If you would like
to be removed
from this mailing list, please indicate so by return mail.
Pour se désinscrire de cette liste, renvoyez svp ce mèle
avec votre
demande.
___________________________________________________________________
Bulletin N° 257
The Independent asked a group of Labour MPs what they though of British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's outburst :
Some years ago Noam Chomsky and I found it useful to distinguish between three categories of terrorism--constructive, benign and nefarious--the classification based strictly on the utility of the terrorism to U.S. interests as perceived by the ruling political elite [1]
Thus,
when terrorism is seen by U.S. officials as highly advantageous to U.S.
interests, it is treated by those officials, and hence by the media, as
a positive development and hence "constructive." This was the case with
the vast massacres by Suharto and colleagues in Indonesia in 1965-1966,
that wiped out the base of a communist party and cleared the ground for
an open door to foreign investment and a realignment of Indonesian
foreign policy in favor of the West. In this instance not only
was
there no moral indignation expressed at the mass murder of many
hundreds of thousands of civilians, it was treated as a "dividend" from
our policy of military aid to the Indonesian army (Robert McNamara),
and a "a gleam of light" in Asia (James Reston). [2]
When the
terrorism is not especially helpful to U.S. interests but is carried
out by an ally or client that U.S. officials want to placate or
protect, the killing of large numbers of civilians is treated as of
little interest and no evident moral concern-it is "benign"--as in the
case of Indonesia's invasion-occupation of East Timor in 1975 and
after, which resulted in the death of a third of the East Timorese
population, but which was aided and diplomatically protected by the U.
S. government, based on the perceived merits of the Suharto
dictatorship and kleptocracy. [3]
On the other hand, a
terrorism carried out by a communist or any other designated enemy
state is given great attention, arouses great moral fervor, and is
treated as "nefarious." This was the case with the killings by Pol Pot
in Cambodia, the NLF in Vietnam, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq--except
during the period in the 1980s when Saddam was serving U.S. interests
by killing Iranians. This classification system was and remains useful,
and is notable in its successful tracking not only official
designations but media treatment as well. For the first two kinds of
terrorism, the media are reliably very quiet, with little coverage,
antiseptic and sometimes apologetic treatment of murderous behavior
where it is mentioned at all, [4] and with no indignation. With
nefarious terror, on the other hand, coverage is intense, detailed,
includes many personal stories of suffering, and elicits great
indignation. [5]
Over the past two decades, during which
ethnic cleansing has frequently been featured by Western officials,
pundits and human rights activists, a closely parallel system of
official treatment and media follow-on is also evident. As with
terrorism, in the official view ethnic cleansing can be constructive,
benign, or nefarious, and the media recognize this and adjust with
almost clockwork precision to the demands of state policy in treating
its different manifestations.
Constructive Ethnic Cleansing: Croatia and the Krajina Serbs
As
a model instance of constructive ethnic cleansing, we may take the case
of the Croat ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the Krajina region of
Croatia in August 1995. Long before that date the Clinton
administration had aligned itself with the Croats and Bosnian Muslims
in the externally stoked civil war that engulfed the region from 1991
onward: it had supported sanctions on the Serbs alone, sponsored and
used the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
(ICTY) as an anti-Serb political-PR-judicial instrument, [6] encouraged
the Bosnian Muslims to withdraw from the Lisbon agreement in March
1992--an agreement that would have settled the conflict and prevented
the further large-scale blood-letting--helped organize an alliance
between the Muslims and Croats to help them better fight the Serbs, and
supported the import of arms and mujahadeen to help the Muslims fight
and kill more effectively, among other matters.
To
further weaken the bargaining position of the Serbs, the Clinton
administration actively supported the Croatian army's attacks on the
Serb communities in Croatia in Operation Flash in May 1995 and then in
the massive ethnic cleansing of Krajina Serbs in Operation Storm in
August 1995. Richard Holbrooke visited Zagreb two days before the
beginning of Operation Storm, and clearly did not exercise any
restraining influence on the imminent cleansing operation. Active U.S.
support came in the form of military aid, the provision of
military
"advisers" closely affiliated with the U.S. armed forces, direct
participation in the military operations via intelligence provision and
even selective bombing missions, and a refusal to cooperate with the
ICTY in providing information on possible war crimes committed by the
Croatian armed forces. [7]
Another form of U.S. support was
an intense and indignant focus on the Srebrenica massacre, [8] which
took place during the month before Operation Storm and helped justify
and distract attention from the Croatian ethnic cleansing and massacre.
Operation Storm involved the removal of some 200,000 to 250,000 Krajina
Serbs, in contrast with perhaps one-tenth that number of Bosnian
Muslims removed from Srebrenica. [9] Operation Storm may also have
involved the killing of more Serb civilians than Bosnian Muslim
civilians killed in the Srebrenica area in July: virtually all of the
Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters, not civilians, as the Bosnian
Serbs bused the Srebrenica women and children to safety. The Croats
made no such provision and hundreds of women, children and old people
were slaughtered in Krajina. [10] The ruthlessness of the Croats was
impressive: Tim Ripley notes that "UN troops watched horrified as Croat
soldiers dragged the bodies of dead Serbs along the road outside the UN
compound and then pumped them full of rounds from the AK-47s. They then
crushed the bullet-ridden bodies under the tracks of a tank." [11]
Media
treatment of the Srebrenica and Krajina cases followed the familiar
pattern of fixing victim worthiness and unworthiness in accord with a
political agenda. With the Serbs their government's target, and their
government actively aiding the massive Croat ethnic cleansing program
in Krajina, the media gave huge and indignant treatment to the first,
with invidious language, calls for action, and little context. On the
other hand, with Krajina, attention was slight and passing, detailed
reporting on the condition of the victims was minimal, descriptive
language was neutral, indignation was absent, and the slight context
offered made the cleansing and killings acceptable.
The
contrast in language is notable: the attack on Srebrenica "chilling,"
"murderous," "savagery," "cold-blooded killing," "genocidal,"
"aggression," and of course "ethnic cleansing." With Krajina, the media
used no such strong language-even ethnic cleansing was too much for
them, even though this was an obvious, carefully planned, and major
case. The Croat assault was merely a big "upheaval" that is "softening
up the enemy," "a lightning offensive," explained away as a "response
to Srebrenica" and a result of Serb leaders "overplaying their
hand."
The Washington Post even cited U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter
Galbraith saying the "the Serb exodus was not 'ethnic cleansing'." [12]
The paper did not allow a challenge to that judgment. In fact, however,
the Croat operations in Krajina left Croatia the most ethnically
purified of all the former components of the former Yugoslavia,
although the NATO occupation of Kosovo allowed an Albanian ethnic
cleansing of Serbs, Roma and others that rivalled that of Croatia in
ethnic purification. [13]
Although in recent years there has
been a trickle of expelled Serbs returning to Croatian Krajina, in
neither the Krajina nor Kosovo cases has there been any effort by the
NATO powers to organize the return of the ethnically-cleansed Serbs to
their homes from which they were removed by force. Civilian victims
associated with a Western target are unworthy. Based on no substantive
differences whatever, their killers and ethnic cleansers are allowed to
be retaliating and taking revenge, rather than pursuing ethnic
cleansing for more sinister motives (racial hatred, land hunger), and
these unworthy victims have no right of return.
In
the case of Kosovo, the UN is actually planning for 40,000 additional
Serb refugees in case of an expected granting of full independence to
Kosovo and Kosovo Albanian control. [14] Thus, not only are unworthy
victims not treated with sympathy or allowed any right of return, the
international community will even plan to collaborate in a further
round of ethnic cleansing by a Western ally or client, and the media
won't complain or even notice.
Benign Ethnic Cleansing: Israel's Removal of the Palestinians to
"Redeem the Land"
As
an illustration of benign ethnic cleansing, the case of Israel's
long-term expropriation and removal of Palestinians in Israel proper,
on the West Bank, in East Jerusalem, and Gaza is clear and very
important, morally and politically. It is "benign," because the United
States does not benefit from this process, which has a negative
feedback effect on Arab and many other peoples' view of the United
States; this is a case of the tail wagging the dog, with the dog
injuring itself as it spins around in service to its tail.
Its
importance rests on several other considerations: This has been a very
obvious--even model--case of ethnic cleansing, in which one ethnic
group has used its military power and aid from the West (mainly the
United States) to evict another ethnic group that stands in its way.
This fundamental fact has been acknowledged by a long line of Israeli
officials and intellectual defenders of Israel, who have admitted,
sometimes regretfully, that to "redeem the land" occupied by
Palestinians in favor of the "chosen people" would require systematic
expropriation and associated killing and forced transfer.
Back
in 1948, David Ben-Gurion was clear that "We must use terror,
assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all
social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Fifty years
later, in 1998, Ariel Sharon made the same point about the centrality
of ethnic cleansing in Israeli policy: "It is the duty of Israeli
leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a
certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first
of
these is that there is no Zionism, colonization or Jewish state without
the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their
lands." On
May 24, 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a joint session
of congress that "I believed and to this day still believe, in our
people's eternal and historic right to this entire land."
Despite
these and numerous other statements along the same line, [15] the
Western elites pretend that Israel's expropriations and ethnic
cleansing are not the basic (and profoundly immoral) causal force in
the struggle over Palestine, and in a Kafkaesque mode it is the
Palestinian resistance to their ethnic cleansing that is to be
condemned.
It should be noted that Israel's "eternal and
historic right" to Olmert's "entire land" may well underlie the current
and renewed Israeli aggression in Lebanon and huge ethnic cleansing and
refugee generation in southern Lebanon. Officially, Israel's ground
invasion of Lebanon is an act of self-defense against Hezbollah's
threat, aimed at creating a security buffer zone until the arrival of a
"multinational force with an enforcement capability." But increasingly,
as the initial goal of a narrow strip of only a few kilometers has now
been extended up to the Litani River deep in Lebanon, the real motives
behind Israel's invasion are becoming crystal clear.
