MDE 15/038/2007
4 June 2007
Israel/OPT: Forty years of occupation - no security without basic rights
On the eve of the 40th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Amnesty International today called on the Israeli authorities to end the land-grabbing, blockades and other violations of international law carried out under the occupation. These have resulted in widespread human rights abuses and have also failed to bring security to the Israeli and Palestinian civilian populations.
A 45-page report published today, Enduring Occupation: Palestinian under siege in the West Bank, illustrates the devastating impact of four decades of Israeli military occupation. The report documents the relentless expansion of unlawful settlements on occupied land that deprives the Palestinian population of crucial resources and documents a plethora of measures that confine Palestinians to fragmented enclaves and hinder their access to work, health and education facilities. These measures include a 700km fence/wall, more than 500 checkpoints and blockades, and a complicated system of permits.
"Palestinians living in the West Bank are blocked at every turn. This is not simply an inconvenience -- it can be a matter of life or death. It is unacceptable that women in labour, sick children, or victims of accidents on their way to hospital should be forced to take long detours and face delays which can cost them their lives," said Malcolm Smart, Director for Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme.
"International action is urgently needed to address the widespread human rights abuses being committed under the occupation, and which are fuelling resentment and despair among a predominantly young and increasingly radicalized Palestinian population," said Malcolm Smart. "For forty years, the international community has failed adequately to address the Israeli-Palestinian problem; it cannot, must not, wait another forty years to do so."
Amnesty International is calling for the urgent deployment of an effective international human rights monitoring mechanism to monitor compliance by both parties, Israeli and Palestinian, with their obligations under international law. This must be backed up with a commitment to investigate and prosecute, through the exercise of universal jurisdiction, those who commit war crimes or other crimes under international law.
"We do not underestimate the difficulties of establishing such an independent monitoring system, whether by the UN or another appropriate body, but it is vital that the international community should become more engaged in finding a solution, and in holding the parties to their obligations under international law," said Malcolm Smart.
In its report, Amnesty International acknowledges Israel’s legitimate security concerns and the government’s obligation to protect the population within its borders, but says this does not justify blatant violations of international law, such as construction of much of the fence/wall inside the West Bank on Palestinian land.
"If the intention was simply to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel, the barrier would be located on the Green Line, the border between Israel and the West Bank," said Malcolm Smart. "Yet, the reality is that most of it is being built on Palestinian land, in defiance of the International Court of Justice, and is separating Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank."
In addition to the fence/wall, the movement of Palestinians is several constrained by a host of other restrictions, including over 500 checkpoints and blockades, and a network of roads for Israeli settlers to use and off-limits to Palestinians. The barrier, together with these roads and roadblocks, benefit continuously expanding but unlawful Israeli settlements and make them territorially contiguous with Israel.
"Harsh Israeli restrictions have caused the virtual collapse of the Palestinian economy and are exacerbating the increasingly fragile conditions in which Palestinians live and work -- resulting in levels of despair, poverty and food insecurity never before seen in the Occupied Palestinian Territories," said Malcolm Smart.
"Most Palestinians are now relying on aid for subsistence, with families reducing the quality and quantity of the food they consume and selling assets essential for their livelihoods."
Amnesty International is calling on the Israeli authorities to:
* lift the regime of blockades and restrictions on Palestinians in the OPT, which constitute collective punishment, and ensure that restrictions imposed in response to specific security threats only target the individuals concerned -- not entire communities.
* halt the construction of the fence/wall inside the West Bank, and remove the sections already built there;
* cease the construction or expansion of Israeli settlements and related infrastructure in the OPT as a first step towards removing Israeli settlements and "outposts";
* cancel all demolition orders on homes in the OPT, and provide reparation to Palestinians whose homes and properties have already been destroyed.
The organization is also reiterating its call on Palestinian armed groups to end immediately attacks on civilians and on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to take effective action to stop and prevent such attacks and bring to justice those responsible.
To see a full copy of the report, please go to http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde150332007
For further information, please contact:
John Tackaberry,
Media Relations
(613)744-7667 #236
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
ISRAEL'S 40 YEARS OF VIOLENT OPPRESSION
Source: AlterNet
Israel’s 40 Years of Occupation: From Democratic State to Violent Oppressor
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted June 5, 2007
Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank 40 years ago this week. The victory was celebrated as a great triumph, at once tripling the size of the land under Israeli control, including East Jerusalem. It was, however, a Pyrrhic victory.
As the occupation stretched over the decades, it transformed and deformed Israeli society. It led Israel to abandon the norms and practices of a democratic society until, in the name of national security, it began to routinely accept the brutal violence of occupation and open discrimination and abuse of Palestinians, including the torture of prisoners and collective reprisals for Palestinians attacks. Palestinian neighborhoods, olive groves and villages were, in the name of national security, bulldozed into the ground.
Israel’s image has shifted from that of a heroic, open society set amid a sea of despotic regimes to that of an international pariah. Israel’s West Bank separation barrier, built ostensibly to keep out Palestinian bombers, has also been used to swallow huge tracts of the West Bank into Israel. Palestinian towns are ringed by Israeli checkpoints. Major roads in the West Bank are reserved for Israeli settlers.
The U.N. estimates that about half the West Bank is now off-limits to Palestinians. And every week there are new reports of Palestinian produce that is held up until it rots, pregnant women giving birth in cars because they cannot get to hospitals, and even senseless and avoidable deaths, such as one young woman who died recently when she couldn’t get through a checkpoint to her kidney dialysis treatment.
“We are raising commanders who are policemen,” former Israeli General Amiram Levine told the newspaper Maariv. “We ask them to excel at the checkpoint. What does it means to excel at the checkpoint? It means being enough of a bastard to delay a pregnant woman from getting to the hospital.”
The occupation was benign at the beginning. Israelis crossed into Palestinian territory to buy cheap vegetables, eat at local restaurants, spend the weekend in the desert oasis of Jericho and get their cars fixed. The Palestinians were a pool of cheap labor and by the mid-1980s, 40 percent of the Palestinian workforce was employed in Israel.
The Palestinians flowed over the border to the shops and beaches of Tel Aviv. But the second-class status of Palestinians, growing repression by Israeli authorities in the West Bank and Gaza and festering poverty saw Palestinians, most of them too young to remember the moment of occupation, rise up in December 1987 to launch six years of street protests. The uprising eventually led to a peace accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasir Arafat. Arafat, who had spent most of his life in exile, returned in triumph to Gaza.
The Oslo Accords that followed momentarily heralded a new era, a moment of hope. I was in Gaza when they were signed. The Gaza Strip was awash in a giddy optimism. Palestinian businessmen who had made their fortunes abroad returned to help build the new Palestinian state. The radical Islamists seemed to shrink away. Palestinian women threw off their head scarves and beauty salons sprouted on city streets. There was a brief and shining sense that life could be normal, free from strife and violence, that finally Palestinians had a future.
But it all swiftly turned sour. The 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, coupled with mounting draconian restrictions on Palestinians to prevent them from entering Israel and keep them in submission, led to another uprising in 2000. This one, which I also covered for The New York Times, was far more violent.
This latest uprising has led to the deaths of more than 4,300 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis. It ushered in an Israeli policy that saw Jewish settlers relocated from Gaza. Gaza was then sealed off like a vast prison. Israel also began to build a security barrier — at a cost of about $ 1 million per mile — in the West Bank. When it is done, the barrier is expected to incorporate 40 percent of Palestinian land into the Israeli state.
