| Author | Message | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2003 10:50 am 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.
_______________________________________
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| Pope Condemns US/UK War Plans, calls for day of fasting for peace
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POPE CALLS FOR FAST AGAINST WAR ON IRAQ
Pope tells British PM in first such meeting in decades war on
Iraq
would constitute a 'Crime Against Humanity'
Pope Calls for All Catholics to Fast on March 5 Against War in
Iraq
By Frances D'emilio
VATICAN CITY (AP - 23 February) - Pope John Paul II called on Catholics
to fast on Ash Wednesday in the name of peace and said again on Sunday
he
worried a U.S.-led war against Iraq could unsettle the entire Middle
East.
Looking wan and tired, John Paul opened his traditional Sunday remarks
from his studio window overlooking St. Peter's Square by denouncing war
as a way to resolve the conflict.
"We Christians in particular are called upon to be sentinels of peace,"
John Paul said, calling on Catholics to dedicate their fasting on Ash
Wednesday, March 5, for the cause of peace.
On that day, the pope said, faithful will pray for "the conversion of
hearts and the long-range vision of just decisions to resolve disputes
with adequate and peaceful means."
He said that the fast, which Catholics traditionally conduct at the
start
of Lent to prepare themselves for Easter, is an "_expression of
penitence
for the hate and violence which pollute human relations."
Fasting, an ancient practice shared by other religions, he said, also
lets faithful "shed themselves of all arrogance."
Rainbow-hued peace banners fluttered in the crowd of tourists and
pilgrims in the square. Surveys have shown Italians and many other
Europeans oppose war, even if waged under the aegis of the United
Nations, and earlier this month, about 1 million Italians marched
through
Rome to protest against the United States and its push for using
military
force.
"For months the international community is living in great apprehension
for the danger of a war, which could unsettle the entire Middle East
region and aggravate the tensions unfortunately already present in this
beginning of the third millennium," the pontiff said.
"It is the duty of all believers, to whichever religion they belong, to
proclaim that we can never be happy pitted one against the other; the
future of humanity will never able to be secured by terrorism and by
the
logic of war," John Paul said.
While the pope has been hailed as a champion of peace by anti-war
demonstrators ranging from environmentalists to communists, some in
Italy
challenged his view.
Radical Party leaders Sunday denounced what they saw as the pontiff's
"equating terrorism and war, whatever war." Led by Marco Panella, the
Radicals say they would like to see Saddam Hussein in exile and a
democratic government under U.N. auspices to replace the Iraqi leader.
John Paul has been holding practically daily meetings with key players
in
the crisis over Iraq. In his latest effort, on Saturday, he met with
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been trying to line up
support
in Europe and elsewhere for Washington's insistence that military force
is necessary if Baghdad doesn't quickly and completely comply with U.N.
disarmament resolutions.
John Paul, 82 and struggling with Parkinson's disease and other health
problems, appeared weary, his voice trailing off in the final words of
his appeal, "blessed are the peacemakers," a phrase from the Gospel of
Matthew.
John Paul made similar calls against conflict in the months before the
1991 Gulf War, but in this campaign, with the memory of the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks making the world particularly apprehensive, he has
seemed more determined than ever to do his part to persuade
decision-makers against going to war.
THE POPE'S DISAPPROVAL WORRIES BLAIR MORE THAN
MARCHERS
A "crime against humanity": those are the forthright words chosen by
John
Paul II to characterise the coming war with Iraq, which he told Mr
Blair
yesterday would create "new divisions in the world"...The Pope, a
veteran
of the Polish wartime resistance and a lionhearted enemy of Communism,
is
no weak-willed peacenik. Quite the opposite, in fact: he knows better
than
any of the West's current crop of political leaders what war really
entails. I imagine that the soft-spoken opposition of this towering
figure
troubles Mr Blair much more deeply than the hostility of the million or
so
voters who marched through London eight days ago.
