Hi. Today's theme is imperial arrogance, with both articles converging - Krugman, by implication and Ali, more directly. The hope is that they bespeak a massive awakening which can prevent an even greater catastrophe. Maybe, maybe not. And at last, in today's just scanned LA Times, an strong op-ed on conscequences of our current course. Rosa Brooks' Bush's burned bridges - B13. Ed
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/opinion/21krugman.html?th&emc=th The Price of Fantasy By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 21, 2006 Today we call them neoconservatives, but when the first George Bush was president, those who believed that America could remake the world to its liking with a series of splendid little wars - people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld - were known within the administration as "the crazies." Grown-ups in both parties rejected their vision as a dangerous fantasy. But in 2000 the Supreme Court delivered the White House to a man who, although he may be 60, doesn't act like a grown-up. The second President Bush obviously confuses swagger with strength, and prefers tough talkers like the crazies to people who actually think things through. He got the chance to implement the crazies' vision after 9/11, which created a climate in which few people in Congress or the news media dared to ask hard questions. And the result is the bloody mess we're now in. This isn't a case of 20-20 hindsight. It was clear from the beginning that the United States didn't have remotely enough troops to carry out the crazies' agenda - and Mr. Bush never asked for a bigger army. As I wrote back in January 2003, this meant that the "Bush doctrine" of preventive war was, in practice, a plan to "talk trash and carry a small stick." It was obvious even then that the administration was preparing to invade Iraq not because it posed a real threat, but because it looked like a soft target. The message to North Korea, which really did have an active nuclear program, was clear: "The Bush administration," I wrote, putting myself in Kim Jong Il's shoes, "says you're evil. It won't offer you aid, even if you cancel your nuclear program, because that would be rewarding evil. It won't even promise not to attack you, because it believes it has a mission to destroy evil regimes, whether or not they actually pose any threat to the U.S. But for all its belligerence, the Bush administration seems willing to confront only regimes that are militarily weak." So "the best self-preservation strategy ... is to be dangerous." With a few modifications, the same logic applies to Iran. And it's easier than ever for Iran to be dangerous, now that U.S. forces are bogged down in Iraq. Would the current crisis on the Israel-Lebanon border have happened even if the Bush administration had actually concentrated on fighting terrorism, rather than using 9/11 as an excuse to pursue the crazies' agenda? Nobody knows. But it's clear that the United States would have more options, more ability to influence the situation, if Mr. Bush hadn't squandered both the nation's credibility and its military might on his war of choice. So what happens next? Few if any of the crazies have the moral courage to admit that they were wrong. Vice President Cheney continues to insist that his two most famous pronouncements about Iraq - his declaration before the invasion that we would be "greeted as liberators" and his assertion a year ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes" - were "basically accurate." But if the premise of the Bush doctrine was right, why are things going so badly? The crazies respond by retreating even further into their fantasies of omnipotence. The only problem, they assert, is a lack of will. Thus William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, has called for a military strike - an airstrike, since we don't have any spare ground troops - against Iran. "Yes, there would be repercussions," he wrote in his magazine, "and they would be healthy ones." What would these healthy repercussions be? On Fox News he argued that "the right use of targeted military force" could cause the Iranian people "to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power." Oh, boy. Mr. Kristol is, of course, a pundit rather than a policymaker. But there's every reason to suspect that what Mr. Kristol says in public is what Mr. Cheney says in private. And what about The Decider himself? For years the self-proclaimed "war president" basked in the adulation of the crazies. Now they're accusing him of being a wimp. "We have been too weak," writes Mr. Kristol, "and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak." Does Mr. Bush have the maturity to stand up to this kind of pressure? I report, you decide. *** Tariq Ali : A protracted colonial war With US support, Israel is hoping to isolate and topple Syria by holding sway over Lebanon The Guardian Thursday July 20, 2006 In his last interview - after the 1967 six-day war - the historian Isaac Deutscher, whose next-of-kin had died in the Nazi camps and whose surviving relations lived in Israel, said: "To justify or condone Israel's wars against the Arabs is to render Israel a very bad service indeed and harm its own long-term interest." Comparing Israel to Prussia, he issued a sombre warning: "The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase 'Man kann sich totseigen!' 'You can triumph yourself to death'." In Israel's actions today we can detect many of the elements of hubris: an imperial arrogance, a distortion of reality, an awareness of its military superiority, the self-righteousness with which it wrecks the social infrastructure of weaker states, and a belief in its racial superiority. The loss of many civilian lives in Gaza and Lebanon matters less than the capture or death of a single Israeli soldier. In this, Israeli actions are validated by the US. The offensive against Gaza is designed to destroy Hamas for daring to win an election. The "international community" stood by as Gaza suffered collective punishment. Dozens of innocents continue to die. This meant nothing to the G8 leaders. Nothing was done. Israeli recklessness is always green-lighted by Washington. In this case, their interests coincide. They want to isolate and topple the Syrian regime by securing Lebanon as an Israeli-American protectorate on the Jordanian model. They argue this was the original design of the country. Contemporary Lebanon, it is true, still remains in large measure the artificial creation of French colonialism it was at the outset - a coastal band of Greater Syria sliced off from its hinterland by Paris to form a regional client dominated by a Maronite minority. The country's confessional chequerboard has never allowed an accurate census, for fear of revealing that a substantial Muslim - today perhaps even a Shia - majority is denied due representation in the political system. Sectarian tensions, over-determined by the plight of refugees from Palestine, exploded into civil war in the 1970s, providing for the entry of Syrian troops, with tacit US approval, and their establishment there - ostensibly as a buffer between the warring factions, and deterrent to an Israeli takeover, on the cards with the invasions of 1978 and 1982 (when Hizbullah did not exist). The killing of Rafik Hariri provoked vast demonstrations by the middle class, demanding the expulsion of the Syrians, while western organisations arrived to assist the progress of a Cedar Revolution. Backed by threats from Washington and Paris, the momentum was sufficient to force a Syrian withdrawal and produce a weak government in Beirut. But Lebanon's factions remained spread-eagled. Hizbullah had not disarmed, and Syria has not fallen. Washington had taken a pawn, but the castle had still to be captured. I was in Beirut in May, when the Israeli army entered and killed two "terrorists" from a Palestinian splinter group. The latter responded with rockets. Israeli warplanes punished Hizbullah by dropping over 50 bombs on its villages and headquarters near the border. The latest Israeli offensive is designed to take the castle. Will it succeed? A protracted colonial war lies ahead, since Hizbullah, like Hamas, has mass support. It cannot be written off as a "terrorist" organisation. The Arab world sees its forces as freedom fighters resisting colonial occupation. There are 9,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli gulags. That is why Israeli soldiers are captured. Prisoner exchanges have occurred as a result. To blame Syria and Iran for Israel's latest offensive is frivolous. Until the question of Palestine is resolved and Iraq's occupation ended, there will be no peace in the region. A "UN" force to deter Hizbullah, but not Israel, is a nonsensical notion. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ยท A demonstration against the Middle East war has been called by the Stop the War Coalition and others on Saturday www.stopthewar.org. RESEARCH AND INFORMATION NETWORK (RAIN) Director : Abie Dawjee P O Box 26119, Isipingo Beach, Durban, South Africa 4115. tel: 0027 31 9029174. fax: 0027 31 9024523. mobile: 082 352 352 6 e-mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Great things are happening at Yahoo! Groups. 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