Wonderful piece by Andrew Bacevich at Tom Dispatch, proving that realists and leftists must break bread with one another (realists must learn to talk about human rights, lefties must think about national interests) if we are going to make any progress in fighting the neoconservative/militarist agenda for the Middle East. Read the whole piece to see Bacevich's conclusion about Israel learning to live with its neighbors (will it ever?).
Also, my hobby-horse: Bacevich says that Israel went first with a strategy of occupation/settlement. Now I know the U.S. is bad, and has pursued two disastrous occupations, but how much of this policy was emulation, and came out of Zionist-neocon thinking re the Islamic world pervading the U.S. establishment post Cold War?
Among nations classified as liberal democracies, only two resisted this trend. One was the United States, the sole major belligerent to emerge from the Second World War stronger, richer, and more confident. The second was Israel, created as a direct consequence of the horrors unleashed by that cataclysm. By the 1950s, both countries subscribed to this common conviction: national security (and, arguably, national survival) demanded unambiguous military superiority. In the lexicon of American and Israeli politics, “peace” was a codeword. The essential prerequisite for peace was for any and all adversaries, real or potential, to accept a condition of permanent inferiority. In this regard, the two nations -- not yet intimate allies -- stood apart from the rest of the Western world.
So even as they professed their devotion to peace, civilian and military elites in the United States and Israel prepared obsessively for war....
Apart from fostering grand illusions, the splendid wars of 1967 [Israel's] and 1991 [US in Iraq] decided little. In both cases, victory turned out to be more apparent than real. Worse, triumphalism fostered massive future miscalculation.
On the Golan Heights, in Gaza, and throughout the West Bank, proponents of a Greater Israel -- disregarding Washington’s objections -- set out to assert permanent control over territory that Israel had seized. Yet “facts on the ground” created by successive waves of Jewish settlers did little to enhance Israeli security. They succeeded chiefly in shackling Israel to a rapidly growing and resentful Palestinian population that it could neither pacify nor assimilate.
In the Persian Gulf, the benefits reaped by the United States after 1991 likewise turned out to be ephemeral. Saddam Hussein survived and became in the eyes of successive American administrations an imminent threat to regional stability. This perception prompted (or provided a pretext for) a radical reorientation of strategy in Washington. No longer content to prevent an unfriendly outside power from controlling the oil-rich Persian Gulf, Washington now sought to dominate the entire Greater Middle East. Hegemony became the aim. Yet the United States proved no more successful than Israel in imposing its writ.
During the 1990s, the Pentagon embarked willy-nilly upon what became its own variant of a settlement policy. Yet U.S. bases dotting the Islamic world and U.S. forces operating in the region proved hardly more welcome than the Israeli settlements dotting the occupied territories and the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) assigned to protect them. In both cases, presence provoked (or provided a pretext for) resistance. Just as Palestinians vented their anger at the Zionists in their midst, radical Islamists targeted Americans whom they regarded as neo-colonial infidels.
No one doubted that Israelis (regionally) and Americans (globally) enjoyed unquestioned military dominance. Throughout Israel’s near abroad, its tanks, fighter-bombers, and warships operated at will. So, too, did American tanks, fighter-bombers, and warships wherever they were sent.
So what? Events made it increasingly evident that military dominance did not translate into concrete political advantage. Rather than enhancing the prospects for peace, coercion produced ever more complications. No matter how badly battered and beaten, the “terrorists” (a catch-all term applied to anyone resisting Israeli or American authority) weren’t intimidated, remained unrepentant, and kept coming back for more.
Israel ran smack into this problem during Operation Peace for Galilee, its 1982 intervention in Lebanon. U.S. forces encountered it a decade later during Operation Restore Hope, the West’s gloriously titled foray into Somalia. Lebanon possessed a puny army; Somalia had none at all. Rather than producing peace or restoring hope, however, both operations ended in frustration, embarrassment, and failure.
And those operations proved but harbingers of worse to come. By the 1980s, the IDF’s glory days were past. Rather than lightning strikes deep into the enemy rear, the narrative of Israeli military history became a cheerless recital of dirty wars -- unconventional conflicts against irregular forces yielding problematic results. The First Intifada (1987-1993), the Second Intifada (2000-2005), a second Lebanon War (2006), and Operation Cast Lead, the notorious 2008-2009 incursion into Gaza, all conformed to this pattern.