The Pope's disapproval worries Blair more than
marchers
By Matthew d'Ancona
[The Sunday Telegraph (UK) - February 23, 2003]: It used to be the
solemn
practice of medieval crusaders to seek the indulgence of the Pope
before
they rode off on their steeds to the Holy Land. Some wrote impassioned
letters to the Pontiff for the good of their souls, but many made the
pilgrimage to Rome in person. Yesterday, on the eve of another mighty
conflict in the sands of the Middle East, the Prime Minister was
granted a
private audience by John Paul II. But there was to be no indulgence -
no
papal imprimatur - for this Christian soldier. Mr Blair may believe
that he
is embarking on a "just war": the Holy Father does not.
When President Bush called the war on terrorism a "crusade" he was
pilloried as a Bible-bashing redneck. It is too easily forgotten that
Tony
Blair deployed that word first, in a Newsweek article on the Balkan war
in
1999, long before the atrocities of September 11. The Prime Minister's
robust Christian convictions and his readiness to take military action
have
always been intimately linked in his own mind. He does not see himself
as a
crusader in any aggressive sense; but there is no doubt that he seeks
authorisation for war, as well as personal spiritual solace, in the
Gospels.
For this reason, yesterday's meeting was unique in British political
history. Mr Blair is not the first prime minister to be so honoured:
Churchill, for example, had an audience with Pius XII in August 1944.
"Not
only did the Papal Guard in all their stately array line the long
series of
ante-rooms and galleries through which we passed," he later recalled
with
relish, "but the Noble Guards, formed of representatives of the highest
and
most ancient families of Rome, with a magnificent medieval uniform I
had
never seen before, were present."
Churchill discussed the evils of Communism with the Supreme Pontiff,
and as
he left, quoted, with some emotion, a passage from Macaulay's essay on
Ranke's History of the Papacy. But that meeting was held towards the
end of
a war, rather than on the eve of one. And, however moved Churchill was
by
the splendour of the Vatican, he did not go in search of spiritual
endorsement, or to engage in theological argument. Officially,
yesterday's
audience was a courtesy extended privately to the Prime Minister's
family
by the Vatican because of Mrs Blair's devout Catholicism. In practice,
it
was an event crackling with doctrinal and political significance.
A"crime against humanity": those are the forthright words chosen by
John
Paul II to characterise the coming war with Iraq, which he told Mr
Blair
yesterday would create "new divisions in the world". Last weekend, His
Holiness met Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's Roman Catholic deputy, while
the
papal envoy, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray held talks with the Iraqi
dictator
himself in Baghdad (Saddam ranted about the racism of the West).
The Pope was, it should not be forgotten, strongly opposed to the last
Gulf
War in 1991, which he foretold would have "certainly disastrous
consequences". George Weigel, his most authoritative biographer,
observes
diplomatically that "the Vatican's performance in the Gulf War crisis
between August 1990 and March 1991 did not meet the high standards set
in
the previous twelve years of the pontificate." Indeed not.
Yet the Pope, a veteran of the Polish wartime resistance and a
lionhearted
enemy of Communism, is no weak-willed peacenik. Quite the opposite, in
fact: he knows better than any of the West's current crop of political
leaders what war really entails. I imagine that the soft-spoken
opposition
of this towering figure troubles Mr Blair much more deeply than the
hostility of the million or so voters who marched through London eight
days
ago: this weekend, there is only one Pole he is worrying about.
The extent of the Prime Minister's attraction to Roman Catholicism
remains
a matter of controversy. Downing Street was furious in 1998 when the
Press
Association revealed that he had been attending Mass at Westminster
Cathedral on his own. Cardinal Hume wasn't too thrilled either by what
appeared to be doctrinal dilettantism. On the Anglican side, it was
claimed
that the Prime Minister, as an alleged crypto-Catholic, could not make
sound appointments to the episcopal bench. I recall an unswervingly
Protestant minister seething to me at the time that his boss's decision
to
take Catholic Communion was "unconscionable": as so often over the
centuries, London murmured of a "Popish plot".