Israeli air strikes have, over the past year, decimated the infrastructure in Gaza, destroying bridges, power stations and civilian administration buildings. The breakdown in law and order, coupled with the growing desperation in Gaza, has triggered an internecine conflict between Hamas and Fatah. There are some 200 Palestinians who have died in clashes and street fighting between the two factions during the past year — more than one-third of those killed by Israel during the same period.
The Israeli abuses have been well documented, not only by international human rights organizations, but Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem. On June 4, 2007, Amnesty International released a new 45-page report called “Enduring Occupation: Palestinians Under Siege in the West Bank,” which again illustrates the devastating impact of four decades of Israeli military occupation.
The report documents the relentless expansion of unlawful settlements on occupied land. It details the ways Israel has seized or denied crucial resources, such as water, to Palestinians under occupation. It documents a plethora of measures that confine Palestinians to fragmented enclaves and hinder their access to work, health and education facilities. These measures include the 700-kilometer barrier or wall, more than 500 checkpoints and blockades, and a complicated system of permits to heavily restrict movement.
“Palestinians living in the West Bank are blocked at every turn. This is not simply an inconvenience — it can be a matter of life or death. It is unacceptable that women in labor, sick children, or victims of accidents on their way to hospital should be forced to take long detours and face delays which can cost them their lives,” said Malcolm Smart, director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program.
“International action is urgently needed to address the widespread human rights abuses being committed under the occupation, and which are fueling resentment and despair among a predominantly young and increasingly radicalized Palestinian population,” said Smart. “For 40 years, the international community has failed to adequately address the Israeli-Palestinian problem; it cannot, must not, wait another 40 years to do so.”
Of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents, a staggering 1.1 million now depend on outside food assistance. The World Food Program has identified Gaza as one of the world’s hunger global hot spots. The WFP is a principal food aid provider to Palestinians, providing assistance to 640,000 Palestinians, more than a third of them in Gaza.
The desperation — with young men unable to find work, travel outside the Gaza Strip or West Bank and forced to sleep 10 to a room in concrete hovels without running water — has empowered the Islamic radicals. The desperation has led the Palestinian population, once one of the most secular in the Middle East, to turn to radical fundamentalism. The more pressure and violence Israel employs, the more these radicals are empowered.
The Israeli lobby in the United States is captive to the far right of Israeli politics. It exerts influence not on behalf of the Jewish state but an ideological strain within Israel that believes it can crush Palestinian aspirations through force.
The self-defeating policies of the Bush administration are mirrored in the self-defeating policies championed by the hard-right administration of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. Israel flouts international law and dismisses Security Council resolutions to respect the integrity of Palestinian territory. It has instead trapped Palestinians in squalid, barricaded ghettos where they barely survive.
It is not in Israel’s interest — or our own — to continue to fuel increased Palestinian strife and rising militancy. Economic sanctions against Israel are our last hope. These were the tools that toppled the apartheid regime in South Africa. And it was, after all, the sanctions imposed by the first President Bush — he suspended $10 billion of loan guarantees for resettling Russian immigrants in Israel — that prodded right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to attend peace talks in Madrid.
A trade embargo — even if imposed only by European states — would be a start. It is outside pressure that can alone halt the inexorable slide into a conflict that could become regional. And a new regional conflict with Israel could spell the end of the Zionist experiment in the Middle East. It may be quixotic, perhaps even impossible, but it is the last measure left to save Israel from itself.
Chris Hedges is a veteran journalist and former Mideast bureau chief for The New York Times. His most recent book is “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America.”
Bush’s Actions Recall History’s Tyrants
Counterbias.com, May 29 2007
Bush’s Actions Recall History’s Tyrants
By Sherwood Ross
As public sentiment begins to build for impeachment, it might be illuminating to examine the many ways President Bush operates in a manner reminiscent of history’s tyrants.
That Bush should act as a tyrant is not surprising given his appreciation for Christian Dominionism. Remember the Christian books were and are written about the poor, the meek, those deserving compassion and aide. Hence the Geneva Bible used the word tyrant over 400 times in talking about mythical and historic rulers. In contrast, the subsequent translation commissioned by the English King James I, eliminates “tyrant” and replaces it with the word “king.” According to scholar Adam Nicholson, the King James Bible and modern editions equate the notion of King and God, which by definition makes Imperial Christianity at odds with commonsense notions of equality, justice, and democracy. To say that Bush sees his role as Christian, and Imperial King as chosen by God are not illogical ramblings, but convenient for a racist-elitist who has no time to alleviate suffering of people in New Orleans, Afghanistan, Gambia, Mexico, etc.
Though we might generate an extensive list of his abuses and crimes, here is a list of ten areas that come readily to mind to compare G. W. Bush and his regime to other tyrannies.
First, tyrants tend to see themselves, as Hitler did, at the head of some kind of “master race.” President Bush and his backers would deny it, but their drive for a “New American Century” betrays them. They seek to be world-beaters, and won’t sign the global warming treaty or any other cooperative document. Republicans, at their last national convention, jeered the very mention of the words “United Nations.” Those among them or outside their clique who see it differently get slandered. Recall how Bush’s hatchet men impugned Senator Kerry’s Vietnam War record. This was reminiscent of Nazi claims Germany’s Jewish veterans of the Great War did not deserve their medals. Another manifestation is that neo-cons and pseudo-Christians (what Christopher Hedges calls Dominionists) from Rumsfeld and Dobson to Robertson and Haggard, would reduce American citizens who identify as homosexuals or bisexual to second-class citizenship status. Bush’s backers are convinced of their superiority at home and globally.
Second, tyrants tend to be congenital, brazen liars. Bush lied about Iraq’s threat to America just as Hitler lied when he claimed Poland attacked Germany first in 1939. The UN told Bush there was no WMD in Iraq, yet Bush said there was and made war. He knew better. As many as 600,000 Iraqi civilians are dead, two million have fled, and a nation is being destroyed before our eyes.
Third, tyrants engage in outright suppression or manipulation of the news – and pursue a preeminent position for state-propaganda. The Bush Administration has paid off newsmen to plug its achievements, sent out video press releases disguised as news stories, banned photographs of coffins returned from Iraq, and even planted a phony journalist (who was actually an ex-Marine and full-time gay escort) in White House press conferences. Now their move toward censorship leads them to spend millions to bribe Iraqi journalists and encourages the puppet government in Baghdad to limit press freedom too. (Call it “Freedom’s Power.”)
Fourth, tyrants will use a “crisis” to grab total power. After the massacre of 9/11, President Bush’s henchmen pushed through the unread and underappreciated Patriot Act (warrantless wiretaps, fiat appointments, and all). Recall 1933, when Hitler declared a “state of national emergency” after the Reichstag fire, which likely was set by the Nazis. In conjunction with his signing statements, and philosophy of an unaccountable, Supreme Executive, the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act purportedly gives Bush the power to arrest any American citizen on his say-so and he has allowed his intelligence agencies to spy illegally on American citizens without a court order.
Fifth, tyrants torture. Relying on an absolute subordinate and protector, Bush picked Alberto Gonzalez for the top legal position in the nation. Recall, Gonzalez was the very man who rationalized the torture of captives – yet advised Bush to order it done in Gitmo or anywhere else outside the 50 U.S. states, lest Bush be subject to impeachment for violating American law and the Constitution. Bush also lavishes billions on dictatorships such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, whose own Gestapo-like police obligingly torture individuals whom the CIA kidnaps and delivers. Bush has turned back the clock of history to the Spanish Inquisition – with equally beneficial results.
