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Why the US and
Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars
By Bill Christison
Former CIA Analyst
08/27/07 "Counterpunch"
-- -- George W. Bush has once again thrown down the
gauntlet. The Mideast wars of the United States, he announced to
the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention on August 22,
must end only with a U.S. victory. He has not wavered in this
position since September 11, 2001. The unspoken but real purpose
of his efforts has been and will be to concentrate increasing
power over the Middle East in the hands of the small group of
rich and greedy elites who rule the U.S. and Israel today, and
perhaps he will achieve this goal. The more important result,
however, will be the elimination of any movement toward greater
global justice, stability, and peace in the world for decades to
come.
It is past time to challenge the
arrogant Mr. Bush directly.
For overwhelming moral
reasons, I do not
want the U. S. and Israeli governments to be victorious in any
present or future Middle East wars. I want them to lose such
wars.
U.S. policies in the
Middle East since 9/11 have already caused a million or so
killings and have created more injustice in the world than
existed formerly. Every day results in more killings, more
injustice. Unless might does indeed make right, we have no right
whatever to win these wars. We should
lose them.
If the U.S. were to "win"
these wars, whatever that means, more of the world's people than
at present would be ruled by the U.S. Most of these people do
not want to be ruled by the U.S. -- which makes the wars
themselves anti-democratic. That fact alone is reason enough to
conclude that our country should lose these wars.
My personal belief is that
the United States and Israel will inevitably lose these wars
over time in any case. If this loss is in fact inevitable,
conventional wisdom would argue that it is better for the loss
to happen rapidly in order to hold casualties down. In a
continuing civil war over which outsiders have limited control,
however, conventional wisdom may not apply.
Nevertheless, a truly rapid
-- meaning within the next six months -- acceptance of defeat by
the U.S. and Israel of their own Mideast policies would probably
offer the only possibility of mitigating the blame assigned to
these two nations by the rest of the world for future mass
killings of human beings throughout this unstable area.
Much of global public opinion
will in any case correctly attribute a large residual
responsibility to the U.S. and Israel for the utterly
disproportionate and one-sided killings already carried out
since 9/11 in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West
Bank. Further killings that occur during even a short and rapid
transition to inevitable U.S. and Israeli defeat will only
enlarge this residual. But a short, quick, and determined
acceptance of defeat will still reduce to some extent the
charges of U.S. responsibility for future killings.
A lasting peace in the Middle
East will only happen, of course, if the U.S. and Israel are
wise enough publicly (and honestly) to end their drive for joint
imperium over the Middle East and Central Asia and also to
cease their efforts to bring about regime change in Iran and
Syria. In other words, as has long been the case, the U.S. and
Israel will need to make serious long-term changes in their own
foreign policies if they wish to avoid a conflict lasting for
generations that ultimately they cannot win.
As of now, no evidence
exists that either country is willing even to consider such
policy changes, and no evidence exists that either the
Republican or Democratic Parties in the U.S., any political
parties in Israel, the military-industrial complexes of the U.S.
and Israel, the Israel lobby in the U.S., the U.S. Protestant
Christian Right, the Catholic Church, or the ruling elites of
any EU states will bring one jot of meaningful pressure to bear
on the Israeli or the U.S. government to change their policies.
If change is to come, it
must come from ordinary voters, particularly in the U.S.,
applying pressure on the various groups listed above, or from
ordinary people succeeding in setting up new groups or parties
that will succeed in bringing greater pressure to bear. The
pressures must be very strong and very explicit. People must
emphasize day after day to both Democratic and Republican
members of Congress and to every presidential candidate that the
U.S. must first and foremost change its own policies. And people
must emphasize to all politicians that the Israel lobby is one
of the strongest forces pressing both Democrats and Republicans
not to change U.S. policies, thereby preventing healthy
political debate in the country. This must stop.
Finally, my hope is that
sensible U.S. voters will agree with the opinions summarized
here and in addition create a groundswell of support for the
immediate impeachment and conviction of Bush and Cheney. This is
the only action, in my view, that opens up the possibility of
rapidly bringing about the necessary changes in U.S. policies.
Other Considerations
Let's say it bluntly. War with
Iran is inevitable before January 2009 unless Bush and Cheney
are both impeached first. New Israeli-U.S. hostilities in
Lebanon are also likely. Either warfare or covert actions
conducted by the U.S. and/or Israel to bring about regime change
in Syria are also probable.
But those of us in the U.S. who
claim to be peace activists ought to be ashamed. With rare
exceptions, the powers in the movement are confident that things
are already going our way, what with the Democratic Party's
success in the 2006 congressional elections and the continuing
disaster the Bush administration faces in Iraq. Most
self-labeled peace activists think the odds so favor further
Democratic victories that, as a group, we do not need to run any
risks or do anything new to take the presidency away from the
Republicans in 2008. It's old hat, maybe, but the best thing to
do, most peace activists believe, is just to keep talking about
withdrawal from Iraq, while patting ourselves on the back and
emphasizing to each other that we are being admirably mature and
responsible in not moving too fast toward actual withdrawal.