Number 10 tried desperately to close the story down: one of the most
menacing phone calls I have ever taken from Downing Street was from a
spin
doctor convinced The Sunday Telegraph was going to disclose an alleged
discussion between Mr Blair and a Catholic priest. In short, I would be
amazed if the Prime Minister converts to Rome while he is in office.
But
there is no doubt that he is powerfully drawn to the certainties and
liturgy of Catholicism (and to its canon law: visitors to his study
have
been startled on occasion to see a well-thumbed copy of Paul VI's bull
on
human reproduction, Humanae Vitae). So yesterday's audience will have
been
freighted with personal significance for Mr Blair as a station on his
own
private pilgrimage.
Downing Street insists that the Prime Minister has a "clear conscience"
on
Iraq, and that may well be so. But that clarity has been hard won.
According to one Cabinet Minister, the Prime Minister spent a great
deal of
time towards the end of last year wrestling with the prospect of war
and
convincing himself that it was just. "It was very private," the
minister
told me, "and very intense." The joke among his officials before
Christmas
was that it was easier to engage the Prime Minister's interest on the
nuances of St Thomas Aquinas than on the detail of public service
reform.
There has always been a strongly Christian strain in the British Labour
movement, of course, but one which has emphasised the duty of the
believer
to avert war at almost any cost. Labour pacifism and CND have their
roots
in Christian socialism. The theologian to whom Mr Blair says he owes
most,
John MacMurray (1891-1976), offers little comfort to the politician
about
to commit troops to battle. "We went into war in a blaze of idealism,"
wrote MacMurray of his experience in the Somme and at Arras. "We
learned
that war was simply stupidity, destruction, waste and futility."
The Prime Minister's faith has led him to a quite different, more
muscular
position on the morality of conflict. "Christianity is a very tough
religion," he wrote in 1993. "It is judgmental. There is right and
wrong.
There is good and bad." In an interview with this newspaper in 2001, he
avowed his belief in "the necessity to make judgments about the human
condition" and drew an explicit connection between that conviction and
his
conduct during the Kosovo crisis. There is, in fact, a consistent
recoil
from appeasement in what he has said about Christianity over the years.
When I interviewed him in 1996 on his religious beliefs, he dwelt upon
Pontius Pilate as "the archetypal politician, caught on the horns of an
age-old political dilemma … his is the struggle between what is right
and
what is expedient that has occurred throughout history". Amongst the
precedents cited by Mr Blair in that interview was the Munich Agreement
- a
"classic example", in Blair's own judgment, of the great ethical
choices
which face politicians. His point was that Chamberlain, in treating
with
Hitler, had chosen expediency over moral rectitude, with appalling
consequences.
Mr Blair made that observation to me sprawled on an ancient sofa in the
Leader of the Opposition's office at the House of Commons. He spoke
with
the excitement that must have filled his all-night debates as an
undergraduate at St John's College, Oxford, with the Australian priest
Peter Thomson. It seems a very long time ago now. Could he possibly
have
imagined that, seven years later, he would be facing a similar
decision,
encouraged, as Chamberlain was by public and churchmen alike, to cut a
deal
with a terrible dictator? Has the image of Pilate washing his hands
passed
through his mind again as he has looked ahead to the gathering storm?
In the first months of the Iraqi crisis, the Prime Minister did his
best to
evade forthright debate on the matter. Wait and see what the United
Nations
resolves, he said. No decisions had been made, he insisted - even as
Allied
troops began to amass in the Gulf. Last weekend, however, Blair the
Moralist finally emerged from behind Blair the Legalist and Blair the
Diplomat.
Yes, the Prime Minister said, the proximate cause of the war, if it
were
fought, would be legal: Saddam's contempt for UN mandates would be the
official casus belli. But there was an ethical dimension, he continued.