Back in
the 1940s Ben Gurion declared that Israel's "natural borders" extended
to the Litani in the north and the Jordan to the east--coincidentally
the two sources of snow fed water in the region. Even in their current
announced plan to evacuate the West Bank the Israelis intend to hold
the Jordan "for security reasons." The Litani is next. The Golan is
also valued for its water. Thus, while officially, Israel's ground
invasion of Lebanon is claimed to be an act of self-defense against
Hezbollah's threat, aimed at creating a security buffer zone until the
arrival of a "multinational force with an enforcement capability," the
initial goal of a narrow strip of southern Lebanon "has now been
extended up to the Litani River deep in Lebanon, [and] the real motives
behind Israel's invasion are becoming crystal-clear…. This is a war to
annex a major chunk of Lebanese territory without necessarily saying
so, under the pretext of security buffer and deterrence against future
attacks on Israel." [16]
This drive to "redeem the land," requiring the takeover of land in the possession of others by force, also constitutes a model case of a quest for a "Greater" entity--here a Greater Israel-a drive which in the case of Milosevic's and the Serbs' alleged drive for a "Greater Serbia" was presented as a prime element of illegal activity in the ICTY indictment of Milosevic (see below under Nefarious). In no case has this drive for a Greater Israel been pointed to by U.S. officials or the U.S. mainstream media as an immoral and illegal program that should call for international intervention and prosecution in the mode of the Serb prosecution, although the Israeli program has been explicitly designed to ethnically cleanse a sizable civilian population.
This model case of ethnic cleansing also represents a clear instance of applied racism, in which the militarily stronger and ethnic cleansing state--its leaders, armed forces, and a major part of its media, intellectuals and citizenry, who would be called "willing executioners" if residing in a Western targeted state--in both words and actions treat the population in process of removal as inferiors (untermenschen in the Nazi mode). These inferiors are not merely discriminated against but freely abused with beatings, harsh treatment at checkpoints, home demolitions and expropriations in accord with Israeli desires, theft of land and water, and killings without penalty. As the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem states, "Israel has established in the occupied Territories a separation cum discrimination regime, in which it maintains two systems of laws, and a person's rights are based on his or her national origin. This regime is the only of its kind in the world, and brings to mind dark regimes of the past, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa."
High
Israeli officials have for years described the Palestinians as
"cockroaches," "lice," "grasshoppers," "animals," "two-legged
beasts,"
a "cancer," along with other epithets of dehumanization, and they have
repeatedly devalued Palestinian life as compared with that of Jews
(most recently, Olmert's statement that "the lives and well-being of
Sderot's residents are more important than those of Gaza residents";
more dramatically, Rabbi Yaacov Perin's "One million Arabs are not
worth a Jewish fingernail"). Palestinian numbers represent what in
Israel is called a "demographic threat," and Israeli academic and human
rights activist Jeff Halper states that "schemes of 'transfer' have
become an acceptable part of Israeli political discourse...[as Israel]
actively pursues policies of displacement: exile and deportation, the
revoking of residency rights, economic impoverishment, land
expropriations, house demolitions, and other means of making life so
unbearable as to induce 'voluntary' Palestinian emigration." [17]
Hundreds
of checkpoints make Palestinian movement difficult and insecure, even
between local neighborhoods, and they are closed on Jewish holidays,
paralyzing Palestinian economic and social life. As of two years ago 79
Palestinians had died as a result of delays at checkpoints and dozens
of women had given childbirth (along with many still-borns) at or near
obstructed checkpoints. [18] There have been over 11,000 Israeli
demolitions of Palestinian homes since 1967, fewer than 600 belonging
to people accused of terrorist activities or their families (the
latter a form of collective punishment that is a war crime). One
Israeli cabinet minister, Yosef Lapid, a holocaust survivor, caused an
uproar at one weekly cabinet meeting, at which the demolition of homes
in the Rafah refugee camp was being discussed, when he said that a
picture of an old Palestinian women on the rubble of her home reminded
him "of my grandmother in the Holocaust," adding that there "is no
forgiveness for people who treat an old woman this way." [19] His
remarks, unreported in the New York Times, had no influence on Israeli
policy.
The demolitions are almost all to clear the ground for
homes or roads or "security zones" for the ubermenschen, with minimal
notice and zero indignation from the Western establishment. In
Jerusalem, "Jewish-Israeli homes are never demolished, although 80% of
the building violations take place on the Western side of the city."
[20] When the settlers were removed from Gaza, they had long notice and
received between $140,000 and $400,000 per family for this dislocation.
Palestinians whose houses are demolished rarely receive even token
compensation and, as Amnesty International notes, "the family may only
have 15 minutes to take out what belongings they have before the
furniture is thrown into the street and their home bulldozed"
[21]
This racist double standard, as well as the associated racist language
and perspectives, has been normalized and has caused no negative
reaction toward the racist state in the West.
Israel's
Western-approved ethnic cleansing program has been massive, proceeding
both in spurts of larger-scale cleansing and in continual
lower-intensity expropriations and removal for almost 60 years
(1947-2006). Some 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in
1947-48, several hundred thousand were removed during and immediately
after the 1967 war, and an exodus, partially "voluntary," based on
Israeli violence, threats, fear, and impoverishment has been continuous
at other times up to the present day. The apartheid wall under
construction within the boundaries of the West Bank has involved the
removal of thousands, with larger numbers in prospect, plus damage to a
great many whose lands have been partly expropriated or divided by the
wall (which carefully avoids disturbing Jewish settlements, but not
Palestinian settlements or property). Large numbers of
Palestinians
have simply moved out of their homeland, adding a 2.4 million
non-refugee diaspora to a refugee diaspora of 2.5 million (the
total
Palestinian population worldwide is estimated to be 9.7 million).
It
is an important fact that this durable and massive ethnic cleansing
process has taken place in daily violation of international law, from
which the ethnic cleansing state is exempt by virtue of long-standing
primary U.S. support, a lesser but real support by the other great
powers, and the weakness and compromised character of the Arab and
other members of the international community. Israel has simply
ignored dozens of Security Council and other UN rulings, the Geneva
Conventions applicable to an occupying power, and decisions of the
International Court. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention
stipulates that "the occupying power shall not transfer parts of
its
own civilian population into the territory it occupies," a clear ban on
settlements, ignored along with numerous other provisions of
international law (which illegalize the theft of water, the checkpoints
and abusive treatment, and the numerous other restrictions on movement).
Israel's
huge wall, built almost entirely within Palestinian territory,
inflicting serious damage on several hundred thousand Palestinians and
blatantly in violation of the Geneva Conventions, was found illegal by
the International Court on July 9, 2004, the court requesting the
international community "not to render any aid or assistance to the
wall and associated regime." But Israel has simply ignored this legal
ruling, with the crucial support of the United States and de facto
support of the international community, the latter (including the World
Bank), continuing to do normal business with the outlaw and thus
colluding in its law violations and ethnic cleansing program. [22]
Israel
has been able to violate international law and continue its ethnic
cleansing project without obstruction or any sort of penalty to this
day. The United States vetoed a demand for international monitors
during the second intifada in 2002, and has also prevented any
international intervention in the serial and brutal Israeli armed
attacks on Palestinian refugee camps and cities (e.g., Jenin, Nablus,
Ramallah in 2002) and currently Gaza and Lebanon once again. Obviously,
no tribunals have been established to deal with these blatant and
large-scale war crimes and massive ethnic cleansing. This is
benign
ethnic cleansing.
The rationalizations for this systematic
ethnic cleansing have been extremely crude and question-begging, but
effective in the West. Israel is always allowed to be "retaliating" to
terror, although there is invariably a sequence of tit-for-tat violence
that the Western establishment regularly cuts off at the point of a
Palestinian action, ignoring the prior Israeli provocations. [23] That
the Israelis keep seizing large and small blocs of Palestinian-occupied
land in response to "terror" and for Israeli "security" is laughable,
and of course flies in the face of the long-standing Israeli admission
of plans for "redeeming the land," but the Israelis have been
allowed
to get away with this laughable basis for land theft and expulsions.
Palestinian resistance to their removal is allowed to be "terrorism"
and not retaliation for Israeli violence, which is never terrorism or
causal.
The Palestinians are in a lose-lose situation: if they
don't resist removal they will be removed and the West will not help
them; if they resist without violence, as in the first intifada, the
West will not help them and they will continue to be removed; and if
they resist with their puny force, they will be "terrorists" and the
West will condemn their "violence" as it collaborates further in their
ethnic cleansing!
Arabs and Third World peoples more generally
can see that despite the preachings of the West on the enlightenment
values of equality, the value of each individual, tolerance, and the
importance of the rule of law, all of these values have been
suspended
in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, with the West
providing unstinting and hypocritical support to Israel's brutal ethnic
cleansing and applied racism. This has fed the anger of the Islamic
world and beyond by providing an ongoing and exceedingly clear
illustrative case of Western racism and discrimination, a case where
the West is engaged in a wholly unprovoked war of aggression and
colonial aggrandizement against a non-Western people. .
