Max Sawicky wrote:
Check the State Dept reports on terrorism. I
took a spin through them last night. The chief
offenders, according to the reports, are Iran
and Syria, mostly for hosting Palestinian-related
groups. Both are particularly tough nuts, for
different reasons. Iran because it's a huge
country, Syria because it is deeply entwined
in conflict with Israel.
=====
Iran and Syria were once before in this frame, around the time of
Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and not long after the Lockerbie disaster.
What got them off the hook was their (essential) support for/tolerance
of the US-led coalition's aims re ejecting Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
Gadaffi conveniently filled the breach.
This time around Gadaffi seems to be supporting some kind of
retaliation. Quite likely he, like a lot of other leaders, is concerned
about the threat posed to state elites by the rise of a quite uncivil
society. But he and others will have to perform very difficult balancing
acts as they attempt to impose order upon their societies but still
retain legitimacy. The diffuse nature of the target identified by Bush
and his clan makes it likely that the non-Western segments of the
coalition, and very possibly even some of the Western, will have only
temporary membership. This is because of the apparently pathological
attachment of key players in the Bush clan to outmoded foreign policy
frameworks. Not content with fighting the Cold War, Rice, Rumsfeld and
Cheney seem set, with Samuel Huntington as their guide, to treat all
Islam as one great opposing civilisation, and act accordingly. Thus they
cannot conceive of the very profound differences between the Iranian
leadership and the Taliban, for instance. Meanwhile Syria's regime,
founded upon a secularist ideology and presided over by members of a
small minority traditionally associated with more mystical elements of
Islam (hence dangerously heretical to the likes of the Muslim
Brotherhood and other elements, including the bin Laden adherents), is
hardly likely to want to encourage such destabilising developments.
Remember Hafez al-Assad's brutal subjugation of the Muslim Brotherhood
in 1982? Unlike Pan-Am flight 103, the WTC/Pentagon attacks were
probably the last things either Syria or Iran wanted to happen. However,
the affront of Israeli atrocities in Palestine prohibits them from even
coming close to saying so.
We have been hearing a lot of late about how there is such a gaping hole
as regards area intelligence. Apparently both Britain and the US lack
sufficient expertise regarding the Middle East generally and Afghanistan
specifically. This is a remarkable admission, considering all the money
and munitions that have poured into the region during the last two
decades alone, all the effort that was spent "informing" the citizens of
both countries of the brave Afghan mujahideen fighters beating back the
evil Commies, etc. One article I forwarded earlier cited US attitudes
towards such people who did research the political economy of the
region. These were frowned upon as inappropriate, at best, and
dangerously suspicious, at worst, in an uncanny replay of the kind of
McCarthyite "cleansing" that rid US universities of expertise in the Far
East during the 1950s. This is detailed by Chalmers Johnson in his
unsurpassably prescient "Blowback", and cited as, in good measure,
responsible for the subsequent debacle in Vietnam. Now we have our own
era's equivalents of Edgar Snow being blackballed and dismissed as
irrelevant or eccentric, only to decry their absence in our hour of
need. The lesson of history is that we never learn the lesson of
history. But with the apparent reluctance of the CIA's agents to embroil
themselves in such an alien culture and forbidding landscape (years in
the desert, no sex! well, no table dancing clubs) how much
"intelligence" has been forwarded courtesy of Mossad, and taken at face
value? Since Syria, Iran, Iraq and Libya are all declared enemies of
Israel, then of course they can be lumped together and treated as part
of a dastardly homogenous anti-Zionist conspiracy of hate. If the BBC is
prone to relaying Mossad PR, you can bet the desk jobbers at Langley are
lapping it up.
One really wonders how the "experts" in and around the White House ever
achieved such status, given the catalogue of errors, faux pas and plain
stupidity that has unfolded since 20 January this year. Say what you
like about Larry Summers et al., but, whatever else they were and did,
at least they were consistent and cognisant of their changed (vis a vis
the Cold War) environment. Meanwhile I believe that Brzezinski refuses
to admit any wrongdoing in having presided over the process that spawned
our global "Wanted" poster pin-up boy. At least with Powell there is a
sheen of competence that escaped his immediate predecessor, she who
coined the phrase "the indispensable nation". Now we know what happens
when you stand just that little bit taller than everyone else.
With so many "experts" so utterly trapped by a mixture of conceit,
tunnel vision and hubris, is it any wonder that we are witnessing US
imperial decline? The unfortunate aspect of this long, necessarily drawn
out process, is that the US power elite will go kicking and screaming,
and taking down as many as possible with it.
Michael K.
