like Ahmad Chalabi to run the country under our tutelage.
The "hundred keys" option offers Iraq self rule, but it sacrifices the neoconservatives' adoration for overwhelmingly strong and centralized federal governments. Adding neoconservative insult to injury, this option also requires us to not only decentralize, but give up U.S. control over Iraqi banks and Iraqi oil production.
Yes, changes would have to be made. Doing so sooner rather than later will save American lives, while preserving at least some existing American contracts. It will, in a small way increase unemployment in Iraq, as the U.S. appointed Governing Council, the U.S. appointed bureaucratic Ministers, and the entire American staff of handlers will all be kicked off the rebuild Iraq gravy train funded by American tax dollars.
These are the types of choices that originate from an honest assessment of why we are in Iraq in the first place: military geo-strategic positioning, with a side of economic welfare for a few fat cat American companies. The neoconservative pipe dream of the reformation of Islam, and a stirring of the democratic heart of the Middle East is, as it always was, delusional window dressing.
April was the cruelest month for T.S. Eliot. It is a month of change; a month that breaks comfortable habits without kindness or remorse. When it comes to fixing our Iraq policy, we need only to appraise, with brutal honesty, what we really want and what we are really willing to spend to achieve it. The practical compromises are self-evident. One hopes we might make them before another April rolls around.
© 2004 Karen Kwiatkowski
Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski can be reached at karen@militaryweek.com. | | | | foppe37 | | Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2004 6:26 am Post subject: Gaza Strip withdrawal myth |
| Sharon can be expected not to withdraw from Gaza Strip because no such plan exists.
The IDF will remain in Gaza Strip, just a very small number of Israeli settlers must go.
Guarding them is too costly, one IDF soldier on every single settler.
One should not expect present Israel ever to give up a square inch of land.
Already before WW II Weizmann made the Jewish Congress in Zürich accept the partition plan for Palestine, telling them to try to enlarge the Jewish part after partition.
This is what is being done, the Iraqi occupation must be seen in the same light.
Zionist debaters assert all the time that with the 1917 Balfour declaration all of the British mandate was given to them, this includes not just present West Bank and present Gaza strip, but also present Jordan. | | | | hateliars | | Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2004 6:35 am Post subject: |
| They want a lot more than just Jordan. They want part of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. Look at the map for Greater Israel. Jews plot a war every 40 years or so to acquire more of their project. Meanwhile the rest of the world stupidly looks on or protests like the UN - "oh stop stop you bad bad Jews or we'll pass another resolution. Then you'll be sorry. Ooh ooh."
America is being cannibalized for the sake of Israel. Meanwhile Jews build up China and India to take our place. | | | | foppe37 | | Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2004 6:48 am Post subject: From the Nile to the Euphrates |
| | I did not assert that Zionist objectives have not been enlarged since 1900, or since 1917. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