Sixth, tyrants tend to make serial wars. Soviet Russia’s Stalin attacked Finland, Poland, and Hungary. Imperial Japan struck Korea, Manchuria, China, America, and UK. One war is never enough for a tyrant. Recall Napoleon invaded nations to liberate them from kings, only to put his relatives on their thrones. Having invaded Afghanistan and setting Iraq ablaze, Bush now threatens Iran — all three countries being oil-rich or geographically sited for oil transmission lines, or both.
Seventh, tyrants are notorious for their closed-mindedness. They ignore their critics. Japan walked out of the League of Nations rather than answer for its conduct. Bush doesn’t listen to critics, either. The Pope denounced America’s war on Iraq as immoral. The UN Secretary-General called it “illegal.” Millions the world over protested it. And a majority of Americans call it wrong but Bush ignores them. Polls show 70% of the Iraqi people want the U.S. to get out but Bush refuses.
Eighth, tyrants spend lavishly on the military. In the Thirties, Germany, Japan and Soviet Russia devoted a high percentage of their gross national product to their war machines. Today, America spends more on armaments than all other nations combined. And under Bush, America is the Number One arms merchant in the world.
Ninth, tyrants don’t respect the sovereignty of other nations. Bush rationalized his attack on Iraq as “preventive war” — a euphemism for the supreme war crime, “a war of aggression.” According to reporter Seymour Hersh and former Marine/UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, the Pentagon has already dropped troops into Iran, armed and trained dissident Iranian groups to engage in Contra-style terrorism and sabotage against a legally elected government. The Pentagon operates over 700 military bases in 130 countries and refuses to leave Iraq, Okinawa, Italy, and Greenland despite protests from their citizens.
Tenth, tyrants have double standards. Bush declares he’s for “freedom” but forges alliances with the heads of Saudi Arabia, and former Soviet Asian republics like the slavocracy of Uzbekistan where citizens have zero rights and protesters are boiled alive. Bush warns Iran against making a nuclear bomb while he sells nuclear technology and weapons to Pakistan and India, and scraps non-proliferation treaties to make America’s nuclear arsenal more lethal. Bush threatens Iran, which spends $4-billion a year on arms, while he authorizes over $500-billion on arms including missile bases in Eastern Europe and killer satellites. Bush tells us to worry that Iran might make one nuclear bomb while he has over 10,000 that he can launch at anytime. Bush accused Saddam Hussein of germ warfare capability while W. has overseen the building of the greatest germ-warfare capability of any nation in history since the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Are these reasons grounds for impeachment? Not if you believe this is the New American Century. Not if you believe Americans are the Master Race. Not if you believe people in the American government and her military should rule the world.
==
This article was originally published at Virtual Citizens.
Sherwood Ross is an American who writes on political and military subjects for national magazines and the Internet. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com.
Bush’s Actions Recall History’s Tyrants
By Sherwood Ross
As public sentiment begins to build for impeachment, it might be illuminating to examine the many ways President Bush operates in a manner reminiscent of history’s tyrants.
That Bush should act as a tyrant is not surprising given his appreciation for Christian Dominionism. Remember the Christian books were and are written about the poor, the meek, those deserving compassion and aide. Hence the Geneva Bible used the word tyrant over 400 times in talking about mythical and historic rulers. In contrast, the subsequent translation commissioned by the English King James I, eliminates “tyrant” and replaces it with the word “king.” According to scholar Adam Nicholson, the King James Bible and modern editions equate the notion of King and God, which by definition makes Imperial Christianity at odds with commonsense notions of equality, justice, and democracy. To say that Bush sees his role as Christian, and Imperial King as chosen by God are not illogical ramblings, but convenient for a racist-elitist who has no time to alleviate suffering of people in New Orleans, Afghanistan, Gambia, Mexico, etc.
Though we might generate an extensive list of his abuses and crimes, here is a list of ten areas that come readily to mind to compare G. W. Bush and his regime to other tyrannies.
First, tyrants tend to see themselves, as Hitler did, at the head of some kind of “master race.” President Bush and his backers would deny it, but their drive for a “New American Century” betrays them. They seek to be world-beaters, and won’t sign the global warming treaty or any other cooperative document. Republicans, at their last national convention, jeered the very mention of the words “United Nations.” Those among them or outside their clique who see it differently get slandered. Recall how Bush’s hatchet men impugned Senator Kerry’s Vietnam War record. This was reminiscent of Nazi claims Germany’s Jewish veterans of the Great War did not deserve their medals. Another manifestation is that neo-cons and pseudo-Christians (what Christopher Hedges calls Dominionists) from Rumsfeld and Dobson to Robertson and Haggard, would reduce American citizens who identify as homosexuals or bisexual to second-class citizenship status. Bush’s backers are convinced of their superiority at home and globally.
Second, tyrants tend to be congenital, brazen liars. Bush lied about Iraq’s threat to America just as Hitler lied when he claimed Poland attacked Germany first in 1939. The UN told Bush there was no WMD in Iraq, yet Bush said there was and made war. He knew better. As many as 600,000 Iraqi civilians are dead, two million have fled, and a nation is being destroyed before our eyes.
Third, tyrants engage in outright suppression or manipulation of the news – and pursue a preeminent position for state-propaganda. The Bush Administration has paid off newsmen to plug its achievements, sent out video press releases disguised as news stories, banned photographs of coffins returned from Iraq, and even planted a phony journalist (who was actually an ex-Marine and full-time gay escort) in White House press conferences. Now their move toward censorship leads them to spend millions to bribe Iraqi journalists and encourages the puppet government in Baghdad to limit press freedom too. (Call it “Freedom’s Power.”)
Fourth, tyrants will use a “crisis” to grab total power. After the massacre of 9/11, President Bush’s henchmen pushed through the unread and underappreciated Patriot Act (warrantless wiretaps, fiat appointments, and all). Recall 1933, when Hitler declared a “state of national emergency” after the Reichstag fire, which likely was set by the Nazis. In conjunction with his signing statements, and philosophy of an unaccountable, Supreme Executive, the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act purportedly gives Bush the power to arrest any American citizen on his say-so and he has allowed his intelligence agencies to spy illegally on American citizens without a court order.
Fifth, tyrants torture. Relying on an absolute subordinate and protector, Bush picked Alberto Gonzalez for the top legal position in the nation. Recall, Gonzalez was the very man who rationalized the torture of captives – yet advised Bush to order it done in Gitmo or anywhere else outside the 50 U.S. states, lest Bush be subject to impeachment for violating American law and the Constitution. Bush also lavishes billions on dictatorships such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, whose own Gestapo-like police obligingly torture individuals whom the CIA kidnaps and delivers. Bush has turned back the clock of history to the Spanish Inquisition – with equally beneficial results.
Sixth, tyrants tend to make serial wars. Soviet Russia’s Stalin attacked Finland, Poland, and Hungary. Imperial Japan struck Korea, Manchuria, China, America, and UK. One war is never enough for a tyrant. Recall Napoleon invaded nations to liberate them from kings, only to put his relatives on their thrones. Having invaded Afghanistan and setting Iraq ablaze, Bush now threatens Iran — all three countries being oil-rich or geographically sited for oil transmission lines, or both.
Seventh, tyrants are notorious for their closed-mindedness. They ignore their critics. Japan walked out of the League of Nations rather than answer for its conduct. Bush doesn’t listen to critics, either. The Pope denounced America’s war on Iraq as immoral. The UN Secretary-General called it “illegal.” Millions the world over protested it. And a majority of Americans call it wrong but Bush ignores them. Polls show 70% of the Iraqi people want the U.S. to get out but Bush refuses.