So let's admit that many of us
sustain ourselves with hot air even when the subject is limited
to Iraq. Let's admit too that few want to discuss the role
Israel played in encouraging the U.S. to invade Iraq in 2003,
because that would be unnecessarily criticizing Israel. In fact,
both the Israel lobby and the Israeli government probably
concluded as early as May 2003 that they had already achieved
their own principal objectives in Iraq, and that it was
counterproductive for them to waste their own credibility by
continuing to oppose every aspect of the U.S. peace movement's
criticism of the war. Even before things began going wrong in
the war's execution, Israeli propagandists were soft-pedaling
their own top officials' support for the war. But underneath,
the support was definitely there, hard and firm.
When it comes to matters in the
Middle East other than Iraq, most peaceniks are even less
willing to address questions of the Israel lobby's involvement
in U.S. policymaking. Talking about this would be the surest way
to reveal the disunity and embarrassing differences within the
so-called peace movement. In order to avoid an open discussion,
it is easier for most of us simply to ignore the voluminous
evidence that both the lobby, and senior U.S. officials who are
in effect part of the lobby, are pushing the U.S. toward war,
particularly with Iran, but also toward regime change in Syria
and resumed hostilities in Lebanon. If it comes to war with any
or all of these countries, most peace types note that they are
not pushing for it, and they will silently hope more wars do not
erupt, but they will not make a lot of noise about stopping such
wars before they start. In this, they are simply following most
of the leaders of the Democratic Party.
All of this, of course, is
logically nonsensical. Take a minute and think of the mess the
peace movement has created. First, the very name reflects the
movement's shallowness. What good is a hypocritical, utterly
out-of-touch and ineffective "peace movement," when beyond
question ordinary people on this earth want justice before they
want peace? The U.S. government and its ultra-close ally Israel
actually want more unjust colonial wars and covert action to
strengthen their own already unjust influence over a major part
of the globe, in this case the Middle East. Peace above all is
for those who support the status quo, but if you're in
that category you're in a small minority. So let's banish the
peace movement and get a global justice movement going.
Peace may be all right long-term, but if you're one of the angry
billions on this earth constantly surrounded by a stench of
injustice that smothers all hope, chances are that, in your
mind, peace should follow justice, not precede it. Chances are,
in fact, that you have no favorable thoughts of any type about
U.S. peaceniks.
Let's look at another question
that is not just about the Middle East but is about the broader
Islamic world as well. It seems clear that Samuel Huntington's
concept of a clash of civilizations has expanded its
intellectual appeal since September 11, 2001. We do indeed seem
to have an example of a clash of civilizations that has become a
growing force today. This force is nourished by the desire of
Muslims for real freedom from the increasing political
domination over the Islamic peoples by Western (Christian and
Jewish) parts of the world. The principal Islamic motivation has
little to do with "hatred of our freedoms." The Islamic hatred
(and it does exist) is aimed at U.S., Israeli, and Western
policies.
Huntington's book was published
in the mid-1990s, and the events of September 11 can be seen as
a major example of this type of clash of civilizations. The
point to be made here is that ideas in the book, conveniently
titled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the
World Order, lend themselves to being twisted fairly easily
into ideas that the neocons, the Israel lobby, recent Israeli
governments, EU elites, the Catholic Church, the Protestant
Christian Right in the U.S., and the Bush administration itself
all have established as part of their own views toward the
Islamic world. The book therefore becomes an object of
considerable value to the present rulers of the United States
and Israel, since it can be seen as providing intellectual
justification not only for the special relationship between
these two nations, but also for the newly cordial ties of the
European Union to U.S. and Israeli policies.
Those among us who wish to
counter the notion that a clash of civilizations justifies what
the U.S. and Israel are doing in the Middle East today should
stand up and state their opposition loudly and directly.
Supporters of the concept that the "clash" is a significant part
of the present global political system seem to suggest that the
very existence of the clash makes unjust, oppressive treatment
of Islamic people somehow acceptable. But we should point out
that the existence of a real clash is questionable, and that in
any case injustice and oppression are never acceptable. People
everywhere should realize that in this increasingly globalized
world the importance of nationalism is beginning to fade. All of
us should begin thinking much more about what are the best
policies for the entire world to pursue, not what are the
best policies for their own nations. To start this ball rolling,
those who happen to live in the U.S. should stop thinking of
themselves as exceptional. Americans are perfectly average -- no
better and no worse than average people everywhere else. There
are some -- a few -- exceptional people anywhere you look, but
most of us do not make the cut.
We should emphasize that in
today's world a Middle East empire dominated jointly by two
nationalist powers, the U.S. and Israel, is not only
anti-democratic, but is impossibly anachronistic as well
Bill Christison was a senior
official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence
Officer and as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and
Political Analysis. He can be reached at
kathy.bill.christison@comcast.net.
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