A professor of mine took a sabbatical earlier this semester to travel back to Iraq (he conducted his doctoral research there). He's accompanied by two graduate students, and the wonderful thing is that they send journal entries through an email network. I find the stories really amazing, considering this allows us a different perspective of what's happening in Iraq, besides what the nightly news covers. The first entry's a bit long, but a really funny read. If there's enough interest, I'll post more entries as I receive them. I hope you guys find as much insight as I have. Salaamo! P.S.-just to be fairly citing this original work, the author is David Romano, professor of political science at McGill University. The graduate students are Mike and Kariim ------------------------------------------------- Oct.11-Oct.14 Hello Everyone, Well, we finally made it to Iraq. We waited in Olympos (on the Turkish Mediterranean coast the most pleasant place I could think of to wait for anything) 10 days for permission from the Turkish Foreign Ministry to cross from Turkey to Iraq. As they had promised (they said it would take 10 days), word came in that we had our permission. So we took a somewhat hellish 26 hour bus ride to Silopi/Habur, the main crossing point on Turkish-Iraqi border (and also about 50 km from the Syrian border). The following morning, we hired a Turkish-Kurdish driver who took the 8 km to the border, and who would cross with us and take us another 10 km on the Zakho, the nearest Iraqi Kurdish town. Like on our previous attempt to cross (Sept.26), the first step was getting approval from a junior Turkish intelligence official, posted in a little mobile home office beside the bridge that takes us over the Zab river into Iraq. Waiting in line ahead of us was an Iraqi Kurd who lives in Dollard Des Ormeaux, the Montreal neighbourhood I grew up in. Our turn came and this time we were on the list (although at first the official said we were supposed to have ID cards from the NGO we are working for and a fax from Ankara in our possession, I would have none of it Take out the list, effendum!). He found our names, called his commanding officer on the little red phone, and informed us that we could now proceed to the passport police for our exit stamps. At the passport police office, I gave over our three passports and that of our driver. They were plenty friendly with us, but also asked our driver if he was going to bring them a package of tea: Driver: Uh, no, I dont have tea. Police: ARENT you going to bring some tea? Driver: Uh, yes, of course, be right back. I then collected our passports and found our driver outside, who promptly declared that he would be damned if he was going to bring them tea. The next stop was the army search. The career military corporal in charge looked in the back of the car and told us to take all our bags out and place them on the searching table. Mike, who was showing another soldier our exit stamps on our passports, hadnt heard the request. I relayed it too him, so he went to the car to get his bag a little after Kareem and I, where the driver told him to screw it and leave his bag in the car no one noticed and Mikes bag did not get looked at. I wish it was my bag that got left in the car, however as it happens, the soldier found amongst all my papers a document in French which described a French language school located in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. Now although the corporal did not speak French, he sure as hell could recognize the word Kurdistan. I know from experience that it is not a popular word in Turkey, so I had taken the precaution of crossing out Kurdistan in the three instances that it appears on that document. I thought that would be sufficient to indicate that I was not interested in political irredentism or offending Turkish officials, on the off chance that they find that one document out of the many I had in my possession. Big mistake. Apparently there is still a word that Turkish officials can not hear, like the Knights who say ni^ in Monty Pythons film, the Holy Grail. For Turkish officials, that word is Kurdistan. The corporal who found the document didnt even pronounce the word he just said whats this? and promptly brought the paper over to the intelligence officials in the mobile home. The intelligence officials also asked, whats this? I explained that it was a publication put out by a Kurdish-Franco association about a French language school in Erbil, northern Iraq, and that I was not the one who had written the document and invoked the word that can not be mentioned adding that I had, in fact, crossed out the forbidden word. At no point was the word pronounced during this exchange. They asked us to wait outside. After a few minutes, the intelligence official asked again if we had ID cards from our NGO. I repeated that we did not, but we had introductory letters from the organization. I was asked to fetch the letters from the car, along with other IDs besides our passports. I showed him the letters, along with our McGill University ID cards (my post-doc supervisor, Prof. Rex Brynen, has used a McGill ID card to get past an Israeli check-point, and I used one in 1994 to avoid getting arrested in the no-mans land on the Greek-Turkish Cypriot border, so why not to get us into Iraq?). He wanted more documents. So with some hesitation, I also pulled out a letter of introduction from the Canadian Department of National Defence, which is funding my post-doc research in Iraq, and for good measure, my business card. The junior official did not speak English or French, however, so he had someone else waiting for permission to cross into Iraq orally translate the NGO letters for him (I guess a translation from me was likely to lack objectivity i.e. her Majesty the Queen of England, the Pope, and Jean Chretien ask that David, Kareem and Mike be allowed into Iraq actually, the Queen does ask that, as Mike later found the following passage on the back of our passports: The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada requests, in the name of Her Majesty the Queen, all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.). Anyhow, he then called the commander on the red phone and then had another junior intel official drive the documents over somewhere (presumably to the commander). We waited and waited, and I began chatting with the corporal who had originally found the paper. He first asked why we werent going to Palestine, where there is also a war (I refrained from pointing out that Palestine is not the name of a state as of yet, much like Kurdistan). I then again pointed out that this document was not a big deal, and that I had not tried to hide the document, but rather crossed out Kurdistan because I knew how they felt in Turkey about the word. When I pronounced the word that can not be said, he actually flinched a bit and said tehilekeli (dangerous) and I thought to myself, is it a dangerous word, or is it dangerous to say, or both?. I said, Look, I know you had a big problem in Turkey with the PKK, and I understand your feelings on the issue, thats why I crossed the word out. Corporal: A big problem? No, a little problem. Turkey is a huge, powerful state, and these guys [points south, towards Iraqi Kurdistan] are not a problem. Me: Yeah, of course youre right. (Meanwhile thinking to myself, Well, if it was such a little problem for you, why this whole thing about the word that can not be said, and why was most of the southeast of Turkey under martial law throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and why are two-thirds of Turkeys 600,000+ armed forces continually deployed in the southeast, and why did the government tank the countrys economy with out of control military budgets, and why the thousands of destroyed and evacuated villages in Turkish Kurdistan, and why all this effort to restrict foreigners access to northern Iraq, and why all the human-rights violations and restrictions on Kurdish language and statements that might threaten the territorial integrity of the Republic, etc). But the corporal and all the other Turkish officials at the border were being quite courteous and polite during this process, and I also wanted their permission to cross to Iraq, so I continued to keep my wise-cracks to myself (which was difficult, since if a political science degree is good for something, knowing enough to point out the inconsistencies in someones arguments has to rank near the top of the list). Besides, I hope the Turks do come around to the point of view that the Kurds are not a big problem, and allow Kurds in Turkey (as well as Iraq) much more autonomy (in whatever political form everyone can settle for) and the freedom to revel in their identity, so perhaps I didnt fundamentally disagree with the corporal. In any Oase, a new intelligence officer arrived while I was talking to the corporal, with about 20 minutes worth of more questions about the document, who gave it to me, what this school in Erbil was, and what I planned to do in Iraq. I had learned my lesson well enough to stress that our mandate with Caritas was for all of Iraq, and that we had no extra interest in Erbil or Suleimaniya (i.e. the Kurdish part of the country). Like the others, he was polite and courteous, explaining that there was actually no problem, they were just collecting information I said to him, Look, you know they use this word a heck of a lot in northern Iraq this isnt knew to you or anything. Yeah, we know, we know, he replied. Meanwhile our driver was pacing around like the energizer bunny, Mike was chain-smoking, and Kareem just looked a little puzzled. It would have been just too agonizingly frustrating if, with the exit stamp already on our passports, if they changed their minds and said we couldnt cross As the new intelligence officer went to call the mysterious commander again, our driver came and gave me hell: You know how they are! Why the heck did you have that piece of paper with you? I really wish you had thrown it away in Silopi! He was right of course I have to try to reign in my fondness of testing the borders of ridiculousness. Anyhow, after calling the commander one last time, the intelligence officer handed me back all our documents and passports, wished us a bon voyage, and waved his hand towards the bridge. Our driver was so excited to get out of there he nearly ran over my foot by starting the car moving before I was completely in it. On the other side a Welcome to Kurdistan region of Iraq sign, KDP (Kurdish Democratic Party) officials and about a 1 minute interview accompanied by sickly sweet tea, (names, fathers names, grandfathers names, reason for visit) and bang, welcome to Kurdistan. As we left the border post towards Zakho, we got our first sight of a U.S. soldier sitting alone just inside an office-like building, M-16 across his lap, eating some chips, looking very relaxed. In Zakho we met with someone who used to work as a contractor for our NGO (part of our job here involves collecting advance information for projects, needs assessment, etc), and then hired a driver he knew to take us to Erbil. The fastest route to Erbil, however, passes through Mosul, which has become a largely Sunni Arab pro-Saddam city since the 1970s and 80s, and which has had its fair share of unrest since the Americans arrived. In short, we were a little nervous about Mosul, but hey, were just passing through, so no sweat, right? Wrong. Our 15 year-old BMW broke down right near the center of Mosul, beside one of Saddams former palaces. Our 21-year old Kurdish driver, probably on his first drive some foreigners for way too much money stint, kind of panicked and just kept trying to turn the ignition again and again. Then he just sat there wondering what to do, not really answering Kareems questions about our plan of action (seeing as we have left Turkey and now entered Iraq, Kareem has become official translator and I kind of just enjoy the scenery, which in this case was passing cars and strange looks from the locals). Eventually our driver decides hes gonna run off and find another car says he has a Volvo with some friends in Mosul. So we kind of sit there, trying to look like locals (we had Mike lie down in the back seat, and I sat in the front with Kareem, ready to try to get the car started one last time in case we saw trouble coming.), and feeling very nervous as every passing heavily-armed American patrol carefully eyed us to make sure we werent a roadside suicide-car bomb. Kareem kindly pointed out to us that the Arabic graffiti on the wall of Saddams adjacent palace said: Long live Saddam and free Iraq. The driver eventually came back with no Volvo, played with the ignition a few more times, got us going just enough to block oncoming cars on the highway for 5 minutes, and then again just long enough to get us back to the side of the road 50 meters further up. Then he announced he was going off again to find a new car good idea we all thought, just make it fast. After a lot of sweat on our part and what felt like ages, but was probably no more than 30 minutes, he came back with a Kurdish taxi-driving friend of his. As blackhawk helicopters hovered nearby and yet another American patrol passed by, Mike, Kareem, our two Kurdish drivers, and some local 20 year-olds they asked for help, pushed the car into a vacant lot, while I guarded the new taxi (how I would have guarded it from anyone who wanted it in a place like Mosul is beyond me, but whatever). The locals, who were quite recalcitrant about helping push the car, eyed Mike with expressions ranging from who the heck are you to what the hell are you doing here. Kareems non-local Arabic was also a likely source of puzzlement. They pointed at Mike and suspiciously asked Ruskie?, at which point Mike promptly became Russian, smilingly mumbling Da, da! They all trotted back over to the car, and as Mike sat in back and the new driver got behind the wheel, Kareem, the previous driver, and I, argued about who got to sit where in our new, somewhat too-small-for-five-people-and-baggage car. Mikes pleading of lets get the hell out of here, plus some large-caliber gunfire in the distance, settled the issue we would sit wherever it was quickest to reach, and continue our drive to Erbil without further delay. On the way out of Mosul, we passed a Sunni-Arab Iraqi police manned roadblock, beside a temporary bridge which replaces a concrete bridge blown-up by Saddams Fedayeen right after the war. A few kilometers after that, a Kurdish Iraqi manned roadblock, controlling access to the Kurdish areas of Iraq and staffed by the KDP (one of Iraqi Kurdistans two principal militias). Once in Erbil we were received extremely well friendliest people one could wish for really, and a bustling city with absolutely no palpable tension whatsoever. Its amazing to be here again in Iraqi Kurdistan Im too excited really. We have free and open political discussions so many times a day, with so many different people, that 2 days here is worth a months reading on Middle East politics. Today, our Assyro-Chaldean barber (a short, thin, mustached, dignified looking man in his early 50s) and his friend, for instance, discussed with us how Islamists blew up his house because he was Christian (this was before their bases near the Iranian border were smashed by a cominbined US-Kurdish assault last March), and gave us the memorable comment that When Saddam was a baby, he didnt drink milk he drank blood! His Sunni half-Turkmen half-Kurdish friend (a shortish, pudgy, jovial fellow whose eyes always look like he just though of a funny joke, and whose family was expelled from Kirkouk by Saddam in 1989) told us how immediately after the recent war, robbers invaded his fathers house, shot and wounded his father, and stole most of their belongings. The robbers were caught by the Kurdish authorities and brought to court and sentenced to prison, but because they were friends of a high ranking KDP official, they only stayed in jail 2 days. The three of us got haircuts and shaves for $2, and chatted with both of them for the better part of an hour. Also, our hotel lent us 200 Iraqi dinars until we could change money the following day. The hotel is one of the nicest in the city, with satellite TV, large clean rooms, and a staff whose service, professionalism and helpfulness puts to shame any $200 a night hotel Ive visited in the West at the very reasonable price of $25 U.S. a night for the three of us Yes, everything is very cheap here (including the ice cream we bought today Mike asked the price of the wonderful multi-flavoured soft stuff coming out of the machine and was told 3 dinars (roughly 25 cents). He got his ice cream and handed over the 3 dinars. When Kareem and I got our ice creams, we then tried to also hand over 3 dinars. Some confusion then ensued, with the ice cream vendor getting ompatient with us seems the price was 3 dinars for 3 ice creams, and unlike the vendors we had met in Syria, this guy never heard of ripping off foreigners). We may well have a great 7 months here (although there is one potential problem everyone appears to be convinced that we are American military people we even sometimes get saluted military-style on the street and in the hotel, by Kurdish peshmerga and regular folk, and when we tell them were here to teach English, their reaction is, yeah, sure you are with a smile even our barber today thought we were Pentagon or something we probably need a woman or two to join us or something, so its not three young foreign guys with short hair-cuts walking around). Oh last two anecdotes now: the other night (our first night in Erbil), we learned that the Saudi channel on our TV was showing The Big Lebowski (my favourite film, and a film that Mike and Kareem have also seen several times) in English with Arabic subtitles, at 11 p.m.. So at 10:50 we decided we needed to buy some snacks to eat while watching the film in our room, and that something bought from the store would be even cheaper than in the hotel (I guess when you go to the store to pay 50 cents for a coke instead of 75, youre getting kind of pathetic, but whatever, its the principle). We stepped out onto the street in front of the hotel, and things were pretty dark, quiet, and closed in all directions. Mike asked if there was a curfew in Erbil, to which I replied not to my knowledge. Just then two pickup trucks full of armed peshmerga (Kurdish soldiers) and a Mercedes with some high-ranking KDP official pulled up in front of the hotel. As they all pile out of their vehicles, Mike tells Kareem to ask one of the guys with an AK-47 machine gun if any nearby stores are open. Oblivious, Kareem approaches the closest person, which happens to be the KDP official theyre all guarding. As about a dozen heavily armed guards stop what theyre doing and alertly look on, the strange-looking foreigner with a slight Morroccan hint to his Arabic says to the official: Do you know where we can get some soft drinks and chips? The official looks surprised for only about a second, then smiles broadly and points at the hotel were all standing in front of, at which point Mike and I burst into laughter, followed by Kareem, the official, and, with a bit of a delay to see if their leader was indeed laughing, 12 overly-armed guards. So a good chuckle was had all around and we got our soft drinks and snacks in the hotel. (I should add that Kareem was already drinking prodigious amounts of Fanta in Turkey here, however, he has discovered an excellent Saudi Fanta-like drink called Miranda, and to the amusement of all the hotel staff, he drank 4 at dinner, and is still drinking more now I expect that he will soon explode in a toxic-orange carbonated cloud and we will have to continue on without his translating skills). As we took the elevator up to our room to see the movie, one of the peshmerga got in with us he was about 6 feet tall and 250 pounds, middle-aged, mustached and dark, wearing desert-storm camouflage and sporting both a full-sized Kalachnikov assault rifle and an additional side arm pistol. He pressed the button for his floor with the assault rifle and we suppressed our chuckles. When the door wouldnt close fast enough on the next floor, he then used the rifle to press the button that rings the alarm bell (I assume he sought the button that closes the door, which that elevator lacks), at which point I failed to suppress my chuckle. Seeing that I apparently enjoyed the bell, he then also chuckled and pressed it two more times for good measure. Just before we reached our floor, Mike said to me in French: Look at his pistol I looked, and the hammer was cocked back. It appeared to be a semi-automatic pistol, and seeing as the safety was also likely to be off, a good sneeze on his part and one of us could lose a foot (most likely him, however). Incredulous, we went off to our room to watch the movie. About The Big Lebowski Ive seen it around 7 times back home, and know it better than any other movie. The Saudi censors edited the thing down do death apart from cutting out any remotely sexual scene (including one where a man licks his bowling ball before rolling it), they also cut out any scene that referred to one of the characters (Walter, played by John Goodman) as being Jewish (and they say theyre anti-Israel but not anti-Jewish), as well as a scene that referred to a group of German nihilists (I suppose that religious/ideological option is also too explosive for the censors), and a couple of other scenes that Im not sure why they deleted (perhaps the scissors and black markers just got out of control). In any case, Ive surpassed myself with the longest write-up yet, Mike and Kareem have been asleep since 3 hours, and we have to wake up at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning (technically this morning its 3 a.m., but I had no time before to write, and dont expect to have any time tomorrow either) to go to Suleimaniya and meet the university officials there. Ill try to send this off tomorrow from the University of Suleimaniya, seeing as no one but my Mother has heard from me since we made it to Iraq (I promised Mom, without fail, one phone call on this trip as soon as I made it to Erbil, and Im a dutiful son). Cheers, Dave P.S. The following evening we played billiards in the hotel with most of the high officials guards they taught us some Kurdish in the process, and the big fellow who presses elevator buttons with his assault rifle turned out to be pretty