Nefarious Ethnic Cleansing: The Case of the Serbs in Kosovo
The
best known case in which the West has denounced and fought against
ethnic cleansing has been that of the Serbs fighting in Bosnia, Croatia
and Kosovo. In fact the term really came into its own in application to
this case. The Serbs were also accused of genocide in Bosnia and
Kosovo, although there was the difficulty that after the Kosovo
bombing war was over in June 1999 and intensive forensic searches
yielded only some 4,000 bodies from all sides, the hysterical claims
of U.S. officials (which at a peak hit 500,000 Kosovo Albanian
victims) were shown to be wild propaganda exaggerations. Thus, to
establish a charge of genocide against Milosevic the ICTY had to extend
his villainy to Bosnia and, accordingly, he was belatedly made part
of
a "joint criminal conspiracy" along with Bosnian Serb officials. [24]
There
is no question but that there was ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in the
years 1991-1995, and that the Bosnian Serbs were implicated in the
ethnic cleansing operations of those years. But they were not
alone-the Croats and Bosnian Muslims were very active participants,
with substantial armed forces, imported mujahadeen fighters, and
growing aid from the United States and other external allies (including
Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) that produced an eventual military
stalemate and threatened defeat for the Bosnian Serbs. [25] And as
noted earlier, the largest single ethnic cleansing of the Yugoslavia
wars was in Operation Storm, carried out by the Croats against the
Krajina Serbs, with active U.S. assistance. In Bosnia the ethnic
cleansing resulted from a struggle for land control by three ethnic
groups or "nations" in a civil conflict unleashed by the unmediated
breakup of Yugoslavia. None of the three was powerless, and all
suffered casualties, the Bosnian Muslims the most, the Croats the
least. [26]
One important difference from the case of Israel in
Palestine is that all three ethnic groups in Bosnia were seeking to
improve their strategic position, whereas in the Israel-Palestine case,
only one side has been seeking to take land from the other contestant.
A second difference is that in Bosnia and Croatia all three parties in
the struggle were well armed, and in the end the Bosnian Serbs were
even overbalanced by their military opponents, [27] whereas in the
Israel-Palestine case the contestants are one of the world's strongest
military powers (Israel), backed by a superpower, versus a virtually
defenseless population that doesn't even have the support of several of
its important local Arab neighbors. A third difference, following
plausibly from the second, is that whereas the ratio of Muslim to Serb
civilian deaths in Bosnia was perhaps two to one, the ratio of
Palestinian to Israeli civilian deaths was for many years something
like 25 to1, dropping in the second intifada to 3 or 4 to 1 (with a
higher injury ratio). [28]
In Kosovo, the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) became very active in 1998 and the Yugoslav army responded
with a crackdown that produced a large number of internal refugees.
NATO threats and an accord in October 1998 forced the Serbs to accept a
large body of OSCE monitors and to withdraw Yugoslav army forces
from
Kosovo. The KLA was not subject to any restraints by NATO and took
advantage of the new arrangements to occupy more Kosovo space, and they
engaged in numerous provocations to entice the Yugoslav police to
crackdowns that would help precipitate NATO intervention. The Racak
"massacre" of January 15, 1999, almost surely not a genuine massacre
but an incident in which KLA battle deaths were converted into a
civilian massacre by KLA-OSCE-ICTY and media cooperation, [29] helped
precipitate a NATO war on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians. The war
produced a flood of refugees fleeing the Yugoslav army, the KLA, and
the NATO bombs.
Was any of this "ethnic cleansing"? Before the
NATO bombing war began there had been many refugees created by Yugoslav
army actions in pursuit of the KLA and treating Albanian villagers
sometimes very harshly. There were, however, no cases reported of
slaughters by the Serbs comparable to the U.S. massacre at Haditha,
nothing remotely like the U.S. destruction of Falluja, and pre-bombing
war civilian casualties in Kosovo were only a very small fraction of
those produced by the U.S. forces in Iraq. [30] The Kosovo Albanians
who became refugees in that period were victims of a civil war within a
part of Serbia, whereas West Bank victims were in occupied territory
outside of Israel. Most relevant to the issue of ethnic cleansing,
Kosovo Albanians were not being pushed out to make way for Serb
settlers, as Palestinians were displaced by Jewish settlers in the true
case of ethnic cleansing on the West Bank. The German Foreign
office
stated explicitly that the turmoil and refugee generation in Kosovo
before the bombing war was not a case of ethnic cleansing, [31] and
British officials even acknowledged that in the runup to the bombing
war the KLA killed more people in Kosovo, including Albanian "traitors"
as well as Serb police and civilians, than did the Yugoslav army and
police. [32]
Albanians who fled during the bombing war were
war refugees, not victims of ethnic cleansing, and Serbs in Kosovo fled
with even greater frequency than the Albanians. Nevertheless, in a
remarkable propaganda coup, the war propagandists made and actually got
away with the claim that the war was necessary to allow the return of
Albanians whose exit was a result of the war itself.
A number
of consequences followed from the fact that the Serbs were the targets
of the United States and its allies. Flowing strictly from this
political alignment, Serb treatment of their antagonists in the wars in
Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo was nefarious, and from 1991 onward the
Serbs were the focus of attention and vilification and subject to
inflated claims, sanctions and legal (ICTY) attacks from which others
doing much the same thing were free. As regards ethnic cleansing, the
term was applied to them freely, not only in Bosnia but in Kosovo,
where it was not applicable. As noted earlier, ethnic cleansing was
extremely applicable to the removal of Serbs from Croatian Krajina, but
as this was done under U.S. auspices the term was not applied there,
nor was it applied to Israel on the West Bank where ethnic cleansing
was crystal clear.
In
the three year period 1998 through 2000, the New York Times, Washington
Post, Los Angeles Times, Time and Newsweek used the phrase "ethnic
cleansing" some 1,200 times in discussing Kosovo, in about four-fifths
of the cases in reference to Serb policy, whereas during the entire
decade of the 1990s they used the phrase only 14 times in discussing
Israel, and only five times referring to Israeli policy. This reflects
massive internalized bias.
Another
consequence of the Serbs
being U.S. targets was that they were allegedly guilty of striving for
a "Greater Serbia," an important feature of the ICTY case against
Milosevic. But this accusation was silly and effectively fell apart
during the Milosevic trial when the prosecutor Geoffrey Nice admitted
to the court that Milosevic wasn't striving to enlarge Serb claims but
merely to keep all Serbs under one flag as Yugoslavia disintegrated-and
there was a great deal of evidence that Milosevic wasn't trying very
hard even to keep Serbs in one state. [33] The contrast here with
Israel in Palestine is dramatic-Israel has been openly trying to
enlarge Israeli territory at the expense of another people. But as
noted earlier, this is not something the U.S.-dominated international
community interferes with, and this model case of ethnic cleansing
isn't even worth discussing in the West. This is benign, not
nefarious
ethnic cleansing.
In the case of
Kosovo, the West was so upset
at the effects of the struggle there and victimization of the
Kosovo
Albanians that the Serbs were warned that force might be employed
against them if they didn't restrain themselves, and the Serbs were
compelled to accept a large number of OSCE monitors, although as noted
earlier no restrictions were place by the OSCE on the KLA. Again the
contrast with the West Bank case is dramatic: there, where there was
real ethnic cleansing by Israel on behalf of settlers taking over
Palestinian property, and with massive Israeli operations in violation
of the Third and Fourth Geneva Convention, no monitors were allowed,
because the United States wouldn't support this, so ethnic cleansing
could proceed unhindered.
Then, with the
excuse of Racak, the
United States could go to war and devastate Serbia and Kosovo, to
protect those victims of Serbia in Kosovo in a great moral
crusade
against "ethnic cleansing"! Racak was not a massacre of
civilians, the
Serbs were not ethnically cleansing in Kosovo, and the Serbs were not
violating international law in their civil war struggle in Kosovo as
the Israelis were doing on the West Bank, but the United States has
been able to get away with the active support of ethnic cleansing
in
the one case and illegal war against a non-existent ethnic cleansing on
the other hand, with the support of the international community.
Conclusion
In
the age of Kafka, ethnic cleansing is clearly acceptable when it is
serviceable to the United States or carried out by one of its allies or
clients, but it is assailed with great energy and indignation and
opposed by force when engaged in (or asserted to be engaged in) by a
U.S. target. In the former cases, the United States and its allies may
actively aid the ethnic cleansing state, and, except for occasional
nominal actions that the international community does not attempt to
enforce, and its occasional whimpers calling for restraint, ethnic
cleansing can proceed for decades in violation of both international
law and the moral rules supposedly guiding the enlightened West. This
of course requires great discipline by the intellectual class and
media, who must keep the bulk of relevant facts out of sight and allow
the ethnic cleansing state to expropriate and remove its unwanted
ethnic target population under cover of a combination of silence and
its alleged necessary response to "terror" and inability to locate a
"negotiating partner."
On the other
hand, ethnic cleansing and
claims of ethnic cleansing by a target country like the former
Yugoslavia is treated with an intense focus of attention, great moral
indignation, and aggressive "humanitarian intervention," in keeping
with Western enlightenment values. In this case, sanctions may be
imposed and international monitors may be forced upon the delinquent
country to constrain its misbehavior, and an incident such as the
killing of 40 Kosovo Albanians by Yugoslav police can bring about a
bombing war and occupation of part of the villain's national
territory. In this case also an international tribunal can be organized
to bring the ethnic cleansing state's leaders and military commanders
to justice. Nefarious ethnic cleansing can be treated harshly.
In
1996 Israel could kill 104 Lebanese civilians, 86 of them children, in
a bombing raid on a UN refugee facility, and in July 2006 kill another
36 children in a UN facility along with killing 4 UN observers in July
2006, and lie about their knowledge of the nature of the targets in all
three cases, and receive no reprimand from its U.S. sponsor and hence
no serious response from the "international community." In fact,
Boutros-Boutros Ghali's taking the 1996 killings a bit too seriously
for Clinton administration tastes may have hastened his replacement as
UN leader. [34] This was the same Clinton administration that found the
40 killed at Racak (none children, one woman, all but the woman almost
surely KLA fighters) a really terrible event worthy of a violent
international response!
The hypocrisy
involved in this applied
double standard is breath-taking. As noted earlier, whereas both the
Croat leadership in cleansing Serbs from Krajina and the Israeli
leadership in removing Palestinians were very clearly doing this to get
rid of an unwanted population to replace it with a competing ethnic
group, the Yugoslav actions in Kosovo were features of a civil
war.