Eighth, tyrants spend lavishly on the military. In the Thirties, Germany, Japan and Soviet Russia devoted a high percentage of their gross national product to their war machines. Today, America spends more on armaments than all other nations combined. And under Bush, America is the Number One arms merchant in the world.
Ninth, tyrants don’t respect the sovereignty of other nations. Bush rationalized his attack on Iraq as “preventive war” — a euphemism for the supreme war crime, “a war of aggression.” According to reporter Seymour Hersh and former Marine/UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, the Pentagon has already dropped troops into Iran, armed and trained dissident Iranian groups to engage in Contra-style terrorism and sabotage against a legally elected government. The Pentagon operates over 700 military bases in 130 countries and refuses to leave Iraq, Okinawa, Italy, and Greenland despite protests from their citizens.
Tenth, tyrants have double standards. Bush declares he’s for “freedom” but forges alliances with the heads of Saudi Arabia, and former Soviet Asian republics like the slavocracy of Uzbekistan where citizens have zero rights and protesters are boiled alive. Bush warns Iran against making a nuclear bomb while he sells nuclear technology and weapons to Pakistan and India, and scraps non-proliferation treaties to make America’s nuclear arsenal more lethal. Bush threatens Iran, which spends $4-billion a year on arms, while he authorizes over $500-billion on arms including missile bases in Eastern Europe and killer satellites. Bush tells us to worry that Iran might make one nuclear bomb while he has over 10,000 that he can launch at anytime. Bush accused Saddam Hussein of germ warfare capability while W. has overseen the building of the greatest germ-warfare capability of any nation in history since the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Are these reasons grounds for impeachment? Not if you believe this is the New American Century. Not if you believe Americans are the Master Race. Not if you believe people in the American government and her military should rule the world.
==
This article was originally published at Virtual Citizens.
Sherwood Ross is an American who writes on political and military subjects for national magazines and the Internet. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com.
The new American embassy compound in Baghdad
Source: Capitol Hill Blue, June 5, 2007
A case of wretched excess in Baghdad
By DALE McFEATTERS
In September, the world's largest, most expensive and most heavily fortified embassy will open. It is ours and it is in Baghdad.
The embassy compound occupies 104 acres of primo real estate along the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad. If the embassy were in Washington, it would take up most of the National Mall.
For security reasons, the embassy will be out of sight and off-limits to most Iraqis, just as Baghdad outside the blast walls is out of sight and off-limits to the people at the embassy.
Instead, they will live in their own self-contained world with its own power, water and wastewater-treatment plants, amenities we have so far been unable to operate elsewhere in Baghdad on any regular basis.
The embassy will cost $592 million, although Congress is mulling a $50 million request for additional housing. The compound will contain 21 buildings, in addition to the embassy itself, residences for the ambassador and deputy, housing for 380 families, a PX, commissary, theater, schools, restaurants and a firehouse.
The Associated Press notes: "The embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget." Apparently the concept of modesty and restraint never entered into it's planning, and if the war continues in its current direction, it will stand as a monument to American hubris and overreaching under the Bush administration.
A case of wretched excess in Baghdad
By DALE McFEATTERS
In September, the world's largest, most expensive and most heavily fortified embassy will open. It is ours and it is in Baghdad.
The embassy compound occupies 104 acres of primo real estate along the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad. If the embassy were in Washington, it would take up most of the National Mall.
For security reasons, the embassy will be out of sight and off-limits to most Iraqis, just as Baghdad outside the blast walls is out of sight and off-limits to the people at the embassy.
Instead, they will live in their own self-contained world with its own power, water and wastewater-treatment plants, amenities we have so far been unable to operate elsewhere in Baghdad on any regular basis.
The embassy will cost $592 million, although Congress is mulling a $50 million request for additional housing. The compound will contain 21 buildings, in addition to the embassy itself, residences for the ambassador and deputy, housing for 380 families, a PX, commissary, theater, schools, restaurants and a firehouse.
The Associated Press notes: "The embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget." Apparently the concept of modesty and restraint never entered into it's planning, and if the war continues in its current direction, it will stand as a monument to American hubris and overreaching under the Bush administration.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
WHAT DOES KISSINGER SAY?
Source: The Providence Journal, June 5, 2007
Saying Nothing, But Still Power-Hungry
by John MacArthur
They say America is the land of the second chance - the chance to make good on a promise, a project or a virtuous deed that might lead to redemption. But in the case of Henry Kissinger, the chances never seem to run out, no matter how much harm he does.
Twice in the last two months I’ve heard the world’s most famous (and venal) diplomat - now said by Bob Woodward to be advising President Bush on Iraq - make speeches that might be deemed comical if they were-n’t so depressingly emblematic of this country’s endless tolerance for con men, courtiers and failures. Kissinger should have run out his string years ago, but there he was, nearly 84 and still vigorous, commanding the rapt attention of people who by now should know better.
How does he get away with it? The crimes committed by Kissinger in the service of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford are well known, exhaustively described by William Shawcross, Seymour Hersh and Christopher Hitchens, among others. I’ve always thought that Kissinger’s role in pointlessly prolonging the carnage of Vietnam while Nixon’s national security adviser was his greatest sin. But I don’t mean to minimize his other acts of diplomatic debauchery, both large (contributing to the destruction of Cambodia and the overthrow of Salvadore Allende, in Chile), and smaller (giving the green light to Indonesia’s immensely bloody invasion, and subsequent occupation, of East Timor).
I suspect that the secret to Kissinger’s enduring influence, against all moral suasion, is his sheer persistence. He is a tireless self-promoter, with more energy and vanity than men half his age. Last month, at the memorial service for Arthur Schlesinger Jr., this servant of Republican Party power was called upon to eulogize a man identified with the Democratic Party and the cause of liberalism. But before a packed audience of nearly 900 people that included Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Norman Mailer and Bill Clinton, Kissinger talked almost entirely about himself.
It seems that when Henry was a young professor at Harvard in the 1950s, he wrote Arthur a letter about nuclear- weapons policy in response to something Arthur had said. Next thing you know, Arthur had passed Henry’s great thoughts along to the editor of Foreign Affairs, resulting, Henry recalled, “in my first published piece on public policy.”
Imagine that. An Adlai Stevenson Democrat got Henry started in his villainous life in politics. Bravo for Arthur! Bravo for Henry! The “eulogy” continued in this narcissistic vein to the point where Kissinger might just as well have brought out his résumé and handed it to Clinton to pass on to future president Hillary. I’m not sure that Schlesinger would have wanted to be remembered as the man who launched Kissinger’s sordid career, but there was no stopping Henry’s ambition amid the historic grandeur of the Great Hall of Cooper Union, scene of one of Abraham Lincoln’s most celebrated speeches.
Two weeks later I got to observe Kissinger working another, more conservative room, this one filled with hundreds of admiring business people, members of the Economic Club of New York. In keeping with Kissinger’s courtier spirit, the lunch was held in the Trianon Room of the New York Hilton, and club president Barbara Franklin did her best to promote an atmosphere worthy of Versailles.
Kissinger, declared Franklin in her introduction, was “the most influential diplomat” of modern times, “his brilliance the stuff of legend.” But wait. Though “we still depend on him; we still need him,” the great man’s precious time had other claims upon it. Kissinger would have to cut short his answers during the question period after his speech, since his attendance was required that very evening at a White House state dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth II.
A collective frisson passed through the audience. But that wasn’t the only thing to get excited about. Something really, really important was in the offing. “In another break with precedent,” intoned Franklin, Kissinger’s talk would be off the record. A second frisson, and then the “one and only Henry Kissinger” approached the podium.