Salaam alaikum everyone, I'm in the process of acquiring a bachelor's degree in Economics & Political Science, inshallah. As of late though, I've been leaning towards continuing the Political Science portion of my degree, since an Economics degree pretty much leads you into the banking, financing, etc. industries--which obviously means dealing with riba/interest. Anyways, I've found hope in Islamic Banking. It's really a frontier industry in the west, and Western banking institutions have been gradually associating themselves with Islamic banking firms. What I do find a bit confusing though, is that a fair share of the North American branches of Islamic banks have an entirely non-Muslim board of executives, or Muslims are definitely a minority. I don't know, but this seems a bit conflicting to me :confused:

I feel obliged to notify the SomaliaOnline community (especially the Canadian members) about the plight of our brother in faith, Maher Arar. This has been a thoroughly covered story in recent Canadian news, and to some extent American media, but I'm sure there's still some people who are unaware. Brother Arar was born in Syria but moved to Canada in his teenage years. He subsequently became a Canadian citizen as well as a distinguished member of the immigrant and Canadian community (he has a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from McGill University, a Master's from INRS Telecommunications; his wife is also a McGill graduate, having received her Ph.D in Finance). In October 2002, upon returning from a trip to Tunisia, Brother Arar was detained by the U.S. authorities as he connected planes in New York City. After a series of questioning, he was notified that he was to be deported---but DESPITE carrying a Canadian passport and holding Canadian citizenship, the Americans deported him to Syria (they also failed to notify Canadian officials until after he was sent to Syria), where he was to spend the following year tortured and held with no charges in Syrian prisons. It was only this October that Brother Arar, alhamdullilah, returned to Canada--after more than a year in detention without cause. For Canadian Muslim Immigrants, this proves that we are not excluded from recent American persecution of Muslims; in fact, in the case of Brother Arar, there is speculation that the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) was involved in his deportation. As Muslims and as Canadians (those in the US, UK and elsewhere should feel equally vulnerable), we ought to feel obliged to protest such maltreatment---considering how easily it could be us next time. For further information about the case and to find out how to get involved , please go to the webpage of the Council on American Islamic Relations Canada ( www.caircan.ca ). Please be aware that another Syrian-Canadian, Abdullah alMalki, still remains in Syrian prisons under the same conditions as Brother Arar. By showing support, inshallah, he will also be released.

Again, there is no arguement that disease, war and poverty are present in both periods; but what's more relevant to analyze is the infrastructure and systems of both periods (feudalism vs. modern state). Disease, war and poverty are invariable factors through all times. I think what would be helpful is to ask what is unique to each period that allows it to foster these calamities? But I will agree that the neopatrimonial states found in Africa do resemble feudal states more so than the modern notion of a state. But that's a whole other can of worms... Drawing similarities between the Moorish occupation of the Iberian peninsula European colonization of Africa is a bit of a stretch. Once again, motives matter a lot here: it's like branding enlightenment and oppression as one and the same.

I don't think it's fair or even constructive to compare pre-Reneissance Europe and modern-day Africa; the Europeans of that age never dealt with constraints of even half the magnitude African states face today (globalization: one word says it all). Who's to say that Africa's renaissance hasn't already occurred? The Empires of Mali (Timbuktu ring a bell?), Ghana, Abyssinia and the Ancient Egyptians and Nubians don't count for much?

Did you know that voluntarily missing one day of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan can only be compensated by 2 months of consecutive fasting?

Wow Conquest, thanks for the interesting article! I came across this at the right time really, because I'm currently in the midst of writing a paper on clan politics in Somalia, and addressing the Bantu presence in Somalia is an integral argument in my essay. Hopefully this will give me further insight; thanks again and if you have related articles, feel free to post them!

Thoth, I am aware of the events surrounding the 1967 War, and the Israeli preemptive strike is factual. I don't believe the Golan Heights were an intentional seizure than a booty of war. Syria and Israel had previously been quarrelling over Lake Tiberias, at the base of the Heights, for a time beforehand. The Golan is a strategic weapon to have, but just like the occupied territories, I don't believe Israel planned extensively beforehand to the all these lands. The grounds for their preemptive strike were based on their conviction that they'd soon be attacked from the Jordanian, Syrian or Egyptian front, and no doubt there was military build-up. But then again, there is not one military or political action committed by Israel that is devoid of existential paranoia. Um, and oil? If you mean the Sinai oil fields, Israel had no knowledge--neither did Egypt--of the fields until the mid-70s, and the fact did not stop Israel from returning the Sinai. Anyways, my point wasn't to argue about the 1967 war, and perhaps I didn't frame my question well enough. How does the 1967 War lend to your argument in favour of the United States and their "contribution" to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

Well, I don't know why I'm adding my input to this, considering this discussion has pretty much been concluded. Shujui, I commend you for posting this topic in the first place. Yes, being the lone military superpower, it's in America's interests to flex their muscle once in a while. Apparantly, there's a pattern for every American president to engage in one war per term. Two is stretching it (and obviously I don't consider Afghanistan in this equation), and that's why some argue the US is backing off of those Syria threats (remember them?)...but anyways, getting off topic! What I really want to say: Shujui, by just reading halfway down the postings of you and Thoth, I noticed you were investing more into this debate than your counter-part! And when Thoth finally contributed links, I believe he/she revealed more about him/herself than was intended. You shouldn't feel so frustrated, considering this was never a balanced debate anyway And Thoth, what were your intentions in including the Six Day War amongst the links? I fail to see how that advances your argument for the US, and not Israel. Salaam Alaikum.