"If
the result of peace is Saddam staying in power, not disarmed, then I
tell
you there are consequences paid in blood for that decision too." The
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and his Roman Catholic
counterpart, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, parried swiftly with a
joint
statement questioning the "moral legitimacy" of the prospective
campaign to
dislodge Saddam and deploring its "unpredictable humanitarian and
political
consequences".
What is so depressing about this debate is its intellectual poverty.
Those
churchmen attacking Mr Blair over Iraq seem to do so primarily on
procedural grounds. Echoing the archbishops' joint statement, Richard
Harries, the Bishop of Oxford, said on the BBC's Today programme on
Thursday that the Prime Minister had not made a "morally persuasive
case".
The bishop went on to say, however, that if the UN passed a second
resolution,"people like myself and the churches and the archbishops
have to
think seriously again".
So let's be clear: does this mean that what the Security Council says
is
somehow intrinsically "morally persuasive"? And that - in practice -
Jacques Chirac now gets to decide what is a "just war", and what isn't?
This is the topsy turvy logic employed by churchmen in this country,
who
seem to be abdicating their own responsibility to make moral decisions,
expecting the Security Council to pronounce on ethical questions as the
Holy See used to on behalf of all Christendom.
Interestingly, a much more vibrant debate on what constitutes a "just
war"
in the wake of September 11 is now under way in America. Michael Novak,
the
Catholic theologian, recently travelled to the Vatican to tell a
sceptical
audience that "a limited and carefully conducted war to bring about
regime
change in Iraq is, as a last resort, morally obligatory".
George Weigel, an acknowledged authority on the theology of the "just
war"
as well as the Pope's biographer, has argued that the development of
weapons of mass destruction by rogues states linked to terrorist groups
"requires us to develop and extend the just war tradition to meet the
political exigencies of a new century" - namely, to encompass
pre-emptive
strikes.
Critical to St Augustine's theory of the "just war" is the duty to
maintain
the "peace of order" - the tranquilitas ordinis - and it is this which
theologians such as Weigel claim is under grave threat from Iraq and
other
rogue states. Mr Blair, in contrast, focuses on the distinct
Augustinian
notion that Christian love may require force to protect the innocent.
Thus,
it is the neighbourly duty of the West to liberate the Iraqis from
their
captivity at the hands of Saddam: the war would be just because of the
suffering it would end.
The Vatican is not yet convinced by any of this. Soon after the
destruction
of the World Trade Center, a papal spokesman speculated that the
atrocity
showed that "an action of active prevention" against a terrorist force
could be doctrinally justified. However, Cardinal Ratzinger, the head
of
the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the Church's
supreme doctrinal body - has since ruled with pitiless clarity that
there
is no basis in the Church's Catechism for the concept of "pre-emptive
war".
Abstruse as this may sound, it is the sort of thing the Prime Minister
thinks about all the time. Alastair Campbell has more or less banned
his
boss from discussing religious matters in public, but that has not
diminished their importance to him by a jot, or discouraged his
impressive
theological literacy. Yesterday's meeting was much more than an
exercise in
protocol. Mr Blair let it be known in advance of the audience that he
was
"not going to try to change [the Pope's] mind", but we can take that
claim
with a pillar of salt. In every phrase, spoken and unspoken, this was
an
attempt by a fervently Christian politician to convince the most
influential Christian leader on earth that war against Saddam is
needed.
In this, the Prime Minister failed, as he must have expected he would.
The
Pope is not easily persuaded to alter his view. But he respects the
limits
of his own power, too. Paragraph 2309 of the Catholic Church's
Catechism is
unambiguous: "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy
[of a
just war] belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have
responsibility for the common good." Or to put it more crudely: if
politicians want to go to war, then, in the end, it's up to them. The
Prime
Minister was surely deep in thought as he left the Vatican yesterday.
For
what His Holiness made clear to him was not only that he was wrong
about
Iraq, but that he was on his own. It is for the crusader-prince to
decide
what to do, in prayer, in silence, in the long watches of the night.
That
is the way of things: render unto Blair that which is Blair's.
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