...Even as the IDF tried repeatedly and futilely to bludgeon Hamas and Hezbollah into submission, demographic trends continued to suggest that within a generation a majority of the population within Israel and the occupied territories would be Arab.
Trailing a decade or so behind Israel, the United States military nonetheless succeeded in duplicating the IDF’s experience. Moments of glory remained, but they would prove fleeting indeed. After 9/11, Washington’s efforts to transform (or “liberate”) the Greater Middle East kicked into high gear. In Afghanistan and Iraq, George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror began impressively enough, as U.S. forces operated with a speed and élan that had once been an Israeli trademark. Thanks to “shock and awe,” Kabul fell, followed less than a year and a half later by Baghdad. ....
If any overarching conclusion emerges from the Afghan and Iraq Wars (and from their Israeli equivalents), it’s this: victory is a chimera. Counting on today’s enemy to yield in the face of superior force makes about as much sense as buying lottery tickets to pay the mortgage: you better be really lucky.
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is proposing kicking the Palestinians’ diplomatic representatives out of the United States.
link to jstreet.org
She’s one of the worst Zionist tools in Congress.
She’s double trouble, as she habitually [if not congenitally] gives voice to the very worst, most reactionary and cosmically out-of-touch voices in the anti-Castro Cuba Lobby.
Bacevich is right about the US (and Israel) staring at political defeat despite military superiority. For that insight we can be grateful.
But he’s wrong about a lot of other things. Lots of countries have engaged in empire-building, not just the US. Consider the British empire, whose glory days of unchallenged superiority could plausibly be dated roughly 1814-1914. It was a liberal democracy, which boasted that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. Bacevich can say he’s limiting himself to liberal democracies (to disqualify Germany and Japan), and limiting himself to the period after the Second World War (to disqualify the British and French empires).
Bacevich ought to ponder the decision-making process that led to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Yes, the US is formally a democracy, but the decision was made by small numbers of men acting in private. The process was similar to the decision-making process in undemocratic countries.
Mr. Weiss, your blog is quite valuable. But for a moment turn your attention away from the Middle East and to Latin America. Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia have been moving away from the US empire (and Brazil to some extent). US policy is aimed at trying to prevent any further defections from the US empire.
There really aren’t enormous differences between US policy in the middle East and US policy in Latin America.
On the ME/Latin America connection, something I’ve come to believe is that Islam is increasingly looking like what (Catholic) Socialism was to South America 20-ish years ago –an organizing tool for the poor and an anti-imperial, somewhat anti-capitalist declaration in general.
Is this not the subject of Oliver Stone’s new film project? Now that Oliver has eaten crow before the feet of the ADL, his project can be delivered to the masses; after all, it’s about S America, not the Promised Land.
The US’s umbrella over Western Europe from 45 to 90 is what gave those democracies the option or the ability to develop their peace oriented foreign policies. Those foreign policies may be wise vis a vis the US’s policies in the Middle East, but 1. I question their foreign policy vis a vis Serbia and Bosnia, when it required a war to put an end to that conflict. But I don’t know enough about that to really assert that this was the wisest decision. but 2. regarding Rwanda, the non military option led to a genocide and proves that sometimes War is the answer. It was the peace orientation of Clinton and the other democracies that allowed that genocide to happen.
The US’s umbrella over Western Europe from 45 to 90 is what gave those democracies the option or the ability to develop their peace oriented foreign policies.
A complicated topic admittedly, but I disagree with this point. Having been stationed in Europe as the USSR fell apart, I got a sense of how many Europeans viewed the American presence as an occupation of sorts, rather than a protective ‘umbrella’.
it is not inconsequential that Jewish persons were at the crucial positions influencing US activities post-WWII. US was callow and inexperienced in assuming the mantle of superpower, post war. It’s not unreasonable to recognize that Jews had and have far more experience at functioning within the government structures and economies of numerous other nation states. That experience and influence was brought to bear on US decision makers.
To be sure, Jewish influence was comfortably received.
How would American Jews have had ” more experience at functioning within the government structures and economies of numerous other nation states” than other Americans?