Libaax and Baashi, I've come across this article that's somewhat related to the first, speculating the role of the far-right in American foreign policy. It's a bit long but still a good read . Anyways, I hope it helps in building your respective views. Salaam alaikum. -------------------------------------------------- The Department of Offense April 22, 2003 By punpirate Once again, I'm a bit confused about this country in which we live. Amongst the two Bushes which have found themselves in the Presidency, this current insanity of ours is the fourth premeditated war in, to date, the six years of their tenure. Current Bush administration officials are hinting at new targets - even as we simply try to get our bearings on our military location in Iraq - through warnings issued almost simultaneously by Rice, Rumsfeld, Bolton, et al, to Iran and Syria. North Korea awaits. These wars (in Panama, the Persian Gulf, twice, and in Afghanistan), have all been surrounded with a good deal of secrecy and phony motives in one way or another - the destruction in Panama was clearly a police action designed to obtain habeas corpus of Manuel Noriega, whereupon he was tried in strict secrecy in the United States (for purposes of national security, mind you), and ferreted away to a jail cell, incommunicado, for a very long time. The first Gulf War, as we only found out later, was largely a carefully orchestrated event intended to sucker Saddam Hussein into a mistake, which we could then use as an attempt to obliterate him. The war in Afghanistan, much heralded as a humanitarian action to free women there of the burqa, was, in fact, a warning to the Taliban that they should play ball with American corporations regarding the no small matter of a pipeline, and secondarily, was a bloodletting to avenge the events of Sept. 11, 2001. This latest war, oft heralded as a liberation, has also been described by this Bush administration as an international response to Iraq's failure to comply with UN resolutions, as a move for "regime change," as the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and, wrongly, as a response to terrorism. The reason shifts with the winds of the Arabian desert, it seems. What characterizes each of these wars, the events leading up to them and their aftermaths, is a profound belief that military force can be used in expeditionary and imperialistic ways to fix screw-ups, to manipulate other nations and to micromanage the world economy. It seems, from the evidence, that this belief is one singularly held by the Bushes and by the truly weird people they attract from the right wing of the political spectrum. The military has been under the civilian control of, first, the Secretary of War. During the years prior to WWII, that office was a somewhat sleepy one, and during WWII, was very busy, under the administration of Henry Stimson, formerly Secretary of State under Herbert Hoover. After WWII, the National Security Act, signed by Truman in July, 1947, created a Department of Defense (designed as a measure to contain, according to George F. Kennan's policy suggestions, the increasing threat of the Soviet Union, which Kennan has recently suggested might not have been the best course of action), and a new service, the US Air Force, out of the Army Air Corps. At the same time, the spooks of the wartime Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, lobbied for the creation of what we now know as the CIA, created by that same legislation. Henry Stimson was out of government in 1946, elderly and retired, but his influence continued on, especially through a curious little club on the Yale campus known as Skull and Bones. Stimson, a member of that secret society, held sway as the warhawk emeritus of the group, and his ideas and occasional visits permeated the lives of that club's members. Both the elder and younger Bushes are members of that secret society, and came under the sway of Stimson's views. Stimson liked war - he viewed it as a national purgative, and according to one of his biographers, felt that a war was necessary every generation. And he liked the idea of war as a test of leadership. George H.W. Bush is said to have often been seen at Camp David in the months leading up to the first Gulf War with his copy of Stimson's biography, The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson. What, though, has caused these two Bushes to imagine war as needing to be fought in serial fashion, one after another, as quickly as possible? The influence of the right wing certainly has something to do with this program of perpetual war for political gain - of that there is no question. The history of the Department of Defense, though, might offer other reasons. On every Strategic Air Command base throughout the last decades, one could find a sign at the main gate with the shield of the Air Force, and the slogan, "Peace is Our Profession." This was indicative of the original mission of the Department of Defense - deterring harm through show of force - a warning to the Soviets that swift and violent retaliation was inevitable, if we were to be attacked. Three or four decades ago, that was a big if, and the principle of "mutually assured destruction" kept both the Soviets and the US from mutually-enabled holocaust, even though the US carried a much bigger nuclear stick at the time. But, around the time of the late '50s, Eisenhower got itchy. The military scared him about runaway communism in the Third World, and he sent in a trickle of "advisors" to Viet Nam. By 1960, he was worried about the "military-industrial complex" but had done nothing to limit its power. The threat of communism seemed greater. The right-wing in the military had made its point to Eisenhower. Our intervention in Viet Nam is seen now as a military and political misadventure, but it was still the first major lapse in the Department of Defense's original mandate for defense, rather than offense, in the post-WWII world. The CIA had been, on its own, meddling in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, but those covert actions did not require a fully-outfitted commitment from the military to either further or protect, such as the war in Viet Nam eventually made necessary. The effective loss of that war, the effective failure of diplomacy to stop the war (in part because so much of what formerly the State Department had done had been taken over by the CIA and the military) humbled the military. For nearly ten years, the principles of overwhelming force and superior technology had been touted by the military, particularly under Gen. Westmoreland, as the means to victory, and yet, there was no victory, the grubby guerillas of the Viet Cong having brought down the military giant, by the same means Gen. Washington's forces overcame Cornwallis' two hundred years prior. In the years after the official conclusion of that war, in April, 1975, I would guess that there were many long, subdued conversations in the Pentagon about the reasons for that failure. Some may have blamed the administration politicians (certainly the CEOs of that war, such as McNamara, the whiz of Ford Motor Co. and, apparently, little else, deserved some blame). Others probably blamed Congress for getting them into it (but, after all, it was DoD's fudged intelligence which was presented to Congress as the basis for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution). Some, thinking more deeply about it, likely came to the conclusion that it was the military itself which helped promote a war it then could not win. Much has been made of the 1962 "Northwoods" plan (detailed in James Bamford's recent book Body of Secrets) as an example of the government's willingness to deceive for political purposes, but this analysis misses an essential point. The plan was conceived entirely within the minds of a few individuals among the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and those military men were mightily coerced by the thinking of far right-wing organizations such as the John Birch Society. The plan, to "frame" Cuba for attacks on US citizens and force an invasion of the island, was dismissed by the civilian government, John Kennedy's administration. Top military leaders sought to persuade their civilian overseers of the need for pre-emptive action, rather than taking direction from the civilians. Through the military, the far right wing sought to influence US policy in a way no sensible person would consider. Kennedy would have nothing of the plan, and a few months after its offering to McNamara, its prime signator, Army Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, was removed from the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and quietly reassigned, as a warning to the others not to meddle too deeply in the affairs of the government. But, meddle they continued to do, and in 1964, handed Lyndon Johnson a cobbled-up bit of evidence to suggest that the Vietnamese had attacked one of our vessels (which just happened to be spying on the Vietnamese) in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson took the bait, and the far right wing, via the military, finally had their shooting war against communism. In the fifteen or so years between the end of the Viet Nam war and the first Bush administration, the leaders and thinkers in the armed services had lots of time to analyze what went wrong in Viet Nam, and a few undoubtedly came to the conclusion that their leadership had overstepped the bounds of its mission of defense, had fallen prey to the sirens of the right, and once in the soup, had to swim in it, for seventeen long years. Military leadership, while still well to the right, politically, of the average American, came to understand that Viet Nam was largely a mistake of its own making. By that time, however, Ronald Reagan was President and was, through the far right, rattling the communists' cage. It is telling, in a way, that after Reagan ordered Marines to Lebanon in support of Israel's failed policy of police occupation there, the military did not demand that America respond with a massive retaliation after the Marines' barracks were attacked by suicide bombers. The Joint Chiefs then, implicitly, understood that they shouldn't have been there in the first place. Even more telling is that Reagan's response to that suicide bombing was to divert troops already headed for the Middle East to Grenada for an impromptu and unplanned war against - who else? - the communists. A small-arms locker at the end of a runway and a few Cuban construction workers were enough to make an election snit and political assassination in Grenada the new Cuban Missile Crisis, replete with reconnaissance photos. While the press made much of distraught medical-school students arriving at Florida airports, PBS' "Frontline" documented, years later, the truth of the encounter - including Marines being given tourist maps with which to direct artillery and air strikes. Quite clearly, the above-ground military establishment had stopped actively planning for any and all regional wars against communism. But the far right-wing had not. Hawks in the Reagan administration, many of whom are now in the Bush II administration (the remainder having retired to the relative comfort and wealth afforded them by hosting right-wing radio talk shows), sought to engage in a wholly illegal war of terrorism against the Marxist government of Nicaragua, at one point enlisting the always helpful CIA to mine that country's harbors. By this time in Reagan's administration, the "Great Communicator" was having difficulty with any task without the help of 3x5 cards, and much of the drudge work fell onto the shoulders of George Herbert Walker Bush, former CIA chief, vice-president and political godchild of Henry Stimson, the master of war. Bush, largely by virtue of a weak Democratic candidate and the help of an obscure black convict by the name of Willie Horton, became the 41st President of the United States, and likely intended to continue the right-wing tradition of fightin' communism, except that, suddenly, there wasn't any communist enemy to speak of any longer. The Soviet Union's collapse was in full bloom by 1989, and Bush was the staunch anti-communist president with no one in jackboots with whom to dance. The far right, not knowing what to do without a strong enemy, immediately sought out another. No available candidates? Look for one. And Bush, rummaging through his Rolodex of old CIA acquaintances, found one - Manuel Noriega. Suddenly, after years of not being noticed by anyone except the CIA, an occasional old girlfriend, the Panamanian public and much of Latin America, Noriega was the US's dictator to hate and America's political center of attention. The elder Bush excoriated Noriega for drug-dealing (must have been a shock to the old man, what with Noriega being a CIA paid informant and all), brutalizing his Panama constituents and being an all-round pervert. Nary a word of consequence, throughout this political build-up to war, was heard from the military. Then, when an American soldier was shot dead by a PDF guard, Bush, ignoring treaties with both Panama and the OAS, launched in late 1989 "Operation Just Cause," which, apart from some very serious and unnecessary bombing of civilian areas of Panama City, rapidly devolved into a Keystone Kops police action. Noriega, by most news reports, was finally captured in the Vatican embassy, but not before the press had a chance to gleefully tell America of his hole-in-the-wall, purportedly filled to overflowing with pornography and cocaine. Afterwards, the Commander in Chief of the Air Force opined that "it was give up Panama or go in all the way." Otherwise, there was no suggestion that the military had any great desire to bomb, strafe and debilitate Panama. Quite the contrary, it was the civilian government, with the support of the far right and George Bush, and his Secretary of Defense, one Richard Cheney, which made that decision. Full reparations to Panama, as promised, have yet to have been made. Then, on the heels of that triumph of democracy through military power, Bush set his sights on bigger fry - a real dictator - Saddam Hussein. Support of Hussein's dictatorial regime throughout the Reagan administration and well into the first Bush administration has already been well-documented and needs no further elucidation. What does need some further explanation is exactly how Bush suckered Hussein into invading Kuwait. Hussein virtually bankrupted Iraq in his pursuit of war against Iran during most of the 1980s. Unable to pay his debts, or to sell enough oil, Hussein borrowed money from Kuwait, postponed other debts to Kuwait, and allowed Saudi Arabia to pump extra oil as if it were Iraq's own, but not for free - rather, as a loan. There was the decades-long dispute over the border with Kuwait, too. But, the final straw, in Hussein's mind, was that Kuwait was found to be slant-drilling into Iraqi oil pools under and across an already-contested border. Kuwait would offer no relief for Iraq's war debts and was stealing its oil, besides. US intelligence knew all of this. As well, US intelligence also knew that Iraq was negotiating with the other Arab states to keep all of the Shatt al Arab waterway as a condition for dropping its complaints against Kuwait. In the summer of 1990, Iraq began to move troops, mostly inexperienced conscripts backed by Republican Guards at the rear, to the Iraq-Kuwait border. Bush, Cheney and other far right US defense policy civilians sensed an opportunity. On July 25, 1990, the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met with Hussein to discuss his troop movements. Hussein made clear his demands about Kuwait to Glaspie, and she asked, according to the transcript of a tape Hussein was making secretly, "what solutions would be acceptable?" Hussein then explains if they must live with only their half of the waterway, they would instead give up all the waterway to pursue action against Kuwait. He then asks of Glaspie, "What is the United States' opinion on this?" At this point, Glaspie, the diplomat, might have offered that the US desired not to usurp any authority from the Arab League, but would be happy to offer all its diplomatic services to avoid bloodshed and restore harmony to the region, and could have warned that the US would take a dim view of any Iraqi aggression without all diplomatic avenues being first explored. Glaspie, to further emphasize the point, might have suggested that after almost nine years of war, Iraq's finances were the central issue, and US diplomatic help with the Arab League and OPEC might improve that situation. That, indeed, would have been the diplomatic way. But, that's not what she said - not even close. Instead, she is recorded to have told Hussein, "We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State, James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America." Ambassador Glaspie quotes her boss, James Baker, to make it clear that the green traffic signal is policy and not just the independent musings of an ambassador. Eight days later, Iraq invades Kuwait, on Aug. 2, 1990. Moreover, what is less quoted from the same transcript is Glaspie stroking Hussein, telling him not to be concerned about an unfavorable US news program about him, saying, "I saw the Diane Sawyer program on ABC. And what happened in that program was cheap and unjust. And this is a real picture of what happens in the American media - even to American politicians themselves. These are the methods the Western media employs. I am pleased that you add your voice to the diplomats who stand up to the media. Because your appearance in the media, even for five minutes, would help us to make the American people understand Iraq. This would increase mutual understanding. If the American President had control of the media, his job would be much easier." If that transcript had been read to Congress before the debate on a resolution for war in the Persian Gulf, instead of false testimony from the intentionally misidentified daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador about babies being thrown out of their incubators, the vote likely would have been much different than the 55 for, 45 against that it was. The important point, again, is that the far right in the White House, in concert with its State Department, were the instigators in this conflict, not the higher-ups of the military. The military was still mindful of the lessons it had learned from Viet Nam and before, and of the hawks in its midst. Hussein takes the bait, and Bush, Cheney, Baker and the far right defense civilians pounce on him for the kill. Hussein is demonized by the Bush administration in the same manner as was Noriega. Hussein, though, being a bigger fish, demands that a bigger hook be used, and the Bush administration pulls out all the stops, albeit selectively. Hussein ordered the use of poison gas against Iranian troops during his war with that country (no mention of our knowledge of that three weeks prior to the visit in 1983 of our special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, with Hussein); Hussein used poison gas on his own people (without mention that the Kurds were not exactly his own people, having fought for autonomous control of their region in Iraq, nor mentioning that CIA analysis of that attack in Halabja in 1988 was less than sure about the deaths originating from Iraqi actions - as former CIA senior analyst Stephen Pelletiere has suggested, many of the Kurdish deaths stemmed from cyanide-based gas, which Iran was known to use, rather than from mustard gas, which Iraq was believed to have used in that battle with Iranian forces); the story of the babies thrown on the hospital floor was repeated by Pres. Bush ad infinitum, even after the suspicions of the press had been aroused; stories of torture abounded from the administration, as well as those of Hussein having starved his people to build weapons of mass destruction to support his wars and opulent palaces to support his ego. As before "Operation Just Cause," there was a period of some months of cheerleading from the Bush administration before "Operation Desert Storm," the gleefulness in it barely disguised, its clear intent to bring the press and the public into line. Some of the stories, no doubt, were true (Saddam Hussein being fundamentally ruthless), while many more were exaggerated for effect. Iraqi citizens, for example, before the first Gulf War and the sanctions, were reasonably well-fed and not well-down on the indices of general health, as they are now. The emphasis, in Panama and the first Gulf war, was not on furthering civilization, but rather was of a Stimsonian show of force, purgative war. Much the same process has occurred with the right's, and Bush's, wars against evil. Afghanistan was "freed," but only for the cameras. In the year afterwards, as many have documented, the country has fallen once again into chaos - the pipeline deal has been signed, but the Taliban are taking territory in the southwest of the country, bombings and assassinations continue in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, and aid organizations are pulling people out. After three brutal weeks of killing in Iraq in this, the second Gulf war in a decade or so, that country is in chaos, in the grip of uncontrolled looting and arson, US Marines indifferent to the damage done to museums and ordinary citizens alike. What was important was not the stated goals, but rather, the right's show of force, and the furtherance of corporate aims. None of the wars initiated by the elder and younger Bushes are over. They've left bitter sores in Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, sores which, without the antibiotics of diplomatic energy and independence, will fester into future terrorist acts against us and our few allies in these crusades. The reason for these failures is the determination of the right to turn the Department of Defense into the Department of Offense, to use economic and military might for perverse aims, for purposes of conquest and empire, first by trying to turn the heads of the military, and failing in that, turning the heads of the civilian government. From the end of the Korean conflict until September 11, 2001, our military has been used offensively - in places as remote as Viet Nam, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, the Philippines, Grenada, Lebanon, Latin America - to no ultimately good effect. Terrorism and despotism remain. And yet, in the one single instance since WWII which required truly defensive action to protect our own territory and people, the hijacking of airliners on September 11, the Department of Defense failed utterly. The entire system of defense, from the web of civilian radar to the massive monitoring capability of NORAD to the fighter aircraft of the Tactical Air Command to the predictive values of our intelligence services, broke down and failed to defend us. Whatever conclusions the commission on terrorism may eventually make, one truth is evident. Our military, used as it has been for fifty years for offensive purposes, has lost sight of its mission, which is, simply, that of defense of territory and citizens. Lately, it has done so at the bidding of just a few fanatical men in our midst, men who boldly imagine themselves modern-day Machiavellis advising the twenty-first century's lesser princes. http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/04/22_offense.html