Whereas the Israeli leadership was and still is quite explicitly
seeking a "Greater Israel" by land theft and people expulsion,
Milosevic was trying to keep the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia within
a single remnant political entity and not trying to enlarge Serb
territory at the expense of some other ethnic group (as Prosecutor
Geoffrey Nice acknowledged during the Milosevic trial). Whereas the
Israeli leadership has for years described the Palestinians in
extremely derogatory and racist language, no such derogation of Kosovo
Albanians (or other nationalities) has ever been attributed to
Milosevic, and Albanians in Belgrade have never been subjected to
discrimination such as Arabs undergo in Israel (not to speak of the
occupied territories). In sum, the differential treatment of
Milosevic
and Sharon, the one prosecuted--after a failed
assassination
attempt-[35] and the other honored as a Free World leader and "man of
peace," was not only not based on the realities of ethnic cleansing or
any honest application of the law, it reflects pure power and
structured injustice in the age of Kafka.
-------------------------------------------
Endnotes:
1. Noam Chomsky
and Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism
(Boston; South End Press, 1979).
2. Ibid.,
chapter 4, sec. 4.1.
3.
Ibid., chapter 3, section 3.4.4.
4.
In a classic case, when Indonesian violence in East Timor reached its
peak in 1977-1978, New York Times coverage fell to zero; see ibid.; see
also Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent (New
York: Pantheon, 1988, 2002), chapter 2, "Worthy and Unworthy Victims.".
5.
See Washington Connection, chap. 5, sec. 5.2; Noam Chomsky and Edward
S. Herman, After the Cataclysm (Boston: South End Press, 1979), esp.
chap. 6.
6. See Michael
Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder (London: Pluto, 2005), chaps.
4-6.
7. Raymond
Bonner, "War Crimes Panel Finds Croat Troops 'Cleansed' the Serbs," New
York Times, March 21, 1999.
8. See Edward
Herman, "<http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=8244>
The
Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre," ZNet, July 7, 2005..
9.
On August 10, 1995, Madeleine Albright cried out to the Security
Council that "as many as 13,000 men, women and children were driven
from their homes" in Srebrenica.. (<The">http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/PRO/N95/858/
26/PDF/N9585826.pdf?OpenElement>The
Situation in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (<S/PV.3564">http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/
PRO/N95/858/26/PDF/N9585826.pdf?OpenElement>S/PV.3564),
UN Security Council, August 10, 1995, 5.30 p.m., pp. 6-7). Needless to
say, Albright did not cry out about the 200,000+ Karajina Serbs being
driven out of their homes in the same time frame as she wept for the
13,000.
10. The Krajina Serb human rights organization Veritas
estimated that 1,205 civilians were killed in Operation Storm,
including 358 women and 10 children. See "Croatian Serb Exodus
Commemorated," Agence France Press, Aug. 4, 2004; also, Veritas
at www.veritas.org.yu'">http://www.veritas.org.yu/>www.veritas.org.yu'.
In the graves around Srebrenica exhumed through 2000, only one of
the 1,883 bodies was identified as female.
11. Tim Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force (Lancaster, UK: CDISS,
1999), p. 192.
12.
"U.N. Report: Bosnian Serbs Massacred Srebrenica Muslims," Washington
Post, Aug. 12, 1995. For illustrative language, see also John Pomfret,
"Investigators Begin Exhuming Group of Mass Graves in Bosnia,"
Washington Post, July 8, 1996. "Upheaval" is in "Softening Up The
Enemy," Newsweek, Aug. 21, 1995.
13. Jan Oberg, "Misleading UN
Report on Kosovo (Part A)," TFF PressInfo 77, Transnational Foundation
for Peace and Future Research, Lund, Sweden, October 3, 1999, <http://www.transnational.org/pressinf/pf77.html
14. "Europe Prepares to Evacuate 40,000 Kosovo Serbs," Focus News
Agency (Bulgaria), April 18, 2006.
15.
For several dozen Israeli leaders' statements of racist
denigration
and indication that ethnic cleansing is a necessary and proper course,
see "<Quotes">http://www.monabaker.com/quotes.htm>Quotes,"
<
The">The">http://www.monabaker.com/quotes.htm> The Middle
East Conflict (Personal Website of Mona Baker); "<Israel's">http://www.just-international.org/article.cfm?newsid=20001494>Israel's
Barbaric and Primitive Action: Examples of Hate Speech," International
Movement for a Just World, 2005. Olmert's speech can be found at http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/
PMSpeaks/speechcong240506.htm
16. Kaveh L Afrasiabi , "It's about annexation, stupid!": <">http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH05Ak01.html>
; see also. Paul Larudee, "The Clearing of South Lebanon: The
Lebanese Nakba and Israeli Ambitiions": http://www.counterpunch.org/larudee08082006.html
17.
Jeff Halper, Obstacles to Peace: A Re-Framing of the
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (Carrboro, NC: The Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions, 2004), p. 17.
18. Ibid, p. 18.
19. A.P., "Official Compares Israeli Action to Nazi's," Guardian, May
21, 2004.
20. Halper, Obstacles to Peace, p. 34.
21. AI, "Israel: Home Demolitions," Dec. 8, 1999.
22. See "Free Markets: Imprisoned People," in "Against
'Sustainable' Apartheid & Occupation," www.stopthewall.org'">http://www.stopthewall.org/>www.stopthewall.org'
The
resolution adopted by the UN Security Council on August 11, 2006 fully
satisfies neither Israel nor Washington nor Hezbollah. This does not
mean that it is "fair and balanced": it only means that it is a
temporary expression of a military stalemate. Hezbollah could not
inflict a major military defeat on Israel, a possibility that was
always excluded by the utterly disproportionate balance of forces in
the same way that it was impossible for the Vietnamese resistance to
inflict a major military defeat on the U.S.; but neither could Israel
inflict a major military defeat -- or actually any defeat whatsoever --
on Hezbollah. In this sense, Hezbollah is undoubtedly the real
political victor and Israel the real loser in the 33-day war that
erupted on July 12, and no speech by Ehud Olmert or George W. Bush can
alter this obvious truth. [1]
In
order to understand what is at stake, it is necessary to summarize the
U.S.-backed goals that Israel was pursuing in its offensive. The
central goal of the Israeli onslaught was, of course, to destroy
Hezbollah. Israel sought to achieve this goal through the combination
of three major means.
The
first one consisted in dealing Hezbollah a fatal blow through an
intensive "post-heroic," i.e. cowardly, bombing campaign exploiting
Israel's "overwhelming and asymmetric advantage" in firepower. The
campaign aimed at cutting Hezbollah's road of supplies, destroying much
of its military infrastructure (stocks of rockets, rocket launchers,
etc.), eliminating a major number of its fighters and decapitating it
by assassinating Hassan Nasrallah and other key party leaders.
The
second means pursued consisted in turning Hezbollah's mass base among
Lebanese Shiites against the party, which Israel would designate as
responsible for their tragedy through a frenzied PSYOP campaign. This
required, of course, that Israel inflict a massive disaster on Lebanese
Shiites by an extensive criminal bombing campaign that deliberately
flattened whole villages and neighborhoods and killed hundreds and
hundreds of civilians. This was not the first time that Israel had
resorted to this kind of stratagem -- a standard war crime. When the
PLO was active in southern Lebanon, in what was called "Fatahland"
before the first Israeli invasion in 1978, Israel used to heavily pound
the inhabited area all around the point from which a rocket was
launched at its territory, even though rockets were fired from
wastelands. The stratagem succeeded at that time in alienating from the
PLO a significant part of the population of southern Lebanon, aided by
the fact that reactionary leaders were still a major force down there
and that the Palestinian guerillas could easily be repudiated as alien
since their behavior was generally disastrous. This time, given the
incomparably better status of Hezbollah among Lebanese Shiites, Israel
thought that it could achieve the same effect simply by dramatically
increasing the scope and brutality of the collective punishment.
The
third means consisted in massively and gravely disrupting the life of
the Lebanese population as a whole and holding it hostage through an
air, sea and land blockade so as to incite this population, especially
the communities other than Shiite, against Hezbollah, and thus create a
political climate conducive to military action by the Lebanese army
against the Shiite organization. This is why, at the onset of the
offensive, Israeli officials stated that they did not want any force
but the Lebanese army to deploy in southern Lebanon, rejecting
specifically an international force and spitting on the existing
UNIFIL. This project has actually been the goal of Washington and Paris
ever since they worked together on producing UN Security Council
resolution 1559 in September 2004 that called for the withdrawal of
Syrian troops from Lebanon and "the disbanding and disarmament of all
Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias," i.e. Hezbollah and the
organizations of the Palestinians in their refugee camps.
Washington
had believed that, once Syrian forces were removed from Lebanon, the
Lebanese army, which has been equipped and trained chiefly by the
Pentagon, would be able to "disband and disarm" Hezbollah. The Syrian
army effectively withdrew from Lebanon in April 2005, not because of
the pressure from Washington and Paris, but due to the political
turmoil and mass mobilization that resulted from the assassination, in
February of that year, of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri,
a very close friend of the Saudi ruling class. The balance of forces in
the country, in light of the mass demonstrations and
counter-demonstrations that occurred, did not make it possible for the
U.S.-allied coalition to envisage a settlement of the Hezbollah issue
by force. They were even obliged to wage the ensuing parliamentary
elections in May in a broad coalition with Hezbollah, and rule the
country thereafter through a coalition government including two
Hezbollah ministers. This disappointing outcome prompted Washington to
give Israel a green light for its military intervention. It needed only
a suitable pretext, which the Hezbollah's cross-border operation on
July 12 provided.