German-American Jews, for instance, who had emigrated to the US between before WW II, and returned as members of the US military occupation forces. They spoke German, for instance, next to being familiar with German institutions, culture etc. You find some info on this here:
link to press.princeton.edu
here it is:
link to books.google.ca
And the only migrants to the U.S. who had such knowledge were Jews?
Correction – Israel is the ethno/cultural/religious chauvanist state fobbing itself off as a democracy which sees war as THE answer. The US is the self-destructive and self-deluded vassal of Israel, and does as it’s told.
as shlomo sand articulated in his book ‘the invention of the jewish people’ israel has an entho-democracy… i don’t think the palestinians living in israel would refer to israel as a ‘democracy’ and neither is it helpful for anyone who is interested in supporting their position to do so either… as a matter of fact – the language used communicates a lot on the position the circumstances are viewed from, whether they recognize it or not..
Does it really have an ethno-”democracy”? If political parties, to be legal, have to accept that Israel is a “Jewish State”, then no party can be less than an expression of Zionism, and never can a party have the position of a “State for all its peoples”. It leaves a form of fascist-democracy. And it’s fascism that seems to be consolidating itself in the government as it already has in institutions of state.
i don’t disagree with what you are saying here.. i do think israel is slipping into fascism.. watching the video a few threads up is enough to verify this..
Look at the coalition. The Shas religious party brand of Judaism seems just as fascist as a secular political philosophy can be.
ethno…
I don’t think Phil’s assumptions about either leftists or realists are quite correct. He says: “realists must learn to talk about human rights, lefties must think about national interests,” implying that leftists spend their time thinking about “human rights” and realists spend theirs thinking about “national interests”. I think both these assumptions reflect the stunted nature of US political thinking. In the rest of the world, where this stunting is fortunately not so apparent, it is liberals who spend their time thinking about “human rights”, not leftists, who think largely in terms of anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism. Similarly, realists outside the US do not spend all their time thinking about “national interests”. They think equally about international treaty systems and their typical modes of breakdown.
the left – right division eludes me, is inessential and artificial to they way I think about situations and relationships.
I suspect that segregating people/ideas/policy choices into such dichotomous categories is inherent in Jewish mental constructs, as you led me to examine, Rowan, with your mention of kashrut, the other day.
Amy -Jill Levine gives a series of lectures explaining Torah and explains how dietary laws, separation of types of animals, etc. are all focused on the requirement that Jews be understood as a “people set apart.” Jewish ideology enforces an understanding of the world as Us and Them; right and left is one more such categorization.
U.S. political thinking does seem stunted. Americans use the term “liberals” to mean “the evil demons who corrupt society and are the source of everything the foam-flecked talk-radio jocks rant against”.
There are hardly any leftists in U.S. politics. Perhaps they have one or two left in some East Coast universities, but I don’t think you’re allowed to touch them unless you are wearing white gloves and a facemask.
Well, this is it, RoHa. By the way, your nickname reminds me of something, RuHuRu or whatever. Doubtless sarcasm on your part. Anyway, I think it is important that US political thought is so stunted, and that does seem to be the best word for it. It’s important because it magnifies microscopic differences in the center and leads people to imagine that anything beyond this is some sort of historical freak from far away, now mercifully forgotten, like cannibalism.
I was rather expecting someone to say smugly, realist doesn’t mean ‘realist ‘any more, it means center-right realpolitiker, because Walt and Mearsheimer said it did. But of course they never said this; the term was just a media label hung round their necks. I suppose it had some prior usage in US media in this sense. But as far as I’m concerned, the US media do not have the power (let alone the ‘right’, whatever that would mean) to redefine ordinary words in support of their delusions of self-importance.
Regarding international treaties as part of the real is not unimportant. It took Europe hundreds of years to reach the point where treaties were understood to bind nations in agreement irrespective of their ideological differences, and the US has systematically destroyed this achievement.
Good article.
In a way, Israel and the US do share common values, that of regional hegemony. In the Muslim they have a common enemy, and in their destruction and conquering of resources (for the US, chiefly oil, and for Israel, chiefly land) they have a common goal.
Thus it’s not hard to why Zionism resonates so closely within Washington’s political corridors. But, even taking these unifying factors in account, Zionists (especially in the media and the Congress) still practice disproportionate control and influence, and their continual goading of America into proxy wars post-911 does not easily let them off the hook.