There's a deep-rooted inferiority complex, which the Africans have. Err, I wouldn't totally agree with that, Jeenyo. Remember the colonial experience in most African states does not extend 120 years (Ethiopia had no more than a few years of Italian occupation). African history before the introduction of European imperialism is dynamic and glorious. So this inferiority you claim to be deep-rooted: that's hardly the case. Africa doesn't differ from any other developing region; look at the Middle East, for goodness sakes. Despite their natural wealth, they're hardly steps ahead. I don't want to give one blanket answer, because this is a really complex issue, Observer. But I think one of the greatest factors is that these African states have had only 50-odd years to readjust into the Western standards of statehood, with no more guidance than to imitate the empty mold left behind by the colonizers .

I came across this article while researching the influence of the Jewish Lobby on American policy. I'm posting this article here because its message was unexpectant--and as much as emotions may want to sway me otherwise--I found it very insightful. It's not recent (and lengthy ) but it's still very relative to the current Arab-Israeli conflict. Please note that this article, or my posting of it, in now way is apologetic of Israeli transgressions. Enjoy and Salaam Alaikum. -------------------------------------------------- ANTI-SEMITISM IN U.S. MIDDLE EAST POLICY March 1995 By Stephen Zunes "Look, the Senator actually agrees with you,” pleaded the exasperated senior aide of a prominent liberal Democrat. He was being confronted by a group of us in the spring of 1992, all peace and human rights activists, about his boss's strident support of Israel's right-wing Likud government and his indifference to the plight of the Palestinians. The aide continued, “But he wants to be re-elected. If you really want him to change his position on Israel, work for campaign finance reform. Such anecdotes have been shared by many who have attempted to lobby members of Congress to pursue a more responsible Middle East policy. There are frequent reports of off-the-record comments by even top Senate leaders over their frustration with how “the Jewish lobby runs Congress.” Similarly, in meetings with top Foreign Ministry officials in Arab countries and even in Europe, I have been told how U.S. diplomats frequently apologize for the continued American economic, military, and diplomatic support of Israeli policies which most of the international community finds abhorrent and which jeopardize the peace process, explaining that it is American Jews who are actually controlling U.S. Middle East policy. Even President Bush, during the debate on the $10 billion loan guarantee to Israel, claimed he was just “one lonely little guy ” standing up to “a thousand lobbyists” swarming on Capitol Hill. There is something very easy -- and all-too familiar -- about Gentiles in powerful positions maintaining that it is not they who are responsible for their actions, but a cabal of rich and influential Jews manipulating events behind the scenes. Indeed, such claims constitute classic anti-Semitism: scape-goating Jews for unpopular actions by exaggerating Jewish economic and political power. Groups like the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its related Political Action Committees are indeed influential. Like the National Rifle Association, AIPAC has exerted influence over Congress far out of proportion to its public support through well-organized and well-financed efforts against those who do not fully support its agenda, creating a climate of intimidation on Capitol Hill. Political Action Committees and their individual funders supportive of the Israeli government contribute more that $7 million biannually to Congressional campaigns. Yet Israel's strongest supporters in the House of Representatives tend to come from some of the safest districts in the country. There is little financial incentive for such Representatives to take a position supporting Israeli government policy, yet they do so anyway. More importantly, Congress does not make foreign policy; recent years have seen foreign policy become increasingly the prerogative of the executive branch. Congress in the past several decades has played a limited, and largely reactive, role in foreign policy. In addition, these Jewish organizations have been unable to successfully force the U.S. government into full accountability in other policy areas which concern the Jewish community, such as the ongoing large-scale U.S. arms sales to Arab regimes or the continued presence of Nazi war criminals in the U.S., many of whom were brought into the United States clandestinely by U.S. intelligence agencies. They were unable to stop President Reagan's controversial visit to the German cemetery at Bitburg (the burial site of SS Officers), halt U.S. agricultural subsidies and other aid to Iraq (which were stopped only immediately prior to the invasion of Kuwait over Bush Administration objections), curb the U.S. increasing rapprochement with Syria, or challenge the decision to limit Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe despite heightened fears of renewed anti-Semitism resulting from that region's growing economic crises. One of the insidious aspects of anti-Semitism is that Jews, a tiny minority in every country except Israel and who have suffered some of the worst persecution in human history, have often been depicted as the exploiters rather than the targets of oppression. For example, Jews in the United States are often believed to have an enormous degree of economic power. Yet among the individuals who could actually be considered among the most influential sectors of the American ruling class, Jews are not represented any more than their share of the general population. As American Jews have entered the mainstream of American life, they -- like other upwardly mobile groups -- have developed an economic stake in the status quo, and have moved politically to the right. Combined with support from most major Jewish organizations of Israel's right-wing government, this has alienated many American Jews -- once a major force in the American Left -- from progressive causes. Combined with the tendency of leftists to see oppression largely from an economic analysis, a sub-group with higher than average incomes and an increasingly conservative political orientation is difficult to appreciate as an oppressed group. Therefore, the American Left -- usually in the forefront of solidarity with those on the receiving end of prejudice -- has often been weak in its analysis of anti-Semitism as compared with racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, and has thus failed to fully appreciate the nature of the role of Jews in contemporary American society and have left exaggerated charges of Jewish economic and political power largely unchallenged. It may be the perception of a powerful Jewish lobby, rather than its reality, that creates this mystique of power. The increasingly conservative American Jewish leadership tries to maintain the myth of their power as a means of keeping the community together. In some cases, the pro-Israeli government lobby and political action committees play on this stereotype by throwing money around, threatening opponents, and exaggerating their role in the defeat of certain incumbents in tight races. Yet few conscientious politicians have even dared to test this alleged power by forcefully advocating a change in U.S. Middle East policy. More fundamentally, it is a naive assumption to believe that foreign policy decision making in the United States is pluralistic enough so that any one lobbying group can have this kind of influence. Foreign policy decisions in the United States, as in most countries, are made by elites based on a broad consensus over strategic interests. Certain policies can be altered if challenged by mass popular movements -- such as the opposition to the Vietnam War -- but there has been no comparable movement in support of the Israeli government. The strong tilt in U.S. foreign policy in the past 20 years in support of the Israeli government has taken place primarily because of broader strategic concerns. Certainly there have been some specific Congressional votes where the outcome was certainly affected by the pro-Israel lobby, yet most of these were of a largely symbolic nature or were successful primarily because they paralleled already existing priorities by foreign policy elites. Bush's success at blocking the loan guarantee is an example of the lobby's impotence when actually faced with resistance from those who really hold power in foreign policy implementation. It is noteworthy that the major upturn in U.S. aid to Israel between 1967 and 1974 took place prior to the reorganization of AIPAC, when it greatly increased its power and influence on Capitol Hill. It also primarily took place under Richard Nixon, who was not only an anti-Semite, but also the least dependent on Jewish votes or financing of any recent president. The fact is that U.S. support for the Israeli government and opposition to Palestinian rights are based not on an all-powerful lobby, but by the same elite interests that lead the U.S. to support any militarized pro-Western government and oppose any Third World nationalist movement. The U.S. “ supports” Israel for what that country has done for U.S. interests. Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen, as well as in Palestine. They have kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in check. Their air force is predominant throughout the region. Israel's frequent wars have provided battlefield testing for American arms, often against Soviet weapons. They have been a conduit for U.S. arms to regimes and movements too unpopular in the United States for openly granting direct military assistance, such as South Africa, Iran, Guatemala, and the Nicaraguan Contras. Israeli military advisors have assisted the Contras, the Salvadoran junta, and foreign occupation forces in Namibia and Western Sahara. Their secret service has assisted the U.S. in intelligence gathering and covert operations. Israel has missiles capable of reaching the former Soviet Union and has cooperated with the U.S. military industrial complex with research and development for new jet fighters, anti-missile defense systems, and even the Strategic Defense Initiative. As a result, the United States has been encouraging some of the more chauvinistic and militaristic elements in the Israeli government, undermining the last vestiges of Labor Zionism's commitment to socialism, non-alignment, and cooperation with the Third World. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it, “Israel's obstinacy. . . serves the purposes of both our countries best.” As Israeli military strength and repression of the Palestinians has increased, so has U.S. aid, contradicting the widespread belief that U.S. aid is to defend a threatened and democratic Israel. The rise of the Likud Bloc in Israel and the rightward drift in the Labor Party since independence is in large part due to this large-scale American support. Israeli politicians such as Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon would certainly exist without U.S. support, but they would have likely been part of a small right-wing minority in the Knesset. No one with those kinds of policies could last very long in office, given the self-defeating effect of such militarization on economic grounds or in terms of international isolation, were they not supported to such a degree that they did not have to worry about the consequences of their policies on their own population. For reasons outlined above, it was in U.S. interests to maintain a militarily-powerful belligerent Israel dependent on the United States. Real peace could undermine such a relationship. The United States, therefore, pursued a policy of Pax Americana, one which might bring greater stability to the region while falling short of real peace. The Camp David agreement was an example, in that it more closely resembled a tripartite military pact than a true peace treaty, promising more than $5 billion of additional weaponry to both countries and closer American strategic cooperation. The U.S. refused to follow through on provisions of the agreement calling for Palestinian autonomy, increasing aid to Israel even as Jewish colonization and anti-Palestinian repression in the territories greatly increased. American opposition to a comprehensive peace settlement goes back nearly 25 years. The Nixon Administration refused to support the Allon Plan, instead encouraging the previous Labor governments in Israel to hold on to the territory. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger passed on to the Israelis the advice that they even ignore the Rogers Plan, crafted by the U.S. Secretary of State. When Sadat made peace overtures to Israel in 1971, Kissinger successfully pressured the Israelis to ignore it, resulting in the October 1973 War. Only after the war did the U.S. support disengagement talks, and then only under American auspices. Subsequent peace plans brought forth by the Europeans or Arab states (such as the Fahd Plan) were also rejected by the United States. However, the intifada led to a shift in thinking by American policy makers, as the inability of Israeli military might to curb popular resistance in the occupied territories, and the dangerous precedent it set for possible insurrections against autocratic pro-Western Arab leaders, led to a re-evaluation of the role of the Israeli armed forces as a stabilizing force. This resulted in the Bush administration challenging Israeli policies to a degree unheard of in Washington for more than a generation. These protests were largely in rhetoric only -- unconditional military and economic aid to the Israeli government continued to flow -- but it did indicate that Washington was ready to pressure Israel for some sort of compromise. Still, the United States would only allow for peace talks under American auspices. The round of talks begun in Madrid, over two years ago, were designed to avoid a multi-party peace conference which could develop a comprehensive formula. Instead, the U.S. stressed a bilateral approach, on the lines of Camp David, to weaken the chances of Arab unity. However, it soon became clear that the Shamir government was effectively using the peace process as a stalling tactic to avoid any kind of agreement while greatly expanding settlement activities in the occupied territories to create a fait accompli. Seeing this as a dangerous provocation, the U.S. decided that the Likud must be defeated and that the Labor Party needed to form a working majority. Then came the decision to temporarily withhold the $10 billion loan guarantee agreement and other measures, helping to make possible the election of Labor-dominated government. This came over the strong protests of the Democratic Party (including the then Governor Bill Clinton and then-Senator Al Gore) -- and many Republicans as well -- who supported the Likud. Still, not wanting a full peace agreement, the Bush administration -- and later the Clinton administration -- continued to bar the Palestine Liberation Organization, the effective Palestinian government and one of the two major parties of the conflict, from even taking part in the U.S.