Measured
against the central goal and the three means described above, the
Israeli offensive was a total and blatant failure. Most obviously,
Hezbollah was not destroyed -- far from it. It has retained the bulk of
both its political structure and its military force, indulging in the
luxury of shelling northern Israel up to the very last moment before
the ceasefire on the morning of August 14. It has not been cut off from
its mass base; if anything, this mass base has been considerably
extended, not only among Lebanese Shiites, but among all other Lebanese
religious communities as well, not to mention the huge prestige that
this war brought to Hezbollah, especially in the Arab region and the
rest of the Muslim world. Last but not least, all this has led to a
shift in the overall balance of forces in Lebanon in a direction that
is the exact opposite of what Washington and Israel expected: Hezbollah
emerged much stronger and more feared by its declared or undeclared
opponents, the friends of the U.S. and the Saudi kingdom. The Lebanese
government essentially sided with Hezbollah, making the protest against
the Israeli aggression its priority. [2]
There
is no need to dwell any further on Israel's most blatant failure:
reading the avalanche of critical comments from Israeli sources is more
than sufficient and most revealing. One of the sharpest comments was
the one expressed by three-time "Defense" minister Moshe Arens,
indisputably an expert. He wrote a short article in Haaretz
that speaks volumes:
"They [Ehud
Olmert, Amir Peretz and Tzipi Livni]
had a few days of glory when they still believed that the IAF's
[Israeli Air Force's] bombing of Lebanon would make short shrift of
Hezbollah and bring us victory without pain. But as the war they so
grossly mismanaged wore on... gradually the air went out of them. Here
and there, they still let off some bellicose declarations, but they
started looking for an exit -- how to extricate themselves from the
turn of events they were obviously incapable of managing. They grasped
for straws, and what better straw than the United Nations Security
Council. No need to score a military victory over Hezbollah. Let the UN
declare a cease-fire, and Olmert, Peretz, and Livni can simply declare
victory, whether you believe it or not.... The war, which according to
our leaders was supposed to restore Israel's deterrent posture, has
within one month succeeded in destroying it." [3]
Arens
speaks the truth: as Israel proved increasingly unable to score any of
the goals that it had set for itself at the onset of its new war, it
started looking for an exit. While it compensated for its failure by an
escalation in the destructive and revengeful fury that it unleashed
over Lebanon, its U.S. sponsors switched their attitude at the UN.
After having bought time for Israel for more than three weeks by
blocking any attempt at discussing a Security Council resolution
calling for a ceasefire -- one of the most dramatic cases of paralysis
in the history of the 61-year old intergovernmental institution --
Washington decided to take over and continue Israel's war by diplomatic
means.
By
switching its attitude, Washington converged again with Paris on the
issue of Lebanon. Sharing with the U.S. a common, albeit rival,
dedication to taking the most out of Saudi riches, especially by
selling the Saudi rulers military hardware [4], Paris regularly and
opportunistically stays on the right side of the Saudis every time some
strains arise between Washington's agenda and the concerns of its
oldest Middle Eastern clients and protégés. Israel's new
Lebanon war
was such an opportunity: as soon as Israel's murderous aggression
proved counterproductive from the standpoint of the Saudi ruling
family, who are terrified by an increasing destabilization of the
Middle East that could prove fatal for their interests, they requested
a cessation of the war and a switch to
alternative means.
Paris
immediately came out in favor of this attitude, and Washington ended up
following suit, but only after giving the Israeli aggression a few more
days to try to score some face-saving military achievement. The first
draft resolution crafted by the two capitals circulated at the UN on
August 5. It was a blatant attempt at achieving diplomatically what
Israel had not been able to achieve militarily. The draft, while
stating "strong support" for Lebanon's sovereignty, nevertheless called
for the reopening of its airports and harbors only "for
verifiably and purely civilian purposes" and provided for the
establishment of an "international embargo on the sale or supply of
arms and related material to Lebanon except as authorized by its
government," in other words an embargo on Hezbollah.
It
reasserted resolution 1559, calling for a further resolution that would
authorize "under Chapter VII of the Charter the deployment of a
UN-mandated international force to support the Lebanese armed forces
and government in providing a secure environment and contribute to the
implementation of a permanent cease-fire and a long-term solution."
This formulation is so vague that it could only mean, actually, an
international force authorized to wage military operations (Chapter VII
of the UN Charter) in order to implement resolution 1559 by force, in
alliance with the Lebanese army. Moreover, no provision restricted this
force to the area south of the Litani River, the area which under the
draft resolution was to be free of Hezbollah's armament, and the
limit of the zone that Israel has requested to be secured after having
failed to get rid of Hezbollah in the rest of Lebanon. This
meant that the UN force could have been called upon to act against
Hezbollah in the rest of Lebanon.
This
project was totally unwarranted by what Israel had achieved on the
ground, however, and the draft was therefore defeated. Hezbollah came
out strongly against it, making it clear that it would not accept any
international force but the existing UNIFIL, the UN force deployed
along Lebanon's border with Israel (the "Blue Line") since 1978. The
Lebanese government conveyed Hezbollah's opposition and request for
changes, backed by the chorus of Arab states including all U.S.
clients. Washington had no choice then, but to revise the draft as it
would not have passed a vote at the Security Council anyway. Moreover,
Washington's ally, French President Jacques Chirac -- whose country is
expected to provide the major component of the international force and
lead it -- had himself declared publicly two weeks into the fighting
that no deployment was possible without prior agreement with Hezbollah.
[5]
The
draft was therefore revised and renegotiated, while Washington asked
Israel to brandish the threat of a major ground offensive and to
actually start implementing it as a means of pressure in order to
enable Washington to get the best possible deal from its standpoint. In
order to facilitate an agreement leading to a ceasefire that became
more and more urgent for humanitarian reasons, Hezbollah accepted the
deployment of 15,000 Lebanese troops south of the Litani River and
softened its general position. Resolution 1701 could thus be pushed through at the
Security Council on August 11.
Washington
and Paris's main concession was to abandon the project of creating an
ad-hoc multinational force under Chapter VII. Instead, the resolution
authorizes "an increase in the force strength of UNIFIL to a maximum of
15,000 troops," thus revamping and considerably swelling the existing
UN force. The main trick, however, was to redefine the mandate of this
force so that it could now "assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking
steps" towards "the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani
river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other
than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL."
UNIFIL
can now as well "take all necessary action in areas of deployment of
its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its
area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind."
Combined,
the two precedent formulations come quite close to a Chapter VII
mandate, or could easily be interpreted in this way, at any rate.
Moreover, the mandate of UNIFIL is actually extended by Resolution 1701
beyond its "areas of deployement," as it can now "assist the government
of Lebanon at its request" in its effort to "secure its borders and
other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent
of arms or related materiel" -- a sentence that definitely does not
refer to Lebanon's border with Israel but to its border with Syria,
which runs the length of the country, from north to south. These are
the major traps in Resolution 1701, and not the wording about the
withdrawal of the Israeli occupation army that many comments have
focused on, as Israel's withdrawal is actually propelled by the
deterrent force of Hezbollah, not by any UN resolution.
Hezbollah
decided to give its green light for the approval by the Lebanese
government of Resolution 1701. Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech on August
12, explaining the decision of the party to agree to the UN-mandated
deployment. It included a much more sober assessment of the situation
than in some of his previous speeches and a good deal of political
wisdom. "Today, Nasrallah said, we face the reasonable and possible
natural results of the great steadfastness that the Lebanese expressed
from their various positions." This soberness was necessary, as any
boastful claim of victory -- like those that where cheaply expressed by
Hezbollah's backers in Tehran and Damascus -- would have required
Nasrallah to add, like king Pyrrhus of Ancient Greece, "One more such
victory and I shall be lost!" Hezbollah's leader wisely and explicitly
rejected entering into a polemic about the assessment of the war's
results, stressing that "our real priority" is to stop the aggression,
recover the occupied territory and "achieve security and stability in
our country and the return of the refugees and displaced persons."
Nasrallah
defined the practical position of his movement as such: to abide by the
ceasefire; to fully cooperate with "all that can facilitate the return
of our displaced and refugee people to their homes, to their houses,
and all that can facilitate humanitarian and rescue operations." He did
so while expressing the readiness of his movement to continue the
legitimate fight against the Israeli army as long as it remains in
Lebanese territory, though he offered to respect the 1996 agreement
whereby operations of both sides would be restricted to military
targets and spare civilians. In this regard, Nasrallah stressed that
his movement started shelling northern Israel only as a reaction to
Israel's bombing of Lebanon after the July 12 operation, and that
Israel was to be blamed for extending the war to the civilians in the
first place.
Nasrallah
then stated a position toward Resolution 1701 that could best be
described as approval with many reservations, pending verification in
practical implementation. He expressed his protest against the
unfairness of the resolution, which refrained in its preambles from any
condemnation of Israel's aggression and war crimes, adding however that
it could have been much worse and expressing his appreciation for the
diplomatic efforts that prevented that from happening. His key point
was to stress the fact that Hezbollah considers some of the issues that
the resolution dealt with to be Lebanese internal affairs that ought to
be discussed and settled by the Lebanese themselves -- to which he
added an emphasis on preserving Lebanese national unity and solidarity.
Nasrallah's
position was the most correct possible given the circumstances.
Hezbollah had to make concessions to facilitate the ending of the war.
As the whole population of Lebanon was held hostage by Israel, any
intransigent attitude would have had terrible humanitarian consequences
over and above the already appalling results of Israel's destructive
and murderous fury. Hezbollah knows perfectly well that the real issue
is less the wording of a UN Security Council resolution than its actual
interpretation and implementation, and in that respect what is
determinant is the situation and balance of forces on the ground. To
George W. Bush's and Ehud Olmert's vain boasting about their victory as
embodied supposedly in Resolution 1701, one needs only to quote Moshe
Arens pre-emptive reply in the already quoted article:
"The
appropriate rhetoric has already started flying. So what if the whole
world sees this diplomatic arrangement -- which Israel agreed to while
it was still receiving a daily dose of Hezbollah rockets -- as a defeat
suffered by Israel at the hands of a few thousand Hezbollah fighters?