I furiously began scribbling in my notebook, to better violate the ground rules. Whispering “confidences” to docile reporters (”you’re the only one who can appreciate the sensitivity of this information”) to reward them for their servility is Kissinger’s stock in trade. In front of 500 or so people, the notion of an “off-the-record” speech was even more preposterous than the idea that Kissinger would ever tell a journalist anything important that he didn’t want known.
And, true to form, there was virtually nothing in the doctor’s speech that would have been worth quoting in a news story. Not always clearly understandable under the heavy German accent, Kissinger recounted a little bit of history studded with clichés: “In the 17th Century there emerged the idea of sovereign states” whose “frontiers were declared impermeable”; “Nationalist appeals to military service in Europe are in decline”; “Europe prefers the use of ‘soft’ power”; the United States is inclined toward the use of “ ‘hard’ power.”
Presumably to suggest an interest in stopping wars, Kissinger made vague reference to Emmanuel Kant’s essay “Perpetual Peace,” though he may have meant it ironically. In any event, he didn’t say anything of substance about the burning issues of the day, namely Iraq and Iran. Only truisms: The modern Middle East, apart from Iran, is made up of artificial states created by “Victorian powers” and “loyalties in the region were tribal and religious.” You don’t say.
Then this: “Vietnam had a definable opponent. . . . When I hear people say we should withdraw from Iraq or send more troops, people do not understand the turmoil we are facing. . . . We cannot let a region fall into the hands of a revolutionary group.” Nevertheless, “things are not hopeless.” For further information, you have to hire Kissinger Associates, and that costs a lot more than a ticket to an Economic Club luncheon.
Indeed, the only thing that Kissinger said that approached anything resembling candor was his statement that China could not maintain an annual growth rate of 11 percent “with an African standard of living in the interior of the country and a European standard on the coast.”
Kissinger’s tactics work wonders on the self-regarding rich. One of two after-lunch questioners, Richard Nixon’s son-in-law, lawyer Edward F. Cox, tried hard to outdo Franklin, calling Kissinger, “the pre-eminent strategic thinker of our time.” But a brilliant self-promoter doesn’t make a brilliant thinker or diplomat.
When, in answer to a question about the Suez crisis of 1956, Kissinger replied that “this was not [President Eisenhower’s] greatest moment,” I remembered just how shortsighted Kissinger can be. Suez was, in fact, one of Eisenhower’s four greatest moments as president, including the ending of the Korean War, the forced integration of Little Rock’s Central High School and his farewell address, in which he warned us about the “military-industrial complex.” Halting the British-French-Israeli seizure of the Suez Canal from Nasser’s Egypt was as principled as it was pragmatic: It told the world, not to mention millions of oppressed Muslims, that America would tolerate only so much re-colonization in the post-war era.
This was far too subtle and ethical for Kissinger, who, as a “private citizen,” in 1979, lobbied hard to admit the deposed shah of Iran to the United States for cancer treatment. Despite President Carter’s initial opposition and strong warnings from the American embassy in Tehran, Kissinger, David Rockefeller and their allies wore down the administration and got their way. The shah entered New York Hospital and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s outraged Revolutionary Guard, fearing a counterrevolutionary plot, seized the hostages at the U.S. embassy, permanently poisoning relations between Tehran and Washington. Now that we need Iran’s help in Iraq, Kissinger’s intervention on behalf of the shah looks worse every day.
But were the members of the Economic Club really as stupid as Kissinger thinks? After his stage-managed exit to attend to the Queen (and King George), I noticed a prominent real-estate man, a Democrat whom I know slightly, whispering earnestly to another guest: “Kissinger said nothing. That’s bad news because it means there’s no way out of Iraq.” I guess Bush must be really desperate. Or maybe he’s just as dumb as people say.
John R. MacArthur, a monthly contributor, is publisher of Harper’s Magazine.
Saying Nothing, But Still Power-Hungry
by John MacArthur
They say America is the land of the second chance - the chance to make good on a promise, a project or a virtuous deed that might lead to redemption. But in the case of Henry Kissinger, the chances never seem to run out, no matter how much harm he does.
Twice in the last two months I’ve heard the world’s most famous (and venal) diplomat - now said by Bob Woodward to be advising President Bush on Iraq - make speeches that might be deemed comical if they were-n’t so depressingly emblematic of this country’s endless tolerance for con men, courtiers and failures. Kissinger should have run out his string years ago, but there he was, nearly 84 and still vigorous, commanding the rapt attention of people who by now should know better.
How does he get away with it? The crimes committed by Kissinger in the service of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford are well known, exhaustively described by William Shawcross, Seymour Hersh and Christopher Hitchens, among others. I’ve always thought that Kissinger’s role in pointlessly prolonging the carnage of Vietnam while Nixon’s national security adviser was his greatest sin. But I don’t mean to minimize his other acts of diplomatic debauchery, both large (contributing to the destruction of Cambodia and the overthrow of Salvadore Allende, in Chile), and smaller (giving the green light to Indonesia’s immensely bloody invasion, and subsequent occupation, of East Timor).
I suspect that the secret to Kissinger’s enduring influence, against all moral suasion, is his sheer persistence. He is a tireless self-promoter, with more energy and vanity than men half his age. Last month, at the memorial service for Arthur Schlesinger Jr., this servant of Republican Party power was called upon to eulogize a man identified with the Democratic Party and the cause of liberalism. But before a packed audience of nearly 900 people that included Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Norman Mailer and Bill Clinton, Kissinger talked almost entirely about himself.
It seems that when Henry was a young professor at Harvard in the 1950s, he wrote Arthur a letter about nuclear- weapons policy in response to something Arthur had said. Next thing you know, Arthur had passed Henry’s great thoughts along to the editor of Foreign Affairs, resulting, Henry recalled, “in my first published piece on public policy.”
Imagine that. An Adlai Stevenson Democrat got Henry started in his villainous life in politics. Bravo for Arthur! Bravo for Henry! The “eulogy” continued in this narcissistic vein to the point where Kissinger might just as well have brought out his résumé and handed it to Clinton to pass on to future president Hillary. I’m not sure that Schlesinger would have wanted to be remembered as the man who launched Kissinger’s sordid career, but there was no stopping Henry’s ambition amid the historic grandeur of the Great Hall of Cooper Union, scene of one of Abraham Lincoln’s most celebrated speeches.
Two weeks later I got to observe Kissinger working another, more conservative room, this one filled with hundreds of admiring business people, members of the Economic Club of New York. In keeping with Kissinger’s courtier spirit, the lunch was held in the Trianon Room of the New York Hilton, and club president Barbara Franklin did her best to promote an atmosphere worthy of Versailles.
Kissinger, declared Franklin in her introduction, was “the most influential diplomat” of modern times, “his brilliance the stuff of legend.” But wait. Though “we still depend on him; we still need him,” the great man’s precious time had other claims upon it. Kissinger would have to cut short his answers during the question period after his speech, since his attendance was required that very evening at a White House state dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth II.
A collective frisson passed through the audience. But that wasn’t the only thing to get excited about. Something really, really important was in the offing. “In another break with precedent,” intoned Franklin, Kissinger’s talk would be off the record. A second frisson, and then the “one and only Henry Kissinger” approached the podium.
I furiously began scribbling in my notebook, to better violate the ground rules. Whispering “confidences” to docile reporters (”you’re the only one who can appreciate the sensitivity of this information”) to reward them for their servility is Kissinger’s stock in trade. In front of 500 or so people, the notion of an “off-the-record” speech was even more preposterous than the idea that Kissinger would ever tell a journalist anything important that he didn’t want known.