-sponsored peace process. The Israeli-Palestinian agreement proposed by the U.S. in June 1993 basically legitimized continued Israeli occupation. Therefore, the only way the new Israeli government could make progress on the peace talks was to circumvent the U.S.-managed peace talks, meet with the PLO secretly in a third country and offer them a more generous agreement than proposed by the United States three months earlier. One of the more unsettling aspects of U.S. policy is how closely it corresponds with historic anti-Semitism. Throughout Europe in past centuries, the ruling class of a given country would, in return for granting limited religious and cultural autonomy, set up certain individuals in the Jewish community to become the visible agents of the oppressive social order, such as tax collectors and money lenders. When the population would threaten to rise up against the ruling class, the rulers could then blame the Jews, sending the wrath of an exploited people against convenient scape-goats, resulting in the pogroms and other notorious waves of repression which have taken place throughout the Jewish Diaspora. The idea behind Zionism was to break this cycle through the creation of a Jewish nation-state, where Jews would no longer be dependent on the ruling class of a given country. The tragic irony is that, as a result of Israel's inability or unwillingness to make peace with its Arab neighbors, the creation of Israel has perpetuated this cycle on a global scale, with Israel being used by Western imperialist powers -- initially Great Britain and France and more recently the United States -- to maintain their interests in the Middle East. Therefore, one finds autocratic Arab governments and other Third World regimes blaming “Zionism” for their problems rather than the broader exploitative global economic system and their own elites who benefit from and help perpetuate such a system. The ramifications of U.S. policy are quite apparent when it comes to the suffering of Palestinians, Lebanese, and other Arabs. But it also has a negative impact on Israel. The respected Israeli intellectual Ishawa Leibowitz has noted, “The existence of the Jewish people of 60 to 80 generations. . . was a heroic situation. We never got from the goyish world a cent. We supported ourselves. We maintained our own institutions. Now we have taken three million Jews, gathered them here and turned them over to be parasites -- parasites of America. And in some sense we are even the mercenaries of America to fight the wars of what the ruling persons in America consider to be American interests.” Many progressive Zionists fear that Israel's close ties with what many perceive as an imperialist power like the United States alienates Israel's potential allies in the Third World and leaves Israel vulnerable to the whims of U.S. foreign policy. Like the Jews of medieval Europe, they fear Israel could be suddenly abandoned by the West after being set up to become the visible agent of an oppressive world order. More than one-third of all U.S. foreign aid goes to Israel, which has only one one-thousandth of the world's population and one of the world's highest per capita incomes. Many neo-isolationists have decried this as a rip-off of the American taxpayer. However, it is important to note that the Israelis do not actually get most of this money. Most of it goes to American banks in the form of interest payments on previous loans and to U.S. arms manufacturers to produce weapons for the Israeli military. “U.S. aid to Israel” is just another means of transferring wealth to the corporate elites of American society. Yet who gets the blame for the billions of dollars the American taxpayer spends annually on so-called aid to Israel? Not the bankers and arms manufacturers and others who benefit, but the Jews. Arms aid to Israel further benefits U.S. arms manufacturers in that it creates a greater demand for weaponry by Arab states, many of which can pay cash in petrodollars. Even though many of these regimes take a far harder stance against Israel than does the Palestinian government (the PLO) and constitute the chief sources of financial support for the extremist Hamas movement, the U.S. has no qualms about selling these autocratic monarchies sophisticated arms while simultaneously refusing to even talk with the Palestinians. These arms sales to Arab states then create a counter-demand from the Israeli military elites for yet more arms, and the cycle continues. Meanwhile, in Israel, U.S. arms transfers cost Israelis two to three times their value in maintenance, spare parts, training of personnel, and related expenses. It drains their economy and further ties them into an economic and strategic reliance on the United States. Yet, in the United States, many critics of U.S. Middle East policy insist that it is the Israelis (once again, the Jews) who are manipulating the United States. The result is an increasingly isolated and dependent Israel and the fueling of anti-Semitism in the United States. Zionism, like every national liberation movement, has both its progressive and reactionary elements. Nationalism by historically-oppressed people may have inclusive, pluralistic, and democratic elements or it may be dominated by racist, chauvinistic and militaristic tendencies. There are a number of reasons why the Zionist movement (even Israel's “Left” Labor Alignment) has been dominated by the latter, but the primary explanation may be that it is because they can get away with it. Historically, any country which has pursued the policies that Israel has followed -- extraordinarily high levels of militarization, territorial conquest, suppression of minorities, flaunting of international law, and gross and systematic human rights violation -- has had to pay the consequences. The inevitable repercussions are self-defeating: such policies eventually result in economic collapse, military defeat, debilitating international sanctions, or internal rebellion. However, the Israeli leadership has been able to maintain its otherwise self-destructive direction because it has been backed diplomatically, financially, and militarily by the world's dominant superpower. The need to compromise by allowing for Palestinian national rights has not yet become apparent to the majority of Israelis and Jews elsewhere, knowing they have an American umbrella under which to hide from the consequences of their actions. Therefore, those who attack Zionism as inherently racist, expansionist, or militaristic are once again falling into the trap of blaming the Jews instead of those who are, in fact, responsible. Any nationalist movement based in a hostile region which has received the kind of backing Israel has would likely behave no differently. The recent breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations -- granting Palestinians limited self-government in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho -- is not likely to lead to real peace, at least as long as the United States continues to be more interested in maintaining a garrison Israel than recognizing that Israeli security and Palestinian rights are dependent on the other. The Camp David Accords had provisions for Palestinian autonomy for almost the entire occupied territories, but when the Israelis refused to implement any real form of Palestinian self-governance, the United States refused to press the issue. Indeed, U.S. military and economic support for Israel's right-wing government increased dramatically, demonstrating to the Israelis that there was little to lose in such intransigence. Similarly, it seems that whenever the current government of Yitzhak Rabin has taken hard-lined actions, they get little criticism from the Clinton administration. The U.S. protected Israel from United Nations sanctions when Israel expelled over 400 Palestinian Muslims, launched heavy attacks against Lebanese villages, and dramatically increased the level of repression in the occupied territories. At the same time, when the Israelis have shown a willingness to compromise and take risks for peace, they have gotten little support. Only when Israel and the Zionist movement see their future with the Third World -- made necessary by its geography, its Semitic language and culture, its majority Sephardic population, and the Jews' history of exploitation by the Europeans -- will Israel end its isolation and find the real security that it has been missing. Many of the so-called “supporters of Israel” in American politics are actually making Israel vulnerable by tying its future to a declining Western imperial order and blocking its more natural alliance with the world's Afro-Asian majority. The combination of Israeli technology, Palestinian industriousness, and Arabian oil wealth could result in an economic, political, and social transformation of the Middle East which would be highly beneficial to the region's inhabitants, but not necessarily to certain elites in the United States and other Western nations who profit enormously from the continued divisions between these Semitic peoples. Meanwhile, Israeli leaders and their counterparts in many American Zionist organizations are repeating the historic error of trading short-term benefits for their people at the risk of long-term security. This cycle can only be broken when current American policy is effectively challenged and Israelis and Palestinians will finally be allowed to settle their differences among themselves and join together in liberating the Middle East from both Western imperialism and their own autocratic rulers. Without U.S. encouragement to compromise further, Israel will not likely allow the Palestinians more autonomy or control of land than the current agreement allows. Given that domestic pressure in Israel against Rabin's middle ground is stronger on the right than the left, he will have little room to compromise further unless there is U.S. pressure. Indeed, members of the Israeli team in the peace negotiations have privately begged the Clinton administration to pressure their government further so they could have an excuse to move more than they can currently, but the Clinton administration has refused. There is a growing consensus in Israel that a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza is an inevitable outgrowth of the agreement. However, the U.S. remains adamant in its opposition to Palestinian statehood. Indeed, the Clinton administration is the first in the United States to imply that the West Bank and Gaza are “disputed” territories, insinuating that the Israelis and Palestinians have equal claim to the land, rather than the view of the international community which recognizes it as territory under foreign military occupation. Most observers recognize that one of the major obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace is the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. However, the Clinton Administration, in a reversal of policy from previous administrations, has not opposed the expansion of existing settlements and has been ambivalent regarding the large scale construction of massive housing developments in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. According to U.S. law, the costs of such additional Jewish development in the occupied territories must be deducted from the $2 billion annual allocation of the controversial $10 billion American loan guarantee to Israel passed in 1992. In October, the U.S. officially announced to Israel that there would be a $437 million deduction in this year's loan due to settlement construction during the 1993 fiscal year. However, State Department Middle East peace talks coordinator Dennis Ross immediately let the Israeli government know that the U.S. would find a way to restore the full funding. Within a month, Clinton announced the U.S. would indeed give Israel an additional $500 million, ostensibly to pay for the “redeployment” of Israeli troops which have yet to evacuate from any part of the occupied territories. Meanwhile, the Clinton administration has launched a vigorous campaign to rescind all the previous UN resolutions critical of Israel. The Administration has labeled these “anachronistic” even though the issues addressed in these resolutions -- human rights violations, illegal settlements, expulsions of dissidents, development of nuclear weapons, and ongoing military occupation -- remain as relevant as ever. By far the strongest domestic pressure Rabin receives comes from the Israeli right, which opposes any territorial compromise. The Israeli peace movement, while supportive of the accords, has been unwilling or unable to mobilize for a complete end of the occupation. Therefore, the only truly effective counter-pressure must come from the United States, which provides the military, economic, and diplomatic support for Israeli occupation forces. Some apologists for the Clinton administration claim that it is pressure from the American Jewish community which accounts for the United States' hard-lined position. However, according to a recent poll by the American Jewish Congress, a sizable majority of American Jews now support Palestinian statehood. Similarly, a number of prominent Jews in the Clinton administration, some of whom have ties with the Israeli peace movement, are quite chagrined at the president's swing to the right. The man who has emerged as Clinton's primary advisor on the Middle East is Martin Indyk of the National Security Council, former head of the conservative Washington Institute on Near East Policy and an advisor to the former right-wing Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who is openly hostile to the Israeli-PLO accord. The U.S. policy towards the Palestinians is to the right of the Israeli government. There is little question that one could get more votes for Palestinian statehood in the Israeli Knesset than in the U.S. Congress; even the leadership of the Labour Party takes a more dovish position than the leadership of either American political party. This cycle of setting Jews up to do the dirty work for those who really have power can only be broken when current American policy is effectively challenged and Israelis and Palestinians will finally be allowed to settle their differences among themselves and join together in liberating the Middle East from both Western imperialism and their own autocratic rulers. Stephen Zunes is director of the Institute for a New Middle East Policy and an associate scholar at the Institute for Global Security Studies in Seattle. www.zmag.org ------------------------------------------------ http://www.islamamerica.org/articles.cfm/article_id/65/