So what if nobody believes that an 'emboldened' UNIFIL force will
disarm Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah with thousands of rockets still in
its arsenal and truly emboldened by this month's success against the
mighty Israel Defense Forces, will now become a partner for peace?"
The
real "continuation of the war by other means" has already started in
full in Lebanon. At stake are four main issues, here reviewed in
reverse order of priority. The first issue, on the domestic Lebanese
level, is the fate of the cabinet. The existing parliamentary majority
in Lebanon resulted from elections flawed by a defective and distorting
electoral law that the Syrian-dominated regime had enforced. One of its
major consequences was the distortion of the representation of the
Christian constituencies, with great under-representation of the
movement led by former General Michel Aoun who entered into an alliance
with Hezbollah after the election. Moreover, the recent war affected
deeply the political mood of the Lebanese population, and the
legitimacy of the present parliamentary majority is thus highly
disputable. Of course, any change in the government in favor of
Hezbollah and its allies would radically alter the meaning of
resolution 1701 as its interpretation depends very much on the Lebanese
government's attitude. One major concern in this regard, however, is to
avoid any slide toward a renewed civil war in Lebanon: That's what
Hassan Nasrallah had in mind when he emphasized the importance of
"national unity."
The
second issue, also on the domestic Lebanese level, is the
reconstruction effort. Hariri and his Saudi backers had built up their
political influence in Lebanon by dominating the reconstruction efforts
after Lebanon's 15-year war ended in 1990. This time they will be faced
by an intensive competition from Hezbollah, with Iran standing behind
it and with the advantage of its intimate link with the Lebanese Shiite
population that was the principal target of the Israeli war of revenge.
As senior Israeli military analyst Ze'ev
Schiff put it in Haaretz:
"A lot also depends on who will aid in the reconstruction of southern
Lebanon; if it is done by Hezbollah, the Shiite population of the south
will be indebted to Tehran. This should be prevented."
[6] This message has been received loud and clear in Washington, Riyadh
and Beirut. Prominent articles in today's mainstream press in the U.S.
are sounding the alarm on this score.
The
third issue, naturally, is the "disarmament" of Hezbollah in the zone
delimited in southern Lebanon for the joint deployment of the Lebanese
army and the revamped UNIFIL. The most that Hezbollah is ready to
concede in this respect is to "hide" its weapons south of the Litani
River, i.e. to refrain from displaying them and to keep them in covert
storage. Any step beyond that, not to mention a Lebanon-wide
disarmament of Hezbollah, is linked by the organization to a set of
conditions that start from Lebanon's recovery of the 1967-occupied
Shebaa farms and end with the emergence of a government and army able
and determined to defend the country's sovereignty against Israel. This
issue is the first major problem against which the implementation of
Resolution 1701 could stumble, as no country on earth is readily in a
position to try to disarm Hezbollah by force, a task that the most
formidable modern army in the whole Middle East and one of the world's
major military powers has blatantly failed to achieve. This means that
any deployment south of the Litani River, whether Lebanese or
UN-mandated, will have to accept Hezbollah's offer, with or without
camouflage.
The
fourth issue, of course, is the composition and intent of the new
UNIFIL contingents. The original plan of Washington and Paris was to
repeat in Lebanon what is taking place in Afghanistan where a NATO
auxiliary force with a UN fig leaf is waging Washington's war.
Hezbollah's resilience on the military as well as on the political
level thwarted this plan. Washington and Paris believed they could
implement it nevertheless under a disguised form and gradually, until
political conditions were met in Lebanon for a showdown pitting NATO
and its local allies against Hezbollah. Indeed, the countries expected
to send the principal contingents are all NATO members: along with
France, Italy and Turkey are on standby, while Germany and Spain are
being urged to follow suit. Hezbollah is no fool however. It is already
engaged in dissuading France from executing its plan of sending elite
combat troops backed by the stationing of the single French air-carrier
close to Lebanon's shores in the Mediterranean.
On
the last issue, the antiwar movement in NATO countries could greatly
help the struggle of the Lebanese national resistance and the cause of
peace in Lebanon by mobilizing against the dispatch of any NATO troops
to Lebanon, thus contributing to deterring their governments from
trying to do Washington's and Israel's dirty work. What Lebanon needs
is the presence of truly neutral peacekeeping forces at its southern
borders and, above all, that its people be permitted to settle
Lebanon's internal problems through peaceful political means. All other
roads lead to a renewal of Lebanon's civil war, at a time when the
Middle East, and the whole world for that matter, is already having a
hard time coping with the consequences of the civil war that Washington
has ignited and is fueling in Iraq.
August 16, 2006
Notes
1. On
the global and regional implications of these events, see my article "The
Sinking Ship of U.S. Imperial Designs," posted on ZNet, August 7,
2006.
2. As an
Israeli observer put it in an article with a quite revealing title: "It
was a mistake to believe that military pressure could generate a
process whereby the Lebanese government would disarm Hizbullah." Efraim
Inbar, "Prepare for the next round," Jerusalem Post, August 15,
2006.
3. Moshe
Arens, "Let the devil take tomorrow," Haaretz, August 13, 2006.
4. Both
the U.S. and France concluded major arms deals with the Saudis in July.
5.
Interview with Le Monde, July 27, 2006.
6. Ze'ev
Schiff, "Delayed ground offensive clashes with diplomatic timetable,"
Haaretz, August 13, 2006.
Gilbert Achcar grew up in Lebanon and teaches political science at the University of Paris-VIII. His best-selling book The Clash of Barbarisms just came out in a second expanded edition and a book of his dialogues with Noam Chomsky on the Middle East, Perilous Power, is forthcoming, both from Paradigm Publishers. Stephen R. Shalom, the editor of Perilous Power, has kindly edited this article.
Tel
Aviv
Thirty
three days of war. The longest of our
wars since 1949. On the Israeli
side: 154 dead--117 of
them soldiers. 3970 rockets launched against us, 37 civilians dead,
more than 422 civilians wounded.
On the Lebanese side: about a thousand dead civilians, thousands wounded. An unknown number of Hizbullah fighters dead and wounded.
More than a million refugees on both sides.
So what has been achieved for this terrible price?
"GLOOMY, HUMBLE, despondent," was how the journalist Yossef Werter described Ehud Olmert, a few hours after the cease-fire had come into effect.
Olmert? Humble? Is this the same Olmert we know? The same Olmert who thumped the table and shouted: "No more!" Who said: "After the war, the situation will be completely different than before!" Who promised a "New Middle East" as a result of the war?
THE RESULTS of the war are obvious:
* The prisoners, who served as casus belli (or pretext) for the war, have not been released. They will come back only as a result of an exchange of prisoners, exactly as Hassan Nasrallah proposed before the war.
* Hizbullah has remained as it was. It has not been destroyed, nor disarmed, nor even removed from where it was. Its fighters have proved themselves in battle and have even garnered compliments from Israeli soldiers. Its command and communication stucture has continued to function to the end. Its TV station is still broadcasting.
* Hassan Nasrallah is alive and kicking. Persistent attempts to kill him failed. His prestige is sky-high. Everywhere in the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, songs are being composed in his honor and his picture adorns the walls.
* The Lebanese army will be deployed along the border, side by side with a large international force. That is the only material change that has been achieved.
This will not replace Hizbullah. Hizbullah will remain in the area, in every village and town. The Israeli army has not succeeded in removing it from one single village. That was simply impossible without permanently removing the population to which it belongs.
The Lebanese army and the international force cannot and will not confront Hizbullah. Their very presence there depends on Hizbullah's consent. In practice, a kind of co-existence of the three forces will come into being, each one knowing that it has to come to terms with the other two.
Perhaps the international force will be able to prevent incursions by Hizbullah, such as the one that preceded this war. But it will also have to prevent Israeli actions, such as the reconnaissance flights of our Air Force over Lebanon. That's why the Israeli army objected, at the beginning, so strenuously to the introduction of this force.
IN ISRAEL, there is now a general atmosphere of disappointment and despondency. From mania to depression. It's not only that the politicians and the generals are firing accusations at each other, as we foresaw, but the general public is also voicing criticism from every possible angle. The soldiers criticize the conduct of the war, the reserve soldiers gripe about the chaos and the failure of supplies.
In all parties, there are new opposition groupings and threats of splits. In Kadima. In Labor. It seems that in Meretz, too, there is a lot of ferment, because most of its leaders supported the war dragon almost until the last moment, when they caught its tail and pierced it with their little lance.
At the head of the critics are marching--surprise, surprise--the media. The entire horde of interviewers and commentators, correspondents and presstitutes, who (with very few exceptions) enthused about the war, who deceived, misled, falsified, ignored, duped and lied for the fatherland, who stifled all criticism and branded as traitors all who opposed the war--they are now running ahead of the lynch mob. How predictable, how ugly. Suddenly they remember what we have been saying right from the beginning of the war.
This phase is symbolized by Dan Halutz, the Chief-of-Staff. Only yesterday he was the hero of the masses, it was forbidden to utter a word against him. Now he is being described as a war profiteer. A moment before sending his soldiers into battle, he found the time to sell his shares, in expectation of a decline of the stock market. (Let us hope that a moment before the end he found the time to buy them back again.)
Victory, as is well known, has many fathers, and failure in war is an orphan.
FROM THE deluge of accusations and gripes, one slogan stands out , a slogan that must send a cold shiver down the spine of anyone with a good memory: "the politicians did not let the army win."
Exactly as I wrote two weeks ago, we see before our very eyes the resurrection of the old cry "they stabbed the army in the back!"
This is how it goes: At long last, two days before the end, the land offensive started to roll. Thanks to our heroic soldiers, the men of the reserves, it was a dazzling success. And then, when we were on the verge of a great victory, the cease-fire came into effect.
There is not a single word of truth in this. This operation, which was planned and which the army spent years training for, was not carried out earlier, because it was clear that it would not bring any meaningful gains but would be costly in lives. The army would, indeed, have occupied wide areas, but without being able to dislodge the Hizbullah fighters from them.