And, true to form, there was virtually nothing in the doctor’s speech that would have been worth quoting in a news story. Not always clearly understandable under the heavy German accent, Kissinger recounted a little bit of history studded with clichés: “In the 17th Century there emerged the idea of sovereign states” whose “frontiers were declared impermeable”; “Nationalist appeals to military service in Europe are in decline”; “Europe prefers the use of ‘soft’ power”; the United States is inclined toward the use of “ ‘hard’ power.”
Presumably to suggest an interest in stopping wars, Kissinger made vague reference to Emmanuel Kant’s essay “Perpetual Peace,” though he may have meant it ironically. In any event, he didn’t say anything of substance about the burning issues of the day, namely Iraq and Iran. Only truisms: The modern Middle East, apart from Iran, is made up of artificial states created by “Victorian powers” and “loyalties in the region were tribal and religious.” You don’t say.
Then this: “Vietnam had a definable opponent. . . . When I hear people say we should withdraw from Iraq or send more troops, people do not understand the turmoil we are facing. . . . We cannot let a region fall into the hands of a revolutionary group.” Nevertheless, “things are not hopeless.” For further information, you have to hire Kissinger Associates, and that costs a lot more than a ticket to an Economic Club luncheon.
Indeed, the only thing that Kissinger said that approached anything resembling candor was his statement that China could not maintain an annual growth rate of 11 percent “with an African standard of living in the interior of the country and a European standard on the coast.”
Kissinger’s tactics work wonders on the self-regarding rich. One of two after-lunch questioners, Richard Nixon’s son-in-law, lawyer Edward F. Cox, tried hard to outdo Franklin, calling Kissinger, “the pre-eminent strategic thinker of our time.” But a brilliant self-promoter doesn’t make a brilliant thinker or diplomat.
When, in answer to a question about the Suez crisis of 1956, Kissinger replied that “this was not [President Eisenhower’s] greatest moment,” I remembered just how shortsighted Kissinger can be. Suez was, in fact, one of Eisenhower’s four greatest moments as president, including the ending of the Korean War, the forced integration of Little Rock’s Central High School and his farewell address, in which he warned us about the “military-industrial complex.” Halting the British-French-Israeli seizure of the Suez Canal from Nasser’s Egypt was as principled as it was pragmatic: It told the world, not to mention millions of oppressed Muslims, that America would tolerate only so much re-colonization in the post-war era.
This was far too subtle and ethical for Kissinger, who, as a “private citizen,” in 1979, lobbied hard to admit the deposed shah of Iran to the United States for cancer treatment. Despite President Carter’s initial opposition and strong warnings from the American embassy in Tehran, Kissinger, David Rockefeller and their allies wore down the administration and got their way. The shah entered New York Hospital and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s outraged Revolutionary Guard, fearing a counterrevolutionary plot, seized the hostages at the U.S. embassy, permanently poisoning relations between Tehran and Washington. Now that we need Iran’s help in Iraq, Kissinger’s intervention on behalf of the shah looks worse every day.
But were the members of the Economic Club really as stupid as Kissinger thinks? After his stage-managed exit to attend to the Queen (and King George), I noticed a prominent real-estate man, a Democrat whom I know slightly, whispering earnestly to another guest: “Kissinger said nothing. That’s bad news because it means there’s no way out of Iraq.” I guess Bush must be really desperate. Or maybe he’s just as dumb as people say.
John R. MacArthur, a monthly contributor, is publisher of Harper’s Magazine.
Bacevich loses his son in a criminal war
Washington Post, June 03, 2007
I lost my son to a war I oppose. We were both doing our duty.
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Parents who lose children, whether through accident or illness, inevitably wonder what they could have done to prevent their loss. When my son was killed in Iraq earlier this month at age 27, I found myself pondering my responsibility for his death.
Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.
This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. By encouraging "the terrorists," opponents of the Iraq conflict increase the risk to U.S. troops. Although the First Amendment protects antiwar critics from being tried for treason, it provides no protection for the hardly less serious charge of failing to support the troops -- today's civic equivalent of dereliction of duty.
What exactly is a father's duty when his son is sent into harm's way?
Among the many ways to answer that question, mine was this one: As my son was doing his utmost to be a good soldier, I strove to be a good citizen.
As a citizen, I have tried since Sept. 11, 2001, to promote a critical understanding of U.S. foreign policy. I know that even now, people of good will find much to admire in Bush's response to that awful day. They applaud his doctrine of preventive war. They endorse his crusade to spread democracy across the Muslim world and to eliminate tyranny from the face of the Earth. They insist not only that his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was correct but that the war there can still be won. Some -- the members of the "the-surge-is-already-working" school of thought -- even profess to see victory just over the horizon.
I believe that such notions are dead wrong and doomed to fail. In books, articles and op-ed pieces, in talks to audiences large and small, I have said as much. "The long war is an unwinnable one," I wrote in this section of The Washington Post in August 2005. "The United States needs to liquidate its presence in Iraq, placing the onus on Iraqis to decide their fate and creating the space for other regional powers to assist in brokering a political settlement. We've done all that we can do."
Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.
This, I can now see, was an illusion.
The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."
To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.
To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.
Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.
Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.
Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.
This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.
In joining the Army, my son was following in his father's footsteps: Before he was born, I had served in Vietnam. As military officers, we shared an ironic kinship of sorts, each of us demonstrating a peculiar knack for picking the wrong war at the wrong time. Yet he was the better soldier -- brave and steadfast and irrepressible.
I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.
Andrew J. Bacevich teaches history and international relations at Boston University. His son died May 13 after a suicide bomb explosion in Salah al-Din province (Iraq).
I lost my son to a war I oppose. We were both doing our duty.
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Parents who lose children, whether through accident or illness, inevitably wonder what they could have done to prevent their loss. When my son was killed in Iraq earlier this month at age 27, I found myself pondering my responsibility for his death.
Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.
This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. By encouraging "the terrorists," opponents of the Iraq conflict increase the risk to U.S. troops. Although the First Amendment protects antiwar critics from being tried for treason, it provides no protection for the hardly less serious charge of failing to support the troops -- today's civic equivalent of dereliction of duty.
What exactly is a father's duty when his son is sent into harm's way?
Among the many ways to answer that question, mine was this one: As my son was doing his utmost to be a good soldier, I strove to be a good citizen.
As a citizen, I have tried since Sept. 11, 2001, to promote a critical understanding of U.S. foreign policy. I know that even now, people of good will find much to admire in Bush's response to that awful day. They applaud his doctrine of preventive war. They endorse his crusade to spread democracy across the Muslim world and to eliminate tyranny from the face of the Earth. They insist not only that his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was correct but that the war there can still be won. Some -- the members of the "the-surge-is-already-working" school of thought -- even profess to see victory just over the horizon.
I believe that such notions are dead wrong and doomed to fail. In books, articles and op-ed pieces, in talks to audiences large and small, I have said as much. "The long war is an unwinnable one," I wrote in this section of The Washington Post in August 2005. "The United States needs to liquidate its presence in Iraq, placing the onus on Iraqis to decide their fate and creating the space for other regional powers to assist in brokering a political settlement. We've done all that we can do."
Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.
This, I can now see, was an illusion.
The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."
To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.
To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.
Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.
Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.
Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.
This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.
In joining the Army, my son was following in his father's footsteps: Before he was born, I had served in Vietnam. As military officers, we shared an ironic kinship of sorts, each of us demonstrating a peculiar knack for picking the wrong war at the wrong time. Yet he was the better soldier -- brave and steadfast and irrepressible.
I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.