I came across this article while researching the influence of the Jewish Lobby on American policy. I'm posting this article here because its message was unexpectant--and as much as emotions may want to sway me otherwise--I found it very insightful. It's not recent (and lengthy ) but it's still very relative to the current Arab-Israeli conflict. Please note that this article, or my posting of it, in now way is apologetic of Israeli transgressions. Enjoy and Salaam Alaikum. -------------------------------------------------- ANTI-SEMITISM IN U.S. MIDDLE EAST POLICY March 1995 By Stephen Zunes "Look, the Senator actually agrees with you,” pleaded the exasperated senior aide of a prominent liberal Democrat. He was being confronted by a group of us in the spring of 1992, all peace and human rights activists, about his boss's strident support of Israel's right-wing Likud government and his indifference to the plight of the Palestinians. The aide continued, “But he wants to be re-elected. If you really want him to change his position on Israel, work for campaign finance reform. Such anecdotes have been shared by many who have attempted to lobby members of Congress to pursue a more responsible Middle East policy. There are frequent reports of off-the-record comments by even top Senate leaders over their frustration with how “the Jewish lobby runs Congress.” Similarly, in meetings with top Foreign Ministry officials in Arab countries and even in Europe, I have been told how U.S. diplomats frequently apologize for the continued American economic, military, and diplomatic support of Israeli policies which most of the international community finds abhorrent and which jeopardize the peace process, explaining that it is American Jews who are actually controlling U.S. Middle East policy. Even President Bush, during the debate on the $10 billion loan guarantee to Israel, claimed he was just “one lonely little guy ” standing up to “a thousand lobbyists” swarming on Capitol Hill. There is something very easy -- and all-too familiar -- about Gentiles in powerful positions maintaining that it is not they who are responsible for their actions, but a cabal of rich and influential Jews manipulating events behind the scenes. Indeed, such claims constitute classic anti-Semitism: scape-goating Jews for unpopular actions by exaggerating Jewish economic and political power. Groups like the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its related Political Action Committees are indeed influential. Like the National Rifle Association, AIPAC has exerted influence over Congress far out of proportion to its public support through well-organized and well-financed efforts against those who do not fully support its agenda, creating a climate of intimidation on Capitol Hill. Political Action Committees and their individual funders supportive of the Israeli government contribute more that $7 million biannually to Congressional campaigns. Yet Israel's strongest supporters in the House of Representatives tend to come from some of the safest districts in the country. There is little financial incentive for such Representatives to take a position supporting Israeli government policy, yet they do so anyway. More importantly, Congress does not make foreign policy; recent years have seen foreign policy become increasingly the prerogative of the executive branch. Congress in the past several decades has played a limited, and largely reactive, role in foreign policy. In addition, these Jewish organizations have been unable to successfully force the U.S. government into full accountability in other policy areas which concern the Jewish community, such as the ongoing large-scale U.S. arms sales to Arab regimes or the continued presence of Nazi war criminals in the U.S., many of whom were brought into the United States clandestinely by U.S. intelligence agencies. They were unable to stop President Reagan's controversial visit to the German cemetery at Bitburg (the burial site of SS Officers), halt U.S. agricultural subsidies and other aid to Iraq (which were stopped only immediately prior to the invasion of Kuwait over Bush Administration objections), curb the U.S. increasing rapprochement with Syria, or challenge the decision to limit Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe despite heightened fears of renewed anti-Semitism resulting from that region's growing economic crises. One of the insidious aspects of anti-Semitism is that Jews, a tiny minority in every country except Israel and who have suffered some of the worst persecution in human history, have often been depicted as the exploiters rather than the targets of oppression. For example, Jews in the United States are often believed to have an enormous degree of economic power. Yet among the individuals who could actually be considered among the most influential sectors of the American ruling class, Jews are not represented any more than their share of the general population. As American Jews have entered the mainstream of American life, they -- like other upwardly mobile groups -- have developed an economic stake in the status quo, and have moved politically to the right. Combined with support from most major Jewish organizations of Israel's right-wing government, this has alienated many American Jews -- once a major force in the American Left -- from progressive causes. Combined with the tendency of leftists to see oppression largely from an economic analysis, a sub-group with higher than average incomes and an increasingly conservative political orientation is difficult to appreciate as an oppressed group. Therefore, the American Left -- usually in the forefront of solidarity with those on the receiving end of prejudice -- has often been weak in its analysis of anti-Semitism as compared with racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, and has thus failed to fully appreciate the nature of the role of Jews in contemporary American society and have left exaggerated charges of Jewish economic and political power largely unchallenged. It may be the perception of a powerful Jewish lobby, rather than its reality, that creates this mystique of power. The increasingly conservative American Jewish leadership tries to maintain the myth of their power as a means of keeping the community together. In some cases, the pro-Israeli government lobby and political action committees play on this stereotype by throwing money around, threatening opponents, and exaggerating their role in the defeat of certain incumbents in tight races. Yet few conscientious politicians have even dared to test this alleged power by forcefully advocating a change in U.S. Middle East policy. More fundamentally, it is a naive assumption to believe that foreign policy decision making in the United States is pluralistic enough so that any one lobbying group can have this kind of influence. Foreign policy decisions in the United States, as in most countries, are made by elites based on a broad consensus over strategic interests. Certain policies can be altered if challenged by mass popular movements -- such as the opposition to the Vietnam War -- but there has been no comparable movement in support of the Israeli government. The strong tilt in U.S. foreign policy in the past 20 years in support of the Israeli government has taken place primarily because of broader strategic concerns. Certainly there have been some specific Congressional votes where the outcome was certainly affected by the pro-Israel lobby, yet most of these were of a largely symbolic nature or were successful primarily because they paralleled already existing priorities by foreign policy elites. Bush's success at blocking the loan guarantee is an example of the lobby's impotence when actually faced with resistance from those who really hold power in foreign policy implementation. It is noteworthy that the major upturn in U.S. aid to Israel between 1967 and 1974 took place prior to the reorganization of AIPAC, when it greatly increased its power and influence on Capitol Hill. It also primarily took place under Richard Nixon, who was not only an anti-Semite, but also the least dependent on Jewish votes or financing of any recent president. The fact is that U.S. support for the Israeli government and opposition to Palestinian rights are based not on an all-powerful lobby, but by the same elite interests that lead the U.S. to support any militarized pro-Western government and oppose any Third World nationalist movement. The U.S. “ supports” Israel for what that country has done for U.S. interests. Israel has successfully prevented victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon, Jordan, and Yemen, as well as in Palestine. They have kept Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in check. Their air force is predominant throughout the region. Israel's frequent wars have provided battlefield testing for American arms, often against Soviet weapons. They have been a conduit for U.S. arms to regimes and movements too unpopular in the United States for openly granting direct military assistance, such as South Africa, Iran, Guatemala, and the Nicaraguan Contras. Israeli military advisors have assisted the Contras, the Salvadoran junta, and foreign occupation forces in Namibia and Western Sahara. Their secret service has assisted the U.S. in intelligence gathering and covert operations. Israel has missiles capable of reaching the former Soviet Union and has cooperated with the U.S. military industrial complex with research and development for new jet fighters, anti-missile defense systems, and even the Strategic Defense Initiative. As a result, the United States has been encouraging some of the more chauvinistic and militaristic elements in the Israeli government, undermining the last vestiges of Labor Zionism's commitment to socialism, non-alignment, and cooperation with the Third World. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it, “Israel's obstinacy. . . serves the purposes of both our countries best.” As Israeli military strength and repression of the Palestinians has increased, so has U.S. aid, contradicting the widespread belief that U.S. aid is to defend a threatened and democratic Israel. The rise of the Likud Bloc in Israel and the rightward drift in the Labor Party since independence is in large part due to this large-scale American support. Israeli politicians such as Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Ariel Sharon would certainly exist without U.S. support, but they would have likely been part of a small right-wing minority in the Knesset. No one with those kinds of policies could last very long in office, given the self-defeating effect of such militarization on economic grounds or in terms of international isolation, were they not supported to such a degree that they did not have to worry about the consequences of their policies on their own population. For reasons outlined above, it was in U.S. interests to maintain a militarily-powerful belligerent Israel dependent on the United States. Real peace could undermine such a relationship. The United States, therefore, pursued a policy of Pax Americana, one which might bring greater stability to the region while falling short of real peace. The Camp David agreement was an example, in that it more closely resembled a tripartite military pact than a true peace treaty, promising more than $5 billion of additional weaponry to both countries and closer American strategic cooperation. The U.S. refused to follow through on provisions of the agreement calling for Palestinian autonomy, increasing aid to Israel even as Jewish colonization and anti-Palestinian repression in the territories greatly increased. American opposition to a comprehensive peace settlement goes back nearly 25 years. The Nixon Administration refused to support the Allon Plan, instead encouraging the previous Labor governments in Israel to hold on to the territory. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger passed on to the Israelis the advice that they even ignore the Rogers Plan, crafted by the U.S. Secretary of State. When Sadat made peace overtures to Israel in 1971, Kissinger successfully pressured the Israelis to ignore it, resulting in the October 1973 War. Only after the war did the U.S. support disengagement talks, and then only under American auspices. Subsequent peace plans brought forth by the Europeans or Arab states (such as the Fahd Plan) were also rejected by the United States. However, the intifada led to a shift in thinking by American policy makers, as the inability of Israeli military might to curb popular resistance in the occupied territories, and the dangerous precedent it set for possible insurrections against autocratic pro-Western Arab leaders, led to a re-evaluation of the role of the Israeli armed forces as a stabilizing force. This resulted in the Bush administration challenging Israeli policies to a degree unheard of in Washington for more than a generation. These protests were largely in rhetoric only -- unconditional military and economic aid to the Israeli government continued to flow -- but it did indicate that Washington was ready to pressure Israel for some sort of compromise. Still, the United States would only allow for peace talks under American auspices. The round of talks begun in Madrid, over two years ago, were designed to avoid a multi-party peace conference which could develop a comprehensive formula. Instead, the U.S. stressed a bilateral approach, on the lines of Camp David, to weaken the chances of Arab unity. However, it soon became clear that the Shamir government was effectively using the peace process as a stalling tactic to avoid any kind of agreement while greatly expanding settlement activities in the occupied territories to create a fait accompli. Seeing this as a dangerous provocation, the U.S. decided that the Likud must be defeated and that the Labor Party needed to form a working majority. Then came the decision to temporarily withhold the $10 billion loan guarantee agreement and other measures, helping to make possible the election of Labor-dominated government. This came over the strong protests of the Democratic Party (including the then Governor Bill Clinton and then-Senator Al Gore) -- and many Republicans as well -- who supported the Likud. Still, not wanting a full peace agreement, the Bush administration -- and later the Clinton administration -- continued to bar the Palestine Liberation Organization, the effective Palestinian government and one of the two major parties of the conflict, from even taking part in the U.S.