The town of Bint Jbeil, for example, right next to the border, was taken by the army three times, and the Hizbullah fighters remained there to the end. If we had occupied 20 towns and villages like this one, the soldiers and the tanks would have been exposed in twenty places to the mortal attacks of the guerillas with their highly effective anti-tank weapons.
If so, why was it decided, at the last moment, to carry out this operation after all--well after the UN had already called for an end to hostilities? The horrific answer: it was a cynical--not to say vile--exercise of the failed trio. Olmert, Peretz and Halutz wanted to create "a picture of victory", as was openly stated in the media. On this altar the lives of 33 soldiers (including a young woman) were sacrificed.
The aim was to photograph the victorious soldiers on the bank of the Litani. The operation could only last 48 hours, when the cease-fire would come into force. In spite of the fact that the army used helicopters to land the troops, the aim was not attained. At no point did the army reach the Litani.
For comparison: in the first Lebanon war, that of Sharon in 1982, the army crossed the Litani in the first few hours. (The Litani, by the way, is not a real river anymore, but just a shallow creek. Most of its waters are drawn off far from there, in the north. Its last stretch is about 25 km distant from the border, near Metulla the distance is only 4 km.)
This time, when the cease-fire took effect, all the units taking part had reached villages on the way to the river. There they became sitting ducks, surrounded by Hizbullah fighters, without secure supply lines. From that moment on, the army had only one aim: to get them out of there as quickly as possible, regardless of who might take their place.
If a commission of inquiry is set up--as it must be--and investigates all the moves of this war, starting from the way the decision to start it was made, it will also have to investigate the decision to start this last operation. The death of 33 soldiers (including the son of the writer David Grossman, who had supported the war) and the pain this caused their families demand that!
BUT THESE facts are not yet clear to the general public. The brain-washing by the military commentators and the ex-generals, who dominated the media at the time, has turned the foolish--I would almost say "criminal"--operation into a rousing victory parade. The decision of the political leadership to stop it is now being seen by many as an act of defeatist, spineless, corrupt and even treasonous politicians.
And that is exactly the new slogan of the fascist Right that is now raising its ugly head.
After World War I, in similar circumstances, the legend of the "knife in the back of the victorious army" grew up. Adolf Hitler used it to carry him to power--and on to World War II.
Now, even before the last fallen soldier has been buried, the incompetent generals are starting to talk shamelessly about "another round", the next war that will surely come "in a month or in a year", God willing. After all, we cannot end the matter like this, in failure. Where is our pride?
THE ISRAELI public is now in a state of shock and disorientation. Accusations--justified and unjustified--are flung around in all directions, and it cannot be foreseen how things will develop.
Perhaps, in the end, it is logic that will win. Logic says: what has thoroughly been demonstrated is that there is no military solution. That is true in the North. That is also true in the South, where we are confronting a whole people that has nothing to lose anymore. The success of the Lebanese guerilla will encourage the Palestinian guerilla.
For logic to win, we must be honest with ourselves: pinpoint the failures, investigate their deeper causes, draw the proper conclusions.
Some people want to prevent that at any price. President Bush declares vociferously that we have won the war. A glorious victory over the Evil Ones. Like his own victory in Iraq.
When a football team is able to choose
the referee, it is no surprise if it is declared the winner.
_________________
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and
peace activist with Gush Shalom.
________________
E.
from ICH :
20 August 2006
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
The coverage of the Lebanon fiasco in the Israeli media is alternately narcissistic and hysterical. The details of the massive destruction to Lebanon’s civil
infrastructure and environment are brushed aside as inconsequential; the 1,300 civilian deaths, irrelevant.
“To confront this accursed plan, to thwart the goals of
this war, to fight the battle to liberate, what remains of our land and
our prisoners, I state categorically under no circumstances will we
accept any term that is insulting to our country, our people, or our
resistance. We will not accept any formula at the expense of the
national interest, national sovereignty and national independence,
especially after all these sacrifices, no matter how long the
confrontation lasts and no matter how numerous the sacrifices may be.
Our main and true slogan is “Honor First”. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah “The resistance is a weapon at the service of the entire nation. It has never acted against anyone but the Israeli occupation.” Talal Salman “A Guarantee Of Victory” |
08/19/06 "Information Clearing House"
-- -- One picture tells the whole
story. The photograph shows a long column of Israeli soldiers, grimy
and bedraggled, limping southwards towards the Israeli border. The lead
soldier looks vacuously at the camera with an expression of pure gloom
and fatigue. In the background a soldier is seen comforting another who
is crying inconsolably.
This is what defeat looks like.
Back in Israel, the headlines are
splattered with every detail of the ongoing withdrawal from Lebanon.
The op-ed pages and talk shows lash out at anyone even remotely
involved with the month-long debacle. Prime Minister Olmert has become
the favorite target of the media’s scathing criticism and the brunt of
every joke. His public approval has dipped from a pre-war high of 80%
to a meager 40%. Meanwhile, political rival Benjamin Netanyahu’s
popularity has soared to a hearty
57% making him the likely successor if Olmert is forced to step down.
Israel is drowning in collective
angst and self-pity. The defeat has shattered the national sense of
self confidence and well being. A joke that is circulating in Tel Aviv
opines that Ariel Sharon’s condition suddenly worsened “when he found
out what was happening in Lebanon.”
The punch-line epitomizes the
general state of malaise in Israel.
The coverage of the Lebanon fiasco
in the Israeli media is alternately narcissistic and hysterical. The
details of the massive destruction to Lebanon’s civil infrastructure
and environment are brushed aside as inconsequential; the 1,300
civilian deaths, irrelevant. The only thing that matters is Israeli
suffering; everything else is trivial. While Lebanon is busy digging
out another 300 or so corpses from the rubble of their destroyed homes,
Israel is preoccupied with its loss of “deterrents” or its battered
sense of “invincibility”.
It is an interesting study in the
prevailing megalomania of Israeli society, a culture as pathologically
self-absorbed as its American ally. It’s no wonder security is so hard
to come by when people are so lacking in empathy.
In Lebanon, the extent of the
damage is just beginning to be grasped. Whole cities in the south have
been laid to waste and most of the vital infrastructure has been
ruined. Barucha Peller summed it up this way in a Counterpunch article
“This Pain has no Ceasefire”:
“The walls of homes that once
protected families and cradled their lives are now in pieces, shreds,
fine dust. Sift through the rubble. Kick the rubble. Stand still,
silent, alone with the absoluteness of destruction and accompanied by
the millions of shattered pieces of everything that was here before.
Leave the rubble. Try to forget. Walk away from the terrible sight. But
your mind is in pieces, lives in pieces, people who never again will
stand in the doorway with greetings. You can walk away. There is a
ceasefire. But missiles fall, they fall, not from the skies, but behind
Lebanese eyes, they fall forever in memory, they are still crashing
into what once was.”
“The absoluteness of destruction”;
the faces that will never reappear “in the doorway”; this nagging,
life-long suffering goes unrecorded in the Israeli media where the
national obsession has turned to finger-pointing and empty
recriminations. The lives and the civilization that’s been decimated
are a mere footnote to Israel’s violated sense of security and the
humiliation of losing to an Arab adversary. Looking at the papers, it’s
easy to believe that the entire population is completely unaware of the
misery they’ve caused. Instead, one gets the uneasy feeling that the
anger is just beginning to mount and could wash across Lebanon in a
second wave of hostilities.
Lebanon has been an embarrassing
defeat for Israel, but this is probably just Round One. As public rage
grows, it will be more and more tempting for Olmert to disregard the
ceasefire and go on the offensive. He needs some way to acquit himself
in the eyes of his people and revenge is an unfailing cure-all. He also
needs to prove that he can be a reliable ally to the Bush team who gave
him carte blanche to pulverize Hezbollah while they stalled the
ceasefire at the UN. Israel needs to show that they can hold up their
end of the bargain by cleaning up matters in their own back yard.
Olmert’s failure will not go down well with the Washington neocons
who’ve worked tirelessly to provide him with all the weaponry and
support he needed.
According to Hezbollah leader Sheik
Hassan Nasrallah, Israel originally planned an attack on Lebanon for
September or October. This would have added an element of surprise to
the war which could have been disastrous for Lebanon. It also may have
affected the results of the 2006 congressional elections in the US.
The Bush administration has made no
effort to conceal their involvement in the conflict. They provided
logistical and material support in the form of satellite-intelligence
and precision-guided missiles, and they blocked all efforts at the UN
for an immediate ceasefire. Bush has stubbornly portrayed the war as
“part of a broader struggle between freedom and terror”, but his
platitudes have had less impact on public perceptions than the photos
of bombed-out airports, bridges and factories which appear daily in the
media.
The biggest champion of the war has
been Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who characterized the vast and
premeditated devastation as “birth pangs”. There now hangs a banner in
downtown Beirut with a ghoulish picture of Rice with fangs dripping
with blood which says, “The massacre of children at Qana is a gift from
Rice”. The Farragamo-draped princess has quickly become the most
reviled diplomat in US history. Move over Henry Kissinger.
It’s no surprise that she was
rebuffed by President Siniora and told she wasn’t welcome in Lebanon
until the terms of a ceasefire were in place.
Rice’s most revealing statement
appeared in a USA Today article when she admitted that the Bush
administration saw the conflict as an “opportunity to create a
fundamentally different situation” in the Middle East.
“Opportunity”? Is that how the
Washington mandarins see the utter destruction of an American-friendly
ally?
Condi’s bromides only confirm
Nasrallah’s claims that the plan to invade Lebanon is actually part of
a broader strategy for establishing US/Israeli hegemony throughout the
region so that they can “exclusively manage its affairs and resources”.