Well, the wars of the 1990s and 2000s against the Muslim world, within the context of the class of civilizations, are actually no different than the clash of civilizations between Communism and Capitalism disguised as Democracy.
The Cold War was in essence a clash of civilizations. The US pursued a policy of containment, as if Communism were a cancer that had to be shrunk.
The usa and israel are not democracies. They are capitalist oligarchies that have a strong fascist smell to them.
Are the Palestinians caught between a reek and a whiffy place?
Seems so, as the intention all along was to coerce/force them out.
Following up, not once in that piece by Bacevich is it mentioned where the zionist influence on americn policies was behind the american wars in the Mideast and america’s support for endless war against Muslims. There is no discussion about the differences in neocon and neolib style aggression or the different interests of zionist and non-zionist oligarchies. He pretty much treats israeli and the usa as separate, when in fact the usa is now a colony of zionists/israel. They’re not separate any more, just look at the u.s. congress constantly grovelling to israel at every opportunity.
He also looks at the various wars looking for conventional victory/defeat outcomes. The current zionists/fascist don’t always wage war for those “traditional” outcomes. They frequently arm both sides in a conflict and creating/prolonging the conflict is often the outcome they are looking for. Chaos and disruption work just as well at preventing your rivals profiting from a region as holding it yourself. In fact, many times, leaving a region a wasteland works well when owning it would cost too much to maintain and you don’t want to leave it to your rivals, or leave the people there capable of benefiting from their independence.
Throughout the article, the author treats all the events as somewhat unconnected, just like he treats american and israeli guv actions. There is no underlying connections provided between the events, nor more than just the basic useless surface reasoning behind the actions. Saddam is mentioned as a”bad guy”, but it’s not discussed how israeloameric/nato created saddam, and then took him down when he was no longer of use, other than as a “bad guy”. They’ve done this repeatedly all over the world for decades. Likewise the author accepted the zionist premise of Muslim extremism being an “enemy” now, when much this is a falseflag creation of israeloamerica/nato, created to first attack the USSR, then later attack other recalcitrants not volunteering to be colonies, and also to provide the pretexts for their genocidal war against Muslims.
The nazi term for them was “plutocracies”, which seems quite accurate, and accords with the marxist view, in that it stresses that the rich actually do rule. The difference between the nazi view and the marxist view lies simply in how we choose to talk about the rich. The nazis considered that the rich were monolithically jewish, because of an immemorial conspiracy on their part to systematically deceive and exploit the world at large. The marxists, on the other hand, granted that many if not most of the truly rich in the western plutocracies were probably jewish, but most certainly did not believe that this was a result of conspiracy, maintaining instead that it was a natural result of superior commercial skills. Either way, “plutocracy” is a perfectly valid term.
My comment no 29 was meant to be a reply to hayate’s comment no 25: “The usa and israel are not democracies. They are capitalist oligarchies that have a strong fascist smell to them.” I tend to forget that this blog nests comments, unlike mine, which just lists them chronologically.
Further on this: many may dispute my claim that “the marxists granted that many if not most of the truly rich in the western plutocracies were probably jewish.” I base this claim on circumstantial rather than direct evidence. Marx himself was often very frank about jewish financial power, especially in France. Subsequent marxists had to reckon with a peculiar problem, almost a paradox. Reformist marxists who wished to ally themselves with what they regarded as the ‘progressive jewish bourgeoisie’ tended to minimise the extent of jewish financial power as if to say, we will defend you against the anti-semites if you accept that together we can and should subject capitalism to a complete overhaul. Revolutionary marxists on the other hand had a dilemma: it might seem to admitting the extent of jewish financial power was playing into the hands of the antisemites who were competing with them in anti-bourgeois revolutionary agitation. However, minimising it could lead to the accusation that in some secretive way they were in league with the jewish capitalists while pretending to be opposed to capitalism as a whole. However, the belief that jews really did control much or all of the western economies was extremely widespread in the early twentieth century. Lazare’s “Antisemitism, its history and causes,” chapter 14, is a good example of this consensus:
link to fordham.edu
Al Jazeera article by Marwan Bishara : “Is Israel a liability for the US?”
link to blogs.aljazeera.net
The more the US encourages the world to believe that it is in charge of a war against Muslims, war crimes be damned, the more will otherwise indifferent Muslims take up arms against the US.