-sponsored peace process. The Israeli-Palestinian agreement proposed by the U.S. in June 1993 basically legitimized continued Israeli occupation. Therefore, the only way the new Israeli government could make progress on the peace talks was to circumvent the U.S.-managed peace talks, meet with the PLO secretly in a third country and offer them a more generous agreement than proposed by the United States three months earlier. One of the more unsettling aspects of U.S. policy is how closely it corresponds with historic anti-Semitism. Throughout Europe in past centuries, the ruling class of a given country would, in return for granting limited religious and cultural autonomy, set up certain individuals in the Jewish community to become the visible agents of the oppressive social order, such as tax collectors and money lenders. When the population would threaten to rise up against the ruling class, the rulers could then blame the Jews, sending the wrath of an exploited people against convenient scape-goats, resulting in the pogroms and other notorious waves of repression which have taken place throughout the Jewish Diaspora. The idea behind Zionism was to break this cycle through the creation of a Jewish nation-state, where Jews would no longer be dependent on the ruling class of a given country. The tragic irony is that, as a result of Israel's inability or unwillingness to make peace with its Arab neighbors, the creation of Israel has perpetuated this cycle on a global scale, with Israel being used by Western imperialist powers -- initially Great Britain and France and more recently the United States -- to maintain their interests in the Middle East. Therefore, one finds autocratic Arab governments and other Third World regimes blaming “Zionism” for their problems rather than the broader exploitative global economic system and their own elites who benefit from and help perpetuate such a system. The ramifications of U.S. policy are quite apparent when it comes to the suffering of Palestinians, Lebanese, and other Arabs. But it also has a negative impact on Israel. The respected Israeli intellectual Ishawa Leibowitz has noted, “The existence of the Jewish people of 60 to 80 generations. . . was a heroic situation. We never got from the goyish world a cent. We supported ourselves. We maintained our own institutions. Now we have taken three million Jews, gathered them here and turned them over to be parasites -- parasites of America. And in some sense we are even the mercenaries of America to fight the wars of what the ruling persons in America consider to be American interests.” Many progressive Zionists fear that Israel's close ties with what many perceive as an imperialist power like the United States alienates Israel's potential allies in the Third World and leaves Israel vulnerable to the whims of U.S. foreign policy. Like the Jews of medieval Europe, they fear Israel could be suddenly abandoned by the West after being set up to become the visible agent of an oppressive world order. More than one-third of all U.S. foreign aid goes to Israel, which has only one one-thousandth of the world's population and one of the world's highest per capita incomes. Many neo-isolationists have decried this as a rip-off of the American taxpayer. However, it is important to note that the Israelis do not actually get most of this money. Most of it goes to American banks in the form of interest payments on previous loans and to U.S. arms manufacturers to produce weapons for the Israeli military. “U.S. aid to Israel” is just another means of transferring wealth to the corporate elites of American society. Yet who gets the blame for the billions of dollars the American taxpayer spends annually on so-called aid to Israel? Not the bankers and arms manufacturers and others who benefit, but the Jews. Arms aid to Israel further benefits U.S. arms manufacturers in that it creates a greater demand for weaponry by Arab states, many of which can pay cash in petrodollars. Even though many of these regimes take a far harder stance against Israel than does the Palestinian government (the PLO) and constitute the chief sources of financial support for the extremist Hamas movement, the U.S. has no qualms about selling these autocratic monarchies sophisticated arms while simultaneously refusing to even talk with the Palestinians. These arms sales to Arab states then create a counter-demand from the Israeli military elites for yet more arms, and the cycle continues. Meanwhile, in Israel, U.S. arms transfers cost Israelis two to three times their value in maintenance, spare parts, training of personnel, and related expenses. It drains their economy and further ties them into an economic and strategic reliance on the United States. Yet, in the United States, many critics of U.S. Middle East policy insist that it is the Israelis (once again, the Jews) who are manipulating the United States. The result is an increasingly isolated and dependent Israel and the fueling of anti-Semitism in the United States. Zionism, like every national liberation movement, has both its progressive and reactionary elements. Nationalism by historically-oppressed people may have inclusive, pluralistic, and democratic elements or it may be dominated by racist, chauvinistic and militaristic tendencies. There are a number of reasons why the Zionist movement (even Israel's “Left” Labor Alignment) has been dominated by the latter, but the primary explanation may be that it is because they can get away with it. Historically, any country which has pursued the policies that Israel has followed -- extraordinarily high levels of militarization, territorial conquest, suppression of minorities, flaunting of international law, and gross and systematic human rights violation -- has had to pay the consequences. The inevitable repercussions are self-defeating: such policies eventually result in economic collapse, military defeat, debilitating international sanctions, or internal rebellion. However, the Israeli leadership has been able to maintain its otherwise self-destructive direction because it has been backed diplomatically, financially, and militarily by the world's dominant superpower. The need to compromise by allowing for Palestinian national rights has not yet become apparent to the majority of Israelis and Jews elsewhere, knowing they have an American umbrella under which to hide from the consequences of their actions. Therefore, those who attack Zionism as inherently racist, expansionist, or militaristic are once again falling into the trap of blaming the Jews instead of those who are, in fact, responsible. Any nationalist movement based in a hostile region which has received the kind of backing Israel has would likely behave no differently. The recent breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations -- granting Palestinians limited self-government in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho -- is not likely to lead to real peace, at least as long as the United States continues to be more interested in maintaining a garrison Israel than recognizing that Israeli security and Palestinian rights are dependent on the other. The Camp David Accords had provisions for Palestinian autonomy for almost the entire occupied territories, but when the Israelis refused to implement any real form of Palestinian self-governance, the United States refused to press the issue. Indeed, U.S. military and economic support for Israel's right-wing government increased dramatically, demonstrating to the Israelis that there was little to lose in such intransigence. Similarly, it seems that whenever the current government of Yitzhak Rabin has taken hard-lined actions, they get little criticism from the Clinton administration. The U.S. protected Israel from United Nations sanctions when Israel expelled over 400 Palestinian Muslims, launched heavy attacks against Lebanese villages, and dramatically increased the level of repression in the occupied territories. At the same time, when the Israelis have shown a willingness to compromise and take risks for peace, they have gotten little support. Only when Israel and the Zionist movement see their future with the Third World -- made necessary by its geography, its Semitic language and culture, its majority Sephardic population, and the Jews' history of exploitation by the Europeans -- will Israel end its isolation and find the real security that it has been missing. Many of the so-called “supporters of Israel” in American politics are actually making Israel vulnerable by tying its future to a declining Western imperial order and blocking its more natural alliance with the world's Afro-Asian majority. The combination of Israeli technology, Palestinian industriousness, and Arabian oil wealth could result in an economic, political, and social transformation of the Middle East which would be highly beneficial to the region's inhabitants, but not necessarily to certain elites in the United States and other Western nations who profit enormously from the continued divisions between these Semitic peoples. Meanwhile, Israeli leaders and their counterparts in many American Zionist organizations are repeating the historic error of trading short-term benefits for their people at the risk of long-term security. This cycle can only be broken when current American policy is effectively challenged and Israelis and Palestinians will finally be allowed to settle their differences among themselves and join together in liberating the Middle East from both Western imperialism and their own autocratic rulers. Without U.S. encouragement to compromise further, Israel will not likely allow the Palestinians more autonomy or control of land than the current agreement allows. Given that domestic pressure in Israel against Rabin's middle ground is stronger on the right than the left, he will have little room to compromise further unless there is U.S. pressure. Indeed, members of the Israeli team in the peace negotiations have privately begged the Clinton administration to pressure their government further so they could have an excuse to move more than they can currently, but the Clinton administration has refused. There is a growing consensus in Israel that a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza is an inevitable outgrowth of the agreement. However, the U.S. remains adamant in its opposition to Palestinian statehood. Indeed, the Clinton administration is the first in the United States to imply that the West Bank and Gaza are “disputed” territories, insinuating that the Israelis and Palestinians have equal claim to the land, rather than the view of the international community which recognizes it as territory under foreign military occupation. Most observers recognize that one of the major obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace is the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. However, the Clinton Administration, in a reversal of policy from previous administrations, has not opposed the expansion of existing settlements and has been ambivalent regarding the large scale construction of massive housing developments in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. According to U.S. law, the costs of such additional Jewish development in the occupied territories must be deducted from the $2 billion annual allocation of the controversial $10 billion American loan guarantee to Israel passed in 1992. In October, the U.S. officially announced to Israel that there would be a $437 million deduction in this year's loan due to settlement construction during the 1993 fiscal year. However, State Department Middle East peace talks coordinator Dennis Ross immediately let the Israeli government know that the U.S. would find a way to restore the full funding. Within a month, Clinton announced the U.S. would indeed give Israel an additional $500 million, ostensibly to pay for the “redeployment” of Israeli troops which have yet to evacuate from any part of the occupied territories. Meanwhile, the Clinton administration has launched a vigorous campaign to rescind all the previous UN resolutions critical of Israel. The Administration has labeled these “anachronistic” even though the issues addressed in these resolutions -- human rights violations, illegal settlements, expulsions of dissidents, development of nuclear weapons, and ongoing military occupation -- remain as relevant as ever. By far the strongest domestic pressure Rabin receives comes from the Israeli right, which opposes any territorial compromise. The Israeli peace movement, while supportive of the accords, has been unwilling or unable to mobilize for a complete end of the occupation. Therefore, the only truly effective counter-pressure must come from the United States, which provides the military, economic, and diplomatic support for Israeli occupation forces. Some apologists for the Clinton administration claim that it is pressure from the American Jewish community which accounts for the United States' hard-lined position. However, according to a recent poll by the American Jewish Congress, a sizable majority of American Jews now support Palestinian statehood. Similarly, a number of prominent Jews in the Clinton administration, some of whom have ties with the Israeli peace movement, are quite chagrined at the president's swing to the right. The man who has emerged as Clinton's primary advisor on the Middle East is Martin Indyk of the National Security Council, former head of the conservative Washington Institute on Near East Policy and an advisor to the former right-wing Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who is openly hostile to the Israeli-PLO accord. The U.S. policy towards the Palestinians is to the right of the Israeli government. There is little question that one could get more votes for Palestinian statehood in the Israeli Knesset than in the U.S. Congress; even the leadership of the Labour Party takes a more dovish position than the leadership of either American political party. This cycle of setting Jews up to do the dirty work for those who really have power can only be broken when current American policy is effectively challenged and Israelis and Palestinians will finally be allowed to settle their differences among themselves and join together in liberating the Middle East from both Western imperialism and their own autocratic rulers. Stephen Zunes is director of the Institute for a New Middle East Policy and an associate scholar at the Institute for Global Security Studies in Seattle. www.zmag.org ------------------------------------------------ http://www.islamamerica.org/articles.cfm/article_id/65/