The main obstacles to this “New Middle East” are the resistance
organizations Hamas and Hezbollah as well as Syria and Iran. Bush and
Olmert conspired to disarm Hezbollah by pushing Syria out of Lebanon
and creating a political climate where (they believed) Hezbollah would
be forced to give up their weapons.
Their plan failed. Hezbollah joined
the government but maintained its guerilla network at the same time;
accumulating the Katyushas and sophisticated anti-tank rockets it
needed to take on Israel’s advancing army. It should be noted that
Hezbollah was the only entity in Lebanon that wasn’t swept up in the
heady revival of Beirut and vigilantly awaited Israel’s next rampage.
Their success in battling Israel is
due in large part to the Russian-made Kornet anti-tank rockets they
obtained from Syria. As reported in the UK Telegraph the rockets are
“some of the best in the world” and “require serious training to
operate which could be beyond the capabilities of some supposedly
regular armies in the Middle East….It is laser-guided, has a range of
three miles and carries a double-warhead capable of penetrating
reactive amour on Israeli Merkava Tanks.”
Hezbollah used their anti-tank
missiles with lethal efficiency during the campaign taking out an
estimated 20 tanks, armored vehicles and buildings where troops were
located. It was a critical part of the conflict and had a profound
effect on the outcome.
Still, there’s little chance that
Hezbollah’s victory will stop Israel from restarting the war. America
and Israel are ideologically committed to establishing their mutual
hegemony throughout the Middle East and they won’t be deterred by a
bloody nose in south Lebanon. Israel will retool and return with
greater determination to crush the resistance and set up a proxy
government in Beirut. So far, they’ve enlisted the support of
Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, France and Denmark to patrol
the southern border while Germany has offered “a rather substantive
maritime component which could patrol and secure the whole of the
Lebanese coast.” The German ambassador said, “We could also offer a
substantial border patrol along the Syrian border.” (Al Jazeera)
Germany certainly understands that their actions will establish a
de-facto blockade which serves US/Israeli interests alone. This
illustrates how Olmert and Bush have manipulated the UN to compromise
Lebanon’s sovereignty and create a permanent state of siege. If Israel
is able to cut Hezbollah’s supply-lines they can easily move in and
crush them at a later date.
So, the US and Israel have found
accomplices they need to help them achieve their goals of reshaping the
Middle East and extending America’s dominance throughout the oil-rich
region. If they succeed, they will have a stranglehold on the world’s
most crucial natural resources and will be able to control the growth
of China, India, Japan, and other potential rivals in the 21st century.
Israel will also play a central role as regional leader in the oil
trade; opening pipeline routes from Ceyhan to the Far East and from
Kirkuk to Haifa. (check “Triple Alliance”: The US, Turkey, Israel and
the war on Lebanon” Michel Chossudovsky)
But we shouldn’t underestimate the
growing strength of non state actors and guerilla forces. In Iraq, the
resistance has brought the world’s only superpower to a grinding
standstill; frustrating all attempts to establish security, rebuild
infrastructure, or transport vital resources.
Similarly, Hezbollah has won a
stunning victory against a high-tech and well-disciplined Israeli army.
They have shown the world that they are resourceful and ferocious
fighters capable of forcing a fully-armed modern army of 30,000 men to
withdrawal. That’s no small feat.
They have shattered the illusion of
Israeli invincibility and emboldened a new generation of Arab youths to
see beyond their present subjugation and despair and aspire to reclaim
their countries from the corrupt US-backed regimes.
The imperial juggernaut will
continue lurching recklessly through the Middle East until it is
worn-down piecemeal by the bold actions of the resistance. Iraq and
Lebanon foreshadow an even wider war extending from the Caspian to the
Red Sea; destabilizing oil supplies and overturning the teetering Arab
monarchies.
Bush and Olmert have thrown open
Pandora’s Box thinking they can contain the chaos within, but have
failed to achieve any of their objectives. They continue to misread the
lessons of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon. High-altitude bombing and
trigger-happy soldiers only swell the ranks of the resistance and feed
their determination. If Bush and Olmert choose to fight a
generation-long 4-G (4th Generation) war, they should at least consider
the modest goals set out by their adversary, Hassan Nasrallah, in a
recent public statement:
“We are not a classic army. We are
waging guerilla warfare Therefore what is important is the number of
losses we inflict on the Israeli enemy. No matter how deep the
incursion the Israeli enemy might accomplish, and the enemy has great
capabilities in this area, it will not accomplish the goal of this
incursion, preventing the shelling of the settlements in north of
occupied Palestine, This shelling will continue no matter how deep the
ground incursion and the reoccupation the Zionist enemy is trying to
accomplish. The occupation of any inch of our Lebanese land will
further motivate us to continue and escalate the resistance…In the
ground war we will have the upper hand. In the ground war , the
criterion is the attrition of the enemy rather than what territory does
or does not remain in our hands because we are not fighting with the
methods of a regular army we will definitely regain any land occupied
by the enemy after inflicting great losses on it”.
Bush would be wise to pay attention
to Nasrallah’s warnings. The conflict that the US and Israel are facing
has no central battlefield and no timeline. It is war against men who
know every street and every alleyway, and every cave in every mountain.
It is “death by a thousand lashes”; engaging and killing the enemy and
then disappearing into the shadows. The conflict only ends when every
American and Israeli soldier has left Arab soil. This is a “no win”
situation. Our leaders should recognize this and withdrawal.
As the resistance continues to
mushroom in Iraq and Lebanon, we’re bound to see more devastation, more
retreating armies, and more hand-wringing in Washington and Tel Aviv.
It could all be so easily avoided.
______________
F.
from Sara Olson :
18 August 2006
http://www.truthout.org/issues.shtml
Sarah Olson reports on Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's decision yesterday that the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional. The
ruling is the first federal challenge to the wiretapping program allowing the NSA to secretly listen to phone calls placed from the US to foreign countries.
Washington - The estimated costs for the development of major weapons systems for the US military have doubled since September 11, 2001, with a trillion-dollar price tag for new planes, ships, and missiles that would have little direct role in the fight against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The soaring cost estimates -- disclosed in a report for the Republican-led Senate Budget Committee -- have led to concerns that supporters of multibillion-dollar weapons programs in Congress, the Pentagon , and the defense industry are using the conflicts and the war on terrorism to fulfill a wish-list of defense expenditures, whether they are needed or not for the war on terrorism.
The report, based on Defense Department data, concluded that the best way to keep defense spending in check in the coming years lies in "controlling the cost of weaponry," especially those programs that the Pentagon might not necessarily need.
The projections of what it will cost to acquire "major weapons programs" currently in production or on the drawing board soared from $790 billion in September 2001 to $1.61 trillion in June 2006, according to the congressional analysis of Pentagon data.
Costs for some of the most expensive new weapon systems -- such as satellite-linked combat vehicles for ground troops; a next-generation fighter plane ; and a cutting-edge, stealth-technology destroyer for the Navy -- are predicted to cost even more by the time they are delivered, because many of them are still in their early phases. In a quarterly report to Congress on weapons costs earlier this month, the Pentagon reported that of the $1.61 trillion it thinks it will need for big-ticket weapons, it has spent more than half so far -- about $909 billion.
But the huge increase in weapons costs is already placing enormous strain on the federal budget, according to government budget specialists, who predict major increases in defense spending for years to come so that the Pentagon can afford all the weapons it has on the books. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, for example, estimates that between 2012 and 2024 the Pentagon budget will have to grow between 18 percent and 34 percent over what was appropriated this year.
Overall, annual defense spending has increased by about 11 percent per year since 2001, to about $400 billion this year, not including hundreds of billions of dollars that Congress has set aside to pay for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Military operations and maintenance costs, as well as salaries and health benefits for people in uniform, have all gone up by about 40 percent.
But the price tag for major weapons has garnered new attention from watchdog groups and government auditors, who contend that many of the arms already on the drawing board don't have much to do with ongoing combat or the war on terrorism.
In fact, most of the weapon systems being designed, tested , or built had been in the Pentagon's pipeline long before the Sept. 11 attacks. Despite the steep price jump, there has been a relatively modest increase in the number of new weapons projects over the past five years, according to Pentagon figures.
Still, "only a portion of these increased costs are a result of the war on terror," said Winslow Wheeler , a former congressional budget specialist now at the nonprofit Center for Defense Information in Washington and the author of " The Wastrels of Defense ."
The weapons projects designated as "major acquisition programs" require at least $365 million in research funding and $2.1 billion is acquisition costs. They include new armored vehicles; two new fighter jets; an advanced Navy destroyer; a package of land, air , and space-based missile defense systems; and sophisticated electronic and intelligence systems such as a new satellite communications network.
Defense specialists attribute the spiral ing costs to a variety of factors. Some projects have increased in scope, while other weapons systems have taken longer to acquire, adding to the cost. Other projects turned out to be far more expensive than project managers and contractors predicted.
For example, the Future Combat System, a high-tech fleet of armored combat vehicles being developed by the Army , was forecast to cost $92 billion when its development began in 2003, according to the GOP committee's report. As of December 2005, however, the price tag had skyrocketed to $165 billion, about an 80 percent increase in just two years.
The Government Accountability Office, the government's nonpartisan audit bureau, warned of "the risks of conducting business as usual," and concluded in a report in November that the major weapons programs are at "high risk" for fraud, waste, abuse , and mismanagement.
The Department of Defense "has experienced cost overruns, missed deadlines, performance shortfalls, and persistent management problems," the report said. "In light of the serious budget pressures facing the nation, such problems are especially troubling."
The GOP committee report was blunt about the impact of rising weapons costs on the federal budget, and expressed little confidence that Congress has the political will to reign in spending on weapons that are not critical to the war effort. Noting that "every project has local employment implications," the report said "weapon system politics" will make it extremely difficult to make cuts.
"Controlling
the long-term costs of the Pentagon's arsenal are very nearly as
complex as restraining the cost of government entitlements like Social
Security and Medicare," the analysis said.