Bush May Re-Assemble Gulf War Coalition For Action Soon
By
URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/
Eugene Narrett, Ph.D
Toogood Reports
soon may be highlighted as the incipient Administration of President-elect
Bush focuses on tensions developing in the northern part of the Fertile
Crescent. Israeli mainstream journalists whose most seminal work is done via
pseudonym (lest they get the heave-ho given dissenters from media orthodoxy)
have been reporting for months, as has the conventional press and various
security analysts on an unusual strategic coalescence between Syria and Iraq.
Iraq has positioned several divisions to its juncture with Syria and Jordan
and recently has begun trucking supplies across the latter nation to
Palestinians in the West Bank. This is monitored by the major CIA presence
there (at the "Pentagon" outside Ramallah) and reports are that Bush Team II
is preparing a response.
The journalist group "Debkafile" reports, "Bush team urging military action
against Iraq, cutting Arafat down to size" (12-15, gamla.org.il/english, Vol.
1, #29). Thousands of Iraqi volunteers are preparing to filter through Jordan
to Judea and Samaria in conjunction with infiltration of Israel�s northern
border by Hizbollah and other terrorist groups funded by Iran and housed in
Syria (Lebanon has become Syrian "province 18"). The precipitate Israeli
withdrawal in May 2000 from its narrow security zone in southern Lebanon
vitiated intelligence as well as deterrence along that border. Barak�s
"security fence" is nowhere near completion, as analyst Emanuel Winston
predicted June 04 ("Barak�s Security Fence Scams Congress"). As a result,
"Hizbollah could virtually walk into [northern] Israel tomorrow" (Jerusalem
Post, 12-18-00, London Sunday Times 12-17-00). The Israeli withdrawal also
caused what proponents of the Security Zone had warned of for years: the
deployment by Hizbollah of rocket launchers whose katyushas can blanket
northern Israel. The Arrow missile defense system is only beginning to be
deployed and the Nautilus anti-missile missile-laser combo is still being
tested in New Mexico.
Among Israeli counter-measures are the deployment of an armored division to
the Golan Heights and, reportedly, high alert status for its three nuclear
submarines (Ibid.). A revealing complement to these war preparations is the
arrival in Washington of Barak�s frenzied Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben Ami
compared to whom Neville Chamberlain was a Churchill. Fresh from meeting with
Palestinian "Security" officials who have directed most of the violence and
killings of Israelis during the past two months, Ben Ami has been
commissioned to surrender the Temple Mount and Jordan Valley. Since December
1999, Barak has allowed Arabs to hollow out the Mount, trucking away remains
of the two Temples and thus erasing history. The exchange is Arafat�s
agreeing to "defer" demands that Israel admits Arab "refugees" and facilitate
a "Peace Treaty" for Barak�s owner, William J. Clinton.
Current "negotiations" are grotesque: Barak resigned December 10 and is
likely to be trounced in elections tentatively scheduled for February 06. He
lacks authority even to appoint a Cabinet Minister, much less undertake
international agreements. Not that the lack of a controlling legal authority
ever impeded the behavior of part of the Clinton menagerie. That�s the
dangerous subtext to these implausible maneuvers.
Barak knows what the Iraqis and Syrians are doing and that Arafat is not
interested in an agreement nearly so much as he is in extending and
internationalizing the crisis. Arafat particularly seeks cementing his
alliance with Iraq that will, in turn, protect him from the Syrians, now
drifting under the uncertain hand of Hafez Asad�s son, Bashir, a thug
presented to the world by French and British intelligence and a compliant
media as a "computer nerd" (Debkafile, 12-11-00). While the new Arab axis
takes shape, Barak, and Clinton are engaged in their typical edge-work,
weakening Israel as an attack nears. The purpose is the same as that of
Nixon-Kissinger in 1973: to soften Israel up by a war fought under difficult
circumstances to maximize its subsequent pliability to internationalizing
Jerusalem and creating a UN protectorate in Judea and Samaria. An
investigative "committee" under former Senator George Mitchell has just
arrived in Israel as a wedge for the first detachment of blue helmets whose
pro-Arab bias and open hostility toward Jews has been on display in Hebron
for two years (David Wilder, hebron.org.il 12-17).
As this overview indicates, the Bush team has a multi-national alternative
seeking stability rather than escalating terrorism and unpredictable
counter-measures. Reports from Debkafile are that the Bush team intends to
detach Jordan from its place in the developing Iraqi-Syrian-Palestinian axis
and to firm its tenuous independence and eroding "western" orientation. Gulf
War II will see British and American troops dropped deep within Iraq to
overthrow of Saddam Hussein, his extended family and destroy their personal
armed forces. This would include dismantling of the chemical and biological
weapons he stores in the network of tunnels connecting his dozens of
residences. It was this network and its shuttling schedule that Major Scott
Ritter had discovered (with Israeli aid) when Madeline Albright scuttled
UNSCOM.
The next two-three months will present Americans with a struggle between two
branches of "the grand game." The sexual Bolsheviks of the global village
group led by Clinton will maneuver for influence against the renewed
ascendance of Anglo-American world-managers who prefer their profits neat and
whose pragmatic self-interest retains some of the moral scruples of an
earlier era. The latter have time, expertise and sobriety on their side. The
former will be using their chits, Barak and Arafat to increase tensions and
drive home a destabilizing "agreement" before Clinton leaves the White House
January 20. The joker in this deck as always is Arafat who increasingly shows
that Clinton now needs him more than vice versa. Arafat doesn�t care if his
outcome-based win is arranged with Netanyahu or Barak (Jerusalem Post,
"Arafat blasts Mofaz," 12-18-00). Attempts last week to assassinate the Grand
Rabbi of Israel and the brother of IDF Chief of Staff Mofaz showed that
Arafat continues his edge work.
Postscript: Bush II Team is managing the re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Cast as a "rightwing nationalist," Netanyahu will carry out Oslo in a
slightly different style and pace than his successor, and now, predecessor,
Barak. As in America, the degenerating status quo will not change unless
grass roots leadership transforms the structure of one of the major parties.
The degenerative logic of Oslo will produce this change in Israel, within a
year if violence escalates. The Bush assault on Iraq and the whittling of
Arafat back down to size means to prevent this new wild card being drawn from
the deck. Grass roots growth that transformed the Republican Party here would
change the debate even more profoundly. That�s the subject of a different
piece.
Eugene Narrett, Ph.D is a favorite Toogood Reports columnist and Professor
of English who frequently has punctured the cloud of therapeutic cliches
smothering this nation like a chloroformed pillow. He contributes to
publications including Culture Wars and Chronicles and The Outpost and for
five years was a columnist for the Metrowest Daily News. He has appeared
frequently on American Freedom Network and other broadcast outlets
including WABC and National Empowerment TV. E-Mail Dr. Narrett at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
December 19, 2000