Tell me why is it that its 'hard' to NOT be influenced by the West in terms of you're views? Are you suggesting that you're more a follower than a leader? Wiil-Nugaal, is it really necessary to attempt attacks on my character? Really though, what does insinuating whether I'm a follower or leader have to do anything? I'm not going to put much effort in responding to your question, because I believe I've already answered it in my first post. Let me quote it for emphasis. every individual in the world has been influenced by the West in one way or another. If we're not trying to be like them, we keep them in mind when we're figuring out how to differentiate ourselves from them. That above not only refers to culture, but western political thought and systems. Anyways, I understand the importance of prioritizing our national goals, but it is impossible--and detrimental--in this global environment to not take other countries' policies into account. So maybe I put in a little more effort than I meant...oh, well. The more content you can respond to, right?

Those were all very profound articles, Shujui, thanks! In response to the first, you're right to infer that there's a compulsion to see Huntington's vision in reality. I swear, it is so disheartening to see such ignorant and misinforming comments made so arrogantly by these individuals. But what I've learnt to realize is that this is something of a political stunt, really. America is jumping on the radical right bandwagon along with the rest of Europe, where almost all of Western European states are facing the re-emergence of facist parties (Germany, Hungary, Austria, France, Italy, etc.). They're all looking for someone to blame for their problems. Most often, the European counterparts attribute unemployment to Muslims and other immigrant groups...I'm not too sure what the Americans are trying to hide behind yet. And in a way, there is some power attained by making such radical stands. Parties or groups like these captivate a sector of the population who are looking for a fresh voice with new ideas, no matter how illogical they may be. What better example is there than the ascent of the Nazi party? Anyways, that's just one perspective at looking at these manipulative statements. It's amazing to witness these people turning a blind eye to the true facts of Islam. Secondly, Robert Fisk is so admirable! I wonder if this is the unrestrained voice of an objective (if not slightly biased) journalist in the midst of Western media propaganda?

please don't say anything about 'democracy.' I don't mean to be poking holes (not REALLY), but why is it that you don't strike out the classic concept of a "republic", along with democracy? The suggestion of a confederation still doesn't say anything about the political system that should be adopted. i don't think a centralized government failed outright in Somalia---it had more to do with the government's incompetence rather than the system. If we want to look away from Western political systems, it seems the other viable option is based on Islam. Pure clanism is definitely not a solution, although I do believe it will be a certain factor of consideration (whether it means to incorporate it or not). By the way, if you haven't already seen it, there's a very interesting topic in the Islam forum titled "Islam's approach towards democracy" that may give some insight Think deep as Somalis, NOT as Western-influenced Somalis! *LOL* I'm sorry, but I think this is too much to ask. I think almost every individual in the world has been influenced by the West in one way or another. If we're not trying to be like them, we keep them in mind when we're figuring out how to differentiate ourselves from them.

Shujui, Well, Sweden first comes to mind. Then, in no particular order of who is MORE of either, France, Italy, Canada (yay! ), Germany...even the UK and US. I don't think globalization has had as much an impact on welfare policies as trade policies. Of course, though, these welfare societies are facing pressure of providing these services to growing populations. This may not answer your question completely---maybe you have a different definition of a socially democratic welfare state with a free market---at least I tried!

Thanks for the great insight, Khayr. I especially liked Imam Ghazzli's quote. Anyways, I've never really been a huge fan of causality .

Lakkad, I mentioned that I've experienced things in Montreal that I would've never come across in Ottawa. It's not really being away from home and family (although that's it's own challenge), it has really been the people and views I've been exposed to here. I never realized it before, but when I left Ottawa it was like enterring another world! It wasn't really intentional, but I never used to socialize with non-Somalis...and then bam, I'm in a place with practically no Somalis! Let's just say it was a test of my character, as a Somali, Muslim and individual. But hey, all of life's a test, and it ain't over yet (inshallah), so I guess I'll just have to hold a sigh of relief :rolleyes:

Lakkad, I mentioned that I've experienced things in Montreal that I would've never come across in Ottawa. It's not really being away from home and family (although that's it's own challenge), it has really been the people and views I've been exposed to here. I never realized it before, but when I left Ottawa it was like enterring another world! It wasn't really intentional, but I never used to socialize with non-Somalis...and then bam, I'm in a place with practically no Somalis! Let's just say it was a test of my character, as a Somali, Muslim and individual. But hey, all of life's a test, and it ain't over yet (inshallah), so I guess I'll just have to hold a sigh of relief :rolleyes:

Thanks for posting this article, Shujui! I'm ashamed to admit I still check up on CNN once in a while (like a thing that you absolutely hate, but must keep in mind always to keep watch of what it's doing), and it's SO frustrating to see these self-proclaimed experts flipping and over-generalizing an idea. If I had a dollar for every time some over-zealous person mentioned the word jihad , I would be a very mad millionaire by now. It's good to know there are competent intellectuals, like Edward Said, speaking out against these people. Excuse me if I'm wrong, but I heard that he's a Christian Palestinian. If that's true, isn't his stand on Islam interesting?

Hariir, thanks so much for contributing that. I really enjoyed it. No mathematical or scientific rational arguement can or should be made to Prove Allah's existance and those who try to do so are in error Khayr, it's interesting that you mentioned that, because this topic made me remember a university lecture that I attended. The lecture's title was "The Logical Proof of the Existence of God". Anyways, his theory was really about causality (if A leads to B, which leads to C, which leads to D...then A must lead to D!), and it took three hours (!!!) for him to finally finish his line of if's. What struck me the most was that he was heavily influenced by a Muslim philosopher of long ago (all I can remember is his name started with an A, sorry). At the end of the lecture though, there were two camps of listeners: those who were satisfied with his proof because they believed in God irregardless; and those atheists whose intention in attending the lecture was to poke holes. The professsor's only response was along the lines of: this is an irrefutable logical proof. Its only critics are those who refuse to acknowledge a Supreme Being. Anyways, I'm not trying to further his theory here. Curiousity led me there, but all the proofs of Allah's will have already been provided for me in the Quran, alhamdulillah

Link, thanks for the webpage link. I've heard about it, but it's kind of disheartening that the McGill black student societies aren't broadcasting them more :confused: . Insha-allah, I'll try my best to attend, and contribute the Somali view on things (which I'm sure they'll appreciate SOOOO much!)

Link, thanks for the webpage link. I've heard about it, but it's kind of disheartening that the McGill black student societies aren't broadcasting them more :confused: . Insha-allah, I'll try my best to attend, and contribute the Somali view on things (which I'm sure they'll appreciate SOOOO much!)

Rahiima, it has been Allah's will that my family ended up in Canada, and as such I've been educated in Western concepts and ideas. Through wonderful forums, such as this, I'm expanding my knowledge of Islamic ideology. I don't think it's harmful, however, to suggest the positive proponents of the theory of democracy. Ignoring something altogether is more destructive than considering it, right? I don't doubt that modern democracy, as lived out by the west, is conflictual with Islam. Khayr, can you really cite Iran as an example of a successful (even moderately) Islamic state? You can prove me wrong, but I was under the impression they are under substantial turmoil. If anyone can give an example of a modern and sound Islamic fundamental state (and I mean one that's not tyrannical, despotic, etc), I would really appreciate it. None cross my mind.