Andrew J. Bacevich teaches history and international relations at Boston University. His son died May 13 after a suicide bomb explosion in Salah al-Din province (Iraq).
Rethinking Israel's David-and-Goliath past
Source: salon.com
Rethinking Israel's David-and-Goliath past
Little-noticed details in declassified U.S. documents indicate that Israel's Six-Day War may not have been a war of necessity.
By Sandy Tolan
June 4, 2007 | At a little after 7 on the morning of June 5, 1967, as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's commanders were finishing their breakfasts and driving to work, French-built Israeli fighter jets roared out of their bases and flew low, below radar, into Egyptian airspace. Within three hours, 500 Israeli sorties had destroyed Nasser's entire air force. Just after midday, the air forces of Jordan and Syria also lay in smoking ruins, and Israel had essentially won the Six-Day War -- in six hours.
Israeli and U.S. historians and commentators describe the surprise attack as necessary, and the war as inevitable, the result of Nasser's fearsome war machine that had closed the Straits of Tiran, evicted United Nations peacekeeping troops, taunted the traumatized Israeli public, and churned toward the Jewish state's border with 100,000 troops. "The morning of 5 June 1967," wrote Israel's warrior-turned-historian, Chaim Herzog, "found Israel's armed forces facing the massed Arab armies around her frontiers." Attack or be annihilated: The choice was clear.
Or was it? Little-noticed details in declassified documents from the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, indicate that top officials in the Johnson administration -- including Johnson's most pro-Israeli Cabinet members -- did not believe war between Israel and its neighbors was necessary or inevitable, at least until the final hour. In these documents, Israel emerges as a vastly superior military power, its opponents far weaker than the menacing threat Israel portrayed, and war itself something that Nasser, for all his saber-rattling, tried to avoid until the moment his air force went up in smoke. In particular, the diplomatic role of Nasser's vice president, who was poised to travel to Washington in an effort to resolve the crisis, has received little attention from historians. The documents sharpen a recurring theme in the history of the Israeli-Arab wars, and especially of their telling in the West: From the war of 1948 to the 2007 conflict in Gaza, Israel is often miscast as the vulnerable David in a hostile sea of Arab Goliaths.
"You will whip the hell out of them," Lyndon Johnson told Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban during a visit to the White House on May 26, 1967. The president's conclusions were based on multiple intelligence reports, including a CIA assessment that Israel "can maintain internal security, defend successfully against simultaneous Arab attacks on all fronts, launch limited attacks simultaneously on all fronts, or hold any of three fronts while mounting successfully a major offensive on the fourth." As Nicholas Katzenbach, U.S. undersecretary of state at the time, recalled: "The intelligence was absolutely flat on the fact that the Israelis ... could wipe out the Arabs in no time at all."
A key discrepancy lay between U.S. and British intelligence reports and those conveyed to the administration by the Israelis. On May 26, the same day Eban met with Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, the secretary of state, relayed a message from Israel indicating "that an Egyptian and Syrian attack is imminent." In a memo to the president, Rusk wrote: "Our intelligence does not confirm this Israeli estimate." Indeed, this contradicted all U.S. intelligence, which had characterized Nasser's troops in the Sinai as "defensive in nature" and only half (50,000) of the Israeli estimates. Walt Rostow, the national security advisor, called Israeli estimates of 100,000 Egyptian troops "highly disturbing," and the CIA labeled them "a political gambit" for the United States to stand firm with Israelis, sell them more military hardware, and "put more pressure on Nasser."
As for the Egyptian president, there was a huge difference between his public and private signals. He had threatened Israelis with "annihilation," causing fear bordering on paralysis for a population devastated by the Holocaust. He had closed the Straits of Tiran, a source of less than 10 percent of Israel's shipping, but nevertheless a casus belli as far as Israel was concerned. He had expelled the U.N. peacekeepers from Sinai, further raising fears of war. (Israel, however, refused to accept those same peacekeepers -- a move that would have diminished the chance of war.) And, as the leader of the "Arab nation," Nasser was under great pressure from other Arabs to cut short Israel's nuclear ambitions and deliver the Palestinians back to the homes they had fled and been driven out of in the war of 1948.
But privately Nasser was sending strong signals he would not go to war. On May 31, he met with an American emissary, former Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson, assuring him that Egypt would not "begin any fight." Two days later, Nasser told a British M.P., Christopher Mayhew, that Egypt had "no intention of attacking Israel." The same day he met again with Anderson, agreeing to dispatch his vice president, Zakariya Mohieddin, to Washington, in an apparent last-ditch attempt to avoid war. (Anderson and Johnson had also spoken of a visit to Cairo by Vice President Hubert Humphrey.)
Rostow decided that Israel should know about the secret visit. In a June 2 note to the president, the national security advisor urged that the United States inform Israel of Mohieddin's impending trip to the White House: "My guess is that their intelligence will pick it up." The same day, Nasser sent a telegram to the American president indicating that Egypt would not attack Israel, but that "we shall resist any aggression launched against us or against any Arab state."
The archives for the 1967 war, as with the documentary evidence from other Arab-Israeli wars, thus reveal a history far more complex, and far more interesting, than the inflated portrayal of Arabs poised to crush Israel. "One against 40," declared David Ben-Gurion in describing the odds facing Israel in the war of 1948, ignoring the fact that comparisons of total populations meant little. The records show that the key Arab and Jewish forces -- a much more crucial benchmark -- were about the same, and that after a June 1948 cease-fire, a rearmed Israel had a decided advantage, which it parlayed into victory. Fifty-nine years later, in today's conflict in Gaza, the tragic, well-publicized deaths of Israelis in Sderot from crudely built Qassam missiles -- nine in the last six years -- are dwarfed by the deaths of 650 Palestinians last year (more than half unarmed civilians, according to Amnesty International) from attacks by Israel, one of the most potent and sophisticated military powers in the world, armed with nuclear weapons.
Yet the David vs. Goliath narrative persists, obscuring a more nuanced view of the balance of power in the region. Much of this has to do with Americans' familiarity with the story of Israel as a safe haven for Jews ravaged by the Holocaust. By contrast, Arabs, especially Palestinians, have long been seen as a vaguely menacing Other, as depicted in Leon Uris' hugely influential best-seller, "Exodus." The "Exodus" history, in which Arabs are alternately pathetic or malicious, holds no room for a more layered narrative of the struggle between Arabs and Jews, in which someone like Gamal Abdel Nasser, blustering for the Arab street, may have been privately seeking a way out of war.
Did Nasser truly want peace? We may never know. On June 3, 1967, after Secretary of State Rusk had informed Israel of the pending visit from Egyptian Vice President Mohieddin, Rusk relayed a message from the president to Nasser. "In view of the urgency of the situation," Rusk wrote, "we hope it will be possible for him to come without delay." That same day, however, at a Pentagon meeting between Mossad director Meir Amit and McNamara, the prospects for war seemed closer than ever. Amit told McNamara bluntly that he was "going to recommend that our government strike." This time, the Americans did not object; indeed, the CIA had grown sympathetic to Israel's war aims, in which Nasser, seen as too close to the Soviets, would be defanged. When McNamara asked Amit how long a war would last, the Mossad director replied: "Seven days." And so the meeting between the White House and Mohieddin, scheduled for June 7, never took place. By that time, it was already Day 3 of the Six-Day War, and Israel was already in control of Sinai, the West Bank, Gaza and the skies over much of the Middle East.
About the writer
Sandy Tolan is the author of "The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East," which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. The documents cited in this article appear in the book's source notes, pp. 303 and 325-332; most of the original documents are from volumes XVIII and XIX of "The Foreign Relations of the United States 1964-1968," housed at the LBJ Library in Austin. Many of them are also available online.
Rethinking Israel's David-and-Goliath past
Little-noticed details in declassified U.S. documents indicate that Israel's Six-Day War may not have been a war of necessity.
By Sandy Tolan
June 4, 2007 | At a little after 7 on the morning of June 5, 1967, as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's commanders were finishing their breakfasts and driving to work, French-built Israeli fighter jets roared out of their bases and flew low, below radar, into Egyptian airspace. Within three hours, 500 Israeli sorties had destroyed Nasser's entire air force. Just after midday, the air forces of Jordan and Syria also lay in smoking ruins, and Israel had essentially won the Six-Day War -- in six hours.
Israeli and U.S. historians and commentators describe the surprise attack as necessary, and the war as inevitable, the result of Nasser's fearsome war machine that had closed the Straits of Tiran, evicted United Nations peacekeeping troops, taunted the traumatized Israeli public, and churned toward the Jewish state's border with 100,000 troops. "The morning of 5 June 1967," wrote Israel's warrior-turned-historian, Chaim Herzog, "found Israel's armed forces facing the massed Arab armies around her frontiers." Attack or be annihilated: The choice was clear.
Or was it? Little-noticed details in declassified documents from the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, indicate that top officials in the Johnson administration -- including Johnson's most pro-Israeli Cabinet members -- did not believe war between Israel and its neighbors was necessary or inevitable, at least until the final hour. In these documents, Israel emerges as a vastly superior military power, its opponents far weaker than the menacing threat Israel portrayed, and war itself something that Nasser, for all his saber-rattling, tried to avoid until the moment his air force went up in smoke. In particular, the diplomatic role of Nasser's vice president, who was poised to travel to Washington in an effort to resolve the crisis, has received little attention from historians. The documents sharpen a recurring theme in the history of the Israeli-Arab wars, and especially of their telling in the West: From the war of 1948 to the 2007 conflict in Gaza, Israel is often miscast as the vulnerable David in a hostile sea of Arab Goliaths.
"You will whip the hell out of them," Lyndon Johnson told Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban during a visit to the White House on May 26, 1967. The president's conclusions were based on multiple intelligence reports, including a CIA assessment that Israel "can maintain internal security, defend successfully against simultaneous Arab attacks on all fronts, launch limited attacks simultaneously on all fronts, or hold any of three fronts while mounting successfully a major offensive on the fourth." As Nicholas Katzenbach, U.S. undersecretary of state at the time, recalled: "The intelligence was absolutely flat on the fact that the Israelis ... could wipe out the Arabs in no time at all."
A key discrepancy lay between U.S. and British intelligence reports and those conveyed to the administration by the Israelis. On May 26, the same day Eban met with Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, the secretary of state, relayed a message from Israel indicating "that an Egyptian and Syrian attack is imminent." In a memo to the president, Rusk wrote: "Our intelligence does not confirm this Israeli estimate." Indeed, this contradicted all U.S. intelligence, which had characterized Nasser's troops in the Sinai as "defensive in nature" and only half (50,000) of the Israeli estimates. Walt Rostow, the national security advisor, called Israeli estimates of 100,000 Egyptian troops "highly disturbing," and the CIA labeled them "a political gambit" for the United States to stand firm with Israelis, sell them more military hardware, and "put more pressure on Nasser."
As for the Egyptian president, there was a huge difference between his public and private signals. He had threatened Israelis with "annihilation," causing fear bordering on paralysis for a population devastated by the Holocaust. He had closed the Straits of Tiran, a source of less than 10 percent of Israel's shipping, but nevertheless a casus belli as far as Israel was concerned. He had expelled the U.N. peacekeepers from Sinai, further raising fears of war. (Israel, however, refused to accept those same peacekeepers -- a move that would have diminished the chance of war.) And, as the leader of the "Arab nation," Nasser was under great pressure from other Arabs to cut short Israel's nuclear ambitions and deliver the Palestinians back to the homes they had fled and been driven out of in the war of 1948.
But privately Nasser was sending strong signals he would not go to war. On May 31, he met with an American emissary, former Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson, assuring him that Egypt would not "begin any fight." Two days later, Nasser told a British M.P., Christopher Mayhew, that Egypt had "no intention of attacking Israel." The same day he met again with Anderson, agreeing to dispatch his vice president, Zakariya Mohieddin, to Washington, in an apparent last-ditch attempt to avoid war. (Anderson and Johnson had also spoken of a visit to Cairo by Vice President Hubert Humphrey.)
Rostow decided that Israel should know about the secret visit. In a June 2 note to the president, the national security advisor urged that the United States inform Israel of Mohieddin's impending trip to the White House: "My guess is that their intelligence will pick it up." The same day, Nasser sent a telegram to the American president indicating that Egypt would not attack Israel, but that "we shall resist any aggression launched against us or against any Arab state."
The archives for the 1967 war, as with the documentary evidence from other Arab-Israeli wars, thus reveal a history far more complex, and far more interesting, than the inflated portrayal of Arabs poised to crush Israel. "One against 40," declared David Ben-Gurion in describing the odds facing Israel in the war of 1948, ignoring the fact that comparisons of total populations meant little. The records show that the key Arab and Jewish forces -- a much more crucial benchmark -- were about the same, and that after a June 1948 cease-fire, a rearmed Israel had a decided advantage, which it parlayed into victory. Fifty-nine years later, in today's conflict in Gaza, the tragic, well-publicized deaths of Israelis in Sderot from crudely built Qassam missiles -- nine in the last six years -- are dwarfed by the deaths of 650 Palestinians last year (more than half unarmed civilians, according to Amnesty International) from attacks by Israel, one of the most potent and sophisticated military powers in the world, armed with nuclear weapons.
Yet the David vs. Goliath narrative persists, obscuring a more nuanced view of the balance of power in the region. Much of this has to do with Americans' familiarity with the story of Israel as a safe haven for Jews ravaged by the Holocaust. By contrast, Arabs, especially Palestinians, have long been seen as a vaguely menacing Other, as depicted in Leon Uris' hugely influential best-seller, "Exodus." The "Exodus" history, in which Arabs are alternately pathetic or malicious, holds no room for a more layered narrative of the struggle between Arabs and Jews, in which someone like Gamal Abdel Nasser, blustering for the Arab street, may have been privately seeking a way out of war.
Did Nasser truly want peace? We may never know. On June 3, 1967, after Secretary of State Rusk had informed Israel of the pending visit from Egyptian Vice President Mohieddin, Rusk relayed a message from the president to Nasser. "In view of the urgency of the situation," Rusk wrote, "we hope it will be possible for him to come without delay." That same day, however, at a Pentagon meeting between Mossad director Meir Amit and McNamara, the prospects for war seemed closer than ever. Amit told McNamara bluntly that he was "going to recommend that our government strike." This time, the Americans did not object; indeed, the CIA had grown sympathetic to Israel's war aims, in which Nasser, seen as too close to the Soviets, would be defanged. When McNamara asked Amit how long a war would last, the Mossad director replied: "Seven days." And so the meeting between the White House and Mohieddin, scheduled for June 7, never took place. By that time, it was already Day 3 of the Six-Day War, and Israel was already in control of Sinai, the West Bank, Gaza and the skies over much of the Middle East.
About the writer
Sandy Tolan is the author of "The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East," which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. The documents cited in this article appear in the book's source notes, pp. 303 and 325-332; most of the original documents are from volumes XVIII and XIX of "The Foreign Relations of the United States 1964-1968," housed at the LBJ Library in Austin. Many of them are also available online.
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